The Case for a Creator (40 page)

“The big issue is where did the information come from to build all these new proteins, cells, and body plans? For instance, Cambrian animals would have needed complex proteins, such as
lysyl oxidase
. In animals today, lysyl oxidase molecules require four hundred amino acids. Where did the genetic information come from to build those complicated molecules? This would require highly complex, specified genetic information of the sort that neither random chance, nor natural selection, nor self-organization can produce.”

In my interview for Chapter Three, biologist Jonathan Wells had satisfactorily answered my objections to the Cambrian explosion, one of which was that transitional organisms may have been too small or soft to have left a legacy of fossils. Still, another possibility came to mind.

“Maybe,” I suggested, “some unexplained environmental phenomenon caused a sudden spate of mutations that accelerated the creation of new organisms.”

“That doesn’t solve the problem,” Meyer replied. “First, even assuming a generous mutation rate, the Cambrian explosion was far too short to have allowed for the kind of large-scale changes that the fossils reflect.

“Second, only mutations in the earliest development of organisms have a realistic chance of producing large-scale macroevolutionary change. And scientists have found that mutations at this stage typically have disastrous effects. The embryo usually dies or is crippled.”

Geneticist John F. McDonald has called this “a great Darwinian paradox.”
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The kind of mutations that macroevolution needs—namely, large-scale, beneficial ones—
don’t
occur, while the kind it doesn’t need—large-scale mutations with harmful effects or small-scale mutations with limited impact—
do
occur, though infrequently.

I brought up another idea that has been offered by some evolutionists. “Why couldn’t mutations have occurred in an inactive part of the DNA, sort of a neutral area that wouldn’t have had any immediate impact on the organism?” I asked. “Then, after a long period of time during which these mutations could accumulate, a new gene sequence could have suddenly kicked in and created an entirely new protein. Natural selection would then preserve any beneficial effects this would have on the organism.”

This theory wasn’t new to Meyer. He responded by saying, “Keep in mind that these mutations would have had to occur by random chance, since natural selection can’t preserve anything until it confers a positive benefit on the organism. The problem is that the odds of creating a novel functional protein without the help of natural selection would be vanishingly small. There are now a number of studies in molecular biology that establish this. So this so-called ‘neutral theory’ of evolution is another dead end.

“There’s really only one explanation that accounts for all the evidence. In any other field of endeavor, it would be obvious, but many scientists shy away from it in biology. The answer,” he said, “is an intelligent designer.”

FITTING THE “TOP DOWN” PATTERN

The puzzle of the Cambrian Explosion quickly falls into place once the possibility of a purposeful Creator is allowed as one of the explanatory options. Even one of the explosion’s most vexing features—its so-called “top down” pattern of appearance—is efficiently explained by intelligent design.

Said Meyer: “Neo-Darwinism predicts a ‘bottom up’ pattern in which small differences in form between evolving organisms appear prior to large differences in form and body plan organization. For instance, you might imagine that pre-Cambrian sponges would have given rise to several different varieties. These varieties would have evolved over time to produce different species. As this process continued, wholly different creatures with completely new body plans would have emerged in the Cambrian era.

“Instead, however, fossils from the Cambrian explosion show a radically different ‘top down’ pattern. Major differences in form and body plans appear first, with no simpler transitions before them. Later, some minor variations arise within the framework of these separate and disparate body plans.

“This has completely stumped neo-Darwinists. Others have tried to explain it away by proposing big leaps of evolutionary change—the so-called punctuated equilibrium idea—but even this can’t account for the ‘top down’ phenomenon. In fact, punctuated equilibrium predicts a ‘bottom up’ pattern; it just asserts that the increments of evolutionary change would be larger. Yet if you postulate intelligent design, the ‘top down’ pattern makes sense, because it’s the same pattern we see in the history of human technological design.”

“Can you give me an example?” I asked.

“Sure—think about cars or airplanes,” Meyer replied. “They also manifest a ‘top down’ pattern of appearance. In both cases, the major blueprint or plan appears fairly suddenly and remains essentially constant over history.

“For instance, all cars have a basic organizational plan that includes a motor, a drive shaft, two axles, four wheels, and so forth. After the basic invention came about, then variations have occurred on the theme over time. That’s an example of ‘top down’ change. The original blueprint was the product of intelligence, and the continuity through the years is explained by an idea being passed from generation to generation of automotive engineers.

“In a similar way, why couldn’t the body plans of the Cambrian animals have originated as an idea in the mind of a designer? This would explain why the major differences in form appear first and then subsequent small-scale variations only come later. In fact, intelligence is the only cause we know that produces the kind of ‘top down’ pattern we see in both the fossil record and in human technology, as illustrated by everything from cars and airplanes to guns and bicycles.
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“Intelligence also explains the origin of the layers of information necessary to create the new body plans in the Cambrian animals. As I mentioned earlier, to build a new animal you need DNA to create the proteins and additional information to arrange the proteins into higher level structures. We find the same layering or hierarchical form of organization in human technologies, like a computer’s circuit board. Humans use intelligence to produce complex components, such as transistors and capacitors, as well as their specific arrangement and connection within an integrated circuit.

“Once you allow intelligent design as an option, you can quickly see how it accounts for the key features of the Cambrian phenomenon. No other entity explains the sudden appearance of such complex new creatures. No other entity produces ‘top down’ patterns. No other entity can create the complex and functionally specific information needed for new living forms. No other explanation suffices.”

“But intelligent design sounds like such an outmoded concept,” I said. “William Paley famously compared biological systems to the workings of a watch more than two hundred years ago. That’s old news.”

I had struck a nerve. Meyer uncrossed his legs, planted both feet on the floor, and spoke with conviction. “I think the opposite is true,” he insisted. “We’ve learned a lot about biology since the Civil War. Evolutionists are still trying to apply Darwin’s nineteenth-century thinking to a twenty-first century reality, and it’s not working. Explanations from the era of the steamboat are no longer adequate to explain the biological world of the information age.

“Darwinists say they’re under some sort of epistemological obligation to continue trying, because to invoke design would be to give up on science. Well, I say it’s time to redefine science. We should not be looking for only the best naturalistic explanation, but the best explanation, period. And intelligent design is the explanation that’s most in conformity with how the world works.”

A HALLMARK OF MIND

As our interview was drawing to a close, Meyer’s reference to the twenty-first century prompted one last line of inquiry. “Fast forward ten or twenty years,” I said. “What do you see?”

“I think the information revolution taking place in biology is sounding the death knell for Darwinism and chemical evolutionary theories,” he said as he removed his glasses and slipped them into his pocket.

“The attempt to explain the origin of life solely from chemical constituents is effectively dead now. Naturalism cannot answer the fundamental problem of how to get from matter and energy to biological function without the infusion of information from an intelligence.

“Information is not something derived from material properties; in a sense, it transcends matter and energy. Naturalistic theories that rely solely on matter and energy are not going to be able to account for information. Only intelligence can. I think that realization is going to progressively dawn on more and more people, especially younger scientists who have grown up in the age of information technology.

“Today we buy information, we sell it, we regard it as a commodity, we value it, we send it down wires and bounce it off satellites—and we know it invariably comes from intelligent agents. So what do we make of the fact that there’s information in life? What do we make of the fact that DNA stores far more information in a smaller space than the most advanced supercomputer on the planet?

“Information is the hallmark of mind. And purely from the evidence of genetics and biology, we can infer the existence of a mind that’s far greater than our own—a conscious, purposeful, rational, intelligent designer who’s amazingly creative. There’s no getting around it.”

The cacophony of street noise coming through the half-opened window was getting louder now that rush hour was approaching. Meyer’s wife was graciously cooking a salmon dinner for us at their house, and it was time to get on the highway before it got clogged with traffic. As we ended our discussion, Meyer excused himself for a quick meeting in another office, giving me some time to reflect.

Meyer’s two rhetorical questions near the conclusion of our discussion effectively summed up the issue. The data at the core of life is not disorganized, it’s not simply orderly like salt crystals, but it’s complex and specific information that can accomplish a bewildering task—the building of biological machines that far outstrip human technological capabilities.

What else can generate information but intelligence? What else can account for the rapid appearance of a staggering variety of fully formed, complex creatures that have absolutely no transitional intermediates in the fossil record? The conclusion was compelling: an intelligent entity has quite literally spelled out evidence of his existence through the four chemical letters in the genetic code. It’s almost as if the Creator autographed every cell.

I sighed and slumped back in my chair, a bit exhausted from my whirlwind of travel and interviews. The case for a Creator was accumulating at a remarkable pace, and I could sense I was approaching the conclusion of my quest. But I also knew there was at least one more expert I needed to consult.

In the closing minutes of our conversation, Meyer had mentioned the word “mind” and referred to conscious activity. As beguiled as I was by DNA, I was equally intrigued by the human brain. Weighing just three pounds, it has ten thousand million nerve cells, each sending out enough fibers to create a thousand million million connections. That’s equal to the number of leaves in a dense forest covering a million square miles.
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Yet how does all of that circuitry create the unique phenomenon of human consciousness? How does raw biological processing power enable me to reflect, or form beliefs, or make free choices? Is my consciousness only attributable to the physics and chemistry of my brain, or have I also been endowed with an immaterial mind and soul? And if there is persuasive evidence of a soul, what could this tell me about the existence of a Creator—and an afterlife?

I pulled out a small notebook and scribbled myself a note to contact an expert on consciousness as soon as I returned to Los Angeles. I started to slip the pad into my shirt pocket, but instead I stopped and looked at the reminder I had just written.

It was also a reminder of something else. Those few words—a fragment of a sentence—represented information that has its source in my intelligence. How intuitively obvious that a dense array of far more complicated biological assembly instructions must, too, have their origin in a mind.

For Further Evidence

More Resources on This Topic

Meyer, Stephen C. “The Cambrian Information Explosion: Evidence for Intelligent Design.” In
Debating Design
, eds. Michael Ruse and William Dembski. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

——. “DNA and the origin of Life: Information, Specification, and Explanation” and “The Cambrian Explosion: Biology’s Big Bang.” In
Darwinism, Design, and Public Education
, eds. John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer. Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 2003.

——. “Evidence for Design in Physics and Biology.” In
Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe
, eds. Michael J. Behe, William A. Dembski, and Stephen C. Meyer. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999.

——. “The Explanatory Power of Design: DNA and the Origin of Information.” In
Mere Creation
, ed. William A. Dembski. Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998, 113–47.

10
THE EVIDENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS: THE ENIGMA OF THE MIND

Cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.”

René Descartes

Why should a bunch of atoms have thinking ability? Why should I, even as I write now, be able to reflect on what I am doing and why should you, even as you read now, be able to ponder my points, agreeing or disagreeing, with pleasure or pain, deciding to refute me or deciding that I am just not worth the effort? No one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer to this. . . . The point is that there is no scientific answer.