DNA and Designing Intelligence – Part 3

(Excepted from our series “The New Scientific Evidence that Points to the Existence of God – Part 2.” Edited for publication. See our online store to order this entire series.)

(Continued from Part 2)

Dr. Stephen Meyer: Now, the big question in biology is, what tells the amino acids how to arrange themselves so that they line up properly, fold into the right shape, and so they can do a job? And the great discovery of the second half of the 20th century biology is that there’s another molecule inside the cell, known as DNA, that literally contains instructions in a digital form for directing the construction of those protein molecules, for arranging the amino acids, subunit by subunit, to make the long chain that will fold properly.

And the story of this discovery starts with Watson and Crick in 1953 when they elucidate the structure of the DNA molecule, which by this time many scientists suspected had something to do with the transmission of hereditary information.

And what Crick discovered later in 1958, or what he proposed, was that the subunits of the DNA molecule that run down the interior of the spine there, are functioning like alphabetic characters in a written language, or like digital characters, like the zeros and ones in a section of software code. This was known as the sequence hypothesis, and it was later confirmed.

And what it essentially says is that the DNA molecule performs a function not by virtue of its physical properties, but instead in virtue of the specific arrangement of those, what they call nucleotide bases, the subunits of the DNA on the inside of the molecule, that it performs a function for directing protein synthesis in virtue of the precise arrangement of those characters.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Let me, hold it right there. Because the DNA that’s in every one of our cells in our body, it’s a billion characters long.

Dr. Stephen Meyer: It’s exactly the same thing with the proteins: specificity is key. It’s not just that you can arrange them any old way. They’ve got to be arranged in a very precise way so that the amino acids get arranged properly, and in turn the protein folds and does a job.

So, one way to understand what’s going on inside this DNA and protein system, is by analogy to a technology we use today in manufacturing called CAD/CAM, Computer Assisted Design and Engineering. So you might,… say, if you were at the Boeing plant in Seattle where I live, you have an engineer sitting at a console write some code; the code goes down a wire; the wires translate it into a machine language that then directs the manufacturing arm to, say, put rivets on the airplane in just the right place in accord with the instructions.

Dr. John Ankerberg: In a huge factory, basically, you’ve got all these big machines that are being programmed from upstairs, and it’s coming down the wire. And the fact is, then it does the work downstairs in building these airplanes.

Dr. Stephen Meyer: Right. And so you’ve got digital information directing the construction of a mechanical system. And that’s exactly what’s going on inside the cell today, inside every single cell of every organism on earth, including our own. And so, we’ve got a little animation that shows exactly how that works.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Let’s roll the tape.

[Video clip]

With computer animation, we can enter the cell to view this remarkable system at work.

After entering the heart of the cell, we see the tightly wound strands of DNA, storehouses for the instructions necessary to build every protein in an organism. In a process known as transcription, a molecular machine first unwinds a section of the DNA helix to expose the genetic instructions needed to assemble a specific protein molecule.

Another machine then copies these instructions to form a molecule known as Messenger RNA. When transcription is complete, the slender RNA strand carries the genetic information through the nuclear pore complex, the gatekeeper for traffic in and out of the cell nucleus.

The Messenger RNA strand is directed to a two-part molecular factory called a ribosome. After attaching itself securely, the process of translation begins.

Inside the ribosome, a molecular assembly line builds a specifically sequenced chain of amino acids. These amino acids are transported from other parts of the cell and then linked into chains, often hundreds of units long. Their sequential arrangement determines that type of protein manufactured.

When the chain is finished, it is moved from the ribosome to a barrel shaped machine that helps fold it into the precise shape critical to its function. After the chain is folded into a protein, it is then released and shepherded by another molecular machine to the exact location where it is needed.

[end video clip]

Dr. John Ankerberg: That looks like a lot of information, Stephen. But in your book you talk about this as the DNA enigma; where did this information come from. Talk about it.

Dr. Stephen Meyer: Right. Well, the DNA enigma is not where does the information for building proteins reside; we now know that—it’s on the DNA molecule, along the spine of the DNA molecule. It’s not what the information does; we’ve just seen an animation of how the digital information in the DNA directs the construction of those crucial protein molecules. The big mystery associated with this discovery is the mystery of the origin of the information. Where did that information come from in the first place?

And that mystery is closely associated with another mystery, which is the origin of the first life. Because if you want to build a cell, you’ve got to have proteins; but to build proteins, you’ve got to have the information in the DNA molecule.

And that question has actually created an impasse in a field of study known as origin of life research. The scientists trying to explain how the first cell arose from supposedly simpler chemicals in a prebiotic soup have come up against this really difficult question, which is, how do you get from chemistry to code? How do you get a molecule chock full of digital information from blind, undirected, material processes?

I think that that mystery is the flip side of a positive case for intelligent design. Because what we know from experience is that information always comes from an intelligent source. Bill Gates has said that DNA is like a software program, but much more complex than any we’ve ever created. And we know from experience that software comes from programmers.

In fact, again, whenever we see information and trace it back to its ultimate source—whether we’re talking about a hieroglyphic inscription, or a paragraph in a book, or information embedded in a radio signal—we always come to a mind, not a material process. And so, the discovery of information at the foundation of life is pointing towards a designing intelligence, toward a master programmer.

And this discovery has actually also shocked some of the New Atheists who have confidently proclaimed that the universe has just the properties we should expect if at bottom there’s no purpose or design. Richard Dawkins, for example, just this last summer tweeted about an animation very similar to this one. And he said, “Animations like this knock me sideways with wonder at the miniaturized intricacy of the data-processing machinery in the living cell.”

So, far from being an expected discovery of scientific materialism or atheism, the information-bearing properties of DNA, and the whole digital information processing system inside the cell, is shocking to scientific materialists. It’s not what they would have expected, and instead it points decisively to a designing intelligence in the history of life.