Wednesday, October 24, 2007

#1

~EVOLUTION~
[adapted from The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel]

When people say 'evolution', they mean merely that there has been change in a species over time, but that's not an accurate description is it?

Absolutely not! If that's all there was to Darwinism, then there wouldn't be any controversy, because it is common agreement that there has been biological change over time, that all organisms within a single species are related through descent with modification. This occurs in the ordinary course of biological reproduction. Darwinism claims much more than that - it's the theory that ALL living creatures are modified descendents of a common ancestor that lived long ago. It claims that every new species that has ever appeared can be explained by descent with modification. Neo-Darwinism claims these modifications are the result of natural selection acting on random genetic mutations.


The Images of Evolution


Image #1: The Stanley Miller Experiment

What?
Stanley Miller, a graduate student at the Unversity of Chicago in 1953, used laboratory apparatus to artificially produce the building blocks of life. By reproducing the atmostphere of the primitive earth and then shooting electric sparks through it to simulate lightning, Miller managed to produce a red goo containing amino acids.

Scientific assessment

Common consensus among scientists that the early atmosphere of the earth was not at all like the one Miller used. Miller chose a hydrogen-rich mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapour, which was consistent with what many scientists thought back then. However, there is no evidence for this primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on earth, but much against it. Most geochemists since the 1960s would say that the earth's early environment was totally unlike Miller's, with the current hypothesis being that there was very little hydrogen in the atmosphere as it would have escaped into space. Instead, the atmosphere probably consisted of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapour. Even two of the leading origin-of-life researchers, Klaus Dose and Sidney Fox, confirmed that Miller had used the wrong gas mixture. Science magazine said in 1995 that experts now dismiss Miller's experiment because 'the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation'.

What if you replay the experiment using an accurate atmosphere?

Some textbooks say that you still get organic molecules, but these organic molecules are actually formaldehyde and cyanide. Formaldehyde is extremely toxic and destroys proteins all over the place, just from the fumes. It even kills embryos. (These organic molecules that are formed can actually make embalming fluid) While it's true that a good organic chemist can turn formaldehyde and cyanide into biological molecules, it is not possible that they give you the right substrate for the origin of life. Whatever it is, you do not get amino acids from this experiment, that's for sure.

If a scientist someday manages to produce amino acids from a realistic atmosphere of the early earth, how far would that be from creating a living cell?

Incredibly far! That would be the first step in an extremely complicated process. You would have to get the right number and sequence of amino acids to link up to create a protein molecule, then dozens of protein molecules in the right sequence, to create a living cell. The odds against this are simply astonishing, the gap between non-living chemicals and even the most primitive living organism is absolutely tremendous.

Why is Miller's experiment still published in textbooks then?

It is becoming clearer that this is materialistic philosophy masquerading as empirical science. The attitude that life had to have developed this way because there's no other materialistic explanation. When origin-of-life expert Walter Bradley, a former professor at Texas A&M University, who co-authored the landmark 1984 book "The Mystery of Life's Origin", was questioned about the various theories advanced by scientists about how the first livin cell could have been naturalistically generated - including random chance, chemical affinity, self-ordering tendencies, seeding from space, deep-sea ocean vents, and using clay to encourage prebiotic chemicals to assemble - he demonstrated that not one of them can withstand scientific scrutiny. Journalist Gregg Easterbrook wrote about the origin-of-life firled, "Science doesn't have the slightest idea how life began. No generally accepted theory exists, and the steps leading from a barren primordial world to the fragile chemistry of life seem imponderable." Bradley not only shares that view, but said that the mind-boggling difficulties in bridging the yawning gap between nonlife and life mean that there may very well be no potential of ever finding a theory for how life could have arisen spontaneously. The absolutely overwhelming evidence points toward an intelligence behind life's creation. In fact, he said, "I think people who believe that life emerged naturalistically need to have a great deal more faith than people who reasonably infer that there's an Intelligent Designer."

Even those who look askance at religious faith have been forced to conclude that the odds against the spontaneous creation of lfie are so absurdly high that there must be more to the creatio story than mere materialistic processes. They can't help but invoke the only ord that seems to realistically account for it all: miracle. It's a label many scientists loathe to use but which the circumstances seem to demand. John Horgan, one of America's leading science journalists, conceded in 2002 that scientists have no idea how the universe was created or "how inanimate matter on our little planet coalesced into living creatures." "Science, you might say, has discovered that our existence is infinitely improbable, and hence a miracle." Even biochemist and spiritual skeptic Francis Crick, who shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular structure of DNA, said, 'An honest man, armed with all the knowledege available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which woud have had to have been satisfied to get it going."

whizzer; 8:31:00 pm