On OOL Science's continuing quest for a free lunch.

Materialist Origin-of-Life Solutions All Depend on a “Free Lunch”
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

This from Nature Reviews Chemistry caught our eye – an unexpectedly candid admission of how far origin-of-life research is from shedding real light on its subject. From “Studies on the origin of life — the end of the beginning,” by John D. Sutherland of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England:

Understanding how life on Earth might have originated is the major goal of origins of life chemistry. To proceed from simple feedstock molecules and energy sources to a living system requires extensive synthesis and coordinated assembly to occur over numerous steps, which are governed only by environmental factors and inherent chemical reactivity. Demonstrating such a process in the laboratory would show how life can start from the inanimate. If the starting materials were irrefutably primordial and the end result happened to bear an uncanny resemblance to extant biology — for what turned out to be purely chemical reasons, albeit elegantly subtle ones — then it could be a recapitulation of the way that natural life originated. We are not yet close to achieving this end, but recent results suggest that we may have nearly finished the first phase: the beginning. [Emphasis added.]

In other words, they’re nowhere near a solution, if purely materialistic processes are taken for granted as the only possible means toward life’s beginning.

And no wonder. As Center for Science & Culture research director Brian Miller explains in a new ID the Future episode with Sarah Chaffee, all the available solutions depend on expectations of a “free lunch.” As we know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

It sounds like that is why, 65 years after the Miller–Urey experiment (see Zombie Science, pp. 50-56), the search for answers is not even past the “beginning” stage. It remains the case that the only known source of the information needed for abiogenesis is intelligence.

In an admirably clear discussion, Dr. Miller debunks some common misunderstandings surrounding the topic. Listen to the podcast here, or download it here.

The kind of extremism this world needs more of II:Irony of ironies.

On the Rube Goldberg approach to design.

Oracle Soup – Dialogue with a Theistic Evolutionist, Continued
Douglas Axe | @DougAxe

This is the third part of my discussion with theistic evolutionist Hans Vodder about my book, Undeniable. I describe the background in the  first post, and I end the  second post by asking Hans to clarify what he means when he says that conditions on the early Earth may have been conducive to biological evolution. Here is his reply:

I used “conditions” as a catch-all term for any physical circumstances relevant to life’s emergence. When I suggested circumstances may have been “conducive to biological evolution,” yes, I roughly meant they may have been sufficient to cause biological evolution. So, I guess I’ve conflated two separate issues here: a) the question of abiogenesis and b) the question of evolutionary development — sorry!

However, I don’t wish to dogmatize. Even though I’m no biologist, I realize that “origin of life” questions have not been settled definitively (as Stephen Meyer has argued in Signature in the Cell). So, I won’t say such conditions actually were conducive to abiogenesis.

My point is far more modest. It is this: even if a completely naturalistic account of life’s origin and development turns out to be true — and I’ve been arguing we can’t rule that out on probabilistic grounds alone — design doesn’t automatically disappear. As Antony Flew put it in his book God and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (p. 71):

“It is…useless to try to dispose finally of the [design] argument with a reference to the achievement of Darwin… [T]he regularities discovered and explained with the help of the theory of evolution by natural selection, like all other regularities in nature, can be just so much more grist to the mill.”

So, even if neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory coupled with some theory of abiogenesis turns out to be completely spot on, that doesn’t obviously remove design (let alone God) from the equation. A universe capable of permitting the evolution of life from non-life would arguably be a remarkable indication of cosmic fine-tuning. So, I don’t think the stakes in the “evolution/design” debate are necessarily as high for theism as is commonly thought.

But the way we think about the divine action across natural/supernatural divide in these contexts is also important. Perhaps we can discuss the Collins quotation to explore these issues further?

Thanks again for clarifying, Hans — very helpful!

You nicely summarized our main point of disagreement by saying you think we can’t rule out a completely naturalistic account of the origin of living things on probabilistic grounds alone. Since I think we can, and this is a major theme of Undeniable, I’d like to unpack this more before we move on.

In my first reply, I used the example of searching blindly for a diamond in the Sahara to show why improbabilities can’t be erased by invoking “conditions” to narrow the search. Briefly: fortuitous conditions that narrow the search so helpfully as to ensure success are themselves improbable. So, invoking these helpful conditions is the explanatory equivalent of the shell game — it only pretends to make the improbability disappear.

We agree on this point, Hans, which is a very good start!

By my understanding of our discussion, here’s where we still disagree: you think the “rigging” needed for the universe to have produced things like fireflies and horses and humans can fit within the regularities described by science, whereas I don’t.

Think of oracle soup — the imaginary version of alphabet soup I describe in the second chapter of my book. As the story goes, you boil this soup in a covered pot, and then, after allowing it to cool, you lift the lid to reveal written instructions for building something that’s very clever — “worthy of a patent.”

Now, we have no trouble rattling off any number of “conditions” that are relevant to the process of boiling alphabet soup: the broth’s viscosity, density, surface tension, and boiling point, the sizes, shapes, and consistencies of the pasta letters, the thickness and conductivity of the pot material, etc., etc. The point is that it’s manifestly inconceivable for any combination of these mere conditions to provide a satisfactory explanation for how instructions appeared on the soup’s surface.

Think of it this way. If we imagine a pot of oracle soup actually working, all of us would recognize this as something astonishing to the point of spookiness, and none of us should be content with an explanation in terms of mundane properties like viscosity and conductivity. Why? Because it’s the startling coincidence that must be explained, and none of those ho-hum parameters diminish this coincidence at all.

As for what’s at stake here, I think it has to do with the fact that life seems to compel everyone to acknowledge a Designer from an early age, whereas arguments about the fine-tuning of the physical universe have been accessible only to relatively few people relatively recently.

The kind of extremism this world needs more of.

Officials in Russia Honor Jehovah’s Witnesses, Including Jailed Danish Citizen, for Outstanding Community Service

NEW YORK—On June 2, 2017, officials in the Russian city of Oryol gave special recognition to the local congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, expressing gratitude for their participation in the city’s annual cleanup efforts on April 22, 2017. There were 70 Witnesses who volunteered to spend the day removing trash from the streets of Oryol and from the Orlik River that winds through the city. As a token of their appreciation, city officials presented the Witnesses with a small gift and a handwritten note stating, in part: “In gratitude for a good deed for the community and for the environment.”

  

However, one month after the cleanup, and one week before being formally thanked by city officials, one of the Witness volunteers, Dennis Christensen (pictured in above inset), was arrested for so-called extremist activity while attending a peaceful religious meeting on May 25. Russian authorities have been using the claim of extremist activity to target Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout the country.

“It is no surprise to those who know Jehovah’s Witnesses that Dennis, and the other members of the congregation, would voluntarily participate in the cleanup of their city. They have been performing this service for many years, continuing even after their legal entity was liquidated in 2016,” states David A. Semonian, a spokesman at the Witnesses’ world headquarters. “Jehovah’s Witnesses in Oryol and in other cities around the world are known for being model citizens. That is why it is ironic that Dennis, a diligent, law-abiding Christian, would be treated like a criminal shortly after making a positive contribution to his community that was recognized as honorable by officials in Oryol. We believe that Dennis should be released immediately and be allowed to continue his peaceful worship and positive community service in association with his fellow worshippers.”

The arrest of Mr. Christensen took place almost a year after the local legal entity used by the Witnesses in Oryol was liquidated on June 14, 2016. The charges leveled against Mr. Christensen also came on the heels of the April 20, 2017,   decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to liquidate the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, near St. Petersburg. Mr. Christensen is still being held in pretrial detention by authorities in Oryol.

Media Contact:

David A. Semonian, Office of Public Information, +1-845-524-3000

Man's best friend v. Darwin.

No, Your Dog Is Not a Barking Exemplar of Macroevolution
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Dogs are yet another evolutionary icon that  Jonathan Wells, perhaps in his next book, could handily leash and take for a walk. The idea expressed by Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and others is that the descent from a common ancestor with wolves demonstrates not only the power of artificial selection, but by extension that of natural selection to sculpt brand new animals. In other words, your pooch is a barking exemplar of macroevolution.

One problem with this, among others, is that the virtue we value most in our dogs – the ability to form relationships with humans – appears to be no product of their evolution. At least it did not evolve from scratch. Dogs have it, but so, in their way, do wolves.

Here’s the tentative conclusion of research published in Royal Society Open Science, based on a limited sample of ten wolf cubs raised and cared for by humans as we would dogs, complete with “daily walks on leashes, cuddling, grooming, etc.”:

[W]e demonstrated that human-raised wolves can develop an individualized relationship with their human raisers which may not include attachment to and dependency on this person but which, at least before the sexual maturation of the animals, is characterized with a higher level of affiliation with the foster parent than with other closely familiar humans. Finally, we confirmed that intensive socialization and hand rearing result in general affinity towards humans.

This “affinity” may be more developed in dogs, which is to be expected, but it sounds like the seed is present in wolves. That would suggest it characterized the wild common ancestor of both dogs and wolves that existed 15,000 years ago.

From the story about this at Gizmodo:

[S]cientists have also documented some behavioral similarities between dogs and wolves. When greeting each other, for instance, wolves like to lick each others’ faces—a trait that’s all too familiar to dog owners. Wolves are also capable of following a person’s gaze into space, and they understand gestures like finger pointing (not even chimps can do this).

Given these similarities, [researcher Dorottya] Ujfalussy sought to learn more about the kinds of relationship that wolves, when socialized to humans, can have with their human caretakers. A primary aim of the study was to figure out what makes dogs so unique in their relationship with humans, and where their traits may have originated. Ultimately, Ujfalussy was trying to learn if dog behaviors were already present in ancestral wolves, or if they’re a product of domestication and artificial selection. This new research suggests the former may be true. [Emphasis added.]

The wolves were not found to be dependent on humans, as dogs are. But this is unsurprising. As geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig has described, the “evolution” of dogs from wolves “represents no increase in [biological] information but rather a decrease or loss of function on the genetic and anatomical levels” (as we reported here at Evolution News, see “The Dog Delusion”). Meaning no disrespect to them and certainly no lack of affection, but dogs are dependent because they are, in a sense, “degenerate” wolves.

A wolf is an apex predator, at home in a wild environment where your typical dog could not survive long or at all. In evolutionary terms, it’s a long step down. This explains, if you follow the interesting neighborhood-based social networking app Nextdoor, the constant refrain of panicked dog owners notifying everyone to be on the lookout for their lost pets. Even in a sheltered suburban context, dogs aren’t safe on their own.

In short, what’s most precious about them was likely there in the pre-dog ancestor. The rest was bred through loss of fitness. All of which is the opposite of what people typically mean when they talk about evolution.

I know, I know – some of this sounds unkind to them. But we love dogs just the same. They are our best friend. What they are not is a legitimate mascot for evolutionary advocates.

On letting the Bible speak for itself:The Watchtower Society's commentary.

“Let Us Compare Scripture With Scripture”

A MAN found a pamphlet on the floor of a railway car bound for New York City. ‘The human soul is mortal,’ said the pamphlet. Intrigued, the man, a minister, started to read. He was amazed because he had never before doubted the teaching of the immortality of the soul. At the time, he could not tell who had written the pamphlet. Still, he found the argument plausible and Scriptural and the material worthy of serious study.

The minister was George Storrs. The incident took place in 1837, the year that Charles Darwin first recorded in his notebook thoughts that would later develop into his theory of evolution. The world was still religious, and most people believed in God. Many read the Bible and looked up to it as having authority.

Storrs later found out that the pamphlet was written by Henry Grew of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Grew held fast to the principle that “the scripture . . . is its own best interpreter.” Grew and his associates had been studying the Bible with the aim of conforming their lives and activities to its counsel. Their studies revealed some beautiful Scriptural truths.


Stimulated by Grew’s writing, Storrs carefully looked into what the Scriptures had to say about the soul and discussed the matter with some of his fellow ministers. After five years of serious study, Storrs finally decided to publicize his newly found gem of Scriptural truth. At first, he prepared one sermon to give on a Sunday in 1842. However, he felt the need to give a few more sermons to do justice to the subject. Eventually, his sermons on the mortality of the human soul numbered six, which he published in Six Sermons. Storrs compared scripture with scripture in order to uncover the beautiful truth buried beneath the God-dishonoring doctrines of Christendom.

Does the Bible Teach the Immortality of the Soul?

The Bible speaks of Jesus’ anointed followers putting on immortality as a reward for their faithfulness. (1 Corinthians 15:50-56) If immortality is a reward for the faithful, Storrs reasoned, the soul of the wicked cannot be immortal. Instead of speculating, he went to the Scriptures. He considered Matthew 10:28, King James Version, which reads: “Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” So the soul can be destroyed. He also referred to Ezekiel 18:4, which says: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” (KJ) When the whole Bible was put into  perspective, the beauty of the truth stood out. “If the view I take of this subject be correct,” wrote Storrs, “then many portions of Scripture, which have been obscure on the common theory, become clear, beautiful and full of meaning and force.”

But what about scriptures like Jude 7? It reads: “Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” (KJ) Reading this text, some may conclude that the souls of those who were killed in Sodom and Gomorrah are tormented by fire forever. “Let us compare Scripture with Scripture,” wrote Storrs. He then quoted 2 Peter 2:5, 6, which reads: “And spared not the old world, but saved Noah . . . , bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly.” (KJ) Yes, Sodom and Gomorrah were turned into ashes, destroyed forever with their inhabitants.

“Peter throws light on Jude,” Storrs explained. “Both together show most clearly what displeasures God has manifested against sinners. . . . Those judgments inflicted on the old world, Sodom and Gomorrah, are a standing, and perpetual, or ‘eternal’ admonition, warning, or ‘example’ to all men to the end of the world.” So Jude referred to the effect of the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah as eternal. That in no way alters the fact that the human soul is mortal.


Storrs was not putting together scriptures that supported his view while ignoring others. He considered the context of each text as well as the overall tenor of the Bible. If a verse seemed to contradict other scriptures, Storrs looked into the rest of the Bible for a logical explanation.

Russell’s Studies in the Scriptures

Among those who became associated with George Storrs was a young man who was organizing a Bible study group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His name was Charles Taze Russell. One of his first articles on Scriptural themes was published in 1876 in the magazine Bible Examiner, edited by Storrs. Russell acknowledged that earlier Bible students had an influence on him. Later, as the editor of Zion’s Watch Tower, he appreciated Storrs’ giving him much assistance, by both word and pen.

At the age of 18, C. T. Russell organized a Bible study class and established a pattern for studying the Bible. A. H. Macmillan, a Bible student associated with Russell, described this method: “Someone would raise a question. They would discuss it. They would look up all related scriptures on the point and then, when they were satisfied on the harmony of these texts, they would finally state their conclusion and make a record of it.”


Russell was convinced that the Bible, when taken as a whole, must reveal a message harmonious and consistent with itself and with the character of its Divine Author. Whenever any part of the Bible seemed difficult to understand, Russell felt that it should be clarified and interpreted by other parts of the Bible.

Scriptural Tradition

However, neither Russell nor Storrs nor Grew was the first to let the Scriptures become their own interpreter. The tradition goes all the way back to the Founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ. He used a number of scriptures to clarify the true meaning of a text. For instance, when the Pharisees  criticized his disciples for plucking heads of grain on the Sabbath, Jesus demonstrated from the account recorded at 1 Samuel 21:6 how the Sabbath law should be applied. The religious leaders were familiar with that account, in which David and his men ate the loaves of presentation. Jesus then referred to the part of the Law that said that only the Aaronic priests were to eat the showbread. (Exodus 29:32, 33; Leviticus 24:9) Still, David was told to go ahead and eat the loaves. Jesus concluded his persuasive argument by quoting from the book of Hosea: “If you had understood what this means, ‘I want mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless ones.” (Matthew 12:1-8) What a wonderful example of comparing a scripture with other scriptures to reach an accurate understanding!


The apostle Paul proved his point by references to scriptures
Jesus’ followers held to the pattern of using scripture references to shed light upon a scripture. When the apostle Paul taught people in Thessalonica, “he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving by references that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead.” (Acts 17:2, 3) In his divinely inspired letters too, Paul let the Bible become its own interpreter. Writing to the Hebrews, for instance, he quoted one scripture after another to prove that the Law was a shadow of the good things to come.—Hebrews 10:1-18.


Yes, sincere Bible students in the 19th and early 20th centuries were simply restoring this Christian pattern. The tradition of comparing scriptures with other scriptures continues in the Watchtower magazine. (2 Thessalonians 2:15) Jehovah’s Witnesses use this principle when they analyze a scripture.

Let the Context Speak

When we are reading the Bible, how can we imitate the fine examples of Jesus and his faithful followers? First, we can consider the immediate context of the scripture in question. How can the context help us understand the meaning? To illustrate, let us take Jesus’ words recorded at Matthew 16:28: “Truly I say to you that there are some of those standing here that will not taste death at all until first they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” Some may feel that these words were not fulfilled because all of Jesus’ disciples who were present when he said those words died before the establishment of God’s Kingdom in the heavens. The Interpreter’s Bible even says of this verse: “The prediction was not fulfilled, and later Christians found it necessary to explain that it was metaphorical.”


However, the context of this verse, as well as that of the parallel accounts by Mark and Luke, helps us understand the real meaning of the scripture. What did Matthew relate right after the words quoted above? He wrote: “Six days later Jesus took Peter and James and John his brother along and brought them up into a lofty mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them.” (Matthew 17:1, 2) Both Mark and Luke also linked Jesus’ comment about the Kingdom with the account of the transfiguration. (Mark 9:1-8; Luke 9:27-36) Jesus’ coming in Kingdom power was demonstrated in his transfiguration, his appearing in glory in the presence of the three apostles. Peter verifies this understanding by speaking of “the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ” with regard to his witnessing Jesus’ transfiguration.—2 Peter 1:16-18.

Do You Let the Bible Be Its Own Interpreter?

What if you cannot understand a scripture even after you have considered its context? You may benefit from comparing it with other scriptures, having in mind the overall tenor of the Bible. One excellent tool  for doing this can be found in the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, now available in whole or in part in 57 languages. This tool is a list of marginal references, or cross-references, that appears in the center column of each page in many of its editions. You can find more than 125,000 of them in the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures—With References. The “Introduction” to that Bible explains: “A careful comparison of the marginal references and an examination of the accompanying footnotes will reveal the interlocking harmony of the 66 Bible books, proving that they comprise one book, inspired by God.”

Let us see how use of the cross-references can help us to understand a scripture. Take the example of the history of Abram, or Abraham. Consider this question: Who took the lead when Abram and his family went out of Ur? Genesis 11:31 reads: “Terah took Abram his son and Lot, . . . and Sarai his daughter-in-law, . . . and they went with him out of Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. In time they came to Haran and took up dwelling there.” Just reading this, one might conclude that Abram’s father, Terah, took the lead. However, in the New World Translation, we find 11 cross-references on this verse. The last one takes us to Acts 7:2, where we read Stephen’s admonition to the first-century Jews: “The God of glory appeared to our forefather Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia, before he took up residence in Haran, and he said to him, ‘Go out from your land and from your relatives and come on into the land I shall show you.’” (Acts 7:2, 3) Was Stephen confusing this with Abram’s leaving Haran? Obviously not, for this is part of the inspired Word of God.—Genesis 12:1-3.

Why, then, does Genesis 11:31 state that “Terah took Abram his son” and others of his family and went out of Ur? Terah was still the patriarchal head. He agreed to go with Abram and thus was credited with moving the family to Haran. By comparing and harmonizing these two scriptures, we can see in our mind’s eye exactly what took place. Abram respectfully convinced his father to go out of Ur in accord with God’s command.


When we read the Scriptures, we should take into account the context and the overall tenor of the Bible. Christians are admonished: “We received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that have been kindly given us by God. These things we also speak, not with words taught by human wisdom, but with those taught by the spirit, as we combine spiritual matters with spiritual words.” (1 Corinthians 2:11-13) Indeed, we must implore Jehovah for help to understand his Word and try to “combine spiritual matters with spiritual words” by checking the context of the scripture in question and by looking up related scriptures. May we keep finding brilliant gems of truth through the study of God’s Word.

And even yet more iconoclasm.

Scott Turner’s Purpose and Desire — An Important New Voice in the Evolution Debate
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

The crisis of evolutionary biology is spoken of openly here and by scientists who are professed advocates of intelligent design. It is acknowledged in much more circumspect terms by other scientists who know they would be hounded and punished by colleagues for doing so in the public arena. You have to look carefully at what they admit in professional journals, when they think laypeople aren’t listening.

However, a forthcoming book by biologist J. Scott Turner,  Purpose & Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It,  is a real shot across the bow. Dr. Turner’s last book, from Harvard University Press, was The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself.  The new book, from HarperOne, is aimed not at an academic audience but straight at the broadest thoughtful reading public.

Turner is a delightful, clear, and highly engaging writer, and he sets out his argument against smug Darwinism forthrightly. As he shows, biology itself is in crisis, having failed to grapple with the enigma of what life really is.

From the Preface:

[T]here sits at the heart of modern Darwinism an unresolved tautology that undermines its validity. We scientists might not be troubled by this, but we should be, not least because the failure to recognize it closes off modern evolutionism from many big problems it should be capable of answering: the origin of life, the origin of the gene, biological design, and the origins of cognition and consciousness, to name a few. Intentionality and purposefulness are important to all these unresolved big questions, and yet we are very quick to fence these off behind a wall of denial. Instead of a frank acknowledgment of purposefulness, intentionality, intelligence, and design, we refer to “apparent” design, “apparent” intentionality, “apparent” intelligence.

The latest biologist to come out swinging at Darwinism, Turner is not an ID proponent. He teaches at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

And this is not a review – you will be hearing more about Purpose & Desire, here and elsewhere, in weeks to come and more so when the book is published on September 12. Instead I want to invite you to take advantage of a great pre-order deal.  See here for details All you have to do is pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or other selected venders, and you get two free e-books, Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, by Michael Denton, and Metamorphosis, which I edited as a companion to the Illustra Media documentary of the same name.

It’s as simple as this: order, and then  click on the button at the bottom  to let us know your order number. The two free e-books are then yours. Needless to say, this deal is of limited duration, so don’t dawdle about it!

Between Necessity and sufficiency:Seeking answers on the OOl

Is the Universe “Rigged” for Life? Conversation with a Theistic Evolutionist, Continued
Douglas Axe | @DougAxe

This is the second part of my discussion with theistic evolutionist Hans Vodder about my book, Undeniable.See this earlier post for background. Hans replied to the response I gave there as follows:

In one sense, I might agree with you that “accidental explanations for life necessarily invoke unbelievable coincidences.” But I’m not sure this says anything definitive about the particulars of life’s history, specifically with respect to the question of whether or not some form of biological evolution occurred.

Continuing the Sahara scenario, a successful search would defy the odds and require an explanation. However, because there’s more than one way to “rig the game” (i.e., there are various possible restrictions which might all lead to a successful search), the historical particulars of those explanations may look very different. In other words, “design” is a multiply realizable concept.

If the ancient Earth’s conditions were conducive to biological evolution, this would be a form of restricted search. Biological evolution might be within the realm of possibility given the conditions of the early Earth (i.e., the specific restrictions), even if the very possibility of life in the universe still requires an explanation. In this way, empirical considerations and accurate probability measurements might be relevant for determining the restrictions that enable evolutionary searches to work, assuming they do.

Two questions suggest themselves here. First, would evolutionary explanations that depend in this way on restricted searches still qualify as “accidental explanations for life”? Or would they more accurately be considered the outcome of design once removed (or design “displaced,” as Dembski might put it)? Second, and related to the first question, is the primary target of probabilistic arguments biological evolution or metaphysical/philosophical naturalism?

I hope that clarifies my approach a bit and gives a sense of how I currently think about these things.

Yes, this is very helpful, Hans. We may have to circle back to these two questions in order to understand better how we think about “rigging the game.”

However the various kinds of life on Earth first came to exist, we agree that the physical circumstances that enable life to work — everything from the stable orbit of our planet to the extraordinary properties of water — seem remarkably well suited for life. As theists, you and I attribute these circumstances to God.

But as necessary as these circumstances are for life to work, I think it has become very clear that they aren’t at all sufficient to explain how the various kinds of life came to exist in the first place. So, I disagree with Francis Collins’s view that God’s role in creating life is hidden from our view by having been woven into the physical backdrop of the universe. In The Language of God, he put it as follows (p 205):

God could in the moment of creation of the universe also know every detail of the future. That could include the formation of the stars, planets, and galaxies, all of the chemistry, physics, geology, and biology that led to the formation of life on earth, and the evolution of humans…. In that context, evolution could appear to us to be driven by chance, but from God’s perspective the outcome would be entirely specified. Thus, God could be completely and intimately involved in the creation of all species, while from our perspective, limited as it is by the tyranny of linear time, this would appear a random and undirected process.

Contrary to Collins, I say random and undirected processes are clearly and obviously incapable of inventing new living things. God’s creative activity is therefore clearly attested to by each distinct form of life over and above his action in specifying a universe that produced a planet where life could flourish once it did exist.

I’m unclear where you stand on this, Hans. When you say “conditions” on early Earth may have been conducive to biological evolution, I’m thinking you’re referring to planetary conditions — prevailing aspects of the atmosphere, surface, crust, etc., under the influence of the sun and moon. And by “conducive to biological evolution” I take you to mean sufficient to cause biological evolution.

But I could be misreading you. Can you clarify this for me, Hans?

Looking for a diamond in the desert: OOL science's errand.

Undeniable? A Conversation with Theistic Evolutionist Hans Vodder
Douglas Axe | @DougAxe

Hans Vodder is a careful thinker, with graduate degrees from the University of St. Andrews (philosophy) and Northwest University (theology) to prove it. I met him a couple of months ago, just before I spoke at the community center in Port Townsend, Washington. Having read my book —  Undeniable  — Hans was instrumental in setting up that event to foster critical dialog over the book’s message.

Although we’re both people of faith, Hans favors the view that God used the evolutionary process to do his work of creating. In other words, while we agree that life is to be attributed to God, we disagree on the plausibility of the evolutionary explanation of life.

When disagreement leads to genuine dialogue, good things are bound to follow. Recognizing this, Hans and I agreed to convert our recent exchange of emails into a public discussion. We don’t know yet whether our conversation will bring us closer to agreement, but even if it doesn’t, each of us will have benefitted from understanding the other better. And we hope you will benefit as well by following the conversation.

Hans started by expressing the following concern about how I use probabilistic reasoning to argue against the standard evolutionary view:

It seems to me (Hans) that the probability distribution might make a big difference if the search has cumulative power and the search space is constrained by environmental factors. Whatever the situation was on early Earth, the specificity of certain features (geographical, climatological, chemical, etc.) would have favored certain outcomes over others: it wouldn’t have been a “level playing field” where any abstract possibility would have had just as much an opportunity for being realized as any other. In other words, might not the environment constrain the search space? If that’s right, the effective search map might be much smaller than a full-blown egg-hunt search.

How much smaller? It’s hard to say, as it seems very difficult to assign probabilistic values for historical events in general. I don’t think these considerations make the probabilistic arguments against evolution go away entirely: the odds do still seem against it. However, I remain extremely doubtful that one can assign anything like an accurate probability value to the historical circumstances under which life, if it evolved on Earth, would have emerged. From where I stand, considering the odds is a cause for caution and humility, but I think we’d be hard pressed to say whether or not a given biological event was “fantastically improbable” or merely “highly improbable.” The calculations cannot be precise enough, so far as I see, to constitute a knock-down argument against evolution.

I (Doug) answered:

I hope I can give you enough of my thinking on the probability question that we can understand each other iteratively.

Let me start by giving you an alternative to the single-sentence summary of the argument I make in Undeniable (see page 160). I could have summarized the argument this way: “Accidental explanations for life necessarily invoke unbelievable coincidences.”

To see why this has to be true, suppose I were to place a small diamond just below the surface of the sand in the Sahara Desert, and you were to set out to find it, knowing nothing other than that it’s in the Sahara. I think we can agree that the challenge for you is nearly impossible. Yes?

We come to that conclusion just by knowing how unsearchably large the Sahara is and how small the thing to be found is. We don’t have to make any assumptions about how you go about searching. Whether you devote years or decades to the diamond hunt, you can’t feasibly search more than an infinitesimal fraction of the Sahara. The fact that this one crucial resource – time — is in limited supply therefore tells us you have only an infinitesimal chance of success.

For example, if a third party (ignorant of the diamond’s location) were to impose geographical constraints on you by saying you can only look in a particular small patch of the Sahara, that wouldn’t help you at all — unless this happened to be the right patch. But for it to be the right patch would be a remarkable coincidence in itself.

The problem with all accidental explanations of life is like this, but far more extreme. You don’t need accurate measurements of probability any more than you needed an accurate measurement of the Sahara. Accuracy is only needed for judging close calls, and this isn’t a close call.

In the end, there’s no way around the fact that for any accidental causes to produce life amounts to a coincidence that’s far too extreme to be credible.

Or at least that’s how I’m thinking of it.

Editor’s note: The conversation continues on Monday.

Why OOL science needs to look past physics and chemistry.

Origin of Life and Information — Some Common Myths
Brian Miller

In previous articles (here,  here, and here) I described the thermodynamic challenges to the origin of life, and I explained the need for information in the first cell to originate from an outside source. Now, I will dispel many of the myths associated with attempts to circumvent the information challenge.

A common attempt to overcome the need for information in the first cell is to equate  information to a reduction in entropy, often referred to as the production of “negative entropy” or N-entropy. This connection is in certain contexts justified by the fact that both  entropy and the Shannon formulation for information use the same mathematics and can be related to probability and uncertainty. For instance, this approach can be used to calculate the amount of work required to  generate specific amounts of information in the amino acid sequences of proteins. However,  entropy is not equivalent to the information in cells, since the latter represents functional information To illustrate the difference, imagine entering the kitchen and seeing a bowl of alphabet soup with several letters arranged in the middle as follows:

REST TODAY AND DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS

I HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER SOON

You would immediately realize that some intelligence, probably your mother, arranged the letters for a purpose. Their sequence could not possibly be explained by the physics of boiling water or the chemistry of the pasta.

To continue the analogy, you mention your design inference to your friend Stanley Miller the Third who happens to be an origin-of-life chemist. Stanley believes any attribution of design to pasta sequences in soup is based on the concerned-parent-of-the-gaps fallacy, so he mocks your superstitious beliefs. He then states that the sequence could have come about as a result of the boiling soup cooling to room temperature. Since cold soup has a lower entropy than hot soup, he believes the reduction in entropy could have generated the information in the message. You would immediately recognize that a reduction in thermal entropy has no physical connection to the specific ordering of letters in a meaningful message. The same principle holds true in relation to the origin of life for the required sequencing of amino acids in proteins or nucleotides in DNA.

A related error is the claim that biological information could have come about by some  complex systems or non-linear dynamics processes. The problem is that all such processes are driven by physical laws or fixed rules. And, any medium capable of containing information (e.g., Scrabble tiles lined up on a board) cannot constrain in any way the arrangement of the associated symbols/letters. For instance, to type a message on a computer, one must be free to enter any letters in any order. If every time one typed an “a” the computer automatically generated a “b,” the computer could no longer contain the information required to create meaningful sentences. In the same way, amino acid sequences in the first cell could only form functional proteins if they were free to take on any order.

Moreover, protein chemists have determined that the vast majority of sequences in proteins today are indistinguishable from being purely random, which further confirms that those in the first cell also appeared random to first approximation. Any relevant divergence from pure randomness would have been due to  constraints associated with protein folding, such as the formation of a-helixes. To reiterate, no natural process could have directed the amino acid sequencing in the first cell without destroying the chains’ capacity to contain the required information for proper protein folding. Therefore, the sequences could never be explained by any natural process but only by the intended goal of forming the needed proteins for the cell’s operations (i.e., teleologically).

A third error relates to attempts to explain the genetic code in the first cell by a stereochemical affinity between amino acids and their corresponding codons. According to this model, naturally occurring chemical processes formed the basis for the connection between amino acids and their related codons (nucleotide triplets). Much of the key research promoting this theory  was conducted by biochemist Michael Yarus. He also devised theories on how this early stereochemical era could have evolved into the modern translation system using ribosomes, tRNAs, and supporting enzymes. His research and theories are clever, but his conclusions face numerous challenges.

For instance, Yarus’s experiments did not actually measure the direct attraction between individual amino acids and their related codons, but they tested for binding between amino acids and sets of generated nucleotide chains (aptamers). His team reported that certain amino acids bound to aptamers which contained a higher than random percentage of their corresponding codons or anticodons at the binding sites. However, other researchers were unconvinced by the findings. For instance, Andrew Ellington’s team questioned whether the correlations in these studies were statistically significant, and they argued that his theories for the development of the modern translation system were untenable. Similarly, Eugene Koonin found that the claimed affinities were weak at best and generally unconvincing. He argued instead that the code started as a  “frozen accident” undirected by any chemical properties of its physical components.

More significantly, even if such affinities existed, they would not help in any realistic origin-of-life theory. Yarus’s model centers on codons embedded in longer sequences of nucleotides folding around single amino acids. Any model for translating sequences of codons into chains of amino acids would require a much longer strand of RNA to fold around multiple amino acids and then consistently link them together in the right order. And, these RNAs would eventually have to lose the “non-coding” nucleotides surrounding the relevant codons – while somehow retaining the affinities which had previously required the removed nucleotides – in order to become modern versions of RNA and DNA. Even if such extraordinary feats could occur, the translation would take place in the wrong direction.

Within the presupposed RNA world framework, nucleotide sequences came into being which eventually evolved into RNA-based enzymes. A selective process was believed to replicate the more efficient enzyme-like sequences over others in order to eventually produce “ribozymes” which could perform all of the needed functions for some sort of protocell. However, the ribozyme sequences would have had no relationship via any code to amino acid sequences which could fold into functional proteins. Therefore, any process which could perform the translation would initially be completely useless. Instead, proteins would have needed to come into existence independently through their own selective process, and then their sequences would have needed to be encoded into new RNAs. However, Yarus’s model does not work in reverse. Another process would have been needed for the amino-acid-to-RNA encoding, but the underlying code would not have corresponded to Yarus’s affinity-based code. As a result, the decoding process would have lost the encoded information.

These problems simply highlight one of the challenges for the RNA world hypothesis and for any materialistic explanation for the genetic code. A viable theory would have to explain for both the encoding and decoding several steps:

Amino acids and nucleotides would have to be created in abundance and then brought together. They would have to originate in separate locations, since the conditions needed for their synthesis are quite different, and cross-reactions would have prevented the creation of either. (See  Shapiro’s Origins.)

A functional protein or RNA strand would have to unfold to allow for its sequence to be translated. And, such functional sequences would have to separate themselves from other useless chains. An enormous number of chains would have to exist for a useful sequence to have had any chance of forming.

Individual codons would have to be so strongly attracted to their corresponding amino acids, that they would attach to them for an extended period of time.

Some enzyme-like molecules would have to come along and then polymerize the nucleotides into strands of RNA or the amino acids into proteins.

All useful products would have to migrate to some safe location until they could be encapsulated into a cellular membrane. A viable membrane would have to be selectively semipermeable, so it would allow the right molecules to enter and waist products to leave.

Neither Yarus nor any other researcher has even come close to properly addressing any of these issues in a purely materialistic framework. Nor will they, for any realistic scenario requires intelligent agency to properly coordinate all of these fantastically improbable steps.