To purchase the entire DVD set of the Summit Lecture Series, visit www.summit.org.
In his book Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe gives some examples of things that are irreducibly complex, including the bacterial flagellum. Bacterial flagellum is an incredibly complex whip-like tail that propels bacteria through water, is made up of an unbelievable amount of parts within a tiny bit of space that can move at unbelievable speeds while changing direction instantaneously in order to do its job. It’s been said that it is the most efficient motor in the universe. And it measures a mere 1/100,000 of an inch.
The problem that it presents in light of Darwin’s theory, though, is that it consists of at least 40 unique proteins that must each be present in order for it to function. If any of them (or their equivalent) are not there, the flagellum stops functioning entirely.
You see, it’s irreducibly complex in that you can’t have these precursor systems built step-by-step, or else it would have no function. Nor can you have them all arrive all at once, because it is far too sophisticated to be placed there.
And, while some scientists will admit that the scientific community hasn’t been able to solve the riddle of irreducible complexity, you can find these exact same scientists write in their academic works that they have actually answered irreducible complexity years ago. That it’s actually a non-debatable issue.
Then there are scientists such as David Depew who said:
“I could not agree more with the claim that contemporary Darwinism lacks the models that can explain the evolution of cellular pathways and the problem of the origin of life.”
And I think he’s right.
So we see, in the world of physics, the fine tuning seems to be best attributed to a fine tuner. And likewise, the engineering and irreducible complexity of even the smallest cell seems to point to an engineer as an explanation.
Then we see, in the world of biology, that “modern biology is actually a science of information” (according to David Baltimore). Therefore, through DNA, information simply “codes” the human body. You see, information is at the basis of life. But the question is: How much information?
The average adult human body consists of 100 trillion cells. If you were able to take the DNA out of one single cell from the human body and uncoiled it, it would be about nine feet in length. Which means that if you were to take the entire sum of the DNA in a single person’s body and string them out, it would run from here to the sun and back about 70 times. So, if DNA stores the information about our biology, then a conservative estimate by Richard Dawkins proposes that within a single human body cell, there are 8 billion letters, 500 million words or eight thousand books worth of information stored.
This is why Bill Gates recently said:
“DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”
So this raises a thorny problem: If we have all this information, where does it come from? How do you get all of this information within the human body? What’s the best source of this information?