Yes...and here is why, this is an e-mail I sent to someone in an ongoing e-mail debate:
My arguments center around the fact that information is neither a material entity nor is it energy. Since information is neither a material entity and nor is it energy, it can not originate from matter nor from energy per se. According to information theory, information cannot be considered to be in the same category as as energy or matter because it bears none of their properties. While it is true that energy and matter can transport information, the energy and matter are only the means of conveying information they are not the information per se. Another way of saying that is, the content of the message is independent of the physical makeup of the medium that conveys it. For example, a book such as Homer's Iliad contains information, but I ask you Upallnite, is the book itself the information? I will answer for you, NO, the materials of the book---the paper, ink, and glue make up the medium which conveys the information, but they do compose the information itself. The DNA molecule carries the genetic language, but the language itself is independent of its carrier. The same genetic information can written in a book, stored on a compact disc, sent over the Internet, and yet the quality or content of the message does not change by changing the means of conveying it. The gene is a package of information, not an object. The base pairs of the DNA molecule specifies the gene, but the DNA molecule is the medium, it is not the message. Do you get the point my non-believing friend, I hope so.
This is an answer I gave on Yahoo! answers: "This is how much information a strand of human DNA can hold.It is hard to fathom, but the amount of information in human DNA is roughly equivalent to 12 sets of The Encyclopaedia Britannica -- an incredible 384 volumes worth of detailed information that would fill 48 feet of library shelves. Yet in their actual size -- which is only 2 millionths of a millimeter thick, if you run your fingers through your hair now and look at a single strand. It is not very thick -- maybe 100 microns in diameter (a micron is a millionth of a meter, so 100 microns is a tenth of a millimeter -- 1000 microns is 1 millimeter). A typical human cell might be one-tenth of the diameter of your hair (10 microns) and a strand of human DNA might be 2 microns which is 50 times smaller than a human hair and 5 times smaller than a typical human cell -- a teaspoon of DNA, according to molecular biologist Michael Denton, could contain all the information needed to build all the proteins for all the species of organisms that have ever lived on earth, and "there would still be enough room left for all the information in every book ever written". A strand of human DNA is, when uncoiled, approximately 6 feet long. This is coiled up in everyone of our approximately 10 trillion cells. According to another scientist, "A surprising statistic about the human genome," he said, "is the length of a unique sequence. It turns out to be about 16 to 20 base pairs, or about half an inch of a string stretched from New York to the West Coast." A zipper the size of the human genome would need some 3 billion teeth. Coil it into a ball 50 feet in diameter and you'll have an idea of how your genes -- all 100,000 of them -- are crammed into the 23 pairs of chromosomes in the nucleus of each of your cells. These analogies, the long string and the coiled zipper, give an idea of how huge and delicate and difficult to get at the human genome is. But to understand how to decipher the information it contains, you need to think of it as a book. "Measured as Manhattan telephone books, each containing about 1,000 pages of 10-point type," he said, "the genome of the bacterium E. coli is about a third of a book -- about 333 1/3 pages. Baker's yeast, which is my specialty, is a full book. The human genome will occupy 200 books." These 200,000 pages of genetic information, encoding everything from the color of your eyes to your likelihood of colon cancer, are written in the language of DNA. In structure it's a double helix: two strands of sugars and phosphates linked by pairs of the four bases, A, T, C, or G. The four bases create the alphabet. Every word in this language is three letters long, and stands for one amino acid. Each sentence, which can be many hundreds of words long, is a gene." Even Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, commented that "DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we've ever devised." How can something so complex and intricate than the most complex computer program on a supercomputer just pop up out of thin air or happen by accident or by process as random as evolution. No matter how much time, no matter how many mutations, and no matter how much natural selection; this can not happen just simply by appearing out of nothing. This is simply astonishing, isn't GOD awesome; truly, truly awesome.
Consider this: "Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 1050. Such a number, if written out, would read:
480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 1050 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!). Any species known to us, including the smallest single-cell bacteria, have enormously larger number of nucleotides than 100 or 1000. In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist's favorite expression)."—I.L. Cohen
Just as a sidenote to Mr. Cohen's statement, the probability for a cell possessed of the enormous complexity of a human cell to have evolved is 1 in 10^40000. That is 1 chance in 1 followed by 40000 zeros chances!
This is an essay a friend sent me via e-mail further speaking of the mathematical improbability of Evolution: "For roughly fifty years secular scientists who have faith in the power of dumb atoms to do anything have been carrying on scientific research aimed at finding out how the dumb atoms could have initiated life without any outside help. Since they believe that this really happened, they believe that it was inevitable that the properties of atoms, the laws of physics, and the earth's early environment should bring forth life. More sober minds, however, have realized the immense improbability of the spontaneous origin of life (called "abiogenesis"). Some have made careful investigations and mathematical calculations to estimate what the probability is for abiogenesis to occur. Their calculations show that life's probability is extremely small, essentially zero. To understand these results let us explain what we mean by probability. What, for example, is the probability of tossing a coin and getting "heads"? There are two possible outcomes of tossing a coin, either the head side or the tail side will be up. The sum of the probabilities of these two outcomes is 100% or 1, unity. Then, since for a perfectly balanced coin the two probabilities must be equal, and their sum is 1, the probability of either heads or tails in one flip of the coin is ? , and the sum of the two probabilities is ? + ? = 1. Simple. Now you understand probability!? Now let's ask what the probability is for flipping the coin twice and getting two heads in a row. It is the product of the two probabilities of getting heads both the first time and the second time. That is, P2H = ? x ? = ?. Now you understand how to calculate the probability that both of two independent events will happen. It is the product of the probabilities of the two events. Next, we will calculate a probability for the chance production of a single small protein molecule. A protein molecule consists of one or more chains made up of amino acid molecules linked together. There are 20 different amino acids molecules which the cells use to construct the protein molecules needed for the life of cells. We will think about a small protein molecule with only 100 amino acid molecules in its chain. Assume we have a reaction pot containing a mixture of the 20 different amino acid molecules, and they are reacting at random to form chains. What is the probability, when a chain with 100 amino acids is formed, that it will by chance have the sequence of amino acids needed to form a particular working protein molecule? There are 100 positions along the chain. What is the probability that a particular one of the 20 different natural amino acid molecules will by chance be placed at position number 1 in the chain? It will be P1 = 1/20. When the complete chain has formed, what is the probability that the necessary particular amino acids will be placed at each of the 100 positions in the chain? It will be the product of the probabilities at the 100 positions. Thus the probability will be the fraction 1/20 multiplied by itself 100 times. So P100 = (1/20)x(1/20)x(1/20)x...x(1/20) = (1/20)100 = (1/10)130 = 1/10130. This is an extremely small fraction. It is the fraction formed by the number 1 divided by the number formed by 1 followed by 130 zeros!
But, we have oversimplified a little bit. In actual fact a protein molecule can have a substantial variability at many of the positions on its amino acid chain. In 1975 I examined the data for a particular protein molecule called cytochrome a which has about 100 amino acids in its chain. This is an important enzyme molecule in all living cells, and the sequence of amino acids has been determined for cytochrome a molecules in about a hundred different species. From the quantitative data I made a rough estimate that on the average up to five different amino acids could fill a particular position on the chain of the enzyme molecule. Thus the probability that an acceptable amino acid would be found by chance at a particular position would be 5/20 = ?. So the probability for a working enzyme molecule to be formed by chance would be (?)100 = 1/1060. This is still a very, very small probability. It is the fraction formed by 1 divided by the number 1 followed by 60 zeros.
In 1977 Prof. Hubert Yockey, a specialist in applying information theory to biological problems, studied the data for cytochrome a in great detail.1 His calculated value for the probability in a single trial construction of a chain of 100 amino acid molecules of obtaining by chance a working copy of the enzyme molecule is 1/1065 , or the fraction 1 divided by 1 followed by 65 zeros. This is a probability 100,000 times smaller than my very rough estimate published two years earlier. Prof. Harold Morowitz estimated that the simplest theoretically conceivable living organism would have to possess a minimum of 124 different protein molecules. A rough estimate of the probability of all of these protein molecules to be formed by chance in a single chance happening would be P124P = (1/1065)124 = 1/108060, the fraction 1 divided by the number 1 followed by 8060 zeros. Truly these are extremely small probabilities calculated through a statistical approach. They tell us that the probabilities for the chance formation of a single working protein molecule or of a living cell are effectively zero.Prof. Morowitz made a careful study of the energy content of living cells and of the building block molecules of which the cells are constructed. From this thermodynamic information he was able to calculate the probability that an ocean full of chemical "soup" containing the necessary amino acids and other building block molecules would react in a year to produce by chance just one copy of a simple living cell.2 He arrived at the astronomically small probability of Pcell = 1/10^340,000,000, the fraction 1 divided by 1 followed by 340 million zeros! Yet he still believed in abiogenesis. Back in the 1970s Prof. Morowitz admitted in a public debate at a teachers' convention in Honolulu that in order to explain abiogenesis, it would be necessary to discover some new law of physics. At that time he still believed in abiogenesis, the spontaneous formation of the original living cells on the primeval earth. However, some ten years later he finally stated that in his opinion some intelligent creative power was necessary to explain the origin of life.
There are yet more mysteries in life's probability(or improbability) which science has not plumbed. One mystery is how one virus has DNA which codes for more proteins than it has space to store the necessary coded information. A gene is a portion of the long DNA molecule which carries the code for the sequence of amino acids in a chain that folds up to produce a particular protein molecule. The DNA molecule is itself made up of four code letter molecules called nucleotides. These provide the four-letter alphabet of genetics. Their names are abbreviated by the letters A, C, G and T. A three-letter "word" called a codon codes for a particular one of the twenty amino acids used to build protein chains. The mystery arose when scientists counted the number of three-letter codons in the DNA of the virus, fX174. They found that the proteins produced by the virus required many more code words than the DNA in the chromosome contains. How could this be? Careful research revealed the amazing answer. A portion of a chain of code letters in the gene, say -A-C-T-G-T-C-C-A-G-, could contain three three-letter genetic words as follows: -A-C-T*G-T-C*C-A-G-. But if the reading frame is shifted to the right one or two letters, two other genetic words are found in the middle of this portion, as follows: -A*C-T-G*T-C-C*A-G- and -A-C*T-G-T*C-C-A*G-. And this is just what the virus does. A string of 390 code letters in its DNA is read in two different reading frames to get two different proteins from the same portion of DNA. Could this have happened by chance? Try to compose an English sentence of 390 letters from which you can get another good sentence by shifting the framing of the words one letter to the right. It simply can't be done. The probability of getting sense is effectively zero. Reasoning from these and other mathematical probability calculations, we can conclude that, without a purposeful causation, life's probability is zero."
Something to ponder: High-level information has been found to originate only from an intelligent source. As Lee Strobel explains: "The data at the core of life is not disorganized, it's not simply orderly like salt crystals, but it's complex and specific information that can accomplish a bewildering task—the building of biological machines that far outstrip human technological capabilities" (p. 244). For instance, the precision of this genetic language is such that the average mistake that is not caught turns out to be one error per 10 billion letters. If a mistake occurs in one of the most significant parts of the code, which is in the genes, it can cause a disease such as sickle-cell anemia. Yet even the best and most intelligent typist in the world couldn't come close to making only one mistake per 10 billion letters—far from it. So to believe that the genetic code gradually evolved in Darwinian style would break all the known rules of how matter, energy and the laws of nature work. In fact, there has not been found in nature any example of one information system inside the cell gradually evolving into another functional information program. Michael Behe, a biochemist and professor at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University, writes: "Consider a step-by-step list of [genetic] instructions. A mutation is a change in one of the lines of instructions. So instead of saying, "Take a 1/4-inch nut," a mutation might say, "Take a 3/8-inch nut." Or instead of "Place the round peg in the round hole," we might get "Place the round peg in the square hole" . . . What a mutation cannot do is change all the instructions in one step—say, [providing instructions] to build a fax machine instead of a radio" (Darwin's Black Box, 1996, p. 41).
Even one of the discoverers of the genetic code, the agnostic and recently deceased Francis Crick, after decades of work on deciphering it, admitted that "an honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going" (Life Itself, 1981, p. 88, emphasis added).
It is good to remember that, in spite of all the efforts of all the scientific laboratories around the world working over many decades, they have not been able to produce so much as a single human hair. How much more difficult is it to produce an entire body consisting of some 10 trillion cells.
Darwinian evolutionists, like you, could try to counter your detractors with some possible explanations for the complexity of life. But now you have to face the information dilemma: How can meaningful, precise information be created by accident—by mutation and natural selection? None of these contain the mechanism of intelligence, a requirement for creating complex information such as that found in the genetic code.
Evolution tells us that through chance mutations and natural selection, living things evolve. Yet to evolve means to gradually change certain aspects of some living thing until it becomes another type of creature, and this can only be done by changing the genetic information.
So what do we find about the genetic code? The same basic quality of information exists in a humble bacteria or a plant as in a person. A bacterium has a shorter genetic code, but qualitatively it gives instructions as precisely and exquisitely as that of a human being. We find the same prerequisites of a language—alphabet, grammar and semantics—in simple bacteria and algae as in man. Each cell with genetic information, from bacteria to man, according to molecular biologist Michael Denton, consists of "artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction . . . [and a] capacity not equalled in any of our most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours" (Denton, p. 329). So how could the genetic information of bacteria gradually evolve into information for another type of being, when only one or a few minor mistakes in the millions of letters in that bacterium's DNA can kill it? Can you and your atheist co-religionists explain that?
Again, you evolutionists are uncharacteristically silent on the subject. You don't even have a working hypothesis about it. Lee Strobel writes: "The six feet of DNA coiled inside every one of our body's ten trillion cells contains a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out precise assembly instructions for all the proteins from which our bodies are made . . . No hypothesis has come close to explaining how information got into biological matter by naturalistic means" (Strobel, p. 282). Werner Gitt, professor of information systems, puts it succinctly: "The basic flaw of all evolutionary views is the origin of the information in living beings. It has never been shown that a coding system and semantic information could originate by itself [through matter] . . . The information theorems predict that this will never be possible. A purely material origin of life is thus [ruled out]" (Gitt, p. 124).
Besides all the evidence for the intelligent design of DNA information, there is still one fact remaining—the ideal number of genetic letters in the DNA code for storage and translation. Moreover, the copying mechanism of DNA, to meet maximum effectiveness, requires the number of letters in each word to be an even number. Of all possible mathematical combinations, the ideal number for storage and transcription has been calculated to be four letters. This is exactly what has been found in the genes of every living thing on earth—a four-letter digital code. As Werner Gitt states: "The coding system used for living beings is optimal from an engineering standpoint. This fact strengthens the argument that it was a case of purposeful design rather that a [lucky] chance" (Gitt, p. 95).
Just recently, one of the world's most famous atheists, Professor Antony Flew, admitted he couldn't explain how DNA was created and developed through evolution. He now accepts the need for an intelligent source to have been involved in the making of the DNA code. He said, "What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinary diverse elements together..."(quoted by Richard Ostling, "Leading Atheist Now Believes in God," Associated Press report, Dec. 9, 2004).
Dean Kenyon, a biology professor who repudiated his earlier book on Darwinian evolution—mostly due to the discoveries of the information found in DNA—states: "This new realm of molecular genetics (is) where we see the most compelling evidence of design on the Earth" (ibid., p. 221).
I must say that to believe that information as complex as the information found in the "simplest" of living organisms, information that is more complex than all computer programs combined and multiplied exponentially, could through some unknown natural and random process is pure non-scientific fantasy. To believe that information that complex can just magically appear out of the nothingness of space is, in a word, foolish. All high-level information (such as the information contained in the DNA of the "simplest" of organisms) must come from an intelligent source, it must, by the very nature of what it is, come from an intelligent source. High-level information requires a high-level intellect to impart it. This, one cannot be naive enough to deny. Again, since information is non-material and non-energic, it cannot evolve or originate from matter or energy, so given this fact, it is impossible for evolution to take place. For evolution to take place it requires new information to be created or imparted which cannot happen because information cannot evolve or originate from matter or energy, information can only be conveyed by energy and matter. Again, mutations and adaptations can only alter the information your DNA already contains, it cannot and does not create new information, this is called by some, genetic variability or variation. To believe that the instructions or blueprints for how to build a nuclear reactor or a particle accelerator can just simply materialize out of thin air without causation and without a source or origin is simple-minded and unintelligent, to say the least about it. The belief that life and all of its complexities happened without causation and without source or origin is known as, Abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is as much of a fairytale as the Wizard of Oz. Again, to believe that high-level information (such as is in the genetic code of the"simplest" of organisms) just happens, without causation and without source or origin, is not science, it's magic, pure fairytales. We, also, have Irreducible Complexity to discuss.
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
--Charles Darwin, Origin of Species
Well Mr. Darwin get ready for your theory to breakdown dramatically.
This an article that was e-mailed to me by the same friend as before:"With this statement, Charles Darwin provided a criterion by which his theory of evolution could be falsified. The logic was simple: since evolution is a gradual process in which slight modifications produce advantages for survival, it cannot produce complex structures in a short amount of time. It's a step-by-step process which may gradually build up and modify complex structures, but it cannot produce them suddenly.
Darwin, meet Michael Behe, biochemical researcher and professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Michale Behe claims to have shown exactly what Darwin claimed would destroy the theory of evolution, through a concept he calls "irreducible complexity." In simple terms, this idea applies to any system of interacting parts in which the removal of any one part destroys the function of the entire system. An irreducibly complex system, then, requires each and every component to be in place before it will function.
As a simple example of irreducible complexity, Behe presents the humble mousetrap. It contains 5 interdependent parts which allow it to catch mice: the wooden platform, the spring, the hammer (the bar which crushes the mouse against the wooden base), the holding bar, and a catch. Each of these components is absolutely essential for the function of the mousetrap. For instance, if you remove the catch, you cannot set the trap and it will never catch mice, no matter how long they may dance over the contraption. Remove the spring, and the hammer will flop uselessly back and forth-certainly not much of a threat to the little rodents. Of course, removal of the holding bar will ensure that the trap never catches anything because there will again be no way to arm the system.
Now, note what this implies: an irreducibly complex system cannot come about in a gradual manner. One cannot begin with a wooden platform and catch a few mice, then add a spring, catching a few more mice than before, etc. No, all the components must be in place before it functions at all. A step-by-step approach to constructing such a system will result in a useless system until all the components have been added. The system requires all the components to be added at the same time, in the right configuration, before it works at all.
How does irreducible complexity apply to biology? Behe notes that early this century, before biologists really understood the cell, they had a very simplistic model of its inner workings. Without the electron microscopes and other advanced techniques that now allow scientists to peer into the inner workings of the cell, it was assumed that the cells was a fairly simple blob of protoplasm. The living cell was a "black box"-something that could be observed to perform various functions while its inner workings were unknown and mysterious. Therefore, it was easy, and justifiable, to assume that the cell was a simple collection of molecules. But not anymore. Technological advances have provided detailed information about the inner workings of the cell. Michael Denton, in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, states "Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10^-12 grams, each is in effect a veritable microminiaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world." In a word, the cell is complicated. Very complicated.
In fact, Michael Behe asserts that the complicated biological structures in a cell exhibit the exact same irreducible complexity that we saw in the mousetrap example. In other words, they are all-or-nothing: either everything is there and it works, or something is missing and it doesn't work. As we saw before, such a system cannot be constructed in a gradual manner-it simply won't work until all the components are present, and Darwinism has no mechanism for adding all the components at once. Remember, Darwin's mechanism is one of gradual mutations leading to improved fitness and survival. A less-than-complete system of this nature simply will not function, and it certainly won't help the organism to survive. Indeed, having a half-formed and hence non-functional system would actually hinder survival and would be selected against.
But Behe is not the only scientist to recognize irreducible complexity in nature. In 1986, Michael J. Katz, in his Templets and the explanation of complex patterns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) writes: "In the natural world, there are many pattern-assembly systems for which there is no simple explanation. There are useful scientific explanations for these complex systems, but the final patterns that they produce are so heterogeneous that they cannot effectively be reduced to smaller or less intricate predecessor components. As I will argue ... these patterns are, in a fundamental sense, irreducibly complex..."
Katz continues that this sort of complexity is found in biology: "Cells and organisms are quite complex by all pattern criteria. They are built of heterogeneous elements arranged in heterogeneous configurations, and they do not self-assemble. One cannot stir together the parts of a cell or of an organism and spontaneously assemble a neuron or a walrus: to create a cell or an organisms one needs a preexisting cell or a preexisting organism, with its attendant complex templets. A fundamental characteristic of the biological realm is that organisms are complex patterns, and, for its creation, life requires extensive, and essentially maximal, templets."
Behe presents several examples of irreducibly complex systems to prove his point, but I'll just focus on one: the cilium. Cilia are hair-like structures, which are used by animals and plants to move fluid over various surfaces (for example, cilia in your respiratory tree sweep mucous towards the throat and thus promote elimination of contaminants) and by single-celled organisms to move through water. Cilia are like "oars" which contain their own mechanism for bending. That mechanism involves tiny rod-like structures called microtubules that are arranged in a ring. Adjacent microtubules are connected to each other by two types of "bridges"-a flexible linker bridge and an arm that can "walk" up the neighboring microtubule. The cilia bends by activating the "walker" arms, and the sliding motion that this tends to generate is converted to a bending motion by the flexible linker bridges.
Thus, the cilium has several essential components: stiff microtubules, linker bridges, and the "motors" in the form of walker arms. While my description is greatly simplified (Behe notes that over 200 separate proteins have been identified in this particular system), these 3 components form the basic system, and show what is required for functionality. For without one of these components, the system simply will not function. We can't evolve a cilium by starting with microtubules alone, because the microtubules will be fixed and rigid-not much good for moving around. Adding the flexible linker bridges to the system will not do any good either-there is still no motor and the cilia still will not bend. If we have microtubules and the walker arms (the motors) but no flexible linker arms, the microtubules will keep on sliding past each other till they float away from each other and are lost.
This is only one of many biochemical systems that Behe discusses in his book, Darwin's Black Box. Other examples of irreducible complexity include the light-sensing system in animal eyes, the transport system within the cell, the bacterial flagellum, and the blood clotting system. All consist of a very complex system of interacting parts which cannot be simplified while maintaining functionality.
Evolution simply cannot produce complex structures in a single generation as would be required for the formation of irreducibly complex systems. To imagine that a chance set of mutations would produce all 200 proteins required for cilia function in a single generation stretches the imagination beyond the breaking point. And yet, producing one or a few of these proteins at a time, in standard Darwinian fashion, would convey no survival advantage because those few proteins would have no function-indeed, they would constitute a waste of energy for the cell to even produce. Darwin recognized this as a potent threat to his theory of evolution-the issue that could completely disprove his idea. So the question must be raised: Has Darwin's theory of evolution "absolutely broken down?" According to Michael Behe, the answer is a resounding "yes."