Design Refutes Evolution

Explore the intricate structures of proteins, cells and DNA, and why this article argues that their organisation reveals design rather than chance.

Design in Proteins

The complex structure of the haemoglobin molecule

Let us set aside “Where did the first cell come from?” and ask an easier question: “Where did the first protein come from?” Evolutionary theory has no answer to this either.Proteins are the cell’s building blocks. If a cell is a huge skyscraper, proteins are its bricks. Unlike bricks, however, they have no standard shape or structure. Even the simplest cells contain around 2,000 types of protein, whose extraordinarily harmonious cooperation keeps the cell alive. Proteins consist of smaller structures, molecules called “amino acids”, formed from different combinations of carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen atoms. An average protein contains between 500 and 1,000 amino acids; some are much larger.

Architecture in Proteins

Proteins have sophisticated designs and help build our bodies. Indeed, we are largely composed of them: they are the basic material of our bones, eyes, hair and muscles. Here you see the complex internal organisation of a single fibre in one of our muscles. Cells containing different combinations of proteins form every detail visible in this structure. Each detail is perfectly designed and built from an organic material: protein. This fascinating architecture is among the most striking signs of creation.

The crucial point is that amino acids must line up in a specific order to form a protein. Living organisms use twenty types of amino acid. These do not combine randomly to produce proteins: each protein has a particular sequence, which must be assembled precisely. Even one missing or substituted amino acid turns it into a useless molecular mass. Every amino acid must therefore occupy the right place in the correct order. Instructions for this sequence are stored in the cell’s DNA and used to manufacture proteins.Evolutionary theory asserts that the first protein formed “by chance”. Yet probability calculations show this to be impossible. For example, the probability of the amino acids in a protein of 500 amino acids being correctly ordered is 1 in 10^950.(See Harun Yahya, Le Mensonge de l’évolution, Éditions Essalam, 1999, pp. 141–142.)10^950 is an unimaginable number: 1 followed by 950 zeros. In mathematics, a probability below 1 in 10^50 is regarded as virtually impossible.

Protein Synthesis Activity takes place constantly inside our cells. Proteins in the food we eat are broken down, and their components, amino acids, are recombined according to DNA’s codes. This produces the new proteins the body needs. Called “protein synthesis”, the process is far more complex than this simplified illustration. No laboratory can synthesise proteins as effectively as a cell.

In short, not even one protein can form by chance. Evolutionists sometimes admit this. The well-known evolutionary scientist Harold Blum, for example, states that “the spontaneous formation of a polypeptide the size of the smallest known protein appears beyond all probability”.W. R. Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Co., 1991, p. 304.What does this mean? Chemistry professor Perry Reeves answers:“Considering the vast number of structures that could result from amino acids combining randomly in an evaporating primordial pond, it strains belief that life arose this way. A master builder with a blueprint and an overall strategy is a more plausible requirement for such a task.”J. D. Thomas, Evolution and Faith, Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1988, pp. 81–82.

Can Monkeys Write a Book? Cytochrome c is the scientific name of one of the most important proteins enabling oxygen-based respiration, making it vital to survival. Its extraordinarily complex design cannot form by chance. Professor Ali Demirsoy, a prominent defender of evolution in Turkey, states in Heredity and Evolution that its chance formation is “as unlikely as a monkey typing the history of humanity without making a mistake”.Ali Demirsoy, Kalıtım ve Evrim (Heredity and Evolution), Ankara: Meteksan Yayınları, 1984, p. 64.

The cytochrome c protein

Design in the Cell

All living creatures consist of cells. Even a single cell is self-sufficient: it can produce its own food, move and communicate with other cells. Its extraordinary technology provides concrete evidence that life did not originate by chance.

The Complexity of Brain Cells The brain has more than 10,000 cells constantly interacting with one another. This communication network is far more complex than all the world’s switching centres.

The cell, not even one of whose proteins can form by chance, is a marvel of design that renders the hypothesis of chance evolution meaningless. It contains power stations, complex factories, an immense database, storage systems and advanced refineries. In Darwin’s time, this extraordinary structure was unknown. Through the very weak microscopes then available, a cell appeared as a dark mass. Darwin and other evolutionists therefore believed it was a simple droplet of water that could easily arise by chance. This primitive scientific view allowed life to be attributed to chance.

An immune cell capturing microbes that have entered the body

Scientific advances in the 20^th century, however, revealed the cell’s incredibly complex system. We now know that so intricate a design could not have arisen by chance as evolutionary theory claims. A structure too complex even for humans to imitate certainly cannot be chance’s work. The renowned British mathematician and astronomer Professor Fred Hoyle describes this impossibility:

“The possibility of higher forms of life emerging in this way is comparable to a tornado sweeping through a scrapyard and assembling a Boeing 747 from the materials it contains.”(“Hoyle and Evolution”, Nature, vol. 294, 12 November 1981, p. 105.)

Plant Cells Like human and animal cells, plant cells are miracles of creation. They perform a process no laboratory can currently reproduce: photosynthesis. An organelle called a chloroplast enables them to produce starch using water, carbon dioxide and sunlight. This substance provides food for all living creatures. The details of this extremely complex process remain unknown today.

Hoyle adds elsewhere: “Indeed, the theory that intelligence assembled life is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific.”(Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984, p. 130.)

Can an Aircraft Form by Chance? The cell’s design is so complicated that the renowned scientist Fred Hoyle, shown on the right, compares it to a Boeing 747. Just as an aircraft cannot form by chance, he argues, neither can a cell. This analogy highlights another important truth: although humans can build enormous aircraft with their knowledge and technology, they still cannot produce even the smallest cell.

Genetic Information

Did you know that the nucleus of each of the trillions of cells in a human being contains a database large enough to fill a 900-volume encyclopaedia?

Francis Crick and James Watson discovered DNA’s structure. Although an evolutionist, Crick stated that DNA could never have formed purely by chance.

DNA is an enormous molecule hidden in the nucleus of every living cell. All a creature’s physical traits are encoded in this helical molecule. Everything about our bodies, from eye colour and the structure of internal organs to our cells’ shapes and functions, is recorded in sections of DNA called genes.

The DNA code consists of sequences of four different bases. Assigning a letter to each base allows us to compare DNA with a database written in a four-letter alphabet. All the information about a living creature is stored there.

Writing out DNA’s information would take around a million pages: an encyclopaedia forty times larger than the Encyclopaedia Britannica, one of humanity’s greatest collections of knowledge. These incredible data are stored in the tiny nuclei of our cells, measuring roughly a thousand millimetres across.

It has been calculated that a strand of DNA small enough to fit in a teaspoon could store all the information in every book ever written.

	The Miracle of Reproduction Placed in a suitable environment, a bacterium produces hundreds of identical copies within hours. Every living cell can “copy itself”. Before DNA was understood, this process was inexplicable. That important discovery revealed that every cell has a “database” holding all its information, once again highlighting creation’s wonders.
	DNA contains not only the cells’ blueprints but also the organisation of living creatures’ entire bodies. From the structure of our internal organs to the shape of birds’ wings, everything is encoded down to the smallest detail.

Such an astonishing structure could never have formed by chance, proving that God created life. It is hardly surprising that evolutionists cannot explain DNA’s origins! Yet they retain the “chance” hypothesis simply to keep their theory alive. The renowned Australian molecular biologist Michael Denton explains this in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis:

“To a sceptic, the claim that the genetic programmes of higher organisms arose through a purely random process is simply an affront to reason. These programmes contain close to a billion pieces of information, equivalent to the letters in a small library of a thousand volumes, and encode countless thousands of complicated algorithms controlling, specifying and ordering the growth and development of billions upon billions of cells into a complex organism. Yet Darwinists accept the idea without a murmur of doubt: the paradigm takes precedence!”(Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, London: Burnett Books, 1985, p. 351.)