Darwin did not know how life began. And he said so. His master work was entitled “On The Origin of Species” for it presupposed the existence of life.
But what got life started? Almost all scientists now believe our Universe had a beginning (Big Bang Theory). But what caused the material/energy which led to the simplest organisms upon which Darwin would build his Origin of Species theory?
We’re often told that origin of life experiments have simulated the production of life’s building blocks under conditions that mimicked the early earth. Or at least that’s what many textbooks say. But is this really true? This video shows how origin of life researchers “cheat” by using purified chemicals that don’t reproduce actual natural conditions. Another dirty little secret is that prebiotic synthesis experiments often don’t report the bulk of the product: toxic garbage that destroys the building blocks’ ability to form more complex molecules. Watch this video to appreciate how origin of life experiments don’t come anywhere close to accounting for the vast complexity of biology. This is the first of several episodes about the origin of life presented as part of the Long Story Short series.
Check back for the next several days to see additional episodes.
In the last few decades my studies have included other subjects specifically related to God’s Good Creation. So today I’m beginning a new category of posts that I hope you will find informative.
The new category I’ll be blogging about is Intelligent Design.
So Let’s Dig In!
When it comes to the Origin of Life & the Universe, there are only two world-view options available to us.
Everything that exists in the Universe is a result of undirected, physical processes.
Everything that exists in the Universe is a result of intelligent design.
That’s it. Those are the options. Which one do you believe?
Those who align themselves with option 2 typically fall into two camps.
Camp A) Literal 6 day, Young Earth Creationism (YEC) or
Camp B) Intelligent Design Creationism (ID).
Two Option 2 “Origin of Life” Perspectives
Intelligent Design (ID) and Young Earth Creationism (YEC) are two perspectives that seek to explain the origin of life and the universe. While they share some similarities, they have fundamental differences in their core beliefs and assumptions.
Intelligent Design:
Intelligent Design posits that certain features of the natural world, including biological systems, are best explained by the action of an intelligent agent or designer, rather than by natural processes like macro evolution by natural selection. (ID affirms micro evolution, i.e., variation within species, or change over time, for example)
ID does not necessarily reject the scientific consensus on the age of the Earth and the universe. It is compatible with a wide range of views on the age of the Earth, including the widely accepted scientific estimate of 4.5 billion years.
ID proponents often focus on the concept of irreducible complexity, arguing that certain biological structures and systems are too complex to have evolved through natural processes alone.
ID does not explicitly identify the intelligent designer, leaving room for various interpretations, including the possibility of an extraterrestrial or supernatural designer.
Young Earth Creationism:
Young Earth Creationism is a religious belief that the Earth and the universe were created by a divine being, specifically the God of the Abrahamic religions, within a relatively short time frame, often interpreted as 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.
YEC proponents believe in a literal interpretation of key biblical texts, particularly the creation account in Genesis, and reject mainstream scientific evidence for an old Earth and the universe.
YEC proponents typically deny the theory of evolution by natural selection, instead believing that all living organisms were created by God in their current forms, in a process known as “special creation.”
YEC is explicitly religious in nature, and its proponents often work to reconcile scientific observations with their interpretation of biblical texts. For example, the Great Flood in Genesis.
YEC is not considered a scientific theory and is rejected by the vast majority of scientists, as it contradicts a large body of well-established scientific evidence from multiple disciplines, including geology, astronomy, and biology.
Intelligent Design and Young Earth Creationism are both perspectives that argue for the involvement of an intelligent agent in the origin of life and the universe. However, ID is more open to the mainstream scientific consensus on the age of the Earth and the universe, while YEC is firmly rooted in a religious and literal interpretation of key biblical texts.
Personal Clarification
I believe in the God of the Abrahamic religions, a God most fully revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish Messiah (Christ). But, I don’t believe in a literal Six day creation of the Heavens and Earth. Most ID proponents would affirm the same. But not all are Theists like myself.
Moving Forward
In the next year this blog will curate the most useful evidence for Creational Design among the hundreds available: books, articles, videos, and other resources. I hope you’ll learn from these. I know I will. And that you’ll gain a greater respect for God’s Good Creation. And most importantly, the Good Creator as well.
For those who might challenge the intellectual heft and rigor of ID Creationism, I challenge you to watch an episode of an interview show called Uncommon Knowledge. Uncommon Knowledge is affiliated with a Stanford University public policy think tank called The Hoover Institution. This two month old video already has 1.6 million views. Not bad for a topic like this one.
Let me finish with a quote from NASA Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow1Robert Jastrow was an American astronomer and planetary physicist who was a NASA scientist, populist author and futurist. He was the founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a professor of geophysics at Columbia University. He wrote several books on astronomy, cosmology, and the relationship between science and religion, such as “Red Giants and White Dwarfs: The Evolution of Stars”, “God and the Astronomers”, and “The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe”. He died on February 8, 2008 at the age of 82. So far as I know, he remained an agnostic.
From Jastrow’s book “God and the Astronomers” (1978) he writes:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
This quote expresses Jastrow’s view that scientific discoveriesof the last 100 years led modern scientists inexorably to a shocking encounter with the old idea of a Creator.
To grasp the novelty of gender identity, compare its idea of child nature with that of child psychology. The psychological approach is predicated on an idea that seems glaringly obvious to most people today: young minds differ from those of adults. Jean Piaget, one of the field’s first theorists of cognitive development, called the first two years the sensorimotor stage, when infants and toddlers explore the outside world through sensory means. They only gradually gain control of their arms and hands as they grab at their clothes and their hair, pull at their genitals, or reach for a caretaker’s necklace or hair. Anyone who has cared for a toddler knows that toddlers’ emotions are so fleeting that they forget the banana that they just demanded in a fit of red-faced rage, once distracted by a bright shiny object.
Here are other truths about young children known to experts and parents alike. They are prone to magical thinking; they believe, as Jazz Jennings did, that a fairy will change their penis into a vagina, or that they play with invisible companions, like the castle-dwelling ninjas that my grandson used to “fight” when he was five. Their sense of time is primitive. Young children have trouble thinking about being six years old; imagining themselves as 20, as they would need to do to know their identity, is like science fiction. Their personalities change; the placid infant turns into a chatterbox five-year-old, who suddenly turns into a withdrawn ten-year-old. Dysphoria itself is often a temporary condition. Assuming that they don’t socially transition, as Jazz did, the large majority of dysphoric young children will desist as they get older; most will become gay.
Yet pediatric gender experts have put psychology’s idea of the child out to pasture. In their view, kids, even those who have yet to pull themselves up in their cribs, are capable of insight that many adults don’t have. “Kids understand themselves better, and at a much younger age, than adults assume. This includes their gender identity,” theorists at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education maintain. Today’s prodigies intuit their gender identities before they can talk. Diane Ehrensaft, director of mental health at the University of California–San Francisco and one of the foremost exponents of youthful gender dysphoria, explained at a 2016 conference how preverbal children could communicate gender distress. A boy infant might pull at the snaps of his onesie, she answered, in order to “make a dress”; he is sending a “gender message” that he really wants to be a girl. Likewise, a toddler tugging at the barrettes in her hair is not trying to ease the pulling at her scalp; she’s demonstrating that she wants to be a boy.
In the past, when a child showed signs of gender dysphoria, clinicians took a stance of “watchful waiting,” an approach that recognized the inherent volatility and cognitive immaturity of creatures still sleeping in their Batman jammies and leaving cookies for Santa Claus. The essentialist logic of gender identity, however, requires teachers, parents, and therapists to take a “gender-affirming” approach. A boy who declares himself a girl must be validated: no questions asked, no therapeutic probing about anything else that might be troubling the child. The enlightened child has spoken. “If you listen to the children, you will discover their gender. It is not for us to tell, but for them to say,” writes Ehrensaft.
