Here is a fact that sounds simple and turns out to be anything but. DNA is built by proteins. Proteins are built from instructions stored in DNA.
Read that twice. Then think about what it means for the beginning of life.
A Circle With No Starting Point
Your DNA carries the instructions for making every protein in your body. That much most people know. What fewer people know is that the cell cannot read or copy that DNA without help. It needs dozens of specialized proteins to read it and copy it. And where do those proteins come from? From instructions written in DNA.
So the instructions require the machinery, and the machinery requires the instructions. Each one needs the other to exist first. Take away the proteins and the DNA is a book no one can open. Take away the DNA and there is no recipe for the proteins.
A Problem That Has Been Circled for Decades
This is not a creationist talking point dreamed up to embarrass anyone. Scientists have been circling this problem since the 1960s, and the name they gave it is exactly what it sounds like: which came first? Two systems, each dependent on the other, and neither able to function alone.
What we actually observe, in every living cell on earth, is both halves working together at the same time. That is not a guess about the past. It is a present-tense fact, and it does not change when you look harder.
Why I Keep Coming Back to It
I spent twelve years trying to argue myself out of belief in God, and problems like this one were part of what turned me back. The most basic system in biology needs both halves at once. A code and a reader. A blueprint and a builder. A code is useless without a reader, and a reader is useless without a code. Both must arrive together, or neither does anything.
DNA cannot exist without proteins, and proteins cannot exist without DNA. Whatever you conclude about where that arrangement came from, start by admitting what it is: a system that only works whole.
Get new articles by email
Subscribe and I will send you a short note whenever a new article is published on this site. No spam, and you can unsubscribe at any time.