CREATION, COMPLEXITY OF

Dr. Carl Sagan, a famous astronomer and author who professes to have no belief in God or the Bible, has nevertheless recognized the complexity of the design of creation. In his book The Dragons of Eden (New York: Ballantine, 1978) he describes the complexity of a chromosome:

A single human chromosome contains twenty billion bits of information. How much information is twenty billion bits? What would be its equivalent, if it were written down in an ordinary printed book in modern human language? Twenty billion bits are the equivalent of about three billion letters. If there are approximately six letters in an average word, the information content of a human chromosome corresponds to about five hundred million words. If there are about three hundred words on an ordinary page of printed type, this corresponds to about two million pages. If a typical book contains five hundred such pages, the information content of a single human chromosome corresponds to some four thousand volumes. It is clear, then, that the chromosome contains an enormous library of information. It is equally clear that so rich a library is required to specify as exquisitely constructed and intricately functioning an object as a human being.263