It is almost universally taught in the high
schools and universities of Europe and North America that
a truly scientific view of the origin of life must be concerned
solely with its origin from the properties of inorganic matter
over huge time spans unaided by any extra-material factor
or factors. If factors beyond the properties of inorganic
matter are invoked in any theory of the origin of life, then
that whole theory is today rejected out of hand as unscientific.

Since no one (scientist or not) really knows
how life originated from inorganic matter, however, such prejudging
of the whole issue of origins must of necessity be highly
unscientific itself, for it pronounces dogmatically on subjects
still outside the knowledge of science.

Trained scientists in both the West and the
East are well aware of the fact that both right and left-handed
forms of certain molecules (dextro and levooptical isomers)
possess an identical state of order, and so cannot possibly
be separated by any unaided chemical means.

Left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars
are both necessary for living systems, but ordinary chemical
reactions cannot supply them. Only the information in molecules
that can recognize patterns can sort out the left from the
right forms.

For the synthesis of optically pure-handed forms,
information leading to pattern recognition must be available,
and is found on the DNA molecule or its products. The reason
for the necessity of specific handed forms for all biosynthesis
becomes clear when it is realized that the DNA molecule stores
its information, not merely in sequence along the molecule,
but in three dimensions rather than in just two. It only recently
has been shown that, if the information on the DNA molecule
were stored in just two dimensional linear sequences such
as would be necessary if the mixture of forms were used in
biology, the molecule would have to be thousands of miles
long to accommodate all the information which life needs.
However, with the addition of the third dimension to the chemistry
of life, the same amount of information can be stored within
tiny cells in three dimensions rather than in two.

Since virtually all forms of life show specific
orientation—either left or right—and all forms of life have
their equivalent of the DNA molecule as a reservoir of information,
conceptual information must have played its role in origins
so as to supply the third dimension required for the super-miniaturization
of information storage and retrieval, in addition to standard
organic chemistry, time, and energy. Life's origin must then
have occurred under the influence of conceptual information
somewhere down the line, thus enabling the separation of right
from left-handed molecules of identical state of order. If
this conceptual information could not arise directly from
the material properties of matter, then surely it is a perfectly
justified scientific question to ask just where this conceptual
information might have originated.

Conceptual information of the type necessary
to "finance" life's codes, languages, and concepts
must be carefully distinguished from Claude Shannon's type
of information, which consists of mere surprise effects without
any necessity of conceptual content. That is, "information,"
according to Shannon, does not need to contain any code, language,
or purpose such as is understood in the normally accepted
sense of the term "information." "Information"
in the Shannon sense of the term certainly can arise from
concept-free inorganic matter, but it is non-conceptual in
nature and has never been shown to be in a position to resolve
any molecular forms. It is, therefore, "unscientific"
to invoke non-conceptual mere surprise effects as a factor
active in the origin of life, which is certainly a matter
of concepts and not mere surprise effects. For the DNA molecule
builds the concepts of the biological machinery of life, which
are superbly conceptual, and, indeed, purposeful. Certainly
conceptless mere surprise effects, such as the Shannon-type
information, would be useless as a source of the purposeful
language conventions and meaning of the DNA molecule, which
are vital for the construction of concept-laden organs such
as kidneys or livers, not to mention four-chambered hearts.

Confusion in assessing the importance of "information"
in origins theories is due to the fact that the term "information"
has been reduced by Shannon to non-conceptual surprise effects,
without most non-experts in this area of knowledge having
noticed the fundamental change in meaning. One is, therefore,
speaking of two fundamentally different subjects, when using
the term "information," often without knowing this
fact. It is just this type of confusion which plays its hidden
role in the basis of Manfred Eigen's important work on the
origin of life. Eigen postulates in effect that life's conceptual
information and its information storage and retrieval machinery
arose spontaneously from inorganic matter and that the non-conceptual
information arising spontaneously from matter stands in for
fully conceptual information in the origin of life. Eigen
insists repeatedly that information "arises," thus
demonstrating that he really means conceptless information
in line with Shannon, but not the concept-filled purposeful
information such as is generally understood under the term
"information." Thus, a whole expensive research
program is built on confusion in word-use. As far as I am
aware, he nowhere clarifies this grave confusion. It
must be kept firmly in mind that inorganic matter contains
none of the code and language concepts on the basis of which
the DNA molecule functions. Inorganic matter certainly
contains no purposeful concepts such as those necessary for,
say, the synthesis of counter-current flow systems in kidneys
or three-dimensional structures such as allow the hemoglobin
molecule to supply the body with oxygen.

This leaves us finally with the grand question
of the origin of the concepts of life's information. The fact
that Shannon's conceptless-type information can arise spontaneously
from inorganic sources does nothing to explain the origin
of the purposeful concepts of biology and of the type of information
residing on the DNA molecule. Confusion on just these points
has allowed Darwinism to be plausible to materialists world-wide
even today. Darwinism thus is supposed to be "scientific"
because it appeals to nothing else but the "Here and
Now." It admirably suits materialistically minded modern
man. This point alone would explain the hold Darwin still
has on modern world thought, in spite of the total lack of
scientific evidence for its views on origins and macroevolution,
both in chemistry, in geology, and in the fossil record.

This then leaves us with one last vital question
on the origin of life: How does one produce the purposeful
type of information required to construct any machine—biological
or mechanical? We know of only one answer to this question
to date. That answer says that the conceptual type of (begriffliche)
information necessary for the production of the handedness
of life arises to date exclusively in organs which function
according to the principles extant in the brain of higher
biological organisms, and which generate conceptual thought.

Sir John Eccles has shown that the human brain
works in a three-dimensional columnar system which gives rise
to the continuity of individual consciousness, which characterizes
at least the human brain and probably to some extent, at least,
the consciousness of the apes and maybe certain whale-like
mammals. It may be necessary to extend this list to certain
parrots, which seem to show very high states of consciousness
and intelligence. Obviously, until the exhaustive nature of
consciousness is more fully understood than today, it will
not be possible to construct any electronic machine which
possesses similar properties to those of consciousness and
which produces conceptual thought in the development of language
and codes such as those stored on the DNA molecule.

The grand question in origins, then, is whether
codes and languages as such ever arise by chance, and selection
over long periods of time in inorganic matter. To invoke natural
selection as the source of such conceptual information or
thought constitutes a huge begging of the whole question.
For natural selection to occur in any plane, life and its
concepts must already pre-exist. Thus, to explain the origin
of life together with its concepts and selection of molecular
forms by any methods which presuppose the prior existence
of life, is a huge begging of the whole question. Life as
we know it could not have started as a mixture of forms, which
then, by natural selection, performed the separation of forms.
The development of other concepts on the DNA molecule would
require the origin of the concepts we are trying to explain.

Thus, we come to the conclusion that there is
no getting around this "chicken or egg" type of
problem. We are forced to come back to basics and assume that
there must have been in the beginning—at the act of creation—an
organ of the kind that makes the human brain tick (but infinitely
more powerful, of course) to generate the concepts of biology
on a much larger scale than the human brain can ever develop.

Now that it is known that the DNA molecule stores
its information not linearly but in three dimensions, we understand
that life could not, on theoretical grounds, ever have originated
from inorganic matter alone. Equal amounts of different forms
of DNA could never have functioned as an information storage
and retrieval system. Therefore, matter alone, with only chemistry
to aid it, could never have produced any form of life as we
know it.

For these reasons, the Biblical report on the
origin of life is right on the mark when it states that man,
with his brain and ability to speak and to develop conceptual
thought, was created in the image of God the Creator. The
ability of the human brain to invent and conceive concepts
such as those of language is directly coupled to the ability
of people like Sol Spiegelman and Arthur Komberg to apply
conceptual thought to the synthesis of a relatively simple
form of life. They merely copied the concepts which the Creator
had already delivered to them in the natural virus! But man
has the ability to develop conceptual thought just like the
Creator Himself, but on an infinitely reduced scale.

This, then, provides us with the solution to
the problem of the origin of conceptual thought, such as is
necessary for the origin of life.

* Dr. Wilder-Smith has three earned
doctorates and over 45 books to his credit. He is a leading
creationist scientist now living in Switzerland.