DNA, DESIGN, AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
The classical design argument looked at order in the world and concluded that God must have caused it. Archdeacon William Paley in the nineteenth century refined the argument. He also gave it perhaps its most eloquent and persuasive formulation. Paley looked at the order of human artifacts and compared it to the order in living beings. If human intelligence was responsible for artifacts, reasoned Paley, then some intelligent power greater than man must have accounted for living beings.
The major problem with this design argument was its claim to reason from order in the world to a supernatural designer. For Paley did not provide any uniform experience of the supernatural, which alone could make good his claim. As valid as this objection was, however, only philosophers seemed concerned about it. It was an argument by Charles Darwin that raised doubt for most people concerning true design in the world. According to Darwin natural selection produced apparent design which the faithful mistook for true design. So the matter has stood in the scientific community and the world at large for a century.
Scientific discoveries made in this century, however, threaten to change the outlook fundamentally in regards to design. However, few outside the relevant disciplines seem aware of it. I am referring to developments in relativity theory and quantum mechanics, neurophysiology, information theory, and molecular biology, particularly the elucidation of the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). I shall focus my remarks on DNA and its relation to design and the origin of life.
Due to advances in molecular biology, the process of reproduction, or self-replication, has become better understood. At the core of this process is the DNA molecule. Though not itself alive, DNA is usually regarded as the sine qua non of life. DNA is considered the identifying mark of a living system. We judge something as living if it contains DNA.
Molecular biology has shown us how extremely intricate living things are, especially the genetic code and the genetic process. Interestingly enough, the genetic code can be best understood as an analogue to human language. It functions exactly like a code — indeed, it is a code: it is a molecular communication system within the cell.
A sequence of chemical ‘letters’ stores and transmits the communication in the cell. Communication is possible whatever symbols used as an alphabet. The 26 letters we use in English, the 32 Cyrillic letters used in the Russian language, or the 4-letter genetic alphabet — all serve in communication.
In recent years, scientists have applied information theory to biology, and in particular to the genetic code. Information theory is the science of message transmission developed by Claude Shannon and other engineers at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the late 1940s. It provides a mathematical means of measuring information. Information theory applies to any symbol system, regardless of the elements of that system. The so-called Shannon information laws apply equally well to human language, Morse code, and the genetic code.
The conclusion drawn from the application of information theory to biology is there exists a structural identity between the DNA code and a written language. H.P. Yockey notes in the Journal of Theoretical Biology:
It is important to understand that we are not reasoning by analogy. The sequence hypothesis [that the exact order of symbols records the information] applies directly to the protein and the genetic text as well as to written language and therefore the treatment is mathematically identical.
This development is highly significant for the modern origin of life discussion. Molecular biology has now uncovered an analogy between DNA and written human languages. It is more than an analogy, in fact: in terms of structure, the two are “mathematically identical.” In the case of written messages, we have uniform experience that they have an intelligent cause.
What is uniform experience? It simply means that people everywhere observe a certain type of event always in association with a certain type of cause. When we find evidence that a similar event happened in the past, it is reasonable to infer it had a similar cause. As I shall argue, based on uniform experience there is good reason to accept an intelligent cause for the origin of life as well.
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