Part 5: Who Wrote the Genetic Code?
In real life, when we find a written message to us, we know it came from another person. We don’t think for a minute that some “natural cause” produced this message.
Some scientists have said if you put a large amount of monkeys at typewriters for a few billion years, that one of them would type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Researchers in England, partly as a gag, actually put this theory to a test. They placed a computer in a cage with 6 monkeys for one month. All the monkeys did was to throw stones at the computer, use it as an outhouse and a couple of them banged some keys. Not even close to one word was written. Granted it wasn’t a billion years but chance does not give rise to complex, specified information. Instead of “creating” information, chance tends to “scramble” it.
Other scientists have said that if you have the right conditions that life will always arise because of the physical laws of nature. But laws of nature don’t give rise to complex, specified information. Laws of nature describe events that are regular, repeatable and predictable. A complex, specified sequence of letters, like in a message, is irregular and non-repeating. If you see ‘Math Test Today’ on a school chalk board, you wouldn’t think this is a product of the chalk (calcium carbonate). The message encoded in our DNA was not created by the chemical forces in the molecules itself. The heart of the design argument is this…that complex, specific information doesn’t arise from chance encounters of molecules but is imposed upon the molecules by an outside, intelligent agent.
Evolutionary Ethics:
Darwinian evolution is the scientific foundation for a worldview called naturalism or materialism, which says that ultimate reality is nothing more than impersonal matter/energy that has chemically evolved into our consciousness. So our mind, our thoughts and even our actions have been pre-determined by these chemical reactions. Darwinian evolution says that these chemical reactions are geared to help us survive. This means that we are nothing more than machines. We don’t have free will. Ethics, morality and free will are all illusions fobbed on us by our genes. Philosopher Michael Ruse says that ethics are a shared illusion of the human race. Atheist philosopher William Provine says, “…there is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life and no free will for humans” because our genes determine our actions. But evolutionists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and David Silverman cannot explain why people risk their lives to save others, why people give blood, why missionaries devote their life to helping others or why Christians teach us to love our enemies. The whole point of morality is that you’re doing what you “ought” to do, not what is in your genes or survival instincts to do. They cannot explain where the “ought” comes from. Christians explain it by saying God imprinted His moral code unto our conscience. But we are in a ‘fallen’ state, so our conscience can be ‘seared’ from not listening to God’s guidance. This is why there’s cannibalism, prostitution, Nazi’s doing grisly experiments on people, etc.
People cannot live without some moral code. If it’s not God’s code imprinted on our conscience, they have to make up their own. The problem comes when their moral code interacts with yours. Without a transcendent moral code, how do you determine whose code to live by in a group/nation of other people? Those who say we shouldn’t force our own morals on them are usually more than willing to force their morals on you. Without a transcendent morality, things like abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, polygamy, the killing of Down’s Syndrome children, etc., can be rationalized using selected (biased) scientific ‘facts’. Princeton University Professor Peter Singer has said that parents of newborn babies, up to 2 years of age, should be legally able to end their life (kill them).
Some evolutionists realize that we cannot live like this, so they formulate their own set of values/morality. They then take an ‘irrational’ leap from the 1st story of ‘science and logic’ into the 2nd story of values/morality. They realize that morality is an illusion but they also realize that they cannot live without it. So they take this irrational leap. To re-emphasize what we said earlier…Professor Marvin Minsky said in his book “The Society of Mind”, that “The physical world provides no room for freedom of will…but that concept is essential to our own models of the mental realm. Too much of our psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We’re virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it’s false”. WOW! Talk about living a contradiction. But the Christian worldview is consistent, because God has communicated His transcendent morality to us. We don’t have to figure out a morality on our own. And just because there may be a few difficult situations doesn’t mean we should throw out God’s morality altogether.
For His Kingdom,
Dave Maynard
http://BSSSB-LLC.com