PEA RIDGE — A new article from proevolution “Science Daily” offers strong support for Creationism without even knowing it. It turns out that DNA is not only packed in a double helix, but the way the helix is folded in on itself and stored is remarkably, or perhaps miraculously, efficient.

One of the most amazing discoveries has to do with information storage of DNA. The “Science Dailey” article states that “the human genome is organized into two separate compartments, keeping active genes separate and accessible while sequestering unused DNA in a denser storage compartment.

Chromosomes snake in and out of the two compartments repeatedly as their DNA alternates between active, gene-rich and inactive, gene-poor stretches.”

The second amazing discovery is that the cell uses a structure called a fractal gobule to fold the helix extremely tight without jamming it up. With this amazing structure the information density in the nucleus of a cell is trillions of times higher than on acomputer chip.

Perhaps you are thinking that this level of elegance in problem solving and display of code-packing skills trillions of times the level of IBM engineers seems more likely to be the result of intelligent design rather than random forces.

I agree. Even the language that the authors use in the article communicates that the results are so much like those of Intelligent Design that they can’t use any other language to describe it.

“Nature’s devised a stunningly elegant solution to storing information - a super-dense, knot-free structure,” says senior author Eric Lander. Nature has devised?

“Cells cleverly separate the most active genes into their own special neighborhood, to make it easier for proteins and other regulators to reach them,” saysJob Dekker.

Cells cleverly separate?

Why, those are some clever single cells, aren’t they?

Another article that caught my eye was the discovery of the fossils of a species of flying reptiles, known as pterodactyls, which lived in the age of the dinosaurs. Scientists have long recognized two different groups of pterosaurs: primitive long-tailed forms and their supposed descendants, advanced short-tailed pterosaurs that had long complicated heads.

Scientists had been looking for fossils to fill the gap between the earlier and the later types. What they had been expecting to find was a type with a head and body intermediate between the two types, and a tail intermediate between the two types. What they found was a pterodactyl that had a head just like the advanced types and a tail and body just like the primitive types. It was not an intermediate so much as a composite.

The article bravely tried to paint the discovery as evidence for a conceptcalled “modular” evolution in which a whole series of connected features evolve together rapidly. The problem with that idea scientifically is that the fossil evidence for “rapid modular evolution” looks just like the evidence for “Creator designing a new type using some existing parts.” Evolution that causes complicated sets of interrelated features to simultaneously appear can’t be proved as evolution. In the fossil record it looks just the same as the evidence would look under Creationism.

So if the evidence points to either super fast evolution or creationism, then how does a person tell which possibility is more reasonable? Evolutionists try to solve the problem by refusing in advance to consider creationist ideas no matter the evidence.

That strikes me as rather unscientific. We have not seen evolution work at that speed on that scale in recorded history, even though we ought to have if rapid modular evolution were true. Therefore the reasonable mind should lean toward the Creationist model.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 10/21/2009