Post date: Sep 15, 2014 2:27:26 AM
Have you ever been on a merry-go-round? Personally, they make me dizzy, so I try to avoid them. Merry-go-rounds, though, are not just amusement park rides. They can also be arguments, logical fun-houses built as merriment, and amusement—and distraction, to keep you from pondering what their designer does not want you to know.
So, have you been on a merry-go-round? You have, you know. If you were born after 1859, you have been on a merry-go-round for your entire life.
Those who want to appear intellectual will trumpet—without bothering to fact-check—the arguments and claims of those whom they think are intellectually astute, thinking that that makes them look smart, too. It doesn’t work, of course (not with those who really are astute), but they do so, anyway. They are deceived into thinking false things true, so we should not be surprised when they think this false thing true, as well.
One of their favorite merry-go-rounds involves the chemistry of life. One might think they were at a tent revival, they carry on so about “how wonderful it is that so much complexity can come from random mutation and natural selection, and, oh, isn’t it grand!” And on and on they go without ever once pursuing this “grandiosity” to its logical and inevitable conclusion.
Allow me to dismantle one so that you can get off and regain your equilibrium.
There is a process at the root of life that they will dismiss as being a product of evolution, and they will not pursue it further. This process, without further pondering, becomes an interminable merry-go-round of chemistry that cannot be logically exited in and of itself, but requires something more. It is the process of protein synthesis at the cellular level.
It was discovered decades ago that proteins do not make themselves, but are a product that is manufactured as a result of DNA to RNA transcription, where the RNA is assembled according to the DNA code that is transcribed, and the RNA gets passed through a molecular machine that reads the RNA and binds amino acids to it in sequence according to the encoding of the RNA that was transcribed from the DNA.
The code in the DNA is instructions for building a particular protein sequence, but what is it that unwinds, separates, copies, and reassembles the DNA? Proteins.
To quote the Wikipedia screenshot above, “They are motor proteins”. So, what you have is proteins being needed to manipulate, disassemble, and reassemble the very DNA that is required to make the proteins that are required to manipulate the DNA in order that those very proteins can be manufactured. That, my friends, is a merry-go-round. Merry-go-rounds have motors, and motors require someone to start them.
I have been attacked as a young-earth creationist a number of times that I have lost count of, so let us dispense with that right now.
My arguments require no knowledge of the age of the earth. Period.
You see, Holy Scripture really never does tell us when the creation happened. It does, I believe, tell us, and rather specifically so, how long that creation took—just not when.
My arguments, therefore, are not based on anything outside science, logic, or Scripture.
When you have a product that depends upon things that depend upon the pre-existence of the product they are needed to make, you have a situation that requires something more, in order to actually work.
Nothing starts without having been started.
That is axiomatic to the most elementary of logic. Nothing starts without having been started. It is also axiomatic that that which does not start has not been started. What might not seem so simple is that that which has not been started need not be non-existent. It is entirely possible, and logical for something to exist without having begun to do so.
Before the discoveries of Edwin Hubble, atheists believed this to be the case regarding the physical universe, so, when they, today, try to ridicule the self same idea when applied to God, they are being disingenuous, dishonest, or woefully ignorant of their own history.
In a recent online debate, someone claimed that “We need Data [the Star Trek character] to deal with the creationists,” as though it would be unavoidably certain that all creationists would be roundly and thoroughly rebuked, ridiculed and flayed by the responses the android would give to such concepts as we are raising here. It has been my pleasure to inform them otherwise.
In an episode of the television show from which he comes it was made clear that Data is quite able to infer correct conclusions from data sets that do not themselves make those conclusions imperative. We can, therefore, make the argument that he would be able to discern the weaknesses of the arguments made by those who adhere to the materialist worldview.
The arrogance of those who hold that view is such that they are unable to see the weaknesses of the arguments that they claim to be proven facts. The eyes of the world are blind, but God gives wisdom that enables men to see. He has not left the world without a witness, but has provided ample evidence for the necessity of His existence to make it obvious to anyone with an open mind to see it.
I have argued it many times, and I am very likely to argue it many times more. The evidence is clear to anyone who has not closed their mind to the mere possibility of the existence of God.
The things of God are impossible to wrap your mind around, but easy to discern. Like a raging thunderstorm, they are impossible to thoroughly know and impossible to ignore.
Like gentle rain His peace falls down
To water those of earth
Who know His Son and trust His Son
To bring them a new birth.
One of the most documented and undenied events of ancient history, is that Jesus Christ lived, was crucified until dead, dead, dead, and on the third day after, that His tomb was found to be empty, for there was no body there. There is no other peace to be known that can cover all our sin. He provides for us all things that we need to live our lives for Him, and all we need do is trust in Him, that He will, indeed, provide.
There is, truly, no need at all for anyone to continue to ride Darwin’s Merry-Go-Round.