Page 120 - The Creation Of The Universe

118 THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

they release carbon dioxide and water (in effect, they're reversing the pho-
tosynthesis reaction) that the plants use to make more glucose and oxygen.
And so it goes on, a continuous cycle that is called the "carbon cycle" and
it is powered by the energy of the Sun.
In order to see how perfectly-created this cycle truly is, let us focus our
attention on just one of its elements for the moment: the sunlight.
In the first part of this chapter we looked at sunlight and found that its
radiation components were specially tailored to allow life on Earth. Could
sunlight also be deliberately tailored for photosynthesis as well? Or are
plants flexible enough so that they can perform the reaction no matter
which kind of light reaches them?
The American astronomer George Greenstein discusses this in The
Symbiotic Universe:
Chlorophyll is the molecule that accomplishes photosynthesis... The
mechanism of photosynthesis is initiated by the absorption of sunlight
by a chlorophyll molecule. But in order for this to occur, the light must
be of the right color. Light of the wrong color won't do the trick.
A good analogy is that of a television set. In order for the set to receive
a given channel it must be tuned to that channel; tune it differently
and the reception will not occur. It is the same with photosynthesis, the
Sun functioning as the transmitter in the analogy and the chlorophyll
molecule as the receiving TV set. If the molecule and the Sun are not
tuned to each other-tuned in the sense of colour- photosynthesis will not
occur. As it turns out, the sun's color is just right. 70
In the last chapter we drew attention to the error inherent in the idea of
the adaptability of life. Some evolutionists hold that "if conditions had been
different, life would have evolved to be perfectly in harmony with them as
well". Thinking superficially about photosynthesis and plants, one could
come to a similar conclusion: "If sunlight were different, plants would have
just evolved according to that." But this is in fact impossible. Although he's
an evolutionist himself, George Greenstein admits this:
One might think that a certain adaptation has been at work here: the
adaptation of plant life to the properties of sunlight. After all, if the Sun