which came first, the chicken or the egg?

We live in an incredibly complex and beautiful universe, on an earth teeming with life, all of which science has been studying and attempting to explain for thousands of years. We are told that no scientist believes in God anymore, a claim I know to be false. Yet the brilliant men who laid the foundation for modern science (Bacon, Boyle, Dalton, Descarte, Faraday, Joule, Kelvin, Kepler, Maxwell, Mendel, Newton, Pascal, Pasteur, et al) were people who saw the hand of God in His orderly creation, making all science possible. Newton, regarded as the most original and influential thinker in the history of science, "wrote and published more works on interpretation of the Bible than on mathematics and physics." 1 Only lately, in the last 150 years, have atheists aggressively taken the position of spokespersons for science.

Even Stephen Hawking admitted, "It is difficult to discuss the beginning of the universe without mentioning the concept of God." "Fritz" Schaefer, director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry, University of Georgia, third most quoted chemist today, has said: The significance and joy in my science comes in the...moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, "So that's how God did it!" My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan. 2

A significant number of Christians are among top scientists and modern Nobel laureates. William D. Phillips, for example, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, once quipped that “so many of his colleagues were Christians that he couldn't walk across his church's fellowship hall without tripping over a dozen physicists...." Professor Richard Bube of Stanford says, "There are [proportionately] as many atheistic truck drivers as atheistic scientists." 3 But among Nobel laureates, the percentage who recognize the hand of God in the universe is very high.

The atheist must explain everything without God, which science cannot do. Everything is made of energy, but science cannot tell us what energy is or how or why it came into existence. Stephen Hawking asks, "Why does the universe go to all the trouble of bothering to exist?" Why is a question that atheism cannot answer. Matter simply exists; it contains no explanation of why. The maker's purpose provides the meaning for anything that is made. Unless there is a Creator, the universe and all in it, including mankind, has no purpose or meaning. Atheists confess this fact.

Today's most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, boasts of the consequences of atheism: "There exists no objective basis on which to elevate one species above another. Chimp and human, lizard and fungus, we have all evolved over some three billion years by...natural selection." 4 No evolutionist could argue with this repugnant statement.

Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule, as an atheist and evolutionist, begins his best-known book with this statement: "The Astonishing Hypothesis is that 'You,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." 5 The average person would reject such nonsense. We all know that we are not just a bag of molecules, but instead are thinking people, who carefully weigh choices, experience joys, sorrows, hopes, fears, remorse, and regrets. Crick's atheism traps him in a net of meaninglessness.

Attempting to describe the physical world, science provides names and categories but can't explain what anything really is. Energy, electrons, gravity, space, time, life, and death-what do they mean, what are they really? What is life; what is its source? How is it imparted to lifeless matter-and why does it depart so quickly? As Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger said, "[Science] is ghastly silent about all...that really matters to us....It knows nothing of...good or bad, God and eternity....Whence came I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question...Science has no answer to it." 6 Fire, electricity, smoke, water, many things have tried to bring life to non-living mater in the last 2,000 years, all unsuccessful of course. It is as if the energy of life comes from a supernatural source, something outside the realm of our existence or understanding.

Atheism "explains" that the universe began with a sudden, almost infinite, burst of energy called the "Big Bang." But science can't tell us where this energy came from, why or how it came together and exploded at that particular moment, or how out of that giant explosion the orderly arrangement, from molecules to galaxies, occurred.

Furthermore, atheism faces dozens of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" conundrums that stop evolution before it can even start. For example, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is what makes protein, yet DNA is itself made of protein. So, which came first: the DNA that makes protein or the protein out of which DNA is made?

There is no life without DNA, but DNA itself has life. What came first, the DNA that is essential for life, or the life that is essential for DNA? Living cells are made up of incredibly complex nano-chemical machinery, and some of this machinery synthesizes DNA. So, which came first, the DNA without which there could be no cells, or the cells without which there could be no DNA?

The problem of "origins" is one of the major questions for which science has no answer. The most amazing thing in the universe is life, but science neither knows from whence life comes nor what it is. There is no life without enzymes, although they themselves are not living things. And there are no enzymes without life because it takes life to produce them. Which came first-the enzymes without which there can be no life, or the life without which there can be no enzymes? The enzymes that make the amino acid histidine contain histidine. Which came first-the histidine or the enzymes that manufacture it, which themselves contain histidine?

Many different enzymes are required to translate the genetic information encoded on the DNA. Yet, the enzymes are themselves encoded by DNA. Thus, the genetic code cannot be translated except by products of translation. This is a vicious circle that allows for only one conclusion: the molecules that encode the information and those that decode it existed simultaneously from the beginning. That fact cannot be explained by any gradual, natural process.

DNA requires an act of creation by God. Yet the major motive of Darwin (who knew nothing of DNA) was to prove that God was not needed to explain life and the universe.

As noted, the incredible nano-chemical machinery in the cell is responsible for synthesizing DNA. But it is the DNA that carries the code that constructs and operates the cellular machinery. Which came first, the DNA that carries the information for producing each cell or the machinery in the cell produced by DNA, which must first make the DNA? Obviously, both had to exist simultaneously from the very beginning or neither would exist. That fact requires a creative act of God.

The genetic code has vital editing machinery, which is itself encoded in the DNA. What came first, the machinery that edits DNA, or the DNA that produces the editing machinery?

Again, the DNA molecule is made of protein; but it is by the DNA alone with which the protein is produced. DNA cannot function without at least 75 pre-existing proteins-but only DNA can produce these 75 proteins. The machinery to convert the DNA information into the protein is itself made of the protein that the DNA alone can produce. There is only one sensible answer to the classic question, "Which came first?" Obviously, the answer is … God.

The Law of Biogenesis, which Pasteur proved, states, "Life only comes from life." That sounds obvious to most people but the brightest minds in the scientific world, adrift without the Word of God, are left to propose things like the "spontaneous generation" of life, and “punctuated equilibrium,” to change one species to another. That is to say their best answer is that randomly and purposelessly life simply “popped” into existence, and then now and again for no reason or cause a whale gave birth to cow. No reason even to consider that the alleged Big Bang would have sterilized everything a trillion times over, making it impossible for any life to exist thereafter. How could life come out of death? Only by Jesus Christ, one with the Father, who created everything, the Bible says, "In him was life" (Jn:1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men).

Science can easily prove that the universe did have a beginning, and without much question we really are here. There are two roads that connect the these events, one a wide path filled with toxic science, wild hypotheses, unproven and improvable theories, and suppositions, all devoid of God or purpose. Or, there is the narrow road of God’s Word, elegant, simple, honest, and believable. It takes a lifelong religious dedication to the hope that there is no God to believe the former, but even a child can believe the latter. As for me and my house we will trust Jesus, it seems to be the most plausible scientific answer, and honestly I don’t have the faith required to believe the other.

Endnotes

1. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006), 162.

2. U.S. News & World Report , December 23, 1991; See also http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9501/bigbang2.html.

3. Charles Colson, “BreakPoint Commentaries; Health & Science: The Nobel Scientists,” http://www.breakpoint.org/listing article.sp?ID=4918&print=1.

4. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 30th anniversary edition, 2006), Foreword to the First Edition.

5. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (New York: Touchstone/Simon& Schuster, 1994), 3.

6. Erwin Schrödinger, quoted in Quantum Questions , ed. Ken Wilbur (Boston, MA: New Science Library, Shambhala, 1984), 81.