The Cell's Design--final section

Toward the end of his book, The Cell's Design, Dr. Rana completes his discussion of many startling molecular features inside the cell and focuses on a common challenge leveled against arguments for intelligent design -- imperfections found in nature. Critics say odd arrangements and funny solutions are proof of evolution because a sensible God would never put things together that way.

Rana admits there are some designs that are less than perfect. But he says these designs merely reflect the unavoidable consequences of the laws of nature instituted by the creator. As an example, he points to the second law of thermodynamics (entropy). Living systems which experience this law tend toward disorder. For example, chemical and physical damage to DNA inevitably cause abnormalities. Over time, the accumulation of these damaging mutations can transform an optimally design biochemical system into one that is substandard. He also says complex, human-engineered systems often involve trade-offs . When confronted with these trade-offs, the engineer carefully manages them in such a way to achieve the best overall performance of the system itself. As an example, think of today's automobile. Each car is a balanced system that attempts to deal with issues regarding safety, performance, and gas economy.

Dr. Rana spends time discussing systems that at one time were seen to be imperfect but have recently been discovered to serve a vital purpose. He looks at glycolysis, bilirubin production, uric acid metabolism, junk DNA, and genetic redundancy as examples. His explanations made my head spin, so I'm not going to try to discuss all of them here. But over and over again, he shows how something that originally appeared badly designed has recently been shown to have a highly useful design. Here's one example -- uric acid metabolism. Many people develop kidney stones due to what appears to be poor design in their cells. However, uric acid helps prevent cancer and may contribute to long human life spans since it is a potent antioxidant. Then, of course, there's junk DNA, which appears to be a portion of DNA that has no purpose. Much to the surprise of scientists, junk DNA has function.

Rana concludes his book by criticizing evolutionary solutions attempting to explain life's chemical picture. Origin-of-life researchers maintain that information-rich biomolecules, like DNA and proteins, emerged under the influence of chemical selection. Evolutionary biologists also claim that irreducibly complex systems did not have to rise all at once but could emerge in a stepwise fashion. He says these naturalistic scenarios proposed to account for the origin of these incredibly complex systems are highly speculative and lack any type of detailed mechanistic undergirding. The formation of biochemical information systems is a probability problem. It appears astronomically improbable for the essential gene set to emerge through natural means alone. In other words, there does not appear to be enough time for evolutionary processes to stumble upon the universal genetic code. Another problem has occurred in the last decade or so when scientists have discovered that a number of life's molecules and processes, though virtually identical, appear to have originated independently, multiple times.

At the very end of his book he summarizes features of life's chemical systems that seem to argue for intelligent design. Here is a list of just some of the ones he mentions – irreducible complexity, chicken-and-egg systems, fine-tuning, biochemical information systems, structure of biochemical information, biochemical codes, quality control, molecular motors, and cell membranes. Take a look sometime at his complete list (pp. 279-282).

Dr. Fuzale Rana (The Cell’s Design) and Dr. Stephen Meyer (Signature of the Cell) have created two books which make significant, serious contributions to scientific literature pointing to intelligent design. Don't be scared off either of these books because of their technical discussions. Skip anything you don't understand; you'll still be impressed with the overall points being made. I recommend both of these books highly.