The Great Designer

Introduction

That’s a great introduction to our lesson tonight, and I had him specifically sing that song for a very specific purpose, which you’ll find out in just a moment. Start this way tonight, you live in one of the most exciting times in the history of mankind. The topic we’re about to discuss tonight is the topic of the chemistry of living things at the microscopic level. Since the 1950s, mankind has learned more about that topic than in all of the history of mankind before that. And you’ve lived through it.

In 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA for which they received the Nobel Prize several years later. 1953. How many of you were alive then? Make me feel better.

Good. That’s not all. 1950s was an amazing decade. In 1951 and 52, Frederick Sanger sequenced the first protein, insulin, and he got the sequence of amino acids for that protein. He received the Nobel Prize for that in 1958. A little bit later, Frederick Sanger also sequenced the first DNA in 1977, for which he received a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Nobody’s ever done that since. Amazing. Other things were happening in science about those years. A grand event happened in 1957, October the 4th. Anyone remember? I’ll give you a hint. It had to do with space. Exactly right. Thank you. Did you hear that, everybody? Sputnik. Kids, do y’all know what Sputnik is? No. Tell them what Sputnik is. Who said it? What’s Sputnik?

That’s right. By the way, this is a class, so we’re allowed to interact tonight. And I expect you to interact with me. Don’t just sit there like bumps on a log. So Sputnik was the first object put in space, and who put it up? The Russians. And everybody knew they’re going to take over space and the world. It was a scary time. Let me tell you something personal that came out of that. Out of that came our government making a ruling that they’re going to pump a bunch of money into science and math education because we were behind the Russians. So thousands of dollars were allocated. And one of the places that received a bunch of that money was Harvard University. And they decided in the early 1960s to grant scholarships to science teachers so that they could help them improve science education around the world.

Guess who got one of those scholarships? I got a full ride to Harvard thanks to Sputnik, which was just fine. And it was an amazing experience. I don’t have time to tell you about that, but remarkable, and it’s found given me a great foundation to build on and opened some doors. So that was a good thing. Sputnik, 1954. And as a result of the challenge we received, you remember what happened by 1969 class. The United States put a man on the moon before anybody else. And surely a lot of you were alive then, right? And uh, were you listening when they stepped off that space and stepped onto the moon? How many of you? Yeah. That was huge. And kids in this class who weren’t even born then, you can be assured that was a dramatic time in the history of mankind.

Well, what I’m telling you is you live in a time when science was becoming the talk of the time. And the discoveries being made in science were bringing people to think, in many instances, that the more we learn, the less we need God. I talked about that some last night, didn’t I? And so the main theme of the 20th century came to be the sciences are going to be our answer to things, and the more we learn, the less we need God. And I can tell you that fed over into the science teaching that was going on at Harvard University and lots of other places.

The Time magazine headlines was Is God Dead? And interestingly enough, one of our brethren in the Lord, Brother A. W. Dykus, who was the academic dean at Florida College at that time, when I was a student there, wrote this song that we just sang. Our God, He is alive. It was in direct response to that. And I’m so glad you sang it with vigor tonight. Our God, He is alive. In Him we live and we survive. God hasn’t died. And I had us sing verses one and three. Verse 3 says that the secret to life is in the hands of God, doesn’t it? And that man will never discover that. I had us sing that because we had a biology professor at Florida College in the 1960s who refused to sing verse 3.

You listening. And he did because he didn’t believe it was true. He truly believed that by however many years, maybe not a very long time, mankind would have discovered the secrets of life and been able to produce life. He believed that.

They are preachers. And here’s what they said in their book, Radical Theology and the Death of God. We must realize that the death of God is an historical event, that God has died in our cosmos, in our history, and the dead God is the God of the historic Christian church, and beyond the church of Christendom at large. So here are two theologians from a denominational church saying God has died. So while the science professors are telling you you don’t need God, you better get God out of your mind. The theologians are saying, by the way, God died. And how is it, class, that God could die? And he didn’t mean that Jesus Christ came, the Son of God and died for our sins. He meant that God, the notion of God, is no longer viable.

Because we made him up in the first place. Yeah, I’m not answering very many questions tonight because I got so much to say, but you hang on to it, would you? Okay. I like this book better. Copyright 2021. Eric Bataxis. Is atheism dead? I have it right here, and I’d highly recommend it to you. It’s a great synopsis of what’s going on right now and why it is that atheism itself is in trouble. And I truly believe that. And it’s heavily based on what we’ve learned in the sciences in the last hundred years. So he says since the time article in 1966, roughly five things have arisen to challenge, and I will argue to overturn the secular consensus that formed in the wake of that article.

I’d like to emphasize what he said, because he said it well. There was a secular consensus that followed from that article. And there was a notion then that God has died and we don’t need God, you need to get over it. The sciences are going to answer the questions. Metaxis says there’s some things that have arisen that overthrow that. And here are the things he lists. We have learned from the sciences that matter, space, and time has a beginning. Did we talk about that briefly last night? That’s another topic you ought to investigate. And I’m leaving you a bibliography to look at that if you wish. That’s not my theme for this week because I don’t have time to do everything. And I’m choosing not to talk about that one.

Second, there is fine-tuning. Did we talk about that, class? Last night? Help those who weren’t here. What did we say? Everywhere you look, things are that’s pretty good, class. Last night they got kind of weak before we were done. But the fact is, everywhere you look, things have to be just right, or we wouldn’t be here. And it appears, class, and I didn’t get to finish all of this last night, it appears that this planet around this sun may be the only place in the entire universe where there’s anything living. And while Carl Sagan in his Cosmos series would have said back in the 60s that there are probably millions of other advanced civilizations in our own galaxy, there are now books being published called the Rare Earth, that there may not be another place in the entire universe because there are so many things that have to be just right to get living things on a planet.

I can’t preach that whole lesson again tonight. But you saw a good bit of it last night, and you can investigate further on your own. Third is the stupefying complexity of everything we see, especially at the biochemical level. That’s what we’re going to talk about tonight. And if I’ve succeeded when I get finished, you’re going to walk out of here stupefied. That’s my goal. And it’s amazing what I’m going to share with you. Then he said there’s been a lot of archaeological discoveries that support the biblical account. That’s not our theme this week, but that’s another powerful message. And then we’ve learned what atheism is and what it produces. So I thought I’d spend just a minute and share with you from this book some things he quotes in here about atheism.

Class, the 20th century was the century of atheistic governments. And it was a horrendous century.

It remains an unendurably horrible fact that dedicatedly atheist regimes in the last century alone tortured and murdered, multiplied millions, usually of their Jewish and Christian faith. In fact, those murdered by the handful of atheist regimes amount to more than 150 million people. You think Hitler was bad? The communist regimes were worse. So let’s be more specific, he says on the next page, because 150 million is hard to even imagine. In the year 1937 alone, the dedicatedly atheistic Soviet Union murdered 106,300 clergymen. They hoped this would help in eradicating the evil of the Christian religion. The Soviets, in the course of their adoption of what they call scientific atheism, murdered between 12 and 20 million human beings.

One of the most dramatic years in the political history of our time, as all of the Eastern European countries declared their freedom. Romania was the last one. And on December the 25th, 1999, they captured Nikolai Ceausescu and his wife, and they had the shortest trial in Romanian history and took them out and shot them to death. Because that hateful dictator had utterly destroyed Romania under the influence of the communist regime. We were well acquainted with an elderly gentleman who was thrown in prison for having a copy of the Bible in his possession. Several of his relatives disappeared, never to be seen again. Atheism has shown its face in the 20th and 21st century. And it’s the last thing in the world we want to experience again.

One only needs skim. Alexander Solzhenitsin, the Gulag Archipelago. How many in this room have read the Gulag Archipelago or small parts thereof? Like four or five of you. The Gulag is where Alexander Solzhenitsin, an intellectual believer in God, spent years being tortured and misabused. If you haven’t read it, you need to be reminded of what atheism has to offer us. So certainly that ought to start declaring the death of atheism. But we’re going to talk about what science has taught us that says not atheism is dead and not God is dead. God is very well alive. And the testimony is very, very vivid. So, class, that’s my introduction tonight. I like to start every class in this kind of a setting with a scripture. Because I want everyone who’s a believer in God to know that this book supports what I’m doing tonight.

1. His Invisible Attributes Are Clearly Seen

So from Romans, the first chapter, verse 20, is our theme passage for this week. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. That passage teaches that you can see God in the things that are made. And what you can see at the very least is he’s eternally powerful, and he’s not part of nature, he’s divinity. And the way you can see it is by looking at the evidence of design, which is everywhere. Everywhere. And I’m thrilled because you know it at heart, I’m a chemistry guy. I am thrilled to invite you to my chemistry class tonight. Welcome. I hope you came expecting to be taught a little chemistry.

And if you didn’t get over it, and I hope in the course of talking to you a little bit about the chemistry of living things, that I can astound you and stupefy you with the majesty and wonder of the great God who created it. That’s what we’re going to be about. So are you ready, class? Evidence from the chemistry of living things, the great designer. That’s our theme. So, why don’t we start with Francis Crick? Remember, I told you he and James Watson are the ones that discovered the structure of DNA in 1953 for which they received the Nobel Prize. I’ll say again, I’m going to put this book aside tonight. Not that it isn’t important and the most important book that’s ever been made, but I want to look at the book of the natural world.

2. Two Huge Types of Molecules: Proteins and Nucleic Acids

So let’s let Dr. Crick tell us a little bit about living things. He certainly ought to know a lot about it. This is page 72 from his little book called Life Itself, its origin and Nature, published in 1981. So relatively early on in this whole scenario. Life as we know it on Earth. Can I interrupt that just a minute? These fellows talk about life as we know it on Earth. People, there isn’t any other life form anybody knows anything about. So how about life? They like to make up stories about how else life could have come about. Like maybe some life somewhere is built out of silicon. That’s a fairy tale. Carbon-based, water-based life is the only life anybody knows anything about. Back to the quote.

Life as we know it on Earth appears as a synthesis of two macromolecular systems. And I just lost you, didn’t I?

So let me put it in plain English. Every living thing class has in it two huge types of molecules. Is that clearer? The proteins, because of their versatility and chemical reactivity, do all the work, but are unable to replicate themselves in any simple way. So the first type of molecules is protein. Say it, class. Proteins. Say it again. Okay, do you remember that? You’re gonna say it a lot.

Proteins are an extremely important type of molecule that are in every living thing. So, as Dr. Crick introduces us to it, there are structural materials that are proteins. And proteins are assembled from amino acids. Say that word. Amino acids, that’s two words. Yeah. It takes a string of amino acids to make one protein. Got it. Alright, so the structural materials that make up the shape and mobility of things, they’re proteins for the most part. Secondly, there are tools and machineries that make up the growth and maintenance of living things. Those are called enzymes, but an enzyme is just a special kind of a protein. Correct. It’s a special case. It’s a protein that’s primary purpose is to catalyze reactions. It speeds it up or slows it down.

I’m watching you be an active audience and don’t just sit there with your eyes glaze over. So that’s the first major type of molecule we’re going to be talking about. Secondly, there’s the blueprints. That’s the RNA and the DNA. They’re called nucleic acids. And they are the ones that allow for reproduction. Let me read you what he says about this. Please understand, I didn’t say this. He says the nucleic acids seem tailor-made for reproduction, but can achieve rather little else compared with the more elaborate and better equipped proteins. RNA and DNA are the dumb blondes of the biomolecular world. Fit mainly for reproduction, but of little use for much of the really demanding work. That’s not nice. And I didn’t say that, so don’t get on me.

But that’s probably the main thing you’ll remember from tonight.

3. A Common Chemistry: Common Ancestry or Common Designer

The RNA and the DNA are primarily for reproduction. But class, may I tell you that in the last 10 years we’ve learned that the RNA is doing all kinds of other things. Lots of RNA going on in all kinds of ways. And I won’t even have time to hardly touch that tonight. But those are the other major kinds of molecules that exist in every living thing. If you don’t have them both, you don’t have a living thing. Because living things have to be able to reproduce and continue their existence. So far so good. Two giant kinds of molecules. Good. So here we go. I mentioned to you amino acids. Proteins are made of amino acids. So what I’ve listed for you before here, and this is your first day of biochemistry in my class.

Welcome. Tomorrow there will be a quiz. And you’ll be expected to name the 20 amino acids. So let me just read them for you. I won’t read all of them, but we’ll read a few. Oops, sorry. Let me get the pointer. Glycine, alanine, valene, leucine, isoleucine, proline, serine, three anine, aspartic acid, and all the way down here to tryptophan and histidine. There’s 20 amino acids. Every living thing on earth has proteins in it. And the proteins in every living thing on earth. Are you listening to me? We have a common chemistry with every living thing. That’s the truth. So, what does an evolutionist say about that? He says the reason we have a common chemistry with every living thing is because we are kin to every living thing by descent.

In other words, you can trace your ancestry back, and you have a common ancestry with everything alive in a single tree of life. And way back a long time ago, the simplest forms of life, like single celled organisms, came about by natural causes from non living things, and from that evolved all of the other living things by natural causes. And therefore, you have a common chemistry. Class. That is not a stupid answer. That is a possible answer. Wouldn’t that be one way to explain our common chemistry? We have a common ancestry. But there’s another way to explain it. What if we have a common designer who wants all of nature to interact? And to interact, you’ve got to eat each eat one another. You know, you got to feed on one another, you have to subsist on one another.

And so the chemistry has to be similar, or you couldn’t survive. So a common design is just as good an answer as a common ancestry. And to answer which is the better explanation, you need to look farther than that. Are you with me? So I’m trying to play fair here. It’s reasonable to suggest if you have the same chemistry, you might have come from the same ancestry. That’s not unreasonable. All right. 20 amino acids class. I don’t care if you take a protein from a bacteria and a protein from U, you have the same amino acids. Proteins are made of the same stuff. All right, let me tell you one other thing. Why are they called amino acids? Let me show you that. See that little NH3 right there, and there and there and there?

If you look at every one of these, can you see there’s an NH3 in every one of them? The name of an NH3 group is an amine, A M-I-N-E. So they are all called amino. And what about the acid part? Well, C double O is a compound with a carbon and two oxygens bonded to it, and one of those oxygens has bumped off its hydrogen ion, and hydrogen ion is what is an acid in solution. So when you have a COO, you have an acid. So it’s an amino acid. And every one of these has an NH3 and a COO. So they’re all amino acids. Okay? That’s question number two tomorrow.

Now, are they different otherwise? Yes. But all of them have carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen. Can you see anything else up there besides those? I’m giving you just a second. There’s an S right there. What’s that? Anybody know? Sulfur. You see anything else? See, it’s mostly nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen in it that make up these things. Alright. So you now know why they’re called amino acids. They have an amine group and an acid. It’s called an organic acid. And other than that, they’re all different and they have certain different characteristics, which is extremely important because that’s what allows the variety of proteins. And class, you have lots of proteins in you. So you better be eating your proteins, some of which your body doesn’t build.

Alright, so these 20 are very much like.

4. The Genetic Code: A Language in DNA

Kids, you’ve memorized them, right? A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H I J K L M L P. But every word you make in English is a string of letters, isn’t it? From the alphabet. It’s exactly the same idea with amino acids. A string of amino acids makes a what class? That was weak, but that is the answer. Get better as we go. Alright. Now let’s talk about the other giant molecules. DNA is one example of that. And you can see a picture of it here with the beautiful structure. It has a double helix with crossbars. Let me show you. Everybody’s eyes up here. Do you see that strand right there? Let’s follow it around. Here it goes. And here’s a separate strand. It comes up like this.

You see they’re twisted around one another? And then there are cross pieces that connect them together. And in this picture, you can see there are four colors. There’s green and blue. Always a green with a blue, and always a red with a yellow. You see that? So there’s green, blue, red, and yellow. That’s four things. That gives it the capacity to reproduce itself, and it contains a language with four letters A, T, G, and C. Adenine, thymine, guanide, and cytosine. That’s question number three tomorrow. The four letters of DNA language. Alright.

Good. That’s our beginning point about DNA. Here, class is the language. It’s called the genetic code. How many have studied that? A few of you. I figured it’d be more than that. Okay. Well, let me teach you how to read. This language class is a very interesting language. It has only three-letter words. That’d be kind of nice, wouldn’t it, kids? If every word were just three letters. And, but. You know, think of any three-letter word. Well, in this case, you only have four letters to work with. You’ve got T, C, A, and G. So here’s a place for the first letter. T, C, A, and G across this way is the second letter, and then T C A and G repeated four times over here for the third letter.

You can represent every possible three-letter word using four things with repeats. Maybe I ought to ask you a math question now. If you have four things and you can re make three-letter words out of the four things, and then you can repeat. How many words can you make? Good for you. How’d you know that? You cheated. I already didn’t think of the same thing in 20%. I’ve already calculated. This is a math guy. I do teacher. Yeah, you’re right. In a three-letter word, how many can you put in the first position if you have four letters to choose from? You have four. You can put four different letters there, right? By choice. How about in the second place? You can put four in that too, because you can repeat.

How about the third? You can put four there too. So the numbers you can put is four times four times four. Four times four is what class? Sixteen and sixteen times four is sixty-four. There’s exactly sixty-four words up there. The genetic code has sixty-four words in it. They’re all three-letter words. So let me show you. Let’s look at this one. How about if the first letter is a T, the second letter is a T, and the third letter is a T. That’s this one. That’s the word T. This is a non-spoken language. But the word T T means something. It means P H E. That’s very helpful. Isn’t it? No. Let’s try another one. Maybe I can help you out here. How about A C T.

That’s the word ACT. That means T H R. Anybody get it? I forgot to tell you a while ago. Not only do you need to memorize the names of the 20 amino acids, you need to remember their abbreviations. Which is typically the first three letters. So PHE is phenylalanine, one of the 20 amino acids. THR is threeonine. That’s one of the 20 amino acids. Let’s try another one. C A T. Cat. That’s H I S. That’s histidine. Okay? If that makes any sense to you. What you have in the genetic code class is a code for the all 20 amino acids. But there’s 64 letters. I mean, there’s 64 words up there. So you only have 20 amino acids. So can you see any repeats? Yes, if you look at it.

See, there’s an L E U and L A U and L A U and L E U and L E U. There’s six codes for L E U. That’s leucine. That looks to me like a backup system. You have sever more than one code for leucine. How about phenylalanine? There’s this one and this one. Serine is four. And what about these guys right here? TAA means term. That is not an amino acid. What do you think that means, class?

Terminate. That can mean kill. That’s not what it means. It means stop. So you have a code in this language that means stop. In fact, there’s three of them, aren’t there? TAA, T G A, and T A G all mean stop. So if you’re reading along a string of amino acids and you come to the T the three-letter word T A G, that means stop reading. Yeah. Exactly. Good. And there’s also a code that tells you to start reading. Now that’s not up here, but I’m going to show you which one it is. It’s that one right there, A T G for methionine. That means start reading. Okay. Everybody’s eyes up here. This is very important. A string of amino acids is a what class? Better.

What’s a string of amino acids class? Thank you. A protein is a string of amino acids, so you’ve got to have a starting place and a stopping place, don’t you? Because it’s only a certain number. So when you make a string of amino acids out of the DNA where this code is located, you’ve got to know where to start reading and where to stop reading. And in between, you have the code for that amino acid. I mean, for that protein, it’s a string of amino acids. So you have a start reading, and then you say this one says that’s alanine, that’s valine, that’s isoleucine, that’s leucine, and so on, and you keep reading until you get to one of the terminators and you stop reading. Okay.

So here’s the end of that string. Here’s the beginning of it. In between the string of amino acids, that’s the code for a protein. That’s what was uncovered in the 50s and 60s. As we began to learn that what that DNA is doing is it’s telling you how to make proteins. Utterly incredible. Protein’s a string of amino acids. And it’s coded in the DNA. Alright, we’re going to talk a lot more about that, but that’s the basic idea. All 20 amino acids are represented here, plus a start and stop code. Right.

What are we doing? I need to put your point to vary in my problems. Oh, you need to change out my things. Leave it up to technical things. While he’s doing that, I’m going to brag on him again. If the computer doesn’t turn on like I want it to and do exactly what I want, I’m lost. But this guy can fix it.

And this means, I’ve got to get something out of my hands here. This means it’d be perfect.

5. How Many Proteins It Takes to Build One Protein

Okay, here we go. All right. My job for the next few minutes now is to try to explain to you how proteins are built in your cell. What you need to know first, class, is that every cell in your body is doing this right now while you’re sitting there. And they’re making them by the thousands. That’s why you get tired just sitting there listening to me. Your body is very busy. There’s all kinds of stuff going on in there. We’re going to focus in on one particular thing, and that’s building proteins.

Most of it. There’s DNA elsewhere also, but most of it’s up there in the nucleus. This is the DNA that contains the code that allows you to copy it that is then used to build proteins. So notice up there that that DNA is, can you see it’s opened up there? It’s zipped up. That strand actually unzips and it exposes both sides. And both sides have on them sticking out those A, T, G, and C’s. Those four letters. They’re sticking out. And as you read along, those things form three-letter words, which can be read. So you see it unzips, and a copy is being made. That particular copy is called messenger RNA. Over here, the same DNA is making some ribosomal RNA. And over here, the same DNA is making transfer RNA.

Each of those have a specific jobs. But all of them are coded up here. That is called transcription class. You’re taking the information on the DNA and you’re copying it. You’re transcribing it. So far so good. Thank you for doing something with your head. It makes me feel better. All right. Once it’s copied, then it has to be matured. So there’s a process that takes place right here. That’s very complicated. And in the last 10 years class, we’ve learned out it’s ten times more complicated than we ever dreamed. The transcription process is very, very complicated. And it involves a whole bunch of activities going on, most of which I can’t even tell you about tonight. We don’t have time. But believe me, there’s a lot of things going on there while all this is happening.

Then once this is matured, it migrates outside the nucleus. See those holes right there? It goes through those holes and comes out here to pick up, be picked up by two ducks hugging each other. Isn’t that what that looks like to you? Two hugging ducks. That’s not what they look like. That’s a picture to kind of make it come alive. Those little guys are called ribosomes. Extremely complex organ. The copy that you made up here is read through the ribosome like a tape through a tape layer. And it reads the code, and out the bottom comes a string of amino acids, which is a protein. Exactly right. So what’s the process? It’s transcribed up here. It’s matured, it migrates, it’s translated, by which it builds a protein.

That’s the process. Now I want to make this real simple to start with. Every single step of that process requires what do you think? That’s weak because you didn’t know what I wanted, did you? From here on, for the next long time, every answer is protein. Okay. You got it? I forgot to tell you that. So let me say it again to see how much better you do. Every step of this process, transcription, maturation, migration, and translation and building proteins requires. Exactly. Every step. So what I’m going to tell you about next is how many proteins it takes to build one protein. Okay. Because what I’ve just told you is the process to build one. One protein. First of all, you have to copy it. Class.

You can’t just copy DNA. You have to have a whole glob of proteins that allow it to open up and that allow you to read it. So in the first step of transcription, you need proteins. Exactly. A whole bunch of them. In fact, it’s hard to make it exactly precise. There’s a whole glob of proteins needed just to start. Second, once the copy’s made, you’ve got to zip this thing back up. By the way, you ever have a zipper get stuck? Zippers can get stuck. Do you know what it takes to make sure that doesn’t get messed up when you’re trying to zip it back up? Exactly right. You have a specialized protein that keeps it from messing up when it zips up. So that’s just right up here now.

Now you’re down here and you’ve made your copy, and do you see these little white regions here? Those are called introns. Those entrons have to be snipped out, and you have to re-edit and put it back together. You can see it here. And when they first started learning about this in the 1980s, the first thing the evolutionists thought was this. Listen to me closely. When you snip out those things there to mature it, what do you do with them? Well, it looks like they just threw it away. That’s just garbage. So the first reaction of the evolutionists was, and they wrote it down, introns are garbage left over from your evolutionary past. They’re not needed. So they’re snipped out and thrown away. Twenty years later, they’re exactly wrong.

What they should have said is, we don’t have a clue what’s going on, and let’s wait a while and see if we can find out. No, that’s not the way they worked. And every time anything comes up that might speak against God, you’re going to hear it. So junk DNA from the 1990s till the 2010s began to be the testimony of many scientists. There’s so much junk in your DNA. Why would God make something that’s 95% junk? May I tell you the end of the story? There’s a book out now called The Myth of Junk DNA. Because we’ve learned a whole bunch about what that supposed junk is doing that is vital to your life. So be careful what you call junk. The fact is, class, those introns are doing all kinds of important things.

Here’s another neat thing. Listen to me carefully. That piece of information right there was copied from the DNA, right? When you can edit it like that and snip it, you can put it up in different sections. Can you see that? If you take this section and this section and then put those together and then the third one here and the fourth one here, that’s one particular protein. What if you change the order of it? That’s another protein. Are you with me? The same piece of information by editing and snipping it back together can give you more than one protein. So what we’ve learned, class, in the last 10 years is that same piece of messenger RNA can make up to, you want to take a guess of the prize winner?

What? How many is the most that we know of that one section of DNA can make? How many proteins do you think? You think it’s in the thousands? It’s in the millions. One section can be snipped and edited so many ways, you can make a million different proteins. That means there’s more information tied up in there than we ever dreamed. But class, what do you think it takes to mature that messenger RNA? Proteins and a bunch of them. There’s a glob called splicosomes. I didn’t say that well. Splicosomes. That’s little, they’re molecular machines that can splice that thing and then edit it back together. And they are so complicated. May I tell you how I spent my afternoon this afternoon? I was trying to go through the literature and count up how many proteins are involved just right here.

I gave up. One spliosome has up to 170 different proteins needed to make it work and do all its job. 170. Don’t believe me, I’ll tell you right where you can go read it for yourself. So there’s another huge bunch of what? Needed for that step. Then it migrates out here to that hole. Do you think any respectable nuclear membrane is just going to let anything go through those holes? No, absolutely not.

What do you think guards the hole, class? There’s a protein made specifically like this, and when the messenger RNA comes up, he says, come on in. And it opens up, lets the messenger RNA through, and closes back down. That’s a specific protein just for that. And what do you think about the other side of that hole? Another protein. Exactly right. I thought about asking one of you kids to keep track here of the math, but forget it. It’s hard to do. But I’m already up close to 200 proteins class. All right, now let’s go down here. We’re translating down here. Every one of these codes right here refers to an amino acid, doesn’t it? Well, the transfer RNAs, see these little guys over here that have been built out of that too.

And how many proteins do you think it takes from here to here? A bunch, and we’re not even talking about that. So here come the transfer RNAs. Each one of them is specific for one of those 20 amino acids. And it carries it over to the ribosome. And by the way, it can’t do its job unless there’s another. What do you think? Exactly. So if there’s 20 amino acids, there’s 20 specific transfer RNAs. How many more proteins? 20 more proteins. Right there. So each transfer RNA has one particular amino acid, maybe alanine, and it’s got a protein riding along there with it, so that when it brings it over here to put it inside the ribosome, it works. You don’t have that amino acid and the protein, it doesn’t work.

Now you’re down in here, you’re actually making the copy and building the protein. What do you think it takes down inside there? More proteins. And then once the protein is built, a string of amino acids is a protein, but class, did you know that’s not all there is to it? Every protein has to fold a three-dimensional shape that is precise. And if it doesn’t fold up exactly the way it’s supposed to, it doesn’t work, and it gets thrown away. What do you think it takes to fold it up into the precise three-dimensional shape? More proteins.

Every protein that is built requires at least 200 different proteins to make that job happen. Don’t miss this point. Every one of those 200 and some odd proteins also have to be built.

So let’s go back up here to the very beginning. At the very beginning up here, you have to have RNA polymerase, a protein, or nothing happens for copying. But folks, RNA polymerase.

How did the first RNA polymerase get built from making a copy of the DNA when you have to have it before you can even make the copy? Can you see it’s a chicken and the egg problem? And it’s a chicken and the egg problem multiplied about a million times. All of this has to be present for this process to work. And every one of those proteins has to have been built already, or you couldn’t build one. Some of you are looking at me blankly. You ought to be falling out of your seat. Don’t believe me about this.

Exactly right. Anybody that’s normal human being who sees that anywhere else is gonna say, somebody built that. That’s an amazing accomplishment. You know what these guys say? Isn’t it interesting what evolution did over billions of years? That is not possible. That’s a fairy tale.

First of all, let me introduce you to Drew Berry. Anyone ever heard of him before? Well, I’m introducing him to you. He is a biomedical animator. His job is to make things that you can’t see come alive. He works with Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. He’s a phenomenal animator. So what we’re about to show you is one of his animations. And you can go to his website and look at a bunch of others. You’ll enjoy it. But Tony, your job, sir, is to stop and start at my command. And if you don’t stop at exactly the time I tell you, it’s a problem. No, we’ve been practicing already. So here we go. This is the animation of Drew Berry. Stop right there.

Whoa! Okay, well, back it up. Yeah, back it up. One of the things I told him is if I mess up or you mess up, your job is to fix it in a hurry.

All right, good. And you are ready, right? All right. First of all, class, let me show you the parts here. See this strand? That’s the DNA. Thank you. Very good. And what do you think this is, class? A glob of proteins. And they’re all color different colors. They are not color different colors in real life, folks. They do that to make it real and to make you see their difference. So let’s count them right now by the colors. One, two, three, four, and that’s a little different color. Five and six. Can you see that? If we had time class, I could tell you the job of each of those six proteins and what they do specifically to make this happen. So we’re just getting started. Alright, let’s go, Tony.

We’re not going to move along here. This is the start of a gene for a bone strength protein. That’s what we’re building here. And as you watch here, stop right there. Good. Good job. Do you see the little vitamin D right there? It’s swimming out there in the cytoplasm. And that vitamin D is critically important to this process. So let’s watch a little bit as this vitamin D approaches this protein glob. Go ahead. What happened? Did we go back? There it goes. Here comes the vitamin D. Watch him. Boom, stop. It turned that guy green. It doesn’t turn green, class. It’s because the red becomes green, and that means go. That’s why he does that. But the point I’m making to you is you need vitamin D to start the copying process.

So get out in the sun. You live in Florida. You need vitamin D to help build proteins. All right, but that activates this glob of proteins. That’s what happened. So go. And now with that activation, another glob of what do you think? Good. Stop right there. Comes up. And here’s another protein. You see that dark blue one in the back? That’s RNA polymerase. Give you a little hint. If a word ends in ASE, it’s an enzyme, which is a special case of a protein. So that’s RNA polymerase. May I expand on that just a little bit? Did you notice up there that there’s messenger RNA, ribosomal RNA, and transfer RNA? Every one of them requires RNA polymerase, only they’re all different. That’s three different proteins. I didn’t tell you that before.

And by the way, I could stop every few seconds and tell you six other things. I told you when you’re finished, I want you stupefied. You’re not going to remember everything I tell you. I want you to be overwhelmed with the amazement of what’s going on. Every microsecond that you’re alive. Okay, let’s go. Now, as the time is ready, this transcription begins. And you see the RNA polymerase is riding along the DNA. Let’s go out here a little bit. There he is. Stop right there. All right, do you see here’s the DNA? What in the world is this coming out here? That’s the RNA copy that’s being made. And it’s being made down inside this glob of proteins. So there’s lots of stuff going on down in here.

And if you’ll watch, see all this junk out here? That’s not junk, folks. That’s the material by which you make the copies. That has to be there, you can’t make copies. So a lot of stuff going on. And it’s acting down inside here. Let’s keep going. DNA is going this way. Messenger RNA is being released as it’s being made. And now we’re going to go look inside this transcription of the genetic code from DNA to RNA. Down inside here is what’s happening. Let’s take a look now. Stop right there. Good job, Tony. See all this stuff? Those are the pieces that are being used as they go inside here to make the messenger RNA. The copy that you’re trying to produce. Alright, let’s keep going. Whoops.

Did I do that?

See if I hit the wrong button, it’s all we’re in trouble.

You got to get me back where we were. I’m sorry. Yeah, back up just a little. Right there is good, yeah. Great job, Tony. Alright, so we’ve been looking down in here, and what I want you to see now is this line moves across as we’re blowing it up even bigger so you can see. Let’s go. Alright, do you see? Stop right there. Do you see how it’s unzipped? What did it take to unzip it, class? Yes, exactly right. And when you open up that site, it exposes this code, you see? Now it doesn’t say T G G T A A. That’s written in there for you to know what those things are. But there is a code along here, and what look what’s happening. The RNA is being built one piece at a time.

If there’s a G over here, there’s gonna be a C over here. G over here, there’s a C over here, T over here, there’s an A over there, and right and so on. Every piece of the code is being built one piece at a time. Class. The average protein has 1,000 amino acids in it. Each of which is three letters. So that’s 3,000 letters that have to be copied. Okay. One of the problems with videos in the past was they had a hard time showing you how fast this happens. So one of Drew Berry’s goals was to show you how rapidly you can build the copy of one protein. Alright, you ready? Don’t you go to sleep? Watch the screen and watch how rapidly as he goes now and puts it up to real time speed.

Go ahead. Now I didn’t do that one. Get me back. That wasn’t my fault that time. There you go. Good job. Alright, watch everybody. Can you see they’re adding one at a time? Way too slow. Now that’s more like it. That’s real speed. Is that incredible? That’s why, class, you can build a protein in microseconds. Because it goes that fast. All right, stop right there. This is the messenger RNA that’s been matured. He skipped a bunch of things in this video. And it comes out that hole. What did I tell you about that? The hole who guards the hole? A protein and lets him out, and then he migrates out to the nuclear protoplasm. Let’s go. And he’s going to get picked up by the ribosomes.

Here he comes. Stop right there. The ribosome has two major parts, and they come together and they close in on that messenger RNA. Class. You want to take a guess how many proteins are in a ribosome? No. He said a million. No, no, no. But there are at least 50 different proteins in the ribosome. It’s made up of RNA and a bunch of proteins. So that’s it. Just add another 50 to make this process work. Okay, so the ribosome is closing in on that. Go ahead. And you can see here it’s reading the can you stop right there just a second? Can you see there’s a three-letter word, a three-letter word, a three-letter word, a three-letter word? See that? That’s the code. And it’s going through here and it’s being read like a tape through a tape player.

And it’s calling for the amino acids needed to build that protein. So let’s watch a little while now. Go. Here comes the transfer RNAs bringing in the amino acids floating through the cytoplasm. And whoop, this is this there’s the transfer RNAs. In a minute I’m going to tell you to stop, but be ready, Tony. Stop right. Now, okay. Here’s the transfer RNA. That is made of RNA, not proteins. But every transfer RNA has to have a protein to help it. I already told you that. There’s 20 specific ones. Every one of them carries an amino acid on its tip end there. See that little pink part? That’s an amino acid. Now what you’re going to see here in this video clip is different ones. So let’s watch here, Tony.

Let’s just let it go through that. See, there’s another one, there’s another one, a different one, different one, different one, different one. Stop. Each transfer RNA has its own specific amino acid. There’s 20 of them. All right, so they’re bringing the information in. Keep going.

Now we’re going to get down inside and watch this thing. We’re going down inside the ribosome. You see the transfer RNA? Stop right there. At this end of the transfer RNA is the code that exactly matches the code on that ribbon. Up here is the amino acid that matches that code that’s going to be added to this protein that’s being built up here. This is hemoglobin. That’s why it’s red. So down here’s the code matching the code from the DNA. Up here is the appropriate amino acid being added by peptide bond linkage to the particular protein being built up here. Now let’s watch. Can you see they’re adding one at a time? One piece at a time. Way too slow. He’s having a time with this one.

Come on, faster, move it. Faster. Can you see the protein being built up here? Coming out the top? That’s the hemoglobin. Stop. That took about a thousand times longer than it should have. That’s the hemoglobin. It’s a string of amino acids. It’s not finished. It will now migrate to another organ over here that’s full of. And it’ll be structured into its perfect three-dimensional shape, and then it will be released into the protoplasm to do the job for which it was designed. And textbooks in biochemistry will say it exactly that way, and then they will say, but it wasn’t designed.

Every step of it. And it works more beautifully than any Ford factory in the history of mankind. Thousands of times more efficient and faster than anything humans have ever constructed. And it all has to be present because the pieces that are used in it have to be built also.

6. The Cell Is a Self-Replicating Nanoscale Robot

We haven’t touched the hem of the garment. We’ve learned so much more about the chemistry of living things in the last 50 years, additional to that. I showed you this last night. That’s a picture of a cell as we know it in modern times. There’s all kinds of stuff going on in there, class. Can I point out one thing to you? Do you see this plasma membrane right there? That little thin membrane that’s the outer wall of the cell? Here’s a blow up of that. It’s a lipid bilayer with a membrane protein in it and a plasma membrane. There’s three layers in there, which a bunch of stuff stuck through it. That membrane is so complicated, it is full of proteins and lipids and all kinds of other things.

That one little piece of the cell is so complicated, it would take me a week to explain it to you. Just the skin. And there’s all kinds of other things going on inside there. Lysosomes and Golgi complex, mitochondrium, which is the energy source, the cytoplasm itself, all kinds of things. The cell is a self-replicating nanoscot nanoscale robot. And it’s self replicating because it can and reproduce itself. Tomorrow, don’t you miss tomorrow? I’m going to show you a cell reproducing itself in its entirety. It’s called mitosis. Did you know, class, that in your body, mitosis is happening at the rate of millions per minute? The biggest volume of that is your red blood cells. Your body’s building those things all the time. And it’s done by mitosis.

They split, and one cell becomes two, and it copies the entire information in that cell in a matter of seconds. That’s going on right now. It’s self-replicating because it can reproduce itself. It’s nanoscale because it’s very small. That’s one billionth of a meter size. And it’s a robot because its activities are carried out unconsciously and automatically by precision molecular machines that follow ordinary physical laws. And there are thousands of them. Thousands.

Do you see the title?

Conclusion

I mean a God. Anthony, one of the foremost notorious atheists of our day, has become a believer that there has to be a God.

And you can believe, folks, the man was crucified for it. In this book, is Atheism Dead? Our author wrote some comments about Anthony Flew. Because he has a section in here of atheists who’ve become believers. And Anthony Flew’s one of them. Well, I think I won’t try to find that. But I will read you a quote. It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism. The enormous complexity by which the results were achieved looks to me like the work of intelligence. It now seems to me that the findings of the more than 50 years of DNA research have provided a materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design. And Anthony Flew told his compatriot atheist, I have said all my life, I will follow the evidence where it leads.

And when it came to this, he said, I give up. This could not have happened without a grand designer. Is it reasonable to believe in God in this scientific age class? It is inexcusable not to.

Have established that beyond reasonable doubt. And you’ve been a good audience. Thank you so much. And I’m finishing a little sooner than I did last night. So welcome back tomorrow night. Our subject is molecular machines. You don’t want to miss it. God bless you. We’ll turn over to one of you.