Living Technology

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ReferencesandNotes39.html

Most complex phenomena known to science are found in living systems—including those involving electrical, acoustical, mechanical, chemical, and optical phenomena. Detailed studies of various animals also have revealed certain physical equipment and capabilities that the world’s best designers, using the most sophisticated technologies, cannot duplicate. Examples of these designs include molecular-size motors in most living organisms;a advanced technologies in cells;b miniature and reliable sonar systems of dolphins, porpoises, and whales; frequency-modulated “radar” and discrimination systems of bats;c efficient aerodynamic capabilities of hummingbirds; control systems, internal ballistics, and the combustion chambers of bombardier beetles;d precise and redundant navigational systems of many birds, fish, and insects;e and especially the self-repair capabilities of almost all forms of life. No component of these complex systems could have evolved without placing the organism at a selective disadvantage until the component’s evolution was complete.  All evidence points to intelligent design.

Denton, p. 329.
We would see [in cells] that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction. In fact, so deep would be the feeling of deja-vu, so persuasive the analogy, that much of the terminology we would use to describe this fascinating molecular reality would be borrowed from the world of late twentieth-century technology.
    “What we would be witnessing would be an object resembling an immense automated factory, a factory larger than a city and carrying out almost as many unique functions as all the manufacturing activities of man on earth. However, it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equalled in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours. To witness such an act at a magnification of one thousand million times would be an awe-inspiring spectacle.”

The origin of technology in nature
Researchers have uncovered technological principles implemented in nature, far beyond what we humans, even today, are able to instantiate and achieve. Without a doubt, God is the ultimate technologist—the supreme information theorist, polymer scientist, energy engineer, electrical engineer, operations manager, architect, systems chemist, photochemist, synthetic chemist, and molecular biologist, to name just a few of wide-ranging capabilities that the creator has displayed in his creation. It is staggering to realize that God has implemented far more creative technological solutions than any human technologist, past or present, could.

Obviously, it could not have been physical non-cognitive principles, dead natural molecules, able to become the ultimate technologist !! Darwinian natural selection is clearly not a plausible scientific explanation. It could not be a significant part of the answer to the question of where these high-tech solutions came from. Darwinian selection is traditionally viewed as a blind watchmaker, akin to what takes place during the execution of a computer program. Such algorithmic processes have never been shown to become powerful on their own. It is human intelligence that has demonstrated to be capable of implementing exceptional technological innovations through computer programs that have brought exceptional innovations into our lives. Pointing to the existence of such an algorithmic process by natural, non-intelligent means, is entirely misplaced.  Consider a computer programmed to play chess. Thanks to the algorithmic process taking place within that computer, it may well outplay any human opponent. Interestingly, however, that chess-playing computer does not know that a human game called chess even exists, let alone that it is playing the game at any given moment. A software program only does what all software programs do—it reduces any problem to a set of ‘dumb’ calculations. But at the beginning of such a program, there is always a programming software engineer that implemented the algorithm. 

Just as a chess computer does not know it is playing chess, a bacterium does not know that it is utilizing information theory to produce proteins, that it is actioning its immune system to protect itself from viral attack, or that it is propelling itself toward a food source. Furthermore, there is the mind.  A new dimension of reality, one that seemingly extends beyond the physical,  was implemented.  The significance of the creation of the human mind by God is hard to overstate. It means that through our eyes, we began to see, not just physically, as in sight, but conceptually, as in mind. Mind— one we humans continually use but have barely begun to understand. This remarkable ability, in addition to its many practical benefits, has enabled us, humans, to discover and comprehend the natural world, the natural laws, calculus, math, and the laws of logic, consciously. The implications of that new pathway to scientific discovery cannot be overstated—we managed to uncover and exploit the secrets of the natural world. 

Most wonderfully, the mindful way allowed us to begin to investigate, understand, and marvel at the mindless natural world. A material system would have never been capable to undergo such an extraordinarily innovative process, implementing data-directing molecular machines, and cell factories,  and becoming conscious on its own !! Mindless natural laws cannot program a computer to play chess, much less if there was no hardware, no computer on which that program could have been installed !!  Matter could not have implemented and stored algorithmic data in DNA by a random process without there being a suitable material substrate—in this case, a simple life form storing the DNA molecule—on which the blind algorithmic process can operate. How did that initial life form, the equivalent of the computer in the chess analogy, come to be? Hidden within natural law there could not exist the primal means by which nature was able to create such a system, one with the extraordinary potential to discover itself! Agency, mind, technological innovation, scientific discovery—whether natural, whether human—all had to arise out of a much greater, much more powerful, intelligent mind. The creation of matter and mind was certainly instantiated by a greater, more powerful mind.

Kinetic and Thermodynamic Stabilities 
Change characterizes the world, and the fundamental law that describes the direction of change in nature is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. However, as we are all aware, the Second Law directive leads toward death, not life. The equilibrium state, the state that all physical-chemical systems are directed toward, is the antithesis of life. So how could the central principle governing natural change, one antithetical to life, lead to the emergence of life, to a system able to become cognitive and explore the universe? One way of expressing the Second Law is to state that material systems are driven toward stability for thermodynamic reasons—to maximize the systems’ entropy.