Just how simple is an amoeba? I think the late apologist, Norman Geisler, helps give us an interesting illustration when he stated:
“The incredible specified complexity of life becomes obvious when one considers the message found in the DNA of a one-celled amoeba (a creature so small, several hundred could be lined up in an inch). Staunch Darwinist Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University, admits that the message found in just the cell nucleus of a tiny amoeba is more than all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica combined, and the entire amoeba has as much information in its DNA as 1,000 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica! In other words, if you were to spell out all of the A, T, C, and G in the unjustly called primitive amoeba (as Dawkins describes it), the letters would fill 1,000 complete sets of an encyclopedia! Now, we must emphasize that these 1,000 encyclopedias do not consist of random letters but of letters in a very specific order just like real encyclopedias. So, here’s the key question for Darwinists like Dawkins: if simple messages such as Take out the garbage Mom, Mary loves Scott, and Drink Coke require an intelligent being, then why doesn’t a message 1,000 encyclopedias long require one?”1
Far from being simple, this little single cell creature is fabulously complex. In fact, even though he declared himself an atheist near the end of his life, Linus Pauling, who won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, once remarked: “Just one living cell in the human body is, more complex than New York City.”2
To think something as complex as an amoeba could have evolved from inanimate matter by the random collision of mindless molecules takes a lot of faith! But to then believe that a single fertilized egg cell could transform itself by more random collisions of mindless matter, in a nine month’s timespan, into a 30 trillion cell ultra sophisticated human being by an unguided mindless process takes far more faith than I can ever muster. But that’s the kind of faith an atheist has to have to believe in evolution. And quite frankly I just don’t have enough faith to be an atheist!
And rather than invest my faith in Darwinian evolution, which biochemist and creationist, Duane Gish, called, “a fairy tale for grown-ups,” I choose to cast my lot with the most unique, amazing, intellectually sound, and transformational book ever written – the Holy Bible – which in its very first verse gives us the answer to how everything, including mankind, came to be. For in (Genesis 1:1) we read: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” My faith is not placed in mindless matter, but in a magnificent infinite mind – called God.
And when it comes to this idea that we Christians have thrown away our minds by putting our faith in Christianity and the Bible, perhaps apologist Craig Hazen said it best:
“We have got to start talking differently about ‘faith.’ Unfortunately, we have let the secular world and antagonists like Bill Maher define the term for us. What they mean by ‘faith’ is blind leaping. That is what they think our commitment to Christ and the Christian view of the world is all about. They think we have simply disengaged our minds and leapt blindly into the religious abyss. The biblical view of saving faith has never had anything to do with blind leaping. Jesus himself was fixed on the idea that we can know the truth—and not just in some spiritual or mystical way. Rather, he taught that we can know the truth about God, humans, and salvation objectively. That is, the very best forms of investigation, evidence, and careful reasoning will inevitably point to God and His great plans for us.”3
1 I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist Quotes by Norman L. Geisler(page 2 of 5) (goodreads.com)
2 Charlie H. Campbell, Apologetics Quotes (Carlsbad, California: The Always Be Ready Apologetics Ministry, 2020), p. 53.
3 We have got to start talking differently about ‘faith’ – The Poached Egg Christian Worldview and Apologetics Network