Origin Of Life: Solved!!!

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A few days ago we solved the origin of the universe problem.

Now the Ball Bounces turns its lonely eyes to you turns its attention to the problem of the origin on life. How hard can it be, really? I mean, it took literally nothing to solve the origin of the universe problem.

To get life, simply add nowhere to nothing. Nothing plus nowhere (plus chance -- ya gotta have chance in your corner) = Life!

This is how it happens: Information necessary for life simply appears out of nowhere, by chance. There. Problem solved. Did you get that? Let me say it again. Embedded, communicated information -- you know, the kind of thing we normally associate with intelligence  random occurrence, simply appears out of nowhere, by chance.

It's simple. It's elegant. Do I win a Nobel?

Drat -- somebody beat me to it:

We can now address a simple question that is central to our understanding of the origin of life: Can non-living systems evolve? Can genetic information really appear out of nowhere, by chance? If the answer is no, then we're in trouble because those of us who work on the origin of life claim that is exactly what happened four billion years ago, when the first forms of life emerged from a sterile mixture of minerals, atmospheric gases, and dilute solutions of organic carbon compounds. 

The answer has to be yes, because otherwise we are looking at intelligence. Article in Evolutionary News and Views that brings this to our attention, here.

The exciting news is this: with this breakthrough, scientists have at long last reconciled materialism with God, and even come up with a scientific description of the Creator!!! OK, he's a bit stubby and truncated, but here He is, God according to the latest scientific theory:

He's a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody!

Where did DNA information come from? Science circa 2011: Nowhere, man.

Alien Arsenic-Boy Is So Last Year

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 Last December we reported on a controversial paper published in Science which claimed to have discovered bacteria that feed on arsenic instead of phosphorous. According to NASA, this research promised to provide "an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." At that time the media reported things like:

scientists discovered "a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today" (Wired)

the "bacteria is made of arsenic" (Wired)

the bacteria is "capable of using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes" (Gizmodo)

the paper had reported "arsenic-based life" which is "very alien in terms of how it's put together" and "NASA has, in a very real sense, discovered a form of alien life" (io9)

"you can potentially cross phosphorus off the list of elements required for life" (Nature)

But soon after the original Science paper was published, credible scientists began critiquing the paper's claims....

Quote of the Day: "Life is Simply A Matter of Chemistry"

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 “The double helix is an elegant structure, but its message is downright prosaic: life is simply a matter of chemistry . . . nothing but a vast array of coordinated chemical reactions” -- James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA(DNA: The Secret of Life, 2003), quoted here.

Read that quote again starting with "life is simply..." and see if you see the interesting word, from an intelligent design point of view. Does it jump out at you?

Coordinated. Coordinated chemical reactions. What or who coordinated these chemical reactions? If there is nothing outside of the chemical reactions themselves, no coordinator doing the coordinating, why not reduce life further and simply say it is chemical reactions, and leave it at that?

Watson is, of course, using a reductionist argument, the hallmark of materialists. We are nothing more than animals. Our minds are nothing more than our brains. Life is nothing more than chemicals. Materialism isn't really about climbing mount improbable; it's more like whittling away at God's creation -- what actually is -- to reduce it to a scrapheap of whittles.

As C.S. Lewis has pointed out, if our minds are nothing more than our brains, and our brains are nothing more than chemical reactions, and if these chemical reactions were caused by nothing more than undirected, purposeless, mindless processes, what rational basis do we have for actually believing anything our minds spit out or cough up -- if we are molecular machines, chemistry-at-work, they are, at heart, no different than a belch.

I believe in God because I believe in "me", conscious, moral, irreducible to chemistry alone. And God, and God alone, provides a sufficient explanation, cause, and reason, for "me".

Mohler Monday: "Materialism can’t answer the big questions"

"Materialism just can’t answer the big questions" -- Albert Mohler, here.

me:

Materialism is reductionist. It reduces man to a mere random arrangement of molecules. You can never get to authentic human existence, with our hopes, dreams,  spiritual longings, moral aspirations, creativity, etc., from a materialistic starting point. And yet, most scientists are supposedly materialists. Materialists redefine and refine themselves out of existence.

Materialism proves scientists don't exist.

Quote of the Day: "Only as men are God's creatures do they have personal significance"

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What then is the theological significance of biblical creationism? Not only does it address and satisfy the screaming intellectual need that we all have as thinking persons for a rational explanation of the universe and ourselves that will preserve significance for us at the same time, but it also defines who we are as men and leaves us, so defined, with great worth and dignity. It also provides the theistic context for necessary for moral absolutes. Without the biblical doctrine of creation we are left with non-answers in these areas.

The church has traditionally understood Genesis as teaching a divine creation ex nihilo, and more particularly, the creation of man in his own image by a direct act of God. The church cannot afford to abandon these absolutely fundamental articles of faith, and it will do so only at great cost to itself and to the people it seeks to win to faith and to a home in heaven, because only as men are God’s creatures do they have personal significance and only as they are his creatures are they responsible moral beings answerable finally, of course, to him. -- Robert L. Reymond, Contending for the Faith, quoted by Albert Mohler, here.

You can be a materialist, or you can be a human being. That's the choice we face.

Quote of the Day: "The laws of physics wrestling with the void"

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The image of the fundamental laws of physics zestfully wrestling with the void to bring the universe into being is one that suggests very little improvement over the accounts given by the ancient Norse in which the world is revealed to be balanced on the back of a gigantic ox.

If this is how explanations come to an end, what of materialism? The laws of physics are sets of symbols, after all—those now vested with the monstrous power to bring things and urges into creation, and symbols belong to the intelligence-infused aspects of the universe. – David Berlinski

David Berlinksi is sooo good.