Creation: Abiogenesis Part VII
A Sunday guest post by my brilliant husband, Gregg.
Every Sunday, my clever husband offers me a “day of rest” by writing posts on the subject of his primary ministry. This is a topic that is gaining more and more attention in our modern culture. The topic, Creationism vs. Darwinism, is a subject that has broad reaching scientific, social, and metaphysical implications. He chooses to conclude each post with a message intended to hearten and bolster believers. However, for believers and non-believers alike, the primary purpose is to present scientific, historical, logical, and/or sociological data in an empirical fashion, as much as possible written in layman’s terms, and in a format suitable for supplementing any homeschool curriculum whether you choose to believe the Biblical account — or secular guesses — about the origins of human life on earth.
A Darwinian Primer
The 6 types of evolution taught in the average public school, the first 5 being types of Darwinian evolution, and the last being simple modifications or changes within kind and not even really “evolution” are:
- Cosmic evolution
- Stellar evolution
- Chemical evolution
- Abiogenesis—Life from non-life
- Macro-evolution
- Micro-evolution (Changes within kind – not evolution)
Citations
“Darwin never really did discuss the origin of species in his [book] On the Origin of Species.”
David Kitts, “Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory,” Evolution, Vol. 28, September 1974, p. 466.
The Argumentum ab Auctoritate is the fallacy of a faulty appeal to authority. This fallacy occurs whenever someone tries to demonstrate the truth of a proposition by citing some person who agrees, even though that person may have no expertise in the given area. For example, it would probably would be fallacious to cite Stephen Hawking as an expert on competitive high speed automobile racing since he is not an expert in that field and doesn’t even have a driver’s license.
“Since Darwin’s seminal work was called The Origin of Species one might reasonably suppose that his theory had explained this central aspect of evolution or at least made a shot at it, even if it had not resolved the larger issues we have discussed up to now. Curiously enough, this is not the case.
As Professor Ernst Mayr of Harvard, the doyen [senior member] of species studies, once remarked, the ‘book called The Origin of Species is not really on that subject,’ while his colleague Professor Simpson admits: ‘Darwin failed to solve the problem indicated by the title of his work.’ “You may be surprised to hear that the origin of species remains just as much a mystery today, despite the efforts of thousands of biologists. The topic has been the main focus of attention and is beset by endless controversies.”
Gordon R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 140.
It could be seen as a false appeal to authority to ask Darwinists about the origin of life considering the fact that Darwin never actually addresses the topic of life’s origin. However, it is not a fallacy to rely on authorities whose expertise relates to the question at hand, especially with regard to questions of fact that could not easily be answered by laymen.
“All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did.”
Harold C. Urey, Nobel Prize laureate and confirmed evolutionist, the “Urey” in “Miller-Urey” as quoted in Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 1962, p. 4. [Emphasis mine]
For instance, it makes perfect sense to quote Stephen Hawking on the subject of the Big Bang theory (which he thinks is a joke) since he is recognized as the preeminent theoretical physicist of our time.
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.”
Francis Crick, Life Itself, Its Origin and Nature (1981), p. 88 [co-discoverer of the DNA molecule and Nobel Prize laureate]
In other words, not all appeals to authority are faulty appeals to authority. Citing an expert concerning his field of expertise is not faulty. It is perfectly legitimate to consider the opinion of an expert on a particular topic or in a particular field. No one has the time or ability to verify each and every truth claim that has ever been made. We can, and very often should, rely upon the expertise of others from time to time.
“The present laws of physics . . are insufficient to describe the origin of life. To him this opens the way to teleology, even, by implication, to creation by an intelligent agent . . If he thinks he has shown conclusively that life cannot have originated by chance, only two rational alternatives remain. The first is that it did not arise at all and that all we are studying is an illusion.”
Sydney W. Fox, confirmed evolutionist and author of The Origins of Prebiological Systems and Their Molecular Matrices (1965), pp. 35-55.
Today, I wanted to share the thoughts of experts on the topic of abiogenesis. First, a quick glance at the religious and philosophical beliefs of ardent Darwinists.
“Randomness caught on the wing, preserved, reproduced…and thus converted into order, rule, necessity. A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.”
Bur, quoted in *Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (1972), p. 98.
Oh, how beautiful. How spiritual. Randomness caught on a wing. Oh, my. A blind process can lead to vision itself. I feel myself tearing up. Perhaps these words should be set to music and made into a hymn sung in the hallowed halls of the Church of Darwin.
I cannot stop this compulsion of mine to point out, however, that while this sentiment is, without a doubt, lovely — it is niether scientific nor true. If randomness can produce such living wonders as surround us in this world, then highly intelligent scientists, working in well-equipped laboratories leveraging multi-million dollar grants ought to be able to produce eyes, ears, and entirely new species in a few months’ time.
The Great Evolutionary Myth is that randomness plus time can do anything; the Truth is that randomness, with or without time, can accomplish almost nothing. And those changes which it does accomplish will quickly be blotted out by the next random action or two,—that is, if they are constructive changes. If they are erosional, they will remain much longer.
Throughout inorganic nature we see randomness producing decay and inertness; we do not find it building houses and, then, installing the plumbing in them.
Vance Ferrell, B.A., M.A., B.D., Science vs. Evolution, p. 230.
Faith in blind process is simple religious faith. If it were true that blind process “can lead to vision itself,” then one must look at the odds fairly. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the Rubik’s cube will concede the near-impossibility of a solution being obtained by a blind person moving the cube faces completely at random. Furthermore, he would have to randomly stop moving those cube faces once the solution had been arrived upon with no knowledge that he had done so. Of course it is possible, but given how much time? Given only complete random movements (no coaching or cheating)? Given no alarm or alert once the puzzle had been solved? What are the odds?
Now imagine 1050 blind persons each with a scrambled cube. That is the number 10 followed by fifty zeros. Here is the number of blind people you would need written out:
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Now try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form then stopping. Since randomness directs that they would not have the benefit of information like “You have arrived at the solution” they must stop turning the cubes based purely on random chance.
If you can conceive of that, then you then have the chance of arriving by random shuffling at just one of the many biopolymers on which life on earth depends. To quote Sir Frederick Hoyle, it is nonsense of a high order.
The notion that not only biopolymers but the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.
Sir Frederick Hoyle, The Big Bang in Astronomy, p. 527.
DeNouy provides another illustration for arriving at a single molecule of high dissymmetry through chance action and normal thermic agitation. He assumes 500 trillion shakings per second plus a liquid material volume equal to the size of the earth. For one molecule it would require “10243 billions of years.”
“Even if this molecule did somehow arise by chance, it is still only one single molecule. Hundreds of millions are needed, requiring compound probability calculations for each successive molecule. His logical conclusion is that “it is totally impossible to account scientifically for all phenomena pertaining to life.”
DeNouy, Cited in Evan Shute, Flaws in the Theory of Evolution (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1971), pp. 23-24.
The odds only get worse the more we learn
Over a hundred years ago, world renowned mathematician Emile Borel calculated the odds of mathematical impossibility at 1 chance in 1050. This number was reduced by orders of magnitude by modern design theorists to only 1 chance in 10150. That is one chance out of the number 10 followed by 150 zeros.
William A. Dembski, “Reviving the Argument from Design: Detecting Design Through Small Probabilities,” Proceedings of the Biennial Conference of the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 8, (1991), pp. 101-145.
More than 50 years ago, scientist Harold F. Blum, wrote:
“The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all probability.”
Harold F. Blum, Time’s Arrow and Evolution (2nd ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955).
Noted scientists Walter L. Bradley and Charles Thaxton, authors of The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, point out that the probability of assembling amino acid building blocks into a functional protein is approximately one chance in 4.9 x 10191.
“Such improbabilities have led essentially all scientists who work in the field to reject random, accidental assembly or fortuitous good luck as an explanation for how life began.”
Walter L. Bradley and Charles B. Thaxton, “Information and the Origin of Life” in J. P. Moreland (ed.), The Creation Hypothesis (IVP, 1994), p. 190.
Now, if a figure as “small” as 5 chances in 10191 referenced by such a statement is honestly explanatory, then what are we to make of the kinds of probabilities involved in the abiogenesis hypothesis that are almost infinitely less? When considering the odds and the probabilities at a practical level, the mind simply boggles at the remarkable religious faith of Darwinists.
According to James Coppedge, the probability of evolving a single protein molecule over a period of 5 billion years is fairly estimated at 1 chance in 10161. This even allows some 14 concessions to help it along which would not actually be present during the random blind processes that Darwinian evolution relies upon. The odds are well beyond mathematical impossibility.
James Coppedge, Evolution Possible or Impossible? P.114
In the late 1970’s, famous mathematician and astronomer Sir Frederick Hoyle teamed up with Chandra Wickramasinghe and calculated the mathematical probability that a single bacterium could spontaneously generate from inorganic material. This work was published in 1981. They determined the chance of this occurring was 1 in 1040,000. Hoyle confessed what most scientists are, strangely, unwilling to confess:
“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40 thousand naughts [zeros after it]. It is enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet or on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”
Sir Frederick Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space, 1981, p. 28.
For context, the smallest possible theoretical cell is made up of 239 proteins. At least 124 different types of proteins are needed for this theoretical cell to become a living thing. In reality, the simplest known self-reproducing organism is the H39 strain of PPLO (mycoplasma) containing 625 proteins with an average of 400 amino acids in each and every protein.
Yet the probability of the occurrence of even the smallest theoretical life is only one chance in 10119,879 and the years required for it to evolve would be 10119,841 years or 10119,831 times what Darwinists assume is the age of the earth.
The probability of this smallest theoretical cell of 239 proteins evolving without the needed 124 different types of proteins to make up a living cell, i.e., the chance of evolving this “helpless group of non-living molecules” in over 500 billion years is 1 chance in 10119,701.
James Coppedge, Darwin’s Leap of Faith, p. 371
That is 1 chance in the number 10 followed by 119,701 zeros. Pardon me if I don’t attempt to write that number out for you.
Dr. David J. Rodabough is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri. When presented with this exobiology problem, he estimated a more realistic chance that life could spontaneously generate, even given 1023 planets and 15 billion years, as only one chance in 102,999,940.
David J. Rodabough, “The Queen of Science Examines the King of Fools,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, June 1975, p. 15.
While that number is vast and the odds against it nearly infinite, Harold Morowitz, a Yale University physicist, gave a far more realistic “probability” for a single bacterium. He calculated the odds of a single bacterium emerging from the basic building blocks necessary were 1 chance in 10100,000,000,000.
Cited in Mark Eastman, Chuck Missler, The Creator Beyond Time and Space, (Costa Mesa, CA:TWFT, 1996), p. 61.
That is the number 10 followed by one hundred trillion zeros. This number is so large it would require a library of approximately 100,000 books just to write it out. Now try to fairly imagine randomly discovering a single specific zero in a number that vast.
“The improbability involved in generating even one bacterium is so large that it reduces all considerations of time and space to nothingness. Given such odds, the time until the black holes evaporate and the space to the ends of the universe would make no difference at all. If we were to wait, we would truly be waiting for a miracle.”
Robert Shapiro, Origins—A Skeptics Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, 1986, p. 128.
These numbers are so vast and the odds so nearly infinite as to be unimaginable. Given that a single individual’s chance of winning the state lottery is about one in ten million, the odds of winning each successive week involve the multiplication of probabilities so that the odds of winning the lottery every single week of your life from the age of 18 to 99, a period of 80 years, is 1 chance in 4.6 x 1029,120.
In summary, it is almost infinitely more likely that you would win the lottery every week of your life consecutively, from the day you were born, without missing even one winning weekly ticket, for 80 years, than it is that we would have the spontaneous generation of even the most simple bacterium.
Cited in Mark Eastman, Chuck Missler, The Creator Beyond Time and Space, (Costa Mesa, CA:TWFT, 1996), p. 61.
Physicist Dr. Howard B. Holroyd refers to the book, Mathematics and the Imagination, where the authors, Kasner and Newman, name the extremely large number 10100, a “googol.” Noting the fact that there could only, at most, have been 4.8 x 1038 possible mutations in all the life forms throughout the history of earth Dr. Holroyd writes:
“It is not possible in a googol of operations to select at random, from the possible infinity of forms, the shapes and arrangements of the dextral and sinistral bones of even one mammal…Let us recognize that if a result depends upon a hundred factors, and if the probability of getting each one right is 1 in 10, then the probability of getting the whole 100 right is only one in a googol.”
Howard Byington Holroyd, “Darwinism is Physical and Mathematical Nonsense” Creation Research Society Quarterly. June 1972, pp. 6, 9.
Dr. Holroyd also discusses factorial numbers. A factorial number is a number that multiplies each successive number by the next number. So ten factorial would be to multiply 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8 x 9 x 10. Seventy factorial is around a googol (1.198 x 10100). Sir Arthur Eddington estimated the total number of electrons and protons in the entire universe as approximately 3.145 x 1079. This is orders of factorial magnitude less than 100 factorial, which equals 9.3 x 10157.
But when it comes to Darwinism, we are not dealing with 100 factorial but millions times millions factorial.
To illustrate, there are 5,000 fibers in the auditory nerve of man that may be connected to the brain in 5,000-factorial ways—and only one is specifically correct.
The optic nerve has about one million fibers, and these may be connected to the brain in one million factorial ways. The odds they could have been connected correctly by chance cannot even be written out longhand.
Howard Byington Holroyd, “Darwinism is Physical and Mathematical Nonsense” Creation Research Society Quarterly. June 1972, pp. 6, 9.
Holroyd proceeds to show by several other examples how absurd belief in chance evolution is. He points out that the straight hydrocarbon chain C40H82 has about 6.25 x 1013 isomers.
It would be impossible for the entire human race, working full time for four billion years, just to study all the isomers of this single organic molecule of no great size.
Howard Byington Holroyd, “Darwinism is Physical and Mathematical Nonsense” Creation Research Society Quarterly. June 1972, pp. 10-11
When we consider there are ten billion cells in the cerebral cortex, that there are several trillion nerve connections between cells in the brain, plus many other amazing factors, it becomes “preposterous beyond words” to believe that all this originated by chance.
“All the facile speculations and discussions published during the last ten to fifteen years explaining the mode of origin of life have been shown to be far too simple-minded and to bear very little weight. The problem in fact seems as far from solution as it ever was.”
Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe (1982), p. 68.
The Truth
Reasonable people think. They do not accept on “blind faith” that anything any fallible man proclaims is true. Look at the odds. Look at the probabilities. Look at what the experts and the authorities in these fields have had to say for years…and consider. Think.
There is an infallible authority. He has given us His expert testimony as to how life began.
How much weight should that be given in this argument?
God Bless you and yours.
Gregg
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I have two reactions to this.
First, I think you might want to revisit it when you get back to this country. I’m guessing that you will not have been able to actually read a lot of your citations in their original form. That means you can’t be sure of their accuracy, of the context, and of the assumptions made in the calculations. And a number of them are fairly old. If you’ve actually read these, what do the sections before and after them have to say? Have you looked up any of these to see what their peers or critics have to say about the examples?
Second, the math might be accurate, but the assumptions might not be reasonable. I’ll use the cathedral/wood shelter again as an analogy (not an analogy for purposes of logical proof but just as a description). If you build a big specific building, you need exact types, dimesnions and numbers of all your building materials. For a shelter in the woods you can use any old shapes or types of wood available, and they don’t have to fit together exactly. For the idea of abiogenesis, there’s no assumption that the exact proteon structures had to be there originally. There’s not even an assumption that there had to be proteins at first. And the idea of RNA or other nucleotide catalysts would make the joinign togethetr of amino acids more likely than if they were just sloshing around in liquid.
I think it’s unfair for you to make fun of Monod’s quote and say it is unscientific. It was taken from a whole book which I think was written for the public and translated from French. In a whole book, don’t you think there’s room for some poetic imagery? What is the context in which he was discussing randomness?
You quoted Fox but it’s really clear that that quote is useless without context – it has ellipses, and it refers to ‘him’. I tried to find this material online but it seems like it’s a book that Fox edited, and that quote was probably not even written by Fox. What’s the value of putting in a quote like that?
Thank you for your comment.
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With respect to a number of citations being fairly old, I have asked this before and it was not really ever addressed. What does the age of something that is true have to do with its veracity? Every single one of these quotes is up to greater than a century more recent than anything Charles Darwin ever said wrote for example.
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By way of analogy, if it is true that the earth orbits the sun, this fact is not any less true simply because someone made that cogent observation hundreds of years ago. It is certainly no less true being thirty years old, or twenty, or ten. Is it your stance that age somehow invalidates truth? I am not certain what it is that you are attempting to imply. Must we toss out the works of Kelvin, Kepler, or Einstein because they are more than 20 or 30 years old? Should we toss out Hawking’s calculations from the 1980’s? Are we only allowed, by your way of debate, to allow citations into the room which completely agree with your point regardless of age, but citations that directly refute your point must be shuttled off at any cost, even to the nursing home because they are somehow too old while yet younger than those which tend to support your world view? That seems a bit like cherry picking, does it not? Would it be possible to address the actual points contained in the citations outside of celebrating their birthdays? That would seem more in order and more consistent with an intelligent debate.
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Next point. I am convinced that the assumptions which led to the various calculations I cite are not only reasonable but, in fact, generous. As you probabbly know, pure Chaos Theory calculations are much less forgiving of the abiogenesis hypothesis, but far more difficult to explain in layman’s terms when confined to a short blog post.
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Next: I confess that I am not clear on this point. You said, “There’s not even an assumption that there had to be proteins at first. And the idea of RNA or other nucleotide catalysts would make the joinign togethetr of amino acids more likely than if they were just sloshing around in liquid.” If there were no proteins, then what exactly would the RNA be an instruction set for? How can RNA even exist if there are no proteins which also? Why would it exist in that case? I’m not sure what you are trying to convey. I apologize for my misunderstanding.
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Next: I strongly disagree that Monod must be granted any latitude whatsoever. First of all, poetic imagery should only ever draw poetic allegories against concepts that are factual, actual, verifiable, observable, or ring true in the human heart. E.g.: “The altered mind alters the eye and the altered eye alters all that it beholds.”
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Obviously, the physical eye is not altered, nor is the eye responsible for any alterations. Equally obvious, that which the “altered eye” beholds is not physically altered in any way. The phrase uses poetic imagery to convey that it is the interpretation of all that which is beheld which is altered by the altered mind, and that only in the mind’s eye. That is poetic imagery that rings true and for which the intent is not masked in flowery religious nonsense rhetoric.
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By contrast, to say that blind processes lead to ANYTHING resembling order or intelligence is patently FALSE. It is, in a word, a LIE. Stated poetically or not, it is plainly NOT TRUE. No blind person ever gave himself sight by blind processes. Vision is only ever regained by way of intelligent intervention. Likewise, no truly blind processes ever leads to intelligently arranged information of any kind. Not ever. That Monod or any other Darwinist must mask this complete falsehood in such a flowery, poetic, and religious fashion is strong evidence that this unfounded belief constitutes a simple article of faith for Darwinists. There is no science, nothing factual, nothing actual, nothing verifiable, nothing observable to any of it and it certainly does not ring true to any reasonable human being based on its intended message.
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Finally, the context of the Fox citation is far too long to go into in any great detail in a blog post. Essentially, if you are familiar with his work, he went around the bend and back again at great expense and in large detail to create amino acids from — other amino acids. Obviously, this is not evidence of spontaneous generation. While an interesting experiment in organic chemistry, to assign any deeper meaning to the result is pure mental masturbation. But I agree that the context of the citation is lacking in this case.
God Bless,
Gregg
“What does the age of something that is true have to do with its veracity? ”
“Would it be possible to address the actual points contained in the citations outside of celebrating their birthdays? That would seem more in order and more consistent with an intelligent debate.”
The age of a reference has a lot to do with its context. It’s a fact that scientific research goes out of date as new information enlarges on it or replaces it, as new techniques provide more detailed information on the same observation, or as more recent information in other areas changes the way you would evaluate that observation or opinion. (Whether this happens and when it happens depends on the exact topic, field, and the particular scientist and observation.) An experiment could have been very important when it was first reported because it broke new ground. But after more research was done based on that observation, the initial observation would become part of a mesh of information, and eventually it becomes unimportant in itself. If you only read that first article, you would not be informed on the topic, no matter how important it had been initially. Darwin is historically important because his work broke new ground. But Wallace also had the same insight, and if neither of them had had that realization, someone else would have done so eventually. If Darwin’s writings completely disappeared today it would have no effect on evolutionary biology now because there is so much information available now that was unknown in his time.
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For me to address the actual points made in the quotes you cited above, I need more than single isolated quotes. For instance, I’d like to read the Urey quote in context. I was able to google that quote and bring up many repetitions of it. But I did not find the whole article, or even an extra sentence or two from the article. If I wanted to read the whole newspaper article I’d have to go to some library that had it on microfilm. Is it worth the trouble?
First of all, can I even assume that is an exact quote? No I can’t because I know of at least one reference used by some creationism supporters that is not correct, and yet the incorrect version is presented on lots of websites and quoted inaccurately in several books. Second, if you read a quote by itself out of context, without knowing what the author said in the sections around it, you are not getting a clear picture of what the author meant to say. This is also a problem with interviews – the person quoted could have said other things to explain his thinking, but the person writing or editing the material might have cut out all the parts that would have clarified what the person being interviewed meant. I’m guessing that you did not read this quote in context but just found it in a creationism-supporting book or website, so that you also do not know anything more about what Urey was saying in that article.
The age of a citation is also important in this sense: if new information came along after the person made that comment, would he have changed his opinion? What information was available to him then compared to what we know now? What did he say in other material at that time and since then? Is that an accurate reflection of his opinions? And how much weight should be given to this one person’s opinion on that particular subject? What did his peers think about the subject?
On the quote you attributed to Fox, you agreed that the context was missing, but it seemed like you were only talking about the need to discuss Fox’s whole research. The first question I would want answered was who actually wrote that quote (was it Fox or someone else?) and what was meant by it, since it contained ellipses and a reference to ‘him’. If it was written by someone else then Fox’s research is not relevant. Also, you left out the sentence just after it, which I saw quoted somewhere else, and, if accurate, it should have been included with the section you posted, not chopped off. Again, I’m assuming you did not read this quote in context, but took it out of some book or website. If you think these citations are worth considering, don’t you think it is important to actually read what the author was saying?
Sincere question. How do you believe these principles you espouse apply to the fact that Darwin’s “On Origins” never discusses origins and that every so-called scientific principle he outlines in that work have been shown to be hopelessly flawed?
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The same can be said of Lyell or Lamarck for that matter.
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Why do you suppose Darwin is still taken as canon even though macro-evolution has been shown to be a myth and spontaneous generation an impossibility?
Well, the simple answer is, I think you’re wrong on this.
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Darwin didn’t talk about the origin of living organisms, and it’s sensible that he didn’t. The information at the time on cellular and molecular biology was too limited. He did talk about how the different species we see now could have originated from ancestral species. This was reasonable because he was able to observe physical traits, variations of animals in different regions, behaviors, the result of breeding. I think you’re wrong that his insights have been shown to be ‘hopelessly flawed’. And to the extent that they were not precisely accurate, as I said above, it wouldn’t matter because his basic idea was sound and stimulated further research.
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I’m not sure what you mean by ‘canon’ in regard to Darwin’s work. But macroevolution absolutely has not be shown to be a myth. Genomics (which was totally unknown in Darwin’s time) supports it very strongly and every day there’s a new piece of information which supports it. If there were an underlying genetic discontinuity between different organisms genomics could have revealed it but with gene after gene the variations in the genes in different organisms fit the pattern. You can still say that God could have made it this way, but if so then God made it in such a way that organisms are similar in just the ways they would be if they had evolved from a common ancestor.
Spontaneous generation (origin of living things from non-living chemicals) is so far not understood, although people are trying to figure out ways in which it could have happened, like the RNA world idea. But the lack of a clear answer on this does not say it’s impossible. It just says that at this time we do not know. And even if it were concluded that it was impossible for life to form from chemicals on earth or in this universe (which I don’t think would ever happen for this kind of question), the answer would still be that at this time we don’t have an explanation for the origin of life. No more than that.
I went to the library to check on the Urey quote you posted. Unfortunately I had trouble with the microfilm reader and the printer was out of ink. I did see the short article, which was about a symposium held in Denver at the end of Dec 1961. There were quotes from several people including Sagan. I think the Urey quote you have above was accurate but without a printout I am not positive. I hoped that the article would have more context, but because it was not just an interview with Urey, that quote was almost all there was. But there were a couple of sentences afterward which I didn’t completely understand. He said that ‘faith’ in his comment was not about the fact that it happened but about the physical laws, something or other. Sorry, I’ll have to go back some time and get a copy. You could take this to mean that he did not think the formation of living organisms from nonliving chemicals was reasonable and so did not require faith, but really the comment he made as printed in the CSM was unclear.
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Here is another quote from Urey in a 1952 article in which he talked about possible chemical processes on the early earth.
ON THE EARLY CHEMICAL HISTORY OF THE EARTHAND THE
ORIGIN OF LIFE ; PNAS vol 38 1952 p 351-363
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“The general course of events and the favorable condition for the origin
of life outlined in this paper in no way depend on the time of transition
from reducing to oxidizing conditions being exactly some 8 X 10^8 years
ago. However, the evolution from inanimate systems of biochemical compounds,
e.g., the proteins, carbohydrates, enzymes and many others, of
the intricate systems of reactions characteristic of living organisms, and of
the truly remarkable ability of molecules to reproduce themselves seems to
those most expert in the field to be almost impossible. Thus a time from
the beginning to photosynthesis of two billion years may help many to
accept the hypothesis of the spontaneous generation of life. On the other
hand, our judgment of an approximate time for the origin of life certainly
is not so precise that we can say that 2 X 10^9 years are sufficient but
2 X 10^8 years are not.”
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AS you can see, he said that experts at that time thought the process to be “almost impossible” in the same section where he was talking about how it might have happened. So for him to say “almost impossible” is not at all the same as saying “impossible”, at least that is the way I interpreted it.
Oh, mistake in my comment:
My sentence:
“You could take this to mean that he did not think the formation of living organisms from nonliving chemicals was reasonable and so did not require faith, but really the comment he made as printed in the CSM was unclear”
should have read that he DID think the formation of living organsims from nonliving chemicals was reasonable.
Your Sidney Fox quote:
““The present laws of physics . . are insufficient to describe the origin of life. To him this opens the way to teleology, even, by implication, to creation by an intelligent agent . . If he thinks he has shown conclusively that life cannot have originated by chance, only two rational alternatives remain. The first is that it did not arise at all and that all we are studying is an illusion.”
Sydney W. Fox, confirmed evolutionist and author of The Origins of Prebiological Systems and Their Molecular Matrices (1965), pp. 35-55.”
The actual quote was written by JD Bernal, not Fox, and it was from a comment referring to an article by PT Mora.
The actual pages were 53-54.
This is a quote from a much longer comment. It would make more sense to start earlier in the comment than where you started it. I’m not sure what point you wanted to make with the quote as shown above, but I think the longer section does not make the point that you probably wanted to make.
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“A third possible objection is that we are posing questions which for the time being cannot be answered. This may be because some essential element is beyond our ken. As Alfven has pointed out, it was quite impossible to find a theory of the origin of the sun’s heat before radioactivity had been discovered. The laws of physics as known in 1895 could not contain a clue to this. Admittedly, the missing element may not be of a material kind but simply in the mode of thought, a lack of the necessary logic or mathematics. In many branches of physical science enormous discrepancies have occurred due to the absolute ignorance of the particular mechanism…I should be very suspicious of our drawing conclusions from failing to account for sny problem of organization which may turn out in the last resort to be due to our failure to imagine the appropriate geometrical mechanism. This idea is also expressed in Dr. Mora’s paper except that he draws a conclusion which is the opposite to the one I would draw. The present laws of physics, I would agree with him, are insufficient to describe the origin of life. To him this opens the way to teleology, even, by implication to creation by an intelligent agent. Now both these hypotheses were eminently reasonable before the fifteenth or possibly even before the nineteenth century. Nowadays they carry a higher degree of improbability than any of the hypotheses questioned by Dr. Mora. If he thinks he has shown conclusively that life cannot have originated by chance, only
two rational alternatives remain. The first is that it did not arise at all, and that all we are studying is an illusion. This is the old argument of Parmenides, whose logic led him to believe that the universe is One and that any apparent multiplicity is illusory. The other alternative is that life is a reality but that we are not yet clever enough to unravel the nature of its origin which seems to me admittedly a priori more probable.”
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(there is more but it’s too long to type in right now.)
On the quote from Blum:
“The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all probability.”
Harold F. Blum, Time’s Arrow and Evolution (2nd ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955).
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The context is, he is talking about spontaneous assembly of peptides in a “dilute hot soup”.
Following the quote above, he says:
“This calculation alone presents a serious objection to the idea that all living systems are descended from a single protein molcule, which was formed as a “chance” act – a view that has been frequently entertained.”
But then he goes on to say:
” Of course one may imagine that the first polypeptides were formed in relatively non-aqueous media. It has long been laboratory practice to carry out such reactions in solvents other than water.” etc.
So he is not saying formation of polypeptides is impossible. He is saying that spontaneous formation is very unlikely in dilute hot soup, but he leaves open formation of peptides in other conditions. (And the option remains that nucleotide chains, not proteins, were the basis for living systems, and were able to catalyze the formation of peptides, so that no spontaneous formation was necessary.)
He says, “one might imagine” not “there is evidence that it can happen” though. One might imagine a great number of things if one has an active enough imagination.
I just have to note after reading this article, and the back-and-forth between Gregg and hd, it is interesting how “experts” in evolutionary biology always seems to demand that whenever an “old” quotation goes against the grain, you have to invalidate it simply because of its age. Also, hd’s comment on how what may have been a seminole result of experiment some time in the past can become trite or unimportant as the knowledge-base grows also must be unique to biology.
I am from the world of physics (electromagnetics, to be specific – the father of most other fields of modern science). In grad school, we spent much time going over old school findings, from guys like Ampere, Coulomb, Faraday, Gauss, Maxwell, Tesla, etc. etc. These old findings, which uncovered at their time unknown truths about the framework and laws of the universe, are still very much applicable today. We certainly don’t divorce ourselves from these authorities of old. Now, are their findings and approaches irrelevant a hundred years later? I would have been promptly removed from my studies if I had insisted on taking such a stance! In fact, a person in my field of practice can only come to new valid conclusions by building upon prior truths – and I can do so confidently only when I am certain of what has been determined to be true (and false) already.
Maybe it would benefit the field of evolutionary biology to not send to the back of the library all of the relevant truths that have been uncovered to this point. Also, maybe it would be wise for folks working in this field of science to contemplate the rate at which they later (and usually very quietly) invalidate the assertions of the not so distant past. Was it really science, or are we watching a new religion evolve here? Evolutionary biology is essentially a secret society, as opposed to open science, at this point, where no one who isn’t in the NSF grant cycle is permitted to comment or quote on this topic. That puts this field on a lower rung than politics – what a shame.
I will say that the field of “creation” science is also plagued with inconsistencies (at least some strands of argumentation, and I am not necessarily attributing this problem to this blog), and it would benefit many folks in that field of study / apologetics to continue to brush up on the latest-and-greatest in science (and to give a hat-tip to the competing bodies of theory if they dis-own prior fallacies). It typically does look poor, even in the field I work in, to only reference 30-50+ year old findings – if I do so, then either what I am working on is ground breaking / out-of-the-box, or I am likely just duplicating the efforts of others over the last 30+ years and pointing nothing new out (which, if it is just for a blog to make an elementary educational point is ok, but you would never get published in a refereed journal).