DNA & Specified Complexity:

Many of us have had to face off against someone touting the abilities of evolutionary theory to explain the existence of life and all the complexity around us. For many, it is overwhelming to stand up against such arguments. After all, aren’t the majority of scientists these days evolutionists? How could such a vast majority be defeated by the regular layperson? To many it is an uphill battle against overwhelming odds. Thankfully, like David against Goliath, science is a battle of quality over quantity. Science is decided by evidence, not by majority rule.

Debating against an evolutionist is not for everyone. When we are neither confident nor equipped for such a debate, we often end up looking foolish or overstepping the evidence we thought we knew. This debate on origins can be a convoluted place; however, it does not have to be. Science at its best is often much simpler than we realize.

As Dr. Douglas Axe suggests in his book Undeniable,[1] we can trust our instincts when it comes to the existence of design in nature. When we look at cars, planes, the pyramids, and even books and computers, we can easily conclude automatically that these were all designed by an intelligent agent. What about similar design in nature? Don’t look too far, because that design is in you and me and every living thing: DNA. The DNA molecule is literally the blueprint for life. An evolutionist will suggest that it is changes to this DNA molecule over long periods of time that lead to evolutionary changes, but where did such a molecule come from in the first place? As will be explained in further detail in the following essay, DNA and its sister molecules RNA and proteins are carriers of what we call “complex specified information.” This argument, simply put, concludes that all our observations of complex specified information has come from an intelligent designer. Since DNA is exactly the same type of information as computer code (though vastly more intricate), such a conclusion of design can be applied to it. As such, unguided processes like evolution by natural selection are incapable of explaining its origins. If you can master the argument of specified complexity, you have a powerful weapon in your arsenal for the next discussion on the origins of life.

[1] Axe, Douglas, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed (New York: HarperOne, 2016).

Jeremy teaches high-school biology and physical science. He earned a B.S. in biology from Simpson University, and is currently working on a Master of Arts in Science & Religion at BIOLA University located in La Mirada California.

The Full Essay Is Available Below

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Naturalistic Evolution and the Origins of Complex Specified Information

Intelligent Design & the Origins of Specified Complexity

I. Introduction

For many, the debate over the origins of life has been settled. It is often assumed that Charles Darwin rendered unnecessary any arguments that the complexity of life needed to be explained by something outside of nature. Darwin and his disciples have been confidently shoveling dirt over the opposition for generations. However, new arguments for intelligent design have arisen: the discovery of complex specified information in biological life has become both intelligent design’s greatest strength and naturalistic evolution’s greatest weakness.

II. Evidence from DNA

Within modern genetic research, we have had many breakthroughs in the decoding of the DNA molecule. Deoxyribonucleic acid, (DNA) has been identified as one of the most efficient information storage methods ever known. Not even digital code from the most advanced supercomputers measures up to DNA’s compact and proficient design. Software pioneer Bill Gates said, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”[1] Upon this incredible molecule, lays a code hidden within a sequence of molecules called base pairs. The pattern of these base pairs could be compared to a digital code’s language of ones and zeros. This information rich molecule contains what Dr. Stephen C. Meyer has called complex specified information.[2] Meyer explained,

The crucial biomolecular constituents of living organisms possess… “specified information” or “specified complexity.” Biological information… constitutes a salient feature of living systems that any origin-of-life scenario must explain “the origin of.” Further… all naturalistic chemical evolutionary theories have encountered difficulty explaining the origin of such functionally “specified” biological information.”[3]

Clearly it’s reasonable to doubt the ability of naturalistic evolution’s explanatory power for DNA if it cannot explain the origins of life’s instruction manual.

III. Specified Complexity

What is complex specified information, and why does this provide such a headache for naturalistic evolution? To understand this, one must first understand the terms “specified” and “complexity”. For example, when we see a set of letters like “ESGIUHKDMNB,” we see a rare or highly unlikely event. If I were to randomly hit keys on my keyboard, it would be highly unlikely that I would hit the keys in that same sequence. This makes this a “complex” sequence. When we see something more like “FOX,” we can identify it as a sequence that conforms to a previously known pattern, making it specified. The second case is not complex because it could be randomly reproduced with the proper amount of time. Now let’s combine the two examples. A sentence, such as “WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?” is a chain of letters and spaces that are both complex, due to the difficulty of random generation in the perfect order, and specified, because they are ordered in a specific way that conveys a previously understood pattern. Likewise, DNA shows incredible levels of specified complexity in its informational storage. Meyer concludes “…my characterization of DNA and RNA [ribonucleic acid] as molecules that store functional or specified information is not even remotely controversial within mainstream biology.”[4]

George Wald once claimed, in Scientific American, “Given so much time, the impossible becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain.”[5] Wald’s claims, however, are based on assumptions that more time can make highly unlikely events possible. It is a common misunderstanding of probabilities to assume that with enough time, things that are astronomically improbable will simply come to pass. Wald even suggests that some scientists are openly returning to spontaneous generation to explain life’s origins.[6] If this is true, scientists would be ignoring the simple, yet conclusive debunking of spontaneous generation from centuries earlier because they have very few other choices to explain the origin of specified complexity with.

Is it possible to produce the key building blocks of life through a purely natural and random process? Director of the Biologic Institute Dr. Douglas Axe explains,

A prevalent idea at the time was that proteins were not particularly fussy about the sequence of amino acids [the building blocks of proteins] along their chains, and even less fussy about the identities of the amino acid that end up on the outside of their folded structure. According to many scientists then, all a protein needed in order to fold was an appropriate placement of water-loving and water-repelling amino acid appendages along the chain.[7]

Simply put, it was commonly assumed that proteins were fairly easy to make. That notion, however, didn’t last long. Through his research on proteins, Axe has discovered that the odds of producing functioning proteins by chance were beyond his wildest imagination.

… I was able to put a number on the actual rarity—a startling number. With only one good protein sequence for every 1074 bad ones, I had found functional proteins to be…rarer than Denton’s criterion! Unless this number was overturned somehow, a decisive blow had been dealt to the idea that proteins arose from accidental causes.[8]

To put that 1x1074 probability in perspective, it is estimated that the “…number of stars may very well be around 1.2×1023 – or just over 100 sextillion.”[9] Through a process of randomly mutating sequences of the amino acids in proteins, Axe discovered that chance alone could not explain the origins of these molecules. Therefore, the identification of specified complexity in DNA forces researchers to look for answers in places other than random recombination.

IV. Interconnectivity in DNA, RNA, and Proteins

By definition, natural selection, the proposed mechanism that drives evolution forward, can only work on living, self-replicating organisms. Natural selection cannot apply to chemicals, and this is where evolutionary theory has problems: DNA requires proteins to read it, package it, maintain and fix it. Even DNA reproduction requires proteins. RNA, a copy of DNA, is required to produce proteins, both because it brings the instructions for the proteins and because it constitutes a functioning portion of the process that produces protein strands. RNA relies on DNA for its information and proteins for forming it as a copy of that information. This leads to one significant puzzle of interconnectivity and instigates a chicken and egg scenario: which came first: the DNA, the RNA, or the protein? Natural selection cannot produce all three parts simultaneously. Robert F. Service states:

In order for life to have gotten started, there must have been a genetic molecule—something like DNA or RNA—capable of passing along blueprints for making proteins, the workhorse molecules of life. But modern cells can’t copy DNA and RNA without the help of proteins themselves.[10]

Even though this seems to be quite puzzling, some evolutionary science writers suggest that it could still be solved. Service continues

Chemists report today that a pair of simple compounds, which would have been abundant on early Earth, can give rise to a network of simple reactions that produce the three major classes of biomolecules—nucleic acids, amino acids, and lipids—needed for the earliest form of life to get its start. Although the new work does not prove that this is how life started, it may eventually help explain one of the deepest mysteries in modern science.[11]

By claiming that the building blocks of life are fairly easy to get started, many imply that the rest of the process of building a living organism should fall into place rather easily.

The issue here is that these biomolecules are just the building blocks. As Axe’s research shows, putting those biomolecules together in a functional order is inconceivably difficult.[12] One could compare this situation to having all the parts to an automobile, but leaving random chance to put all of them together in a functional manner.

V. Other Explanations for Origins of Complex Specified Information

If complex specified information cannot be explained by natural selection, what else could account for it? There are only three possibilities left. One is the random recombination of parts that just happened to produce a functioning molecule that included specified information. Imagine, for a moment, that DNA was a book of blank pages. Now, picture a stream of random letters, numbers, and punctuation appearing on those pages until every page was filled. Would it be logical to think that the product is now a novel? Of course not! It would be gibberish. If occasional words did appear, they would soon be consumed by the degenerative nature of random mutations. If a few words appeared, they are still worthless since they have neither context nor function. Logically, if a string of letters such as “FORWUBFAWAS” appears at random, we may notice “FOR” and “WAS,” but in their context, they lack any value. In DNA, a single “word” means nothing in functional terms if there isn’t a sentence around it. An instruction manual is an apt comparison to DNA because one needs to see all the steps to be able to build the functioning product. Famous atheist Richard Dawkins has recognized these similarities: “The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal.”[13] If a prominent supporter of the naturalistic evolutionary view sees this comparison, one should take note.

However, Dawkins suggests that this design is illusory and “…the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, [they] impress us with the illusion of design and planning.”[14] Dawkins would conclude that our notions of design are flawed and that natural selection, a directionless process could create the illusion of design; however, this ignores the observational nature of the scientific method.

However, is Dawkins correct that our intuitions about design are not trustworthy? Axe wrote, “…whenever we think we would be unable to achieve a particular useful result without first learning how, we judge that result to be unattainable by accident.”[15] Thus, our design intuition can be scientifically observed to be correct. We can look back at Bill Gates’ comparison of DNA to computer code: what is the only observable source for the information found in computer code? An intelligent mind is the only known cause, and science must be based upon our observations. Thus, using proper scientific methodology, we must conclude based on our observations, that, because DNA contains such a richness of functional information, it must come from a similar source as computer code, written novels, or instruction manuals: an intelligent mind.

If the origins of information cannot be traced from natural selection or random processes, then what other options are there? In 1969, Dean Kenyon, Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University, and coauthor Gary Steinman developed an idea in a book entitled Biochemical Predestination. They argued that life might have been “biochemically predestined” by the properties of attraction existing between its constituent chemical parts, particularly among the amino acids in proteins.”[16] Their textbook became a predominant text on chemical evolutionary theory, and suggested that there were predispositions in molecular attractions in these biomolecules that made functional proteins not just likely, but necessary.

However, Kenyon himself eventually discredited his own theory. “Ironically… Dean Kenyon has now explicitly repudiated such theories as both incompatible with empirical findings and theoretically incoherent.”[17] Simply put, any attractions seen in the bonding of amino acids “…do not correlate to actual sequences in large classes of known proteins”[18] Some amino acids have particular attractions to others, but they are not strong enough to force the particular functional order needed to get the working proteins we see today.

Explaining DNA’s information-rich sequences by appealing to differential bonding affinities meant that there had to be chemical bonds of differing strength between the different bases along the information-bearing axis of the DNA molecule. Yet, as it turns out… there are no bonds at all between the critical information-bearing bases in DNA.[19]

Because there are no actual chemical bonds between the information storing base pairs in DNA, there is no way that stronger bonding attractions in biochemical predestination could explain the existence of DNA’s complex specified information.

If neither natural selection, random chance, nor chemical necessity can explain the origin of complex specified information, then what else is left? Logically, if an event cannot happen through these mechanisms, there is only one reasonable alternative. Intelligent design has the explanatory power to help us comprehend the origins of these complex biomolecules and their complex specified information, because “Intelligent design is the scientific study of the intelligible principle of biological function.”[20] Because the functions are complex and specified, an intelligent cause is the only logical answer to the origins of this information. In all our common observations, we see similar types of information only in books, digital code, and other analogous sources. Where does this breed of information come from? Do books write themselves? Can a computer randomly produce more functional code? No, these things require an intelligent source to infuse more information into them. The intelligent causation of life, therefore, is the only scientifically viable explanation we have left. Naturalistic evolution has been buried under the burden of proof, while Intelligent Design should take its earned place at the forefront of science.

Works cited

Axe, Douglas, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 33-34.

Dawkins, Richard. River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books/Harper Collins, 1995), 17.

Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986), 21.

Egnor, Michael, “Life is a ‘Distinguished Outcome,’” Evolution news and Views, (Nov. 2015), http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/life_is_a_disti101061.html (accessed Sept 19, 2016)

Gates, Bill, The Road Ahead (Boulder, Colo.: Blue Penguin, 1996), 228.

Kenyon, Dean and Steinman, Gary, Biochemical Predestination, 199–211, 263–66, quoted in Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA and the Origin of Life” in Darwinism, Design and Public Education (Rhetoric & Public Affairs), ed. John Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer (Michigan State University Press, 2003), 248.

Meyer, Stephen C., “Denying the Signature: Functional Information Is the Fact to Be Explained,” Evolution News and Views (Nov. 2015), http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/denying_the_sig_2101021.html (accessed Sept. 15, 2016)

Meyer, Stephen C., “DNA and the Origin of Life,” in Darwinism, Design and Public Education (Rhetoric & Public Affairs), ed. John Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2003), 237.

Meyer, Stephen C., Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 109.

Service, Robert F., “Researchers May Have Solved Origin-of-life Conundrum,” Science (March 2015), http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/researchers-may-have-solved-origin-life-conundrum (accessed Sept. 15th, 2016)

Villanueva, John Carl, “How Many Atoms are there in the Universe?” Dec. 2015, http://www.universetoday.com/36302/atoms-in-the-universe/ (Accessed 9/18/16)

Wald, George, The Origin of Life (Scientific American 191, 1954): 44-53, quoted in Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA and the Origin of Life” in Darwinism, Design and Public Education (Rhetoric & Public Affairs), ed. John Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer (Michigan State University Press, 2003), 237.

[1] Bill Gates, The Road Ahead (Boulder, Colo.: Blue Penguin, 1996), 228.

[2] Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 109

[3] Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA and the Origin of Life,” in Darwinism, Design and Public Education (Rhetoric & Public Affairs), ed. John Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2003), 237.

[4] Stephen C. Meyer “Denying the Signature: Functional Information Is the Fact to Be Explained,” Evolution News and Views (Nov. 2015), http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/denying_the_sig_2101021.html (accessed Sept. 15, 2016)

[5] George Wald, The Origin of Life (Scientific American 191, 1954): 44-53, quoted in Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA and the Origin of Life” in Darwinism, Design and Public Education (Rhetoric & Public Affairs), ed. John Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer (Michigan State University Press, 2003), 237

[6] Wald, The Origins of Life 1954, 44

[7] Douglas Axe, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 33-34

[8] Ibid., 57.

[9] John Carl Villanueva, “How Many Atoms are there in the Universe?” Dec. 2015, http://www.universetoday.com/36302/atoms-in-the-universe/ (Accessed 9/18/16)

[10] Robert F. Service, “Researchers May Have Solved Origin-of-life Conundrum,” Science (March 2015), http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/researchers-may-have-solved-origin-life-conundrum (accessed Sept. 15th, 2016)

[11] Ibid

[12] Axe, Undeniable, 57.

[13] Dawkins, Richard. River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books/Harper Collins, 1995), 17.

[14] Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986), 21

[15] Axe, Undeniable 2016, 20

[16] Dean Kenyon and Gary Steinman, Biochemical Predestination, 199–211, 263–66, quoted in Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA and the Origin of Life” in Darwinism, Design and Public Education (Rhetoric & Public Affairs), ed. John Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer (Michigan State University Press, 2003), 248

[17] Stephen C. Meyer, DNA and the Origins of Life n.d. 249

[18] ibid., 250.

[19] Meyer, Signature., 243.

[20] Michael Egnor, “Life is a ‘Distinguished Outcome,’” Evolution news and Views, (Nov. 2015), http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/life_is_a_disti101061.html (accessed Sept 19, 2016)