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I'm PROUD to have descended from
slime.
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Letter received
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My response
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Right. I'm a scientist and I get pissed off when I see poor science used to convince people who can't otherwise judge whether a statement is true or incorrectly reasoned.
For starters, get this right - life as we know it developed through many forms. The first forms were complex chemicals. Their components have already been shown to exist naturally, for example amino acids can been produced in the lab with an electrical current being passed through a mix of gases which might have been found in a primal atmostphere. These chemicals arose through CHANCE. It is not too hard to believe that with a long period of time, and the whole earth as a test tube that this happened. These aquired the ability to replicate and through SELECTION of those which replicated the fastest, and therefore gained access to the most resources they gained in complexity.
With the greatest period of the earths history, life was very simple. In fact, for over 3 billion years bacteria were the most complex organisms to have evolved.
Now, with the NUMBER of bacteria swarming through earths seas and the TIME to evolve, they did so. With the results that you see today... some bacterial developed the biochemical pathways to utilise the suns energy. These are the cyanobacteria and their descendants, plants. These bacteria rapidly poisoned the earth's atmosphere until another type of bacteria developed a means to use this poisonous Oxygen
Ok, ok, ok. You can read this anywhere. Your logic was indeed correct that, if life evolved AT ONCE to the complexity that you see around you then it would be ludicrous to imagine as well being highly improbable. (can I remind you that this is the creationist viewpoint...thinking about that are we?) however, with evolution through selection we have a simple system gaining in complexity.
Oh, and by the way. The next time someone dies of cancer because it no longer responds to chemotherapy, please remind them that there is no such thing as a drug-resistant cancer, as no such animal exists - as it would have had to have EVOLVED from the original cancer much the same way a cancer EVOLVES from a normal cell.
THe irony is that if you knew how truly complex even a bacteria is then you would probably never change in your views.
Get an education before you try this again. |
Thanks for your letter. I enjoy a good challenge. Believe it or not, you and I have quite a bit in common here. I too get very disturbed when I see poor science and logic being used to convince people who can't otherwise judge whether a statement is true or incorrectly reasoned. Unfortunately I see it all the time in leading scientific publications and TV shows on science and nature. Over the years I've found that scientists are just as guilty of choosing pride in their own beliefs as people in any other field of endeavor. In my site, I try to ask the questions that challenge people to think fully about what they've been taught or blindly accept within their belief system.
I'm always happy to make corrections to my site, and have done so in the past, whenever presented with appropriate evidence and reason. With your involvement in cancer and DNA research, you undoubtedly have more knowledge in this area than I do, so I'm sincerely willing to listen and learn. I appreciated your letter, but it seems that you really only presented
constructs from your belief system, not scientific evidence and logic. Please help me to understand your support for the statements you made:
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These chemicals arose through CHANCE. It is not too hard to believe that with a long period of time, and the whole earth as a test tube that this happened.
Life is supposed to have started in the oceans, which occupy three-quarters of the Earth's surface, right? Let's look at that test tube:
It's almost entirely water, an almost universal solvent that can dissolve many chemicals and wear away mountains.
Three percent of the ocean water by weight is sodium chloride, a very corrosive chemical.
This solution is continually agitated by the Earth's motion. The chemicals and molecules that represent life represent a very small part of the solution.
Help me with this question: If you put a weak concentration of amino acids or other basic organic chemicals in a saline solution and agitate the solution mildly, what happens? Do your own observation and logic tell you that they will break down or at least disperse throughout the solution into equilibrium? What do you observe that gives you reason to believe that they would continually aggregate into more complex chemical compounds and then into life?
It may not be hard for you to believe that life occurred by chance, but it is for me, based on mathematics, chemistry and physics. Is our difference in opinions due to evidence and reason or is it just based on differing underlying belief systems? I can perhaps accept that amino acids arose through chance, but, with the degree of expertise you have in this field, you know better than I the HUGE difference between simple amino acids and DNA and between DNA and a functioning cell. Isn't saying that life formed on its own because amino acids happened by chance akin to saying the pyramids of Egypt formed on their own because granite formed naturally by chance? Did you see my page on this issue at
http://evolutionoftruth.com/
evo/evogene.htm? Who's presenting the "poor science and logic" here that you so detest: Me or those who make a huge leap of faith that goes beyond logic and evidence in stating that chemicals came together on their own to form living cells?
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Their components have already been shown to exist naturally, for example amino acids can been produced in the lab with an electrical current being passed through a mix of gases which MIGHT have been found in a primal
atmosphere.
You say that they have been SHOWN to exist "naturally," but is there any proof of this or is it just a supposition based on a system (i.e., Miller-Urey) that was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to produce the desired result to support the conclusion you and others wish to hold? How does that make it NATURAL? Isn't there a great degree of disagreement in the scientific community as to whether the Miller-Urey primal atmosphere is even a good model? Why do the origins of life keep changing? First it was organic soup, then it was undersea thermal vents and now the latest thinking is that it was seeded by comets. (Scientific American, July 1999) Is this good objective science or just creative conjecture?
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Regarding the part on chemicals acquiring the ability to replicate, evolve, etc:
How does this square with the work of Louis Pasteur and the universally accepted scientific fact that spontaneous generation of life from inanimate material is a fallacy and that living organisms only come from living organisms? If all this happened so simply in the past and is so "natural" why don't we see ANY examples of inanimate matter forming to produce life today? Yes, I understand the line of reasoning that the oceans weren't just water and salt, maybe, the atmosphere was different, maybe, comets seeded life, maybe, etc., but is it really even logical to assume that chemicals would form structures complex enough to be alive, embodying technology and intelligence, when everything else we observe in the universe tends towards lower states of energy and more randomness? Why did this happen in contradiction to what we observe? Is this truly supported by scientific evidence and reason or is it just the belief system required of one who wants to rationalize life without Intelligent Design in the equation?
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Life as we know it developed through many forms. The first forms were complex chemicals.
How do you KNOW this? It certainly isn't based on observation unless you're a WHOLE lot older than you look. Is this simply what you were taught and chose to believe or can you offer evidence and reason to support this statement?
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On the immense complexity of even a bacteria. You're absolutely right. The simplest living cell is an
phenomenally incredible piece of biological machinery, with scores of interdependent components and systems for respiration, reproduction, digestion, etc. Take any part of it away and you no longer have life. So: How did the first cell come into existence? I've never heard anyone who can articulate a logical scenario for the creation of the first cell, but I would be absolutely fascinated to hear one that goes beyond the broad brush approach of saying that chemicals just kept on doing this and that naturally on their own until it somehow happened.
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I used to believe everything you said in your letter, but now I really have my doubts about the underlying credibility of what science teaches today about life's origins. Is it really based in evidence and reason or is it just conjecture, a creation story from AbioGenesis 1:1 for atheists, agnostics and others who think that this is what they are supposed to believe if they are to be accepted by their peers in the scientific and academic communities? Is the evidence really strong enough that you think this story will hold for five hundred years when we see the "facts" continually changing?
I don't understand exactly what you do at Melbourne, but I have no doubt, based on the listing of your involvement in "DNA Repair," that you must know a heck of a lot more about DNA and the cell than I ever will. Still, I have many unanswered questions and much of what I see coming from the scientific community on life's origins seems to be based on what everyone thinks they're supposed to believe rather than the quality of evidence and reasoning that is demanded in other fields of science and that brought science to become such an incredible tool for acquiring knowledge. Have we even considered the alternate hypothesis in this case? I'm sincerely interested to know your thoughts on this and am sincere in my statement that I will change my site if presented with appropriate evidence and reason.
Best regards,
Gary
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In response to your reply...
Life is supposed to have started in the oceans, ... It's almost entirely water, an almost universal solvent that can dissolve many chemicals and wear away mountains. Three percent of the ocean water by weight is sodium chloride, a very corrosive chemical. This solution is continually agitated by the Earth's motion. The chemicals and molecules that represent life represent a very small part of the solution.
Help me with this question: If you put a weak concentration of amino acids or other basic organic chemicals in a saline solution and agitate the solution mildly, what happens? Do your own observation and logic tell you that they will break down or at least disperse throughout the solution into equilibrium? What do you observe that gives you reason to believe that they would continually aggregate into more complex chemical compounds and then into life?
In reply, I'd firstly like to state that sodium chloride is not a 'very corrosive chemical'. True, metals rust faster in salt water, but that's because of the redox reactions that occur in this medium. The elemental forms of both of these elements are incredibly reactive but as ions they are relatively inert.
The reductionist method of analysing a situation is a good one, and frequently used in constructing a model of a complex situation (and what could be more complex than modelling life?). However, to start with, the model will be based on a few assumptions that simplify the equation. These assumptions must be reasonable and fairly accurate. Once the model has been constructed, it is tested and refined. A bit like evolution...
To assume that some amino acids in saline will react to form the progenitor of life in a test tube, or at least react in a way that forms interesting products is too large a leap and inaccurate.
The real model should be thus... a) we have an reducing environment with a dilute source of simple hydrocarbons (fats, some simple amino acids, 4 nucleic acids, probably the NTP variety) b) we have a souce of energy (heat, electricity, chemical) c) we have a catalyst present that enriches the solution and provides a solid subrate for reactions to occur.
Clay has been proposed to be once good catalyst for more complex reactions. It has a very charged surface with an enormous surface area. Charged molecules will adhere to its surface and thus be positioned for reacting with their neighbours. Another way to provide a local enrichment of organic molecules is to form a miscele of lipids (fat with a charged head group) around a replicating molecule. Diffusion of small molecules (sugars, amino acids, nuceic acids) through the hydrophobic barrier of the miscelle is permitted but once inside, they can react to form larger compounds which are no longer free to diffuse.
Thus, from a test tube with saline and a few amino acids and a 'corrosive' enironment we move to a model of a more complex chemical mixture which is propelled towards local equilibriums (instead of a global one such as an even diffusion) by catalysts and fatty 'bags'.
Hmmm. And as for this comment " Is our difference in opinions due to evidence and reason or is it just based on differing underlying belief systems? "
At least my 'belief system' is testable. If you are going to use science to 'prove' creation, you need to be able to test it. There are many examples of evolving systems but I don't think I've ever heard of a good 'God' theorem. in fact, if there is one thing that a scientist loves, its reducing an 'accepted' paradigm (read: belief system) to rubble.
How does this square with the work of Louis Pasteur and the universally accepted scientific fact that spontaneous generation of life from inanimate material is a fallacy and that living organisms only come from living organisms? If all this happened so simply in the past and is so "natural"
why don't we see ANY examples of inanimate matter forming to produce life today?
Life is not so common to evolve on the benchtop. I'm not saying this. It took a short period of time for life to appear in the primordial earth, but this is measured in geological terms - it was still something like a billion years before we see evidence of primitive life. a BILLION years. Pasteur's contribution was to show that there was no spontaneous generation of life which was one thought at the time. Obviously, for life to develop in a few hundred years in an inert beaker on a benchtop (some of the flasks that he sterilised still remain so) is quite different from the case that I make.
Again, due to the conserved nature of common biological processes (the genetic code, gene transcription and protein translation) life appears to have only evolved once. However, life once evolved is incredibly agressive in terms of environments habitated and colonised. Any 'second chance' at life is going to find it difficult to even establish a foothold in an envirnoment where a more complex form sees it as food, and has the digestive enzymes to metabolise both it and any resources it may require nearby.
Can I also say that I'm PROUD to have descended from slime and more recently, apes? I think that the bootstrapping ability of life, and ultimately intelligence is far more impressive than to be simply 'made'. Who would you respect more? A self-made man or one who has had a silver-spoon upbringing?
I'm not a christian hater (I am in fact christian, I think that the values are an excellent rule to hold one's life to) so I don't go out christian-bashing. But I don't like it when science is used to support what should otherwise be a personal faith in a deity. Especially when the reasoning is usually one-sided - 'logic' is used to attempt to weaken a scientific viewpoint on the origin and development of life but then never applied to the opposing creationist view of an unknown power who has powers which defy physics and is supposed to have brought all of existance into being pre-formed and apparently quite recently as well. I don't know - how logical does that sound? There are a lot of suppositions there. And testable? Not at all. Well, it could be, but so far ALL the scientific evidence is against it. Read it again - ALL. We have the fossil and geological records as well as a few dozen genomes sequenced. We also have time travel in a sense with astronomy which is able to gaze back billions of years in our past.
The bible is NOT an authoritive scientific source on these matters. If it contained a few chapters in the New Testament on 'The behaviour of very small pieces of matter' or 'the pattern of inheritance as revealed to me by my Father' then it might be talking the same language - but it doesn't.
By all means, keep your own personal faith, but please don't mix it with what is MEANT to be an objective world view (I agree, it gets subjective sometimes, but it struggles to right itself).
Hope that you had a good Easter. |
Thanks for the reply. I agree that I overrated the corrosiveness of
NaCl and that soil would be in the solution. I concede that you have
much more knowledge of chemistry and biology than I do. Still, while
you've added some complexity to the big test tube model with some
acids, fats, energy and clay as a catalyst, this doesn't even begin to
approach the complexity of even the simplest of bacteria, does
it? Do you really think that what you've stated constitutes a
"scientific proof?" Forgive me if I'm reading this wrong,
but it almost seems as though you think that you don't have a
"belief system" and that because you are a scientist that
anything you can rationalize to your own satisfaction is
"scientific fact." The truth is that we all have
belief systems that influence the way we view and interpret the world.
Consider some of the things you said that reflect the nature of your
biases and your belief system:
"At least my 'belief system' is testable." In truth, your
belief system is impossible to test because life originating from
matter on this planet wasn't observed, hasn't happened since, and
nothing we've done has even comes close to creating life. Your belief
system requires as much, if not more, faith in the unseen forces that
go against what we observe in the universe as any other explanation
for life's origins.
"If there is one thing that a scientist loves, its reducing an
'accepted' paradigm (read: belief system) to rubble." In truth,
you said you were "pissed off" in your first letter, yet
what my site does is challenge an accepted paradigm. I may not have a
sheepskin in the sciences to show for it, but I've studied science most my life and in
my site I apply observation and logical inference to support another
view of life's origins and ask reasonable questions of evolution
theory which have yet to be answered. You still seem to want to
pigeon-hole me and battle me as a young-Earth, six-day creationist,
even though those views are never expressed anywhere in my site, nor
do I use the Bible to prove anything.
"Can I also say that I'm PROUD to have descended from slime
and more recently, apes? I think that the bootstrapping ability of
life, and ultimately intelligence is far more impressive than to be
simply 'made'. Who would you respect more? A self-made man or one who
has had a silver-spoon upbringing?" In truth, you are anything
but self made. You were given life and all your abilities and
potential through no doing of your own. This comment reflects a strong
bias against anything that would relate you to God. How open-minded or
objective can you be in these matters with such a strong bias?
"I am in fact Christian, I think that the values are an
excellent rule to hold one's life to." In truth, the greatest
commandment for a Christian, as given by Jesus Christ in Matthew 22:37
is 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind.' Christianity is, as described by Oswald
Chambers, "not devotion to work, or to a cause, or a doctrine,
but devotion to a person, the Lord Jesus Christ."
"So far ALL the scientific evidence is against it (creation).
Read it again - ALL." In truth, you want to make this a black and
white choice between scientific evolution and young Earth creationism,
but there are many reasonable possibilities in between, much evidence
for Intelligent Design and many highly regarded scientists who
disagree with your beliefs, but you are so unwilling to even consider
other views that the ONLY the evidence you will even consider is that
which supports your existing view.
"I don't like it when science is used to support what should
otherwise be a personal faith in a deity." In truth, this says
that you are not open to the concept of Intelligent Design, even if it
is supported by those in the scientific community. Consider these
words:
The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many
fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the
electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and electron. . . .
The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have
been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.
STEPHEN HAWKING
Atheists all over the world have... called upon science as their
crown witness against the existence of God. But as they try, with
arrogant abuse of scientific reasoning, to render proof there is no
God, the simple and enlightening truth is that their arguments
boomerang. For one of the most fundamental laws of natural science is
that nothing in the physical world ever happens without a cause. There
simply cannot be a creation without some kind of Spiritual Creator.
DR. WERNER VON BRAUN
I know you can find contradictory quotes and I don't intend any of
this as a proof of God or creation by Him. I just hope that you see
that your views are very definitely influenced by a belief system that
has a strong predisposition against God having much of a hand in
creation or in your life. With that foundation, there's no way you can
be objective in your interpretation of evidence. Your beliefs aren't
even universally accepted by the scientific community, so what is the
true basis by which you hold them?
Pretend for a second that you just arrived in this universe and had
no preconceived biases against God. What would you observe:
- Matter in the universe tends towards randomness and lower states
of energy, yet life is based on incredibly complex structures and
interdependent systems.
- Cause and effect is the basis for observable events, so if life
is the outcome what is the cause?
- The universe itself is precisely tuned to allow the development
of life, from the fundamental properties of water and carbon, to
the forces of the universe to the precise mechanisms of our solar
system that create the thin biosphere around the surface of the
Earth.
- Life is only found to come from other life.
- The complexity of life makes the odds of it forming on its own
very, very slim, with estimate ranging up to one in 10 to the
40,000th power.
- Living organisms demonstrate an incredible degree of perfection
and technology in design.
- The evidence of evolutionary relationships in the fossil record
is scarce enough to bring Darwinian gradualism into question and
to require a new unproven theory, punctuated equilibrium, to
explain the lack of transitionary forms.
- Human beings represent an incredibly different species from any
other creature on the planet in their capabilities of intellect,
creativity, emotions, relationships, spirituality, etc.
- Human beings in every culture are drawn to seek their Creator.
Those turning to God often have life changing experiences and can
point to answered prayers, miracle healings and other events that
go beyond what can be explained by "natural" causes.
I'm not saying there aren't any reasons for you to believe in
evolution as well, but whether you look to evidence that is based in
science, logic or the spiritual, to say that there is NO evidence of
Intelligent Design, or of God, demonstrates an incredible bias and
little objectivity to what you observe in the world around you. Good
science requires that you be open to alternate hypotheses and that you
seek evidence in support of both sides before coming to a conclusion.
The funny thing is that I used to believe much of what you do, from
evolution to thinking I was a "Christian." I since have had
some experiences though that humbled me enough to realize that maybe I
didn't know as much as I thought I did. Just as you noted that I
should "get an education before I do this again," I would
offer that there are many things that we ALL still have to learn and
that we should continue to ask the questions in humble awe of life
rather than to be arrogant and angry with the pride that we've got it
all figured out on our own. The greatest learning in our life comes
when assume we know nothing, not when we assume we know everything. As
it says in Proverbs 11:2, "When pride comes, then comes disgrace,
but with humility comes wisdom." That applies to all aspects of
life, from getting along with people in your life to seeking wisdom
over intellectual pride in scientific pursuits. For me, the most
revealing wisdom into myself and human nature was found in the words
of Jesus Christ in the gospels and I would recommend that reading to
anyone.
You closed your last letter with "By all means, keep your own
personal faith, but please don't mix it with what is MEANT to be an
objective world view (I agree, it gets subjective sometimes, but it
struggles to right itself)." You are quite right that science
gets subjective at times and in the area of life's origins it has
become more subjective than in any other area of science. I hope that
through use of simple observation and logic that I can be part of the
group that is struggling to bring science and our life views back into
open-minded objectivity. I similarly would ask that you not let your
personal beliefs overcome your own scientific objectivity to the point
that you aren't even open to the possibilities seen others, including
Hawking and Von Braun. If you do, you'll serve neither science nor God
well. I wish you the best in your future studies.
Best regards,
Gary
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