In order to resolve a problem, we need to break it down into its tiniest, irreducible parts and then examine and analyze it. What is the smallest part of life? It’s the cell, of course—“the basic structural, functional, and biological unit of all known living organisms and the smallest unit of life,” according to Wikipedia.
Typical animal cell (according to Encyclopedia Britannica).
You studied that one in high school, remember? The cell structure is very complex—plasma membrane, cytoplasm, mitochondrion, nucleus, etc. (see the picture above). Every cell is a miniature laboratory where very complicated chemical reactions occur, leading to an organism’s growth, metabolism, muscle, bone formation, reproduction, immunity, and everything else imaginable. Now, considering that the human body comprises about 30 trillion cells, one percent of which (or about 330 billion cells) are replaced daily, let’s see how Michael Denton, Ph.D. in biochemistry and author of Evolution, A Theory in Crisis, describes the extreme complexity of one single cell.
“To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a billion times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design, resembling an immense automated factory larger than a city and carrying out almost as many unique functions as all the manufacturing activities of man on Earth… We would see around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines. We would notice that the simplest of the functional components of the cell, the protein molecules, were astonishingly complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial conformation. We would wonder even more as we watched the strangely purposeful activities of these weird molecular machines, particularly when we realized that, despite all our accumulated knowledge of physics and chemistry, the task of designing one such molecular machine—that is one single functional protein molecule—would be completely beyond our capacity at present… Yet the life of the cell depends on the integrated activities of thousands, certainly tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of different protein molecules.” (Michael Denton. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Adler & Adler, 1986, pp. 328-329).
To the description above, we could add this of the cell’s nucleus, which is the place where our genetic information is stored via DNA. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “nucleus, in biology, is a specialized structure occurring in most cells, separated from the rest of the cell by a nuclear membrane… The nucleus controls and regulates the activities of the cell (e.g., growth and metabolism) and carries the genes, structures that contain the hereditary information. Nucleoli are small bodies often seen within the nucleus. The gel-like matrix in which the nuclear components are suspended is the nucleoplasm.”
When Watson and Crick found deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 1953, they announced they had “discovered the secret of life.” This discovery is fascinating, indeed, because it explains how the data of everything imaginable, beginning with your height, hair, eye color, the form of your earlobes, and how good, spiteful, jealous, and lazy you’ll be in your life, all transmitted by a CODE. This code is strictly determined and comprises a double helix connection between four bases, which always pair up: Adenine-Thymine and Cytosine-Guanine.
Now, let’s return to the “Oparin-Haldane primordial soup” concept, which states that life originated spontaneously and accidentally through the mixing of chemical elements. Considering everything you’ve just read about the cell; do you see anything accidental here? Seriously? I cannot believe that thousands of scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, and Francis Crick (the latter a Nobel laureate for his crucial discovery of DNA structure), could be so blind and unreceptive. But even Crick, an outspoken atheist, admits, “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.” (Francis Crick. Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. Simon and Schuster Ed., NY, 1981, p. 88).
“Almost a miracle,” he says. The problem here is that biologists don’t believe in miracles. They search for explanations by identifying patterns, breaking down the facts, and understanding how the processes work. But unfortunately, it all stops there. Biology can describe the exact procedure of how things happen, but it cannot determine why they occur in precisely this way or, in other words, who has established the process and written the code. Thus, we cannot explain the awareness that drives every cell to reproduce these complex chemical reactions that sustain and determine our life if we don’t bring into play the intelligent design of a higher mind. Otherwise, we are blocked on a visible level, ignoring the upper, invisible layer that is responsible for the organization and execution of the healthy functioning of every living organism. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
What is the mysterious force that makes our heart beat ceaselessly from our birth to our last breath? What about our brain’s structure, which is so unimaginably complex that the theory of hazardous formation looks ridiculous? What about hormones? About feelings? Why does aging occur? Why can we not escape death?
So many questions without answers. We need to accept that our knowledge has its limits, and we will probably never understand the mystery of our existence. But we could at least try to figure out the purpose of our life.
Let’s not be fooled about our intellect, though. I don’t know if we use only about 10 percent of our brains (and when I watch certain politicians, I think even this a generous statement), but certainly, our mission is to find a way to unlock the rest—and that watching CNN or Fox News does not help at all. But that’s a topic for another debate.
So, I hope that after all the arguments I have pointed out, you will admit that things are far more complicated than they seem. Perhaps you still have a hard time accepting that life is ruled in every single moment by a higher power and consciousness, but if you can grasp what the common denominator between a chameleon changing its color is, or a fight between a mongoose and a cobra, or a flock of wild geese flying in a perfect V-formation, then you have caught my drift.
Next: Does the Devil exist?
