Matter and Chance

Our argument against natural laws and causes being somehow selfexistent. selfsustaining. and even in some sense eternal. holds true for those views attributing creativity to chance and matter.

Whether defined according to the principles of classical physics or new physics. matter is obviously changeable and susceptible to external interventions. Thus it cannot be eternal or capable of origination. Also. as matter is deaf and blind. lifeless and ignorant. powerless and unconscious. how can it be the origin of life and knowledge. power and consciousness? Something cannot impart to others what it does not possess itself.

There is such abundant evidence of purposive arrangement. organization. and harmony in the universe that it is irrational to speak of chance or coincidence as its cause. For example. a human body contains 60 million million cells. and a single cell contains about 1 million proteins. The possibility of a protein occurring by chance is infinitesimally small. Without One to prefer its existence and to create it; who has an absolute and allcomprehensive knowledge to prearrange its relations with other proteins. the cell. and all bodily parts; and then to place it just where it must be. a single protein could not exist. Science will find its true path only when its practitioners admit that this One—God—is the Creator of all things.

The following simple scientific experiment helps us understand this significant argument:

Overbeck and his coworkers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston were trying to practice some gene therapy techniques by seeing if they could convert albino mice into colored ones. The researcher injected a gene essential to the production of the pigment melanin into the singlecell embryo of an albino mouse. Later they bread that mouse's offspring. half of which carried the gene on one chromosome of a chromosome pair. Classic Mendelian genetics told them that roughly a quarter of the grandchildren should carry the gene on both chromosomes—should be "homozygous." in the language of genetics—and should therefore be colored.

But the mice never got a chance to acquire color. "The first thing we noticed." says Overbeck. "was that we were losing about 25% of the grandchildren within a week after they were born." The explanation:

The melaninrelated gene that his group injected into the albino mouse embryo had inserted itself into a completely unrelated gene. An unfamiliar stretch of DNA in the middle of a gene wrecks that gene's ability to get its message read. So in the mice. it seems whatever protein the gene coded for went unproduced. whatever function the protein had went undone. and the stomach. heart. liver. and spleen all wound up in the wrong place. Somehow. too. the kidneys and pancreas were damaged. and that damage is apparently what killed the mice.

Overbeck and his colleagues have already located the gene on a particular mouse chromosome and are now trying to pin down its structure. That will tell them something about the structure of the protein the gene encodes. how the protein works. and when and where it is produced as the gene gets "expressed" or turned on. "Is the gene expressed everywhere. or just on the left side of the embryo or just on the right side?" Overbeck wonders. "And when does it get expressed?"

These questions will take Overbeck far from the genetransfer experiment. "We think there are at least 100.000 genes." he points out. "so the chances of this happening were literally one in 100.000." [3]

It will take thousands of tests. and therefore thousands of mice. for such an experiment to succeed. However. there is no trial and error in nature. Any tree seed placed in the soil germinates and becomes a tree. unless something prevents it from doing so. Likewise. an embryo in the womb grows into a living. conscious being equipped with intellectual and spiritual faculties.

The human body is a miracle of symmetry and asymmetry. Scientists know how it develops in the womb. What they cannot figure out is how the buildingblock particles reaching the embryo distinguish between right and left. determine the specific organ's location. insert themselves in their proper places. and understand the extremely complicated relations and requirements among cells and organs. This process is so complicated that if a single particle required by the right eye's pupil ended up in the ear instead. the embryo could be damaged or even die.

In addition. all animate beings are made from the same elements coming from soil. air. and water. They also are similar to each other with respect to their bodily members and organs. And yet they are almost completely unique with respect to bodily features and visage. character. desire. and ambition. This uniqueness is so reliable that you can be identified positively just by your fingerprints.

How can we explain this? There are the two alternatives: Either each particle possesses almost infinite knowledge. will. and power; or One who has such knowledge. will. and power creates and administers each particle. However far back we go in an attempt to ascribe this to cause and effect and heredity. these two alternatives remain valid.

Even if the universe's existence is attributed to that which is not God (e.g.. evolution. causality. nature. matter. or coincidences and necessity). we cannot deny one fact: Everything displays. though its coming into existence and subsistence and death. both an allcomprehensive knowledge as well as an absolute power and determination. As we saw in Overbeck's experiment. one misplaced or misdirected gene may ruin or terminate life. The interconnectedness of everything. from galaxies to atoms. is a reality into which every new entity enters and wherein it must know its unique place and function.

Is there a better demonstration of the existence and free operation of an all-comprehensive knowledge. an absolute power and will. that particles of the same biochemical constituents should produce. through the subtlest adjustments in their mutual relationships. unique entities and organ-isms? Is it satisfactory to explain this as heredity or coincidence. seeing that all such explanations rest on the same all-encompassing knowledge. absolute power. and will?

We must not be misled by the apparent fact that everything happens according to a certain program. plan. or process of causes. Such things are veils spread over the flux of the universe. the evermoving stream of events. Laws of nature may be inferred from this process of causes. but they have no real existence. Unless we attribute to nature (or to matter or coincidence and necessity) what we normally would attribute to its Creator. we must accept that it is. in essence and reality. a printing mechanism and not a printer. a design and not a designer. a passive recipient and not an agent. an order and not an orderer. a collection of nominal laws and not a power. [4]