Some time ago I got to meet Dr. Fazale Rana, a biochemist and author of several books. He gave a presentation on the complexities inside the cell, which he used as an indication of the existence of God. This represents a continuation of the design argument, which says God is the ultimate engineer who designed everything in the universe. I recently finished reading Dr. Rana’s new book called The Cell’s Design. It makes an important contribution to the argument of design by explaining recent scientific discoveries that seemed to indicate complexity far beyond anything that random processes can create. For the next couple of blogs, I’d like to explore his key points in this book.

He starts by mentioning another famous book, Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe. This earlier book presented a case for intelligent design from the biochemical perspective. Behe had argued that biochemical systems, by their very nature, are irreducibly complex. He argued for intelligent design by emphasizing the inability of natural selection to generate such complex systems through a gradual evolutionary process. Critics, however, said that this book rested on a lack of understanding, so they rejected his argument. As result of this, Dr. Rana wanted to write a book that went beyond irreducible complexity to communicate a vast range of amazing properties that characterize life’s chemistry. These indicators of design seen inside the cell make a case for a creator based on what scientists know, not on what we don’t understand.

Before Dr. Rana starts on his proof, he describes and justifies the approach used to argue for intelligent design in biochemical systems. He says when people distinguish between the work of an intelligent agent and the outworking of natural processes, they don’t use intuition. Instead, they use pattern recognition. If biochemical systems are indeed the product of a creator who made man in his image, then the defining characteristics of those systems should be very close to the hallmark characteristics of humanly crafted systems. The rest of his book makes use of pattern recognition to build a positive case for biochemical intelligent design.

His first chapter which presents his argument talks about the minimum number of genes and essential biochemical systems necessary for life. It appears as if a lower bound of several hundred genes exist, below which life cannot be pushed and still be recognized as life. If left up to an evolutionary process, not enough resources or time exists throughout the universe’s history to get life even in the simplest form. Scientists used to see bacteria as simple bags of assorted molecules haphazardly arranged inside the cell. But actually these bacteria, as simple as they are, display an incredible degree of internal organization and exquisite composition of biochemical activity. Origin-of-life researcher David Deamer remarked, ” . . . one is struck by the complexity of even the simplest form of life.” So even these tiny bacteria speak of intelligent design.