Dr. Rob Carter describes the amazing design of the genome and the impossibility of it being caused by natural selection.
DEL: So what you’re saying when we look at this from a molecular or genetic perspective what we’re finding is really a fascinating design in all of this.
ROB CARTER: Absolutely.
DEL: But what we’ve heard in the conventional paradigm, the conventional story tells us that it’s those random changes that has brought about all of this.
ROB CARTER: Sure. Back in the 1800s, when life was simple, when they didn’t know what was happening inside the cell, they didn’t how how complex genetics was, you could imagine all sorts of things. But now that we know what actually happens behind the scenes the story gets a lot more complicated. You see, I’d like to say the genome is four-dimensional. We have a one dimensional string called DNA. And if you want to draw that out, you’d have to write all the letters of DNA out, all three billion of them, and then you’d have to draw lines or arrows from one part to another part, because this part turns this part off, this part interferes with this, this part enhances this. It’s this huge two dimensional interaction network and that’s how you have a two dimensional genome.
DEL: Let me stop you for a second because this is really amazing to think about this because I think in terms of a computer program that it’s fairly static. The instructions are there. But you’re talking about a program that is reprogramming itself. It’s modifying it’s own instructions.
ROB CARTER: Oh, wait until I get to the fourth dimension, because there’s a third dimension first. The information in that first dimension, that linear string, has to be organized in such a way that when it folds into the third dimension it still works.
DEL: Oh that’s amazing.
ROB CARTER: Genes that are used together are next to each other in 3-D space.
DEL: Are you saying that once this thing gets folded up it’s almost like we have a new set of instructions?
ROB CARTER: Yes, a new level of information that whoever programmed that first level needed to understand what was going to happen to have it work in the third level.
DEL: You said there’s another dimension.
ROB CARTER: Oh yeah, the fourth dimension is time.
DEL: And how does that work?
ROB CARTER: The genome changes shape over time. Maybe you eat something that’s bad for you and your liver says I can get rid of that toxin. Now the chromosomes in the liver will change shape, expose that new protein gene, make copies of it, build a brand new protein that can kill off that toxin and when it’s not needed anymore they’ll change shape again and fold back. Dynamic programming, all three levels change in the fourth level, time.
DEL: Rob, that so far beyond anything that we know even in our most complex software systems that it’s almost beyond imagination to think that someone would look at that and say it all happened by chance.
ROB CARTER: Yes, and it only brings glory to God.
DEL: It does.
ROB CARTER: You can’t build something like that one thing at a time. You need it to function in all its interlocking four-dimensional complexity. It’s not something you can do one letter at a time with natural selection.
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