In Six Days Book index

D.B. Gower, biochemistry

First published in
In Six Days
Religion and origins testimony #3

Edited by John F. Ashton

Professor Gower is emeritus professor of steroid biochemistry at the University of London, United Kingdom. He holds a B.S. in chemistry from the University of London, a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of London and was awarded a D.Sc. from the University of London for his research into the biochemical mechanisms for the control of steroid hormone formation. Professor Gower is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a fellow of the Institute of Biology and a chartered chemist.

I was not always a creationist, that is, one who believes in the Genesis account of our origins. I was brought up to attend a church where the creation of heaven and earth by God was considered as a fact and any doubt, or even discussion, was thought of as strange. Later on, as I studied chemistry and, especially, biology, I found that there were more and more questions which needed to be answered. By this time, at the age of 15 or 16 years, I was a convinced Christian and firmly believed that the Bible was the Word of God, but the questions remained and I had to be content with the verse in Hebrews 11:3:

By faith we understand that the universe was formed by God’s command.

Time went on and I studied chemistry (with physics, mathematics and biology) for my first degree. Then, some years after completing my Ph.D. in biochemistry, literature concerning dating methods and other matters relating to the accuracy of the Genesis account of creation began to be published. I believe that it was about this time, in the mid-1960s, that my ideas of the greatness of God were transformed. No longer was He a “pocket” God who did things as I could imagine from my “human viewpoint,” but He had staggeringly great power, far beyond anything I could possibly comprehend. I began to realize that the Bible is entirely consistent on this point as, for example, in Isaiah 40:25:

To whom will you compare me? or who is my equal? says the Holy One.

If God is so great, then there is nothing He could not do. This realization of the almighty power of God having come to me, I began to study the “creation-type” literature available at that time. During the past three decades, a great deal of work has been done and published in the field of “creation research.” This has stimulated me to criticize evolutionary theory in three areas which are of particular interest to me:

1. My chemical knowledge has allowed me to understand the criticisms of isotopic dating methods for rock samples and to realize that there are enormous problems with the interpretation of the data. Consequently, my own view is that rocks are nowhere near as old as they are alleged to be.

2. From the biochemical point of view, the idea that amino acids, sugars, etc., some of the vital “building blocks” for proteins and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), could be formed simply by interaction of electrical discharges with a primitive reducing-type atmosphere, can be criticized in so many ways and at so many levels.

3. My own studies in numerous biochemical control mechanisms, especially in the control of steroid hormone formation (for which I was awarded the higher doctorate, D.Sc.) convince me that all these processes are ordered precisely. This order and the extraordinary complexity are entirely consistent, in my own opinion, with the existence of a Creator, who himself must be capable of creating with such design.

Such complexity is also being found in virtually every other branch of science in general, and is especially evident in the field of nature. Far from pointing towards formation by the chance processes of evolution, this clearly speaks to me of an Almighty Creator.

Recommended resources

In the Beginning Was Information Shows that coded information can only come from an intelligent source.

Darwin’s Black Box This easy-to-read book does a top notch job of explaining one of the most vexing problems in biology: the origin of the complexity that permeates all of life.

This chapter from the book In Six Days, published and graciously provided at no charge to Answers in Genesis by Master Books, a division of New Leaf Press (Green Forest, Arkansas).

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