(WATCH) Evolution: Bacteria to Beethoven

“Don’t forget, though, that those bacteria have also been evolving for billions of years, they are every bit as derived as you or I, and have far more evolutionary diversity as a result of their simplicity”. It seems that materialists like to use time as an all explanatory mechanism in the same way some creationists would be happy to answer “God did it” as though wind blowing through a junkyard was capable of assembling a functional 747 is any more probable because it happened over billions of years. As to the complexity of the cell when the Urey/Miller experiment was first conducted it was seen as a success and has been misleadingly promoted as evidence in science text books as proof of how life began. But this is far from truth which science text books fail to mention and further experiments only served to highlight the increasing difficulties which emerged which only made the problem increasingly difficult not less.

Stephen Meyer wrote " a typical gene is several hundred bases long, so it’s precise sequence is highly improbable. If this is true for a gene it is truer for an entire organism. Estimates for the smallest amount of genes needed to make a living cell start at 250. If a minimal cell needs 250 genes , each several hundred bases long, then it’s gene sequences are so complex that the universe isn’t old enough for them to have plausibly originated by chance. A living cell needs not just any DNA but DNA that encodes functional proteins. To be functional a protein must have a very specific sequence". Francis Crick wrote in 1958 "For any particular protein the amino acids must be joined up in the right order So proteins – and thus DNA that encodes – are both complex and specified. “By information” protein … (and since) in even a small bacterial cell there are probably a thousand different types of protein, each containing some hundreds or amino acids in it’s own rigidly determined sequence, the amount of hereditary information" in that cell “is quite considerable”.
So it is not the atoms and the molecules in DNA that matter but the fact that they are arranged in such a way that they can carry information. The secret of life is information. But where does it come from? From the book The politically incorrect guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design by Jonathan Wells

Like Pontius Pilot when faced with conflicting stories one could easily be puzzled and ask, “What is truth”, when dealing with the incongruity of evolutionary thinking!

Despite insurmountable hurdles and division in the scientific community, evolution has graduated from hypothesis (assumption), to theory (disputable truth), to fact (indisputable truth). I disagree with this perception however. The accepted models for evolution have not been established as fact and the few examples that they claim to have, are micro-evolutionary events that have been bent, molded or exaggerated to fit ambiguous assumptions and/or philosophical beliefs.

Kalam’s argument in “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist”, by Geisler and Turek is indeed worth noting, “If there were an infinite number of days before today, then today would never have arrived. But here we are! So there must have been only a finite number of days before today. In other words, even though we may not be able to see, as we look to the left, where the line begins, we know it had to begin at some point because only a finite amount of time could be passed for today to arrive. You can’t traverse an infinite number of days. Thus time must have had a beginning.”

Due to our inability to observe the past, the origin of our universe is increasingly being expressed in a metaphysical context, which implies “a belief” about the world or about the universe “which may seem reasonable but is ultimately not provable”. Models that express the above belief such as the latest Quantum Gravity Models are “highly abstract and increasingly difficult to understand”. Many scientists view such a perspective as “incomprehensible”.

In an article entitled “The Ultimate Question of Origins: God and the Beginning of the Universe” the author of the article William Lane Craig states, “Vilenkin and, more famously, James Hartle and Stephen Hawking have proposed models of the universe which Vilenkin candidly calls exercises in ‘metaphysical cosmology.’ In his best-selling popularization of his theory, Hawking even reveals an explicitly theological orientation. He concedes that on the Standard Model one could legitimately identify the Big Bang singularity as the instant at which God created the universe. Indeed, he thinks that a number of attempts to avoid the Big Bang (and there were/are many) were probably motivated by the feeling that a beginning of time ‘smacks of divine intervention’. He sees his own model as preferable to the Standard Model because there would be no edge of space-time at which one ‘would have to appeal to God or some new law’.” (emphasis in brackets is mine)

Like Pontius Pilot when faced with conflicting stories one could easily be puzzled and ask, “What is truth”, when dealing with the incongruity of evolutionary thinking!

Despite insurmountable hurdles and division in the scientific community, evolution has graduated from hypothesis (assumption), to theory (disputable truth), to fact (indisputable truth). I disagree with this perception however. The accepted models for evolution have not been established as fact and the few examples that they claim to have, are micro-evolutionary events that have been bent, molded or exaggerated to fit ambiguous assumptions and/or philosophical beliefs.

Kalam’s argument in “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist”, by Geisler and Turek is indeed worth noting, “If there were an infinite number of days before today, then today would never have arrived. But here we are! So there must have been only a finite number of days before today. In other words, even though we may not be able to see, as we look to the left, where the line begins, we know it had to begin at some point because only a finite amount of time could be passed for today to arrive. You can’t traverse an infinite number of days. Thus time must have had a beginning.”

Due to our inability to observe the past, the origin of our universe is increasingly being expressed in a metaphysical context, which implies “a belief” about the world or about the universe “which may seem reasonable but is ultimately not provable”. Models that express the above belief such as the latest Quantum Gravity Models are “highly abstract and increasingly difficult to understand”. Many scientists view such a perspective as “incomprehensible”.

In an article entitled “The Ultimate Question of Origins: God and the Beginning of the Universe” the author of the article William Lane Craig states, “Vilenkin and, more famously, James Hartle and Stephen Hawking have proposed models of the universe which Vilenkin candidly calls exercises in ‘metaphysical cosmology.’ In his best-selling popularization of his theory, Hawking even reveals an explicitly theological orientation. He concedes that on the Standard Model one could legitimately identify the Big Bang singularity as the instant at which God created the universe. Indeed, he thinks that a number of attempts to avoid the Big Bang (and there were/are many) were probably motivated by the feeling that a beginning of time ‘smacks of divine intervention’. He sees his own model as preferable to the Standard Model because there would be no edge of space-time at which one ‘would have to appeal to God or some new law’.” (emphasis in brackets is mine)

“It turns out what he thought was a simple cell was anything but.”

Don’t forget, though, that those bacteria have also been evolving for billions of years, they are every bit as derived as you or I, and have far more evolutionary diversity as a result of their simplicity. We’re more like a yeast cell, than a bacteria is like an archaea. " I would also love to know what came first the ability to breath or the ability to eat and wouldn’t need to have heart present and the ability to remove waste if you can eat? How would a gradual evolutionary model provide you with all of these necessary to life mechanisms if they were needed to keep you alive"

Eating. Many organisms have digestive systems, but no respiratory systems (e.g, jellyfish) and just absorb oxygen directly from their environment. In fact, the fact that a lot of vertebrates have the “pipes crossed” is essentially unique to our phylum. No, circulatory systems are not mandatory, and many organisms simply make do with nutrient or waste diffusion. Even when they exist, they don’t need to be actively pumped unless you’re using blood to carry oxygen, again not that common, but something that’s evolved a couple of times (e.g, different blood pigments; notably red hemoglobin vs blue hemocyanin)

“I know this was all more fully fleshed out by people like Stephen Hawking. But if time, space and matter began to exist, and anything that began to exist must have an external cause,”

We don’t actually know if there was a discrete beginning. The Big Bang is basically a theoretical placeholder event, what you get if you extrapolate the expanding universe backwards well past the point where the numbers stop making sense. But … those numbers stop making sense. What lies beyond? Who knows. There’s a lot of evidence that is not consistent with the Big Bang, particularly the uneven distribution of matter, an unevenness that shouldn’t exist were it a single discrete event. What actually happened? Good question.

In essence, if you go back things get denser and denser and start moving faster and faster. Eventually you hit a “singularity” -the point when things starts moving at the speed of light. This is, shall we say, impossible according to our understanding of physics. The universe was there, was there, it in theory, well after the “big bang”, we just don’t know what’s going on because our physics models break down, things like an object’s mass and the time it experiences briefly approach 1/infinity (approaches zero but is undefined at that point) then the formulas start returning complex numbers. As far as we know, this is physically meaningless. The equations we could use to describe it? Outside our experience. Can’t do that.

The state of singularity is very real – it exists in black holes. And, knowing that it’s a real state, we can say that the universe already existed when it began experiencing time – and since there is no time before this point, you can’t say there was a beginning as that requires the progression of time. Again, the Big Bang is a placeholder for a room full of physicists scratching their heads that, in the meantime, sort of explains what we see.

Interesting side note: the interior of a black hole probably doesnt’ experience time either. From within, it has netiher a beginning nor an end; from the outside, it has both. And both are entirely natural phenomena. There’s always the possibility that our universe is simply the breakdown of a much larger singularity in what is a routine event from a perspective, that like a black hole, lies outside. This is perhaps indistinguishable from divinity, but also doesn’t rule out natural phenomena.

When Darwin first proposed his theory of evolution he believed that all life evolved from the simple cell. What Darwin did not have access to was the powerful microscopes available to microbiologists. It turns out what he thought was a simple cell was anything but. And despite the claims we were all lead to believe life did not emerge easily out of the primordial soup. The Urey/Miller experiments which were once held out to be the promise despite large amounts of cash funding and many years have been unfruitful in providing those exact conditions required for life to come into being, which is why scientists now consider the possibility that maybe life began somewhere else and arrived here by some form of planetary explosion or on an asteroid. Some accuse religious people of ending scientific inquiry by simply answering the question with God did it, but that isn’t necessarily true as one can certainly believe God did and then look to science to explain how he might have “done it”. It is also quite possible that the naturalist can simply say nature did it without providing any proof as to how this was accomplished. The reality is however you believe life began it is very complex and there are many unanswered questions which most naturalists tend to avoid. I would be interesting in hearing how they explain a system of gradual evolution that produces a bird which uses a different breathing apparatus compared to the bellows system used by all others. I would also love to know what came first the ability to breath or the ability to eat and wouldn’t need to have heart present and the ability to remove waste if you can eat? How would a gradual evolutionary model provide you with all of these necessary to life mechanisms if they were needed to keep you alive. Some have suggested that perhaps evolution happened very quickly and it should be noted that those who proposed punctuated equilibrium were looked upon as heretics, for if life evolved quickly how was this to be seen as any different than creationism?

As for the Universe and how it came to be, there are only three possibilities; 1) God created it from nothing, 2) It just spontaneously popped into existence for no particular reason, or 3) It has existed from all Eternity. Astronomers and astrophysicists seem to agree that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old. They conclude that, I believe, from the degree of “red-shift” in the most distant galaxies. I don’t know if the Universe is that old or not. I wasn’t there. But they all conclude that it BEGAN to exist. That’s the crucial point. So you can forget about 3) above. Besides, since you can neither add to, nor subtract from infinity, an infinite regress of temporal events is a philosophical impossibility. In addition, according to the Kalam cosmological argument in philosophy, anything that began to exist must have an external cause. It’s difficult for me to wrap my mind around but according to people like Einstein, time, space and matter are all different, interchangeable forms of the same thing. I know this was all more fully fleshed out by people like Stephen Hawking. But if time, space and matter began to exist, and anything that began to exist must have an external cause, then that cause must be immaterial and timeless. The only things I can think of that are immaterial and timeless are abstract principles of logic, such as the laws of non-contradiction and mathematics, ans a mind…. not a brain, a mind. Therefore, despite what Andrew Stephenson says, it seems logical that there’s a mind behind the Universe. Ergo the mind of God.

Indeed why would a scientist of Crick’s credentials need an “intellectual escape hatch”? What happened to the billions of years necessary for macroevolution?"

There weren’t billions of years. Life emerged very, very quickly after conditions became suitable for it, the billions of years of macroevolution followed.

Panspermia is just one idea. Others suggest that, since it’s relatively easy to generate organic soups of many of lifes’ components in a flask of water in a lab, that it was simply a lucky accident that something that could metabolize, emerged.

The reality is, we don’t know how it happened. We may never know, and that’s OK. It certainly invites speculation, which is not an escape hatch so much as it is curious individuals pondering the universe.

In fact, I would consider religious explanations to be a greater “escape hatch”. It not only suggests that some outside force could have put life on earth, but insists that it did.

Darwin was a eugenicist.
I like the idea of a spaceship dropping off some samples better.
(credits go to Ken Conrad for that trivia!)

Ken, it is amazing how people are desperately seeking comforting lies. Instead of accepting the evidence they manufacture a most ludicrous “escape hatch”.

Dr Francis Crick, professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, who received a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA suggested, “To avoid damage…the microorganisms…traveled in the head of an unmanned spaceship sent to earth by a higher civilization which had developed elsewhere some billions of years ago…Life started here when these organisms were dropped into the primitive ocean…We called our idea Directed Panspermia.”

A New York Times article on July 29, 2004 following Dr, Cricks death suggested, “With “Directed Panspermia,” he prepared, in effect, an intellectual escape hatch, an alternative explanation for life should scientists in fact find it too hard to account plausibly for the remarkably rapid emergence of Earth’s first life forms.”

Indeed why would a scientist of Crick’s credentials need an “intellectual escape hatch”? What happened to the billions of years necessary for macroevolution?

The basis for his proposal above can be best described by Dr. Crick himself with these two statements where he suggested, “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"… “Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I determine I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation running after too few facts.”