The three greatest acts of creation

A significant Hebrew word bara is used five times in Genesis 1. In the Old Testament the form of the word that occurs in this chapter is used only of God's activity, implying in its usage that it refers to acts of creation that are beyond the scope of human ability. Though not necessarily meaning to "create out of nothing", it has the concept of "initiating something new".

This word is used in Genesis, 1:1, of the creation of the physical universe - the creation of matter. In verse 21 it refers to the creation of living things - the creation of life. And it occurs three times in verse 27 - referring to the creation of human beings, the most important of his creations. Here we have God's three greatest acts of creation.

The creation of matter

Over the last few decades scientists have probed some of the amazing properties of the atom. We are told that this fantastic thing, of which all matter is composed, is made up of a central nucleus with electrons whizzing around it. If it could be blown up to the size of a football field, its nucleus would be about the size of a fly in the centre. Where did the power come from that holds it together? Nobel prize winner, Arthur H. Compton, declared that actino-uranium is theoretically capable of yielding 235 billion volts per atom. It is significant that the Bible states of Jesus; "all things were created by him and for him...and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:16,17).

We are told that the atom contains wonderful things such as leptons, muons, bosons, neutrinos, photons, gravitons, psions, neutrons and goodness knows what else. Maybe reality is somewhat like the jingle "Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs bite 'em. Little fleas have smaller fleas and so ad infinitum!" However, scientists now tell us they think they have got down to the smallest particle from which protons and neutrons are made - the quark. There are six types of quark: up and down, charm and strange, bottom and top - with their anti-quarks. These are stuck together with gluons! The last of these, the top quark, was discovered in 1995.

My question is: "Did the atom, with its amazing design, consistent throughout the universe, evolve?" The story is told of a Hyde Park orator who was attacking belief in God. He argued that the world just happened. As he spoke he was hit by a soft tomato. "Who threw that?" he demanded. A Cockney voice replied, "No one threw it - it threw itself." As G. K. Chesterton has put it:

It is absurd for the evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is not more unthinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.

The creation of life

The simplest form of independent life is the single-cell bacterium. Bacteria have been around for several billion years and though possessing an amazing adaptability, unknown in larger creatures, have shown no sign of evolution into another species. Bacteria are amazingly complex organisms and are of the same design as all other living cells of which higher life forms are made. A single cell is a wonderfully complex thing.

Dr Michael Denton, a medical doctor and molecular biologist, in seeking to convey the complexity of a single living cell, uses the following illustration in his book Evolution, A Theory in Crisis:

...to grasp the reality as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity...

According to Princeton biologist, J. T. Bonner, an average-sized cell contains about 200,000 billion molecules. In The Ideas of Biology he says:

...it seems easier to imagine a single cell evolving into complex animals and plants than it does to imagine a group of chemical substances evolving into a cell.

If we want to consider the possibility of this happening, some of the factors we would have to consider are:

The importance of proteins in the structure of the cell. These are among the most complex molecules known, with very precise molecular structure, and with molecular weights up to 50,000. Proteins may contain 200 - 300 amino acids, which must be exactly the right sort in exactly the right order. Some proteins have thousands of amino acids and molecular weights of hundreds of thousands. The APC protein has 2,843 amino acids and is 312,000 in molecular weight. Amino acids come in approximately 20 different types with either left-handed or right-handed shape. All those in our bodies are left-handed.

The complexity of the DNA molecule which every cell possesses. The 'simple' Escherichia coli bacterium (living in our gut) is a 'prokaryotic' single cell (with no nucleus), but has a wound-up DNA strand which is 1,000 times its own length and has 3,000 genes made of some 4 million base pairs. RNA is a shorter, usually single-stranded molecule, but still with large numbers of nucleotide bases.

Proteins and enzymes do not reproduce without the corresponding genetic materials, the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, yet the latter cannot function without the former. Which came first? The old chicken and egg problem!

Without the protective membrane surrounding the cell, which is a very complex structure in itself, it could not survive.

All life must have food of some sort. The first life form would have needed the capacity of either photosynthesis or chemosynthesis to create food from chemicals, or else have had access to organic food from some source. Otherwise it would perish on the spot.