David Deamer - Professor of Biomolecular Engineering and Research Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz
In an interview with Suzan Mazur (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0809/S00127.htm) , origins of life Zoologist David Deamer says, "I think genetic information more or less came out of nowhere by chance assemblages of short polymers."
That's a lot of conjecture: "I think", "more or less", "nowhere"," chance assemblages", "short [undefined] polymers".
Stripped of its uncertainties and equivocations, what we are left with is an hypothesis (I would hesitate to call it scientific) of information coming from more-or-less nowhere. Wouldn't information from Somewhere be at least as likely a scientific alternative?
If it is legitimate for scientists to speculate that information comes from nowhere, is it not at least equally legitimate, given what we know from the hard facts of life experience about the link between information and intelligence, to speculate that information comes from an intelligent source?
Not if you're among the committed materialists who have a lock on science education in the western world. You can speculate out of nothing and nowhere, but not from something or somewhere.
When asked whether life has a beginning or is it just part of a process inherent to the universe, he responds, "It’s part of a process."
That's some process.
If the laws of life-creating biology were somehow embedded inside the laws of physics which were somehow embedded inside the molecules of the universe that just somehow -- correction, nohow -- leapt into being at the moment of the Big Bang, would this not be just as big of a miracle requiring explanation as a universe created in steps by an intervening Creator?
Apparently not, to neo-darwinists like Deamer.
John Lennon might have put it this way:
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
You may say that I'm a Deamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
I think he's a real Nowhere Man.
4 comments:
If Deamer'[s idea is difficult for you, try Richard Dawkins' book, "Climbing Mount Improbable" which explains it.
pettitji: Materialists offer two versions of "the dog ate my homework" to explain a universe infused with apparent design and intelligence:
1) There was a pack of many dogs, and one of them ate my homework (multiverses).
2.) The dog ate my homework in tiny increments over a long period of time (darwinian evolution).
Neither are convincing. Both involve rational creatures busily trying to provide a rational explanation -- this itself is an absurdity in an arational, undesigned, mindless universe.
Atheists are stuck with a universe of sheer and total absurdity. Given this, why not just accept this brute fact and stop trying to "explain" anything?
It's not "Darwinism". That term is not used by biologists. The term is "the theory of evolution." If you wished to be taken seriously, at least use the proper terms.
There is indeed a great deal of uncertainty about the origins of life. I suppose it's easier to insert God into the equation and remove that uncertainty. I prefer to keep to science.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll stick with darwinism because it communicates that which I wish to communicate. Darwinian evolution provides no satisfactory explanation for how consciousness, will, or my choice to convey immaterial "meaning" can take place in the first place. Your objection becomes an absurdity, as, indeed, does all atheistic reasoning.
If you wish to stick with science with regards to origins of life, you are limiting yourself to an inadequate and insufficient methodology. There are philosophical, moral, and spiritual realities to consider as well.
For that matter, how is speculating that information came from nothing more scientific than assuming that information came from intelligence?
Which has more empirical evidence in its favour?
Can you give me a single example from human experience where information came from a non-intelligent source?
When scientists speculate that information came from nothing, they have moved into speculative philosophy ungrounded in either empirical evidence or reality.
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