Because of my fascination with scientific discoveries, and desire to follow evidence wherever it leads, I’ve been following this fascinating story about the newly-discovered use of DNA: information storage. It seems that promising experiments are underway using artificial DNA to store digital information. Its capacity is well beyond anything man has yet invented. Maybe DNA was designed? No, we are to believe that it just happened and came together. And further, once it did, it started building every living thing that has ever been on earth–by means of mutations and natural selection. The problem is, mutational rates and the usefulness of mutations together are far too unstable and weak to drive such as thing as the origin of the species. If DNA was designed, do we have to draw the line of design “there and no further”? The rest was just mechanics, right up to the men who are using DNA to store information?
Thursday, January 31, 2013, 1:30 PM
The problem with militant young earth creationists is their stagnant dogmatism in the face of ever-changing results in research. All the books that were the ‘current’ anti-evolution treatises are now behind the surge. And yes, “Darwin’s Black Box” still makes a solid argument, but is not current. Is it because evolutionary theory is more thoroughly debated in the sphere of metaphysics instead of biology–an angle which these books don’t completely address? I wonder if this new DNA perspective will give a lasting argument, or if it will end up being glossed over along with the bombadier beetle…Mr. Kushiner, am I way off here?
I don’t think DNA is a “lasting” argument, it’s just another thing that points to design. Information and consciousness and mind are facts of our universe, but the origin of them is utterly mysterious to the followers of scientism. Christians must view the world from the beginning point of the Logos, working out from there ultimately. We can work back in assessing bits of data, and even pretend to start thinking about everything from the moment of the Big Bang on, adding one bit of material and empirical fact to another, but coherence itself, coherence of a theory even, arises not from matter but from mind. Trying describing the Big Bang without reference to the human mind–you can’t. We’re stuck in this, so the best place to begin is with us, and “we” include a singularly smart Man, whom we should listen to.
Mr. Kushiner,
Thank you for the insights. Very helpful.