DNA and a Puzzle
by Helen C. Dickey
Take a picture puzzle box of about 100 pieces. Dump all the randomly thrown-together pieces from the box onto a table. Do you expect the pieces to land in such a way that the picture is put together? No, of course not. Do you expect all the pieces to be there to make that particular picture? Yes, you bought the box expecting all the correct pieces to be in it.
Even if one piece was missing or if one was the right shape but was from a different puzzle, and it was the wrong color, would you get a nice picture when you put the puzzle together? No. You would probably be annoyed.
How did all those pieces get into the box? Someone painted the picture, designed the puzzle pieces, cut the cardboard or wood up, put them into the box, and sold it to you.
Now let us look at the simplest cell possible that can live and reproduce and how many pieces are in its DNA. (Of course a cell would not exist as DNA alone, without all its other parts. According to Stefan Surzycki, a relatively simple cell, the E. coli cell, is about 1% DNA by weight. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-56968-5_1)
The simplest cell possible that can live and reproduce was made by scientists who started with Mycoplasma mycoides, a parasite, and one of the smallest bacterial cells known, normally having a genome (total DNA) of about 1000 genes (with around 1,100,000 nucleotide base pairs) depending on the strain. They knocked out every gene that was not totally necessary for its life and reproduction in a glucose culture, and came up with something they call "JCVI-syn3.0" with 473 genes, composed of 531,560 nucleotides, allowing evolutionists to imagine what a "primitive" cell genome may have looked like.[https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/03/minimalist-genome-only-473-genes-synthesized-and-used-to-boot-up-a-cell/]
531,560 is a very large number---more than half a million. Can you imagine a puzzle with 531,560 pieces? A puzzle, when put together, that is not in two dimensions, but in three? A puzzle that is also the code for complex biological functions. How did 531,560 pieces along with the other 99% of the cell get in one tiny bit of primordial water and how did the pieces propel themselves around until they quickly lined up by chance into a perfect finished puzzle/cell that could actually live an reproduce?
Nevertheless, children are taught that the first living cell spontaneously generated in some warm little pond or in the ocean somewhere. This story, which is not based on any evidence whatsoever, stands in absolute contradiction to the most fundamental scientific law of biology, the law of biogenesis---that "life can only come from life." Nothing even remotely as complex as a self-contained, self-replicating cell has ever been observed to have arisen spontaneously from non-living chemicals in any environment, even a lab-controlled one, let alone in the hypothetical changing, hostile environment we would find in nature, where water would serve to break apart any of the organic molecular chains necessary for life. Life made by chance sounds like a fairy tale to me.
I have written articles and I have found many amazing links/references made by scientists that do not believe chance is the way the universe came to be. You can link to this information at https://creation.familyce.org home page.
The life-made-by-chance fairy tale has corrupted the minds and souls of countless individuals, giving rise to a modern culture that does not believe God exists, nor that any miracles are possible, nor that there is a spiritual battle going on for souls. Many people today see nothing wrong with going down horrific moral paths, if that is your choice, and persecute Catholics or anyone else that would make laws to stop them.
All this falsehood and nonsense needs to stop. The truth about creation must be made known. If you are in any position to do something about this, please do it.