Biochemistry

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With support from the United States National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, scientists from several medical research laboratories in the United States and the Netherlands have recently completed a series of experiments designed to sequence the male-specific region of the Y chromosome (MSY) in the chimpanzee. 1 In their words, they achieved for the first time “levels of accuracy and completion previously reached for the human MSY.” They also compared the MSYs of humans and chimpanzees and found that “they differ radically

• 1. Hughes JF, Skaletsky H, Pyntikova T, Graves TA, van Daalen SKM, Minx PJ, Fulton RS, McGrath SD, et al. (2010) Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure gene content. Nature 463 (7280): 536-539

The central question evolutionary science has yet to answer is by what natural processes is novel information introduced into the biological world. Until this question is answered, evolution will remain an organized system of unproven speculations and “just so” stories. There are two main events in the evolutionary tale that need this type of explanation: the origin of life and the mechanism for macroevolution.

The genome of organisms contains their genetic material, which largely determines how they will develop. Scientists are learning more and more about the genome of various organisms, which is revealing more and more about the amazing wisdom of God in their design and creation. It seems that our understanding of the functioning of life is always incomplete, and the genome is always more complex than we had thought. Will we ever fully understand the functioning of life, or will it always be a mystery to us?

Several recent discoveries in genetics reveal even more of the amazing properties of the genome and give additional evidence for the design of life by an intelligent creator. DNA consists of a long sequence of four nucleotide bases. Proteins consist of sequences of about twenty amino acids, and are specified by a coding system in which three successive nucleotide bases of DNA constitute a “codon” and are translated into a specific amino acid. However, there are more codons than amino acids, so more than one codon corresponds to a given amino acid in many cases.

The genome of an animal contains the DNA that specifies the characteristics of the animal. This is in the form of a sequence of four bases; the sequence of the human genome is over three billion bases long. Of course, different individuals have different sequences. A few years ago the human genome project completed a description of the sequence of the human genome, and several other animals’ genomes have been sequenced since then. Scientists sometimes claim that these genomes provide evidence for the theory of evolution. However, recent results show how little we really know about the genome, and therefore it is unreasonable to assert that the genome provides evidence for evolution, when we understand it so poorly. 

Genesis 1 describes the separate creation of various organisms “after their kind.” This means that all life on earth is primarily related through having a common creator and not through common descent. When evolutionists claim that molecules-to-man macroevolution is a “fact”, they are often referring to evidence for common ancestry irrespective of any evolutionary mechanism. This approach helps them avoid the inherent difficulties associated with explaining how point mutations, genetic recombinations, gene duplication, and natural selection could create new genetic information by chance. One way evolutionists try to support the idea of common ancestry involves comparison of homologous DNA sequences and proteins between organisms (molecular homology). Presumably, the greater the similarities between DNA or protein sequences in different organisms, the more recent has been the divergence from a common ancestor.

The phrase "intelligent design" is heard a great deal lately in the media, usually in the context of secondary school science education.

A mathematician and a philosopher, William A. Dembski is the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Science and Theology at Southern Seminary in Louisville where he heads its Center for Theology and Science. He is also a senior fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture in Seattle and the executive director of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (www.iscid.org).

Recently I was asked to give a talk on resources available on creation. I expanded the topic to include best evidences for creation. This article is based on that talk. For resources, I will discuss some of the major websites and organizations. Many of these will probably be familiar to you if you have been interested in creation science for a while. For best evidences, I will discuss scripture, the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of species, empirical detection of intelligent causes, and the age of the earth.

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment."-Sherlock Holmes in a Study of Scarlet

Back in the 1960s, scientists discovered sections of DNA that did not code for proteins. These non-coding DNA strands were assumed to be non-functional and were referred to as "junk" DNA, the presumed evolutionary remnants of ancestral organisms.¹ Almost 99% of human DNA is known to be non-coding.