We ask the question, “What is required today to write a meaningful software program?” Answer: An intelligent mind. Looking to the past, obviously a programmed code “far, far more advanced than any software ever created” also required an intelligent source, a divine mind, God. Indeed, God is worthy of our praise for we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” as the Psalmist declared long before DNA coding was known. (Ps 139:14)

Do you ever watch old spy thriller movies or read spy novels? Coded messages are often a part of unraveling the diabolical scheme of whatever villain wishes to do harm to truth, justice, and the American way. Or perhaps you are familiar with the history of breaking the German Enigma Code during World War II. The primary investigator credited with leading the way in breaking the code was Alan Turing. Many consider him to be the father of computer science.[i] Turing basically designed a computer-like machine to break the daily-changing encryption. It was a key contribution to the Allied victory.

Let’s now try and break the code below, only with the code key already given.

Code Breaking

Key:

Code:

CAU AUG CGG AAC ACA CGG AUG CAC CGG AUC AUG CAU CGG CAU AUG CGG AAC ACA CGG AGA CAG CGG AAA CGG ACG CAC ACA AAA CAU CGG AGU AGA AUC ACA CGG ACC CAC AUG AUA CGG ACU AAA AUA AGU ACA CAU UAG

Answer:

TO BE OR NOT TO BE IS A GREAT LINE FROM HAMLET.

Proteins

Writing and decoding that code required an intelligent source. It could not happen blindly. It just so happens that our example code could also be a segment of a real code inside of a cell on messenger-RNA, a code of instructions for protein assembly. Proteins are the building blocks and workhorses of the cell. Over half the dry weight of the cell comes from proteins.

Proteins are made of single units called amino acids. There are twenty different amino acids. An average protein contains 250-350 amino acid units linked together. The arrangement of the amino acids is like spelling a word. They must be in proper order on a protein chain the way letters must be in proper order to form meaningful words and sentences.

If we scramble a bunch of letters together without an intelligent design, without deliberately placing them in a meaningful order, we would get meaningless gibberish such as this: EDSI OCRT TAE HRGO

But using intelligent deliberation by placing the same letters in proper order gives meaning: GOD IS THE CREATOR

Just as words are built with units of 26 letters, proteins are built with units of 20 amino acids. And, like letters in words, those amino acids must be in proper order for the protein to be functional. Proteins must be “spelled” properly in the correct sequence of amino acids just as letters need to be for functional (meaningful) words and sentences.

DNA

Inside every cell, there is a stored code which dictates the proper order of amino acids to “spell” a protein correctly. The code is stored inside DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), a two-stranded helix. The code comes from the arrangement of four possible bases on the DNA strand, which are represented by the letters A, T, G, C, (A, U, G, C in RNA, like in our Hamlet example). Notice that different combinations of three bases as triplets selected from the four base letters determined the order of letters and spaces in our decoded Hamlet message. Amino acid sequences to build proteins are determined in the same way.

Humans have over 3 billion bases (base pairs across the helix) of information from these four base letters distributed in 23 chromosomes. Information for a lot of cellular activities are stored there, but we are limiting our programming example to protein manufacture. To the left is my sketch of a typical segment of the double-helix strands of DNA, showing the base pairs on the DNA backbone.

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