In response to this blog, I answer that it is true that all attempts at inventing life randomly have come up short, as have all attempts at creating life lawfully. The paradox is that neither chance nor order can explain what we observe. Yet this does not mean that OOL research is “flatlined”, for we are learning a great deal, even as we discover what doesn’t work–as Edison famously said.Darwin undoubtedly believed in the fecundity of primordial ooze, yet 150 years of study have shown both the complexity and fragility of that polysaccharide glycopeptide. The biologist Jacques Monod may claim that his OOL research has led him to the Abyss of meaninglessness where a faith in Man’s existence was his only support, but today the Abyss is ever deeper and the supports are ever more divine.
It will be OOL research, I feel, that breaks down the barrier between Intelligent Design and Darwinism. For it is only at OOL that the Darwinist acknowledges the unscaleable odds and his incapacity to conquer them. And it is also only at OOL that the ID acknowledges his own inability to fathom the intelligence that brought this divine design into progressive existence. As I said, the two sides will meet when they both acknowledge their profound infirmity of thought and theology.
And that is why OOL research will never be flatlined.