Why a Scientist Believes in a Creator: DNA Is a Code

Every living cell carries a coded message. Messages come from minds.

A Message in the Sand

You are walking a deserted beach. No footprints. No one for miles. Then you look down and see words scratched in the sand: HELP ME. STRANDED ON NORTH POINT.

You do not credit the waves. You do not credit the wind. You know at once that a person wrote that message, because messages come from minds. You did not need a science degree to know it. You just needed common sense.

Now consider this. Every living cell on earth, from the simplest bacterium to the cells in your own body, carries a message far longer and more precise than anything scratched in sand. That message is DNA. So here is the question: Where did the message come from?

DNA Is a Code, Not Just a Chemical

DNA uses a four-letter chemical alphabet: A, T, G, and C. Like letters on a page, the order is what matters. C-A-T and A-C-T use the same letters but say different things. In the same way, the order of DNA’s letters tells the cell which proteins to build, when to build them, and how they work.

Scientists describe this with the language of information. The cell copies the code, reads it, translates it, and even proofreads it for errors. That is not a loose comparison. It is how the system works.

And the scale is staggering. Your DNA holds about 3.2 billion of these chemical letters, roughly 750 megabytes of data. A full copy sits inside each of the roughly 3 trillion cells in your body that have a nucleus, running right now as you read this sentence.

The Best Answer the Other Side Has

Fairness requires that we give the other side its strongest case. Many scientists believe that early earth’s chemistry, given enough time and energy, produced molecules that could copy themselves. The leading idea, called the RNA World, holds that RNA came first because it can both carry information and do chemical work. Laboratories have made some of life’s building blocks, such as amino acids, under the right conditions. That is real science, done by serious people.

But building blocks are not a building. A pile of bricks is not a hospital. Letters dumped from a bag are not a novel. Making chemicals is not the same as making information. No experiment has produced a self-copying, coded information system like DNA from raw chemistry. Partial steps exist. The full system does not. Nobel laureate Jack Szostak has called the jump from chemistry to biology one of the great unsolved problems in science.

Why a Scientist Believes in a Creator: The Author of the Code

Nature can make order. Crystals and snowflakes form patterns on their own. But a repeating pattern is not a set of instructions. In everything we know, coded instructions come from one place: a mind. Software comes from programmers. Books come from authors. Blueprints come from engineers.

This is not “God of the gaps.” We are not saying, “Science can’t explain it, so God did it.” We are saying that what science has found, a cell that runs on code, points to a Coder. The more we learn about the cell, the stronger that case gets.

The Bible tells us how God created. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). God spoke. He gave commands, and matter obeyed. The apostle John goes further: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1–3). The source of all things is not blind energy. It is a Person who speaks.

David knew this long before anyone saw a cell: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13–14).

No argument on a page can change a heart. But the God who wrote the code in every living cell can.

Dear Christian: the next time someone tells you science has made God unnecessary, ask one question: Where did the information in DNA come from? Not the chemicals. The information. Then let the question do its work.

Dear skeptic, dear seeker: you are living in a body that runs on instructions you did not write. Follow that fact honestly and see where it leads. The Author of the code in your cells is the same One who says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

The battle is real, but so is our God. We stand firm, speak truth, and trust the One who wrote the code of life.

Want the Full Case?

Read the complete article — The Language Written in Every Cell — including the full case for DNA as an information system, a closer look at the origin-of-life research, the scale of the simplest living cell, and a references section for deeper study.

For related commentary, see Creation Bullet #26: Common Sense – But Not for Everyone, from the late Bill Nowers’ Creation Bullet series.

For more from the Virginia Christian Alliance on biblical creation, visit our Creationism archive.

For Further Study

• Meyer, Stephen C. Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. HarperOne, 2009. Learn more
• Lisle, Jason. “Information: Evidence for a Creator?” Answers in Genesis. Read the article
• Nowers, William E. “The Real Cause is God.” Virginia Christian Alliance. Read on VCA