Sunday, October 26, 2008

IF DARWIN HAD KNOWN ABOUT DNA



Too small to be seen with the naked eye, DNA serves as the data bank of our cells. Information about all the living things around you is concealed within this miniaturized data bank inside every cell of every organism. All the structural characteristics of a rose, an orange, a sparrow, a tiger or a human being are present in the nuclei of the cells that comprise these organisms. Look at your hand that is holding this book. These data stores exist in the nucleus of every single one of the cells that compose that hand.

These DNA molecules are invisible to the naked eye but in terms of their contents and data-storage capacity, they are equal to a library consisting of tens of thousands of books. As you observe the miraculous aspects of DNA, which we can be seen only by magnifying it thousands of times, you will also appreciate how such this minute essential component of life places the theory of evolution in an insuperable quandary. Examining the details of this extraordinary structure will give you the opportunity to ponder the infinite might, incomparable knowledge, scope and dominion of our Lord, Allah (God) and the universe He has created.

However, at the time when Darwin launched his theory, the level of science was extremely backward. Not even the basic structure of the cell had been revealed, let alone the discovery of the helix structure and data capacity of the DNA molecule, which James Watson and Francis Crick revealed nearly 100 years after the publication of Darwin’s book The Origin of Species. Darwin had no means of foreseeing the advances that molecular biology would subsequently make. Clearly, his theory of evolution built on fundamentally flawed knowledge and hypotheses cannot account for the existence of a structure like DNA, which amazes scientists.

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