Many thanks to Dr Don Batten for a short, but lethally succinct, article explaining why DNA shouts Creation! It never fails to puzzle my monkey mind why humans cannot see the obvious truth of their being an Almighty Creator – God. Subscribe to Creation Magazine and receive this ammunition to make sure you can give a reason for your faith, at the same time supporting a work that is at the forefront of the battle for the mind.

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Dr Don Batten’s unusual biography may be read by clicking his name below, at the top of his artice, which is also a live link.

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

DNA repair mechanisms “shout” Creation

By: by Don Batten

Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for discovering DNA repair mechanisms.¹ As the BBC article says, “In the 1970s, scientists had thought that DNA was a stable molecule, but Prof. Lindahl demonstrated that it decays at a surprisingly fast rate.” This led him and then the others to look for repair mechanisms, and the researchers found several (hence the three recipients of the prize).

The article speaks of the repair mechanisms as “essential processes”. Indeed, without the repair mechanisms, DNA falls apart “at a surprisingly fast rate”. Once an organism dies, the repair mechanisms no longer operate and DNA decays. This means that fossils that are supposedly millions of years old should not have any intact DNA; but they often do, including dinosaur fossils.²DNA could never have arisen by natural processes.

It should now be obvious to all that DNA could never have arisen by natural processes (i.e. just chemistry and physics) because even if that could happen, the DNA would be useless without the repair mechanisms to preserve it. Without the repair mechanisms, DNA would fall apart quicker than it could possibly come together (if it even could in the absence of the cellular machinery to put it together, which is itself coded on the DNA). Furthermore, no natural origin could possibly explain either the coded information storage system of the DNA or the highly ordered sequences of information on the DNA that specify how to make the protein components of life.

The repair mechanisms involve incredibly complex nano-machines³ that themselves defy the notion of naturalistic origins. The more we know about the science of life, the more it becomes clear that life came about by the action of an incredibly intelligent creator.⁴

First posted on homepage: 7 March 2016
Re-posted on homepage: 5 May 2025

References and notes

1. Rincon, P., Chemistry Nobel: Lindahl, Modrich and Sancar win for DNA repair, bbc.com, 7 October 2015. Return to text
2. Sarfati, J., DNA and bone cells found in dinosaur bone, J. Creation 27(1):10–12, 2013; creation.com/dino-dna. Return to text
3. These molecular machines are incredibly small, hence the term nano-machine. Return to text
4. Batten, D., Origin of life; creation.com/origin-of-life, 26 November 2013. Return to text