Irreducible Complexity, the Incredible Miracle of DNA and Intelligent Design

When Charles Darwin wrote “The Origin of the Species” in 1859, the conventional wisdom held that the single-cell ameba was the original starting point in the evolutionary development of life on Earth.

The conventional wisdom of the mid-19th Century also held that the single-cell ameba was quite simple, hardly more than a tiny glob of elements that came together by chance in a prehistoric pool of watery goo. Scientists of Darwin’s day simply didn’t possess magnification tools sufficient to examine single-cell amebas in deep detail.

But then came the discovery of DNA not long after Darwin published, and in the 20th century the explosion of knowledge and understanding of DNA launched by scientists Francis Crick and James Watson and on to the present. We are only just beginning to grasp the incredible complexity and functions of DNA.

Darwin’s theory may well be the most reasonable explanation of the development of life after its origin, but in my view and that of a host of others who are much smarter than me, it cannot explain how the first living cell came into existence or the amazing complexity of it. There is, in other words, an irreducible complexity to the origins issue for which evolutionary theory is not the most reasonable explanation.

That is why as more is known about DNA, the ranks of intelligent people, including many top scientists, view Intelligent Design as the most reasonable explanation for the origin of life. Saying that does not exclude some form of theistic evolution or the multiple processes of adaption seen in the natural world.

Check out the following animated video about a couple of DNA characteristics that require multiple steps to be completed in a specified sequence. The discrete origin and survival of that sequence is an illustration of irreducible complexity.