MODULE #1: Biology: The Study of Life
Life's Secret Ingredient
Well, now that we have a good idea of whether or not something is alive, another question should come to mind. What gives life the characteristics that we learned in the previous sections? As we said before, if we chemically analyzed an organism, gathered together all of the chemicals contained in it, and threw them in a pot, we would not have a living organism. Those chemicals would be useless without the information stored in the organism's DNA. However, even if we were able to isolate a full set of the organism's DNA and were to throw it into the pot as well, we would still not have a living organism.
You see, life is more than a collection of chemicals and information. There is something more. Scientists have tried to understand what that “something more” is, but to no avail. The secret ingredient that separates life from nonlife is still a mystery to modern science. Of course, to believers, that secret ingredient is rather easy to identify. It is the creative power of God. In Genesis 1:20-27, the Bible tells us that God created all creatures, and then He created man in His own image. Think about it this way. Suppose you had a bunch of engine and metal parts and you also had instructions that led you through all of the steps necessary to take those parts and make a working motorcycle. Could you just throw the parts and the instructions into a pile and make a motorcycle? Of course not. Even if you had all of the necessary parts as well as all of the instructions, you would still need to exercise some of your own creative power to follow those instructions and make the motorcycle.
If we were talking about a living organism instead of a motorcycle, we could say that chemicals are the “parts” that make up the organism and DNA is the instruction set that contains the information necessary to assemble the parts properly. Nevertheless, if you just threw the chemicals and the DNA into a big pot, you would not make a life. Some creative power must be exercised in order to take lifeless chemicals and use the information in DNA to make a living organism. Of course, only God has such creative power, and that is why all life comes from Him.
So you see, science will never be able to uncover the “secret ingredient” that makes life possible. At some point in the future, scientists might be able to catalog every chemical that makes up a living organism. Scientists might even decode the information stored in DNA and determine all of the instructions necessary to form those chemicals into a living organism. Even after those incredible feats, however, science would be no closer to creating life. Without the creative power of God, lifeless chemicals will never become a living organism.
This little discussion brings us to probably the most important thing that you will ever learn in your academic career: science has its limitations. We say that this is probably the most important thing that you will ever learn because we know a great many people whose lives have been ruined because they put too much faith in science. They think that because of all the wonderful advances we have made in recent years, science has no limitations. As a result, they live their lives looking to science as the ultimate answer to every question. This leads them down a path of spiritual destruction. Had they only placed their faith in God, who has no limitations, they would have lived fulfilling lives and spent eternity with the ultimate Life-Giver! Read the next section carefully, so that you will understand the limitations of science.