Reading time: ~2 min read
The computer is the most advanced technology through which large quantities of information can be stored. The information possessed by room-sized computers 50 years ago can now be stored on small discs. Yet the latest computer technology, developed by human intelligence as the result of centuries of accumulated knowledge and many years of effort, comes nowhere near to approaching the data-storage capacity of DNA.
A strand of DNA is only one 2 millionth of a millimeter in thickness. Despite this extraordinary thinness and the fact it is 4 meters (13.12 feet) long, DNA strips never become tangled up with one another. Thanks to its special structure, the DNA is folded up perfectly inside the cell's nucleus - an example of incomparable engineering. One of the main goals of computer engineers is to be able to store as much information as possible in as small a space as possible. At present, the highest level storage capacity on Earth is that belonging to DNA molecule.52 In his book , The Road Ahead, Bill Gates, the president of Microsoft, writes:
Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created.53
The well-known American philosopher Prof. Daniel Dennet describes the density of information contained in DNA in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea:
Even to those of us accustomed to the "engineering miracles" of the computer age, the facts are hard to encompass. Not only molecule-sized copying machines, but proofreading enzymes that correct mistakes, all at blinding speed, on a scale that super computers still can not match. Biological macromolecules have a storage capacity that exceeds that of the best present-day information stores by several orders of magnitude.54
The sequencing of the codes in DNA resembles that of the digits in a computer system. The numbers in a computer environment can contain an image, the instructions for a computer game, or the text of a book. The codes in DNA contain information that serves to produce new proteins.55 But no computer engineer can imitate DNA, which contains sufficient information to fill a million encyclopedia pages in a space invisible to the naked eye. To claim that DNA emerged by chance is even more irrational than maintaining that the most advanced computers could have done so. DNA exhibits evident proofs of Allah's sublime creation. Allah reveals this matchless creation in the Qur'an:
He is the Originator of the heavens and the Earth… (Surat al-An'am, 101)