Wonders of Creation

Even the most ?primitive? cells are enormously complex structures that form the basis units of all living matter. All tissues and organs are composed of cells. In a human an estimated 60 trillion cells interact, each performing its specialized role in an organized community. In single-celled organisms all the functions of life are performed within the confines of one microscopic package. There is no life without cells.? Bacteria, or germs, are so small we cannot see them without a microscope, yet they need several thousand genes to carry out the functions necessary for life. E. coli has about 4,639,221 nucleotide base pairs, which code for 4,288 genes. Each gene produces an enormously complex protein-making engine. Despite Man's general dislike of bacteria, if just one of them could be enlarged to the size of a football field, it would . . .

The usual school textbook diagram of a human cell and pictures of the Earth from space share something in common ? both make an object of incredible complexity appear simple. Zoom in on either, and a vast range of complicated detail will emerge, however it is easier to understand this detail when it comes to the Earth, than it is with the cell, because cells are made of molecules and atoms, chemicals and proteins and all sorts of other strange things, which we usually never see.

Yet all living things are made from cells. They are the basic building blocks of all life. In the human body they number in the trillions, and all of them communicate with each other like one vast city wired together. At the subatomic level a single cell contains several trillion parts, and all of these parts must work together efficiently, or the cell will either mutate or die. Just as a machine such as a photocopier is made of many separate pieces, all designed to operate with all the other pieces, the human cell is like a machine designed as a whole ? as Hickman (1997 page 43) says, ?Cells are the fabric of life.
Even the most ?primitive? cells are enormously complex structures that form the basis units of all living matter. All tissues and organs are composed of cells. In a human an estimated 60 trillion cells interact, each performing its specialized role in an organized community. In single-celled organisms all the functions of life are performed within the confines of one microscopic package. There is no life without cells.? Bacteria, or germs, are so small we cannot see them without a microscope, yet they need several thousand genes to carry out the functions necessary for life. E. coli has about 4,639,221 nucleotide base pairs, which code for 4,288 genes. Each gene produces an enormously complex protein-making engine. Despite Man's general dislike of bacteria, if just one of them could be enlarged to the size of a football field, it would become a new wonder of the world ? millions would flock to see it, and marvel at its beauty, structure, design features and complexity. The building of proteins and the movement of chemical messengers inside the cell would be an extraordinary sight.

For life to persist, living creatures must have a means of taking in and biochemically processing food. Life also requires oxygen, which must be safely moved about inside the cells without damaging them. In simple terms, life also requires three types of molecule: DNA, which contains the master plans, RNA which decodes and implements the plans, and proteins, which construct everything the cell needs. Each of these areas of design are interdependent with all the others, and no life would occur without all of them operating properly together.

Evolutionists suggest that the parts of a cell gradually formed separately and then accidentally combined, but the half-lives of many of the basic building blocks of life are far too short to allow for the gradual accumulation of the whole 'machine?. Before any of the parts got together, most of them would have disintegrated. Therefore, unless the formation of living cells took place extremely rapidly, they could never have formed, and the chances of all the millions of parts all appearing instantly together by accident is too remote to be considered!

Humans require more than 200 different kinds of cell (skin, muscle, hair, heart, etc) and all these come from instructions contained in 23 chromosomes.
Evolutionists have suggested that some original single cell began the whole diversity of life, and gradually became more and more complex, but this cannot be so because each species inherits the entire blueprint for the next generation from its parents. All the instructions for all the parts are all there at conception, and no addition to this DNA code has ever been documented. All each species does is pass on, more or less intact, a copy of what it already has. Evolution cannot explain where the first fully formed species came from.

Biologically speaking, the cell is evidence of a creative moment, some time in the past, in which fully formed, fully functioning living cells appeared. In other words, the chicken came first, and as long as there is no compelling evidence to the contrary, the Bible record in Genesis remains the best explanation for life we have.

Wonders of Creation - Cells