I had the opportunity to chat with a big fan of evolutionists like Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan etc. who told me that the 'fact' of evolution is not affected by the little details of 'abiogenesis' (the idea that life pop out of non-life molecules) and suggest that though scientists know next to nothing about 'how' it came about, that doesn't mean we won't know in the future.
Well, to be precise, I was not harping on some minor, specific details within the ‘fact’ of evolution. They are not separate issues. Neither are they trivial.
If abiogenesis can’t happen, the grand story that life evolved naturalistically can’t even begin.
How can the game get started if there is no kick-off?
(Btw, I’m rooting for Portugal now that Holland lost in the semifinals)
How do we know THAT the fact of evolution took place if we dunno HOW it even began?
And evolution is not about the fact THAT life's origin came from non-life molecules... it's about a simple elegant process HOW it came about via natural means.
When creationist asks, “How?” it’s not attacking some minor specific details within the fact of evolution. It deals directly with the validity of evolution. If this is unethical or unscholarly, then Darwinism is scientifically unfalsifiable!
I haven’t even gone into the mathematical probability of ‘chance assembly,’ which Fred Hoyle described like the chances that a tornado in a junkyard would produce a Boeing 747… That’s a naturalistic way of saying “miracle”. And it doesn’t matter whether the miracle takes one day or billions of years if the process itself is impossible.
Just because we dunno HOW now, that doesn’t mean that we won’t find out in the future? Maybe we’d understand abiogenesis later??
Sure, that’s a fair response used by the experts too! (Greg Koukl has something interesting to say here)
Firstly, this is at least a tacit admission that Darwinists don’t have the goods.
If abiogenesis can make a lot of sense in some journals somewhere, they don’t need this kind of pleading. I agree with you that “Darwin could not explain satisfactorily how life came about as in abiogenesis.”
Neither can modern neo-Darwinists, as a matter of fact. And it’s not getting better, if you follow the recent theories that came up. It’s depressing! Instead of being “acceptable” (it’s nowhere near ‘compelling’, that’s for sure!), let me share with you a recent, serious theory by Crick, one of the Nobel Laureate who discovered DNA (no pseudo-scientist here)… He thinks that conditions on planet earth are not conducive to abiogenesis at all. Thus simple, living organisms were actually imported from some advanced extra-terrestrial race elsewhere where the conditions are much better. (This is not falsifiable unless you find this alien civilization) So, appealing to little green men is scientific but appealing to God is unscientific…? On what criteria do we decide? Of course, the criterion is whether it fits into naturalistic philosophy.
Secondly, we are rationally obliged to take into consideration the evidences at hand, not conceivable evidences of the future. It is possible that future research shows that a person with five gunshot wounds on his chest died of vitamin deficiency instead but our decisions must based on what we do know today.
Thirdly, if such a crucial foundation of Darwinism is basically unknown, let us be humble and tone down the rhetoric about the ‘fact’ of evolution as if it’s already settled. I believe in Intelligent Design not because Darwinism failed to deliver so the God-of-the-gaps is the default alternative. There are ‘brute facts’ in support of it, but my thesis today is just to debunk the ‘fact’ of evolution. It takes faith despite of the facts to believe in evolution…
In the event that we don’t have the hard facts HOW abiogenesis happened, why do we still talk about the ‘fact’ THAT it happened. The answer is simple…
Darwinism has got to be true because the alternative of an intelligent designer is unpalatable to the naturalistic meta-narrative, not science... so even if there's a lack of hard facts, we must "preserve the theory of evolution like a closely guarded scientific doctrine that must be defended at all costs."
At the end of the day, we both know that the ONLY honest answer to the HOW of abiogenesis is that the experts do not have concrete answers to the question. As my fren put it, the process of how even the most primitive form of life imaginable can occur still eludes present day scientists.
What they do know about the bio-molecular complexity of supposedly ‘simple’ life-form is such a liability that experts like Crick had to resort to ‘little green men’. But what every Darwinist is sure of is THAT the fact of abiogenesis must have happened. Surely, we can’t blame the non-theistic folks like Michael Denton who cry foul! That’s unvarnished faith, not science.
(Even if we find life-forms on the Moon, the question still remains HOW it came about by natural means, doesn’t it? It’s not a solution - it moves the question from earth to the moon)
Well, to be precise, I was not harping on some minor, specific details within the ‘fact’ of evolution. They are not separate issues. Neither are they trivial.
If abiogenesis can’t happen, the grand story that life evolved naturalistically can’t even begin.
How can the game get started if there is no kick-off?
(Btw, I’m rooting for Portugal now that Holland lost in the semifinals)
How do we know THAT the fact of evolution took place if we dunno HOW it even began?
And evolution is not about the fact THAT life's origin came from non-life molecules... it's about a simple elegant process HOW it came about via natural means.
When creationist asks, “How?” it’s not attacking some minor specific details within the fact of evolution. It deals directly with the validity of evolution. If this is unethical or unscholarly, then Darwinism is scientifically unfalsifiable!
I haven’t even gone into the mathematical probability of ‘chance assembly,’ which Fred Hoyle described like the chances that a tornado in a junkyard would produce a Boeing 747… That’s a naturalistic way of saying “miracle”. And it doesn’t matter whether the miracle takes one day or billions of years if the process itself is impossible.
Just because we dunno HOW now, that doesn’t mean that we won’t find out in the future? Maybe we’d understand abiogenesis later??
Sure, that’s a fair response used by the experts too! (Greg Koukl has something interesting to say here)
Firstly, this is at least a tacit admission that Darwinists don’t have the goods.
If abiogenesis can make a lot of sense in some journals somewhere, they don’t need this kind of pleading. I agree with you that “Darwin could not explain satisfactorily how life came about as in abiogenesis.”
Neither can modern neo-Darwinists, as a matter of fact. And it’s not getting better, if you follow the recent theories that came up. It’s depressing! Instead of being “acceptable” (it’s nowhere near ‘compelling’, that’s for sure!), let me share with you a recent, serious theory by Crick, one of the Nobel Laureate who discovered DNA (no pseudo-scientist here)… He thinks that conditions on planet earth are not conducive to abiogenesis at all. Thus simple, living organisms were actually imported from some advanced extra-terrestrial race elsewhere where the conditions are much better. (This is not falsifiable unless you find this alien civilization) So, appealing to little green men is scientific but appealing to God is unscientific…? On what criteria do we decide? Of course, the criterion is whether it fits into naturalistic philosophy.
Secondly, we are rationally obliged to take into consideration the evidences at hand, not conceivable evidences of the future. It is possible that future research shows that a person with five gunshot wounds on his chest died of vitamin deficiency instead but our decisions must based on what we do know today.
Thirdly, if such a crucial foundation of Darwinism is basically unknown, let us be humble and tone down the rhetoric about the ‘fact’ of evolution as if it’s already settled. I believe in Intelligent Design not because Darwinism failed to deliver so the God-of-the-gaps is the default alternative. There are ‘brute facts’ in support of it, but my thesis today is just to debunk the ‘fact’ of evolution. It takes faith despite of the facts to believe in evolution…
In the event that we don’t have the hard facts HOW abiogenesis happened, why do we still talk about the ‘fact’ THAT it happened. The answer is simple…
Darwinism has got to be true because the alternative of an intelligent designer is unpalatable to the naturalistic meta-narrative, not science... so even if there's a lack of hard facts, we must "preserve the theory of evolution like a closely guarded scientific doctrine that must be defended at all costs."
At the end of the day, we both know that the ONLY honest answer to the HOW of abiogenesis is that the experts do not have concrete answers to the question. As my fren put it, the process of how even the most primitive form of life imaginable can occur still eludes present day scientists.
What they do know about the bio-molecular complexity of supposedly ‘simple’ life-form is such a liability that experts like Crick had to resort to ‘little green men’. But what every Darwinist is sure of is THAT the fact of abiogenesis must have happened. Surely, we can’t blame the non-theistic folks like Michael Denton who cry foul! That’s unvarnished faith, not science.
(Even if we find life-forms on the Moon, the question still remains HOW it came about by natural means, doesn’t it? It’s not a solution - it moves the question from earth to the moon)
Comments
Why worry about a “missing link” when the entire chain is missing!? In fact, not even one single set of transitional fossils (like reptiles becoming birds) has ever been found in all of human history. They can not find what has never existed.
An accidental world, with chance as a mechanism for life forms, must fall upward against science’s axiom that out of nothing comes nothing. Cause and effect demands some Causer prior to nothingness. Chance, to Emanuel Kant, is an excuse for ignorance. Chance is not even a noun, it can do nothing of itself, it has no power to effect, it is not an x-factor, as many are convinced. And chance is not composed of physical matter. Regardless of those facts, to those who believe in evolution or carry a disbelief in Creationism or Intelligent Design, chance was the x-factor in everything coming into existence. Otherwise, they must admit that they don’t know how matter, and thus life, came into existence. They simply don’t know and can only placate theories (subjective).
We should expect science to deal only with facts (objective), approaching things rationally and logically. They have not. Evolution remains in the textbooks. Believing in something does not make it true. Humanity once believed the earth was flat, however their belief in that did nothing to change the fact that it was spherical.
Another consideration is that it is impossible for matter to create itself, spontaneously, out of nothing. Evolutional theory is of no help: it doesn’t explain how matter was formed and thus by extension, it can not explain the origin of life. In fact over time, cells do not gain additional DNA (which, in evolution, must be present for transitional stages), they lose DNA integrity. Each cell is like a carbon copy of the original. With each passing day, the cells are making copies of each other and becoming a little less like the original. The cells are not evolving, they are aging. I’ve got more wrinkles today than ten years ago. Natural Selection produces extinction of the species, not a proliferation of it. Cells do not improve or become superior over time, but in fact do just the opposite.
The Law of Entropy says that cells break down or smooth out over time and lose their cellularintegrity. It is the polar opposite of a theoretical, evolutional process.
The general approach for those who don’t believe in a Creator, the argument or theory is an equation: Space + Time + Chance = Everything. How can, in what in reality is, 0 + 0 + 0 = everything!? The space did not cause matter to come into existence, nor did time. Neither can chance influence or create events. Can being come from non-being… spontaneous generation of matter from nothing? Can chance actually do anything or cause something to happen? No. Chance is only the likelihood of something occurring. There must first come “cause” before an effect can occur. An a cause logically demand a Causer…and a Creator. Chance is powerless. It can not make something happen or create something from nothing. It is a non-being.
freewebs.com/freegrace
Jack Wellman
Dr. Peter Stoner, in his book Science Speaks (Moody Press), shows that the prophecies in the Old Testament are quantifiable. Based upon the number of prophecies, Dr. Stoner calculated the odds of one man fulfilling just 8 of the Old Testament Messianic prophecies. He found it to be 10 to the 17th power, that’s 10 with 17 zeros after it! When he went on to calculate the odds of one person fulfilling all 48 of the prophecies, he found that it was 10 to the 157th power. That’s a 10 with 157 zeros after it! Now consider the odd's of Jesus fulfilling the over 300 prophecies!
Prize-winning mathematician Emile Borel stated that once you get beyond 10 to the 50th power, you can say with great confidence that that event will never happen at random or by mere chance. Ever! In other words it is intentional.
Historians
Since there are nearly 100 ancient Historians that include Christ in there writings, it is too much to believe that they would base their writings on someone who did not exist. Josephus, Tacitus, Gibbons, and others (all of which are highly respected) could not have all been wrong when writing about Jesus‘ existence. It is also an historical fact that all 48 prophecies were fulfilled in one Man in history, Jesus Christ. Many were written hundreds and thousands of years before He was born in Bethlehem. Remaining prophecies will later be fulfilled. These prophecies, beyond doubt, confirm that He is the Messiah. There are volumes of archeological and manuscript evidence about people and places in the Bible. There are over 25,000 manuscripts from the New Testament alone. Ninety-six percent of the texts agree completely with each other (only differences attribute to spelling).
There is nothing else in human archival history to compare to that. Augustus Caesar had only 10 manuscripts to survive as well as Aristotle and no one questions there existence!
BIOLOGISTS
The scientific axiom called the Law of Entropy states that once an organism becomes alive, it is then, until death, in a state of continual decline (or entropy). What evolution says goes against scientific knowledge. That organisms are growing more complex after birth, despite natural, genetic mutations and a decline in cellular reproduction integrity. When you make a copy of something, then use that to make another copy, eventually the copies will fade to nothing! A cell is like the original copy, but each replicated cell, being slightly less perfect that the original, begins to break down. Mutations are not an evolving process, but a weakening of the organism. Mutations are caused by a decay in the genetic DNA code, induced by the rigors of time and by what each DNA clock is set for.
ARCHEOLOGISTS/ANTHROPOLOGISTS
Evolutionary anthropologists say that the Stone Age lasted for at least 100,000 years, during which time the world population of Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men was roughly constant, between one and 10 million. All that time they were burying their dead with artifacts. By this scenario, they would have buried at least four billion bodies. If the evolutionary time-scale is correct, buried human bones should be able to last for much longer than 100,000 years, like the dinosaurs presumably have, so many of the supposed four billion Stone Age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). There should be or fossils of humans or any other spec
SCIENTISTS
Over 40% of scientists & 90% of astronomers not only believe in God, but that same percentage believes that God answers prayer (Guideposts, Dec. 06). Science should not conflict with belief in God, but it in fact points to a Creator.
The processes of life are so complex that they point to some intelligent design and thus require an Intelligent Designer. The odds of life evolving are equally as staggering as the prophetic fulfillments of Jesus Christ. This indicates deliberate, intentional design, not random, chaotic “hit and miss” genomes.
How the Carbon Clock Works
Carbon has unique properties that are essential for life on earth. Familiar to us as the black substance in charred wood, as diamonds, and the graphite in "lead" pencils, carbon comes in several forms, or isotopes. One rare form has atoms that are 14 times as heavy as hydrogen atoms: carbon-14, or 14C, or radiocarbon. Carbon-14 is made when cosmic rays knock neutrons out of atomic nuclei in the upper atmosphere. These displaced neutrons, now moving fast, hit ordinary nitrogen (14N) at lower altitudes, converting it into 14C. Unlike common carbon (12C), 14C is unstable and slowly decays, changing it back to nitrogen and releasing energy. This instability makes it radioactive.
Ordinary carbon (12C)is found in the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air, which is taken up by plants, which in turn are eaten by animals. So a bone, or a leaf or a tree, or even a piece of wooden furniture, contains carbon. When the 14C has been formed, like ordinary carbon (12C), it combines with oxygen to give carbon dioxide (14CO2), and so it also gets cycled through the cells of plants and animals.
We can take a sample of air, count how many 12C atoms there are for every 14C atom, and calculate the 14C/12C ratio. Because 14C is so well mixed up with 12C, we expect to find that this ratio is the same if we sample a leaf from a tree, or a part of your body. In living things, although 14C atoms are constantly changing back to 14N, they are still exchanging carbon with their surroundings, so the mixture remains about the same as in the atmosphere. However, as soon as a plant or animal dies, the 14C atoms which decay are no longer replaced, so the amount of 14C in that once-living thing decreases as time goes on. In other words, the 14C/12C ratio gets smaller. So, we have a "clock" which starts ticking the moment something dies. Obviously, this works only for things which were once living. Not so for rocks, which even over thousands of years, have fairly constant rates of 14C to 12C, whether they are volcanic or igneous rocks. Rocks can accumulate C14 atoms from surrounding rocks, plants, animals or water. They can just as easily lose much of their C14 from floods, burials and cataclysmic events (ie, volcanoes). This skews the isotropic C14 to C12 ratio test results.