Biological Proof of God’s Existence

There is arguably no greater ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ evidence for the existence of a personal intelligent God than the presence and pervasiveness of biological information in all living things.

Ponder the testimony of atheistic Biologist Richard Dawkins on the nature of biological information.

“…at the molecular genetic level, every single one of more than a trillion cells in the body contains about a thousand times as much precisely-coded digital information as my entire computer…” (The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, xiii).

What Dawkins is getting at here is the stubborn fact that DNA, the molecule of heredity, is information rich.

“In order for any organism to be whatever it is, its genetic program (DNA) must specify what sort of organism it will be and, within surprisingly narrow limits, what specific characteristics it will assume…The DNA must be faithfully copied to every single cell of an organism that will eventually consist of billions of cells if the organism is to remain viable…” (John W. Oller Jr. et al in The Creation Hypothesis, 1994, edited by J.P. Moreland, 252, 253.)

Each of us began as a tiny entity about the size of a full stop. Yet all of our physical characteristics were spelled out in our DNA and this coded information guided our development into adulthood.  Modern scientists with their advanced technology and superior intelligence still can’t store so much information in so small a container as one cell of the human body (probe Dawkins’ words again).  What would any rational person conclude about the origin of a computer (a mechanical information-storing facility)? By chance, natural cause or by intelligent cause? What is the inference to the best explanation here?

Bear in mind too that information is a non-material (mental) entity and cannot at all originate from matter though it can be stored in matter.  It follows inexorably then that once we detect genuine information we must conclude that intelligence is behind its origin.  This has been the scientific basis for the SETI program, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. SETI scientists scan the millions of radio signals produced in outer space in search of a specified, complex pattern distinguishable from the normal noise (unspecified or specified but simple signal patterns) of outer space (cf. the movie Contact).

It is understandable to me then why the late British Atheist and Philosopher Antony Flew surrendered atheism and gave one of three reasons for his change as the formidable challenge of finding a naturalistic [non-God] explanation for

“…the origin of the coding and information processing that is central to all life-forms…” (in his There is a God, 2007, 126).

In the field of origin of life studies leading researchers bluntly admit their ignorance of the origin of genetic information. Carl Woese, an internationally recognized leader in origin of life studies laments

“The origins of translation, that is before it became a true decoding mechanism, are for now lost in the dimness of the past, and I don’t wish to engage here in hand-waving speculations as to what polymerization processes might have preceded and given rise to it, or to speculate on the origins of tRNA, tRNA charging systems or the genetic code.” (in RNA, 2001, 1064 cited in Flew, 128).

Antonio Lazcano, who served for two terms as President of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, said..

“Life could not have evolved without a genetic mechanism—one able to store, replicate, and transmit to its progeny information that can change with time…Precisely how the first genetic machinery evolved also persists as an unresolved issue…The exact pathway for life’s origin may never be known.” (in Natural History, February, 2006, cited in Flew, 130).

Yet ponder the strange words of the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist George Wald concerning the origin of life.

“We choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance.” -George Wald

If this were a court of law and I had called Wald as a reluctant scientific witness in defense of the existence of God I would simply say “The defense rests your honor.”