Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Once Rene’ Descartes, Immanuel Kant and the rest of the so-called Enlightenment thinkers denied the literal historical truth of God’s Genesis Revelation, they began to formulate their own “scientific” accounts of the origin of man and the universe with time-lines derived from extrapolations of presently-observed material processes into the remote past. One of the biggest challenges faced by the uniformitarian naturalists, then and now, is how to explain the origin of life. Even uniformitarian naturalists must acknowledge the complexity of the “simplest” living things, a complexity which biologists are only beginning to understand. As Helen C. Dickey explains in her wonderful pamphlet “DNA, Fairy Tales, and Chance”:
To find out what the minimum genome might be for a single-cell that can autonomously self-replicate, scientists studied the genome of the species Mycoplasma mycoides, a parasite, and one of the smallest bacterial cells known, normally having a genome of about 1000 genes (with around 1,100,000 nucleotide base pairs) depending on the strain. Other bacteria, such as E. coli, may have 4,000 to 5,000 genes.
These scientists essentially knocked out all genes that weren't totally necessary for the bacteria to survive and replicate in a controlled environment and determined that this stripped-down cell, with 473 genes, dubbed “JCVI-syn3.0”, constitutes the simplest possible living organism. Thus, a cell with 473 genes appears to be about as streamlined as a cell can be and still survive, albeit in a glucose culture, allowing evolutionists to imagine what a “primitive” cell genome may have looked like.
The complete genome of JCVI-syn3.0 is composed of 531,560 nucleotides. There have only ever been two ways so many nucleotides have been observed to be sequenced in this way: 1) in an already functional, living cell, or 2) by intelligent intervention. It is inconceivable how such a huge nucleotide sequence could arise otherwise.
To visualize 531,560 nucleotides, think of small seeds and tweezers. Imagine counting half a million seeds by hand, lining them up, four different kinds, seed by seed, in a precise order, in such a way as to provide a specific set of instructions to carry out a variety of complicated tasks, without a single error since with a minimalist genome, one error will render the cell non-viable. It is hard to believe that such a huge number of nucleotides, all in a precise working order, could have ever lined up by random chance, along with all the other complicated parts of a cell.
In the most basic, simple cell, millions of molecules, thousands of amino acids, and hundreds of genes would have had to spontaneously assemble in exactly the right positions in order for the cell to function at all. The amount of time needed for such a spontaneous assembly is incalculably great. The chances that all the working combinations would come together harmoniously is astronomically small because a so-called “primitive” cell that can reproduce is inestimably more complicated than most people think.
Nevertheless, we are told that the first living thing spontaneously generated in some warm little pond somewhere. This story, which is not based on any evidence whatsoever, stands in absolute contradiction to the most fundamental scientific law of biology, the law of biogenesis—that “life can only come from life.” Nothing even remotely as complex as a self-contained, self-replicating cell has ever been observed to have arisen spontaneously from non-living chemicals in any environment, even a lab-controlled one, let alone in the hypothetical changing, hostile environment we would find in nature, where water would serve to break apart any of the organic molecular chains necessary for life. Life made by chance in some “warm little pond” sounds like a fairy tale.
Now Iet us take a look at the complexity of human DNA: According to NIH studies, the human genome, in each cell of our body, has an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 genes carrying 3 billion bits of information. [8] Most of our cells, however, are diploid which means they contain one strand of DNA from the father and one from the mother, meaning there are actually over 6 billion bits of information in each cell.
My neighbor has a beautiful 30-year-old maple tree in his front yard which gets plenty of sun. It is more than twice as tall his two-story house and about twice as wide. This large tree might have about 1,000,000 leaves. To get some concept of six billion, let us compare it to the same maple tree. Six billion divided by 1,000,000 leaves shows us that if each nucleotide in a human cell corresponded to one leaf on a large maple tree, we would need 6000 trees to cover all the nucleotides.
My two-inch thick Webster’s New World Dictionary brags about having over 159,000 entries. [11] If we think of each entry corresponding to one nucleotide and then divide 6,000,000,000 which is the approximate number of nucleotides in each cell, by 159,000, I get about 38,000 dictionaries needed for six billion entries. If we stacked these 38,000 dictionaries, they would be over a mile high. A dictionary is somewhat of an apt comparison because each entry appears in alphabetical order. Likewise, each nucleotide is in its own precise location and order. However, typographical errors in a dictionary could probably be fairly easily recognized and corrected by an intelligent reader; on the contrary, as those familiar with computer programming will be able to testify, “typographical” errors in code (like DNA) can easily be catastrophic. Also, like computer code, DNA codes for complicated processes, and any error in logic would cause the whole system to fail as well.
How could life which is so incomprehensibly complex and organized happen by chance and not by design? Belief that naturalistic, materialistic processes assembled all of life as we know it is a fantasy at best.
Given the enormous scope of coordination and the extreme magnitude of genomic intricacy, common sense tells us that life on earth could not have happened by chance When the theory of evolution came out in the 19th century, no one, including Darwin, knew how complex life and its DNA really are. Now we know, and we have to look at the origin of life and at the molecules-to-man evolutionary hypothesis in the light of these new facts. Textbooks, schools, museums, and media should not have taught as fact what was only conjecture. Let us stop believing, writing, teaching, making laws, and acting as if creation happened by chance. What we observe has the fingerprints of our Creator God all over it.
In spite of this evidence and in defiance of all logic and common sense, the overwhelming majority of schools and universities throughout the world continue to teach that life came from non-life through a natural process. They are able to do this because they claim that chemical evolution went on for billions of years and that, given enough time, the right chemical interactions took place to produce the first life. Since no one can conceive of a process that takes billions of years, most students simply take it on faith that, given enough time, life can come from non-life. However, it is important to contrast the time element in this naturalistic conjecture with the time element in God’s supernatural revelation. In the former, billions of years are required to produce life from non-living matter. In the latter, God brings life from non-life instantaneously. The same result achieved in the naturalistic scenario after billions of years is achieved instantaneously by our Creator according to His Genesis Revelation.
When we look for evidence to support one scenario over the other, it quickly becomes apparent that there is no evidence whatsoever to support the naturalistic hypothesis. Time is not the friend but the implacable foe of self-organizing chemicals. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, over time, things in nature move from order to disorder, not, as would be required for abiogenesis, from disorder to order. But when we look for evidence to support the truth of God’s Revelation, we find it in abundance.
Life Comes from Non-Life Every Day on Catholic Altars
Our Lord Jesus Christ said, “I am the Bread of Life” . . . “He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood will have Eternal Life.” At the Mystical Supper before He suffered and died for us, He took bread and wine in His sacred hands and pronounced the words, “This Is My Body,” and “This is My Blood,” over them, thus changing ordinary bread and wine into His living Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, under the appearance of bread and wine. After two thousand years of Church history, there are 153 Church-Approved Eucharistic Miracles in which Our Lord Jesus Christ has proven that He continues to bring Life from non-Life by His divine power at every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
For example, on August 15, 1996, in a Parish in Buenos Aires, a parishioner received a Consecrated Host in his hands . . . and dropped it on the floor . . . The Parish priest . . . following the instructions of the Church, put the Host in a container filled with water [and left it] in the tabernacle [so that] the Host would dissolve. On August 26, the tabernacle was reopened to remove the fallen Host from the container, and it was found that the Host had not dissolved and had some reddish stains.
The famous forensic histopathologist Dr. Robert Lawrence examined the Host. He concluded that the portion of the Host that he examined corresponded to the tissue of an inflamed heart, which meant that the person to whom it belonged must have been in great pain. Later, to remove any doubt, the sample was given to the leading expert in cardiac pathology and forensic medicine, Professor Frederick Zugibe. The professor didn’t know that the sample . . . was from a Consecrated Host. After studying it, he said, “The sample you brought me is a heart muscle, more precisely the left ventricle.” Dr. Zugibe then asked Dr. Lawrence whose sample it was, and when he told him that it was from a Consecrated Host, he said, “Doctor, when you brought me that sample, that heart was alive!”
On the other side of the world, in Sokolka, Poland, a Catholic priest acting in union with Jesus pronounced the words “This is My Body” over baked, non-living bread. According to the observations of two independent medical experts, the mysterious substance into which the fragment of the Host had changed was muscle tissue of a human heart experiencing the agony of death—as if on the point of cardiac arrest. Thus, non-living bread was once again instantly changed by the words of Christ into the muscle tissue of a living, suffering human Heart, experiencing the agony of death.
But that is not all.
To confirm His perfect reliability, Our Lord Jesus Christ left incontrovertible proof that He brought His mutilated corpse to life on the third day after His death and that He has the power to give eternal life to those who believe in Him and obey His teachings. The source of this incontrovertible proof is the linen Shroud in which the Sacred Body of Our Lord was wrapped after His crucifixion and death. At the moment of His Resurrection, Our Lord left a miraculous impression of His Body on the Shroud which has been treasured by His disciples down to the present day. The Blood on the Shroud has been proven to be post-mortem blood; and the Body wrapped in the Shroud bears all the marks of the Passion of Jesus—crucifixion, scourging, crowning with thorns, and a spear-wound in the side—and history records only one person who was scourged, crucified, crowned with thorns, and pierced in the side.
NASA developed an instrument called the VP8 Image Analyzer. It can distinguish minute differences between light intensities. Pictures have shapes and colors and do not contain this information. But a photographic negative of the Shroud shows a consistent 3D relief of a human body. No other photograph on earth will produce this effect. A follow-up study was conducted by a team of researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), Italy. The study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 thousand billion watts of Vacuum Ultraviolet Radiation to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond the capacity of human technology.
In the 1980s a study was done of the limestone/strontium dust found in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, believed to be the burial tomb of Christ. This same limestone/strontium dust was found on the Holy Shroud. This is compelling evidence that the Shroud was once on the grounds of the Holy Sepulcher. On a sample of the Turin Shroud (TS), [scientists] applied a new method for dating ancient linen threads by inspecting their structural degradation by means of Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS). The experimental results are compatible with the hypothesis that the Turin Shroud is a 2000-year-old relic, as held by Christian tradition. In short, the most logical explanation for this image is that it was produced by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself when He re-entered His Body and rose from the dead.
Beloved readers, let us reflect on what we have just learned. Most students all over the world are taught that life came from non-life over billions of years. But God has demonstrated again and again—through the Holy Shroud of Turin and through His Eucharistic Miracles—that He brings Life from non-Life, instantly and immediately, by His Word. So, can anyone doubt which is more “scientific”—the production of life from non-life through a natural process over billions of years, or the instantaneous creation of life by our Creator God? Common sense and logic compel us to conclude that the billions of years are an illusion and that God alone is the “Lord and Giver of Life.”
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. One of the greatest scourges of our day is the diabolical promotion of transgenderism and the effort by school personnel to exploit innocent children by manipulating them into mutilating themselves against one or both of their parents’ wishes. In my home state of Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin has proposed overhauling the Virginia Department of Education transgender policy mandates on public schools and replacing them with regulations that restore parental rights and protection the First Amendment rights of students and staff. The Governor has asked for commentary from the citizens of the Commonwealth. At present, the majority of comments are coming from those who oppose the policy mandates. Thus, we need to make our support known. If you live in Virginia, or if you have friends or relatives who live here, please exhort them to let their voices be heard and to take action in a timely manner as comments must be posted online no later than 11:59 pm on Wednesday, October 26.
