Design denial crashes into a brick wall or former atheist confronts his selective scepticism.

The brick wall
January 1, 2016 Posted by vjtorley under Intelligent Design

I’ve had a very interesting night. After watching Dr. David Wood (a Christian apologist and former atheist) and skeptic John Loftus (an atheist and former Christian preacher) debate whether Jesus rose from the dead in a very lively exchange, I decided to have a look at David Wood’s fascinating but very disturbing conversion story (WARNING: Do NOT watch this with children in the room!) At one point in the video (20:38), David Wood describes how several things combined to destabilize his entire atheistic belief system. The first was the argument from design:

First, what’s called the design argument finally hit me. I was looking at a wall, and how the bricks were arranged, and I thought to myself: “You know, if someone told me that these bricks went into this order by some process that didn’t involve intelligence, I’d smack him in the mouth. And yet I believe that life formed without intelligence, when the most basic living cell is unimaginably more complicated than some bricks stacked on a wall.” Why did I blindly accept the extraordinary claim that life arose spontaneously from non-life without demanding some very good evidence?

David Wood’s argument is not directed at unguided evolution, but at abiogenesis, so the standard reply that an organism is not like a wall (or a watch, for that matter) because it can reproduce, is beside the point. What we are talking about here is the origin of the first living thing that could reproduce.

Now, if I were an atheist, I might respond to David Wood’s argument as follows: “Maybe even the most basic living cells today are far, far more complicated than the first self-replicating molecule was. And maybe the first self-replicator was simple enough to have originated spontaneously on the primordial Earth, by an unguided process, over a period of hundreds of millions of years. And once it originated, it could have evolved into bacteria and other living organisms.”

I might say that, but the problem is that:

(a) there’s not a smidgen of evidence for the existence of these primitive self-replicators;

(b) there’s also no evidence that even a primitive self-replicator could have evolved within the time available;

(c) peer-reviewed calculations by a senior evolutionary biologist suggest that the origin of the simplest possible life-form – a “a coupled replication-translation system” – on the primordial Earth would have been a fantastically improbable event, even over a period of billions of years;

(d) we have no evidence that such a primitive life-form could have evolved into the kinds of cells that we find on Earth today;

(e) while someone might invoke the multiverse to beat the overwhelming odds against abiogenesis, there are also universes out there in which brick walls form spontaneously, too – yet we don’t go around saying that design inferences for brick walls; and

(f) in any case, there are good scientific arguments against the existence of an infinite multiverse.

Finally, Dr. David Wood does not present his design argument as a knock-down demonstration. The question he posed was: “Why did I blindly accept the extraordinary claim that life arose spontaneously from non-life without demanding some very good evidence?” Right now, we have no evidence for abiogenesis, let alone very good evidence.

So my question for readers today is: what do you think of David Wood’s “brick wall” design argument?

The new wild west?

Mass Human Cloning May Soon Be Upon Us
Wesley J. Smith

Human cloning has been accomplished, but the field remains generally stalled because of a shortage of human eggs — one needed per cloning attempt — and eggs for use in research are hard to come by.


That impediment may soon be overcome. Scientists have changed human blood cells into immature egg cells. The next steps should go even farther, eventually allowing for the eventual mass lab-creation of eggs capable of being fertilized or used in cloning.. From the Motherboard story:

The eggs produced by [Mitinori] Saitou and his colleagues are far too immature to be fertilized, much less grow into a human child. Still, they open the door for babies made from the genetic material of relatives, dead or alive. They could also provide a way for infertile people or same-sex partners to produce a child made from their own DNA.


The next step, according to the researchers, is to apply a similar process to the production of human sperm and to create egg cells that are mature enough to be fertilized. This will not only require a lot more research, but creating viable human eggs in a lab is also sure to be incredibly controversial.

Ya think?

And Here’s the Thing

It isn’t just eggs and cloning. Biotechnology researchers are creating the most powerful technologies invented since the splitting of the atom. For example:

CRISPR allows any cell or life form to be genetically engineered, potentially used in life-saving genetic therapies or the unleashing of a genetically altered viral pandemic.
Three parent embryos are being created in labs to be brought to birth.
Artificial life forms are being created with no predicate in creation or evolution.
Researchers are putting human stem cells into mouse brains and making other forms of chimeric lab animals.
The list goes on and on.


Yet, there are few concerted national and international discussions outside the research community to find ways to govern these experiments or to draw firm boundary lines. Indeed, other than some government funding restrictions, scientists are generally ethically bound only by their own consciences. That is unacceptable.

Missing: A Systematic Ethical Conversation

George W. Bush’s President’s Council on Bioethics attempted to carry on a systematic ethical conversation about these crucial issues. But the Council was roundly attacked in the media and among mainstream bioethicists for daring to have a conservative perspective and, as a consequence, much of its intellectually sterling work is too often ignored.

Time and scientists wait for no one! Yet our leaders dither. There is no serious discussion that I can discern within the current Administration about gathering a bioethics/biotechnology advisory council together.

We need a robust societal debate, led, I believe, by a council with members holding various, even conflicting, ethical and political perspectives — I call it a populist bioethics council — to duke it out publicly. Nothing attracts media attention or public interest like a good policy donnybrook, out of which we can hope to achieve at least some policy and societal consensuses.


It’s time to focus! Anything goes, or leaving our biotechnological future “up to the experts,” is not a wise or sustainable approach.