googlef87758e9b6df9bec.html A Sure Word: Defending the Indefensible: How Evolutionists Address the Improbability of Abiogenesis

Monday, October 15, 2012

Defending the Indefensible: How Evolutionists Address the Improbability of Abiogenesis


Evolutionists are rather cavalier in their attitude toward abiogenesis. The supposed first ancestor of everything was not observed. Neither can it be repeated or tested. It's outside of the scope of scientific inquiry yet evolutionists, because of the religious-like tenets of methodological naturalism, dismiss any possibility of divine intervention in the origin of life. It's not a scientific conclusion; it's a faith based one.

Outside the revelation of the Creator, we could not possibly know about the true origin of life. How it did happen can never be known scientifically because it was a unique event in history and we weren't there to see it. However, scientists are also in the dark about how it even could happen. In spite of years of trying, scientists have not been able to create life from non-living chemicals. They've not even devised a plausible scenario. The best they have are fanciful, “just so” stories that are no more scientific than Dr. Seuss.

Seeing that scientists have not been able to create life via their own intelligence, it's rather far fetched to believe that life could randomly begin without the aid of any intelligent design whatsoever. Many creationists have ridiculed the idea of abiogenesis using a purely statistical perspective. That is, given the length of even the simplest protein, the odds of that many amino acids lining up in just the right order to create life seems impossible. Talk Origins summed up the creationists' argument this way (source):

So the calculation goes that the probability of forming a given 300 amino acid long protein (say an enzyme like carboxypeptidase) randomly is (1/20)300 or 1 chance in 2.04 x 10390, which is astoundingly, mind-beggaringly improbable. This is then cranked up by adding on the probabilities of generating 400 or so similar enzymes until a figure is reached that is so huge that merely contemplating it causes your brain to dribble out your ears. This gives the impression that the formation of even the smallest organism seems totally impossible.

That's not a bad summary of the creationists' position and I think the improbable odds is a serious objection to abiogenesis. Now, don't get me wrong. By citing them, I'm not saying TO is not a bunch of closet creationists nor do they cringe when hearing the probability argument. It just that evolutionists aren't daunted by the mind-numbingly small chance of abiogenesis. In a textbook example of circular reasoning, they know that abiogenesis has happened because we're here!

When considering abiogenesis, evolutionists usually dismiss the matter with the tired argument, “that's not part of the theory.” That's rather odd because they always seem to include something about the “primordial soup” or the Miller-Urey experiments in biology text books. So even though they like to claim it's not part of their theory, they spend a lot of their own time talking about it. I'll come back to that point in a moment.

On some occasions, evolutionists have even attempted to address the improbability of abiogenesis. Some rebuttals are more intriguing than others but I've not heard any that are very convincing. Of course, my bias toward creationism casts doubt on my objectivity. Yet there are a couple of things that I've spotted in the evolutionists' argument that betrays their entire point. See if you can spot them in this quote:

If [a 300-molecule-long protein forming by total random chance] were the theory of abiogeneisis [sic], and if it relied entirely on random chance, then yes, it would be impossible for life to form in this way. However, this is not the case.

Abiogenesis was a long process with many small incremental steps, all governed by the
non-random forces of Natural Selection and chemistry. The very first stages of abiogenesis were no more than simple self-replicating molecules, which might hardly have been called alive at all.” (italics in original)

I think the weaknesses in this argument are rather glaring. First, this argument claims a certainty of the pathway from non-living chemicals to a living creature. That's rather presumptuous of them, don't you think? I mean, scientists don't really have any idea how life began so how can they credibly say, “The very first stages of abiogenesis were no more than simple self-replicating molecules”? Could someone please show me these alleged, “self-replicating molecules”? Please show me how they became living molecules. I want scientific evidence please – not more of your Dr. Seuss theories.

The other weakness is a little more subtle. Do you remember how evolutionists usually respond to questions about abiogenesis? They usually say that it's not part of their theory, right? However, in this quote, they actually seem to invoke their theory! They are essentially saying that self-replicating molecules “evolved” from simple to complex via Natural Selection. Yep, that's evolution, all right. How about that? They say that abiogenesis isn't part of their theory yet they use their theory to explain abiogenesis. That's just goofy.

There are a few other things I have to say about their attempts at rebuttals but I'll save those for another post. I think these few points are damning enough for the moment. Let me conclude by saying this: abiogenesis is a fatal flaw in the evolutionary theory. Not “the” fatal flaw, mind you, because there are others, but it alone dooms the whole theory as incredible. If the supposed, first ancestor of all living things could not have arisen without divine intervention, then the entire rest of the theory is academic. Evolutionists dismiss the subject with little more than a wave of their hand. They're simply whistling past the graveyard.

7 comments:

Todd Williams said...

I've seen a brilliant demonstration by Dr. Stephen Meyer on how DNA (or RNA in the case of the RNA-world hypothesis) could not have arisen through any combination of chance or necessity. Even the very limited progress in RNA-Engineering that scientists have made only points to the fact that it takes intelligence to pull it off. We were engineered from the dust of the earth.

You're right about methodological materialists, though. They absolutely refuse to consider the potential of an intelligent mind behind creation. The implications would tear violently through their comfortable, unaccountable position as the ultimate authority of their own lives...blinded by the alluring light of scientism that allows them to bestow godhood upon themselves.

RKBentley said...

Todd,

Thanks for your comments. I'll have to look for the demonstration by Dr. Meyer. In the meanwhile, you might want to check out one of my posts on methodological naturalism. There's one titled, “The Funny Thing About Science.” Here's the URL. I'm sorry it's not hyperlinked.

http://rkbentley.blogspot.com/2011/05/funny-thing-about-science.html

God bless!!

RKBentley

Steven J. said...

The death of a particular person is often unobserved, and always unrepeatable, yet for some reason governments still keep medical examiners on hand. You can't burn the same building down more than once, yet arson investigators still exist. The investigation of past events from present evidence is the basis of many different fields of investigation. The prehistoric past is no more beyond scientific investigation than last night in an unobserved alley.

The problem with divine intervention is that it isn't scientifically investigable: there isn't and can't be a "theory of miracles," or a way to distinguish between the expected effects of a miracle and those expected of some unknown natural cause. Miracles are the supposed results of supposed causes that don't operate in the world normally -- which puts a real crimp in attempts to scientifically investigate them or use them as a scientific investigation.

Do you see any inconsistency between holding that biology can exist without the theory of evolution, and finding it odd that a general biology textbook (rather than one dealing specifically with evolutionary biology) would briefly consider ideas about the origin of life?

Do you see anything odd in supposing that science, right now, knows everything about nature that can be known, and that anything that scientists can't duplicate in the lab today must be a miracle?

Note that asking the odds of getting some particular, pre-specified protein is the wrong question. Possibly even asking the odds of getting a protein that can perform a particular function is the wrong question: we see the particular proteins and the particular functions that exist in life today, but the relevant question is the odds of getting any protein that can perform functions in an entity that has reproduction, metabolism, etc.

Just as the odds of a full house in poker are not so great as the odds against any particular full house, the odds against abiogenesis are very unlikely to be as great as the odds against the particular set of proteins and reactions we use.

If the Urey-Miller and similar experiments (and spectroscopic examination of distant interstellar clouds, etc.) show anything at all, it is that atoms don't glom onto each other at random; some sorts of molecules are much more likely than others. Some combinations of molecules are more likely than others. Random assembly of atoms, or even of amino acids, is the wrong model to use to investigate the probabilities, and this is pretty obvious even if we're not sure what the right model is.

Steven J. said...

Excuse the length of these posts, please. Or don't, as you please.

Back in 2009, scientists as the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, CA, assembled RNA molecules that could make copies of themselves using only relatively simple nucleotides and sugars, without the need for proteins or other large molecules to copy the RNA. So technically, self-replicating molecules exist and can be shown to you.

In the same year, researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK found that repeated drying and wetting of very common, simple molecules produced the ribonucleotides strings of which produce RNA. It's not quite the same as producing RNA itself, but it's only a step away. Given that RNA is known to function as both replicator and enzyme, spontaneous assembly of self-replicating molecules seems less implausible than ever. And mutable replicators can, of course, evolve by natural selection.

Many facts of history are ascertainable even though their precursors are obscure. The shadowy origins of the Germanic tribes does not mean that the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Great Britain is equally uncertain, much less, e.g. the American Civil War. The inability, for the time being, to reconstruct in detail the origins of life does not actually cast doubt on, e.g. the common ancestry of humans and other primates, or of whales and artiodactyls (even-toed hoofed mammals), or of dinosaurs and birds.

One further point: there is a difference between knowing what specific pathway abiogenesis took, and knowing (or at least being fairly sure about) some properties that pathway would have to take (e.g. starting as simply as it could and involving steps that were not exactly alive but were still, as mutable replicators, subject to natural selection).

RKBentley said...

Steven J,

I hadn't heard from you in a while but then again, I've not blogged as much about evolutionary issues as usual. Anyway, you're comments are indeed quite lengthy so I''ll not be able to hit all of your points. I might include some of the points you've raised in future posts so I might not address them all here.

You said, “The problem with divine intervention is that it isn't scientifically investigable: there isn't and can't be a "theory of miracles," or a way to distinguish between the expected effects of a miracle and those expected of some unknown natural cause. Miracles are the supposed results of supposed causes that don't operate in the world normally -- which puts a real crimp in attempts to scientifically investigate them or use them as a scientific investigation.”

Yes, I've heard that complaint before. However, nothing you've said prevents the miraculous from being true. If God created the universe supernaturally, then that is what is true regardless of whether or not it is scientific.

You said, “Do you see any inconsistency between holding that biology can exist without the theory of evolution, and finding it odd that a general biology textbook (rather than one dealing specifically with evolutionary biology) would briefly consider ideas about the origin of life?”

Biology does exist independently of evolution. What I find odd is that secular text books often talk about the origin of life; but when a creationist mentions it, he is soundly criticized for doing so.

You said, “Do you see anything odd in supposing that science, right now, knows everything about nature that can be known, and that anything that scientists can't duplicate in the lab today must be a miracle?”

I find it odd that scientists assume the attitude that, even if they don't know how something can be, they are still certain it's not a miracle. If a modern scientist were present at the resurrection of Lazarus, what might he say? He doesn't know how someone could be alive again after being dead for four days but he KNOWS it wasn't a miracle because that's not scientific?! You can see how that doesn't quite work.

You said, “Note that asking the odds of getting some particular, pre-specified protein is the wrong question. Possibly even asking the odds of getting a protein that can perform a particular function is the wrong question: we see the particular proteins and the particular functions that exist in life today, but the relevant question is the odds of getting any protein that can perform functions in an entity that has reproduction, metabolism, etc.”


I was planning on writing about still another problem with the infinite monkey analogy but I'll mention it now. Through a random selection of letters, suppose I draw “MONKEY.” Some people might hold that out as a triumph of order being derived from randomness. However, MONKEY only has value in English! In most other languages, MONKEY is gibberish. So in order for MONKEY to be seen as order, there must already exist a language to identify it. Even if all the letters are there, if there is no language then MONKEY is meaningless.

Likewise, life might be qualitatively more than a fortunate arrangement of chemicals. Without the Author of life, perhaps no combination of chemicals would ever yield anything.

I'm out of space and time. I'll try to touch on some of your other points later.

God bless!!

RKBentley

Todd Williams said...

Steven, you said "The problem with divine intervention is that it isn't scientifically investigable." This is only true for the naturalist. You assume that knowledge is only available through materialistic methodology. (And yet, many of the decisions we make throughout life are based on intuition and logic) Then, when evidence is witnessed, it is filtered through a naturalistic framework to support the theory. The naturalistic is handcuffed by this scientism, and doesn't have the leeway of the theist who can look at the natural as well as the supernatural.

"But you can't test the supernatural," says the naturalist, which once again betrays his presuppositions. Now does the theist have presuppositions, sure. I would admit that I do. But my faith is not threatened by (macro)evolution if it were found to be true. From everything I've studied to this point on both sides, I just don't buy it. But the naturalist cannot even begin to crack the door to the possibility of the supernatural, as the psychological and spiritual implications would be devastating to their worldview and state of mind.

RKBentley said...

Todd,

I appreciate your comments. You're absolutely right about the limitations of naturalism. I've said before that if the true origin of the universe is the supernatural one, then a "natural only" brand of science is utterly ill-equipped to discover that.

Have a great one. God bless!!

RKBentley