Well, Rob, when we talk about the diversity
of life, there are really diverse creatures in this pool. This one little touch tank
is filled with amazing things. So each of these kinds, from the
Genesis paradigm, each of these were created, and yet there's some
similarities between them. Similarities and differences, and that's what we see
across the entire realm of life. Similarities and differences. So what
makes them different? Well, genetically, they're very similar. They have the same biochemistry. They have a lot of - they share most of their
genes in common. But there are developmental genes, they're called Hox
genes, that set up these patterns in the animal as it develops. They develop
from a single cell, just like you and I do. We - just like my left and
right hand are mirror images of one another, it's because there are
genes that set up inside of me that did patterns and sequences and timing, such
to the point where as I grew my little arm buds, my hands popped out, and they
look almost the same. Well for these guys, there are Hox genes that in one of them,
they set up a fivefold symmetry, another they set up a ten fold symmetry, another
one, they make this long, skinny animal. There are these master computer programs
that have a tremendous downstream effect. They control the development of the
embryo in these amazing ways. So it's like we have these programs that are
creating all this diversity, but there is a master program - almost like an
operating system. Absolutely. And an operating system - actually, scientists have compared
the operating system of a simple bacterium to the Linux operating system. Which is very, very complex. Very complex, but when we look at it, there's a lot of
computer programming in life, and so what we've seen is, just like in our
operating systems, life has some master modules, and then has some middle level
programs that control all the output - we call that proteins, and sugars,
and action. Computer systems, they've got your operating system that controls a
lot of middle level managers - you know, do this to the sound card, do this to the video
card, that controls all the outputs. But it's really funny, when we look at the
way life is structured, it's a lot more optimally designed. You have less high
level programs, controlling less middle level programs, controlling a lot more
outputs. Our computer programs are top-heavy. We have a lot stuff up
here controlling a little bit stuff down here, because we're not quite as smart as
God. So what you're saying, when we look at this from a molecular or genetic
perspective, what we're finding is really a fascinating design in all of that. Absolutely. And, when you talk about the standard paradigm, the standard
evolutionary story, we run into great difficulties when we get to these hox
genes, to these master program modules. Because yeah, you can take a starfish
like that, and you can change its size a little bit, you might change this color a
little bit, but if you want to get that starfish to turn into a radically
different organism, you don't tweak these little things, you have to tweak the high
level operating system and that usually causes downstream catastrophe. I would imagine if you're - if you're programming a computer, right? You can change a 1 or a 0 in an output, and maybe now your letters are blue instead
of white on the screen. Big deal. But if you want to randomly change the core
operating system? How many changes are possible that don't cause disaster? I
mean, almost all changes would ruin the whole system. From a computer scientist
perspective, I can tell you we call that system software sometimes. That's the
fundamental heart of that whole system. And if you have a problem down there,
that the whole thing breaks down. And when someone wants to change that, how
many people have to think for how long to make a simple change to the basic
programming? It's - that's tough, because once you start monkeying with
that operating system, with that system software, you have to be very careful
because you'll upset the whole thing. Yeah. And that's what we see in life. But what we've heard,
in the conventional paradigm, the conventional story tells us
that it's those random changes that has brought about all of this. Sure. Back in the 1800s, when life was simple, when they didn't know what
was happening inside the cell, they didn't know how complex genetics was, you can imagine
all sorts of things. I mean you can imagine a cell turning into a square, or
a circle, or changing color, or growing a spike, or a hair. No problem. But now that
we know what actually happens behind the scenes, the story gets a lot more
complicated. You see, the more complex life becomes, the less possible evolutionary
theory becomes. It can only work if life is really, really simple, and life is not
simple. We've had a revolution in technology just the last ten or fifteen
years, that our understanding of life is skyrocketed, and the standard paradigm's
ability to explain life has plummeted. So this is that concept of a black box -
like Darwin really couldn't see inside that, and so he thought it was simple. But
what you're saying is that now, we're finding it's extremely complex. Yes. And
it's complex at all levels. Structurally, it's complex, functionally, it's complex,
biochemistry is unbelievably complex, genetics is - our understanding of
genetics is only getting more complex over time. What are we finding now, as
we're studying genetics? What are - are kind of the things that we see now
that we didn't see 50 years ago? Well, 50 years ago, they had this simple idea that
you have a gene, and a gene makes a protein. That's been blown out of the
water. We now know that genes are involved in making dozens, if not
hundreds, of proteins, and different pieces of genes are used in different
proteins at different times in the cell's cycle, different times in life,
under different conditions, in different cells, most of your cells in your body,
they produce similar proteins than other cells - but they're different. So your
brain cells actually produce different versions of proteins than your liver
cells produce. So how's that possible? I mean, how is it - how do they do that? It's dynamic programming. You have a gene, and this piece is used over here, or
over there, or over there, and there's little teeny programs inside the DNA
that control when and where and how to use that piece. But just recently, I read
a paper about actually shifting of the information in the genes. So if you started at letter number one, you can read out this information. If you started reading
letter number two, you get a totally different information. How on earth did
that evolve like that? I mean, if you think of, um, if you read a story, maybe
you're reading a story talking about some swashbuckling pirate.
if you start at the second letter, it's a chocolate-chip cookie recipe. We can't write that.
We - there's no way we could intelligently program multiple
levels of information into the same story. And that's what we see in life. And
if we can't do it intelligently, it's not going to happen randomly. We're talking
about something that is beyond imagination, in terms of the complexity.
Even from the standpoint of the kind of things we've done with software, and
we've done some amazing things with software. But that appears to be it's
not even close to what you're talking about. I like to say the genome is four
dimensional. In software, we write in lines of code. correct. Well, in
mathematics, we learned a line is a one-dimensional object. it just has
length. So you could actually take a computer program, and just write from
left to right for millions of characters. Now on our screens, we put carriage
returns in there so we can read it, but the computer doesn't know that, it
ignores the carriage returns. It's just a line. Well, DNA is a line. So in the naive
concept of DNA, we had a line that had information in it. But it's not simple
like that, because this piece of DNA makes a little protein that comes over
here and sticks on this piece of DNA over here, which turns on or turns off a
gene. My goodness, it's like self-modifying code. Oh, it's worse than
that. Because this piece of DNA over here
makes just an RNA that goes over here and interferes with this gene's RNA, they
stick together, they interfere, they conflict with one another, they turn
things on, they turn things off, and if you wanted to draw that
out you need a sheet of paper - a very big sheet of paper, you'd have to read all the
letters of DNA out on - all three billion of them, it would take, I calculate about
850 Bibles as one human genome and then you have to draw lines or arrows from
one part to another part, because this part turns this part off, this part
interferes with this, this part enhances this, it's this huge two dimensional
interaction network. That's where you have a two dimensional genome. So it
sounds like - I mean, let me just stop you for a second, because this is really
amazing to think about this, because I think, in terms of a computer program,
that it's fairly static. I mean, the instructions are there, but you're
talking about a program that is reprogramming itself. It's modifying its
own instructions. Then we take it to the fourth dimension. Oh, okay. Because - the
third dimension first. The genome also folds into a three-dimensional
shape. So this is a 3D, the third dimension is actually the shape. And the genes that
are buried inside this ball of DNA? They're not active. They're turned off.
The genes that are exposed are the ones that are used. So whoever programmed that
string knew, when it folded up, which genes will be available at what
time. Are you saying that when this instruction set folds onto itself, it
creates a whole new set of instructions? Yeah, absolutely. And the information in that
first dimension, that linear string, has to be organized in such a way that when
it folds into the third dimension, it still works. Oh that's amazing. But it's so - it's amazing when when they first sequenced the human genome,
some scientists sat down, they did something I would have done. They said
okay, let's look at genes that we know are used in a biochemical pathway. They
might, like, ten genes in a row to convert this into something over here. Well, if I
would have programmed it, I would've stuck them right next to each other in the genome. So they looked, and they were right next to each other. They're random. They said
these genes are used on different chromosomes, they're backwards, they're forwards
they're just - they said, look at all the evidence of evolution. It's just junk.
Random change over millions of years, throw all this stuff together
willy-nilly, it's just nonsense. And we've heard that alot. We've heard that whole lot. That it is junk DNA. Yes, but then someone figured out how to look at the genome in three
dimensions. First of all they realized that genome folds in a fractal pattern,
and it's beautiful. But it's in a fractal pattern that doesn't make knots, and so
it folds up, and then when they figured out where the genes were, genes that
are used together are next to each other in 3d space, even if they're on different
chromosomes. When the chromosomes fold, they bring those two genes next to each
other, and usually, this cluster of genes is right next to a nuclear pore. So when
God programmed these genes, he knew that when he had to turn all these genes on,
he needed them in three-dimensional space next to each other,
so the whole biochemical pathway can be turned on, the little things are copied
into RNA, the RNA comes outside the nucleus, it's turned into protein, Voila. That's amazing. Okay, so you've about blown my mind with that, but you
said there's another dimension. Oh yeah, the fourth dimension is time. And
how does that work? The genome changes shape over time.
Remember I said that genes - some genes are buried? Yes. And some were exposed? Well,
you need those buried genes at some time, And so, at different stages of
development, or sleeping versus waking, or stress versus non stress, or after you -
maybe you eat something that's bad for you, and your liver says I can get rid of
that toxin. Now your earlobes, they don't care. They don't know what to do, but your
liver says I know what to do. The chromosomes in the liver will change
shape, expose that new protein gene, make copies of it, build a brand new protein
that can kill off that toxin, and when it does not need anymore, they'll change
shape again and fall back. Oh my goodness. So what you're saying is that we could
look at this, I mean from a very simple perspective, and come up with the phrase
called junk DNA - Yes. - and then we can even look at it when it's folded, even though
that is complex, and say, oh there's still some strange things in there. But you're
saying if it's not being used, we might not recognize its importance. True, but some of the information in the genome is like scaffolding in a
building. The reason this piece of DNA is here is
because when it falls into the three dimensions, it needs these two genes to
be next to each other. So this stretch here might not have a functional
protein associated with it, but it still has a function, it's very important. So most
of the so-called junk DNA has been brought into the functional category,
just not in the way the standard paradigm predicted. And it's funny
because the more amazing, the more complex things become, the harder it is
for the standard paradigm to explain it. That 3-dimensional ball of DNA changes
over the fourth dimension, but the interaction networks in its second
dimension, they change because this gene turns off, well that affects this one
over here, this one no longer talks to that one over there, but it's worse - it's
even more complicated than that. It's the first dimension, that linear string?
The program changes. That - computer software people, they don't like programs
that dynamically rewrite themselves. You get all sorts of catastrophes, but we've
learned that in the human brain, brain cells have different genomes to other
brain cells. There are these little pieces of DNA that - they actually, they
make a circle and they pop out and they go over and they float somewhere else in
the genome and they stick themselves in there, and they turn genes on and they
turn genes off. And now we have different pieces of DNA in different brain cells,
and that directs what type of brain cell it will become. But our liver cells, they
have different genomes also. There's a lot of chromosomal duplications that
happen in the liver. Because if you need a biochemical pathway, and a lot of it,
well, make extra copies of those protein genes. But different liver cells have
different copies of different chromosomes. And we've learned that in
the mouse embryo, there's a jumping gene, a junk piece of
DNA, an ancient viral infection, the standard paradigm says, which is
balderdash. It's not true, because this little piece of DNA has to excise itself,
and jump around in the mouse embryo to turn genes on and turn genes off, and if
you deactivate that little piece of DNA, you don't get development. It stops.
So it's necessary in the mouse, it's probably something similar, also probably
happens in us. Dynamic programming, all three levels change in the fourth level,
time. Rob, that's so far beyond anything that we know, even in our
most complex software systems, that it - it's almost beyond imagination to think
that someone would look at that and say it all happened by chance. Yes, and it only
brings glory to God, because the more complex it becomes, the less possible it
is to explain with natural, simple mutational processes. And we realize
that God is so far above us in intelligence, we don't program computers
like that because we're not that smart. But he made us in His image. We're
good at copying things. I predict that - that computers in the future are going
to be different because of what we're learning in the genome. Well we've done
that in the past, and we were talking earlier about how man has looked at the
flight of birds and studied them aerodynamically, and from that we've been
able to create aircraft. But it's hard for me right now to think that what
you're talking about, that we could even come close to replicating. Not yet, not
with any technology we have right now. we are limited to silicon chips right now,
and that is so incredibly primitive compared to the technology that God
engineered directly into life. Rob, there's a complexity here that is just
hard to imagine. Hard to even get your mind around. And yet the conventional
paradigm would tell us that all of this happened as a result of random processes
over billions of years. But that's hard to imagine, that that could happen. It is
becoming impossible to imagine, based on what we're learning, but all different
levels of life - I mean, the genome, you can't build something like that up one
thing at a time. You need it to function, in all its interlocking, four-dimensional
complexity. It's not something you can do one letter at a time with natural
selection. It all has to be there. Yeah, in the same way when we talked about the
environment out here on the coral reef, if you don't have all these interlocking
pieces of that puzzle, you don't have that ecology, the system will come
crashing down if you just remove a couple of very important factors that
are there. They have to be together, or it doesn't happen. so not only did we have
this inner dependency, this mutualism, so to speak, down at the genetic level, now
we even make it more complex by saying there is that same mutualism at the
higher level as well. Yes. In fact the entire world has a mutualism. Think about it.
Everything on earth depends upon photosynthesis. Everything depends upon
plants grabbing sunlight, storing that energy in sugar molecules. If that didn't
exist, nothing else would exist. So we're back to this notion, to some extent, of
this - the fact that the whole creation itself is built in relationships with
each other. It's all interconnected, the relationships between pieces that we
haven't even been able to see, and think about. And yet we're continually
discovering - and we're discovering them. There are some which - who would turn at this
point to Gaia, or the universe being conscious, or alive. It doesn't fly
because they're still appealing to this conventional millions of years paradigm,
and they're still trying to build it up step by step. It doesn't work that way.
You cannot build high technology step by step. It takes a leap of technology to
produce something like a starfish - Right. - from nothing. Rob, what you're saying
here is that it's impossible to think that all of this could have happened
just by a series of slow processes over billions of years. That's exactly what
I'm saying. When we talk about the cell, we have to
talk about technology. When we talk about technology, we have to talk about
intelligence. When we look at the mutual interdependence of everything that is
happening inside the cell, we realize systems like that don't come about
through a step- wise process. You've got things that
have to exist, or life cannot exist. And they're intrinsic, and important, and found
throughout all of life. It has to be not built up stepwise, but the whole system
laid out, spun up, and then God let go, and there it works. Rob, I have to ask
you this question, then. We are accused, often, of just taking a leap of faith
here, in believing the Genesis paradigm. Do you think it's a leap of faith for
what you believe? There is certainly an aspect of faith involved in any science.
I put my faith in my Redeemer Jesus Christ. I put my faith in my God.
But at the same time, when I'm looking at the world, my world is fitting in with
what I read about God and about creation in the Bible. I don't have a gigantic
scientific conflict. I'm not turning my mind off. I'm actually thinking through
these things, and my colleagues, we are thinking through these issues, and it is -
it is a wonderful place to be right now, because right now, with the technology
that we're developing, and the understanding that we're
experiencing, it is only pointing toward our Creator.
