R A N D O M   R A N T S COVID-19 AND THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE While many people today assume science knows a lot about life and the universe, many actual scientists confirm modern science doesn't know how, when, where or why life first began or, really very much about anything else, in comparison to what science doesn't know. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, while viruses are the most abundant living thing on earth, science knows almost nothing about viruses compared to what is left to be learned. Unfortunately for ourselves and every other living thing, viruses can be very harmful. This isn't true of all viruses. Many are necessary for our survival and hold in check other harmful viruses and bacteria living within ourselves and other visible organisms. Scientists debate whether a virus should be classified as an organism, because they are dependent on host organisms like animals, plants, insects and even bacteria for their own survival. For those of you who still believe what you were taught in your high school and university biology textbooks, you may be rather disillusioned to learn that evolution by natural selection is at best, only one of many reasons why life adapts and changes. In fact, many scientists today are claiming natural selection utterly fails to account for the overwhelming complexity of living organisms. For example, the existence of a simple human language sentence, like "a boy took his dog for a walk" or a simple meaningful short segment of computer code, has been mathematically demonstrated to be far beyond statistically impossible to ever randomly occur through "self-designing" processes. When it comes to life "we don't really know very much" is a far more legitimate and honest approach than far too many educators are willing to admit. The "language" of DNA is far more complex than originally assumed and, apparently all of our so-called "junk" DNA does in fact have a purpose, rather than being the left over evolutionary baggage once assumed by Darwinian biologists. Modern geneticists have also discovered that both bacteria and viruses can re-arrange and change their own DNA. Obviously if micro-organisms living within larger visible forms of life can "harvest" DNA outside of themselves, this in turn would cause larger visible organisms to adapt and change in order to survive. Such changes, unknown to Darwin, are neither random nor attributable to natural selection as commonly understood. There are multiple reasons why viruses mutate and, not all mutations make them more deadly. But newer COVID-19 mutations are more contagious, making it easier for the virus to infect our body's cells. It seems that larger percentages of younger people are becoming infected with newer strains of the coronavirus. Each human cell contains about 42 million protein molecules. Long chains, or polymers, of alpha amino acids are called proteins, ranging in size from 44 to over 27,000 amino acids. RNA and DNA within living cells provide instructions for the correct sequential order of amino acids for each and every protein. While there are only 20 main amino acids necessary for life, the number of possible configurations of them in protein chains is about 10 to the 100th power, a number far larger than all of the particles of matter in the universe (10 to the 80th power). Human beings consist of over 30 trillion individual cells, each with its own overwhelmingly complex internal system. And, this is only a tiny partial description of what makes up a living cell; a full explanation would require volumes. Obviously, trying to find a cure for cancer or something else focused on cells, like the COVID-19 virus, is extremely challenging and difficult for medical researchers to achieve. Rather than making a lot of unsubstantiated claims, why not let some actual practicing scientists state what their own research has taught them. According to world leading DNA and disease expert Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, "modern DNA evidence alone overwhelmingly demonstrates design and not random processes" (and human cells which contain DNA are unimaginably more complex than DNA alone). According to leading physicist Paul Davies, the majority of his fellow physicists now agree that the entire universe appears to be incredibly, extremely precisely "fine-tuned" for the emergence of life. British mathematician Roger Penrose calculates, the odds of the universe randomly existing through natural unguided processes are at least 10 to the 10,123rd power against; to compare, the number of particles in the known universe are a mere 10 to the 80th power. Many current scientists believe the universe is designed according to both pi and the golden ratio. These are two irrational numbers theoretically extending forever and ever, something only an eternal Creator could rationally master. But, what truly destroys any and all hope for so-called "totally by chance" processes today, is the seemingly irreducible overwhelming complexity of living cells. Again, we'll let some actual scientists do the talking. "The most elementary type of cell constitutes a 'mechanism' unimaginably more complex than any machine yet thought up, let alone constructed, by man." --W.H. Thorpe; evolutionary biologist ". . .the chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble into a Boeing 747 from the materials therein. This means that it is not possible for the cell to have come into being by coincidence and therefore [cells] must definitely have been created." --Sir Fred Hoyle; British mathematician Robert Shapiro, DNA expert and professor of chemistry at New York University, calculated the probability of the coincidental formation of the proteins found in a single bacterium to be 10 to the 1040 power against. "The likelihood of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution." --Chandra Wickramasinghe; mathematician & astrobiologist Mr. Wickramasinghe also writes, "From my earliest training as a scientist, I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. . . now we realize that the only logical answer to life is creation and not accidental random shuffling," If we really want to be free from COVID-19, cancer and other human disease, perhaps like one of our greatest living scientists Francis Collins, we should spend a little more time seeking our Creator's guidance. And, a little less time reading pulp fiction posing as science, pretending there is no Universal Grand Design designer. As if anyone here on earth either would know or possibly could know. As if the universe just magically appeared and, out popped living beings of intelligence and conscious awareness, supported by over 30 trillion tiny little irreducibly complex magically existing super-duper machines called "cells".  Machines far more complex than anything designed or conceived of by the human brain. NOTES: 1. The Complexity of the Cell 2. Encyclopedia Britanica: Biology - Cell Click Here to Go Back to Contents Click Here to eMail the Author Copyright © by Richard Aberdeen.  Copyright © by Freedom Tracks Records. No part of this material may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher and signed by the author. For inquiries, please contact Freedom Tracks Records.  The essays entitled Revolution and Revolution ~ Side B are open copyright and may be reproduced and distributed as desired.