Divine evidences — Human hostility

The need of reasoning —its purpose and its limits

“... to attempt to stifle criticism of Scripture by the cry that ‘the Bible is the word of God’ only serves to excite distrust on the part of earnest and honest-hearted inquirers. There never was an attack made upon the truth that could not be refuted. ‘Truth is one’; but error is in its very nature inconsistent, and therefore absurd. And while Divine truth is spiritual, and can only be spiritually discerned, human error is natural, and can be met on its own ground. We cannot ‘reason’ men into the kingdom of God, but by reasoning we can expose errors which prejudice them against it.”

Sir Robert Anderson
- The Bible and Modern Criticism
(London, Pickering and Inglis, c. 1895), p. 27.

The reality of God and human resistance

Many materialists are not bothered by the presence of a faith stated in an emotional and dogmatic form, with no basis on evidence. When they become alarmed and upset is when it is remarked that the Intelligent Design in nature and of nature itself is detectable and provable. That it is a logical inference which, although it does not depend on a theistic or religious worldview, carries an unavoidable inference of the reality of a Wisdom and a Godhead which, although often denied, it is none the less evident. It is a logical inference that has always been present and that has always stood as a barrier against the materialists claims that the whole universe as the environment for life and that all life in the said universe have sprung without direction or purpose.

One of the reasons for this stonewalling on the part of many against the least possibility of an Intelligent Design of nature and of life is that they have the intuition that this brings them before Him who judges the innermost attitudes and motives. And this they will not want to accept at all. They will not want to accept such a conclusion. They want to reject this possibility from the very start. This has always been the great motivator of materialism. The denial of God is not a scientific conclusion, but a yearning of a humanity in search of a false autonomy, a yearning that has been covered under the disguise of a philosophical or a scientific jargon.

For instance, philosopher Thomas Nagel, in his book, The Last Word (Oxford University Press, 1997), talks about what he calls "the fear of religion itself." He writes,

“I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.”

In his view, this fear may be “responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.” (p. 130)

That is why many materialists don't even want to talk about the evidences of Intelligent Design. For them it is a very personal, emotional matter. And they sense that it is a lost battle. Thus, instead of discussing about the facts and data as they are known today about the structures and functions of life, and about the theoretical possibilities that these facts and data allow, and about the limits that might or might not exist in the process of mutation and selection, they lower themselves to ridiculing and to throwing invectives, and try to confuse the matters that should be object of open debate. They even try to prevent the public presentation of these matters, as it happened recently in several places in Spain[1], and, like the squid, they throw a cloud of ink in their attempt to avoid a reasoned discussion of the matter.

On ridiculing the opponent:

When ridicule and mockery take the place of argument, we have to be wary. The use of ridicule against a reasoned exposition of arguments is a wretched attitude. However, humour can be the answer sometimes when the absurdity of a position is either clear by itself or has been demonstrated by a reasoned explanation; then the absurdity of such position may bring up the ridicule of the situation of those who may persist in an argument that has been refuted by facts or as inconsequential with them.

Speaking about evidences

One of the subjects in Physics is that to effect the separation of the molecules of a gas at a given temperature into two distributions of the said gas, a colder portion and a hotter portion, the so-called «Maxwell’s Demon» is needed, that is to say, an agent that may obtain information of each molecule of the said gas and act accordingly, to select it and let it pass and isolate it in the proper section of the system made ready to achieve the said differentiation. In summary, to select you need a given purpose, information and a source of energy for the work needed for the operation of the system, an operation guided by an information addressed to an end. We can also achieve a dissociation to even more segregated thermal groups (we can achieve groups segregated degree by degree). This implies more complication, a more complex mechanism.

By «evolution», when applied to the origin and development of life, what is generally understood is the emergence of new characters, of new structures, of new functions —by natural selection?

Darwin remarked that selection could be made between already existing characters, but this was known from old times. He advanced many examples of ARTIFICIAL selection and proposed a parallelism with natural selection which would improve the already existing traits and favouring the emergence of more and more complex structures.

The problem is that here we have a false parallelism. The real question, when we are dealing with the ORIGIN of new structures and functions (sight, hearing, flight, the diverse physiologic functions, etc.) is not how these structures are selected and improved, but how they ORIGINATE.

The paramount question in the origin and coordination of the diverse organic functions of the cell and of the organism is the production of the components and their coordination. First the material has to be available, then those necessary materials will have to be selected and placed in their due and corresponding relationships. A purpose, an end in view is necessary, and to possess the information that may direct all this arrangement. It is necessary not only to select all the adequate elements, but it is necessary as well to exclude all those that would interfere and that would make it impossible to reach the desired end.

For instance, to achieve the rotary motor of the bacterial flagellum, some given pieces are needed. These pieces are obtained through a manufacturing profess of each component in the desired quantities. And the manufacturing process of these pieces in the cell includes a series of steps which go from the reading of the instructions in the central library cell (DNA) to prepare transcriptions (not a mere copy) where information supports like mRNA are involved, as well as codified transport media of basic materials (aminoacids) as tRNAs, specific enzymes to join the tRNA with the said aminoacids, and machinery for the assembly of proteins (ribosomes) which, by means of a reading head, read the instructions which are transported to the same, and with other functions of this complex machine, weld the unit compounds (aminoacids) in the sequences commanded by the code supported by the lengths of mRNA which tell which tRNAs which each carry a specific aminoacid must enter every time in the entrance zone of the corresponding ribosome, to achieve the production of the proteins, both the structural ones and the enzymes, which are the fundamental components of the structures and of the functions of the cells.

Once the pieces of the motor of the bacterial flagellum have been obtained by means of this process of manufacture assisted by a cybernetic PROGRAMMED system with the reading of the codes and with all its systems of regulation and control, we are just at the beginning. The assembly of the motor follows a whole sequence that has been also PROGRAMMED, wholly regulated and controlled with the sending and receiving of signals of start-up and end of each of the sequential steps.

But this motor would not be able to do a thing without receiving (protonic) energy, which arrives through circuits which are as well product of a manufacture assisted by program, program also stored in the central library (DNA), transcribed and governed by the same process. And these circuits would not be fed by energy without the existence of another mechanism like that of ATP synthase which feeds all the different circuits and functions of the cell, of which we give one amongst thousands of examples.

Thus, we see that the great secret of all the production of these systems is the INFORMATION applied by means of sophisticated devices. It is not possible to achieve the selective production of components and their concatenation in coordinated systems without a system of reading and treatment of information. Codes, information, word and thought are everywhere, embodied in the performance of a plan and of a purpose.

Natural selection cannot achieve the origin of that which it selects. It is irrelevant regarding the origin of the structures of life, at all levels.

The necessary selection to obtain complex systems for regulation and control adapted to an end demands the existence of a transcending Mind and Purpose. The reality of life in particular, and of its framework, the universe in general, takes us to the consciousness of the reality of God, of His power and godhead.

The force of the evidence was felt even before the discovery of the nanomachinery of life by none other than Ernst Mayr, one of the most staunch Darwinists of the 20th Century. He had to confess that

“... it is a considerable strain on one's credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs (the eye of vertebrates, or the bird's feather) could be improved by random mutations. This is even more true of some ecological chain relationships (the famous Yucca moth case, and so forth).”

Mayr, Ernst (1942)
Systematics and the Origin
of Species, p. 296

Of course, he immediately adds that:

“However, the objectors of random mutations have so far been unable to advance any alternative explanation that was supported by substantial evidence.”

Ibid.

This attempt to solve this matter in this way tries to sideline the reality of the evidence that points to life as a result of an act of creation by God. It is here that the well known physicist and cosmologist Carl F. von Weizsäcker, although a materialist and a Darwinist, uncovers the true state of affairs, which, since the time he wrote, has been really worsening more and more for any materialistic approach to the origin and development of life:

“We do not yet understand the causes of evolution too well, but we have very little doubt about the fact of evolution; ... What are the reasons for this general belief? In the last lecture I formulated them negatively: We do not know how life should have come to exist in its actual form by any other way. This formulation leaves silently aside any possible supernatural origin of life; such is the faith in science of our time which we all share.” [The Relevance of Science, Collins, London and Glasgow, 1964, p. 141.]

The weight of evidence facing a hostile will

In my view, I.D. will generate hostility in a mind-set that is already hostile to its basic outcome. As Richard Lewontin put it so quaintly in his review of some years ago, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door”. It is not that the evidence is weak but that the materialistic mind has an axe to grind. Materialism MUST be maintained at all costs.

So, in fact, this is a deeply personal matter: Materialism, promising Man freedom, but bringing with it all its ultimate despair, or Theism, bringing Man before God. But man's attitude is not neutral; there is nothing irenic in it. Unrepentant man is at enmity against God and therefore in its natural state prefers rather to reject or reinterpret all evidence of God in the design of all nature in materialistic terms.

The bottom line is that Materialism has provided an illusory refuge for Man where to hide from God.

The problem is not in the evidence. There is a mountain of evidence to bring anybody to the conviction of the reality of a Design. But evidence is not a sufficient thing when facing a hostile attitude against God, as the one shown by the philosopher Nagel. We are surrounded by evidence. Out there in created Nature. The problem exists in the mindset of man, looking at design as something to be rejected, not because it is not apparent in the study of the created things, but because of a very strong bias against the evidence. When Dawkins says in his preface to The Blind Watchmaker: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose”, and then proceeds to apply the criteria that Lewontin describes in his review, he does so because "they have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism" ... they “CANNOT allow a Divine Foot in the door”. To be able to accept Intelligent Design, more than evidence is necessary, what is needed is a change of inner attitude that may break with the prior commitment to materialism and that may open itself to the reality that surrounds us. This prior commitment to materialism shows a heart of hostility against God. To come to a proper perspective of reality, repentance towards God is needed —and the end in view is a supernatural change of view transforming hostility and thanklessness into worship and thankfulness (Romans 1:20-22).

Yes, the bottom line is that the controversy is about much more than science, it is about the heart of man – which, taking his cue from the diatribes of Voltaire and others like him against God, seeks to deny all sovereign action of God in creation, providence, salvation and judgment. Thus modern man rebuilds his view of reality into one that God is absent, with the illusion of receiving therefore his freedom. But, as a lecturer remarked many years ago, in words that have stayed in my mind: “The optimistic Atheism of the Nineteenth Century thought that by displacing God, Man would have a place to be a man; the pessimistic Atheism of the Twentieth Century discovered that by having displaced God, Man had lost all place to be a man”.

Addressing himself to God, Augustine of Hippo (350-430) says: “Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in thee!” (Confessions, I, 1)

Santiago Escuain

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[1] For information in English on these events, click HERE; for more complete information in Spanish, click HERE
For supplementary reading: Evolutionist Learns from “Neo-Creationists”

For a sobering analysis of recent evolutionary claims that cannot be maintained, about evolution having been proved by lab experiments, and others, see:

• The ID Update - On the evolution of a "key innovation" in Escherichia coli
• Creation·Evolution Headlines - Fossil Frog-amander Claimed to Be Missing Link
• Creation·Evolution Headlines - An Evaluation of Evolution as an Explanatory Device

The origin of life – an unsolvable problem for materialism

When we address the question of the origin of life, we refer really to the origin of the first metabolic unit which can reproduce and perpetuate itself.

Before the great advances in microscopy and other observation techniques, it was believed that cells were relatively simple entities, a protoplasm where chemical interactions gave them their dynamic and reproductive properties. Not until the structures of the cell were observed by high resolution electronic microscopy and by means of other techniques that it was known that it was not a matter of mere chemical interactions, of more or less complexity, but of very complex interactions where a whole set of highly miniaturized complex machines made up of pieces of protein material fulfilled very specific functions within a vast biological-industrial complex, with systems for storage and retrieval, translation, transcription and maintenance of information, of regulation and control of processes, of capture, transformation and application of energy, of selective entrance of materials, and their automated transport by codified identification systems, with clocks and timers for all the rates of function and operation.

Thus, the problem of the origin of a living system is not limited merely to the origin of its functional systems as such, but:

1) If at first the systems were formed by some chance (systems of energy capture, energy conversion, and energy application for functions),

2) then, how did these proteinic structures come to be described in a codified system of information supported by the DNA

3) which afterwards could reproduce them by means of the complex of DNA-RNA transcription together with the whole complex of protein machines which are in their turn codified in DNA?

Support of information and Information – a needful distinction

Sometimes there is the unconscious idea that DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) IS the genetic information, and that if the formation of DNA could be explained we would have solved the problem of the origin of the codes of life. It is necessary to distinguish between the support of information and information itself.

An example of it we find in a high-frequency wave, which is no information by itself, and which could be explained as an emission due to a natural process. But a high-frequency wave can be a support of information, when a source of information (the human voice, a musical source, etc.), modulates either its amplitude, its frequency or its phase by means of devices applied to this end.

Another support of information is paper and ink, which cannot by themselves explain the message expressed by their means; the sequence of letters gives the message, either a novel or technical specifications to build a machine. The same with DNA, which by itself could never explain the sequence of the chemical bases, which gives codes for an end in view. This besides the inability of any merely chemical system to produce this molecule.

The same information can be transferred from one support to another one, from electromagnetic waves bearing a Morse code (... --- ...) to letters on paper (SOS) or to binary computer code or to the Braille alphabet. The message, the information, is an entelechy that communicates meanings and which can ride on different supports, and which, therefore, is not the support itself, but independent from it.

Therefore, the DNA chains are not information, paper and ink are not information, the surface of a CD-R is not information – but they serve as media to contain information. It may be said with these words: The plays of Shakespeare are much more than the paper and ink with which the book is produced. There is another magnitude besides the material support: the message.

Thus, what we have is information, which is generated by a mind, (1) either to communicate it to another mind when both minds share the same code, or have means to translate the codes to make them understandable, or (2) to dictate instructions issuing from a mind for achieving some specified purposes, which are thereafter applied by a set of mechanisms that are capable to receive this information and translate it into results.

What was first – the chicken or the egg?

So, the problem stands thus: Were the proteinic machines first formed by chance? In this case, how did they become described and codified on the DNA support and how was formed the whole proteinic machinery for the transcription and materialization of this information to give in its turn all the proteinic structures formed first by chance?

Or perhaps the DNA was first formed by chance, with the codes of life? With all the instructions for the different components of the cellular machinery, for the capture, conversion and application and energy, and for identification and transportation of materials to different parts of the cell, as well as the instructions for the sequences and timings of the assembly? And how much time passed until all the machinery to READ these instructions and to apply them in a functional way was formed by chance?

And, while the machinery was being formed to be able to use the information on this DNA support, which is chemically very fragile, how can the non-degradation and dissolution of a rich-information DNA chain be explained, without the needed proteins and enzymes for its protection, activation, repair and reproduction?

The alternatives

The differing options that have been proposed regarding the origin of life, regarding the origin of the first functional cell, are:

a. Chance + Natural Selection

b. Natural deterministic law

c. Personal intelligent direction

a. Chance + Natural Selection

An argument used by materialists is that the machinery of life, with all its complexity, bears no comparison with the "true" machines invented and made by men, "because he machines made by men do not reproduce, and it is the capability of reproduction what makes it possible for living beings to evolve by natural selection". But this argument is wholly false in relation to the origin of life: It is not only because the machines of the cells, which are real and highly miniaturized machines, are of an exquisite complexity, and because they are coordinated in their functions in time and rates for the systems of treatment, translation and transcription of information. The matter is also that cell reproduction cannot happen UNTIL WE HAVE THE CELL AS A WHOLE. Therefore, the materialist cannot adduce any difference between the cell machinery and the machinery invented by man "because those are living systems". There is no biological life until we have all the information systems with all their machinery, both the information itself contained in its DNA material support, transcribed then by a whole set of machines made up of specific protein pieces which then translate this information for the manufacture of the needed materials and as instructions for the positioning and addressing of the materials, and for the timing and regulation of the different cellular and organismic functions of life. The whole system is needed for the highly complex functions of life TO START TO EXIST. The parallelism of the origin of a cell by chance should be established with that of a whole industrial automated set-up of such a complexity that it could reproduce itself, from all the databases with the complete specifications of all machines, their placements, the materials they have to receive and how they have to process them, and for the maintenance of the whole complex, to the machines themselves and all their environment, connections, systems of capture, transformation and application of energy, systems of regulation and control of processes, selective hoppers for the feed of specific materials, and automated hatches for the exit of other materials, etc,

Therefore, the materialist cannot dodge the real problem posed as to the origin of this machinery with the statement that "those are living systems", because these living systems do not exist until we do not have in existence the integrated whole of all these informational system with all of its machinery, where the protein machines are codified in the DNA, but where DNA cannot express its information except by means of the operation of these protein machines.

In the pairing "Chance + Natural Selection", even when great importance is attributed to "selective pressures" to give the impression that the said pressure brings about the emergence of new organs and of new biological functions, it must be considered that selection, whether natural or artificial, can only operate on that which already exists, and also additionally that it can only operate on entities that are already reproductive. Therefore, natural selection can only exist when the living cell already exists and reproduces itself. It cannot therefore be invoked as a cause of its origin. Obviously, natural selection would not be able to act to build the reproductive system of the cell, as the indispensable reproductive function would not exist as yet. In this case, what we contemplate is the origin of the integrated whole of the first cell by pure chance. And chance is ruled out.

b. Natural deterministic law

In the first decades of speculation regarding the possible formation of a living cell by purely materialistic processes, a branch of materialists expressed the conviction that the natural laws themselves would have brought about the unavoidable formation of life. Amongst others, Kenyon and Steinmann expressed this position in their book Biochemical Predestination. Nowadays this idea is still held in the popular concept that if conditions are right, life will necessarily happen. The idea is that if we should find a planet or a satellite with "earthly" conditions, we could expect to find life, naturally brought about by these same natural laws, as it is assumed.

But the reality is that the properties of the chemical systems PRECLUDE the accumulation of the needed components for life, and even the formation of the said components (DNA, polypeptidic chains, etc.) not to mention all the assembly of the compounds into dynamic and coordinated systems of code-reading, mutation-correcting, and transcribing, regulating, manufacturing protein machines, as well as systems for the capture, transformation, application and regulation of energy, of automated transport of materials, etc. Natural laws are helpless to explain the origin of life. Even more, they prevent it in the absence of a deliberate action, either immediate or mediated, because they act in a contrary direction; they are not of an integrating nature, but disintegrating.

c. Personal intelligent direction

In the same way as the complex of mechanical, electrical and pneumatic components, static or dynamic, of a coordinated and automated system of machines, cannot be explained by chance nor by the laws of matter (although when the whole complex has been built intelligently, it certainly follows the laws of physics and chemistry), those biochemical structures and their concatenation cannot be explained by chance nor by the action of natural law, either. They are the expression of Contrivance for the performance of a special purpose; it all bespeaks a Mind, and a purposeful Creating Mind at that: of the Godhead and the Power of God.

Denial – no refutation
----Materialism as idolatry

Those that refuse God His capability and power to create end up, many of them, ascribing this quality to that which objectively does not possess it —to the universe (por example, Sir Fred Hoyle [The Intelligent Universe], De Duve [Vital Dust], to the physico-chemical systems, etc.

So, such people refuse God the being, the wisdom and power, and ascribe all this to [N]ature, "Mother Nature", etc. They refuse to God the worship that belongs to Him and worship the creature, that which is justly denounced by Scripture as a capital sin of a culture that has risen in rebellion against God:

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, ... Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen."

(Romans 1:18-22, 25.)

Santiago Escuain