Don't tell the evolutionists

In a revealing article recently, John Horgan admitted that scientists don't have a clue how life originated on this planet.

Quotes and comments;

1. 'Dennis Overbye just wrote a status report for The New York Times on research into life's origin, based on a conference on the topic at Arizona State University. Geologists, chemists, astronomers and biologists are as stumped as ever by the riddle of life. [1.]

- The implication of this admission is that evolutionary theory can't be a fact; i.e. if we don't know how it all began. At best it can be a partial, incomplete theory. A theory is only as good as its basic assumptions. In this case grand theory of Evolution is built on a foundation of sand... which is sprinkled lightly over a void.

2. 'Researchers have found evidence of microbial life dating back 3.5 billion years ago, suggesting that life emerged fairly quickly—"like Athena springing from the head of Zeus," as one scientist quoted by Overbye put it.' [1.]

- That's not a bad symbol for the source of creation being an intelligent, self-aware mind.

3. 'The RNA world is so dissatisfying that some frustrated scientists are resorting to much more far out—literally—speculation. The most startling revelation in Overbye's article is that scientists have resuscitated a proposal once floated by Crick. Dissatisfied with conventional theories of life's beginning, Crick conjectured that aliens came to Earth in a spaceship and planted the seeds of life here billions of years ago. This notion is called directed panspermia. In less dramatic versions of panspermia, microbes arrived on our planet via asteroids, comets or meteorites, or drifted down like confetti.' [1.]

- Panspermia is about as close as some people get to admitting the answer might be God. [see my post 'Panspermian spaceships from on high']

4. 'Of course, panspermia theories merely push the problem of life's origin into outer space. If life didn’t begin here, how did it begin out there? Creationists are no doubt thrilled that origin-of-life research has reached such an impasse (see for example the screed "Darwinism Refuted," which cites my 1991 article), but they shouldn't be. Their explanations suffer from the same flaw: What created the divine Creator? And at least scientists are making an honest effort to solve life's mystery instead of blaming it all on God.' [1.]

- Horgan doesn't seem to understand that the god of the bible is eternal. (Either that or he's forgotten.) You can't give an answer to the question what created God, if God wasn't created; if God didn't have a beginning. (I fail to see how a what can create a who in any event.)

Horgan is projecting his own feelings onto creationists in this tattered shred of an article. I'm in no way 'thrilled' that OOL research has gotten nowhere. It's what I expect. (In fact it's why I became a creationist in the first place.)

He claims 'scientists' are at least making an honest effort at solving the mystery of origins. Well; maybe some are, but some certainly aren't; aren't being honest at all. I suspect many people see the implications of this failure, and refuse to accept the evidence, refuse to follow the evidence.

We have a problem here with the word mystery. There is the 'mystery' of a solvable question, and the mystery of an unsolvable problem. Most materialists think the Origins issue is a solvable problem, while most creationists think it is an unsolvable problem; ie. a true mystery not a pseudo mystery. (Unsolvable in the sense we can't know how the creation took place.)

It's popular in our day (in our culture) to deny that mystery is possible. The pretense behind scientism is the claim nothing is beyond human understanding... that there cannot be real mystery in the universe. We might call this secular optimism or something else, but it's a denial of mystery. (It is I think a sign of a still confident civilization... confident at least in this respect.) We might also call it arrogance or vanity. People will have different views.

Mystery can be frustrating... the more time and effort you put into answering a question, the more importance you attach to it, the more you want to answer it, the more you will find 'mystery' unsatisfying and frustrating. (Some of us feel driven to find answers to questions that will no doubt remain mysteries... at least for us, but maybe forever.)

In the comments to the article a lot of people were upset with Horgan for making this admission. I got the feeling reading them that they wanted to say ''don't tell the evolutionists'' i.e. don't make it known to our less well informed comrades that there's a real problem here... i.e. let's all pretend (e.g. Eugenie Scott) that there are no problems with the grand theory.

Summary;
Speaking of God Job says, "Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.'' - Job; 9:10 [3.]

Notes;
1. Pssst! Don't tell the creationists, but scientists don't have a clue how life began - By John Horgan [Feb 28, 2011]
2. 'John Horgan, in his book The End of Science, reports that Stanley Miller viewed the theories subsequently put forward regarding the origin of life as quite meaningless.
"In fact, almost 40 years after his original experiment, Miller told me that solving the riddle of the origin of life had turned out to be more difficult than he or anyone else had envisioned… Miller seemed unimpressed with any of the current proposals on the origin of life, referring to them as "nonsense" or "paper chemistry." He was so contemptuous of some hypotheses that, when I asked his opinion of them, he merely shook his head, sighed deeply, and snickered-as if overcome by the folly of humanity. Stuart Kauffman's theory of autocatalysis fell into this category. "Running equations through a computer does not constitute an experiment," Miller sniffed. Miller acknowledged that scientists may never know precisely where and when life emerged.'' - Horgan, John, The End of Science, 1996, p. 139 [source unknown]
3. Gill's commentary;
'Which doth great things past finding out,.... In heaven and earth; great as to quantity and quality, not to be thoroughly searched out so as to tell their numbers, nor explain and express the nature of them to the full; even what he has done, and does in creation, providence, and grace...'