|
Home
Church Community
Statement of
Beliefs
Contact Us Search Our Site
Bible
Study Resource
|
|
|
Basic
Worldview:
102
Atheism vs. Theism
Scientists Acting as Mechanisms, Article 1
Prelude:
"Atheism/Theism" vs. "Science, the Bible, & Creation"
Atheism:
Introduction and Charges
Charge
1, Deduction and Induction
Charge
2, Question 1
Charge
2, Questions 2 and 3
Charge
2, Summary and Question 4
Charges
3 and 4, Definitions
Empirical
Evidence
Scientists
Acting as Mechanisms, Article 1
Scientists
Acting as Mechanisms, Article 2
Scientists
Acting as Mechanisms, Article 3
Occam's
Razor and Conclusions
Footnote
1
Footnote
2 and 3
Proof
of Life
Not
Theories, Unsubstantiated Hypotheses 1
Not
Theories, Unsubstantiated Hypotheses 2
Not
Theories, Unsubstantiated Hypotheses 3
Not
Theories, Unsubstantiated Hypotheses 4
Scientists:
Life on Earth Imported from Outer Space
Atheisms
Circle of Reasons
Is
God a White Crow?
Scientists acting as Designers or Mechanisms
In Place of the Supposed Natural Mechanisms, Which are
Absent and Unknown
Up until this point in our proof, we have remained somewhat
general in our terminology. We have referred somewhat vaguely
to the work of scientist in laboratories attempting to recreate
the origination of a living cell. We have also classified
this work as itself an evidence that intelligent agency is
necessary as part of the process since the scientists themselves
act as intelligent agents conducting the experiments.
One criticism of our proof may be offered in terms of scientific
methodology. The argument could be suggested that the work
of scientists during experimentation does not constitute the
involvement of intelligent agency in the outcome of those
experiments. The scientists are simply recreating natural
environments under which cell origination can take place under
the direction of unintelligent natural mechanisms in those
environments, or so the argument goes. And such a criticism
would be valid, too, provided that two essential conditions
were met.
The first condition is this: the environments recreated
in these experiments would have to be producible by exclusively
unintelligent natural processes. If an environment is highly
contrived or unnatural and contains elements not likely to
occur naturally by unintelligent causes, then the experiment
implies intelligent agency. Now, with regard to this first
condition, we concede that some of these recreated environments
are not contrived but are completely producible by unintelligent
natural forces. There is nothing inherently unnatural or extraordinary,
for example, about a tide pool with ultraviolet light (to
mimic sunlight) shining down on it.
However, as our second section below will demonstrate, atheistic
scientists admit that a great many of these experimental environments
are themselves so highly contrived that they go far beyond
what is available in nature and are thus, insufficient to
establish what could occur in an actual natural environment.
As such, many of these types of experiments, in general, do
not pass this first condition. Here is our first quote from
that section, taken from an article in American Scientist.
1) [A]biotic chemistry, which aims to reproduce in the
laboratory the chemical events that initiated the emergence
of life on earth some four billion years ago. Besides
amino acids and other organic acids, experiments in abiotic
chemistry have yielded sugars, as well as purine and pyrimidine
bases, some of which are components of the nucleic acids DNA
and RNA, and other biologically significant substances, although
often under more contrived conditions and in lower yields
than one would expect for a prebiotic process. - American
Scientist article
If scientists are recreating environments that do not simply
mimic nature but create conditions far more ideal than those
found in nature, then all such experiments are demonstrating
is that natural environments are not sufficient to produce
a living cell but that for a living cell to develop it takes
intelligent design to create a better environment and endow
it with traits that surpass natural conditions. In such cases
the scientist's intelligent design of an unnatural environment
itself becomes the mechanism of cell development. And thus,
these experiments would imply the necessity of an intelligent
agent for life to originate.
The second condition is this: the development of the
cell, proto-cell, or cell component that is the focus of the
experiment would have to be created exclusively by unintelligent
mechanisms existing naturally within that environment. However,
when we look at some of the experiments currently being hailed
as demonstrations that life could evolve by unintelligent
causes, we find that the assembly of cell components is not
resulting from any supposed natural mechanism inherent to
any natural environment. Instead, cell components are being
assembled, not from natural mechanisms, but by the intelligent
intervention of the scientists themselves.
Thus, the charge asserted in our proof, that these experiments
only provide evidence of the necessity for intelligent agency,
still stands.
The following article is divided into three sections, each
one demonstrating the intervening influence of the scientists
themselves as opposed to the hypothetical and vague natural
mechanisms they propose are responsible for the origin of
life. The first section focuses on an article published by
the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, Mass. This article describes the cutting edge experiments
conducted by MIT researches including their Department of
Chemistry. The second section focuses on an article titled
"The Beginnings of Life on Earth" published by American
Scientist. And finally, the third section focuses on an article
entitled "First Cell" that was published by Discover.
It should be noted that all three articles were hyperlinks
from Talkorigins.org, a website dedicated to the defense of
naturalistic evolution (i.e. atheistic evolution) and to debunking
creationism's main criticisms. These links can be found by
going to the Talkorigins' Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ),
following the link to the section on "Probability of Abiogenesis
FAQs" and then clicking on the article titled, "Lies,
Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations."
Given the purpose of that website and the fact that this particular
section was dedicated to defending the notion of life from
non-life (i.e. abiogenesis), we assume that these articles
and the experiments they describe represent some of the very
best available for the defense of the proposition that life
can evolve from unintelligent causes.
Here then, are some very prominent examples of how scientists
themselves act as the mechanism of cell component assembly,
rather than the hypothetical unintelligent natural mechanisms
they propose. Keep in mind as you read that these experiments
are being performed by the top scientists in this field of
research.
MIT Article
1) Led by Professor Julius Rebek, Jr. of the Department of
Chemistry, they have created an extraordinary self-replicating
molecular system that they say might be regarded as a
"primitive sign of life." - MIT article
2) How the whole business of molecular replication got
started has been and remains one of the central mysteries
of the origin of life. The origin of life is a classic
"chicken-and-egg" dilemma. In the presumed molecular evolution
on primitive Earth, what came first, proteins or the nucleic
acids RNA and DNA? And remember that the enzymes necessary
to make proteins are themselves proteins, where did they
come from? Amazingly, the laboratory-made molecule
that Professor Rebek and his colleagues have created can reproduce
itself without the "outside" assistance of enzymes. -MIT
article
There's a chicken an egg dilemma with enzymes, proteins, and
DNA/RNA, and until the problem is solved, naturalistic evolution
(i.e. evolution without an intelligent designer) is at a roadblock.
To solve this problem, these MIT scientists engineered a new
type of molecule, one that they could not find in the natural
world. This newly created molecule that cannot be found in
the natural world is capable of self-replication without enzymes.
In short, evolution theory required the existence of a type
of molecule we don't find in nature. So, these scientists
engineered this formerly nonexistent molecule and are now
heralding their newly engineered creation as evidence that
unintelligent natural forces could produce such a necessary
molecular stepping-stone.
So, how did they create this new molecule? The scientists
created the new molecule by reacting two other existing molecules.
If it is at least slightly probable that such a reaction could
have occurred in an unintelligent natural environment, then
it might be fair to say that such a self-replicating molecule
could have been produced without intelligent agency. If such
a reaction is NOT likely to have occurred in the natural environment,
then the intelligent agency of the scientists becomes a mechanism
necessary to produce this vital step in the evolution of a
living cell.
However, it begs the question. If the process, which produces
such a molecule, is likely to occur in the natural environment,
then why did scientists have to engineer it in the first place?
Why didn't they just go extract it from some existing natural
source? As we will see later in the article from Discover,
other compounds such as DNA or lipids are often extracted
from naturally occurring substances such as salmon sperm and
egg yolks (respectively.) So, why not just extract such a
self-replicating molecule from a naturally occurring substance?
The answer is obvious, because nature does not produce such
a molecule. If nature does not produce such a molecule, then
how can we say it is likely that such a molecule could have
been produced in an unintelligent natural environment? This
fact is only strengthened by the fact that the primitive earth
is only likely to have been more hostile, not more conducive,
to the production of such molecules. So, if such a molecule
can't be found in the organically friendly modern earth, then
how can it be proposed to be a likely inhabitant of the ancient,
primordial earth?
In short, scientists have engineered a type of molecule that
nature does not. And in doing so, these scientists have created
an experiment, which demonstrates that intelligent agency
is required to fill in the gaps that nature itself does not.
You see what such scientists are doing? They are asking us
to believe it is likely that nature could produce a type of
molecule that we do not find produced in nature and so have
had to engineer ourselves. So much for the MIT experiment.
All the MIT scientists did was to demonstrate that natural
(atheistic) evolution requires molecules that nature doesn't
produce but that an intelligent agent can.
|
|
|
|
|
|