The Reality of Biology

I have often contended that the most basic components of a living cell are essentially information driven molecular machinery. In other words there are two primary components on the mechanical level – information which contains sets of instructions and machinery to read those instructions and carry them out. And this isn’t a mere analogy – that is actually what we find in the cell in terms of its processes and mechanics. I was reminded of this again when reading comments by geneticist Craig Venter in an article in New Scientist:


Now I have no doubt Venter thinks this software and machinery evolved. Given that he isn’t a theist, he has to believe this. But that fact is irrelevant to the point that he has correctly identified the essential nature of life and how it operates. He has not only identified it, but he has put that knowledge into practice by programing the software and using it to operate the machinery of the cell showing further that cellular systems are not merely analogous to information systems but in fact are information processing systems.

This fact should be the greatest cause of skepticism of materialism and naturalism when we come to understand that there is not a single shred of evidence that such systems can come about through unguided processes. The only known and demonstrable way to develop machinery which processes information is through planning, design and application of the knowledge of such systems. It might have been possible before we ourselves developed such systems to imagine they could originate from natural processes, but now that we have been engineering such sophisticated technology ourselves for decades such a belief is no longer an intellectually valid option. And given that the knowledge gained by our own development is applicable to the technology found in the cell tells us that they share a common original mechanism.

Now one could still imagine that life developed through a series of incidental modifications to these core systems to develop the diversity we see on earth today. One could also look at the similarities contained within the software that operates all of life and imagine that the systems all share a common origin at some point at time. I think there are better explanations, but an intellectually honest person could imagine these things. What one could not claim and be a person of intellectual honesty and or understanding is that the system of software and requisite machinery originated apart from the knowledge necessary to build such systems. To believe such a thing would be to ignore everything we know about information processing, software development and machine engineering

In other words, that one could only believe life originated as the result of unguided mechanical processes is by neccesity a tenet of utterly blind faith.


3 Responses to The Reality of Biology

  1. Allallt says:

    I love how the existence of DNA (which is information arising without a creator) cannot be seen as evidence of information arising without a creator.
    It doesn’t matter how much evidence is gathered, you will discard it immediately. I don’t know what you call the opposite of a circular argument (it’s probably still a circular argument).

    I will not accept this premise because there is no evidence for it. This is not evidence for the premise, because the premise is unsupported.

    I’m still not sure why some Christians feel the need to split a religious dialogue on the table of evolution; it is a non-sequitur conversation. You can believe in both.

    You are dividing your own numbers.

  2. jackhudson says:


    Given the fact there is no evidence for DNA and it’s processing machinery arising without some sort of directive agency, one would have to say the assertion that it arises apart from such agency is a statement of faith.

  3. IntelligentAnimation says:

    allallt, you ask about circular arguments, yet provide a blatant example of one. Your odd self-affirming definition of DNA being “information arising without a creator” does conveniently fit your claim that complex coherent data comes into existence by chance, although most people are less obvious with their tautologies.

    The opposite of a circular argument is a linear argument. When mathematicians calculate the odds of a particular segment of genetic information occurring by luck, that is factual information. To then conclude that something intelligent must have arranged the data is a logical linear sequitor.

    “It doesn’t matter how much evidence is gathered…”

    Yes, it does. You only make this cop-out claim because you have no evidence and you know it.

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