Origins of Life
Let’s get to the center of this conversation. Life. What is life? Don’t feel bad if you struggled to form a definition. Defining life is not easy and very contested these days. In fact people are trying to define and redefine it so it can be made it in a laboratory.
The oxford dictionary defines life this way. “Life is the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter. Including the capacity to grow, reproduce, function, and change prior to death.”
So, for our purposes we will ignore the attempts to redefine life, but we will instead use the dictionary definition for our conversation. Life gives rise to life; it is a condition that distinguishes it from non-living things both inorganic materials and dead things that were once living.
Life is complicated. The atheist attempts to remove God from the possible explanations is also very complex, confusing, and frankly disingenuous. I want to try and break this discussion into two distinct parts. Origins of Life meaning the origins of the first life and the naturalistic Darwinist evolution.
But of course it’s not really that easy. When we start talking about evolution we have to add the complexity after complexity. That is micro-organisms like bacteria and viruses versus macro-organisms like you and me, elephants, whales and puppies. And then we have lots of organisms with different kinds of complexity like the giant redwood tree, the beautiful day lilies, and weeds like thorn bushes.
Quick gardening question. What is the difference between a weed and a flower? Well, a weed is any plant growing where it is unwanted. Like in my garden, right now. I even have some vegetables which I consider weeds like bitter melon. I don’t like it so it is growing where I don’t want it. Of course my wife and Joy disagree. But that is for another conversation.
Here is John Lennox framing this discussion for us. Lennox (Video 58seconds). John is right on, this is self-contradicting or at best wishful thinking.
Origins of Life. Wow this is such a complex discussion.
What Dr. Tour is trying to say is as science discovers more scientists are realizing there is more and more that must have happened simultaneously for life to happen. Not one or two random events, many, many, many. Or statistically impossible number. And that’s not even the extreme of it.
They all have to happen exactly at the same time, in perfect conditions, in perfect proportions, and then…. They don’t know. How does a series of molecules arranged randomly jump from molecule to living cell. Nobody knows. Current science cannot even build the basic building blocks. (Listen to this 50s Dr. Tour)
Dawkins directed panspermia is not a new idea but for an atheist naturalist to admit that the best solution for the origins of life on earth is an external directed seeding of life on Earth. I want to say, yes you finally got it. What you are calling an extraterrestrial sounds a lot like what we have been saying all along. God created. Now we do not believe, God is a life form from another planet in our universe. God is the ultimate creator from outside of the universe.
But this is just one of many creative theories to eliminate the need for God in the equation of life. But none of these are observable, testable or plausible. They all take a lot of blind faith to believe. God is the simplest explanation. It’s not God of the gaps, it is the best solution to the problem based on the evidence. None of these other theories have any evidence or imagination and blind faith in their godless religion.
If you want to see more on Origin of Life send me an email and I’ll send you some link from the technical to cartoon. Problems with the origin of life without God is, none of the explanation hold up to the scientific method, logic, reason, observation and cannot be tested.
I’m sure most of you don’t read scientific journals or keep up with the latest science. I love science, so I try to read a few articles a week.
This one caught my eye a couple weeks ago. We are talking about Origins of Life and here was an article on Physics.org based on an article in the Journal of Chemistry. Researchers at Scripps Research Institute. Titles “Scientists reveal how first cells could have formed on Earth”
I wanted to see what they had to say. They began with words like possible, plausible but quickly shifted to “we know,” and “proven methods” etc.
This was a classic “Goo-to-You” fairy tale. They said they started with fatty acids. This is a typical artist conception of a fatty acids chain. This is not a simple molecule. This is actually quite complex already but I will let them start at this point for our discussion.
Then they imagined that its not just one complex fatty acids molecule but many fatty acids molecules all together and the exact right types which would somehow spontaneously align themselves in lipid layers. These lipid layers would eventually form Vesicles or more specifically a lipid vesicle. Like the one shown.
Then some of the random spontaneously forming vesicles would be even more complex with different types of fatty acids and possibly nucleic acids or proteins inside. Something like that which “could be” the transitioned to form what they call a “proto-cell.”
This protocell could have some amino acids and phosphate inside which could undergo some form of Phosphorylation which might result in the more stable and more complex double chained phosphate backed highly complex molecules inside the protocell.
Boom origin of life solved. These cell-like structures provide the building blocks for life. First even if they were successful, the only thing the could prove would be that very intelligent people could replicate a very highly designed system. It is much like reverse engineering, when we do this we do not ignore the fact there was a intelligent design in the first place to replicate.
Okay. First. There is no such thing as a protocell. This is just made up. There has never been such a thing observed in nature and there has never been such a thing made in any lab. People are trying to define what this is, so they can say they made something like it. But there is no such thing as a protocell except in the imagination of very smart scientist looking for grant money in the Origins of life research fraud of today.
The type of phosphorylation they are talking about has never been observed outside of living organisms. Period. There has never been any meaningful phosphorylation reactions in pristine lab conditions that even do anything close to what they are claiming. This is just a lie. They can imagine it but this is not science. This is very smart people using their brains to imagine something with no evidence, no data, only a desire to further their godless religion. If God is not an option, then all imagined options are considered better. But there is no evidence for these theories. None.
Oh and by these vesicles they are talking about are formed by living organisms, not randomly by a clump of fatty acids. We can make these in the lab artificially to some extent but not the way this article states it. And a vesicle is not a step toward a living cell, rather a biproduct of a living cell.
Last where are the fatty acids coming from. These are not simple molecules. These are long chain, high molecular weight molecules which need to have very specific characteristics in order to assemble into a flat lipid pad, let alone a three dimensional shape bilipid structure with functionality.
So what did this article show me. Well there are very smart people spending lots of effort to imagine a solution to a problem that only exists because they wish there was no God. Reality even if they could do this, which they can’t. It would not prove anything. It might be very cool chemistry but it would not provide origin of life. It does not disprove God. And it sure does not create anything that resembles a living cell. They even claimed these protocell would spontaneously replicate. Outside of living organisms, things don’t spontaneously replicate. Life does not originate this way, You need life for that to happen.
This is the end of How to Defend your Faith Session 11: Science & the Bible (Naturalism vs Christianity Part 2 or 5))
