Imagine walking out on your front porch to get the
newspaper one morning and getting the shock of your life! After looking over at your
neighbor Sam who is sitting and reading his own copy over a cup of coffee, you notice
a robot carrying a package down the street. Astounded, you observe that after it drops the
parcel off on someone’s doorstep and walks away, several more robots appear,
marching along, performing the same task. After rubbing your eyes
in disbelief, you “whisper-shout” to your friend, “Sam, where did these robots come
from? Who do you think made them?” To which he glances at you over the top of his
glasses with a slightly bored look and says, “I don’t think anyone made them.
I think they made themselves.” Now, does this scenario have any correlation to
a situation we could relate to in real life? Well, yes, it does. Our neighbor Sam is analogous to
the materialistic worldview being taught today through the state-run education
and media platforms throughout the West: the story of evolution
presented as “science and fact.” This materialistic ideology explains everything
through a naturalistic lens—no matter how intricate, complex, or marvelously
engineered something appears to be. The foregone conclusion always trotted out is
that whatever is being discussed was somehow produced by nature—with no appeal to design
allowed (i.e., everything “makes itself”). The robots referred to in our story are
represented by the incredible motor protein kinesin that is found inside the cells of all
living things. And as amazing as it sounds, they are very much like tiny biological robots walking
around inside all your cells at this very moment, and most of you likely never even
knew this was happening before now. To understand the world in
which kinesin operates, imagine the scenario depicted in Isaac Asimov’s
classic 1966 sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage. In it, a group of scientists were shrunk in
a submarine and injected inside someone’s body to perform microsurgery on him
before reverting to normal size. Now of course, we haven’t been able to shrink
ourselves yet, but advances in biochemistry have allowed us to take many fantastic voyages inside
cells through the use of electron microscopes. And what we’ve discovered through
using them is truly fantastic. Electron microscopy is a technique for obtaining
high resolution images of biological specimens by using a beam of accelerated electrons as a source
of illumination. And what is discovered inside the simplest of living things is astounding indeed.
As PhD geneticist Michael Denton described, "To grasp the reality of life as it has
been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million
times until it is 20 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. On the surface of the cell we
would see millions of openings, like the portholes of a vast spaceship,
opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we
were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme
technology and bewildering complexity." Part of that bewildering complexity
is our topic of conversation: kinesin. Kinesin proteins aren’t
living things; rather, they are a family of miniature motor
proteins inside living things that transport cargo around inside cells and
are remarkably humanoid in appearance. Having two legs that allow them
to walk along the roadways inside cells and two arms that allow them to
carry packages full of important cargo, they are like the postal delivery persons—but
on a mind-bogglingly microscopic scale. At only seven-billionths of a
meter long, they consist of, utilize, and synchronize with an incredibly
complex array of micro-biotechnology that rivals the most sophisticated feats of
engineering humans have ever achieved. There are many different types of
kinesin and kinesin-related proteins, each with different specifications and
functions that have been discovered in various organisms from yeast to
humans. The following example is a very basic scientific description of what
a typical kinesin does and why it does it. Inside life forms, proteins and other needed
parts must be delivered to specific places within the cell at precise times. If the
needed part is a protein, for example, a manufacturing plant (called the ribosome)
receives blueprints for the part from the nucleus (the information is stored in
the nucleus on a strand of DNA, but the blueprint is sent in the form
of an RNA copy of that section of DNA). This is obviously a complex coordinated
effort, as something must first access the creature’s DNA library, unzip it
at the exact location needed to copy the specific information required for
whatever part is to be manufactured, create a copy of the information for
the part, and deliver it to the factory. Afterward, another organelle
in the cell (called the Golgi apparatus) packages the needed part
and wraps it in a bag called a vesicle, then imprints the “address” where the part is to
be delivered onto the outside of the “parcel.” Then a kinesin is summoned. As mentioned,
a typical kinesin has two “arms” on one end holding the cargo (the vesicle)
and two “legs” on the other end that walk along the roadway (called a
microtubule), so it picks up the parcel and “walks” along microtubules in the cell
and delivers the parcel where it is needed. Now, if that sounded like a lot of technobabble
to you, let’s use a more relatable scenario that although sophisticated, actually pales in
comparison to what kinesin regularly does, so that we can better understand
the level of complexity at which these micromachines interact and operate
among the other systems inside cells. Imagine a fellow named Joe is working at his job
one day when suddenly the machine he’s operating breaks down. After doing a diagnostic to
determine what happened, he identifies a broken part and makes a call from his
cell phone to a local manufacturer in his contact list requesting the needed
component and giving them the part number. The manufacturer takes the
order and records Joe’s address. However, although they have a list of all
the part numbers on hand, they don’t have the schematic required to manufacture it, so they
send an email to another company (that has a copy of all the blueprints for every part needed in
the industry) requesting the needed diagram. So, someone there makes a photocopy of the
needed section from the master database and delivers it back to the manufacturer. Now, having
the instructions to construct Joe’s needed part, the factory then constructs it, puts
it in a package, marks it with the postal address from its database, and calls
a courier company to send a delivery person. After arriving at the factory and acquiring
the package, the courier punches in the GPS coordinates and travels along the
route plotted to deliver the package to the proper address so that Joe can get on
with his day. Voilà! Mission accomplished! Now, most would agree that the level of
complexity, both in the engineering and manufacturing prowess combined with
the multitiered levels of coordinated communication and interaction that I just
described in my analogy, is pretty impressive: not simply the technology, communications
systems, manufacturing capability, and databases combining these integrated components
but the specialized knowledge required at each step along the way—beginning with Joe performing
the troubleshooting analysis of his broken machine all the way to the admin person’s insight about
which area of the “meta-database” to access. Truly, such intricately synchronized problem
solving would be considered close to peak level human sophistication.
And of course in our example, all of these steps were coordinated
by intelligent people at every stage. Well, as impressive as that may have been, let’s
understand that the actual processes involving kinesin are far more impressive than what
“Joe” experienced. And all the programming involved was, according to advocates of the story
of evolution, supposed to have been generated via random mechanistic processes over millions of
years—all without any intelligence behind it. However, just think about the
implications we’ve gone over here. The fact that cells are somehow able to
“know” when and where a specific part is needed inside of themselves requires an
incredibly sophisticated diagnostic system. It also requires a database of all the parts that
may be stored and the ability to access them at the appropriate times when the correct, specific
communication is activated through the system. That communication then must trigger the
access of a blueprint for the needed part and the assembly and packaging of it, along
with the recording of some type of “address” for the kinesin to access and utilize in
order to travel to the correct destination (just as an address is useless to us without
some sort of map or GPS system of the location). However, the more we discover,
the more mind-blowing it gets! Just the kinesin proteins themselves
function with incredible efficiency. A kinesin’s motor produces nearly 15 times more
power than most man-made engines and is nearly twice as efficient as a gasoline engine.
In addition, kinesin are extremely fast, moving at a rate of 100 steps per second. If we
were to somehow scale up a kinesin to my height, it would move approximately 600 meters per
second—over 2,000 km per hour! As Steven M. Block from the Department of Molecular
Biology at Princeton University said, "Scaled up to our own dimensions, a motor
with corresponding properties would travel at similar speeds and produce as much
horsepower per unit weight as the jet engines of the Thrust supersonic car,
which recently broke the sound barrier." Incredibly, kinesins also have what
could be considered a “bypass mode” ability that allows them to navigate
around obstructions they may encounter while delivering packages. Similar
to how a GPS system “re-computing” mode will calculate an alternate
route should obstructions arise, kinesins have demonstrated the remarkable ability
to reroute around obstructions when needed. Of course, this not only demonstrates
programming of the kind that computer science describes as conditional statements,
illustrated by an “if-then-else” construct common to most programming languages (i.e.,
if [an obstruction]-then [re-route]). It also means that they can somehow determine
alternate routes through some type of program operating in the background that can
provide the most efficient path available. (No one yet knows what exactly
that program is or how it works.) Kinesin proteins also coordinate their efforts
should the task at hand be too much for just one of them to complete. Like runners in a relay
race, kinesins sometimes “hand off” their cargo to a fresh worker after bringing it a certain
distance. And if the cargo to be transported isn’t a “one-man job,” so to speak, multiple
kinesins will join and pull the load together. And however mundane a simple delivery service may
seem, research has shown that kinesins do far more than so-called “grunt work.” Among their most
important functions are support of cell division and transporting neurotransmitters needed
for neurons to communicate with one another. Some kinesins dismantle microtubules,
and since controlling microtubule length is vitally important during cell division
(as it can cause chromosomal instability, which is linked to human cancer),
their work is very important indeed! As one researcher said, "If kinesin were to fail altogether, you
wouldn’t even make it to the embryo stage, because your cells wouldn’t
survive. It’s that important." Kinesin are powered by the universal
energy compound known as ATP, which is produced by another engineering marvel
inside all living things: ATP synthase, the molecular motor. Every molecule of ATP
absorbed by kinesin allows it to take a step. Without the ATP synthase motors, there would
be no way for the kinesin “robot” to function (which adds yet another extraordinary level
of complexity to the processes involved). Cells are also extremely efficient. This
is remarkably illustrated by how kinesin has a hibernation feature and enters an
“autoinhibited” state when not in use. Similar to how modern computers shut down after a
period of inactivity, kinesins fold over and enter into a “sleep mode” when cargo isn’t attached,
to prevent ATP from being wasted. When needed, they reactivate (somehow) and carry on with
whatever new task they’ve been assigned. There is also good evidence they are either
dismantled and recycled or transported in groups back to the center of the cell by large
transport units (much like how buses, street cars, or subway trains shuttle groups of people
around in cities) when done with their tasks. Now let’s be honest, if any scientist were
somehow able to design such incredible microtechnology, they would likely receive
the highest possible accolades and be the recipient of the most prestigious awards
available from the scientific community. But of course, no scientist has even come
close. And yet scientists have minds; nature doesn’t. Unless nature can display
the capability to construct such marvels, would it not be logical to invoke
our Creator as the source of these? But in a culture with an education
system committed to naturalism, God is never given the glory for such
marvelous creations. It is the story of evolution that supposedly
explains such nanotechnology. "It is impressive how nature manages to combine
all of these functions in one molecule. In this respect it is still far
superior to all the efforts of modern nanotechnology and serves
as a great example to us all." Of course, naturalists typically appeal to the
concept of “deep time” to explain away such marvelous constructs. The materialist’s mantra
is “simple to complex over millions of years”— repeated ad nauseam. This is their typical
modus operandi for explaining away the incredible complexity continuously being
revealed by modern scientific techniques. By simply declaring that all things, no
matter how miraculous they might seem, are possible with enough time, naturalists
brandish the wand of deep time with impunity, waving away all criticisms of the story of
evolution that appeal to examples of design. This is a terrible argument
of course. In our experience, even with intelligent input and upkeep, things
get worse over time, not better. However, the problem for them in this case is that the more
they research, the more they run out of time. Why? Well, originally, kinesin was thought to only
be in the cells of organisms with a nucleus (eukaryote cells). But evolutionists’ “best
guesses” of when first life (consisting of so-called simple prokaryote cells) appeared on
earth is around 3.812–4.3513 billion years ago. As evolutionists believed eukaryote cells
evolved well over two billion years ago, that meant such incredibly sophisticated
constructs as kinesin appeared in life very early on indeed—in less than or just over
half of the supposed time life was on earth! How could such marvels appear so quickly
after evolution supposedly began? And if trying to explain that type of
sophistication in such a short time wasn’t enough of a headache, researchers now propose
that types of kinesin must have appeared prior to eukaryotes, in what researchers call the
“last common eukaryotic ancestor” (LCEA), which means they must have come into existence
even earlier on in the deep-time framework. As one researcher put it, "[A] large proportion of the extant diversity of
the kinesin superfamily was already established before the radiation of eukaryotes from
the last known eukaryote ancestor (LCEA)." And now new research has revealed a
kinesin type within bacteria, which, according to the story of evolution,
evolved 3.5 billion years ago! "A eubacterial homolog of
a kinesin light chain gene has been isolated and characterized from
the cyanobacterium Plectonema boryanum." But that would mean complex features
like kinesin were here from at least very near the beginning of life according
to their imagined evolutionary timescale! Again, this is biotechnology far superior
to anything the most intelligent scientific minds on the planet have ever produced! Which
is likely why evolutionists have suggested (without any observable evidence) that perhaps
bacteria were simply given this genetic “software package” at a much later date via lateral
gene transfer—after it had evolved elsewhere. Bible believers can
be confident in the fact that kinesins were truly here from the
beginning as the Word of God says, "For in six days the LORD made heaven and
earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day."
(Exodus 20:11) Which would of course
include kinesin. The commonly taught evolutionary story that simple
life evolved into more complex forms is simply false. True science is based on observation, and
what we’ve observed is that there is no such thing as a “simple” life form—even the simplest
creatures we’ve seen aren’t simple at all. What we have observed is life forms that range
from mind-blowingly complex to a level of sophistication that is virtually inconceivable in
terms of brilliant design and functional ability. Should evolutionists believe that in the past
there were “simpler” life forms that existed other than what we observe today (which are
not simple in any true sense of the word), they believe that on faith, not facts. Common sense tells us that when we see robots
in factories, communication devices such as smartphones that can connect to the
internet and share information through vast and diverse networks, GPS systems that
required countless hours of data collecting and utilization through sophisticated,
state-of-the-art satellite systems, etc., in our everyday life, they are
always the result of intelligent design. And yet as a culture in the West, we
have been feeding our children into indoctrination centers for decades now.
These institutions have been teaching young minds—in contradiction to all human
experience—that a “no-mind process” (evolution) can produce far more sophisticated technology
than what the most brilliant scientists on the planet have ever achieved and that,
somehow, matter arranged itself into minds that have determined matter is in fact better at
creating constructs than we will likely ever be. As Jack Szostak, an evolutionist from
Harvard Medical school, admitted, We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work
and then we figure out what happened. Are we supposed to believe this is logical,
reasonable, or rational to any degree whatsoever? No! When we see comparable (yet even
more sophisticated) things inside the so-called “simplest” living things on the planet, it is a logical conclusion to believe
that the incredible Creator God of the Bible, Jesus Christ, is the wonderful
Mastermind behind all that we experience! Christians, don’t ever let anyone tell
you that your faith is irrational, illogical, or “not scientifically supported.” Non-Christians, take an honest look at the
evidence from science and Scripture. The story of evolution is simply not scientifically
tenable whatsoever according to what we observe in nature—even in something like the quirky
kinesin crawling around inside of you right now. The fact is, what we see in God’s
world is what we see in his Word. "For his invisible attributes, namely,
his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever
since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So
they are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
