Resolving Paradoxes

“If any man thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.” –Paul, 1^st Corinthians 8:2

Every so often I will look down at my own hand and consider how very little I know about it.  Moving my fingers I can see an array of bones working together in tandem, somehow tied together by a complex network of muscle and tendons.  The muscle is mysteriously activated by electrical impulses triggered by my brain, causing a cascade of molecular rearrangement that makes one of thousands of fibers contract precisely in such a way as to create an efficient movement.  The draft I feel as my fingers cut through the air results from millions of branched neurons scattered throughout my hand granting me the wonder of sensory perception.  The very flesh that encases my hand is composed of countless cells each containing their own biochemical factory rivaling all the industries on the face of this planet.  And for all this, my knowledge is limited to the vaguest generalizations of a reality that infinitely extends in complexity.

I could focus all of my attention on one aspect of one detail of my hand, and perhaps could suggest a reasonable theory for how it came into existence.  However brilliant my theory may be though, it would still be void unless it could also account for the rest of the hand.  The problem with theories of origin is that they fail to take into account the paradoxical arrangement of our universe.  From swirling galaxies to swirling electrons, everything is ordered in such a way that every aspect of detail requires another aspect of detail in order to exist.  For example when it comes to life on earth, the existence of every creature is dependent on the existence of other creatures in an elaborate ecosystem.  The earth’s environment is regulated by millions of different organisms that continually cycle carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen for their mutual survival.  Nothing on earth can survive on its own, and if we were to find life on another planet it is only reasonable to assume that we would have to find an entire ecosystem.

When studying theories of origin in college I was particularly struck by this lack of thinking when it came to the evolution of DNA and proteins.  Initially in the 1950’s there were theories advanced suggesting that the building blocks of proteins, amino acids ‘could’ have existed in some primordial soup billions of years ago.  However even if that were the case, and this ‘soup’ somehow produced functional proteins contrary to principles of dynamic equilibrium, how would those proteins be reproduced?  In our modern world, the information that encodes for proteins is found in DNA.  This means that in some form or another, DNA and proteins had to coexist or at least co-develop from the very beginning of time.  Proteins can’t exist without DNA, and DNA can’t exist without proteins!  Modern theorists have attempted to resolve the problem by suggesting that RNA, a functional hybrid of DNA and proteins was the first to develop.  This initially sounds plausible, but RNA can’t successfully perform the functions of DNA or proteins – and also requires DNA and proteins to exist itself!

Contrary to the critics of intelligent design, the chief argument in favor of the universe being created is not merely that everything is ‘really complex’.  Rather, it is the paradoxical arrangement of that complexity – such that everything depends on everything else for its own existence.  Such an arrangement could not have come about in a step by step process, but must have had some functional unity from the very beginning.  For anyone that is truly honest with their selves, and considers how little they really know – none of this should come as a surprise.  God never intended His reality to be questioned, but designed creation to be an open declaration of His existence.

Homologous Structures

I love my iphone – it has got to be one of the most useful devices ever created.  Not only can you listen to music, but you can also watch movies, check email, surf the internet and of course play games.  I must admit that the App Store has become one of my guilty pleasures of late, and have been continually amazed at the ever burgeoning supply of available applications.  There is an incredibly diverse array of applications ranging from file storage programs to photo editors to the most unusual of games.  I have smiled on the inside playing some of these games thinking about the creative gifts that God has blessed some people with.  There is nothing that pleases me more than to encounter something that is truly original, and the App Store has provided me with plenty of those moments.

As unique and vastly different as all of those iphone applications are from one another, if we were to ‘look under the hood’ and compare the raw binary sequences that compose these programs – there would be a very high degree of sequence similarity!  In fact, there would be vast and repeating regions of identical sequences common to all of the programs.  Why should this be the case?  Each application after all represents a unique effort by an individual or team of individuals to turn an idea into a functional program.  Although the ideas of these individuals may have been inspired by previous applications, every programming effort must begin from scratch.  The answer to the mystery lies in the fact that similar programming languages are used by all the programmers.  Programmers don’t program using raw binary sequences, but instead use languages that have been built up from those sequences.  Even the simplest commands used by programmers represent a huge binary sequence that will be repeated every time that command is used.

When we compare the raw DNA sequences of living things to one another there is also an astonishing degree of sequence similarity common to all life.  Like computer programs, the level of similarity between sequences will depend in large part on the types of living things we are comparing.  Life that is outwardly similar structurally will most likely share a greater degree of common sequences.  In the same way, a word processing program will share more sequence similarity with another word processing program due to the nature of the application.  This is a natural consequence of the programming language used to create the applications.  When the end result is similar, it is necessary that there will be a greater degree of common commands used to achieve that end result.

The programming language of life is proteins; proteins determine the chemical environment of a cell which in turn triggers developmental changes.  DNA could be compared to the binary sequences in computers, and its primary function is to encode for proteins.  You could think of the proteins as representing ‘commands’ in the programming language of life, and hence many of these ‘commands’ are found in almost every living thing.  It is therefore not surprising that similar proteins can be found in bacteria, plants, animals and humans!  Of course like computer programs, the degree or percentage of similar commands will depend on the type of living thing that will result from the program.  For example, as different as every human being is from one another, our DNA sequences are all 99.9% identical!  When compared to a mouse, we are 70% identical.

If we were to collect all of the different App Store applications and compare their structural and sequence similarities, we could create an evolutionary tree from that information!  We could determine which application ‘gave rise’ to other applications based upon ‘homologous structures’ structurally and ‘genetically’!  Of course we all know that would be utter nonsense, because each application was created from the ground up by a designer.  Even though applications can be ‘tweaked’ to a certain degree, once created they are limited in the amount of change they are capable of.  Life is no different – God created life with the ability to adapt to changes in the environment to a certain degree, but the degree to which life can change once created is limited.