Reading between the lines
by Don Batten
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A simple message on a radio signal from some distant galaxy would be hailed as proof
for an intelligent source ‘out there’. Why doesn’t the message sequence on the DNA
molecule indicate an intelligent source?
I visited China in 1983, at the time when the cult of Mao was just beginning to
loosen its grip on that country. However, Communist party cadres still very
much controlled everything, and the minders for my visit made out that this was
‘paradise on earth.’ ‘There is no unemployment in China,’
they said.
Beijing’s English language newspaper was full of positive thinking—everything
was wonderful in utopia. The newspaper praised all the enterprising citizens
who were contributing to the ‘revolution.’ And then my eyes fell on
a story about a madam comrade, a model citizen, who had started a program for ‘idle
youths,’ giving them training in various work skills so they no longer got
into mischief. In other words, they had been unemployed!
I suspected my minders had been stretching the truth just a little in claiming that
there was no unemployment in China. How could there be ‘idle youth’
in need of skill training if everyone had a job? It was likewise with crime.
Crime and corruption did not exist but were reported when the culprits were punished.
Propagandists catch themselves out because it is difficult for them to be consistent.
It’s like that when you read the science journals of today, especially the
popular ones. Many writers try to give the impression that evolution (everything-made-itself)
explains everything—just like the communists tried to persuade people that
their doctrine solved everything. However, if you think carefully about what
you are being told, you will see that they often give the game away. You have
to learn to ‘read between the lines.’
Example 1. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence
(SETI)
On the Lateline program on ABC (Australia) television in 1996, the presenter
interviewed one of the astronomers behind the SETI program. Why would anyone
bother to send signals into space, hoping to get an answer, when the closest planet
(if any exist) is likely to be a hundred thousand light years away? It would
take 200,000 years to get an answer! What would motivate anyone to do this?
What motivated this astronomer? He said, ‘It would be the death of religion.’
‘You mean Christianity?’ asked the presenter. ‘Yes,’
was the reply.
This astronomer obviously did not want to believe in the Creator as revealed in
the Bible, and therefore would believe that blind chance produced life, which is
full of complex information, from simple chemicals. The amount of information
in a bacterium is about the same as in 2 large books. And then this original
life form changed into all the life forms on earth, including him, all by itself,
without a Creator’s involvement. The astronomer has about 1,000 books
of complex information in each of his cells. All this information just happened;
no intelligent source was necessary, in his way of thinking. No Creator was
necessary. All that meaningful coded information just made itself.
But then how could this astronomer be sure that anything he heard with his radiotelescope
from outer space was not also the result of chance? How would he know that
it came from an intelligent source? He is ready to recognize the evidence
for intelligence on a radio signal from ‘out there,’ but not in the
incredible living things beneath his very nose—indeed in his nose—here
on earth. Such inconsistency is present throughout evolutionary thinking.
For more, see God and the extraterrestrials.
Example 2. Antibiotic resistance
In a very interesting article in New Scientist, Jason Chin discussed antibiotic
resistance, attributing such resistance to ‘evolution.’1
The whole tone of the paper was ‘evolution does it.’ This indoctrinates
the uninformed reader in the belief that antibiotic resistance is evolution in action.
But is it?
Evolution would need a mechanism for creating new genetic information.
Chin implies throughout the paper that the antibiotic resistance mechanisms have
arisen as a result of exposure to antibiotics—that is, evolution has created
new complex functions. However, he unwittingly gives the game away in several
places.
Amoxycillin resistance in bacteria has been overcome by adding a compound which
blocks the bacterial enzyme which degrades the amoxycillin. The combination,
known as Augmentin, the author says, ‘is a better antibiotic than amoxycillin
ever was [that is, even when bacteria had never been previously exposed
to amoxycillin]: it is active against a wider range of bacteria …’
(my emphasis and addition).
So, reading between the lines … when amoxycillin first came into use it could
not kill some types of bacteria because these already had the enzyme that
degrades amoxycillin. Addition of the enzyme blocker in Augmentin now allows
amoxycillin to kill these bacteria as well.
But that means that there were certain bacteria that already had the resistance
mechanism before amoxycillin was in use. It is well known that the genes for
such resistance can be transferred between different types of bacteria. The
bacteria which were not resistant, but now are, most probably got their resistance
from the ones which had the resistance mechanism all along. There is no new
genetic information involved, just its transfer from one bacterium to another!
In other words, all this has nothing to do with microbes-to-man evolution.
There is no new complex information.
This is confirmed in the last paragraph of the article. Julian Davies of the
University of British Columbia suggests that scientists should be able to predict
the ways in which bacteria will foil new antibiotics. He is reported as saying,
‘I would go and get a handful of soil, I would expose the microbes in the
soil to the antibiotic and pick out the ones that grow. And in a fortnight
I could tell you the mechanism of resistance that would eventually be found in the
clinic.’
Again, the resistance mechanisms are already present in some bacteria. Resistance
arises in disease-causing bacteria by transfer of the genetic information from resistant
types of bacteria which may not even cause disease. These may be ecologically
beneficial bacteria that are involved in normal healthy soil, for example.
Or they may be bacteria that normally live in the large intestines of healthy people,
or on our skin. A gene for resistance usually has some other role normally
and it just happens also to confer resistance to an antibiotic.
So, we can read between the lines in these overtly evolutionary statements and see
that the very subject matter contradicts the evolutionist’s beliefs.
Complex genetic information does not arise from accidents, it can only be the result
of our immensely intelligent Creator’s plan and purpose.
For more on antibiotic resistance see Superbugs: Not super after
all! and Anthrax and antibiotics: Is evolution relevant?
Related article
References and notes
- Jason Chin, Resistance is useless, New Scientist 152(2051):32–35,
1996. Note: Resistance can arise from mutations, or errors
in the copying of DNA, when bacteria reproduce. For example, there are genes
which control the amount of an enzyme produced. An error in a control gene
can cause much greater production of the enzyme. Just such a mutation resulted
in greatly increased production of an enzyme which breaks down penicillin, resulting
in resistance. Note that such mutations are ‘downhill.’
They cause a loss of function. Loss of function can sometimes be
beneficial—such as the loss of eyes in fish trapped in a dark cave with acidic
water (see Creation 11(2):9,
1989, and ‘Lost World of Mutants’
discovered, Journal of Creation 10(2):172–173,
1996).
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