Well adapted to the believability of mainstream claims:
We’re often told that origin of life experiments have simulated the production of life’s building blocks under conditions that mimicked the early earth. Or at least that’s what many textbooks say. But is this really true? This video shows how origin of life researchers “cheat” by using purified chemicals that don’t reproduce actual natural conditions. Another dirty little secret is that prebiotic synthesis experiments often don’t report the bulk of the product: toxic garbage that destroys the building blocks’ ability to form more complex molecules. Watch this video to appreciate how origin of life experiments don’t come anywhere close to accounting for the vast complexity of biology. This is the first of several episodes about the origin of life presented as part of the Long Story Short series.
Rob Stadler, “Tonight, New “Long Story Short” Video Delivers a Dose of Reality for Origin-of-Life Researchers” at Evolution News and Science Today (August 17, 2021)
The thing to see here is that origin of life is history, not science. That point is often missed. Science is about how laws act in nature; history is about the details of what actually happened.
If you want to know how life originated, you want to know history. It may or may not be accessible. We might never know how life originated for the same reasons as we may never know whether Neanderthal man had a religion. Anything anyone says on the subject is conjecture or ideology, not evidence.
You may also wish to read: Microbial fossils found at 3.4 billion years ago at the sub sea floor level. It’s not entirely clear that these were life forms but if they were, it’s further evidence that life got started pretty much when the planet cooled and not, apparently, as a result of some long, slow, Darwinian process.
This video is an excellent, easy to understand, summary of the (very) disingenuous way in which Atheists ‘sell’ their false narrative of a completely naturalistic Origin of Life.
For a deeper dive into the technical details discussed in the video, I recommend Dr. James Tour’s fairly recent lecture series on this topic.
7 – Peptides: https://youtu.be/0Hv6KjB0j8Y
8 – Nucleotides: https://youtu.be/CYiguQYCSio
9 – Intermediate Summary & a Call to Colleagues: https://youtu.be/ImPxfmKrmoY
10 – Lipids: https://youtu.be/QTQd5Ifqv2g
11 – Chiral-induced Spin Selectivity: https://youtu.be/VKEZSfuMgL0
12.1 – Cell Construction & The Assembly Problem, Part 1: https://youtu.be/IaJo5jWs_6k
12.2 – Cell Construction & The Assembly Problem, Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDayvhch_W4&list=PLILWudw_84t2THBvJZFyuLA0qvxwrIBDr&index=3
The main problem for Darwinists in explaining the Origin of Life, (and the main problem for Darwinian evolution in general), is explaining where the information in life came from.
Darwinian atheists simply have no clue how inanimate matter can possibly generate information. As Werner Gitt noted, “,,,there is no known law of nature and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter. ”
And as Paul Davies explained, “,,,in the same way that Chalmers identified qualia as central to the hard problem of consciousness. To that end we propose that the hard problem of life is the problem of how ‘information’ can affect the world.”
As Paul Davies also mentioned, “There are some indications for a potentially deep connection between information theory,,,, and thermodynamics, which is a branch of physics(5) due to the mathematical relationship between Shannon and Boltzmann entropies.”
And this ‘deep connection’ between entropy and information has now been experimentally realized.
As the following 2010 experiment found, “they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information.”
As Christopher Jarzynski, who was instrumental in formulating the ‘equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information’, stated, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
In. short, it is now experimentally shown that, when dealing with immaterial information, we are not dealing with some abstract, non-physical, entity that has no causal effect on the material world but are in fact deal with an immaterial entity that has a quanta-unquote “thermodynamic content”.
Even more provocative than that experimental finding that linked together entropy and information, advances in quantum information theory have now shown that, quote-unquote, “an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer”
And as the following article 2017 stated, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
To repeat that last statement, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”
That statement is simply completely devastating to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, and is a full vindication of the presuppositions of Intelligent Design where it is held that only an Intelligent Mind has the capacity to create the information needed to explain life.
How much information is needed to explain the origin of a ’simple’ cell? Well, the information needed to be imparted into a system, by an intelligent ‘observer’, in order to bring the system far enough out of thermodynamic equilibrium in order to sustain life, is found to be immense.
The information content of a ‘simple cell’ when working from the thermodynamic perspective is found to be on the order of 10^12 bits,
,,, Of note: 10^12 bits is equivalent to approx. 100 million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Moreover, besides the OOL requiring a vast amount of information, the information needed to explain embryological developement is also found to be immense.
Specifically, “the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.”
While we are on the subject of information and life, it is also interesting to note that, long before Darwinists even realized that it is immaterial information that is ‘running the show’ in life, that Christianity ‘predicted’ that life had an ‘author’.
Moreover, to show that it is indeed God who is imparting this massive amount of immaterial information into the first life, as well as imparting the massive amount of information into each individual human during embryological development, (in order to ‘locally’ circumvent the second law with immaterial information), I can appeal to advances in quantum biology.
Specifically, Quantum Entanglement/Coherence, and/or Quantum Criticality, is found to be ubiquitous within life. i.e. It is found within every important biomolecule of life.
As the following 2015 article entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules”, stated, “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
And as this follow up article in 2018 stated, “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
As well, DNA itself does not belong to the world of classical mechanics but instead belongs to the world of quantum mechanics. In the following video, at the 22:20 minute mark, Dr Rieper shows why the high temperatures of biological systems do not prevent DNA from having quantum entanglement and then at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper goes on to remark that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.
The interesting thing about quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement is that quantum entanglement is a non-local, beyond space and time, effect that is shown to require a beyond space and time cause in order to explain its existence.
As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, and with the falsification of ‘hidden variables’, simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the non-local quantum coherence and/or entanglement that is now found to be ubiquitous within biology.
Whereas I, as a Christian Theist, readily do have a beyond space and time cause that I can appeal to in order to explain quantum entanglement and/or quantum information. As Colossians 1:17 states, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Moreover, quantum information, like energy, is conserved. As the following article states, “In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.”
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, (i.e. beyond space and time), and ‘conserved’, (i.e. cannot be created nor destroyed), quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, “the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Verses:
the origin of life … Darwinian clowns are nowhere close to explain the origin of life… actually, with every new discovery, they are further away than ever …
But the is not the main problem…. the main problem is, that Darwinists are nowhere close to create a simplest cell in their fancy labs … let alone to create a simplest life … we are stupid creationists/ ID proponents… so Darwinists, please finally show us how it could be done …. use your fancy labs, use any tool, any technology, …. i personally don’t mind what way, … just show me how you create a simple cell … show me how to create that very poor design …
I am wanting to hear Sev, Bob-oh and Chucky d give their rebuttal to this video. Maybe they will wait for “professor” Dave to explain 😉 😉
Again, I don’t see a big problem with spontaneous origins of life, from non life.
1. The DNA system is an information processing system.
2. The human mind is also an information processing system.
3. Therefore reasonably the human mind is mainly an extension of the DNA system, and less a development of it, like arms and kidneys are developments.
4. Therefore how the human mind works fundamentally, is the same as how the DNA system works fundamentally.
5. I have direct evidence of how the human mind works, I have one. And my sense of how the human mind fundamentally works is, that it is alike a universe in it’s own right. Ordered in logically efficient steps away from zero / nothing. Things can be copied to the human mind from the universe proper, and things can be created in it, de novo.
6. Therefore the human mind and the DNA system, have the same fundamental mathematical ordering as the universe proper.
7. As is also backed up by parsimony, makng it the default theory, and by empirical evidence.
8. Therefore because the mathematical ordering of the DNA system is the same as the fundamental mathematical ordering of the universe proper, the ordering of the DNA system would only have to be copied from the fundamental ordering of the universe, and this seems easy. Therefore it is probable that life can originate spontaneously, from non living matter.
9. Which does not deny that it is possible that life is generated by a “poof” mechanism, creating organisms fully formed. Which theory also has credence for some reasons.
zweston 🙂
I just scanned through the 200+ comments and the impact is strong, to say the least.
The Miller-Urey experiment simulated the conditions that were thought at the time (1952) to exist on the very early Earth. It’s purpose was to test the hypothesis that organic molecules could be synthesized through natural processes under such conditions. That was all.
It worked. Over 20 amino acids were formed in the experiments.
Did it provide a comprehensive, abiogenetic theory of the origins of life? No, of course not. But apart from creationists, who have their own reasons for exaggerating its success, no one thought it did.
Because it is not a valid point. In both history and science, researchers attempt to create explanatory narratives or hypotheses to account for observational data.
For example, there is no one alive today who was an eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg. Yet there is no doubt that such an event occurred in the nineteenth century American Civil War because of the mass of data we have as evidence for it.
Far less certain is the fate of the Roman Ninth Legion in the second century AD Britain because the data is so sparse
Astrophysicists do exactly the same thing when compiling observational data of the likes of the expansion of the Universe and the cosmic microwave background radiation and infer that the Universe came into existence around 14.8 bn years ago in an event known as the Big Bang.
No human being was around to witness it – probably no living thing was – but that does not prevent us from gathering whatever data we can and trying to fit narratives around them.
The real difference is not so much between history and science as it is between how much data we have and consequently how much confidence we can have in our explanations of it.
Seversky, thanks for the post- we already know that your Faith is very strong. Your Darwin-god would be proud of you.
Scientists are in lose-lose situation : if they can’t create a cell is obviously that complexity is outside of human understanding that means there is a type of intelligence more advanced that designed the life . If they would create a cell will be considered that the cell is intelligently designed by the minds of scientists. Either way life can be designed only as an activity of an intelligence.
🙂 Who knows what speed of light was in the past when the universe was in shipyard when not all the universal laws were in place as they are today ? Answer :Nobody. Therefore all the hypotheses of origins are just religious ideas. We only have to chose which religious hypothesis is more credible.
LCD @11
sure… because life was intelligently designed… and they already know that … so they deserve to lose…
i as an engineer also think, that OOL-scientists take the wrong approach… I doubt that whoever created the cell was pouring, mixing and heating some chemicals. To create a self-replicating technology which lasted to replicate for 3.5 billions of years, indeed, this is “outside of human understanding” …
So ID is (at best) history and not science then. Got it.
Bob quips, “So ID is (at best) history and not science then. Got it.”
Yet Intelligent Design, as a ‘historical science’, uses the same exact method of ‘scientific reasoning’ that Charles Darwin himself used, and, (in light of scientific facts that Darwin did not even know about in his day), comes to a very different conclusion than Darwin did.
As Stephen Meyer explains,
Of semi-related note, Christianity just so happened to ‘predict’ that life had an author long before anyone even knew about DNA.
ba77 – your gripe is with Denyse not me: she’s the one who gave that idiosyncratic definition of science.
Bob O’H:
ID offers the only scientific explanation for our existence. But you wouldn’t know because you don’t seem to understand science.
Nature can produce stones yet nature cannot produce Stonehenge. It would be easier for nature to produce Stonehenge than it would be for nature to produce life. And it is impossible for nature to produce Stonehenge.
Here it is, 2021, and still not ONE peer reviewed paper that supports a naturalistic abiogenesis or evolution by means of blind and mindless processes- unless you count genetic diseases and deformities.
Although Dr. Meyer has, in the past, charitably conceded that Darwinian evolution qualifies as a science, or at least conceded that it qualifies as a testable scientific hypothesis, I myself, personally, find that Darwinian evolution is not now, nor has it ever been, a true and testable science but that Darwinian evolution, instead, firmly belongs in the realm of pseudoscience, even in the realm of a being faith based religion for atheists, rather than belonging in the realm of a true and testable science.
The key, and primary, step that brought modern science into the world was when Francis Bacon, a devout Christian, championed ‘bottom-up’ inductive reasoning over and above the ‘top-down’ deductive reasoning that had been the dominate form of reasoning that had been in place since the times of the Ancient Greek philosophers.
In. short, and as Henry F. Schaefer explains, “The emergence of modern science was associated with a disdain for the rationalism of Greek philosophers who pronounced on how the world should behave, with insufficient attention to how the world in fact did behave.”
The reason why Francis Bacon championed inductive reasoning over and above deductive reasoning was because Bacon, via his Christianity, held that, due to humanity’s fallen, sinful, nature, the human intellect, “could not be trusted to generate knowledge that was in any way free from bias, wrong presuppositions, or contradictions.,,,”
And indeed, repeated experimentation, ever since it was first set forth by Francis Bacon, has been the cornerstone of the scientific method. And has indeed been very, very, fruitful for man in gaining accurate knowledge of the universe in that repeated experiments lead to more “exacting, and illuminating”, conclusions than is possible with the quote-unquote, “educated guesses” that follow from Aristotle’s deductive form of reasoning.
And, (in what should not be surprising for anyone who has debated Darwinists for any length of time), it turns out that Darwinian evolution itself is not based on Bacon’s Inductive form of reasoning, (which is too say that Darwin’s theory itself is not based on the scientific method), but Darwin’s theory is instead based, in large measure, on the Deductive form of reasoning that Bacon had specifically shunned because of the fallibleness of man’s fallen, sinful, nature.
As Dr. Richard Nelson noted in his book ‘Darwin, Then and Now’, Charles Darwin, in his book ‘Origin of Species’, “selected the deductive method of reasoning – and abandoned the inductive method of reasoning.”
In fact, Richard Owen, in a review of Charles Darwin’s book shortly after it was published, had found that Charles Darwin, as far as inductive methodology itself was concerned, had failed to produce any “inductive original research which might issue in throwing light on ‘that mystery of mysteries.’.
In other words, Darwin had failed to produce any original experimental research that might support his theory for the “Origin of Species”.
And on top of Richard Owen’s rather mild rebuke of Darwin for failing to use inductive methodology, Adam Sedgwick was nothing less than scathing of Darwin for deserting, “after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth – the true method of induction, and started us in machinery as wild, I think, as Bishop Wilkins’s locomotive that was to sail with us to the moon.”
OUCH! That had to leave a mark! 🙂
Moreover, Adam Sedgwick also called Darwin out for being deceptive in exactly what form of reasoning he was using in his book. Specifically Sedgwick scolded Darwin that “Many of your wide conclusions are based upon assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved, why then express them in the language and arrangement of philosophical induction?”
And it was not as if Darwin was ignorant of the fact that he had failed to follow Bacon’s inductive methodology when he wrote his book.
Charles Darwin himself, two years prior to the publication of his book, confessed to a friend that “What you hint at generally is very very true, that my work will be grievously hypothetical & large parts by no means worthy of being called inductive; my commonest error being probably induction from too few facts.”
In fact, just two weeks before Darwin’s book was to be published, Darwin’s brother, Erasmus, told Darwin, “In fact, the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts [evidence] won’t fit, why so much the worse for the facts, in my feeling.”
In short, when Darwin published his book, and in regards to inductive reasoning itself, Darwin did not do, or have, any original experimental research that would actually establish his theory as being scientifically true. i.e. Darwin had failed to use the scientific method!
And now, over a century and a half later, the situation still has not changed for Darwinists who, ironically, proclaim ‘I believe in science”.
To this day, Darwinists still have no experimental research that would establish Darwin’s theory as being scientifically true,
As Dr Richard Nelson further noted in his book’ Darwin, Then and Now’, “After 150 years of research,,, the scientific evidence is clear: there are no “successive, slight” changes in the fossil record, embryology, molecular biology, or genetics to support Darwinism or neo-Darwinism.”
In fact, not only do Darwinists still not have any experimental evidence that would establish their hypothesis as being true, or even establishing their hypothesis as being feasible, Darwinists, like ostriches sticking their head in the sand, blatantly ignore many lines of experimental evidence that falsify their hypothesis as being true.
A key principle in the inductive methodology of Francis Bacon, (where repeated experimentation plays a fundamental role in gaining accurate knowledge about the world), is if your hypothesis can withstand falsification from repeated experimentation (Karl Popper).
As Richard Feynman, who formulated Quantum-Electrodynamics, himself stated, “If it (your hypothesis) disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”
Darwinists, in blatant disregard for the scientific method itself, simply ignore many lines of empirical evidence that have now directly falsified their theory as being true.
Here are a few falsifications of Darwin’s theory that Darwinists, (such as Seversky and Bob O’H) simply refuse to ever accept as falsifications of their theory,
Verse:
As if that was not bad enough for Darwinists, by any other reasonable measure that one may wish to judge whether Darwinian evolution even qualifies as a science, as is shown in the following video, Darwinian evolution fails to meet those criteria as well:
Simply put, Darwinian evolution simply fails to qualify as a rigorous and testable science by any reasonable measure one may wish to invoke and is therefore more properly classified as a pseudoscience, even as a religion for atheists, rather than being classified as a real and testable science.
Moreover, contrary to what many people have been falsely led to believe by Darwinian atheists about Intelligent Design supposedly being a pseudo-science, the fact of the matter is that all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of methodological naturalism as Darwinists falsely claim..
Moreover, If science is artificially forced into this materialistic straightjacket of methodological naturalism, (where, prior to scientific investigation, all answers are forced into some sort of materialistic, natural, and/or physical explanation), then this artificial naturalistic straightjacket on scientific inquiry, that is forced onto science prior to any investigation, ends up driving science itself into catastrophic epistemological failure.
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist may firmly believe that he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic/Darwinian materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
That is not even wrong. The OoL is part of science. Science is about how things came to be. Science is not just about how laws act in nature- see archaeology and forensic science. History isn’t about any details unless those details were documented. It takes science to tease out the details where there isn’t any documentation.
Bob O’H at 15, “your gripe is with Denyse not me: she’s the one who gave that idiosyncratic definition of science.”
I thought that it was fairly clear that I did not agree with Denyse’s ‘idiosyncratic definition of science’ since I directly quoted Stephen Meyer, (who has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge), in regards to what constitutes the methodology of ‘historical science’. i.e. ‘inference to the best explanation’.
As well, I also thought it was fairly clear that my ‘gripe’ is now, and always has been, with Darwinian Atheists, such as yourself, who continue to propagate the pseudo-scientific garbage of Darwinian evolution as if it were true despite being contradicted by the scientific evidence, at every turn, time and time again.
I am far more forgiving of the minor slips that ID advocates may have in regard to properly defining science, (which is a fairly complicated definition to hash out), than I am of Darwinian atheists who have systematically, via censorship and intimidation, forced their atheistic, pseudo-scientific, and religious garbage upon unwary school children in public schools
How does one come to that assessment?
ID is about logic applied to facts to come to conclusions on how those facts arose. Those facts could be historical facts or facts of physical processes or results from experiments.
ID is not a science per se but uses the results from science to come to the best explanation for the findings of science. So ID and science are intertwined but one is not the other.
In terms of science and ID is the unusual facts about the Earth.
The science is the findings about the properties of Earth. ID is a conclusion about why these facts exist.
https://www.hillfaith.org/agnosticism/think-about-this-the-goldilocks-principle-and-earth/
Aside: this site references a young earth apologetics site. However, the conclusions of this analysis are not dependent on acceptance of a young earth scenario.
Jerry @23
ID proponents/creationists believe in something that makes lots of sense, especially in 21st century.
And then, there are the other guys … Darwinists
i never understood what Darwinian OOL-researchers want to figure out …
By now they know, that even in simplest cell, there are thousands of parts/molecules working in concern for a purpose …
Do Darwinian researchers really expect, that when they mix, heat up and cool down some chemicals that these chemicals suddenly start working in concert for a purpose ?
What do these guys actually expect ????
Jerry @ 23 – according to Denyse, “[s]cience is about how laws act in nature”. If there is one thing ID doesn’t do, it is describing how laws act in nature: on core claim is that ID doesn’t investigate the designer or how the designer does things. So, by Denyse’s definition, ID can’t be science.
This should probably be filed under “With friends like these…”.
Did you read what I wrote?
I have zero problem with what Denise wrote and what I wrote is also accurate. Origin of life investigation is not science. It’s at best futile speculation.
It is so absurd …
The most advanced technology on Earth (perhaps in whole Universe) is being researched by a group of natural science graduates (Biologists)
No wonder that biologists claim the most absurd things imaginable …
Bob O’H:
What an ignorant thing to say. Of course ID describes how the laws act in nature. And ID is about the DESIGN. Only ignorant fools think that ID needs to say anything about the Designer.