Why Christianity — VacantTomb

DNA, Life, and the Origin of Information

The Darwinian account of biological evolution — that species change over time through random mutation and natural selection — is the consensus of modern biology and is not, by itself, a challenge to Christianity. Many Christians, including Francis Collins, the geneticist who led the Human Genome Project, hold that God created life through the evolutionary process. The cosmological arguments work equally well whether or not evolution is the mechanism of biological development.

But there is a prior question that evolutionary theory does not address and cannot address: where did the first life come from? How did the first self-replicating cell arise from non-living chemistry? This is the question of abiogenesis, and it is one of the most significant unsolved problems in all of science.

The abiogenesis problem

The origin of life from non-life is not a solved problem. It is not even close to being solved. This is acknowledged across the scientific literature, though it rarely makes it into public discourse, where the gap between "evolution explains the development of life" and "science explains the origin of life" is routinely elided.

The minimum requirements for the simplest known life — a basic bacterial cell — include: a lipid membrane capable of maintaining an internal chemical environment, a metabolic system capable of extracting energy from the environment, a genetic system (DNA or RNA) capable of storing and transmitting information, and a translational system (ribosomes) capable of reading that information and producing proteins. Each of these systems is irreducibly complex in the sense that it requires all its components to function — a partial ribosome does not partly translate; it does not translate at all.

The Miller-Urey experiment of 1953 is often cited as a breakthrough in explaining the origin of life. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey produced amino acids by passing an electrical spark through a mixture of gases they believed represented the early Earth's atmosphere. The experiment is significant — but much less significant than it is usually presented as.

What Miller-Urey showed	What it did not show
That amino acids can form from simple gases under certain conditions	That those amino acids would not immediately be destroyed by the same conditions — the energy that creates them also breaks them down
That some of the building blocks of proteins can arise naturally	That proteins themselves can form — proteins require amino acids to link in specific sequences, which requires information
That chemistry can produce biologically relevant molecules	That those molecules can self-organize into functional systems — the gap between having the parts and having a functioning cell is enormous
That the atmosphere Miller used could produce these results	That the early Earth’s atmosphere was actually like Miller’s — subsequent research suggests it was more oxidizing, which prevents the reactions

Origin-of-life researcher Leslie Orgel, who spent his career working on the RNA world hypothesis, wrote near the end of his life:

The RNA world theory is not an explanation for the origin of life. It is a description of what life's first genetic system might have looked like, which is interesting and important, but it does not explain how that system came to exist. The difficulty of the problem should not be underestimated.
Leslie OrgelSecular historian— PLoS Biology, 2008

The information argument

The deepest challenge from biology to materialist accounts of life's origin is not chemical — it is informational. DNA is a digital information storage system. A single human cell contains approximately 3 billion base pairs of DNA, encoding the information needed to build, maintain, and reproduce an extraordinarily complex organism. The information density of DNA exceeds that of any human-engineered storage system.

The key insight of Stephen Meyer's argument in Signature in the Cell (2009) is that the question of life's origin is fundamentally a question about the origin of specified information — information that is both complex (not reducible to a simple pattern) and functional (it actually does something when read by the cell's translational machinery).

The Information Argument

P1The DNA of even the simplest living cell contains specified, functional information of extraordinary complexity.

P2In all observed cases, specified, functional information arises only from intelligence — never from undirected physical or chemical processes.

P3The first life required specified, functional DNA information.

∴The origin of the first life points to an intelligent cause.

The second premise is the crucial one. Meyer is not arguing from ignorance — he is arguing from what we actually observe. Every time we trace specified information back to its source, we find a mind. Computer code: a programmer. A library: authors. The Rosetta Stone: scribes with linguistic knowledge. We have never once observed unguided physical processes generating specified functional information. The inference to design follows the same logic as every other inference to an unobserved cause in historical science: we identify the cause not by witnessing it but by recognizing the kind of effect it produces — and specified information is the kind of effect only minds produce.

When you have worked in this field and have had the opportunity to see the complexity of the genetic code — the way in which four letters of this remarkable digital information system can encode the instructions for building a human being — it is almost impossible not to be awed into wondering whether something beyond the reach of chemistry could have assembled this.
Francis CollinsChristian scholar— The Language of God, 2006

Collins led the Human Genome Project — one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings in history. He is an evolutionary biologist who has no interest in dismissing science. His awe at the informational complexity of DNA is that of an insider, not an outsider.

DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.
Bill Gates— The Road Ahead, 1995

Gates is not making a theological argument — he is making an observation about the character of the information in DNA. Computer programs are produced by programmers. The inference from information to intelligence is one of the most natural inferences available to human reason.

The fine-tuning of chemistry for life

Beyond the information in DNA, the chemistry of life itself appears fine-tuned at a level beyond what random processes can plausibly explain. The carbon atom has properties that make it uniquely suited to forming the complex molecular structures that biological life requires — its valence electrons allow it to form four stable bonds simultaneously, creating the molecular scaffolding of proteins, DNA, and cell membranes. No other element comes close.

Water — the universal solvent of biology — has properties that seem engineered for life: its anomalous expansion when frozen (meaning ice floats, insulating aquatic life beneath in winter), its extraordinary heat capacity (stabilizing temperature), its polarity (enabling it to dissolve the charged molecules biology requires), and its surface tension (enabling the capillary action plants depend on). Each of these properties is chemically unusual. Together they constitute a suite of features that make water uniquely suited to serving as the medium of biological chemistry.

Physicist Paul Davies:

The origin of life is the greatest outstanding mystery in science. We do not know how, where, or when life first emerged, but we know what life requires: an extraordinarily improbable and complex set of circumstances that natural processes alone have never been shown to reproduce.
Paul DaviesSecular historian— The Fifth Miracle, 1998

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DNA, Life, and the Origin of Information

The origin of life from non-life is unsolved science. DNA contains specified, functional information of extraordinary complexity — 3 billion base pairs encoding the instructions for a human being. In all observed cases, specified information comes only from intelligence.

Key claims

—Abiogenesis is unsolved — Miller-Urey produced amino acids, not life
—The quantum vacuum is not nothing — it is a field with energy and laws
—DNA contains 3 billion base pairs — more information than 30 encyclopedias
—Specified information in all observed cases comes only from intelligence
—Francis Collins (Human Genome Project): complexity of DNA inspires awe
—Leslie Orgel (origin-of-life researcher): "The difficulty of the problem should not be underestimated"

Scholars cited

Stephen MeyerPhilosopher of science
Francis CollinsGeneticist / HGP director
Leslie OrgelChemist / origin-of-life researcher
Paul DaviesPhysicist

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