The physical world was designed to operate according to certain laws and principles.
1. God cannot work directly in this world of finite time and space, but must have angels or perfected humans through whom to work.
2. Life comes from life. There were very few acts of abiogenesis (formation of living cells from nonliving chemicals). However, it seems likely that at least five types of cells were created from scratch: (1) a prokaryotic (bacterial) cell; (2) an eukaryotic animal cell, (3) a zygote egg, (4) a eukaryotic plant cell, and (5) a plant zygote within a seed. Then all other life forms were created through genetic modification and cellular manipulation of these first cells.
3. Each organism in the physical world must go through a period of growth to reach maturity.
4. Multicellular beings must pass through a life-to-death cycle. In general, this starts with the formation of a single-celled zygote followed by growth into a multicellular embryo, which develops until it goes through a birthing process and then grows to maturity. The mature organism ages into old age and finally dies.
5. Multicellular life is continued through the formation of a zygote. (Zygote: the initial single cell of each multicellular organism that contains a complete set of chromosomes.)
6. There were four levels of creation for each multicellular life form.
a. Molecular level: formation and organization of macromolecules to operate together such that a functioning cell was created.
b. Cellular level: life cannot develop from the molecular genome (DNA) alone; it must reside in a fully functioning cell in order to function and replicate.
c. Cellular differentiation level: starting from a single-celled zygote cell division occurs in the multicellular organism and cells differentiate into particular tissue types and into organ systems.
d. Level of central nervous system function: in animals, programs for instinctual behavior had to be developed so that the animal could grow successfully and interact with its environment.
6. All fundamental information necessary to produce any particular being must be reduced to the codes found in the single-celled zygote for that particular life form. These codes may be molecular codes such as DNA or structural codes such as organelles. These codes must be such that they evoke the ontogenesis of higher organizational levels.
7. See “Biological Paradigms” for more laws and principles.