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Before the construction of a house begins, an architectural plan is drawn up, and the materials to be used in construction must be determined and obtained. Different shapes and sized of timber, nails, insulation materials, mortar, windows, doors, electrical wiring, pipes and many other materials are all prepared for specific purposes. These materials are not used haphazardly; nor does the construction crew act in the light of their own decisions and desires. On the contrary, everything proceeds in the light of a specific plan and is tightly regulated. Throughout the course of the project, there is no doubt what the construction workers will do first, how much of which materials they will use, and in what order. For example, the foundations must be laid before the doors and windows can be framed, and the wiring has to be put in before the walls. All these stages are parts of a comprehensive plan.
Now, suppose that this comprehensive plan has been encoded and concealed somewhere too small to be seen with the naked eye.
If we compare the human body to a structure, the DNA molecule represents the blueprint, complete right down to the smallest detail. DNA contains all the technical details, such as how the body and its materials are to be put together, how much will be used and where, what the finished anatomy will look like and what functions each part will serve.
A human being's growth in the womb and after birth takes place according to this predetermined plan. This flawless order in human development is expressed in the following terms in the Qur'an:
Does man reckon he will be left to go on unchecked? Was he not a drop of ejaculated sperm, then a blood-clot which He created and shaped? (Surat al-Qiyama, 36-38)
Allah determines all the characteristics that human beings will possess in the future while they are still newly fertilized eggs in their mothers' bodies, and He shapes them, installing all the required information inside the DNA. All of a person's characteristics--such as eye color, blood group, facial shape and bone structure are all predetermined and encoded nine months in advance, while the individual is still no more than a single cell.
From the moment an egg is first fertilized, all events concerning all the biochemical and physical developments that will give a human form to the growing embryo take place under the control of the blueprint in the DNA. Prof. Phillip E. Johnson refers to the flawless nature of the system:
Instructions in the fertilized egg control embryonic development from the beginning and direct it to a specific outcome. This "full and complete set of instructions" employs the material processes of chemistry and physics but is not created by those processes. Similarly, the software in a computer employs natural processes to generate a word processing document, but the software has to be written by an intelligent agent.99
In addition, the blueprint for a human being also includes the production of its materials, and the biochemical factories in which those materials will be manufactured. It is nearly impossible to compare the human body's blueprint to anything else, because whatever analogy we consider will still fall far short of the complexity in a single cell. Gerald L. Schroeder describes the extraordinary nature of what lies hidden in that complexity:
The beauty and awe of life's genesis lies in the details. Skipping over the intricacies can lead a person to believe that milk just naturally comes in containers, and is not the end result of a process starting with sunlight shining on grass. What follows is just a sampling of the relevant steps in gestation, each revealing only a hint of the complexly ordered wisdom built into the process.100
The inanimate, unconscious atoms that make up the cell cannot make a blueprint, lay out a project, write and decipher a code, take precautions at various stages, establish a system for the preservation of information and to perform many other such feats. Anyone able to think independently of materialist and Darwinist dogmas will appreciate that such an order cannot come into being spontaneously, but that on the contrary, it is the work of our Almighty Lord's sublime intellect. By the will of Allah, elements in the lifeless earth come together to give rise to a living human being, and perform the tasks entrusted to them with flawless co-ordination. In the Qur'an, Allah reveals that:
He Who has created all things in the best possible way. He commenced the creation of man from clay. (Surat as-Sajda, 7)