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 4 of 53)
46. Why did Dawkins have to embarrass us with the ET stopgap defense? Superman bested a herculean Kryptonian by throwing a piece of cellophane at him. This isn't TV or the movies. Now we have to follow up the ET argument with the Chewbacca Defense.
When you play the probability game, evolution is much easier to explain than abiogenesis. We're doomed for now to explain away the sarcastic Tornado Junkyard. Evolution, from a perspective of populations and survival scenario randomness, it makes sense that animals will change over generations.
Mokele Mbembe at 3:00PM on Apr 18th 2008
47. ...pop the cork, fingers snappin'...
Even simple minerals grow into intricate crystals. I'm just saying.
Mokele Mbembe at 3:03PM on Apr 18th 2008
48. Moke, I didn't know you were within range of those insipid ads.
Spin the wheel, round and round we gooooooo....
AndrewV at 3:04PM on Apr 18th 2008
49. what are you talking about Andrew?
It is a beautiful day, I'm outta here.
TJ at 3:04PM on Apr 18th 2008
50. Evolution began with molecules and not cells.
Even today in meiosis, the dna splits like a zipper into two half-strands. They then become whole strands. How? Because of the fact that the "building blocks (nucleotides) are present in the surrounding environment and are ATTRACTED to their proper places on the halves of the "zipper" like a magnet is attracted to another magnet. They "stick on" where their partner molecules are, and complete the DNA strand by making the matching "half-zipper."
A similar process undoubtedly occurred in the primal seas of the planet. Molecules snapping together by "magnetic attraction" of their bonds, fitting in their appropriate places on the dna strand. The molecules that did this best lasted and evolved, since they made more of themselves, and eventually got more sophisticated, and life started...
Godless Heathen Brian at 3:05PM on Apr 18th 2008
51. Linda,
As I stated previously, I could go on and on about 'showing you the money', as you say. but I won't clog up this blog with my personal experience. I can only encourage you to explore beyond what your apparently self-limited senses have shown you. If you do, you will likely find the 'money' on your own. Peace and Luck!
Robert
Robert at 3:04PM on Apr 18th 2008
52. TJ, what am I talking about where?
AndrewV at 3:06PM on Apr 18th 2008
53. Hi Andrew,
I hope you and your family are doing great today. I just want to touch on a couple things you wrote, and give you my responses to it.
"If God created life, why did he start with very simple things like cells, and then progress on to humans? He could have just started with humans!"
What do you mean by "God"? How do you define God? I ask this, because you have said that you don't believe in "God". What is your vision of something you don't believe in? It's a valid question. With that said, I'll try to answer it.
God can't be explained. We're simply not intelligent enough to understand God. But whatever he did, we still can't explain it. We can explain the results and the process such as Evolution which I believe in, but origin is not so easy. They have ideas, but say they do create life in a lab., does that mean they disproved God? No.
Botts at 3:07PM on Apr 18th 2008
54. YES -- SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!!
I JUST WANT TO SEE THE MOOONNEEYYYYYY
TJ at 3:07PM on Apr 18th 2008
55. "Linda,As I stated previously, I could go on and on about 'showing you the money', as you say. but I won't clog up this blog with my personal experience"
That's a neat way to avoid providing examples of those things that "defy empirical explanation"
Tim at 3:15PM on Apr 18th 2008
56. To all the Northeasterners on here, I know you're out there...
The wonderrrr of it all
Take a chance, make it happen...
What the frak are you talkn about???
I don't know if I'm a northeasterner or not - kinda on the line there... are you watching tv?
TJ at 3:09PM on Apr 18th 2008
57. ...life is short, life is sweet...
Mokele Mbembe at 3:10PM on Apr 18th 2008
58. God can't be explained. We're simply not intelligent enough to understand God.
---------------------------------
Well, some of us aren't.
It's a simple scam. I get it. Since you're the rube, you don't.
If you admit that you're not intelligent enough to understand god, you're also saying that you're not intelligent enough to know if He's real or not. Admitting that, how can you continue to spout?
Godless Heathen Brian at 3:11PM on Apr 18th 2008
59. Because if you can't understand god, he might be satan, faking you out, no?
Or he might be nonexistent. How would you know? You'd make him up anyway.
Like you did.
Godless Heathen Brian at 3:14PM on Apr 18th 2008
60. Well, it's nice that Dinesh actually acknowledges that abiogenesis and evolution are two different topics. A whole lot of creationists don't understand the distinction.
It's true that Crick *was* worried about the difficulty of abiogenesis (the origin of life from nonliving materials) and proposed, among other candidates, that life might have originated elsewhere and then been transported (possibly deliberately) to Earth. But he acknowledged he'd been overly pessimistic in this 1993 article:
http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/reprint/7/1/238.pdf
You want to be very careful in asserting that things science can't currently explain offer evidence of the supernatural. It was wrong with respect to lightning, cellular reproduction, orbital stability, etc. etc. If you posit a "God of the gaps", then that god has trouble if those gaps are filled. A lot of progress has been made in the area; see, for example, here:
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/did-life-evolve-in-ice/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=
Ray Ingles at 3:15PM on Apr 18th 2008