Is Protein God's
Fingerprint?
A POPULAR EXPLANATION for life's origin is that a fortuitous chemical accident brought it into being. But although this miraculous accident idea is fashionable, it is out of step with the actual data of science. Calculations on the idea have been done by a number of investigators, and their conclusion is unanimous: It is simply too unlikely to be credible.1 Prior to the practical development of the electron microscope the true extent of the complexity of living cells was unknown. However, when facts began to accumulate and data analyzed, the results suggested that believing in the Great Pumpkin might be more credible than the "miraculous accident" idea. Although this might sound silly it really isn't. The calculations show that the belief that life arose accidentally is statistically impossible and intellectually outrageous.
The Mystery of Protein
Mankind's track record at explaining life's origin has been consistently poor. Historically, we've always been wrong, so no one should be surprised that our current idea appears also to be wrong. As we have said, the current theory pushes the spontaneous generation of life to the level of the protein molecule. How small is that? To answer this question we need to ask, what is protein?
Consider the following illustration. A string of railroad cars, each connected to the next, is lined up. There are petroleum cars, cattle cars, coal cars, lumber cars and others. This gives us a rough idea of what protein looks like under an electron microscope — a string of "chemical railroad cars" called amino acids.
For example, if we picture two kinds of trains composed of 574 cars in all we have a good picture of hemoglobin, a protein in our blood that carries
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oxygen throughout our body. Iron is located within hemoglobin in a special way that allows the molecule to carry oxygen more efficiently than anything else known. Were it not for hemoglobin, our heart would need to pump fifty thousand gallons a day just to keep us alive. As for our blood pressure, would you care to guess? It would be almost seventy pounds per square inch, or about five times the pressure of the atmosphere.
Protein is made of building blocks called amino acids. We can picture them as the links in a chain, or we can think of them as wooden blocks connected end to end in the same way that railroad cars are connected. Imagine trying to assemble a "hemoglobin train." We would need a total of 574 railroad cars, each "car" being an amino acid. There are twenty different kinds of useful amino acids in our body. If we are to simulate protein, then in designating the first car we can select from among twenty different kinds. In designating the second car, we must also select from among these twenty kinds, and so on!
Ways to Assemble a Train
With twenty selections for each of the first two locations, we have twenty times twenty ways of choosing the first two cars of our train. We can assemble the first and second cars in four hundred ways (combinations). If we were to make a train with three cars, we would choose from eight thousand combinations.
Hemoglobin contains two "trains" totaling 574 cars — each selected from among twenty kinds of amino acids. The number of ways we can assemble these hemoglobin trains is so vast that it is a trillion, trillion, trillion (repeat twenty times more) times the entire number of stars in the universe. Yet despite this, only one combination known to man carries oxygen most efficiently in your blood. Moreover, if just one railroad car is changed in the sixth position of one of the trains, the result is sickle-cell anemia. Consider this: 270 million of these hemoglobin protein molecules of just the right combination reside in each of the 30 trillion red blood cells in your body. Did this just happen by chance? Some people have enough faith to believe that it did. Faith can be good if it's based on evidence. But where is the evidence that this system came into being by chance? There is none!
Was the Human Body Designed?
Can we calculate the certainty (inverse probability) that hemoglobin could not have happened by chance? No, because hemoglobin is so complicated that we can't fully describe it. We need to settle for something much simpler. The argument then is that if a simpler thing couldn't have happened by chance, then neither could the more complicated structure of hemoglobin. One protein that is much simpler than hemoglobin, and which scientists have extensively studied, is a "string of cars" called "cytochrome C." It's a much shorter protein than hemoglobin in that the length of its "train" is only 101 railroad cars.2
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Cytochrome C is also of interest because it is basic to all of life. Among other things, it controls both the respiration and energy transfer in the living cells of a broad spectrum of life.3 Let's recall that the calculation necessary to learn whether life could have come about through an accident was not possible until very recently. That's because the calculation needs two things: insight from information theory and data from electron microscopy.
The first image ever made with electrons instead of light occurred on April 7, 1931, on a thin metal grid.4 Five years later, electron microscopy was used for the first time to magnify a living cell.5 Thereafter, serious work began on the development of an electron microscope,6 and a series of rapid technological advances 7 made it a working tool by the 1950s.8 Further developments enabled definitive application of electron microscopy to the fine structure of living cells. By the early sixties its use as a practical research tool in the biological sciences was unquestioned.9
Although the mathematical tools necessary to interpret the data from electron microscopy had been discovered a decade earlier,10 as a practical matter realistic knowledge of the microstructure of cellular systems wasn't available until the early sixties. Thus if we believed life was an accident, before 1960 no one could prove us wrong. Today that's changed. For the first time in history we can calculate the "next unseen, smaller level." The result is this: To get life, you need life. Nothing less will do. Anything else is wishful thinking.
When scientists calculate probabilities showing that cytochrome C could not have been produced by an accident, it's a little more complicated than just asking the question, How many ways can we assemble a train? But the basic idea is the same. Of course, many technical details must be carefully taken into account. When these calculations are done, a variety of factors must be considered, including the fact that not all "railroad cars" are equally available (residue probability) or significant (codon degeneracy). Likewise, when selecting the "railroad cars," it is necessary to distinguish among those choices that are selected from comparable locations (homologous protein lineage) and the extent to which they may be similar (synonymous amino acid residues).
Suffice it to say that all of this has been carefully done, and the calculations published in the scientific literature.11 The result is staggering. In terms of the railroad train, the calculations show that the longest train that an accident can produce is fewer than fifty cars. This is mind-boggling when we remember that a hemoglobin protein molecule consists of two trains totaling 574 cars! At this point you may be thinking: What's so staggering about limiting a train (protein chain) to fewer than fifty cars (amino acids)? Since we only needed 101 for cytochrome C, isn't that only missing the mark 50 percent? No, we've missed the mark by a huge percent. It's deceptively naive to think that the certainty that this can't happen doubles with the length of the train, for it doesn't work that way. When the train length doubles to the 101 amino acid residues of cytochrome C, the numbers are such that,
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as a practical matter, it's impossible for an accident to have produced it. It is so unlikely that the odds cannot be easily explained.
A Look at Some Staggering Numbers
The certainty that an accident did not create cytochrome C has been carefully calculated. Yet this small protein corresponds to a "train" containing only 101 railroad cars. We can't even fathom the complexity of hemoglobin with 574 cars. We're only looking at the certainty that cytochrome C is so vast that to communicate it in simple terms isn't easy. The problem is illustrated by the following example.
Picture an 8½-by-11-inch sheet of paper with letters printed on both sides. Let's allow eighty columns by sixty-six lines of letters, giving us just under 5,300 letters on each side of the paper, or 10,600 letters per sheet. Putting the sheets into piles, we can stack about 310 sheets per inch, giving us just over thirty-six thousand letters in a cube one inch on a side. Now, what volume of space do we need to store enough sheets whose total number of letters equals the certainty that chance did not produce cytochrome C? When I first did the calculation the answer astounded me. We need the space of almost forty thousand universes, each 30 billion light-years wide!
Light travels at a speed of just over 186,000 miles per second. This means that in one second light can travel seven and half times around the earth. If light can travel that far in one second, imagine how far it will go in a year. Scientists call the distance light travels in one year a "light-year." It is roughly 6 thousands billion miles. We believe that the universe — out to the visible horizon — is about 30 billion light-years wide. Yet the certainty that an accident did not create cytochrome C is the number of letters filling both sides of 8½-by-11-inch sheets packed into the space of forty thousand universes!
Consider this. You and I are both aware that we exist. Yet we're told that all of life, including you and me, bounced itself into existence eons ago by a fortunate accident involving cosmic dust. But if we honestly face what we've uncovered in the past thirty years or so, we find ourselves up against the following question: When we believe, in the light of modern knowledge, that lifeless particles eventually endowed themselves with a living awareness of their own existence, do we not engage in the secret and irrational worship of interstellar dust under the guise of atheism? In short, do not the scientific calculations outlined above point to God rather than to sod as the source of our life?
What Do We Mean by "Proof"?
The magnitude of the numbers outlined above can be put into perspective by asking, How sure are we that an accident could not have created life, as over against our confidence in other conclusions that are commonly held?
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In approaching this question, it's helpful to realize that modern knowledge, and therefore science, is synthetic. This means that our conclusions are never known with absolute certainty. They are only held to be true to a certain level of confidence. As a scientist, I personally participate in the process. It's just that we're never sure that what we think is true today will be true tomorrow. In science, we routinely measure things, but there's always room for reinterpretation because tomorrow we may find something new. But does that mean we can't prove anything? Surprisingly, the answer is no.
How is it possible prove something while at the same time saying that tomorrow it may be wrong? What kind of proof is that? If something that is believed to be true today can be shown to be false by some future discovery, how can anything by proved? The answer to such questions lies in carefully defining what is being proved and in realizing that the basis for accepting the proof is a set of events that are reproducible within the space of an advancing time. Specifically, what we say is this: By mathematically analyzing reproducible events, we can prove that the truth of one belief is more inevitable than another. As a practical matter, when the belief becomes "almost certain," we then accept it as "true."
How Confident Are We of Gravity?
Is there a "truth of science" that almost everyone is willing to accept? While there are several contenders, almost everyone would agree that the inverse square law of gravity is true. But how sure are we that this law is true? Newton introduced it about three hundred years ago12 and numerous experiments have confirmed its validity ever since. Had only one experiment been performed, the belief could be seriously questioned. But because the inverse square law has been confirmed by many investigators in various countries over an extended time period, our confidence in the law is high. How high is this confidence? It's not 100 percent.13
We can estimate the highest possible confidence anyone can rationally have in the law of gravity and when we've got the answer, we'll compare our confidence in this belief to the belief that an accident could not have spontaneously generated the "simple" protein discussed earlier. When we have done this, we will see that the confidence calculated for the inverse square law is far less than our confidence that an accident could not have created life.
Let's maximize our confidence in the law of gravity by transforming all 5 billion people on earth today into instant scientists. We'll allow them three hundred years (the time since Newton) in which to do experiments in the inverse square law of gravity. We'll also endow them with superhuman powers so that they only need one second to start and complete each experiment. This means that they don't eat, sleep, or do anything except bring in another confirmation of the inverse square law every second of their lives. And they do this for three hundred years. At the end of this time, how sure would
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we be that the law of gravity is true? It's actually far less sure than we are that something other than chance created protein.
To compare the two, we'll again fill both sides of our paper with letters and ask: What volume of space do we need to store all the letters whose total equals the certainty that the inverse square law is true? The answer is surprising. It's a cube less than two miles on a side. Now think about it. Forty thousand universes, each 30 billion light-years wide, would be needed to store the paper with a letter total that equals the certainty that chance cannot produce even simple protein, while our corresponding assurance that the inverse square law remains true for the next experiment is a cube less than two miles on a side!
What is "Occam's Razor"?
Although this example is necessarily oversimplified, it nonetheless illustrates something that is quite true: It is nonsensical to believe that an accident created life.
To compare a cube under two miles with forty thousand universes is to liken the finite with the infinite. The groundless belief that life spontaneously arose from nonliving physical matter was rationally defended for centuries because no one had any information to the contrary. Today, we know better and we can see inside living cells and study the resplendent majesty of a structure so awesome that it reeks of divine fingerprints. It's one thing to defend wrong beliefs out of ignorance, but it's quite another to perpetuate the folly when the light of day shows a more truthful way.
In science we use a principle called "Occam's razor." It can be explained as a rule that "cuts away" complicated explanations when a less complicated one will do. Succinctly put, it means that the simplest explanation is the best explanation. What can be simpler than the thesis, "intelligence designed life"?
What motivates us to deny the clear direction of new scientific insights in favor of more complicated, but less likely, explanations? Why do we deny that intelligence designed life? Our world is full of "intelligences." You are an intelligence, and so am I. Since the human body is the most sophisticated and complex machine known to man, what would motivate us to deny that a Supreme Intelligence designed it? Are we able to accept the existence of an Authority higher than ourselves? Or are we committed to beliefs that perpetuate man as the highest authority? Either way, one thing is sure: Scientific data do not support the thesis that life arose by chance. The calculations could have come out differently, but they didn't, so the likelihood of life having occurred through a chemical accident is, for all intents and purposes, zero. This does not mean that faith in a miraculous accident will not continue. But it does mean that those who believe it do so because they are philosophically committed to the notion that all that exists is matter and its motion. In other words, they do so for reasons of philosophy and not science.
Chapter Eleven || Table of Contents
1. Thaxton, C. et.al. The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (1984) Philosophical Library, NY; Hoyle F. & Wickramasinghe C. Evolution from Space (1982) Enslow Publishing; and Crick F. Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature (1981) Simon & Schuster.
2. Yockey H. Jour. Theor. Biol. (1977) 67:345.
3. Renger G. "Biological Energy Conservation" in Hoppe W. et.al. ed. Biophysics (1983) ch.8(7.4c):358 Springer-Verlag.
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7. Zworykin V. et.al. Electron Optics and the Electron Microscope (1945) Wiley, NY.
8. First International Congress Proceedings On Electron Microscopy (1953) Paris; Hillier J. "Electron Microscopy" in: Uber F. ed. Biophysical Research Methods (1950) :381; Cosslett V. Practical Electron Microscopy (1951) Academic Press, NY; Fischer R. Applied Electron Microscopy (1953) Bloomington Indiana Univ. Press; and Stroke G. & Falconer D. Phys. Lett. (1964) 13:306.
9. Warner J. et.al. Electron Microscope Studies of Multiple Ribosome Unites in Hemoglobin Synthesis (1962) Preprint 135 Dept. of Biology, MIT, Cambridge; Selme P. Biology: Le Microscope Electronique (1963) Collection: "Que sais-je?" Presses Universitaires Francaises, Paris; Porter K. An Introduction to the Fine Structure of Cells and Tissues (1963) Lea & Febiger, Phil.
10. Shannon C. & Weaver W. The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949) Illinois Univ. Press, Urbana.
11. Yockey H. Jour. Theor. Biol. (1977) 67:377.
12. Newton I. Assuming the planets had circular motions Newton declared in 1665 that their centrifugal forces must vary inversely as the squares of their distances from the sun in: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687).
13. Stacey F. & Tuck G. "Geophysical Evidence For Non-Newtonian Gravity" Nature (1981) 292:230 Jul 16.
