Genesis 1:24
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”
One instinctively wants to be as fair as possible to the science philosopher Dr. Michael Ruse. Although an atheist, he usually goes out of his way in his writings and broadcasts to be as fair to Christians as he feels is possible. In fact, he has for that reason been highly critical of fellow atheist Professor Richard Dawkins, suggesting that he does not give serious theologians the credit that they deserve.
That having been said, Ruse is, we stated, an atheist. He is also an evolutionist. In the well-known documentary movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, narrator Ben Stein asked Ruse how non-living molecules could become a living cell. Ruse famously responded that one theory which he liked is that molecules got together on the back of crystals. Stein, who is a humorist at heart, pounced on this comment and asked how life could have happened. Ruse seemed to get a little exasperated as he replied, “I just told you – on the back of crystals.”
Ruse was referring to the problem of order in DNA, which provides the code for life. There must be some way of demonstrating that order can be produced from disorder. In order to do this, Ruse refers to crystals because a crystal structure also has order.
The problem with Ruse’s hypothesis is that the order in DNA differs from that in crystals. Crystalline order does not involve the input of information as does the arrangement of sugar-base pairs in DNA. Ruse needs a naturalistic answer to the problem of life but has not found it. Author: Paul F. Taylor
Prayer: Father, we thank You that every cell in our body shows the evidence for Your wonderful design. Truly, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Amen.
Ref: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008), featuring Ben Stein (Premise). Image: Regular arrangement in halite crystal, license: CC BY-SA 4.0.
