A review of physicist Paul Davies’s book, The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Finally Solving the Mystery of Life makes a key point about claims about solving the mystery of the origin of life.
Somewhere I had picked up the impression that Davies was sort of ‘on the ideological fence’ – a Materialist with reserved doubts about Materialism and therefore genuinely open to Theism. Maybe that was because Davies had been awarded the Templeton Prize. Whatever the reason, clearly my impression was wrong. As I progressed through Demon, I realized that if Davies was straddling the ideological fence this was being done solely for optics – perhaps to appeal to both camps. In fact, Davies is deep-seated in Materialistic Darwinism. Throughout Demon, Davies injects comments always in support of the Materialistic Darwinist position.
For instance, on page 61 Davies is speaking of RNA transcription and mentions the fact that there are occasional errors in that process. Davies comments, “Which is good: remember, errors are the drivers of Darwinian evolution.” Davies is referring to the Darwinist belief that errors generate variations and then natural selection ‘selects’ those variations that are ‘best fit’ (the “survival of the fittest” story).
Jorge Fernandez, “Review: Demon in the Machine” at Access Research Network
See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips – origin of life What we do and don’t know about the origin of life.