In Ben Stein's new film "Expelled," there is a great scene where Richard Dawkins is going on about how evolution explains everything. This is part of Dawkins' grand claim, which echoes through several of his books, that evolution by itself has refuted the argument from design. The argument from design hold that the design of the universe and of life are most likely the product of an intelligent designer. Dawkins thinks that Darwin has disproven this argument.
So Stein puts to Dawkins a simple question, "How did life begin?" One would think that this is a question that could be easily answered. Dawkins, however, frankly admits that he has no idea. One might expect Dawkins to invoke evolution as the all-purpose explanation. Evolution, however, only explains transitions from one life form to another. Evolution has no explanation for how life got started in the first place. Darwin was very clear about this.
In order for evolution to take place, there had to be a living cell. The difficulty for atheists is that even this original cell is a work of labrynthine complexity. Franklin Harold writes in The Way of the Cell that even the simplest cells are more ingeniously complicated than man's most elaborate inventions: the factory system or the computer. Moreover, Harold writes that the various components of the cell do not function like random widgets; rather, they work purposefully together, as if cooperating in a planned organized venture. Dawkins himself has described the cell as the kind of supercomputer, noting that it functions through an information system that resembles the software code.
Is it possible that living cells somehow assembled themselves from nonliving things by chance? The probabilities here are so infinitesimal that they approach zero. Moreover, the earth has been around for some 4.5 billion years and the first traces of life have already been found at some 3.5 billion years ago. This is just what we have discovered: it's quite possible that life existed on earth even earlier. What this means is that, within the scope of evolutionary time, life appeared on earth very quickly after the earth itself was formed. Is it reasonable to posit that a chance combination of atoms and molecules, under those conditions, somehow generated a living thing? Could the random collision of molecules somehow produce a computer?
It is ridiculously implausible to think so. And the absurdity was recognized more than a decade ago by Francis Crick, codiscoverer of the DNA double helix. Yet Crick is a committed atheist. Unwilling to consider the possibility of divine or supernatural creation, Crick suggested that maybe aliens brought life to earth from another planet. And this is precisely the suggestion that Richard Dawkins makes in his response to Ben Stein. Perhaps, he notes, life was delivered to our planet by highly-evolved aliens. Let's call this the "ET" explanation.
Stein brilliantly responds that he had no idea Richard Dawkins belives in intelligent design! And indeed Dawkins does seem to be saying that alien intelligence is responsible for life arriving on earth. What are we to make of this? Basically Dawkins is surrendering on the claim that evolution can account for the origins of life. It can't. The issue now is simply whether a natural intelligence (ET) or a supernatural intelligence (God) created life. Dawkins can't bear the supernatural explanation and so he opts for ET. But doesn't it take as much, or more, faith to believe in extraterrestrial biology majors depositing life on earth than it does to believe in a transcendent creator?
Reader Comments ( Page 3 of 53)
31. Linda: "I feel I should see it if I expect to critique it."
Linda, you are dealing with a concept foreign to Christians. Imagine if any of them read a book by Dawkins with an open mind, the same way they ask atheists to read the Bible with an open heart!
Hang on, let me shorten that. Imagine if any of them read a book!
AndrewV at 2:44PM on Apr 18th 2008
32. Dear Linda,
Did you read all of my post, or just the part about the 'quantification' of God. You just proved my point- i.e. that if you can't weigh or measure it, it must not exist. Who are you to say that we know everything about everything? Do we? Don't answer so quickly... I could go on and on about things that defy empirical explanation, yet have occured throughout our known history, but, alas, you still wouldn't believe it. I am saddened for you, your arrogance has uncovered your ignorance.
Robert at 2:46PM on Apr 18th 2008
33. Wow, I'm torn.
I don't know which person I would say is less qualified to expound on what evolutionary theory does or does not say. D'Souza or Stein?
On the one hand, Stein apparently thinks that evolutionary theory falls apart because it does not explain what it has never claimed to explain - life's origin. On the other, D'Souza thinks Stein is brilliant for thinking this.
What do you think, flip a coin?
skeptik at 2:47PM on Apr 18th 2008
34. Dinesh wrote: "Is it reasonable to posit that a chance combination of atoms and molecules, under those conditions, somehow generated a living thing?"
I'm not sure what you mean by “a chance combination of atoms and molecules.” However, it is overwhelmingly likely that no intelligent being intervened on earth about 3.8 billion years ago and contributed to the existence of the first self-replicators on earth. Please see my previous posts.
Dinesh wrote: “Could the random collision of molecules somehow produce a computer?”
No. But that is irrelevant to whether I’m warranted in inferring that self-replicators formed without an intelligent intervening to cause them to form. Self-replicators are much smaller than computers. They are tiny in fact. And self-replicators are much less complex than, say, the computer that I’m working on now.
Wes at 2:50PM on Apr 18th 2008
35. When I was seven and precocious, my uncle asked me, "If you're so smart, which came forst, the chicken or the egg?"
I answered him "Neither one; they both evolved from a long line of egg-laying animals going all the way back in time."
I still agree with my seven-year-old self. It all goes back to when the egg itself evolved, in reptiles, and before that in amphibians, and before that in fishes, and before that in even simpler creatures. The very first "egg" was probably bacterial spores or soemthing like that, and even that evolved from simpler forms.
And you know what? My uncle didn't understand my answer and dismissed it as nonsense.
Just like christians do today. Their minds are just too small to see big pictures. They only can think vertically, and not horizontally.
+++
Thinking vertically is looking to the next step, and the next, and so on in a straight progression toward the perceived goal. Thinking horizontally means that you stop at each step and think of ALL the implications of that step, the one before it, and the one after it. The goal may have to change, if the implications of the steps toward accomplishing it are too negative or if it is revealed in the process that the original goal was in error.
Godless Heathen Brian at 2:51PM on Apr 18th 2008
36. Intelligent Design is a play on words.
If 'design' then 'designer'.
But there are plenty other words to play with too.
If 'creation' then 'creator'.
Scientists have decided that matter is composed of protons, neutrons and electrons. But this was 'decided' before any scientists were born.
If 'decision' then 'decider'.
This is taking the confusion technique of religion to science. People of 'faith' already have faith that there is a creator, designer, decider.
What can anyone say about this 'being'. It is not alive by any scientific description (to date) of the term 'alive'. It cannot be carbon-based life.
It cannot be natural so it must be beyond natural or supernatural.
I could go on, citing historical documents, philosophers etc.
But this is not science, it is philosophy.
There may well be an infinite number of dimensions that are space-like and time-like where universe creating, designing beings can exist entirely apart from this particular universe.
One or more of these supernatural beings may have created this universe, anything is possible.
But that's philosophy, not science.
Ben Stein's movie deliberately confuses science with philosophy here too.
The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is science.(how science understand things happened)
Social-Darwinism is philosophy.(how people try to fit their notions of how the world should be by claiming allegience to the 'natural way of things'.)
not-pboyfloyd at 2:52PM on Apr 18th 2008
37. Dinesh, do you honestly think that biologists believe a complete living cell just sprang into existence by chance?
It should be painfully obvious that evolution can take place as soon as you have a self-replicating structure that is subject to random copying errors and environmental pressures. In all likelihood, evolution began with a molecule, not a cell.
keltendo at 2:57PM on Apr 18th 2008
38. Robert; "i.e. that if you can't weigh or measure it, it must not exist"
You are correct, you can't be 100% certain something doesn't exist if there is no evidence. But you don't make the leap to "it must exist" despite the evidence.
There is no evidence for Yeti either. I can't be 100% certain there aren't Yeti, but I will just assume there aren't until I find out otherwise.
Ryan Anderson at 2:53PM on Apr 18th 2008
39. Pastorkid wrote: "This is the same 'debate' I keep getting into with Biology Professors and Athiest friends. Evolution can only explain life after it came into existence, but now how it did come into existence in the first place. 'Chicken or the egg' is a good example of this evolutionary paradox."
As of today, no person knows exactly which series of events resulted in the first self-replicators forming. But that no person knows the exact series of events that caused a given event does not make one unable to reasonably infer the causes of all subsequent events. For example, no person currently knows exactly what caused the onset of the matter and space that is the known universe. But I know that my existence was proximately caused by sexual reproduction and a particular person giving birth to me. So that no person currently knows exactly which series of events resulted in the formation of the first self-replicators does not make me unable to determine that self-replicators that were on earth about 3.8 billion years ago evolved through reproduction into all the complex life that has lived on earth, including all the humans.
Wes at 2:56PM on Apr 18th 2008
40. "Once you have envisioned as far as your limited imaginations can take you, you will then perhaps only be approaching the doorstep of the wonder of it all."
======================================================
Robert, that sounds like something out of a fairy tale or a fantasy magazine. Is it arrogant of me to not believe one iota of the stuff that you do, or is it hubris on your part to think that you have the Answer?
I am in continuous awe of things and people and the world around me. Anything else is called daydreaming and has no basis in truth.
And those "things that defy emperical explanation"??
You'd have to show me the money on that one.
Linda at 2:57PM on Apr 18th 2008
41. "the doorstep of the wonder of it all."
To all the Northeasterners on here, I know you're out there...
The wonderrrr of it all
Take a chance, make it happen...
AndrewV at 2:59PM on Apr 18th 2008
42. Once again the goal post seem to be moving. Didn't it used to be that the Earth was only a few thousand year old? Didn't God create Adam and Eve in his likeness? So now that science has shown that these two things are not true, even DD seems to accept these things in the article, lets go pick on another thing that has not yet been explained. So basically science is invalidated because it has not explained every single mystery that exists in the universe.
PS at 3:04PM on Apr 18th 2008
43. not-pboyfloyd at wrote:
"It cannot be natural so it must be beyond natural or supernatural.
"I could go on, citing historical documents, philosophers etc.
"But this is not science, it is philosophy.
"There may well be an infinite number of dimensions that are space-like and time-like where universe creating, designing beings can exist entirely apart from this particular universe.
"One or more of these supernatural beings may have created this universe, anything is possible.
"But that's philosophy, not science."
What do you mean by "philosophy?" And what do you mean by "science?" And why do you say that the one is "philosophy" and the other is "science?"
Either an intelligent super being contribute to the existence of the known universe or it didn't. And it is overwhelmingly likely that no intelligent super being contribute to the existence of the known universe.
Wes at 3:00PM on Apr 18th 2008
44. 25. If aliens delivered life to earth, how did the origins of alien life come about? Had to be God! :)
Ben Fraley at 2:34PM on Apr 18th 2008
__________________
Yes, the Vorlons have been to Earth.
The Vorlons have been everywhere
The Vorlons ARE!
Igor at 3:02PM on Apr 18th 2008
45. "Scientists have decided that matter is composed of protons, neutrons and electrons. But this was 'decided' before any scientists were born"
Surely scientists have observed that matter is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons not 'decided' Isn't the fact that it is an observation not a decision define what science is?
Tim at 3:04PM on Apr 18th 2008