Crick, Francis

Advances in genetic science and the discovery of nucleic acids—DNA and RNA, in other words—posed new problems for the theory of evolution, which seeks to account for the origin of life in terms of chance and which was already unable to offer any consistent explanation for the cell’s most basic molecules. In 1955, two scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick, revealed the unbelievably complex structure and design in the DNA molecule. (See DNA.)

DNA is found in the nucleus of each of the 100 trillion cells in the body, containing the flawless blueprint for the human body.

Francis Crick had spent years defending the theory of molecular evolution. But after his discovery of DNA, even he admitted that it was impossible for such a complex molecules to come into being by chance, spontaneously, as the result of a process of evolution:

 An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.95

95 Francis Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981, p. 88.