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The following are quotes added to my Unclassified Quotes database in January 2007. The date format is dd/mm/yy. See copyright conditions at end.
[Feb (1), (2); Mar; Apr; May; Jun; Jul; Aug; Sep; Oct; Nov; Dec]
1/01/2007
"The practical measure of the random element which can increase in the universe but can never decrease is
called entropy. Measuring by entropy is the same as measuring by the chance explained in the last
paragraph, only the unmanageably large numbers are transformed (by a simple formula) into a more
convenient scale of reckoning. Entropy continually increases. We can, by isolating parts of the world and
postulating rather idealised conditions in our problems, arrest the increase, but we cannot turn it into a
decrease. That would involve something much worse than a violation of an ordinary law of Nature, namely,
an improbable coincidence. The law that entropy always increases-the second law of thermodynamics-
holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet
theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations-then so much the worse for Maxwell's
equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation-well, these experimentalists do bungle things
sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no
hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." (Eddington, A.S., "The Nature of the
Physical World," [1928], The Gifford Lectures 1927, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1933,
reprint, pp.74-75. Emphasis original)
1/01/2007
"Primary and Secondary Law. I have called the laws controlling the behaviour of single individuals
`primary laws', implying that the second law of thermodynamics, although a recognised law of Nature, is in
some sense a secondary law. This distinction can now be placed on a regular footing. Some things never
happen in the physical world because they are impossible; others because they are too improbable.
The laws which forbid the first are the primary laws; the laws which forbid the second are the secondary
laws. It has been the conviction of nearly all physicists that at the root of everything there is a complete
scheme of primary law governing the career of every particle or constituent of the world with an iron
determinism. This primary scheme is all-sufficing, for, since it fixes the history of every constituent of the
world, it fixes the whole world-history. But for all its completeness primary law does not answer every
question about Nature which we might reasonably wish to put. Can a universe evolve backwards, i.e.
develop in the opposite way to our own system? Primary law, being indifferent to a time-direction, replies,
"Yes, it is not impossible". Secondary law replies, "No, it is too improbable"." (Eddington, A.S., "The Nature
of the Physical World," [1928], The Gifford Lectures 1927, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1933,
reprint, pp.75-76. Emphasis original)
1/01/2007
"But the nightmare of infinity still arises in regard to time. The world is closed in its space dimensions like a
sphere, but it is open at both ends in the time dimension. There is a bending round by which East ultimately
becomes West, but no bending by which Before ultimately becomes After. I am not sure that I am logical but
I cannot feel the difficulty of an infinite future time very seriously. The difficulty about A.D. ¥ will not
happen until we reach A.D. ¥ , and presumably in order to reach A.D. ¥ the difficulty must first have been
surmounted. It should also be noted that according to the second law of thermodynamics the whole
universe will reach thermodynamical equilibrium at a not infinitely remote date in the future. Time's arrow will
then be lost altogether and the whole conception of progress towards a future fades away. But the difficulty
of an infinite past is appalling. It is inconceivable that we are the heirs of an infinite time of preparation; it is
not less inconceivable that there was once a moment with no moment preceding it." (Eddington, A.S., "The
Nature of the Physical World," [1928], The Gifford Lectures 1927, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge
UK, 1933, reprint, p.83)
1/01/2007
"This dilemma of the beginning of time would worry us more were it not shut out by another overwhelming
difficulty lying between us and the infinite past. We have been studying the running-down of the universe;
if our views are right, somewhere between the beginning of time and the present day we must place the
winding up of the universe. Travelling backwards into the past we find a world with more and more
organisation. If there is no barrier to stop us earlier we must reach a moment when the energy of the world
was wholly organised with none of the random element in it. It is impossible to go back any further under
the present system of natural law. I do not think the phrase "wholly organised" begs the question. The
organisation we are concerned with is exactly definable, and there is a limit at which it becomes perfect.
There is not an infinite series of states of higher and still higher organisation; nor, I think, is the limit one
which is ultimately approached more and more slowly. Complete organisation does not tend to be more
immune from loss than incomplete organisation. There is no doubt that the scheme of physics as it has
stood for the last three-quarters of a century postulates a date at which either the entities of the universe
were created in a state of high organisation, or preexisting entities were endowed with that organisation
which they have been squandering ever since. Moreover, this organisation is admittedly the antithesis of
chance. It is something which could not occur fortuitously. This has long been used as an argument against
a too aggressive materialism. It has been quoted as scientific proof of the intervention of the Creator at a
time not infinitely remote from to-day. But I am not advocating that we draw any hasty conclusions from it.
Scientists and theologians alike must regard as somewhat crude the naive theological doctrine which
(suitably, disguised) is at present to be found in every textbook of thermodynamics, namely that some
billions of years ago God wound up the material universe and has left it to chance ever since. This should be
regarded as the working-hypothesis of thermodynamics rather than its declaration of faith. It is one of those
conclusions from which we can see no logical escape-only it suffers from the drawback that it is incredible.
As a scientist I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang;
unscientifically I feel equally unwilling to accept the implied discontinuity in the divine nature. But I can
make no suggestion to evade the deadlock." (Eddington, A.S., "The Nature of the Physical World," [1928],
The Gifford Lectures 1927, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1933, reprint, pp.84-85)
1/01/2007
"Turning again to the other end of time, there is one school of thought which finds very repugnant the idea
of a wearing out of the world. This school is attracted by various theories of rejuvenescence. Its mascot is
the Phoenix. Stars grow cold and die out. May not two dead stars collide, and be turned by the energy of the
shock into fiery vapour from which a new sun-with planets and with life-is born.? This theory very prevalent
in the last century is no longer contemplated seriously by astronomers. There is evidence that the present
stars at any rate are products of one evolutionary process which swept across primordial matter and caused
it to aggregate; they were not formed individually by haphazard collisions having no particular time
connection with one another. But the Phoenix complex is still active. Matter, we believe, is gradually
destroyed and its energy set free in radiation. Is there no counter-process by which radiation collects in
space, evolves into electrons and protons, and begins star-building all over again? This is pure speculation
and there is not much to be said on one side or the other as to its truth. But I would mildly criticise the
mental outlook which wishes it to be true. However much we eliminate the minor extravagances of Nature,
we do not by these theories stop the inexorable running-down of the world by loss of organisation and
increase of the random element. Whoever wishes for a universe which can continue indefinitely in activity
must lead a crusade against the second law of thermodynamics; the possibility of re-formation of matter
from radiation is not crucial and we can await conclusions with some indifference. At present we can see no
way in which an attack on the second law of thermodynamics could possibly succeed, and I confess that
personally I have no great desire that it should succeed in averting the final running-down of the universe. I
am no Phoenix worshipper. This is a topic on which science is silent, and all that one can say is prejudice.
But since prejudice in favour of a never-ending cycle of rebirth of matter and worlds is often vocal, I may
perhaps give voice to the opposite prejudice. I would feel more content that the universe should accomplish
some great scheme of evolution and, having achieved whatever may be achieved, lapse back into chaotic
changelessness, than that its purpose should be banalised by continual repetition. I am an Evolutionist, not
a Multiplicationist. It seems rather stupid to keep doing the same thing over and over again." (Eddington,
A.S., "The Nature of the Physical World," [1928], The Gifford Lectures 1927, Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge UK, 1933, reprint, pp.85-86)
1/01/2007
"On the other hand, the circumstances just noted afford the strongest indirect evidence of the truth of this
narrative. For, if it were the outcome of Jewish imagination, where is the basis for it in contemporary
expectation? Would Jewish legend have ever presented its Messiah as born in a stable, to which chance
circumstances had consigned His Mother? The whole current of Jewish opinion would run in the contrary
direction. The opponents of the authenticity of this narrative are bound to face this. Further, it may safely be
asserted, that no Apocryphal or legendary narrative of such d (legendary) event would have been
characterised by such scantiness, or rather absence, of details. For, the two essential features, alike of
legend and of tradition, are, that they ever seek to surround their heroes with a halo of glory, and that they
attempt to supply details. which are otherwise wanting. And in both these respects a more sharply-marked
contrast could scarcely be presented, than in the Gospel-narrative." (Edersheim, A.*, "The Life and Times of
Jesus the Messiah," [1883], Hendrickson Publishers: Peabody MA, Third Edition, 1886, p.i:186)
1/01/2007
"A passage in the Mishnah [Shek. vii. 4] leads to the conclusion, that the flocks, which pastured there, were
destined for Temple-sacrifices, and, accordingly, that the shepherds, who watched over them, were not
ordinary shepherds. The latter were under the ban of Rabbinism, on account of their necessary isolation
from religious ordinances, and their manner of life, which rendered strict legal observance unlikely, if not
absolutely impossible." (Edersheim, A.*, "The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," [1883], Hendrickson
Publishers: Peabody MA, Third Edition, 1886, pp.i:186-187)
2/01/2007
"Natural selection has been extremely effective in policing allelic mutations which arise in already existing
gene loci. Because of natural selection, organisms have been able to adapt to changing environments, and
by adaptive radiation many new species were created from a common ancestral form. Yet, being an effective
policeman, natural selection is extremely conservative by nature. Had evolution been entirely dependent
upon natural selection, from a bacterium only numerous forms of bacteria would have emerged. The creation
of metazoans, vertebrates and finally mammals from unicellular organisms would have been quite impossible,
for such big leaps in evolution required the creation of new gene loci with previously nonexistent functions.
Only the cistron which became redundant was able to escape from the relentless pressure of natural
selection, and by escaping, it accumulated formerly forbidden mutations to emerge as a new gene locus."
(Ohno, S., "Evolution by Gene Duplication," Springer-Verlag: New York NY, 1970, p.xvii. Emphasis original)
3/01/2007
"How can the calculus of probabilities permit the prediction of certain fortuitous eventualities? The
mechanism of prediction is always the same and invariably brings in the single law of chance, of which we
shall speak in greater detail, and which consists essentially of this: Phenomena with very small probabilities
do not occur. It is then a matter of combining simple phenomena into complex phenomena whose
probabilities calculated in terms of those of the simple phenomena are small enough for the application of
the single law of chance." (Borel, É., "Probabilities and Life," [1943], Baudin, M., transl., Dover: New York
NY, 1962, p.1. Emphasis original)
3/01/2007
"This law [the single law of chance] is extremely simple and intuitively evident, though rationally
undemonstrable: Events with a sufficiently small probability never occur; or at least, we must act, in all
circumstances, as if they were impossible. A classical example of such impossible events is that of the
miracle of the typing monkeys, which may be given the following form: A typist who knows no other
language than French has been kept in solitary confinement with her machine and white paper; she amuses
herself by typing haphazardly and, at the end of six months, she is found to have written, without a single
error, the complete works of Shakespeare in their English text and the complete works of Goethe in their
German text. Such is the sort of event which, though its impossibility may not be rationally demonstrable, is,
however, so unlikely that no sensible person will hesitate to declare it actually impossible. If someone
affirmed having observed such an event we would be sure that he is deceiving us or has himself been the
victim of a fraud." (Borel, É., "Probabilities and Life," [1943], Baudin, M., transl., Dover: New York NY, 1962,
pp.2-3. Emphasis original)
3/01/2007
"But in concluding from its extremely small probability that the typist's miraculous feat is impossible, by
virtue of the single law of chance, we leave the domain of mathematical science, and it must be recognized
that the assertion, which seems to us quite evident and incontestable, is not, strictly speaking, a
mathematical truth. A strictly abstract mathematician could even claim that the experiment need only be
repeated a sufficient number of times, namely, a number of times represented by a number of 20 million
figures, to be sure, on the contrary, that the miracle will be produced several times in the course of these
innumerable trials. But it is not humanly possible to imagine that the experiment can be so often repeated. If
the dimensions of the universe are assumed to be equal to a billion billion light years, the number of atoms
which it could contain, if it were full of matter, is expressed by a number of less than two hundred figures,
and in the course of a billion billion years there are fewer seconds than a number of fifty figures would
express. If, therefore, in that lapse of time, every atom of the universe were transformed into a typist and
repeated the experiment every thousandth of a second, the total number of experiments would be much less
than a number of three hundred figures. It is then clearly absurd to imagine experiments whose number
would extend to more than a million figures; that is a purely abstract conception, a piece of mathematical
juggling of no consequence, and we must trust our intuition and our common sense which permit us to
assert the absolute impossibility of the typist's miracle which we have described." (Borel, É.,
"Probabilities and Life," [1943], Baudin, M., transl., Dover: New York NY, 1962, p.5. Emphasis original)
3/01/2007
Probabilities which are Negligible on the Cosmic Scale. If we turn our attention, not to the terrestrial
globe, but to the portion of the universe accessible to our astronomical and physical instruments, we are led
to define the negligible probabilities on the cosmic scale. Some astronomical laws, such as Newton's law of
universal gravitation and certain physical laws relative to the propagation of light waves, are verified by
innumerable observations of all the visible celestial bodies. The probability that a new observation would
contradict all these concordant observations is extremely small. We may be led to set at 10-50 the value of
negligible probabilities on the cosmic scale. When the probability of an event is below this limit, the
opposite event may be expected to occur with certainty, whatever the number of occasions presenting
themselves in the entire universe. The number of observable stars is of the order of magnitude of a billion, or
109, and the number of observations which the inhabitants of the earth could make of these stars, even if
all were observing, is certainly less than 1020. A phenomenon with a probability of 10-50 will therefore
never occur, or at least never be observed." (Borel, É., "Probabilities and Life," [1943], Baudin, M., transl.,
Dover: New York NY, 1962, p.28. Emphasis original)
4/01/2007
"During the last year, a number of popular books on religion by scientists or philosophers of science have
appeared. ... Among these books, Dawkins's The God Delusion stands out for two reasons. First, it's by
far the most ambitious. ... Dawkins is on a mission to convert. He is an enemy of religion, wants to explain
why, and hopes thereby to drive the beast to extinction. ... Dawkins not only thinks religion is unalloyed
nonsense but that it is an overwhelmingly pernicious, even `very evil,' force in the world. His target is not so
much organized religion as all religion. And within organized religion, he attacks not only extremist sects but
moderate ones. Indeed, he argues that rearing children in a religious tradition amounts to child abuse." (Orr,
H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin,
2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"Dawkins's book begins with a description of what he calls the God Hypothesis. This is the idea that `the
universe and everything in it' were designed by `a superhuman, supernatural intelligence.' This intelligence
might be personal (as in Christianity) or impersonal (as in deism). Dawkins is not concerned with the alleged
detailed characteristics of God but with whether any form of the God Hypothesis is defensible. His answer
is: almost certainly not. Although his target is broad, Dawkins discusses mostly Christianity ..." (Orr, H.A.,
"A Mission to Convert." Review of "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"The first few chapters of The God Delusion are given over to philosophical matters. Dawkins summarizes
the traditional philosophical arguments for God's existence, from Aquinas through pre-Darwinian arguments
from biological design, along with the traditional arguments against them. In a later chapter entitled `Why
There Almost Certainly Is No God,' Dawkins himself plays philosopher, presenting the chief argument of his
book. The God Hypothesis, he tells us, is close to `ruled out by the laws of probability.' Dawkins's
demonstration involves what he calls the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. This is his variation on a standard
creationist argument. By tweaking that argument in a clever way, Dawkins claims it now leads to a
conclusion that's the opposite of the traditional creationist one. The creationist argument works like this.
Living things are enormously complex. Even the simplest of present-day organisms, like bacteria, are far
more complicated than anything found in the nonliving world. All organisms carry genes, built from a
replicating molecule like DNA (which is itself very complex). But DNA alone doesn't make an organism.
Organisms also possess many different proteins (each, in turn, made of amino acids), as well as other
molecules that help make structures like cell membranes. Moreover, all these parts must be arranged in just
the right way: membranes on the outside of the cell and DNA on the inside, and so on. Creationists argue
that the idea that such organized complexity could arise by natural means-without the intercession of a
designer mind- is absurd. In particular, they argue that the probability that life could assemble itself
spontaneously is extremely close to zero. To dramatize this, they suggest that thinking life could arise by
natural means is like thinking a tornado could tear through a junkyard and assemble a Boeing 747. Such an
event is not, strictly speaking, impossible but it's so extraordinarily unlikely that it is, according to
creationists, unworthy of serious consideration. Dawkins's variation on this argument involves a judo-like
move in which he turns its logic against itself. In particular, Dawkins claims that rejecting natural means to
explain life and instead invoking a designer God leaves us with a hypothesis that's even more improbable
than the naturalistic one: A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God
capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in
his own right. In short, only complicated objects can design simpler ones; information cannot flow in the
other direction, with simple objects designing complicated ones. But that means any designer God would
have to be more complex -and thus even more improbable- than the universe he was supposed to explain.
This argument, Dawkins concludes, `comes close to proving that God does not exist': the God Hypothesis
has a vanishingly small probability of being right." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The God
Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1,
January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"The latter half of The God Delusion is partly devoted to Dawkins's discussion of religion as practiced.
Not surprisingly, he finds little good to say about it: religion for him is the root of much evil and its
disappearance from the world would be an unmitigated good. Religion, he tells us, is certainly not the source
of our morality (indeed the God of the Old Testament is, he claims, nothing short of monstrous) and
believers are no better morally than nonbelievers; in fact they may be worse. Dawkins regales us with tales
of Christian cops who threaten to beat up an atheist; presents statistics on the higher rates of crime in
regions that are religious; and argues that, when considering religiously inspired violence and terrorism, `we
should blame religion itself, not religious extremism-as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of
real, decent religion.' ... As you may have noticed, Dawkins when discussing religion is, in effect, a blunt
instrument, one that has a hard time distinguishing Unitarians from abortion clinic bombers. What may be
less obvious is that, on questions of God, Dawkins cannot abide much dissent, especially from fellow
scientists (and especially from fellow evolutionary biologists). Indeed Dawkins is fond of imputing ulterior
motives to those `Neville Chamberlain School' scientists not willing to go as far as he in his war on religion:
he suggests that they're guilty of disingenuousness, playing politics, and lusting after the large prizes
awarded by the Templeton Foundation to scientists sympathetic to religion. The only motive Dawkins
doesn't seem to take seriously is that some scientists genuinely disagree with him." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission
to Convert." Review of "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York
Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"Despite my admiration for much of Dawkins's work, I'm afraid that I'm among those scientists who must part
company with him here. Indeed, The God Delusion seems to me badly flawed. Though I once labeled
Dawkins a professional atheist, I'm forced, after reading his new book, to conclude he's actually more an
amateur. ... The most disappointing feature of The God Delusion is Dawkins's failure to engage religious
thought in any serious way. This is, obviously, an odd thing to say about a book-length investigation into
God. But the problem reflects Dawkins's cavalier attitude about the quality of religious thinking. Dawkins
tends to dismiss simple expressions of belief as base superstition. Having no patience with the faith of
fundamentalists, he also tends to dismiss more sophisticated expressions of belief as sophistry (he cannot,
for instance, tolerate the meticulous reasoning of theologians). But if simple religion is barbaric (and thus
unworthy of serious thought) and sophisticated religion is logic-chopping (and thus equally unworthy of
serious thought), the ineluctable conclusion is that all religion is unworthy of serious thought. The result is
The God Delusion, a book that never squarely faces its opponents. You will find no serious examination
of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins's book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the
early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions
(are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of
interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of
non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does
Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they're terminally ill?)." (Orr,
H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin,
2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"Instead, Dawkins has written a book that's distinctly, even defiantly, middlebrow. Dawkins's intellectual
universe appears populated by the likes of Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy, and Carl Sagan, the science popularizer, both of whom he cites repeatedly. This is a different group
from thinkers like William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein-both of whom lived after Darwin, both of whom
struggled with the question of belief, and both of whom had more to say about religion than Adams and
Sagan. Dawkins spends much time on what can only be described as intellectual banalities: `Did Jesus have
a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving
evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question.' The vacuum created by Dawkins's failure to
engage religious thought must be filled by something, and in The God Delusion, it gets filled by
extraneous quotation, letters from correspondents, and, most of all, anecdote after anecdote. ... One reason
for the lack of extended argument in The God Delusion is clear: Dawkins doesn't seem very good at it.
Indeed he suffers from several problems when attempting to reason philosophically. The most obvious is
that he has a preordained set of conclusions at which he's determined to arrive. Consequently, Dawkins
uses any argument, however feeble, that seems to get him there and the merit of various arguments appears
judged largely by where they lead. The most important example involves Dawkins's discussion of
philosophical arguments for the existence of God as opposed to his own argument against God, which he
presents as the intellectual heart of his book. Considering arguments for God, Dawkins is careful to recite
the many standard objections to them and writes that the traditional proofs are `vacuous,' `dubious,'
`infantile,' and `perniciously misleading.' But turning to his own Ultimate Boeing 747 argument against God,
Dawkins is suddenly uninterested in criticism and writes that his argument is `unanswerable.' So why, you
might wonder, is a clever philosophical argument for God subject to withering criticism while one against
God gets a free pass and is deemed devastating? The reason seems clear. The first argument leads to a
conclusion Dawkins despises, while the second leads to one he loves. Dawkins, so far as I can tell, is
unconcerned that the central argument of his book bears more than a passing resemblance to those clever
philosophical proofs for the existence of God that he dismisses. This is unfortunate. He could have used a
healthy dose of his usual skepticism when deciding how much to invest in his own Ultimate Boeing 747
argument. Indeed, one needn't be a creationist to note that Dawkins's argument suffers at least two potential
problems. First, as others have pointed out, if he is right, the design hypothesis essentially must be wrong
and the alternative naturalistic hypothesis essentially must be right. But since when is a scientific
hypothesis confirmed by philosophical gymnastics, not data? Second, the fact that we as scientists find a
hypothesis question-begging-as when Dawkins asks `who designed the designer?'- cannot, in itself, settle
its truth value. It could, after all, be a brute fact of the universe that it derives from some transcendent mind,
however question-begging this may seem. What explanations we find satisfying might say more about us
than about the explanations. Why, for example, is Dawkins so untroubled by his own (large) assumption
that both matter and the laws of nature can be viewed as given? Why isn't that question-begging?" (Orr,
H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin,
2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"Exercises in double standards also plague Dawkins's discussion of the idea that religion encourages good
behavior. Dawkins cites a litany of statistics revealing that red states (with many conservative Christians)
suffer higher rates of crime, including murder, burglary, and theft, than do blue states. But now consider his
response to the suggestion that the atheist Stalin and his comrades committed crimes of breathtaking
magnitude: `We are not in the business,' he says, `of counting evils heads, compiling two rival roll calls of
iniquity.' We're not? We were forty-five pages ago." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The
God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54,
No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"Dawkins's problems with philosophy might be related to a failure of metaphysical imagination. When
thinking of those vast matters that make up religion-matters of ultimate meaning that stand at the edge of
intelligibility and that are among the most difficult to articulate-he sees only black and white. Despite some
attempts at subtlety, Dawkins almost reflexively identifies religion with right-wing fundamentalism and
biblical literalism. Other, more nuanced possibilities- varieties of deism, mysticism, or nondenominational
spirituality-have a harder time holding his attention. It may be that Dawkins can't imagine these possibilities
vividly enough to worry over them in a serious way. ... In any case, part of what it means to suffer a failure
of imagination may be that one can't conceive that one's imagination is impoverished. It's hard to resist the
conclusion that people like James and Wittgenstein struggled personally with religion, while Dawkins
shrugs his shoulders, at least in part because they conceived possibilities-mistaken ones perhaps, but
certainly more interesting ones- that escape Dawkins." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The
God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54,
No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"Putting aside these philosophical matters, Dawkins's key empirical claim-that religion is a pernicious force
in the world-might still be right. Is it? Throughout The God Delusion, Dawkins reminds us of the horrors
committed in the name of God, from outright war, through the persecution of minority sects, acts of
terrorism, the closing of children's minds, and the oppression of those having unorthodox sexual lives. No
decent person can fail to be repulsed by the sins committed in the name of religion. So we all agree: religion
can be bad. But the critical question is: compared to what? And here Dawkins is less convincing because he
fails to examine the question in a systematic way. Tests of religion's consequences might involve a number
of different comparisons: between religion's good and bad effects, or between the behavior of believers and
nonbelievers, and so on. While Dawkins touches on each, his modus operandi generally involves
comparing religion as practiced -religion, that is, as it plays out in the rough-and-tumble world of
compromise, corruption, and incompetence- with atheism as theory. But fairness requires that we compare
both religion and atheism as practiced or both as theory. The latter is an amorphous and perhaps impossible
task, and I can see why Dawkins sidesteps it. But comparing both as practiced is more straightforward. And,
at least when considering religious and atheist institutions, the facts of history do not, I believe,
demonstrate beyond doubt that atheism comes out on the side of the angels. Dawkins has a difficult time
facing up to the dual facts that (1) the twentieth century was an experiment in secularism; and (2) the result
was secular evil, an evil that, if anything, was more spectacularly virulent than that which came before. ...
The problem is that these latter days have witnessed blood-curdling experiments in institutional atheism.
Dawkins tends to wave away the resulting crimes. It is, he insists, unclear if they were actually inspired by
atheism. He emphasizes, for example, that Stalin's brutality may not have been motivated by his atheism.
While this is surely partly true, it's a tricky issue, especially as one would need to allow for the same kind of
distinction when considering religious institutions. (Does anyone really believe that the Church's dreadful
dealings with the Nazis were motivated by its theism?) In any case, it's hard to believe that Stalin's wholesale
torture and murder of priests and nuns (including crucifixions) and Mao's persecution of Catholics and
extermination of nearly every remnant of Buddhism were unconnected to their atheism. Neither the
institutions of Christianity nor those of communism are, of course, innocent. But Dawkins's inability to see
the difference in the severity of their sins- one of orders of magnitude-suggests an ideological commitment
of the sort that usually reflects devotion to a creed." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The
God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54,
No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"What of the possibility that present-day churchgoers are worse morally than those who stay away? They
might be. Indeed C.S. Lewis, in perhaps the most widely read work of popular theology ever written, Mere
Christianity, conceded the possibility. Emphasizing that the Gospel was preached to the weak and poor,
Lewis argued that troubled souls might well be drawn disproportionately to the Church. As he also
emphasized, the appropriate contrast should not, therefore, be between the behavior of churchgoers and
nongoers but between the behavior of people before and after they find religion. Under Dawkins's
alternative logic, the fact that those sitting in a doctor's office are on average sicker than those not sitting
there must stand as an indictment of medicine. (There's no evidence in The God Delusion that Dawkins is
familiar with Lewis's argument.) ... Even when comparing believers and nonbelievers, Dawkins is curiously
silent on one of the best-known differences. Believers give far more to charities-even nonreligious charities-
than do secularists. See, for instance, the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey
(www.cfsv.org/communitysurvey/results.html)." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The God
Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1,
January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"In any case, there are some grounds for questioning whether Dawkins's project is even meaningful. As T.S.
Eliot famously observed, to ask whether we would have been better off without religion is to ask a question
whose answer is unknowable. Our entire history has been so thoroughly shaped by Judeo-Christian
tradition that we cannot imagine the present state of society in its absence. But there's a deeper point and
one that Dawkins also fails to see. Even what we mean by the world being better off is conditioned by our
religious inheritance. What most of us in the West mean-and what Dawkins, as revealed by his own Ten
Commandments, means-is a world in which individuals are free to express their thoughts and passions and
to develop their talents so long as these do not infringe on the ability of others to do so. But this is
assuredly not what a better world would look like to, say, a traditional Confucian culture. There, a new and
improved world might be one that allows the readier suppression of individual differences and aspirations.
The point is that all judgments, including ethical ones, begin somewhere and ours, often enough, begin in
Judaism and Christianity. Dawkins should, of course, be applauded for his attempt to picture a better world.
But intellectual honesty demands acknowledging that his moral vision derives, to a considerable extent,
from the tradition he so despises." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The God Delusion," by
Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 11,
2007)
4/01/2007
"One of the most interesting questions about Dawkins's book is why it was written. Why does Dawkins feel
he has anything significant to say about religion and what gives him the sense of authority presumably
needed to say it at book length? The God Delusion certainly establishes that Dawkins has little new to
offer. Its arguments are those of any bright student who has thumbed through Bertrand Russell's more
popular books and who has, horrified, watched videos of holy rollers. ... The reason, of course, is that The
God Delusion is not itself a work of either evolutionary biology in particular or science in general. None of
Dawkins's loud pronouncements on God follows from any experiment or piece of data. It's just Dawkins
talking." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins,
Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"We should not, though, conclude that there's no debate whatever to be had between science and religion.
The view championed by Stephen Jay Gould and others that the two endeavors are utterly distinct and thus
incapable of interfering with each other is overly simplistic. There have been, and likely will continue to be,
real disagreements between legitimate science and authentic religion. Some of the issues involved are
epistemological (Do scientific and religious claims simply begin with different premises, the first materialist
and the second not?), and others ethical (Where do we draw the line between what medicine can accomplish
and what it should be allowed to accomplish?). These questions are difficult and might well merit extended
discussion between scientific and religious thinkers. But if such discussions are to be worthwhile, they will
have to take place at a far higher level of sophistication than Richard Dawkins seems either willing or able to
muster." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins,
Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 11, 2007)
4/01/2007
"Dawkins would likely respond that his moral vision derives from either biological or cultural evolution, i.e.,
from the spread of `memes,' his putative unit of cultural evolution. I suspect that biological evolution has
endowed us with a rough moral sense; but this can't explain the kind of differences between Judeo-Christian
and Confucian cultures noted above. As for memes, I see no difference between saying that my morals
derive from, say, Christianity and saying that my brain hosts a `Christian morality meme.' In any case, most
scientists do not accept Dawkins's theory of memes. Lewis Wolpert's reaction in his new book is typical:
`Just what a meme is, and how it is distinguishable from beliefs, I find difficult.... There is no distinction
made between memes relating to belief and knowledge. Moreover, no mechanism is proposed for the so-
called replication of memes, or what they are selected for." (Orr, H.A., "A Mission to Convert." Review of
"The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2006. The New York Review of Books, Vol.
54, No. 1, January 11, 2007)
5/01/2007
"Beginnings of life About 4,600 million years ago (one quarter the age of the Universe), a hostile, barren
Earth was formed from the accumulation of cosmic debris. Between then and the beginning of the Cambrian
some 600 million years ago, a number of mountainous steps had to be taken to change the inert dust and
gases into such complex living wonders as the sea snails, jellyfish, octopuses, trilobites and so on that
abruptly appear in the fossil record. The first and perhaps the easiest stage was the change from inorganic
to organic - from the gases which presumably surrounded Earth at that time (hydrogen, ammonia, methane,
etc.) to the simplest amino acids, containing about ten atoms, which are the most basic of the biochemical
universals. Experimentally, Stanley Miller in the United States showed in 1953 that by passing an electrical
discharge (in real life, perhaps a bolt of lightning) through the appropriate gases, quite surprisingly large
amounts of amino acids were formed. The experiments are acknowledged as a major breakthrough in our
understanding of how life got under way, and since then other essential chemicals have been synthesized.
Today, five of the twenty amino acids common to us all still resist attempts to create them artificially under
anything like plausible conditions, and critics have pointed to the 'oxygen-ultraviolet conundrum' that is still
not resolved .... A summary paper in Nature concluded bleakly that the chances of finding significant
concentrations of organic chemicals in any prebiotic 'soups' so far imagined were vanishingly small: 'The
physical chemist, guided by the proved principles of chemical thermodynamics and kinetics, cannot offer
any encouragement to the biochemist who needs an ocean full of organic compounds.' [Hull, D.E.,
"Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Spontaneous Generation," Nature, Vol. 186, May 28, 1960, pp.693-694,
p.694]" (Hitching, F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Or Where Darwin Went Wrong," Pan: London, 1982, pp.63-
64. Emphasis original)
5/01/2007
"But the really crucial stage is the one that necessarily followed: the transformation from non-life to life.
Living things are distinguished from non-living things in a number of ways. Primarily, they organize
themselves on a continuing basis. They tend to move themselves towards an increase in order and
complexity - they grow, while non-living things inevitably disintegrate. They have a unique ability to renew
themselves after injury - they are able, both at the cellular level and as complete organisms to reproduce
their form. There are other secondary characteristics, such as the ability to dispose of waste, and to respond
to stimuli, that have no exact parallel in the non-living world. This is true even of the simplest living forms:
single-celled bacteria. They represent a quantum evolutionary leap from the lifeless chemicals that came
before. Assuming that there was, around four billion years ago, a sea with perhaps a ten-percent solution of
amino acids, sugars, phosphates, and so on, two prodigious leaps have to take place, and they have to
happen in synchrony. The amino acids must link together to form proteins; and the other chemicals must
join up to make nucleic acids, including the vital DNA. The seemingly insurmountable obstacle is the way
the two reactions are inseparably linked - one can't happen without the other. Proteins depend on DNA for
their formation. But DNA cannot form without pre-existing protein. This biological treadmill greatly worries
all biologists actively concerned in research into the origin of life. The puzzle was put succinctly: 'How,
when no life existed, did substances come into being which, today, are absolutely essential to living
systems, yet which can only be formed by those systems?' [Blum, H.F., "'Perspectives in Evolution,"
American Scientist, Vol. 43, 1955, p.595] No one knows the answer. 'Which came first?' asked Professor
Sidney Fox of Miami University. 'Whichever postulate has been considered has seemed to leave an
unresolved question.' [Fox. S.W., ed., "The Origins of Prebiological Systems and their Molecular Matrices,"
Academic Press: New York, 1965, p.359]." (Hitching, F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Or Where Darwin Went
Wrong," Pan: London, 1982, p.64. Emphasis original)
5/01/2007
"Beginnings of life The first and perhaps the easiest stage was the change from inorganic to organic -
from the gases which presumably surrounded Earth at that time (hydrogen, ammonia, methane, etc.) to the
simplest amino acids, containing about ten atoms, which are the most basic of the biochemical universals.
Experimentally, Stanley Miller in the United States showed in 1953 that by passing an electrical discharge (in
real life, perhaps a bolt of lightning) through the appropriate gases, quite surprisingly large amounts of
amino acids were formed. ... Today, five of the twenty amino acids common to us all still resist attempts to
create them artificially under anything like plausible conditions, and critics have pointed to the 'oxygen-
ultraviolet conundrum' that is still not resolved ... It was a Russian biochemist, A.I. Oparin, who in 1936 first
suggested how inert chemicals might link together into an organic chain. Although it was impossible to
create life from non-life in our present oxygen-heavy environment, he said (oxygen literally eats up any
primitive organic chemical such as an amino acid), this might not have been the case in conditions billions of
years ago. He suggested that there was a 'reducing' atmosphere - free of oxygen, and consisting of such
gases as methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen. All experiments, including Stanley Miller's, have been
based on this hypothesis. Without oxygen, there is no ozone canopy to protect Earth from the sun's
ultraviolet rays. Nowadays, as established by NASA's early space probes, this canopy blankets us between
fifteen and thirty miles above Earth's surface, effectively shielding us from certain death. So with oxygen in
the air, the first amino acid would never have got started; without oxygen, it would have been wiped out by
cosmic rays. Imaginative and elaborate solutions have been written to this conundrum. Perhaps the amino
acid was formed at the edge of a volcano, and then sank into a lake where it dropped the few metres below
the surface necessary to protect it from radiation; perhaps the Earth's waters were covered by a layer of tar-
like chemicals which stopped ultraviolet light; perhaps the amino acid was protectively dehydrated or
'frozen' in some way on dry rock or clay, waiting for an improvement in the atmosphere. For every
suggestion, there is a seemingly insuperable objection: beneath the surface of the water there would not be
enough energy to activate further chemical reactions; water in any case inhibits the growth of more complex
molecules; unlike conditions in laboratory experiments, the amino acids and their constituents could not be
kept pure and isolated. In other words, the theoretical chances of getting through even this first and
relatively easy stage in the evolution of life are forbidding." (Hitching, F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Or
Where Darwin Went Wrong," Pan: London, 1982, pp.63-65 )
5/01/2007
"However improbable we regard this event [the start of all life], or any of the steps which it involves, given
enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once. And for life as we know it ... once may be enough.
Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years.
What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time
the `impossible' becomes the possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has
only to wait: time itself performs the miracles. [Wald, G., "The Origin of Life," Scientific American, August
1954] These words were written by Nobel laureate and Harvard University biology professor George Wald
and published in the widely read journal Scientific American. For decades leading biologists had
promulgated the position, stated so well by Wald, that time and chance were the forces behind the miracle of
life. It was logically correct. After all, what else could be operating? Wald's definitive statement, made on
behalf of the scientific community, rested firmly on research completed the previous year. In 1953, Stanley
Miller, then a graduate student at the University of Chicago, had produced amino acids by a series of totally
random reactions. His experiment was simple but brilliant. Miller evacuated a glass flask and then filled it
with the gases thought to have been present in Earth's atmosphere 3.8 billion years ago: ammonia, methane,
hydrogen, and water vapor. Free oxygen was not present. It appeared only billions of years later, the
product of life itself photosynthesis. Using electrodes placed through the walls of the flask, Miller
discharged electric sparks, simulating lightning, into the gases. Their energy induced random chemical
reactions among the gases. After a few days, a reddish slime appeared on the inner walls of the apparatus.
Upon analysis, the slime was found to contain amino acids. The importance of Miller's experiment was at
once apparent. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and proteins are the building blocks of life.
As Wald pointed out, two billion years had passed between the appearance of water on Earth and the
appearance of life. If random reactions in a small flask can produce amino acids in just two days, given two
billion years of reactions throughout the Earth's vast atmosphere and oceans, the first forms of life, bacteria
and algae, must have been the product of similar random reactions during those eons. The impossible had
become the probable and the probable certain. We and all other members of the biosphere are living proof of
the theory's accuracy. The news media worldwide reported the significance of Miller's seminal experiment.
The public had been told the truth: life had started by chance. Or had it? Wald's article was such an
important statement that twenty-five years later, in 1979, Scientific American reprinted it in a special
publication titled Life: Origin and Evolution. The only difference was that this time it appeared with a
retraction. I have seen no other retraction by a journal of a Nobel laureate's writings. The retraction was
unequivocal: Although stimulating, this article probably represents one of the very few times in his
professional life when Wald has been wrong. Examine his main thesis and see. Can we really form a
biological cell by waiting for chance combinations of organic compounds? Harold Morowitz, in his book
`Energy Flow and Biology,' [Morowitz, H.J., "Energy Flow in Biology," Academic Press: New York NY, 1969,
pp.5-12] computed that merely to create a bacterium would require more time than the Universe might ever see if
chance combinations of its molecules were the only driving force. [Folsome, C., "Life: Origin and
Evolution," Scientific American Special Publication, 1979] In short, life could not have started by chance."
(Schroeder, G.L., "The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom," Broadway
Books: New York NY, 1998, pp.83-85. Emphasis original)
5/01/2007
"All plants and animals are bound together by sharing the same earth, air and water. They are also linked by
a competition for solar energy, on which their lives depend. Once believed to be a ruthless and unbridled
battle, more recent study of this struggle for existence suggests that co-operation and interdependence may
be more important for the survival of a species than a no-quarter war." (Farb, P., "Ecology," [1963], Time-Life
International: Netherlands, Reprinted, 1968, p.105)
6/01/2007
"The Chicken or the Egg Imagine that you are the captain of a small sailboat that is sinking slowly in a
storm. You must lighten it if it is to stay afloat. Unfortunately, everything that obviously can be spared has
already been thrown overboard. What should you sacrifice now: the sail, the food supplies, the radio, the
signaling equipment, or perhaps one of the passengers? It is a difficult choice. A similar dilemma faces the
biochemist who considers the origin of life. As we have seen, the simplest known organisms are far too
complex to form spontaneously. The hypothetical common ancestor, an organism containing the features
shared by living cells today, would also be complex. The first organism was a much simpler one. What, then,
should be sacrificed to strip down the common ancestor into the original organism: the membrane, the
energy-generating system, the genetic system, or the vital catalysts? Understandably, controversy exists
over this question. It is agreed that one thing must be kept, however. Just as the captain must preserve the
hull of his ship, the biochemist must preserve some mechanism in his organism that will permit it to evolve
and generate more complex life. Most biochemists are willing to part with the energy-generating system and
to rely upon the benevolence of the prebiotic soup. This soup is called upon to perform the functions of a
modern mammalian mother. It must not only assemble a living organism within its body, but it must also
continue to nourish it after birth. The chemicals in the soup will furnish the meals for the first organisms,
supplying both energy and the substances needed for further growth. Most biochemists are also willing to
forgo the lipid membrane, or to make its acquisition a minor feature in the development of life. If we ignore
the protein gateways, then the membrane simply becomes a partition to separate the living cell from its
environment. Partitions can be formed in many ways, and need not have complex structures. ... When lipids
and carbohydrates are thrown overboard, we are then left with proteins and nucleic acids as candidates for
the ingredients of the first organism. Some more cautious thinkers would like to retain both of them, but then
the boat would surely sink. Both are complex types of molecules, which need to be of considerable size to
function properly. We shall see that it is difficult to account for the appearance of either of these molecules
by spontaneous generation on the early earth. If both are needed, then we go down in a sea of
improbability. Most workers in the field are willing to face the painful choice. As stated in A.L. Lehninger's
biochemistry text, it is: `Which had primacy in the origin of life, proteins or nucleic acids?' [Lehninger, A.L.,
"Biochemistry," Worth Publishers: New York NY, Second Edition, 1975, p.1045]" (Shapiro, R., "Origins:
A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth," Summit Books: New York NY, 1986, pp.132-133.
Emphasis original)
6/01/2007
"The Origin of `Life' vs. the Origin of Cells We have seen how primitive polypeptides, polysaccharides,
polynucleotides, catalysts, and replication templates could have arisen in the course of prebiotic chemical
evolution. We now come to that critical moment in chemical evolution when the first semblance of `life'
appeared, through the chance association of a number of abiotically formed macromolecular components to
yield a unique system of enhanced survival value, capable of evolving toward a more complex structure, one
better able to survive. However, the first structure possessing `life' was not necessarily a modern cell,
complete with a membrane, a chromosome, ribosomes, enzymes, a metabolism, and the property of self-
replication. The minimum requirement is that it could potentially evolve into a complete cell. It is at this point
that a cluster of organic molecules, possibly a group of oligomers or polymers, associated with each other
into a stabilized structure. ... Such a structure may have included fatty acids or lipids, which spontaneously
form membranes and micelles, or other molecules with hydrophobic zones, such as polypeptides rich in
amino acids with hydrophobic R groups." (Lehninger, A.L., "Biochemistry: The Molecular Basis of Cell
Structure and Function," [1970], Worth Publishers: New York NY, Second Edition, 1975, Sixth Printing, 1981,
p.1045. Emphasis original)
6/01/2007
"We cannot define `life' accurately enough to determine at what point it arose in the chain of events leading
from preformed macromolecular components to a complete cell. However, it is generally agreed that a
minimum requirement for life is one or more informational macromolecules capable of directing their own
replication. One must then ask: Which had primacy in the origin of life, proteins or nucleic acids? One view
suggests that the first protocells arose when primitive catalysts (presumably polypeptides) first became
surrounded by a membrane or became incorporated in a gel-like matrix and that the resulting structure
`learned' to maintain itself with a primitive metabolism. In this view the first cells functioned in the absence
of nucleic acids and a genetic system, which they acquired later. Another view is that nucleic acids arose
first and that they provided the information for the evolution of proteins. A third view is that both nucleic
acids and proteins had to come together to form the first real precursor of a living cell." (Lehninger, A.L.,
"Biochemistry: The Molecular Basis of Cell Structure and Function," [1970], Worth Publishers: New York
NY, Second Edition, 1975, Sixth Printing, 1981, pp.1045-1046)
6/01/2007
"Any hint that DNA and RNA can do some work is received eagerly by those who favor the primacy of
nucleic acids. Late in 1982, for example, Colorado State University chemist Thomas R. Cech and co-workers
reported that certain RNA molecules could reorganize themselves. They could rearrange their connections
so that certain sections were expelled and others were rejoined. Enzymes could speed up these processes
manyfold, but they took place more slowly anyway, even when no enzymes were present. Science
magazine reported the news under the headline "RNA Can Be a Catalyst," [Lewin, R., "RNA can be a
catalyst," Science, Vol. 218, 26 November 1982, pp.872-874] and suggested that it had significance for the
origin of life. This announcement was premature, as the word `catalyst' has a different meaning. It describes
a substance that changes other molecules, while it remains unchanged. Subsequently, other workers
showed that one RNA molecule can also aid in the rearrangement, or splicing, of another, in true catalytic
fashion. The effects shown thus far testify to the versatility of RNA as a genetic material, but do not
demonstrate the control of other kinds of molecules that would have been valuable in the early days of life.
They may have come into play later in evolution, when the partnership of DNA and RNA was first
established. As we have seen, the DNA of higher organisms has extra messages ('commercial breaks') that
are passed on to RNA, but must be removed before the information is used to construct proteins. The ability
of RNA molecules to splice one another without outside help shows how fit they are for this particular role,
but tell us little about whether nucleic acids or proteins had primacy in the origin of life." (Shapiro, R.,
"Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth," Summit Books: New York NY, 1986, pp.133-134)
6/01/2007
"The nucleic acids are, of course, the hereditary material. They contain the blueprint for the organism which
is passed from parent to daughter cells. DNA duplicates during replication, to provide a blueprint copy for
each daughter. The design of DNA, with its two complementary chains, makes this event possible. DNA
cannot replicate alone, however. It requires the aid of proteins in this process. Further, neither DNA nor the
other nucleic acid, RNA, has much catalytic ability. Unlike proteins, they cannot make things happen. ...
Proteins can make things happen effectively in the cell. Alas, they lack another capacity. We know of no
mechanism by which they can replicate themselves. Like mules, they can work, but are sterile. If a cell were
deprived of its DNA, it would function for a time. Cilia would wave, ribosomes would make proteins, and
sugars would be converted to simpler substances, releasing energy. After a time, however, everything
would grind to a halt. The cell would die, leaving no offspring. Genes and enzymes are linked together in a
living cell two interlocked systems, each supporting the other. It is difficult to see how either could manage
alone. Yet if we are to avoid invoking either a Creator or a very large improbability, we must accept that one
occurred before the other in the origin of life. But which one was it? We are left with the ancient riddle:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" (Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life
on Earth," Summit Books: New York NY, 1986, p.135)
6/01/2007
We will enter this arena by considering an article published in 1966 by Nobel laureate H. J. Muller (18901967)
in the American Naturalist, which summarized his views on the origin of life. Muller was an American
scientist who had discovered that X rays can produce mutations. He was among the first to warn the public
of the adverse health effects of radiation, and was also an advocate of human improvement through
voluntary eugenics. He was one of the founders of modern genetics. Not surprisingly, Muller was the
foremost exponent of the primacy of the genetic material in the origin of life. He had suggested this idea in
the late 1920s, adapting it from an earlier theory of L.T. Troland. The Troland theory held that enzymes and
genes were the same substance (this was long before Watson and Crick) and that this substance, catalyzing
its own reproduction, was the master chemical of life. Muller recognized that the functions might be
separate, and attached more importance to the gene. We will quote from his 1966 article directly: `It is the
specific sequences in the DNA which determine those in the proteins and changes in the former result in
corresponding changes in the latter, whereas the reverse relation does not hold, any more than, in general,
other acquired characteristics are inherited. This circumstance clearly gives the gene material primacy....
The `stripped down' definition of a living thing offered here may be paraphrased: that which possesses
the potentiality of evolving by natural selection.... The gene material also, of natural materials, possesses
these faculties and it is therefore legitimate to call it living material, the present-day representative of the first
life...Primitive conditions afforded it enough means of exercising them to allow it to evolve protoplasm that
served it...Thus the gene material itself has the properties of life.' [Muller, H.J., "The Gene Material as the
Initiator and the Organizing Basis of Life," American Naturalist, Vol. 100, 1966, pp.493-517]" (Shapiro, R.,
"Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth," Summit Books: New York NY, 1986, p.135. Emphasis
and ellipses original)
6/01/2007
"Muller's views do not lack advocates today, among them the astronomer Carl Sagan. Sagan was an
undergraduate at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s and spent one summer in Muller's laboratory
in Indiana. Subsequently, as a graduate student, Sagan published an article expressing views similar to
Muller's: `The design of the organism is merely to provide for gene multiplication and survival.... Now this
picture we have been drawing of the proto-DNA molecule, associated with protein, is certainly strongly
suggestive of a primitive free-living naked gene situated in a dilute medium of organic matter.... There was
no protoplasm per se for the naked gene to act upon. ... In time the naked gene found it of greater adaptive
value to control the environment by becoming no longer naked. [Sagan, C., "Radiation and the Origin of the
Gene," Evolution, Vol. 11, 1957, pp.40-55] Sagan has continued to advocate this position during his
outstanding career in astronomy and science writing. In his book and television series Cosmos, the origin
of life was equated with the formation of the first self-copying molecule: "the earliest ancestor of
deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, the master molecule of life on Earth.' [Sagan, C.E., "Cosmos," [1980],
Macdonald: London, Reprinted, 1981, p.31]" (Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life
on Earth," Summit Books: New York NY, 1986, pp.136-137. Emphasis and ellipses original)
6/01/2007
"The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were
imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations that were by
accident adaptive, time for the slow accumulation of patterns of favorable mutations. Part of the resistance
to Darwin and Wallace derives from our difficulty in imagining the passage of the millennia, much less the
aeons. What does seventy million years mean to beings who live only one-millionth as long? We are like
butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever." (Sagan, C.E., "Cosmos," [1980], Macdonald: London,
Reprinted, 1981, pp.30-31. Emphasis original)
6/01/2007
"What happened here on Earth may be more or less typical of the evolution of life on many worlds; but in
such details as the chemistry of proteins or the neurology of brains, the story of life on Earth may be unique
in all the Milky Way Galaxy. The Earth condensed out of interstellar gas and dust some 4.6 billion years ago.
We know from the fossil record that the origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years
ago, in the ponds and oceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as
a one-celled organism, already a highly sophisticated form of life. The first stirrings were much more humble.
In those early days, lightning and ultraviolet light from the Sun were breaking apart the simple hydrogen-
rich molecules of the primitive atmosphere, the fragments spontaneously recombining into more and more
complex molecules. The products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of
organic soup of gradually increasing complexity, until one day, quite by accident, a molecule arose that was
able to make crude copies of itself, using as building blocks other molecules in the soup. ... This was the
earliest ancestor of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, the master molecule of life on Earth. It is shaped like a
ladder twisted into a helix, the rungs available in four different molecular parts, which constitute the four
letters of the genetic code. These rungs, called nucleotides, spell out the hereditary instructions for making
a given organism. Every lifeform on Earth has a different set of instructions, written out in essentially the
same language. The reason organisms are different is the differences in their nucleic acid instructions. A
mutation is a change in a nucleotide, copied in the next generation, which breeds true. Since mutations are
random nucleotide changes, most of them are harmful or lethal, coding into existence nonfunctional
enzymes. It is a long wait before a mutation makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable
event, a small beneficial mutation in a nucleotide a ten-millionth of a centimeter across, that makes evolution
go. Four billion years ago, the Earth was a molecular Garden of Eden. There were as yet no predators. Some
molecules reproduced themselves inefficiently, competed for building blocks and left crude copies of
themselves. With reproduction, mutation and the selective elimination of the least efficient varieties,
evolution was well under way, even at the molecular level. As time went on, they got better at reproducing.
Molecules with specialized functions eventually joined together, making a kind of molecular collective-the
first cell." (Sagan, C.E., "Cosmos," [1980], Macdonald: London, Reprinted, 1981, pp.30-31. Emphasis original)
7/01/2007
"Finally, in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick proposed a three-dimensional model for DNA that
provided insights into the way DNA could store information and be copied. A single molecule lay at the
heart of heredity. Many scientists found it irresistible after this discovery to place the gene at the center of
the life process, perhaps capable of life on its own. For example, Hermann J. Muller, the Nobel Prize-winning
geneticist who discovered the effect of radiation in causing mutations, wrote in 1966, `The "stripped down"
definition of a living thing offered here may be para phrased: that which possesses the potentiality of
evolving by natural selection. ... The gene material also, of natural materials, possesses these faculties and
it is therefore legitimate to call it living material, the present day representative of the first life.' [Muller, H.J.,
"The Gene Material as the Initiator and the Organizing Basis of Life," American Naturalist, Vol. 100, 1966,
pp.493-517] Astronomer Carl Sagan, as a graduate student, had earlier speculated on the possibility of `a
primitive freeliving naked gene situated in a dilute medium of organic matter.' [Sagan, C.E., "Radiation and
the Origin of the Gene," Evolution, Vol. 11, 1957, pp.40-55] Evolution then represented the extension of
the gene's ability to provide for its future. As Richard Dawkins argued in The Selfish Gene, the bodies of
animals are `survival machines' for the genes within them. [Dawkins, R., "The Selfish Gene," Oxford
University Press: New York, 1976]" (Shapiro, R., "Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life beyond
Earth," John Wiley & Sons: New York NY, 1999, pp.98-99. Emphasis original)
7/01/2007
"Looking for spiritual meaning within science is not a new idea. It was quite a popular intellectual activity in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the period from Newton to Darwin. One of the best examples was
the previously mentioned Bridgewater Treatises of the 1830s. These works on natural theology were written
by eminent scientists with the purpose of showing evidence of the creator from a study of his creation. This
genre of literature had, at its core, a concept called the argument from design, which implies that we need
only examine the world around us to see that it must be the result of a creative intelligence rather than blind
chance. However, the early adherents of this viewpoint always carried their argument at least one step
further than its original logic and formed a chain of reasoning that went as follows: The observed world-
implies: a creative intelligence-implies: a creator-implies: the Judeo-Christian God-implies: the established
Church. Those scientists who rejected the second and third or fourth implications in the sequence threw out
the entire chain of reasoning, thus abandoning the first step, the argument from design, without giving it the
consideration it deserves." (Morowitz, H.J., "Cosmic Joy and Local Pain: Musings of a Mystic Scientist,"
Charles Scribner's Sons: New York NY, 1987, pp.99-100)
7/01/2007
"In 1913, however, fitness and design were reexamined from a new scientific perspective. Distinguished
Harvard professor of philosophy Lawrence J. Henderson wrote the profound and controversial book now
sitting in front of me. Some sixty-four years had passed since Charles Darwin's Origin of Species had
introduced the idea of `fitness' as the criterion of success in the struggle for survival. When new variations
arose in the plant or animal world, they multiplied or perished depending on whether they were more or less
adapted than the competition. Fitness was not an absolute concept but measured the relative survivals of
different biological variants in a given habitat, under given conditions. Generations of evolutionists had
already pointed out the somewhat circular nature of `survival of the fittest' as an argument for evolution, as
we often lack criteria other than survival to measure fitness. Nevertheless, Darwin's ideas provided a
unifying framework for biological thought, and by 1913 biology was thoroughly dominated by the theory of
evolution. Simultaneously with the rise and triumph of Darwinian evolution, physiology developed as a
sophisticated science, using the understanding of physics and chemistry to explain the mechanisms of
biological activity at every level. Henderson is a leader in that tradition. Indeed, some of his work on
biophysical chemistry is still referred to today. He took a fresh view of fitness in terms of the new knowledge
of physical chemistry and the ascendance of the atomic theory. He examined the argument from design, not
from a theological perspective but from deep within science, using the constructs of matter, energy, space,
and time. He wrote: `But although Darwin's fitness involves that which fits and that which is fitted, or more
correctly a reciprocal relationship, it has been the habit of biologists since Darwin to consider only the
adaptations of the living organism to the environment. For them in fact, the environment, in its past, present,
and future, has not been an independent variable, and it has not entered into any of the modern
speculations to consider if by chance the material universe also may be subjected to laws which are in the
largest sense important in organic evolution. Yet fitness there must be in environment as well as organism.'
[Henderson, L.J., "The Fitness of the Environment," [1913], Beacon Press: Boston MA, Reprinted, 1958,
pp.5-6]" (Morowitz, H.J., "Cosmic Joy and Local Pain: Musings of a Mystic Scientist," Charles Scribner's
Sons: New York NY, 1987, pp.100-101)
7/01/2007
"With a suddenness which to many seemed catastrophic Darwin's hypothesis of natural selection changed
the whole aspect of the problem. Law appeared as the basis of purpose just as it had appeared as the
basis of order, and adaptations became, in the judgment of most men, the necessary results of an
automatic process. To-day, after a half century, there is no longer room for doubt that the fitness of organic
beings for their life in the world has been won in whole or in part by an almost infinite series of adaptations
of life to its environment, whereby, through a corresponding series of transformations, present complexity
has grown out of former simplicity. The great and fruitful ideas which Darwin brought to the attention of the
whole world have long since been incorporated into human thought. Not the least important among them is
the new scientific concept of fitness, as it emerges from the discussion of natural selection. Before Darwin,
this concept possessed all the vagueness of an idea which, though in part founded on observation, was not
to be explained with the help of existing scientific theories. But although Darwin's fitness involves that
which fits and that which is fitted, or more correctly a reciprocal relationship, it has been the habit of
biologists since Darwin to consider only the adaptations of the living organism to the environment. For
them, in fact, the environment, in its past, present, and future, has been an independent variable, and it has
not entered into any of the modern speculations to consider if by chance the material universe also may be
subjected to laws which are in the largest sense important in organic evolution. Yet fitness there must be, in
environment as well as in the organism. How, for example, could man adapt his civilization to water power if
no water power existed within his reach?" (Henderson, L.J., "The Fitness of the Environment: An Inquiry
into the Biological Significance of the Properties of Matter," [1913], Beacon Press: Boston MA, Reprinted,
1958, pp.4-5. Emphasis original)
7/01/2007
"With new knowledge emerging in biology, physicotheology expanded into natural theology. In 1802,
William Paley, Archdeacon of Carlisle, authored a book on that subject. My reading was in the 1829
American edition of that book. Its title page bears the full message: NATURAL THEOLOGY or Evidence of
the Existence and Attributes of the DEITY Collected from the Appearances of Nature. Paley begins with the
thought "Suppose I found a watch on the ground." He argues that the watch, because it is so admirably
designed for a purpose, must have had a maker. In his words: `The inference, we think, is inevitable; that the
watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an
artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended
its construction, and designed its use. There cannot be design without a designer.' This line of reasoning
has become known, using Paley's words, as the argument from design. After presenting the argument in
exhausting detail Paley goes on to document the design of mechanical parts of organisms, the human frame,
muscles, blood vessels, special structures, the relation of organisms to environment, insects, plants, the
physical world, and the solar system. The argument from design goes back to Aristotle's unmoved mover
but required the scientific advances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to come to its full fruition."
(Morowitz, H.J., "Cosmic Joy and Local Pain: Musings of a Mystic Scientist," Charles Scribner's Sons: New
York NY, 1987, pp.293-294. Emphasis original)
7/01/2007
"Clearly no one can doubt that upon the properties of matter as determined by the periodic system, and
upon the relative amounts of the different elements, the actual process of cosmic evolution from nebula to
solar system is dependent. Hence, in accordance with the general method of science, we must assume that
the origin of environmental fitness lies at least as far back as the phenomena of the periodic system, at least
as far back as the evolution of the elements, if they were ever evolved." (Henderson, L.J., "The Fitness of
the Environment: An Inquiry into the Biological Significance of the Properties of Matter," [1913], Beacon
Press: Boston MA, Reprinted, 1958, pp.303-304)
7/01/2007
"If, then, cosmic evolution be pure mechanism and yet issue in fitness, why not organic evolution as well?
Mechanism is enough in physical science, which no less than biological science appears to manifest
teleology; it must therefore suffice in biology. ... What then becomes of fitness ? Clearly there are two
logical possibilities. Either there exists an unknown mechanistic explanation of that common issue of the
organic and cosmic evolutionary processes, or there does not. If such an explanation be possible, at least it
must be admitted that it is very hard to conceive. ... On the other hand, it is conceivable that a tendency
could work parallel with mechanism without interfering with it ... Although I have no intention of here
seeking a choice between these two hypotheses ... I do feel concerned to remove from the latter view, if I
may, some of the objections which are commonly raised against it in scientific circles ... It is evident that a
perfect mechanistic description of the building of a house may be conceived. Within the world of physical
science the whole process is logically complete without consideration of the architect's design and purpose.
Yet such design and purpose, whether or not in themselves of mechanistic origin, are at one and the same
time determining factors in the result, and nowise components of the physical process. Now it seems clear
that a similar effect of a tendency working steadily through the whole process of evolution is also at least
conceiveable ..." (Henderson, L.J., "The Fitness of the Environment: An Inquiry into the Biological
Significance of the Properties of Matter," [1913], Beacon Press: Boston MA, Reprinted, 1958, pp.305-307)
7/01/2007
"Whatever else it may achieve, mechanism can never explain, cannot even face the problem of the existence
of matter and energy. Within the world of science these are conserved; only outside that world can they
have originated or not originated. As for the existence of life, in spite of our utter ignorance, it must be
admitted that a half century has greatly diminished the number of substantial biologists who really look
forward to its scientific explanation, and the greatest chemists have ever shared such a view. Liebig is
reported by Lord Kelvin to have replied to the question whether he believed that a leaf or a flower could be
formed or could grow by chemical forces, `I would more readily believe that a book on chemistry or on
botany could grow out of dead matter.' [Kelvin, Lord., "On the Dissipation of Energy," Popular Lectures, Vol.
III, p. 464] Darwin, too, once said, "It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as
well think of the origin of matter." [Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic
Books: New York NY, Vol. II., Reprinted, 1959, p.203] Since Liebig's day the chemical organization of the
cell has become in scientific knowledge vastly more complex than it was before, and I know of no biological
chemist to whom the spontaneous, that is to say, the mechanistic, origin of a cell is scientifically imaginable,
1 though all believe that once formed, cells exist as mechanisms in a mechanistic universe. Thus the chemist
puts his mind at rest regarding the existence of life, just as the physicist calms his regarding the existence of
matter, simply by turning his back on the problem." (Henderson, L.J., "The Fitness of the Environment: An
Inquiry into the Biological Significance of the Properties of Matter," [1913], Beacon Press: Boston MA,
Reprinted, 1958, pp.308-309)
7/01/2007
"I cannot hope to have provided more than a very imperfect illumination of certain aspects of teleology in
this venture upon the foreign field of metaphysics, and I should wish to be understood as very doubtful of
my success in stating what seem to me some of the philosophical conclusions to be drawn from the fitness
of the environment. There is, however, one scientific conclusion which I wish to put forward as a positive
and, I trust, fruitful outcome of the present investigation. The properties of matter and the course of cosmic
evolution are now seen to be intimately related to the structure of the living being and to its activities; they
become, therefore, far more important in biology than has been previously suspected. For the whole
evolutionary process, both cosmic and organic, is one, and the biologist may now rightly regard the
universe in its very essence as biocentric. (Henderson, L.J., "The Fitness of the Environment: An Inquiry
into the Biological Significance of the Properties of Matter," [1913], Beacon Press: Boston MA, Reprinted,
1958, pp.312)
7/01/2007
"In the early 1900s, Lawrence J. Henderson revived the argument from design within his perceptive work
The Fitness of the Environment. He did not actually talk about design; rather, he noted: `There is,
however, one scientific conclusion which I wish to put forward as a positive and, I trust, fruitful outcome of
the present investigation. The properties of matter and the course of cosmic evolution are now seen to be
intimately related to the structure of the living being and to its activities; they become, therefore, far more
important in biology than has been previously suspected. For the whole evolutionary process, both cosmic
and organic, is one, and the biologist may now rightly regard the universe in its very essence as biocentric.'
[Henderson, L.J., "The Fitness of the Environment: An Inquiry into the Biological Significance of the
Properties of Matter," [1913], Beacon Press: Boston MA, Reprinted, 1958, p.312] ... In any case, design was
back in the arena and periodically appeared in the writings of aging scientists, who, freed from the idylls of
the marketplace, could state their philosophical views without fear of peer pressure." (Morowitz, H.J.,
"Cosmic Joy and Local Pain: Musings of a Mystic Scientist," Charles Scribner's Sons: New York NY, 1987,
p.295)
7/01/2007
"In 1979 Freeman Dyson attacked head-on a reexamination of design in light of the science of our time. His
brief essay on theology occurs within a book appropriately titled Disturbing the Universe. Dyson is a
prominent physicist and astrophysicist, and I think it came as a surprise to the scientific community when
his book contained a chapter entitled `The Argument from Design.' He points out that many of the pre-
Darwinian discussions of design focused on the biological world and the functional perfection of living
structures. ... This path eventually led to the already discussed philosophical excesses of Jacques Monod's
Chance and Necessity. Dyson takes on Monod ... `Jacques Monod has a word for people who think as I
do and for whom he reserves his deepest scorn. He calls us `animists,' believers in spirits. `Animism,' he
says, `established a covenant between nature and man, a profound alliance outside of which seems to
stretch only terrifying solitude. Must we break this tie because the postulate of objectivity requires it?'
[Monod, J., "Chance and Necessity," [1971], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1997, p.31] Monod answers yes:
'This ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity,
out of which he emerged only by chance.' [Monod, Ibid, p.31] I answer no. I believe in the covenant. It is
true that we emerged in the universe by chance, but the idea of chance is itself only a cover for our
ignorance. I do not feel like an alien in this universe. The more I examine the universe and study the details
of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known that we were
coming.' [Dyson, F.J., "Disturbing the Universe," Harper & Row: New York NY, 1979, pp.249-250]"
(Morowitz, H.J., "Cosmic Joy and Local Pain: Musings of a Mystic Scientist," Charles Scribner's Sons: New
York NY, 1987, pp.296-297)
7/01/2007
"Dyson points to the role of mind in the domain of physics. He notes that there is just the right balance
between the attractiveness of nuclear forces and the repulsion of the like charges of nucleons. If the
repulsive forces were larger, nuclei could not exist. If the attractive forces were greater, all the protons of the
universe would have been tied up in diprotons and all the hydrogen reactions that fuel the nuclear
chemistry of the universe could not have taken place. The actual fusion reactions of hydrogen in the sun
depend on what physicists call the weak interaction. It controls the rate of fusion: much stronger and the
stars would burn up too fast, much slower and they would be too cold. [Dyson, F.J., "Disturbing the
Universe," Harper & Row: New York NY, 1979, p.250] Dyson goes on to point out that organic chemistry
(and by extension biochemistry) depends on a delicate balance between electrical and quantum mechanical
forces that come about because of the exclusion principle. [Dyson, Ibid., p.251] The thrust of Dyson's
approach is very much in the mode of Henderson's, except that he adds mind, the immanent mind quality of
the universe, as a further feature of design." [Dyson, Ibid., pp.251-252] (Morowitz, H.J., "Cosmic Joy and
Local Pain: Musings of a Mystic Scientist," Charles Scribner's Sons: New York NY, 1987, pp.296-297.
Emphasis original)
7/01/2007
"In the preceding chapters we, too, have looked at the workings of the biological and geological universes
and have been impressed with how well the microscopic and macroscopic aspects come together. Like
Dyson and Henderson and Teilhard, I find it hard not to see design in a universe that works so well. Each
new scientific discovery seems to reinforce that vision of design. As I like to say to my friends, the universe
works much better than we have any right to expect. (Morowitz, H.J., "Cosmic Joy and Local Pain: Musings
of a Mystic Scientist," Charles Scribner's Sons: New York NY, 1987, pp.297-298
8/01/2007
"Beginnings of life ... The first and perhaps the easiest stage was the change from inorganic to organic -
from the gases which presumably surrounded Earth at that time (hydrogen, ammonia, methane, etc.) to the
simplest amino acids, containing about ten atoms, which are the most basic of the biochemical universals.
Experimentally, Stanley Miller in the United States showed in 1953 that by passing an electrical discharge
(in real life, perhaps a bolt of lightning) through the appropriate gases, quite surprisingly large amounts of
amino acids were formed. The experiments are acknowledged as a major breakthrough in our understanding
of how life got under way, and since then other essential chemicals have been synthesized. Today, five of
the twenty amino acids common to us all still resist attempts to create them artificially under anything like
plausible conditions, and critics have pointed to the 'oxygen-ultraviolet conundrum' that is still not resolved
... A summary paper in Nature concluded bleakly that the chances of finding significant concentrations of
organic chemicals in any prebiotic 'soups' so far imagined were vanishingly small: 'The physical chemist,
guided by the proved principles of chemical thermodynamics and kinetics, cannot offer any encouragement
to the biochemist who needs an ocean full of organic compounds.' [Hull, D.E., "Thermodynamics and
Kinetics of Spontaneous Generation," Nature, Vol. 186, May 28, 1960, pp.693-694, p.694]" (Hitching,
F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Or Where Darwin Went Wrong," Pan: London, 1982, pp.63-64. Emphasis
original).
8/01/2007
"One slow afternoon in the late 1970s I was hanging out in my lab at the National Institutes of Health near
Washington, D.C., where I worked as a postdoctoral researcher investigating aspects of DNA structure. A
fellow postdoc, Joanne Nickol, and I were chewing the fat about the big questions: God, life, the
universethat sort of thing. She and I were both Roman Catholics (Joanne's brother was a priest) and so had
the same general attitude toward many topics. That included an easy acceptance of the idea of evolution,
that life unfolded over a long time under the governance of secondary causes, natural laws. Unlike some
Protestant friends of mine who seemed obsessed by it, we Catholics were always cool about evolution,
because we knew that God could make life any way he wanted to, including indirectly. Who were we to tell
him differently? The critical point was that God was the Creator of life, no matter how he went about it. The
course of Joanne's and my conversation in the lab hit a little snag. Because we were taught biology well in
parochial school, we both knew that the evidence for Darwinian evolution by natural selection was ultra
strong. But when the topic turned to the origin of life she asked, `Well, what would you need to get the first
cell?' `You'd need a membrane for sure,' said I. `And metabolism.' `Can't do without a genetic code,' said she,
`and proteins.' At that point we stopped, looked at each other and, in unison, hollered `Naaaahh!' Then we
laughed and went back to work. From a distance of years I notice three things about my conversation with
Joanne (who died about a decade ago). The first is that the notion, widely accepted among scientists, that
undirected physical laws started life, struck both of us-both well-trained young scientists who would be
happy to accept it-as preposterous because of the many complicated preconditions necessary just to get
things underway. Second, we apparently hadn't given it much thought before then. And third, we both just
shrugged it off and went back to work. I suppose we were thinking that even if we didn't know how life
started by natural processes, surely somebody must know. Or that somebody would figure it out before
long. Or eventually. Or that it wasn't important. Or something." (Behe, M.J.*, "From Muttering to Mayhem:
How Phillip Johnson Got Me Moving," in Dembski, W.A., ed., "Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the
Intelligent Design Movement," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2000, pp.40-41)
9/01/2007
"If Hodge's and Patton's endorsement of evolution was ultimately tentative, B.B. Warfield was decidedly
more partisan. By his own admission a `Darwinian of the purest water' [Warfield, B.B., "Personal Reflections
of Princeton Undergraduate Life," The Princeton Alumni Weekly, 6 April 1916, pp. 650-53] .... It goes
without saying that Warfield's endorsement of Darwin was not unqualified, however. He held that any
scientific theory that in principle subverted providence or occasional supernatural interference must
ultimately prove unacceptable. But within those limits, Warfield, in pointed contrast to both of the Hodges,
said he would `raise no question as to the compatibility of the Darwinian form of the hypothesis of
evolution with Christianity.' [Warfield, B.B., `Charles Darwin's Religious Life: A Sketch in Spiritual
Biography,' in Studies in Theology Oxford University Press: New York, 1932, p.548] The context of this
particular ratification of Darwin's theory is itself important, for it shows Warfield's capacity to distinguish
central issues from peripheral issues. He made the statement in an article entitled `Charles Darwin's Religious
Life,' in which he reviewed the three-volume Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. As the subtitle `A Sketch
in Spiritual Biography' suggests, Warfield focused on what has come to be known as Darwin's `affective
decline'-that is, his increasing distaste for art, music, literature, and religion. Warfield certainly lamented the
spiritually disruptive effects of the theory of evolution on its chief advocate, and he expressed his
annoyance at Darwin's absolutist claims for his natural selection mechanism. But this must not be allowed to
conceal the fact that Warfield remained enthusiastic about the theory as a natural law operating under the
control of Providence an interpretation supported in various ways, he noted, by such scientists as
Carpenter, Dallinger, and Gray. Warfield held that Darwin's aesthetic atrophy and spiritual disaffection could
be traced on the one hand to an inability to conceive of God as immanent in the universe (which resulted in
a misapprehension of the doctrine of Providence) and on the other hand to an unsophisticated
understanding of teleology. It was Warfield's concern, therefore, to articulate a theological defense of divine
design and providential government of the world in evolutionary terms." (Livingstone, D.N.*, "Darwin's
Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought," Eerdmans:
Grand Rapids MI, 1987, pp.115-117)
9/01/2007
"In the book of Genesis (43:33) we read of a lord of Egypt who entertained eleven men who were brothers.
The men, so the story goes, `marvelled one with another' when they found themselves seated at table in the
exact order of their ages. Let us seek to face the question: why was it that they marvelled? For answer we
can only say that such an event seemed to contradict one of the basic ideas entailed in `common sense.' The
men had never heard of the laws of probability, of entropy, or of the second law of thermodynamics, but
they rightly suspected that the long arm of coincidence would hardly have arranged them in just that way.
Somehow, they guessed that intelligence was at work, though to all appearances this could hardly have
been the case. In the end, so it would seem, they decided to trust to appearances instead of intuition.
Nevertheless, they soon learned that their intuition had not deceived them. The idea, in short, is simply this.
Order does not arise of its own accord; it does not come out of nothing, and we must not explain it away by
chance. On the other hand order is easily lost spontaneously." (Clark, R.E.D.*, "Darwin: Before & After: An
Examination and Assessment," [1948], Paternoster: London, Reprint, 1966, pp.148-149)
10/01/2007
"False Negatives and False Positives ... All criteria, and not just medical tests, face the problem of false
positives and false negatives. ... When the medical test classifies an individual who doesn't have the disease
with those who do, it commits a false positive. When the medical test classifies an individual who does have
the disease with those who do not, it commits a false negative. Let us now apply these observations to the
complexity-specification criterion. This criterion purports to detect design. Is it a reliable criterion? The
target group for this criterion comprises all things intelligently caused. How accurate is this criterion at
correctly assigning things to this target group and correctly omitting things from it? The things we are
trying to explain have causal stories. In some of those causal stories intelligent causation is indispensable,
whereas in others it is dispensable. An inkblot can be explained without appealing to intelligent causation;
ink arranged to form meaningful text cannot. When the complexity-specification criterion assigns something
to the target group, can we be confident that it actually is intelligently caused? If not, we have a problem
with false positives. On the other hand, when this criterion fails to assign something to the target group, can
we be confident that no intelligent cause underlies it? If not, we have a problem with false negatives.
Consider first the problem of false negatives. When the complexityspecification criterion fails to detect
design in a thing, can we be sure no intelligent cause underlies it? The answer is no. For determining that
something is not designed, this criterion is not reliable. False negatives are a problem for it. This problem of
false negatives, however, is endemic to detecting intelligent causes. One difficulty is that intelligent causes
can mimic necessity and chance, thereby rendering their actions indistinguishable from such unintelligent
causes. A bottle of ink may fall off a cupboard and spill onto a sheet of paper. Alternatively a human agent
may deliberately take a bottle of ink and pour it over a sheet of paper. The resulting inkblot may look
identical in both instances, but the one case results by chance, the other by design. Another difficulty is
that detecting intelligent causes requires background knowledge on our part. It takes an intelligent cause to
know an intelligent cause. But if we don't know enough, we'll miss it. ... The problem of false negatives
therefore arises either when an intelligent agent has acted (whether consciously or unconsciously) to
conceal one's actions or when an intelligent agent in trying to detect design has insufficient background
knowledge to determine whether design actually is present. ... Intelligent causes can do things that
unintelligent causes cannot and can make their actions evident. When for whatever reason an intelligent
cause fails to make its actions evident, we may miss it. But when an intelligent cause succeeds in making its
actions evident, we take notice. This is why false negatives do not invalidate the complexity-specification
criterion. This criterion is fully capable of detecting intelligent causes intent on making their presence
evident. Masters of stealth intent on concealing their actions may successfully evade the criterion. But
masters of self-promotion intent on making sure their intellectual property gets properly attributed find in
the complexity-specification criterion a ready friend. This brings us to the problem of false positives. Even
though specified complexity is not a reliable criterion for eliminating design, it is, I shall argue, a reliable
criterion for detecting design. The complexity-specification criterion is a net. Things that are designed will
occasionally slip past the net. We would prefer that the net catch more than it does, omitting nothing due to
design. But given the ability of design to mimic unintelligent causes and the possibility of our own
ignorance passing over things that are designed, this problem cannot be fixed. Nevertheless we want to be
very sure that whatever the net does catch includes only what we intend it to catch-things that are
designed. Only things that are designed had better end up in the net. If this is the case, we can have
confidence that whatever the complexity-specification criterion attributes to design is indeed designed. On
the other hand, if things end up in the net that are not designed, the criterion will be worthless." (Dembski
W.A., "Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove
IL, 1999, pp.139-141. Emphasis original)
10/01/2007
"The Explanatory Filter is a criterion for deciding when something is intelligently caused and when it isn't.
Does it decide this question reliably? As with any criterion, we need to make sure that whatever judgments
the criterion renders correspond to reality. ... Any medical test is a criterion. A perfectly reliable medical test
would detect the presence of a disease whenever it is indeed present, and fail to detect the disease
whenever it is absent. Unfortunately, no medical test is perfectly reliable, and so the best we can do is keep
the proportion of false positives and false negatives as low as possible. All criteria, and not just medical
tests, face the problem of false positives and false negatives. ... A medical test checks whether an individual
has a certain disease. The target group comprises all those individuals who actually have the disease. When
the medical test classifies an individual who doesn't have the disease with those who do, it commits a false
positive. When the medical test classifies an individual who does have the disease with those who do not, it
commits a false negative. When the Explanatory Filter fails to detect design in a thing, can we be sure no
intelligent cause underlies it? The answer to this question is No. For determining that something is not
designed, the Explanatory Filter is not a reliable criterion. False negatives are a problem for the Explanatory
Filter. This problem of false negatives, however, is endemic to detecting intelligent causes. One difficulty is
that intelligent causes can mimic law and chance, thereby rendering their actions indistinguishable from
these unintelligent causes. It takes an intelligent cause to know an intelligent cause, but if we don't know
enough, we'll miss it. Intelligent causes can do things that unintelligent causes cannot, and can make their
actions evident. When for whatever reason an intelligent cause fails to make its actions evident, we may
miss it. But when an intelligent cause succeeds in making its actions evident, we take notice. This is why
false negatives do not invalidate the Explanatory Filter. The Explanatory Filter is fully capable of detecting
intelligent causes intent on making their presence evident. And this brings us to the problem of false
positives. Even though the Explanatory Filter is not a reliable criterion for eliminating design, it is, I argue, a
reliable criterion for detecting design. The Explanatory Filter is a net. Things that are designed will
occasionally slip past the net. We would prefer that the net catch more than it does, omitting nothing due to
design. But given the ability of design to mimic unintelligent causes and the possibility of our own
ignorance passing over things that are designed, this problem cannot be fixed. Nevertheless, we want to be
very sure that whatever the net does catch includes only what we intend it to catch, to wit, things that are
designed. I argue that the explanatory filter is a reliable criterion for detecting design. Alternatively, I argue
that the Explanatory Filter successfully avoids false positives. Thus whenever the Explanatory Filter
attributes design, it does so correctly." (Dembski W.A., "The Explanatory Filter: A three-part filter for
understanding how to separate and identify cause from intelligent design," An excerpt from a paper
presented at the 1996 Mere Creation conference, [Biola University, Los Angeles, November 14-17, 1996]
originally titled "Redesigning Science.")
10/01/2007
How likely was it, given a soup of one sort or another that a system arose spontaneously which could
evolve by natural selection? Here we face formidable problems. What ever happened during those early
times, we can be sure that the primitive system had eventually to evolve fairly smoothly into the present
one, based on nucleic acid for replication an protein synthesis for action. We cannot be sure that the earliest
evolving system was not embodied in something quite different, which set the stage for the present one.
Even if this was not the case, and the first replicating system contained some elements of the one we have
today, we have no evidence whether nucleic acid came first, or protein came first, or whether both evolved
together. My own prejudice is that nucleic acid (probably RNA) came first, closely followed by a simple form
of protein synthesis. This seems to me the easiest route to follow, but even this appears fraught with
difficulties. Phosphate was probably common and the sugar ribose (which contains no nitrogen) could have
easily been made under certain special conditions, because formaldehyde (HCHO) is known to be one of the
most common prebiotic chemicals. However, a rather different set of conditions would have been required
for the synthesis of the bases, such as adenine, which do contain nitrogen. Then there is the problem of
linking the sugar to both the phosphate and the base in the correct way (and several incorrect ways are
possible) and then activating this compound (called a nucleotide), possibly by joining on a further
phosphate or two to provide the energy needed to link two nucleotides together. This operation, if repeated,
would lead to the chain molecule we call RNA. It is not easy to see how this could happen in a mixture of
other, rather similar compounds without the frequent incorporation of incorrect molecules in the chain
unless there were some rather specific catalyst present. This conceivably could be a mineral or even some
peptide produced by the random aggregation of amino acids, but if so this has not been demonstrated in a
convincing way. Even if such a process did occur, if only in one particular pool at one particular time, it
would only yield RNA with a rather random base-sequence." (Crick, F.H.C., "Life Itself: Its Origin and
Nature," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1981, pp.80-81)
10/01/2007
"Protein Production as an Improbability Problem The problem of assembling the amino acid building
blocks into functional protein can also be illustrated using probability and statistics. To simplify the
problem, one may assume the probability of getting an L-amino acid (versus a D-amino acid) to be 50
percent and the probability of joining two such amino acids with a peptide bond to also be 50 percent. The
probability of getting the right amino acid in a particular position may be assumed to be 5 percent, assuming
equal concentration of all twenty amino acids in the prebiotic soup The first two assumptions are realistic,
while the third would be too low for some amino acids and too high for others. Neglecting the problem of
reactions with non-amino acid chemical species, the probability of getting everything right in placing one
amino acid would be 0.5 x 0.5 x .05 = .0125. The probability of properly assembling N such amino acids
would be .0125 x .0125 x ... continued for N terms of .0125. If a functional protein had one hundred active
sites, the probability of getting a proper assembly would be .0125 multiplied times itself one hundred times,
or 4.9 x 10-191. Such improbabilities have led essentially all scientists who work in the field to reject
random, accidental assembly or fortuitous good luck as an explanation for how life began. If we assume that
all carbon on earth exists in the form of amino acids and that the amino acids are allowed to chemically react
at the maximum possible rate of 1012/s for one billion years (the greatest possible time between the cooling
of the earth and the appearance of life), we must still conclude that it is incredibly improbable (~10-65) that
even one functional protein would be made, as H. P. Yockey has pointed out.46 [Yockey, "A Calculation of
the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis by Information Theory," Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol.
67, 1981, p. 377] D. Kenyon and G. Steinman and Sir Fredrick Hoyle come to similar conclusions, with the
latter commenting, "The current scenario of the origin of life is about as likely as the assemblage of a 747 by
a tornado whirling through a junkyard." [Hoyle F., "The Intelligent Universe," Michael Joseph: London,
1983, p.19] (Bradley, W.L*. & Thaxton, C.B.*, "Information & the Origin of Life," in Moreland, J.P., ed., "The
Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL,
1994, pp.190-191)
10/01/2007
"Two of his reasons involve the origin of life-the calculated time since the origin of the Universe of 10,000
million years or so is not enough to account for the evolution of living forms, while adiabatic expansion of
the Universe would have been inimical to the evolution of highly ordered forms. ... The essence of his
argument last week was that the information content of the higher forms of life is represented by the number
1040 000 - representing the specificity with which some 2,000 genes, each of which might be chosen from
1020 nucleotide sequences of the appropriate length, might be defined. Evolutionary processes would,
Hoyle said, require several Hubble times to yield such a result. The chance that higher life forms might have
emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that `a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might
assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein'. ... Of adherents of biological evolution, Hoyle said he was
at a loss to understand `biologists' widespread compulsion to deny what seems to me to be obvious'."
(Hoyle, F., in "Hoyle on evolution," Nature, Vol. 294, 12 November 1981, p.105).
10/01/2007
"We are now ready to handle the chances for the spontaneous generation of a bacterium. ... Many scientists
have attempted such calculations; we need cite only two of them to make the point. The first was provided
by Sir Fred Hoyle, whose ideas we shall discuss in detail later in the book. He and his colleague, N. C.
Wickramasinghe, first endorsed spontaneous generation, then abruptly reversed their position. Why did
they do this? Quite obviously, they calculated the odds. Rather than estimate the chances for an entire
bacterium, they considered only the set of functioning enzymes present in one. Their starting point was not
a complex mixture, but rather the set of twenty L-form amino acids that are used to construct biological
enzymes. If amino acids were selected at random from this set one at a time and arranged in order, what
would be the chances that this process would produce an actual bacterial product? For a typical enzyme of
200 amino acids, the odds would be obtained by multiplying the probability for each amino acid, 1 in 20,
together 200 times. The result, 1 in 10120, places us on floor 120 of the Tower of Numbers, immensely
higher than the level where we find the number of trials. Things need not be that bad, however. What
matters is the function of the enzyme, rather than the exact order of amino acids within it. A large number of
amino acid sequences might provide enzymes with the proper function. With this in mind, Hoyle and
Wickramasinghe estimated that the chances of obtaining an enzyme of the appropriate type at random were
`only' 1 in 1020. To duplicate a bacterium, however, one would have to assemble 2,000 different functioning
enzymes. The odds against this event would be 1 in 1020 multiplied together 2,000 times, or 1 in 1040,000.
This particular item would then be available on floor 40,000 of the Tower of Numbers. If we consider that the
number of trials brought us only to the fifty-first floor, we can understand why Hoyle changed his mind. His
estimate of the likelihood of the event was that it was comparable to the chance that `a tornado sweeping
through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.' [Hoyle, F., in "Hoyle on
evolution," Nature, Vol. 294, 12 November 1981, p.105] In fact, things are much worse. A tidy set of
twenty amino acids, all in the L-form, was not likely to be available on the early earth. This situation has not
even been approached by the very best Miller-Urey experiments. Nor does a set of enzymes constitute a
living bacterium." (Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth," Summit Books:
New York NY, 1986, pp.125,127-128)
11/01/2007
"In general, the [Neo-Darwinian modern] synthesis has ignored speciation when it has confronted the
larger-scale phenomena of macroevolution, preferring to see such patterns as trends, adaptive radiations,
and the like as merely a wholesale accumulation of conventional Darwinian adaptive change (see Eldredge
and Cracraft 1980 for a more extensive discussion of such macroevolutionary theory). What we have, then,
are two ships passing in the night. The hold of one is crammed with phenomena either ignored (ecology,
developmental biology) or only vaguely addressed (species, monophyletic groups, the molecular anatomy
of the gene), while the other ship bears an explanatory theory only alleged to be relevant to such
phenomena. In the popular parlance of contemporary philosophy of science (as seen at least by some
scientists), such a situation renders much of evolutionary theory untestable. There is simply no way to
evaluate a statement about fossils that is written in the language of genetics." (Eldredge, N., "Unfinished
Synthesis: Biological Hierarchies and Modern Evolutionary Thought," Oxford University Press: New York NY,
1985, p.120. Emphasis original)
11/01/2007
"The major classes of biomolecules have identical functions in all species of cells. The nucleic acids serve
universally to store and transmit genetic information. In all cells the proteins are the direct products and
effectors of gene action. Some have specific catalytic activity and function as enzymes; others serve as
structural elements. Proteins are the most versatile class of macromolecules .... The polysaccharides have
two major functions in all cells. Some, e.g., starch, serve as storage forms of energy-yielding fuel for cell
activity, and others, e.g., cellulose, serve as extracellular structural elements. The lipids in turn also play the
same roles in all cells, either as major structural components of membranes or as a storage form of energy-
rich fuel. One other point requires comment. There is an important and fundamental difference between the
nucleic acids and proteins on the one hand and the polysaccharides and lipids on the other .... Nucleic acids
and proteins are informational macromolecules. Each nucleic acid molecule contains four or more types of
nucleotides arranged in a specific information-rich sequence. Similarly, each protein molecule contains a
specific information-rich sequence of some 20 different amino acids. On the other hand, the polysaccharides
and lipids do not have an information-carrying function. For example, the recurring building blocks of
polysaccharides either are all identical, as in starch, a polymer of glucose, or they consist of regularly
alternating building-block components." (Lehninger, A.L., "Biochemistry: The Molecular Basis of Cell
Structure and Function," [1970], Worth Publishers: New York NY, Second Edition, 1975, Sixth Printing, 1981,
p.20. Emphasis original)
11/01/2007
"Since peptide bonds are thermodynamically unstable in aqueous solutions, once a primitive proteinoid
arose, it would be highly susceptible to hydrolytic breakdown in the warm primordial sea. Thus no single
proteinoid molecule could be expected to survive for long. This fact raises a fundamental problem. It is
difficult to see how any given proteinoid could have undergone residue-by-residue evolutionary
improvement to an amino acid sequence better able to survive if each proteinoid molecule lasted but a short
period and if there were no means of recording or replicating the amino acid sequence of the `better'
proteinoids." (Lehninger, A.L., "Biochemistry: The Molecular Basis of Cell Structure and Function," [1970],
Worth Publishers: New York NY, Second Edition, 1975, Sixth Printing, 1981, p.1041)
11/01/2007
"Attractive as these ideas might at first appear, they are subject to some major questions. The most crucial
one is the origin of the genetic code. Apart from the fact that all hydrophobic amino acids are coded by
triplets whose second base is U, there is little evidence that the coding triplets (page 962) bear any steric or
chemical relationship to the amino acids for which they code. Model-building experiments have simply not
revealed a satisfactory picture of the molecular correspondence between amino acids and their codons. For
this reason it has been proposed that the genetic code is the result of a `frozen accident.' It is this step in
the molecular evolution of the genetic system for which there is yet no satisfactory model or theory. Indeed,
Crick and Orgel have pointed out that it is not beyond reasonable possibility that genes and the genetic
code may have been brought to earth by spaceship from some other body in the universe where intelligent
life had already evolved. This is a throwback to the old hypothesis of `Panspermia,' postulated at the turn
of the twentieth century by the Swedish chemist S. Arrhenius, who proposed that life began on earth from
seeds or sperm wafted from the outer reaches of the universe by celestial winds. Of course this idea is no
answer to the problem, since one must then explain how life arose elsewhere."
(Lehninger, A.L., "Biochemistry: The Molecular Basis of Cell Structure and Function," [1970], Worth
Publishers: New York NY, Second Edition, 1975, Sixth Printing, 1981, pp.1052)
11/01/2007
"But the most striking of all the interlinked events which have led to the incredibly complex biological
organisms we know today still remains at the divide where chemical evolution ends and biological
evolution begins. Why and under what conditions does an ensemble of organic compounds become a
self-organizing self-replicating system? The laws of chemistry and physics we know today do not
forbid self-organization of matter; however, they provide no easy explanation for it. Our greatest task is
to formulate in precise terms the molecular logic of self-organizing and self-replicating systems of
organic compounds." (Lehninger, A.L., "Biochemistry: The Molecular Basis of Cell Structure and
Function," [1970], Worth Publishers: New York NY, Second Edition, 1975, Sixth Printing, 1981, p.1054.
Emphasis original)
11/01/2007
"Primitive cell-like structures may have formed by the process of coacervation or by micelle formation driven
by hydrophobic interactions, the tendency of the surrounding water molecules to seek the position of
maximum entropy. A. I. Oparin has postulated the formation of coacervate droplets composed of polymers,
into which primitive catalysts may have been incorporated. More recently S. W. Fox has described
proteinoid microspheres, which exhibit many aspects of cell-like behavior. Such structures were visualized
as developing in the absence of nucleic acids, which may have been acquired later. The other general
hypothesis is that a primitive gene was required before proteins were added, an idea supported by the
structure of modern viruses, the general importance of nucleotides in modern biochemistry, and the capacity
for self-replication. In either case, some means for recording or coding and thus self-replication was
required, as well as the capacity for further evolution. Development of the genetic code may have been the
basic event in the origin of life. At the center of the problem is the process of self-organization of matter."
(Lehninger, A.L., "Biochemistry: The Molecular Basis of Cell Structure and Function," [1970], Worth
Publishers: New York NY, Second Edition, 1975, Sixth Printing, 1981, p.1055)
12/01/2007
"What if We Are Alone? The most common argument that I have seen advanced against the proposition that
we are alone in the galaxy is that it is anti-Copernican, and, therefore, goes against five centuries of Western
intellectual tradition. There are a number of retorts that can be made against this argument. First, ideas are not
Copernican or anti-Copernican; they are right or wrong. Second, after so many impeccably Copernican books
have been written showing that we must be very junior and unimportant members of the Galactic Club, it is time
for someone to marshal the rather formidable arguments that can be made for the opposite viewpoint. For, as we
have seen in this book, the evidence we have at present clearly favors the conclusion that we are alone. From the
formation of the sun as a single G star to the evolution of the earth's atmosphere to the conditions of the earth's
recent climate, everything points to the same conclusion-we are special. But we are living on an insignificant
speck of rock going around an undistinguished star in a low-rent section of the galaxy. We are not the center of
the universe. Maybe so, but we are special. But we share our biochemistry with millions of life forms, from
flatworms on up. We are one member of a large family of animals using one particular variant of carbon chemistry
known as DNA. Maybe so, but we are special. Why? Because on this particular bit of rock, circling this particular
sun, all of the millions of factors happened to work themselves out so that the first fragile molecules had enough
time to form complicated chains, and these chains were given just the right amount of protection to form simple
living systems, and these living systems changed their environment in just the right way so as to narrowly
escape twin catastrophes and put oxygen into the atmosphere. This in turn allowed life to emerge onto land, and
since the planet's orbit was just right, the weather changed, forcing the apelike creatures on the African
savannah to build tools, fashion shelters, and start to think about the world around them. Because only on this
insignificant speck of rock have beings evolved who can look at the universe and ask the question, `Why?' If I
were a religious man, I would say that everything we have learned about life in the past twenty years shows that
we are unique, and therefore special in God's sight. Instead I shall say that what we have learned shows that it
matters a great deal what happens to us. We are not the snail darters of the galaxy-one more life form whose
ultimate fate is of little moment in the grand scheme of things. If we succeed in destroying ourselves, it will be a
tragedy not only for the human race but for the entire galaxy, which will have lost the fruit of a 15-billion-year
experiment in the formation of sentient life." (Trefil, J.S., in Rood, R.T. & Trefil, J.S., "Are We Alone?: The
Possibility of Extraterrestrial Civilizations," Charles Scribner's Sons: New York NY, 1981, pp.251-252. Emphasis
original)
12/01/2007
"You might imagine an uncharitable extraterrestrial observer looking down on our species over all that time-
with us excitedly chattering, `The Universe created for us! We're at the center! Everything pays homage to
us!'-and concluding that our pretensions are amusing, our aspirations pathetic, that this must be the planet
of the idiots." (Sagan, C.E., "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space," Random House: New
York NY, 1994, p.17)
12/01/2007
"Australia's Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), based at the University of Western Sydney
Macarthur campus in Campbelltown, is attempting to answer one of humanity's oldest, and most frustrating,
questions. Are we alone in this vast universe? An answer either way will have enormous significance. If
they discover other forms of intelligent life by detecting an artificial radio beacon, it could lend weight to the
soul-destroying theory that there is nothing special about us. Ever since it first began thinking about such
things, humanity has seen itself at the centre of all life. While scientific discoveries in the past few hundred
years have given us a more humble outlook - we now know we occupy a small ball of rock in an anonymous,
outer suburb of an average galaxy filled with hundreds of billions of stars mankind still regards itself as
unique. If we are not alone, our egos may suffer a sizeable blow. And what if we are alone? For those with
religious faith, man's special relationship with God will be firmly cemented. But for atheists, there may be the
ultimate in that dull, aching sense of loneliness. Out of all the billions of stars and galaxies over all the
billions of years since the universe began, this may be as good as it gets. Our existence is due to a lucky roll
of the cosmic dice. And when we are gone, no one will ever know we were here." (Linnell, G., "Heaven Only
Knows," The Bulletin, Vol. 117, July 6, 1999, p.33)
13/01/2007
"To some people, such are the outrageous words of Jesus Christ: `I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.' [John 14:6] Many people consider it arrogant, narrow-
minded, and bigoted for Christians to contend that the only path to God must go through Jesus of Nazareth.
In a day of religious pluralism and tolerance, this exclusivity claim is politically incorrect, a verbal slap in the
face of other belief systems. Pluralist Rosemary Radford Ruether labeled it `absurd religious chauvinism,'
[Hick, J. & Knitter, P.F., eds., "The Myth of Christian Uniqueness," SCM Press: London, 1987, p.141] ...
Certainly an approach like the one expressed by Indian philosopher Swami Vivekenanda is much more
acceptable today: `We [Hindus] accept all religions to be true,' he told the World Parliament of Religions in
1893. The real sin, he said, is to call someone else a sinner.' [Copan, P., "True for You, But Not for Me,"
Bethany House: Minneapolis MN, 1998, p.34] That kind of open-mindedness and liberality fits well with our
current culture of relativism, where no `fact' is considered universally true at all times, at all places, for all
people, and in all cultures. Indeed, fully two- thirds of Americans now deny there's any such thing as truth.
[Colson, C., "Introduction," in Zacharias, R., "Can Man Live Without God," Word: Nashville TN, 1994, p.ix]
When I was an atheist, I bristled at assertions by Christians that they held a monopoly on the only correct
approach to religion. 'Who do they think they are?' I'd grouse. `Who are they to judge everyone else?
Where's the love of Jesus in that?' Charles Templeton called it `insufferable presumption' [Templeton, C.,
"Farewell to God," Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996, p.27] for the Bible to claim that besides Jesus there
is `no other name under heaven ... by which we must be saved.' [Acts 4:12.] Templeton added: `Christians
are a small minority in the world. Approximately four out of every five people on the face of the earth believe
in gods other than the Christian God. The more than five billion people who live on earth revere or worship
more than three hundred gods. If one includes the animist or tribal religions, the number rises to more than
three thousand. Are we to believe that only Christians are right? ' [Templeton, Ibid., p.27. Emphasis
added] Despite Templeton's woeful undercounting of the number of gods worshiped in the world, his point
remains. The exclusivity claim of Jesus is among the biggest obstacles to spiritual seekers today. With a
subject this volatile, I knew I needed to talk with an expert who has a crisp, analytical mind, a sound
philosophical background, and extensive experience with a wide range of different world religions. Those
criteria led me to a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, and the office of Ravi Zacharias, who was born and raised in
India." (Strobel, L.P.*, "Objection #5: It's Offensive to Claim Jesus Is the Only Way to God," in "The Case for
Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI,
2000, pp.146-147)
13/01/2007
"'Forgive me for being blunt,' I said in prefacing my question, `but isn't it grossly arrogant for Christians to
claim Jesus is the one and only way to God? Why do Christians think they're justified in asserting that
they're right and that everybody else in the world is wrong?' ... `Lee, I hear that question so much, especially
in the East,' he said, his voice animated and his eyes looking sincere and concerned. `The first thing I do is
try to deal with the misinformation that is inherent in it.' `Misinformation?' I asked. `Like what?' `First,' he
said, `it's important to understand that Christianity is not the only religion that claims exclusivity. For
instance, Muslims radically claim exclusivity-not just theologically, but also linguistically. Muslims believe
that the sole, sufficient, and consummate miracle of Islam is the Koran. They say, however, it's only
recognizable in Arabic, and that any translation desacralizes it. And it's not just a basic understanding of
Arabic that's required, but a sophisticated knowledge of the language. `As for Buddhism, it was born when
Gautama Buddha rejected two fundamental assertions of Hinduism-the ultimate authority of the Vedas,
which are their scriptures, and the caste system. Hinduism itself is absolutely uncompromising on two or
three issues: the law of karma, which is the law of moral cause and effect, so that every birth is a rebirth that
makes recompense for the previous life; the authority of the Vedas; and reincarnation.' I interrupted. `But
I've heard Hindus say quite nobly that Hinduism is a very tolerant faith,' I said, thinking of statements like
the one made by Swami Vivekenanda near the beginning of this chapter. He smiled. `Whenever you hear
that statement, don't take it at face value,' he said. `What it really means is that Hinduism allows you to
practice your religion so long as it buys into their notion of truth, which is syncretistic,' he said. Syncretism
is the attempt to blend together different or even opposing beliefs. `As for Sikhism,' he continued, `it came
as a challenge to both Hinduism and Buddhism. Then there are the atheists-they reject the viewpoints of
those who believe in God. And even Baha'ism, which claims to be a cosmic embrace of all religions, ends up
excluding the exclusivists! Therefore, the statement that Christians are arrogant by claiming exclusivity
ignores the reality that every other major religion does as well. So when people talk of arrogance, this cannot
be a logical attack they are making.' I started to formulate my next question, but Zacharias anticipated where
it was headed and jumped in to complete my sentence. `You believe that all truth-' I began. `Is, by definition,
exclusive,' he said. `Yes, yes, I do. If truth does not exclude, then no assertion of a truth claim is being made;
it's just an opinion that is being stated. Any time you make a truth claim, you mean something contrary to it
is false. Truth excludes its opposite.' `There are those who deny that,' I observed. `Yes, but think about this:
to deny the exclusive nature of truth is to make a truth claim, and is that person then not arrogant too?
That's the boomerang effect that the condemner often doesn't pause to consider. The clear implications of
Jesus saying he's the way, the truth, and the life are that, first, truth is absolute, and second, truth is
knowable. His claim of exclusivity means categorically that anything that contradicts what he says is by
definition false.'" (Strobel, L.P.*, "Objection #5: It's Offensive to Claim Jesus Is the Only Way to God," in
"The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity," Zondervan: Grand
Rapids MI, 2000, pp.148-151)
13/01/2007
"'It's one thing for Christians to believe that,' I said. `It's another thing to communicate it without sounding
smug or superior. But Christians often come off that way.' Zacharias sighed. It was a charge he had heard all
too often. `Yes, if truth is not undergirded by love, it makes the possessor of that truth obnoxious and the
truth repulsive,' he said. `Having been raised in India and having all Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, and Sikh
friends growing up, I can appreciate some of their criticisms of Christians. Christianity's history has some
explaining to do with its methodology. Violence, antagonism, and hostility are contrary to the love of Christ.
One cannot communicate the love of Christ in non-loving terms. `In India we have a proverb that says once
you cut off a person's nose, there's no point in giving him a rose to smell,' he continued. `And if a Christian's
arrogance turns off somebody, that person won't be receptive to the Christian message. Mahatma Gandhi
said, `I like their Christ, I don't like their Christians.' Friedrich Nietzshe said, `I will believe in the Redeemer
when the Christian looks a little more redeemed.' Their points need to be taken. `However,' he added, `it is
possible to lovingly claim exclusive truth, just as a scientist can very gently say, `This is the second law of
thermodynamics' without adding, `Now, can we vote on how many of us can cooperate with it or not?' `So
the criticism of Christians is often valid?' `Yes, sometimes we have run afoul of cultural sensitivities. At the
same time, however, Eastern religions have a lot of soul-searching to do in this regard today. Clannish and
political conflicts aside, I know of no Christianized country where your life is in danger because you are from
another faith. But today there are many countries in the world-such as Pakistan, Saudia Arabia, and Iran-
where to become a follower of Christ is to put your life and your family at risk.' I had read enough newspaper
accounts in recent years to know that was accurate, including in Zacharias' native land, where several
Christians have been killed by militant Hindus in recent years. But sometimes it's not the manner in which
the Christians try to spread their faith that's offensive. Sometimes people are simply reacting to the message
itself. `Even the one whose life was most perfectly lived ended up on a cross,' Zacharias noted. `Resistance
to truth can be so strong that it can still engender violence and hate even when the person has done
absolutely nothing wrong.'" (Strobel, L.P.*, "Objection #5: It's Offensive to Claim Jesus Is the Only Way to
God," in "The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity,"
Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 2000, pp.150-151)
13/01/2007
"Anyone can claim to be the only path to God. In fact, quite a few crackpots have made that assertion
throughout history. The real issue is why anybody should believe Jesus was telling the truth when he said
it. `On what basis do you believe this claim by Jesus is true?' I asked Zacharias. `Ah, yes, that is the heart of
the question,' he replied, his head nodding. `On one hand, you can say that the resurrection of Jesus
established him as being the son of God. If that's true, then all other faith systems cannot be true, because
they each assert something contrary to his divinity. And of course, the historical record concerning the
Resurrection is extremely compelling.' ... `Finally, destiny is based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the
historical event that proved his divinity and that opened the door to heaven for everyone who will follow
him. Where else do you have anything that comes close to claiming this? ... Because the Resurrection is an
actual historical event, we can be forgiven, we can be reconciled with God, we can spend eternity with him,
and we can trust Jesus' teachings as being from God. ... That's why the apostle Peter said, `We did not
follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but
we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.' [2 Peter 1:16] `He's saying, `This is true. This is reality. This can be
trusted.' And, yes, this truth excludes that which is contrary.'" (Strobel, L.P.*, "Objection #5: It's Offensive to
Claim Jesus Is the Only Way to God," in "The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest
Objections to Christianity," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 2000, pp.151-153)
14/01/2007
"Automatic processes are themselves often creations of great brilliance. From today's vantage point, we can
see that the inventors of the automatic transmission and the automatic door-opener were no idiots, and their
genius lay in seeing how to create something that could do something `clever' without having to think about
it. Indulging in some anachronism, we could say that, to some observers in Darwin's day, it seemed that he
had left open the possibility that God did His handiwork by designing an automatic design-maker. And to
some of these, the idea was not just a desperate stopgap but a positive improvement on tradition. The first
chapter of Genesis describes the successive waves of Creation and ends each with the refrain `and God saw
that it was good.' Darwin had discovered a way to eliminate this retail application of Intelligent Quality
Control; natural selection would take care of that without further intervention from God. (The seventeenth-
century philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz had defended a similar hands-off vision of God the Creator.)
As Henry Ward Beecher put it, `Design by wholesale is grander than design by retail' (Rachels 1991, p. 99 ).
Asa Gray, captivated by Darwin's new idea but trying to reconcile it with as much of his traditional religious
creed as possible, came up with this marriage of convenience: God intended the `stream of variations' and
foresaw just how the laws of nature He had laid down would prune this stream over the eons. As John
Dewey later aptly remarked, invoking yet another mercantile metaphor, `Gray held to what may be called
design on the installment plan" (Dewey 1910, p. 12)." (Dennett, D.C., "Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution
and The Meanings of Life," [1995], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1996, p.67)
14/01/2007
"From a biblical standpoint, however, it is not only the events of salvation history that create difficulties for
any compromise with naturalism. One is faced not simply with the details of the Genesis account but with
New Testament passages that reflect the fundamental logic of Christianity. For example, the first chapter of
Romans tells us that `the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of
men, who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them,
because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his
eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without
excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became
futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and
exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.'
[Romans 1:18-23] That passage does not speak of a nature that merely raises questions that a naturalistic
science cannot answer, but of a nature that points directly and unmistakably toward the necessity of a
creator. And if nature does no more than raise questions, how can men be blamed for coming to the wrong
conclusions about what to worship? If God stayed in that realm beyond the reach of scientific investigation,
and allowed an apparently blind materialistic evolutionary process to do all the work of creation, then it
would have to be said that God furnished us with a world of excuses for unbelief and idolatry." (Johnson,
P.E.*, "Creator or Blind Watchmaker?" First Things, January 1993, p12)
14/01/2007
"On the day after New Year's, as most of the world now knows, Wesley Autrey, a construction worker and a
Navy veteran, was waiting for the train with his two daughters at the 137th Street Station in New York. Then, a
man collapsed on the platform and began convulsing. After Autrey helped him get up, the man collapsed again
and fell onto the tracks. With the lights of the Broadway Local visible down the tunnel, Autrey had to make what
he later called a `split decision'-a decision that inspired a nation and taught us a powerful lesson about what it
means to be human. Autrey jumped onto the tracks, risking his own life, to save the stricken stranger. After
visiting the man in the hospital, Autrey, who denied that he had done anything `spectacular,' went to work.
While Autrey didn't think that his actions were spectacular, other people did. At a time when most of the news is
disheartening, Autrey's actions inspired millions of people. Americans have become jaundiced and skeptical. We
need heroes every now and then, a role model-and that's what Autrey has become. Not only did he inspire us,
but he also helps remind us of some important truths about being human. One of these is that materialism can
never provide a satisfactory, much less complete, account of human nature. While neo-Darwinism offers a
superficial explanation for human evil, it can't begin to account for human goodness, such as Autrey's actions.
What we Christians call `altruism,' Neo-Darwinists call `enlightened' selfishness. Thus, a Neo-Darwinist would
say that parents care for their children and siblings as a way of ensuring that their `selfish genes' get passed on
to the next generation. Even if this were true, it says nothing about why a man jumps in front of an incoming train
for a total stranger, as Autrey did. For that, you need the capacity for self-sacrifice, an utterly un-Darwinian
trait." (Colson, C.*, "The Subway Hero: Extraordinary Ordinary Virtue," BreakPoint, November 1, 2007. Emphasis original)
15/01/2007
"Group Selection and Altruism Reporter: When you ran Finland onto the map of the world, did you feel
you were doing it to bring fame to a nation unknown by others? Nurmi: No. I ran for myself, not for
Finland. Reporter: Not even in the Olympics? Nurmi: Not even then. Above all, not then. At the
Olympics, Paavo Nurmi mattered more than ever. Who does not feel at least a tinge of admiration for Paavo
Nurmi, the ultimate individual selectionist? At the opposite extreme, we shared a different form of approval,
warmer in tone but uneasily loose in texture, for the Apollo 11 astronauts who left their message on the
moon, `We came in peace for all mankind.' This chapter is about natural selection at the levels of selection in
between the individual and the species. Its pivot will be the question of altruism, the surrender of personal
genetic fitness for the enhancement of personal genetic fitness in others." (Wilson, E.O., "Sociobiology:
The Abridged Edition," [1975], The Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1980, p.50. Emphasis original)
15/01/2007
"Group Selection Selection can be said to operate at the group level, and deserves to be called group
selection, when it affects two or more members of a lineage group as a unit. Just above the level of the
individual we can delimit various of these lineage groups: a set of sibs, parents, and their offspring; a close-
knit tribe of families related by at least the degree of third cousin; and so on. If selection operates on any of
the groups as a unit, or operates on an individual in any way that affects the frequency of genes shared by
common descent in relatives, the process is referred to as kin selection. At a higher level, an entire
breeding population may be the unit, so that populations (that is, demes) possessing different genotypes
are extinguished differentially, or disseminate different numbers of colonists, in which case we speak of
interdemic (or interpopulation) selection. ... Selection can also operate at the level of species or entire
clusters of related species. ... It is even possible to conceive of the differential extinction of entire
ecosystems, involving all trophic levels ... " (Wilson, E.O., "Sociobiology: The Abridged Edition," [1975],
The Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1980, p.50. Emphasis original)
15/01/2007
"Another of [Stephen] Hawking's controversial statements needs to be addressed. Although it is not
original with him, Hawking states: `We are such insignificant creatures on a minor planet of a very average
star in the outer suburbs of one of a hundred billion galaxies. So it is difficult to believe in a God that would
care about us or even notice our existence.' [Hawking, S., in "Master of the Universe," BBC TV, 1989] I take
a different position. In their recent writings, Hugh Ross and Guillermo Gonzalez (a professor of astronomy at
Iowa State University) have demonstrated that our solar system, and in particular the sun and planet earth,
are in fact quite extraordinary in many respects. The work of Ross and Gonzalez follows the excellent book
Rare Earth, published in 2000 by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. There is no compelling evidence to
date that life exists elsewhere in the universe. Human beings, thus far, appear to be the most advanced
species in the universe. Maybe God does care about us! Stephen Hawking surveys the cosmos and
concludes that the principal characteristic of humankind is obscurity. I consider the same evidence and
conclude that human beings are special." (Schaefer, H.F. III*, "Science and Christianity: Conflict or
Coherence?" [2003], Apollos Trust: Watkinsville GA, Second Printing, 2003, p.66)
17/01/2007
"One bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee), Kanzi, can use the system to say: `I want a cup of coffee, please'.
Another, Panbanisha, is said to know around 3,000 words. ... But Dr Tom Sambrook, of the Scottish Primate
Research Group, told BBC television of his doubts that the apes' achievements signified all they appeared
to. `They can use language effectively to make requests', he said. `But whether they're understanding what
they're doing is a much more difficult mystery to disentangle.' ... `But if you look at their production of
language, you'll find it's vastly different from the manner in which, for example, a child uses language. Dr
Sambrook quoted an earlier researcher's verdict: `Were a four-year-old child to use language in the way a
chimpanzee uses it, we would consider that child disturbed.'" (Kirby, A., "Chimps' language skills in doubt,"
BBC, July 26, 1999)
18/01/2007
"There are two counter-intuitive aspects here. Using higher animals as models we would be much more
inclined to see the organism as dynamic and the environment as static. But the only bit of an organism that
is unambiguously not part of the environment is the bit that is static - the genotype. The other counter-
intuitive idea is that, in computer jargon, it is software in organisms that lasts, while hardware is being
perpetually replaced. Consider, for example, the instructions about how to make cytochrome c molecules:
that software has remained little altered in essentials while mountain ranges have risen and been worn away
many times. Yet the hardware, the actual individual protein molecules, individual DNA molecules, and so on,
have been quite evanescent, flickering in and out of existence on a geological time scale. And this is very
close to the heart of the problem: following our discussions in the last chapter we might say that life can
begin to appear when mechanisms exist for retaining and propagating a kind of software - genetic
information - indefinitely." (Cairns-Smith, A.G., "Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life," [1982],
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, Reprinted, 1987, p.80)
18/01/2007
"All such speculations that I have come across are evolutionary - they talk of the gradual perfection of this
and that subsystem. But there is only one engine for the evolution of ingenious competence that I know of
and that is natural selection. To evolve, the subsystems have to be part of an organism of some sort. Now
there might be no need to postulate an earlier kind of life if some minimum nucleic acid-protein system could
be conceived of as having formed spontaneously on the primitive Earth. But I do not see such a system as
conceivable. You say yourself that naked nucleic acid genes are no good, and anything else would be more
complicated - nucleic acid plus something else. I see no alternative to postulating some other kind of starter
life to provide the milieu within which our kind of life system began its evolution." (Cairns-Smith, A.G.,
"Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life," [1982], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK,
Reprinted, 1987, p.130)
18/01/2007
"Perhaps the simplest kinds of organisms would be hardly more than pieces of unencumbered information-
printing machinery - `naked genes' as they have been called (Muller, 1929). To have the potential for
indefinite evolution into the future, the potential information capacity of these naked genes would have to
be very high. ... the idea of a 'naked gene', as the simplest and first kind of organism, has a long history. It is
somewhat out of favour now mainly on account of two kinds of argument that are put up against it. First,
there is a practical argument. Even if it could evolve in principle, it is said, such a structure would be too
improbable in practice: it would be exceedingly unlikely to form, and the Earth would be exceedingly unlikely
to continue to provide the highly specialised components needed to keep it replicating. If we think about a
naked nucleic acid molecule such an attitude seems justified. Second, there is a formal argument. To evolve,
a system must have both a genotype and a phenotype. Pure information is no use: it is the phenotype on
which selection operates to give genetic information a meaning. Formally this argument is impeccable, but it
is largely irrelevant. A `naked gene' would not be - could not be - pure genotype. Clearly what is meant by a
gene, in this context at least, is some sort of structure that is holding information - something analogous to a
DNA molecule or a punched card. Such a thing is not pure software as it includes the structure that is
holding the information, and that is hardware. And at least some aspects of hardware could very well be
phenotype." (Cairns-Smith, A.G., "Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life," [1982], Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge UK, Reprinted, 1987, p.81)
18/01/2007
"All such speculations that I have come across are evolutionary - they talk of the gradual perfection of this
and that subsystem. But there is only one engine for the evolution of ingenious competence that I know of
and that is natural selection. To evolve, the subsystems have to be part of an organism of some sort. Now
there might be no need to postulate an earlier kind of life if some minimum nucleic acid-protein system could
be conceived of as having formed spontaneously on the primitive Earth. But I do not see such a system as
conceivable. You say yourself that naked nucleic acid genes are no good, and anything else would be more
complicated - nucleic acid plus something else. I see no alternative to postulating some other kind of starter
life to provide the milieu within which our kind of life system began its evolution." (Cairns-Smith, A.G.,
"Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life," [1982], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK,
Reprinted, 1987, p.130)
18/01/2007
"Evolution started with 'low-tech' organisms that did not have to be, and probably were not made from 'the
molecules of life'. The first part of this statement might seem rather obvious were it not for the baleful
conclusion ... that the design of any conceivable organism is inevitably very very complicated - with robot
machines that can make other machines (including ones like themselves) under instructions held in an
information store that can be replicated by means of yet more machinery whose construction is also
specified in the information store and can be executed by the robot machines... But that was another Big Red
Herring. It arose from the unstated assumption that you actually need any machinery at all in an organism.
Once you think you will need any, then you will think that you need a lot. If, for example, the organism has
to have some kind's of printing machinery in it, so that it can replicate its genetic information, then it will
need manufacturing machinery also to make this printing machinery. And then this manufacturing
machinery, some sort of robot, must also be able to make other machines exactly like itself. The circle closes
eventually, but not until after a long journey - too long to be a practicable piece of engineering even for us,
and much too long for Nature before its engineer, natural selection, had come on the scene." (Cairns-Smith,
A.G., "Seven Clues to the Origin of Life: A Scientific Detective Story," [1985], Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge UK, Reprinted, 1993, pp.65-66. Emphasis original)
18/01/2007
"So why start on such a journey? Only the messages are in principle essential for evolution, although in
practice there has to be a material to hold the messages and physical means for their replication. But the
components for making the genetic material can be provided by the environment and so can any machinery
that is needed to work with these components to bring about the replication of the messages. An organism
need be no more than a naked gene if the environment is kind enough. ... But does this not simply shift
the difficulty from the organism to the environment? Certainly it shifts the difficulty, but it does not
simply shift the difficulty. The difficulty changes, and it becomes much less severe. There do not have to
be robots anywhere. The environment might possibly have to provide some sort of printing or replicating
machinery, but it would not have to provide another instructable machine to make such machinery. Indeed it
is a matter to be decided whether the environment would even have to provide anything that could be called
replicating machinery, or machinery of any sort. There would be but three things that an environment would
have to provide for 'naked genes': (i) material units out of which new genes could be made (by template
replication); (ii) conditions that would allow this to happen (whether or not these conditions included any
sort of replication machinery); and (iii) reasons why some genes should do better than others (what are
called selection pressures). It is true that now for RNA, the material units are probably too complex as
primitive Earth products; and it looks as if a big enzyme has indeed to be included under (ii). But these are
incidental features, not vital. They are specific objections to RNA. They depend on particular attributes of
RNA molecules - and, anyway, we had decided in the last chapter that neither RNA nor DNA was the
original genetic material." (Cairns-Smith, A.G., "Seven Clues to the Origin of Life: A Scientific Detective
Story," [1985], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, Reprinted, 1993, pp.66-67. Emphasis original)
18/01/2007
"We are now ready to analyze the `chance' origin of life ... This view usually assumes that energy flow
through the system is capable of doing the chemical and the thermal entropy work, while the configurational
entropy work of both selecting and coding is the fortuitous product of chance. To illustrate, assume that we
are trying to synthesize a protein containing 101 amino acids. ... we estimated that the total free energy
increase ... or work required to make a random polypeptide from previously selected amino acids was 300
kcal/mole. An additional 159 kcal/mole is needed to code the polypeptide into a protein. Since the `chance'
model assumes no coupling between energy flow and sequencing, the fraction of the polypeptide that has
the correct sequence may be calculated ... using equilibrium thermodynamics ... ~ 1 x 10-117 ... This is
essentially the inverse of the estimate for the number of ways one can arrange 101 amino acids in a
sequence ... This ratio gives the fraction of polypeptides that have the right sequence to be a protein. Eigen
[Eigen, M., Die Naturwiss, Vol. 58, 1971, p.465] has estimated the number of polypeptides of molecular
weight 104 ... that would be found in a layer 1 meter thick covering the surface of the entire earth. He found
it to be 1041. If these polypeptides reformed with new sequences at the maximum rate at which chemical
reactions may occur, namely 1014/s, for 5 x 109 years (1.6 x 1017s), the total number of polypeptides that
would be formed during the assumed history of the earth would be 1041 x 1014/s x 1.6 x 1017s = 1072 ...
Combining the results ... we find the probability of producing one protein of 101 amino acids in five billion
years is only 1/1045. Using somewhat different illustrations, Steinman [Steinman, G. Arch. Biochem.
Biophys, Vol. 121, 1967, p.533] and Cairns-Smith [Cairns-Smith, A.G., "The Life Puzzle," Oliver & Boyd:
Edinburgh, 1971] also come to the conclusion that chance is insufficient. It is apparent that `chance' should
be abandoned as an acceptable model for coding of the macromolecules essential in living systems. In fact,
it has been, except in introductory texts and popularizations." (Thaxton, C.B.*, Bradley, W.L.* & Olsen, R.L.*,
"The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories," Lewis & Stanley: Dallas TX, 1992, pp.145-146)
8:36 AM 19/01/2007
"As posture is focal for consideration of man's anatomical nature and tools are for consideration of his
material culture, so is language focal for his mental nature and his non-material culture .... Language is also
the most diagnostic single trait of man all normal men have language; no other nonliving organisms do. That
real, incomparably important, and absolute distinction has been blurred by imprecise use of the word
`language' not only in popular speech but also by some scientists who should know better, speaking, for
example, of the `language of the bees' ... In any animal societies, and indeed in still simpler forms of
aggregation among animals, there must be some kind of communication in the very broadest sense. One
animal must receive some kind of information about another animal. That information may be conveyed by
specific signals, which may be of extremely diverse kinds both as to form and as to modality, that is, the
sensory mode by which it is received. The odor of an ant, the movements of a bee, the color pattern of a
bird, the howl of a wolf, and many thousands of others are all signals that convey information to other
animals and that, in these and many other examples, are essential adaptations for behavioral integration in
the species involved. Human language is also a system of interpersonal communication and a behavioral
adaptation essential for the human form of socialization. Yet human language is absolutely distinct from any
system of communication in other animals." (Simpson G.G., "The Biological Nature of Man," Science, Vol.
152, 22 April 1966, pp.472-478, p.476)
19/01/2007
"Of all the tales Chagnon heard regarding the Yanomamo spiritual world, one was clearly more important
than the rest. `It is the only one they repeatedly told me without my asking for it,' he said. It is a long story
and involves elements of Yanomamo daily life intertwined with horrific fantasy, including a great flood that
kills many people. Chagnon tells it this way: `After the flood, there were very few original beings left.
Periboriwa (Spirit of the Moon) was one of the few who remained. He had a habit of coming down to Earth to
eat the soul parts of children. On his first descent, he ate one child, placing his soul between two pieces of
cassava bread and eating it. He returned a second time to eat another child.... Finally, on his third trip,
Uhudima and Suhirina, two brothers, became angry and decided to shoot him. Uhudima, the poorer shot of
the two, began letting his arrows fly. He shot at Periboriwa many times ... but missed.... Then Suhirina took
one bamboo-tipped arrow (rahaka) and shot at Periboriwa when he was directly overhead, hitting him in the
abdomen. The tip of the arrow barely penetrated Periboriwa's flesh, but the wound bled profusely. Blood
spilled to Earth ... [and] changed into men as it hit the earth, causing a large population to be born. All of
them were male; the blood of Periboriwa did not change into females. Most of the Yanomamo who are alive
today are descended from the blood of Periboriwa. Because they have their origin in blood, they are fierce
and are continuously making war on each other.' The story goes on to explain the origin of women, who
sprang fully formed from the body of one of the men. But, says Chagnon, the essential point is that `this
myth seems to be the `charter' of Yanomamo society.' The fierce people are fierce because of their origins.
The Yanomamo people are not alone in their ability to account for their origins. Every society that has
records also has its own version of the `origin myth,' where myth means allegory, not just fantasy. The
product of the unique curiosity of the human mind, origin myths explain far more than how a particular
people might have gotten here. They encompass a view of the world that instructs people as to how they
should behave. Origin myths are prescriptive, as well as descriptive. They present a microcosm of society:
the way men interact with women, the way `real people' relate to `foreigners,' and the place humans occupy
in the world of nature. It is not surprising, therefore, that ever since the unique quality of reflective self-
awareness has evolved in the human mind, origin myths have been central to the intellectual lives of Homo
sapiens everywhere." (Lewin, R., "In the Age of Mankind: A Smithsonian Book of Human Evolution,"
Smithsonian Books: Washington DC, 1988, p.16)
19/01/2007
"Another British researcher, John Durant, of Oxford University, seems to agree. "Theories of human
evolution are first and foremost stories about the appearance of man on earth and the institution of society,"
he said recently. "Obviously, this is not all that they are, and most of us would want to apply to them
standards of factual accuracy and theoretical rigor which would be quite inappropriate in the evaluation of,
for example, Yanomamo stories about the `first beings,' or Old Testament accounts of the Garden of Eden.
But ... it is surely worth asking whether ideas about human origins might serve similar functions in both
prescientific and scientific cultures." [Durant, J., "The Myth of Human Evolution, " New Universities
Quarterly, Vol. 35, 1981, pp.425-38, p.426]" (Lewin, R., "In the Age of Mankind: A Smithsonian Book of
Human Evolution," Smithsonian Books: Washington DC, 1988, pp.16,19)
19/01/2007
"When John Durant suggested the strong parallels between theories of human evolution and creation
myths at a recent gathering of the British Association for the Advancement of Science ["How evolution
became a scientific myth," New Scientist, 11 September 1980, p.765], he provoked outrage from many
anthropological quarters. But, among human-origins researchers with a historical or philosophical bent,
Durant and Midgley touched on something special in the science. `The scientific study of human origins
necessarily has mythological content,' agrees Duke University anthropologist Matt Cartmill. `What gives
our stories their mythological force is their subject matter: They list the significant differences between
human beings and beasts, and they tell how and why those differences came to be.' Rather than a criticism
of human-origins research, this, suggests Cartmill, is a more complete description of it. `What
paleoanthropologists do is more, not less, than scientific,' he argues. `The mythic dimension is plus, not
instead of. The theories still have to resist attempts to prove them false, but they don't mean as much
without those extensions into the extra-scientific.' As any basic text on the philosophy of science will state,
all scientific theories are temporary, tentative mental constructs, subject to modification by revised
perceptions of existing and new data. Many such texts even admit that because all sciences are done by
people, not automatons, the sciences are sometimes prey to personal and perhaps capricious
interpretations. Paleoanthropology-the search for human origins-is no different, but it does have an extra
dimension not found in other sciences. Because it exists to explain the origin and status of Homo sapiens
in the world-or humans' place in nature-anthropology carries with it more emotionalism and social overlay
than, say, the study of parasitic flatworms. What has for millennia been the object of origin myths cannot
readily-if at all-be stripped of subjective social content, even if that were desirable. What Midgley, Durant,
and Cartmill argue is that this concept be kept in mind when reading or thinking about human evolution. To
repeat Cartmill, `What paleoanthropologists do is more, not less, than scientific.'" (Lewin, R., "In the Age of
Mankind: A Smithsonian Book of Human Evolution," Smithsonian Books: Washington DC, 1988, pp.19-20)
19/01/2007
"There was little doubt that the star intellectual turn of last week's British Association for the Advancement
of Science meeting in Salford was Dr John Durant, a youthful lecturer from University College Swansea.
Giving the Darwin lecture to one of the biggest audiences of the week, Durant put forward an audacious
theory-that Darwin's evolutionary explanation of the origins of man has been transformed into a modern
myth, to the detriment of science and social progress. Durant said that scientists and popularisers have
asked too much of the theory of evolution, demanding that it explain in the immortal words of The Hitch-
hiker's guide to the Galaxy, "Life, the Universe, and Everything". As a result Darwin's theory has burst at
the seams, leaving a wreckage of distorted and mutilated ideas, and man's understanding of his society has
been hobbled by his inability to escape the conservative myths he has created. Durant bemoaned the
transformation of evolutionary ideas into `secular or scientific myths'. Not, he was anxious point out, that
these ideas are wrong. Rather that they have assumed the social role of myths-legends about remote
ancestors that express and reinforce peoples' ideas about the society around them. `Like the creation myths
which have so largely replaced, theories of human evolution are basically stories about the first appearance
of man on Earth and the institution of human society,' said Durant. As an example, he pointed to the theme
of `the beast in man'-an idea that parallels the Christian doctrine of original sin. Much of Christian theology
depends on this doctrine. It underpins the idea of a divine plan of creation, fall, incarnation and redemption;
the Christian's insistence on justification by faith; and a moral code based on the conflict between flesh and
the spirit. Evolutionists, Durant said, have been quick to incorporate the theme of original sin into their
ideas. Darwin himself wrote in his private notebooks: `Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!!
The Devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather'. Evil, for Darwin, was the legacy of inherited biological
impulses. Later scientists took up the theme, if in a modified form. Freud, for example, saw human drives
such as sex and aggression as man's heritage from the animal world, a heritage in perpetual conflict with
reason. The repression of these drives was, in Freud's psychology the price of social progress. Popularisers
such as Robert Ardrey and great scientists such as Konrad Lorenz have reinforced the myth, Lorenz adding
the refinement that social problems are not so much the result of man's inherent aggression, but of the tragic
mismatch between these instincts, evolved when man lived in a state of nature, and the world man has
created with his culture. In all these cases, Durant suggested, `the idea of the beast in man represents a
direct response to the immediate and urgent problems of violence and warfare'. The theory of evolution
`became a mirror which reflected back only those aspects of human experience winch its authors wanted to
see'. The modern critics of Ardrey, Lorenz and the rest didn't escape the lash of Durant's flail at the BA last
week. For the critics too-the anthropologist Richard Leakey, for instance-are `looking to the theory of
evolution for solutions to contemporary human problems.' They too are making myths-but their myths are
not those of Ardrey or Lorenz. Durant concludes that the secular myths of evolution have had `a damaging
effect on scientific research', leading to `distortion, to needless controversy, and to the gross misuse of
science'. The only prescription, Durant prophesised, is to `stop playing this particular game. Scientific
studies of human origins are best undertaken without the subjective pressures and distortions which are
introduced by the desire to see one's personal view of life confirmed in the testimony of the rocks'. All that
we need for Durant's prophecy to come true are scientists without opinions." ("How evolution became a
scientific myth," New Scientist, 11 September 1980, p.765)
20/01/2007
"As Boston University anthropologist Misia Landau has recently recognized, many anthropological
accounts describing the course of human evolution are presented in the language of a folktale (Midgley's
term). Phrases such as `the wonderful story of Man's journeyings towards his ultimate goal' and `Man's
ceaseless struggle to achieve his destiny' frequently flowed from the pens of American and British
anthropologists, especially in the early decades of this century. Landau was somewhat astonished to
discover in these classic works such a powerfully developed sense of storytelling, especially in what
purported to be scientific accounts of human origins. The titles of the books often set the tone: The Story
of Man, The Adventure of Humanity, Adventures with the Missing Link, Man Rises to Parnassus,
and so on. `When I saw these titles, I knew I had made a discovery,' Landau now says. `Accounts of human
evolution were often couched in the language and structure of the folktale.' Roughly speaking, the story
goes as follows: A humble hero (an apelike creature or some such primitive ancestor) is introduced, who is
then forced to undertake a hazardous journey (life on the savanna after leaving the `safety' of the trees). Our
hero then displays his worth (by acquiring a bigger brain or developing technology), but may be tested
again (the rigors of Ice Age Europe). Eventually, our humble hero is triumphant (through achieving
civilization). `There is a final irony, however,' says Landau. `Again and again we hear how a hero, having
accomplished great deeds, succumbs to pride or hubris and is destroyed. In many narratives of human
evolution there is a sense that man may be doomed, that although civilization evolved as a means of
protecting man from nature, it is now his greatest threat.' Landau is not saying that these early twentieth-
century accounts of human origins are nothing but folktales or fantasy. She suggests that the nature of the
subject-the evolutionary transformation of a `humble' primate ancestor into `civilized' Western man-
promotes an inescapable urge to portray the event as triumph in the face of adversity. It becomes an
allegory of the moral values of Western industrial society, where effort brings success and indolence
failure." (Lewin, R., "In the Age of Mankind: A Smithsonian Book of Human Evolution," Smithsonian Books:
Washington DC, 1988, p.20)
20/01/2007
"Nevertheless, often a sense of journey is still built into the descriptions of some of our ancestors. Take
`Lucy,' the famous three-million-year-old partial skeleton found in ancient Ethiopian lakeside deposits in
1974, for instance. While she clearly walked upright, she was an adept tree climber as well; she was neither
ape nor human, but something in between. This intermediate adaptation is often described as `being in
transition to fully developed bipedalism' or `being on the way to modern bipedal locomotion.' In fact, as
revealed by a remarkable discovery at Olduvai Gorge in 1986, it turns out that Lucy's anatomy was a very
stable adaptation, not on the way to anywhere, because it persisted for at least two million years. `The
problem is,' says Landau, `that because we know `the end of the story,' we tend to interpret earlier events as
if their sole purpose was to reach that end.' The result, almost inescapably, is a narrative style of description,
however hard one tries to be scientific about it." (Lewin, R., "In the Age of Mankind: A Smithsonian Book of
Human Evolution," Smithsonian Books: Washington DC, 1988, pp.21-22)
20/01/2007
"The task of human-origins research has often been perceived as an explanation of our special place in the
world, of why there exists so great a gap between Homo sapiens and the rest of animate nature. Our
intelligence, our reflective consciousness, our extreme technological facility, our complex spoken language,
our sense of moral and ethical values-each of these is apparently sufficient to set us apart from nature.
Together they are seen to give us "dominion over nature," to use a popular phrase among anthropologists
just a few decades ago. This gap, then, is the focus of the explanations." (Lewin, R., "In the Age of
Mankind: A Smithsonian Book of Human Evolution," Smithsonian Books: Washington DC, 1988, p.20)
20/01/2007
"Since the publication of Darwin on Trial, I have taken to reading a newsletter called BASIS, which is
published by an organization calling itself the San Francisco Bay Area Skeptics, mainly because it often has
something unfavorable to say about me. As you can imagine, the Bay Area Skeptics do not encourage
people to be skeptical about such doctrines of the rationalist faith as atheism, materialism, and Darwinian
evolution." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Evolution and Theistic Naturalism," 1992 Founder's Lectures, Trinity
Evangelical Divinity School, Revised, February 17, 1992)
20/01/2007
"Beginning in the late 1960s, several famous projects claimed to have taught language to baby chimpanzees
with the help of more user friendly media. (Baby chimps are used because the adults are not the hairy
clowns in overalls you see on television, but strong, vicious wild animals who have bitten fingers off several
well-known psychologists.) Sarah learned to string magnetized plastic shapes on a board. Lana and Kanzi
learned to press buttons with symbols on a large computer console or point to them on a portable tablet.
Washoe and Koko (a gorilla) were said to have acquired American Sign Language. According to their
trainers, these apes learned hundreds of words, strung them together in meaningful sentences, and coined
new phrases, like water bird for a swan and cookie rock for a stale Danish. `Language is no longer the
exclusive domain of man,' said Koko's trainer, Francine (Penny) Patterson. These claims quickly captured the
public's imagination and were played up in popular science books and magazines and television programs ....
Many scientists have also been captivated, seeing the projects as a healthy deflation of our species'
arrogant chauvinism. I have seen popular-science columns that list the acquisition of language by
chimpanzees as one of the major scientific discoveries of the century. ... People who spend a lot of time with
animals are prone to developing indulgent attitudes about their powers of communication. My great-aunt
Bella insisted in all sincerity that her Siamese cat Rusty understood English. Many of the claims of the ape
trainers were not much more scientific. Most of the trainers were schooled in the behaviorist tradition of B.F.
Skinner and are ignorant of the study of language; they latched on to the most tenuous resemblance
between chimp and child and proclaimed that their abilities are fundamentally the same. The more
enthusiastic trainers went over the heads of scientists and made their engaging case directly to the public
on the Tonight Show and National Geographic. Patterson in particular has found ways to excuse
Koko's performance on the grounds that the gorilla is fond of puns, jokes, metaphors, and mischievous lies.
Generally the stronger the claims about the animal's abilities, the skimpier the data made available to the
scientific community for evaluation. Most of the trainers have refused all requests to share their raw data,
and Washoe's trainers, Beatrice and Alan Gardner, threatened to sue another researcher because he used
frames of one of their films (the only raw data available to him) in a critical scientific article. ... To begin with,
the apes did not `learn American Sign Language.' This preposterous claim is based on the myth that ASL
is a crude system of pantomimes and gestures rather than a full language with complex phonology,
morphology, and syntax. In fact the apes had not learned any true ASL, signs. ... To arrive at their
vocabulary counts in the hundreds, the investigators would also `translate' the chimps' pointing as a sign
for you, their hugging as a sign for hug, their picking, tickling, and kissing as signs for pick, tickle,
and kiss. Often the same movement would be credited to the chimps as different `words,' depending on
what the observers thought the appropriate word would be in the context. In the experiments in which the
chimps interacted with a computer console, the key that the chimp had to press to initialize the computer
was translated as the word please. Petitto estimates that with more standard criteria the true vocabulary
count would be closer to 25 than 125. ... The chimp's abilities at anything one would want to call grammar
were next to nil. Signs were not coordinated into the well-defined motion contours of ASL and were not
inflected for aspect, agreement, and so on-a striking omission, since inflection is the primary means in ASL,
of conveying who did what to whom and many other kinds of information. ... Even putting aside
vocabulary, phonology, morphology, and syntax, what impresses one the most about chimpanzee signing is
that fundamentally, deep down, chimps just don't `get it.' They know that the trainers like them to sign and
that signing often gets them what they want, but they never seem to feel in their bones what language is
and how to use it. They do not take turns in conversation but instead blithely sign simultaneously with their
partner, frequently off to the side or under a table rather than in the standardized signing space in front of
the body. ... The chimps seldom sign spontaneously; they have to be molded, drilled, and coerced. Many of
their `sentences,' especially the ones showing systematic ordering, are direct imitations of what the trainer
has just signed, or minor variants of a small number of formulas that they have been trained on thousands of
times. They do not even clearly get the idea that a particular sign might refer to a kind of object. ... Also, the
chimps rarely make statements that comment on interesting objects or actions; virtually all their signs are
demands for something they want, usually food or tickling." (Pinker, S., "The Language Instinct: The New
Science of Language and Mind," [1994], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 2000 pp.367-373. Emphasis original)
20/01/2007
"Within the field of psychology, most of the ambitious claims about chimpanzee language are a thing of the
past. Nim's trainer Herbert Terrace, as mentioned, turned from enthusiast to whistle-blower. David Premack,
Sarah's trainer, does not claim that what she acquired is comparable to human language; he uses the symbol
system as a tool to do chimpanzee cognitive psychology. The Gardners and Patterson have distanced
themselves from the community of scientific discourse for over a decade. Only one team is currently making
claims about language. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Duane Rumbaugh concede that the chimps they trained
at the computer console did not learn much. But they are now claiming that a different variety of chimpanzee
does much better. Chimpanzees come from some half a dozen mutually isolated `islands' of forest in the west
African continent, and the groups have diverged over the past million years to the point where some of the
groups are sometimes classified as belonging to different species. Most of the trained chimps were `common
chimps'; Kanzi is a `pygmy chimp' or `bonobo,' and he learned to bang on visual symbols on a portable
tablet. Kanzi, says Savage-Rumbaugh, does substantially better at learning symbols (and at understanding
spoken language) than common chimps. Why he would be expected to do so much better than members of
his sibling species is not clear; contrary to some reports in the press, pygmy chimps are no more closely
related to humans than common chimps are. Kanzi is said to have learned his graphic symbols without
having been laboriously trained on them-but he was at his mother's side watching while she was
laboriously trained on them (unsuccessfully). He is said to use the symbols for purposes other than
requesting-but at best only four percent of the time. He is said to use three-symbol `sentences'-but they are
really fixed formulas with no internal structure and are not even three symbols long. The so-called sentences
are all chains like the symbol for chase followed by the symbol for hide followed by a point to the person
Kanzi wants to do the chasing and hiding. Kanzi's language abilities, if one is being charitable, are above
those of his common cousins by a just-noticeable difference, but no more." (Pinker, S., "The Language
Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind," [1994], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 2000, pp.373-374.
Emphasis original)
20/01/2007
"Perhaps you know the story about the man who refused to let God take care of him on God's own terms. A
dam broke, and as word spread throughout the valley below, people hurried to save themselves. But one
man refused to leave his house. `God will take care of me,' he said. Just before the flood waters reached his
house, his neighbors urged him to hop in to their waiting car and flee, but he stayed put. When the water
began to fill his house, he climbed up onto the roof. Soon a young man in a boat rowed by and urged him to
jump in. `No,' the man replied. `God will take care of me.' So he stuck to his roof, and the boat headed off.
Finally, as the waters began to lap at the top of the roof, a helicopter approached, and a rope was lowered.
`Grab on and we'll haul you up,' the pilot shouted. But the man refused. `God will take care of me,' he said.
Finally, the flood covered the house, and as the man began swimming madly to stay afloat, he cried out to
God, `Why didn't you save me?' A voice from heaven answered, `I sent you a car, a boat and a helicopter.
What else do you want?'" ("Sifting through Signs," A Sermon preached by Dean Thomas Breidenthal on
November 16, 2003)
21/01/2007
"The crucifixion of Christ took place, it is generally agreed, about AD 30. According to Luke iii. 1, the
activity of John the Baptist, which immediately preceded the commencement of our Lord's public ministry, is
dated in `the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar'. Now, Tiberius became emperor in August, AD 14, and
according to the method of computation current in Syria, which Luke would have followed, his fifteenth year
commenced in September or October, AD 27 [The method in Syria, retained from the days of the Seleucid
kings, was to reckon the start of a new regnal year in September-October. As Tiberius became emperor in
August, AD 14, his second regnal year would thus be regarded as beginning in September-October of the
same year. The Passover of Jn. ii. 13 ff. accordingly was that of March, AD 28, and this agrees with the
chronological indication of ii. 20, for Herod's temple was commenced in 20-19 BC, and 46 years from that
brings us to AD 27-28]. The fourth Gospel mentions three Passovers after this time; [Jn. ii. 13, vi. 4, xi. 55 ff.]
the third Passover from that date would be the Passover of AD 30, at which it is probable on other grounds
that the crucifixion took place. At this time, too, we know from other sources that Pilate was Roman
governor of Judaea, Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee, and Caiaphas was Jewish high priest. ... ."
(Bruce, F.F.*, "The New Testament Documents. Are They Reliable?," [1943], Inter-Varsity Press: Leicester
UK, Fifth Edition, 1990, pp.11-12)
22/01/2007
"THE earliest of the New Testament writings, as they have come down to us, are the letters written by the
apostle Paul up to the time of his detention in Rome (c. AD 60-62). The earliest of our Gospels in its present
form can certainly not, be dated earlier than AD 60, but from the hand of Paul we have ten Epistles written
between 48 and 60. This man Paul was a Roman citizen of Jewish birth (his Jewish name was Saul), born
somewhere about the commencement of the Christian era in the city of Tarsus in Cilicia, Asia Minor. His
birthplace,. `no mean city', as he said himself (Acts xxi. 39), was m those days an eminent centre of Greek
culture, which did not fail to leave its mark on Paul, as may be seen :n his speeches and letters. He received
an education in Jerusalem under Gamaliel [Acts xxii. 3], the greatest Rabbi of his day and a leader of the
party of the Pharisees. He rapidly attained distinction among his contemporaries by the diligence of his
studies and the fervour with which he upheld the ancestral traditions of the Jewish nation [Gal. i. 13 f.]. He
may even -though this is uncertain-have been a member of the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the nation.
This zeal for the law brought him into conflict with the early Jerusalem Christians, especially with those who
belonged to the circle of Stephen, whose teaching he must have heard in the synagogue where the Cilician
Jews met [Acts vi. 9] and who early realized, with exceptionally far-sighted comprehension: that the gospel
cut at the roots of the traditional Jewish ceremonial law and cultus. At the stoning of Stephen, we find Paul
playing a responsible part and giving his consent to his death, and thereafter proceeding to uproot the new
movement which, in his eyes, stood revealed by Stephen's activity as a deadly threat to all that he counted
dear in Judaism. [ Acts vii. 58, viii. 1 ff., ix. 1 ff, xxii. 4, xxvi. 9 ff.; 1 Cor. xv. 9, etc] To use his own words,
`Beyond all measure I persecuted the Church of God and harried it' (see Gal. i. 13)-until his encounter with
Jesus on the road to Damascus convinced his mind and conscience of the reality of His resurrection, and
therewith of the validity of the Christians' claims, whereupon he became the chief herald of the faith of which
he formerly made havoc." (Bruce, F.F.*, "The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?," [1943], Inter-
Varsity Press: Leicester UK, Fifth Edition, 1990, p.76. Emphasis original)
22/01/2007
"It is reasonable to believe that the evidence which convinced such a man of the out-and-out wrongness of
his former course, and led him so decisively to abandon previously cherished beliefs for a movement which
he had so vigorously opposed, must have been of a singularly impressive quality. The conversion of Paul
has for long been regarded as a weighty evidence for the truth of Christianity. Many have endorsed the
conclusion of the eighteenth-century statesman George, Lord Lyttelton, that `the conversion and
apostleship of St. Paul alone, duly considered, was of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity
to be a divine revelation' [Lyttelton, G., "Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul," London, 1748]"
(Bruce, F.F.*, "The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?," [1943], Inter-Varsity Press: Leicester
UK, Fifth Edition, 1990, p.77)
22/01/2007
"Here, however, we are chiefly concerned with the information we can derive from his Epistles. These were
not written to record the facts of the life and ministry of Jesus; they were addressed to Christians, who
already knew the gospel story. Yet in them we can find sufficient material to construct an outline of the early
apostolic preaching about ,Jesus. While Paul insists on the divine pre-existence of Jesus, [Col. i. 15 ff.] yet
he knows that He was none the less a real human being, [Gal. iv. 4] a descendant of Abraham [Rom. ix. 5]
and David [Rom. i. 3]; who lived under the Jewish law [Gal. iv. 4]; who was betrayed, and on the night of His
betrayal instituted a memorial meal of bread and wine [1 Cor. xi. 23 ff.]; who endured the Roman penalty of
crucifixion, [Phil. ii. 8; 1 Cor. i. 23; Gal. iii. 13, vi. 14., etc.] although the responsibility for His death is laid at
the door of the representatives of the Jewish nation [1 Thes. ii. 15]; who was buried, rose the third day, and
was thereafter seen alive by many eyewitnesses on various occasions, including one occasion on which He
was so seen by over five hundred at once, of wham the majority were alive nearly twenty-five years later. [1
Cor. xv. 4 ff.] In this summary of the evidence for the reality of Christ's resurrection, Paul shows a sound
instinct for the necessity of marshalling personal testimony in support of what might well appear an
incredible assertion." (Bruce, F.F.*, "The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?," [1943], Inter-
Varsity Press: Leicester UK, Fifth Edition, 1990, pp.77-78)
23/01/2007
"With the advent of evolution as the dominant intellectual theory of Western traditions-a position the
theory achieved several decades after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859-a
reassessment of humans' place in nature was demanded. A response was readily produced, as Roy
Chapman Andrews, a contemporary of Henry Fairfield Osborn's at the American Museum of Natural
History, demonstrates. `The progress of the different races was unequal,' he said. `Some developed into
masters of the world at an incredible speed. But the Tasmanians, who became extinct in 1870, and the
existing Australian aborigines lagged far behind ... not much advanced beyond the stages of Neanderthal
man.' [Andrews, R.C., "Meet Your Ancestors - A Biography of Primitive Man," John Long, 1948, p.11]
Natural selection, not the hand of a creator, was now seen as the cause of the gradations of races, from the
`lower' to the `higher.' And, according to Sir Arthur Keith, a contemporary of Osborn's in England, the
process continued still. `When we look at the world of men as it exists now, we see that certain races are
becoming dominant; others are disappearing,' said Keith. `Competition is not confined to human rivalries
and struggles; it pervades the whole animal kingdom of life; it is the basis of Darwin's doctrine of evolution;
it has been, and ever will be, the means of progressive evolution.... To extinguish the spirit of competition is
to seek racial suicide.' [Keith, A., "Darwinism and What it Implies," Watts & Co: London, 1928, pp.18-19]
`The law of survival of the fittest is not a theory,' concurred Osborn, `but a fact.' [Osborn, H.F., "The Dawn
Man," McClure's magazine, Vol. 55, 1923, pp. 19-28, p.27] It explained the social, political, and economic
order of the world as Henry Fairfield Osborn saw it. Man's place in nature-and specifically the overall
ascendancy of Caucasian man-was therefore not shaken by the replacement of a fixed, created world order
by an evolutionary scheme. Only the process leading to this final outcome was perceived as different.
Linked to animate nature by the thread of evolutionary relationship, yes, but most definitely above it.
Thomas Henry Huxley described it this way: `No one is more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness
of the gulf between civilized man and the brutes ... for, he alone possesses the marvelous endowment of
intelligible and rational speech [and] ... stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his
humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite
source of truth.' [Huxley, T.H., "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature and Other Anthropological Essays,"
Appleton: New York, 1900, pp.155-156]" (Lewin, R., "In the Age of Mankind: A Smithsonian Book of
Human Evolution," Smithsonian Books: Washington DC, 1988, p.26)
23/01/2007
"The job of evolutionary theory was to explain the origin of such a gulf. How did the very special qualities
of humanity-our intelligence, our moral sense, and so on-that set us upon Huxley's mountaintop come about
as the result of naturalistic, rather than divine, forces? Some scientific authorities simply failed to see how it
could be done. Most notable among these was Alfred Russel Wallace, who, along with Charles Darwin, was
the coinventor of the theory of natural selection. Another was Robert Broom, a pioneer in the recovery of
early human fossils from South Africa during the 1930s and 1940s. Although both Wallace and Broom
argued that divine intervention was the only explanation for the origin of the qualities that made Homo
sapiens so special, their reasons were different. As coinventor of the theory of natural selection, Wallace
not surprisingly considered it a powerful force in nature. Natural selection shapes an organism and its
behavior according to the demands of its environment. Wallace found this argument convincing until he
attempted to explain the extremely advanced state of human faculties. He was unable to see how they could
have arisen as a result of the apparently limited intellectual and technological exigencies of a primitive
hunting-and-gathering way of life. `Natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a
little superior to that of an ape,' he reasoned, `whereas he actually possesses one very little inferior to that of
the average member of our learned societies.' In addition to great intelligence, Wallace added wit, humor,
mathematical skills, and a beautiful singing voice to the list of attributes surely beyond the province of
natural selection. So, too, were our naked skin and our `unnecessarily perfect' hands and feet. In 1871, the
year Darwin published his The Descent of Man, Wallace wrote that `the inference I would draw from this
class of phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction,
and for a special purpose.' Although Wallace insisted that he was influenced by the harsh logic of natural
selection, his writings suggest that he was much comforted by what he was able to conclude. A purely
materialistic world, in which the special qualities of humanity were not shaped by a higher force but by
merely naturalistic forces, would be `hopeless and soul-deadening.' Wallace was led inexorably to the belief
that `the whole purpose, the only raison d'etre of the world ... was the development of the human spirit in
association with the human body.' This statement encapsulates a popular sentiment of Wallace's time, one
which persists to this day, albeit in different forms: Evolution is a progressive force, driving from the simple
to the complex, with Homo sapiens as its ultimate product and goal. Robert Broom, who greatly admired
Wallace, certainly believed this, and expressed it clearly in his 1933 book, The Coming of Man: Was It
Accident or Design? He wrote, `Much of evolution looks as if it had been planned to result in man, and in
other animals and plants to make the world a suitable place for him to dwell in.' Like Wallace, Broom also saw
a spiritual guiding hand behind the whole process." (Lewin, R., "In the Age of Mankind: A Smithsonian
Book of Human Evolution," Smithsonian Books: Washington DC, 1988, p.26. Emphasis original)
23/01/2007
"Hallmarks of Homo sapiens: the human brain, above, with its uniquely large cerebral cortex, center of
reasoned behavior, memory, abstract thought, and intelligence; a hand with nimble fingers and opposable
thumb, as seen in the drawings above right b Albrecht Dürer; and a bipedal, upright mode of movement,
perhaps reaching its most beautiful expression in a ballet dancer, right." (Lewin, R., "In the Age of Mankind:
A Smithsonian Book of Human Evolution," Smithsonian Books: Washington DC, 1988, pp.26-27. Emphasis
original)
23/01/2007
"Such a long evolutionary separation-the Pleistocene is now calculated at 2 million years in duration-
between the races would of course give ample opportunity for the cutting edge of competition to do its
work. And Keith revered the stern and impartial judgment imposed by competition. `When we look at the
world of men as it exists now, we see that certain races are becoming dominant; others are disappearing,' he
said. `Competition is not confined to human rivalries and struggles;, it pervades the whole animal kingdom
of life; it is the basis of Darwin's doctrine of evolution; it has been, and ever will be, the means of
progressive evolution ... To extinguish the spirit of competition is to seek racial suicide.' [Keith, A.,
"Darwinism and What It Implies," Watts & Co: London, 1928, pp. 18-19] Osborn concurred: `The law of
survival of the fittest is not a theory, but a fact.' [Osborn, H.F., `The Dawn Man,' McClure's magazine, Vol.
55, 1923, pp. 1928, p.27] The fittest, it was generally agreed, could not possibly be races from the tropics
because the tropics induced indolence and degeneration, not improvement. `The evolution of man is
arrested or retrogressive ... in tropical and semi-tropical regions,' says Osborn, `where natural fruits abound
and human effort-individual and racial-immediately ceases.' [Osborn, H.F., "Why Central Asia," Natural
History, May-June 1926, pp. 263-69, p.266] Clearly, without effort there is no improvement-a good Puritan
ethic. Even Robert Broom, who worked for many years in Africa, agreed with this sentiment. `It seems
impossible for the higher types of man even to live for any length of time in the tropics without
degenerating,' he wrote in 1933. `Apparently a steady improvement of the brain was only possible in a
temperate climate.' [Broom, R., "The Coming of Man Was it Accident or Design?," Witherby: London, 1933,
p.219] So it was that several threads of argument were woven together to form a theoretical fabric whose
pattern matched closely the ethos of the Edwardian world. If the white races were economically and
territorially dominant in the world, it was surely the natural outcome of natural processes. The slow pace of
evolutionary change, the long separation between the races, the inimical environment of the tropics-all
combined to produce a graded series of races, rising from the Australian aborigines at the bottom, through
the black races and the Mongols, and reaching the Caucasians at the apex." (Lewin, R., "Bones of
Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins", Simon & Shuster: New York NY, 1987, p.308)
23/01/2007
"If man's place in nature appeared to be readily explicable and ordered through the races of Homo sapiens
itself, by contrast it presented problems in the larger scheme of things. The perceived gulf between man and
the brutes, though edged into by the `lower races,' was still large. Thomas Henry Huxley commented upon it
this way: `No one is more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between ... man and the
brutes ... for, he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech [and] ...
stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from
his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.' [Huxley, T.H.,
"Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature and Other Anthropological Essays," Appleton: New York, 1900,
pp.155-156] The origin of so important a gap demanded an explanation from evolutionary theory." (Lewin,
R., Bones of Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins", Simon & Shuster: New York NY,
1987, pp.308-309)
23/01/2007
"What in fact has happened through much of the course of paleoanthropology is that practitioners have
impaled themselves on the horns of a dilemma when approaching this challenge. On one hand, they have
recognized that according to evolutionary theory, natural forces must be capable of essentially transforming
an ape into a human. But on the other, they have until recently tended to concentrate on those characters
which we feel make us special, such as intelligence, culture, society, and moral sense. `In accepting this
persistently pre-Darwinian definition of their problem, scientists who study human evolution have saddled
themselves with the paradoxical job of explaining how causes operating throughout nature have in the case
of Homo sapiens produced an effect that is radically unlike anything else in nature,' [Cartmill, M., Pilbeam,
D. & Isaac, G., "One Hundred Years of Paleoanthropology," American Scientist, Vol. 74, July-August
1986, pp. 410-20, p.410] comment Matt Cartmill, David Pilbeam, and (the late) Glynn Isaac in a recent review.
This `paradoxical job' is precisely what Cartmill was referring to earlier when he said, `The demands of the
scientific method itself force us to pursue the essentially extrascientific objective of telling stories that
explain our privileged status in the universe of things." (Lewin, R., Bones of Contention: Controversies in
the Search for Human Origins", Simon & Shuster: New York NY, 1987, p.309)
23/01/2007
"For some people, most notably Alfred Russel Wallace, who was the coinventor with Darwin of the theory
of natural selection, and Robert Broom., the job simply proved to be too much, though in different ways.
Both men concluded that human intelligence and moral sense had no other explanation than spiritual
intervention. As befits the coinventor of the theory of natural selection, Wallace perceived it as being an
extremely powerful and inexorable force. `The law of Natural Selection or the survival of the fittest is, as its
name implies, a rigid law, which acts by the life or death of the individuals submitted to its action,' [Wallace,
A.R., "Darwinism," Macmillan: London, 1889, p.469] he wrote in an essay on Darwinism in 1889. In other
words, if an animal possessed an inheritable trait that improved its chances in the competition with others,
that trait would be favored and enhanced through the generations. A more effective way of digesting food
might be a mundane but good example. Conversely, traits that had no particular survival advantage would
not be selected for and would not persist and increase through the generations. Wallace turned his sharp
criterion on Homo sapiens, and found problems. "I fully accept Mr. Darwin's conclusion as to the
essential identity of man's bodily structure with that of the higher mammalia, and his descent from some
ancestral form common to man and the anthropoid apes, " [Wallace, A.R., "Darwinism," Macmillan: London,
1889, p.461] he conceded. However, man's intellectual powers and moral sense, among other things, he said,
`could not have been developed by variation and natural selection alone, and ... , therefore, some other
influence, law, or agency is required to account for them.' [Wallace, Ibid, p.463] Darwin was naturally upset
by what Wallace called `my little heresy,' and he wrote to Wallace in 1869 lamenting, `I hope you have not
murdered too completely your own and my child.' [Darwin, F. & Seward, A.C., eds, "More Letters of Charles
Darwin," John Murray: London, 1903, Vol. II, pp.39-40] But Wallace remained steadfast.
23/01/2007
"His [Wallace's] argument was simple and direct. He concluded that if you examine the mental capacity of
technologically primitive people - savages he called them, though, if anything, he was less of a racist than
his contemporaries-then you find that they are better endowed than they obviously have need for in their
simple lives. `Natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to that of
an ape, whereas he actually possesses one but very little inferior to that of the average members of our
learned societies.' [Wallace, A.R., "Sir Charles Lyell on Geological Climates and the Origin of Species,"
Quarterly Review, April 1869, pp.359-394, pp.392-393] And what of wit and humor, and mathematical skill,
in advanced societies? How could these be the product of natural selection when our forebears could have
had no use of them? He listed our peculiarly naked skin as inexplicable by natural selection, our singing
voice, our `unnecessarily perfect' hands and feet; and of course our moral sense. `The inference I would
draw from this class of phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a
definite direction, and for a special purpose,' [Wallace, A.R., "The Limits of Natural Selection," in "Essays
on Natural Selection," Macmillan, 1871, p.359] Wallace concluded in 1871, the year in which Darwin
published his major statement on human origins, The Descent of Man.". (Lewin, R., "Bones of
Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins", Simon & Shuster: New York NY, 1987, pp.308-
309)
23/01/2007
"It may be that, as Gould has argued, Wallace came to this position by the force of the cold, remorseless
logic of the theory of natural selection. And indeed that is how Wallace couches it. But in a long, rambling
passage in his 1889 essay on Darwinism you get a distinct glimpse of a man more than a little comforted by
what he finds himself able to conclude. `Those who admit my interpretation of the evidence adduced ... will
be relieved from the crushing mental burden imposed upon those who-maintaining that we, in common with
the rest of nature, are but products of the blind eternal forces of the universe, and believing also that the
time must come when the sun will lose its heat and all life on earth necessarily cease-have to contemplate a
not very distant future in which all this glorious earth-which for untold millions of years has been slowly
developing forms of life and beauty to culminate at last in man-shall be as if it had never existed; who are
compelled to suppose that all the slow growth of our race struggling towards a higher life, all the agony of
martyrs, all the groans of victims, all the evil and misery and undeserved suffering of the ages, all the
struggles for freedom, all the efforts toward justice, all the aspiration for virtue and the wellbeing of
humanity, shall absolutely vanish, and, "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wrack behind."'
[Wallace, A.R., "The Limits of Natural Selection," in "Essays on Natural Selection," Macmillan, 1871, p.416]
Wallace describes the materialistic worldview in which the sun will one day rise no more as a `hopeless and
soul-deadening belief.' By contrast, his own worldview is full of hope and transcendence. `We, who accept
the existence of the spiritual world, can look upon the universe as a grand consistent whole adapted in all its
parts to the development of spiritual beings capable of indefinite life and perfectibility. To us, the whole
purpose, the only raison d'etre of the world ... was the development of the human spirit in association
with the human body.' [Wallace, A.R., "Darwinism," Macmillan: London, 1889, p.477]" (Lewin, R., "Bones of
Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins", Simon & Shuster: New York NY, 1987, pp.310-
311)
23/01/2007
"Robert Broom, who, remember, played such an important part in establishing the reality of
Australopithecus as a part of human ancestry, held a similar but even more extreme view. Not only could
he not accept the naturalistic evolution of humanity, but he also could not believe that much of the rest of
the complex and beautiful world- of animals and plants could have arisen without the intervention of a
guiding hand, `a spiritual agency,' as he called it. Moreover, he saw the origin of Homo sapiens as the
ultimate purpose of it all. `Much of evolution looks as if it had been planned to result in man, and in other
animals and plants to make the world a suitable place for him to dwell in.' [Broom, R., "The Coming of Man
Was it Accident or Design?," Witherby: London, 1933, p.220] And, explicitly influenced by Wallace's
writings, Broom finishes on a truly spiritualistic note: 'The aim [of evolution] has been the production of
human personalities, and the personality is evidently a new spiritual being that will probably survive after
the death of the body.' Wallace and Broom therefore accounted for the perceived gap between Homo
sapiens and the rest of animate nature by employing a `with one bound Jack was free' type of explanation,
an explanation that clearly was congenial to their deeply held world views. Others in their profession have
employed more scientific explanations, explanations that have nevertheless shifted ground substantially
through the past three generations." (Lewin, R., "Bones of Contention: Controversies in the Search for
Human Origins", Simon & Shuster: New York NY, 1987, pp.311-312)
23/01/2007
"Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he
matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care. He is
impelled by nearly the same motives as the lower animals, when they are left to their own free choice, though
he is in so far superior to them that he highly values mental charms and virtues. On the other hand he is
strongly attracted by more wealth or rank. Yet he might by selection do something not only for the bodily
constitution and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities. Both sexes ought to
refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind; but such hopes are Utopian
and will never be even partially realised until the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known. Everyone does
good service, who aids towards this end. When the principles of breeding and inheritance are better
understood, we shall not hear ignorant members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan for
ascertaining whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to man." (Darwin, C.R., "The Descent of
Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: London, Second Edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922,
pp.944-945)
23/01/2007
"The advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate problem: all ought to refrain from marriage
who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its own
increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. On the other hand, as Mr. Galton has remarked, if the
prudent avoid marriage, whilst the reckless marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the better members
of society. Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a
struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be
feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence; and the
more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted. Hence our natural rate
of increase, though leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by any means. There
should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from
succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring." (Darwin, C.R., "The Descent of Man and
Selection in Relation to Sex," [1871], John Murray: London, Second Edition, 1874, Reprinted, 1922, p.945)
23/01/2007
"In the physical realm, any theory of human evolution must explain how it was that an apelike ancestor,
equipped with powerful jaws and long, daggerlike canine teeth and able to run at speed on four limbs,
became transformed into a slow, bipedal animal whose natural means of defense were at best puny. Add to
this the powers of intellect, speech, and morality, upon which we `stand raised as upon a mountain top,' as
Huxley put it [Huxley, T.H., `Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature and Other Anthropological Essays,'
Appleton: New York, 1900, pp.155-156], and one has the complete challenge to evolutionary theory.
Darwin's answer to this was to look at those faculties which appear to make us special-our brains, our
bipedality, our use of tools, our sociality-and suggest that, developed little by little, they would give us a
competitive edge in the world of brute nature. It was an explanation that made our earliest ancestors already
human, albeit to a rudimentary degree. This latter theme has persisted until relatively recently: hominid
equals human, and to explain hominid origins is to explain human origins. For Darwin, the first hominids
were brainier than the apes, were more upright than the apes, were more technological and cultural than the
apes, and were more social than the apes. In a nutshell, the earliest hominids in Darwin's world were already
cultural creatures: they were homunculi. Most of all, they were in competition with the apes and with the rest
of animate nature; they were in `the struggle for existence.' Darwin even saw an advantage to our ancestors'
physical weakness and apparent defenselessness. `An animal ... which, like the gorilla, could defend itself
from all enemies, would perhaps not become social,' [Darwin, C.R., "The Descent of Man," John Murray:
London, 1871, p.64] he suggested. As befits the inventor of the theory of natural selection, Darwin placed
competition at the core of his explanation of human origins, and emphasized its continuing importance.
`Man ... must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more
gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted,' [Darwin, C.R., "The
Descent of Man," John Murray: London, 1871, p.618] he said. "Darwin's ideas, when applied to human
society, were comforting to many other well-to-do Victorians," [Cartmill, M., "Four Legs Good, Two Legs
Bad," Natural History, November 1983, pp. 65-78, p.68] observes Matt Cartmill. `Like the idealized moguls
of nineteenth-century capitalism, Homo sapiens has earned mastery of the world by virtue of know-
how, shrewdness, and rectitude developed in the `marketplace' of human competition. Darwinian man is lord
of the earth, not because of any God-given stewardship or Romantic affinity to the World Spirit, but for the
same good and legitimate reason that the British were rulers of Africa and India.' Darwin's ideas on human
origins-in which our `special' attributes were self-explanatory through the incremental advantage of natural
selection-persisted into the twentieth century, through the era of Arthur Keith and Henry Fairfield Osborn
and on into the 1950s. In this world view, it wasn't so much man's ascendance that puzzled scientists and
required explanation, but why the apes had so obviously `failed.' The answer was simple: namely, the malign
effect of the tropics, `which encouraged indolence in habit and stagnation of effort and growth,' [Smith, G.E.,
"Essays on the Evolution of Man," Oxford University Press, 1924, p.40] offered Grafton Elliot Smith. "While
Man was evolved amid the strife with adverse conditions, the ancestors of the Gorilla and Chimpanzee gave
up the struggle for mental supremacy because they were satisfied with their circumstances.' There is as
much moral disapprobation as scientific explanation in these remarks. Homo sapiens, by contrast with the
`low' apes, had risen to the highest noble and intellectual plane in the natural world by virtue of his-own
unrelenting effort. When, during the 1930s and '40s, the discoveries of australopithecine fossils in South
Africa showed that human forebears stood upright and were equipped with small brains as well as small
canine teeth, the Darwinian structure began to come apart. Intelligence could not have been an important
engine in human evolution if most of the major physical changes in the skeleton had occurred with virtually
no expansion in apparent mental capacity." (Lewin, R., "Bones of Contention: Controversies in the Search
for Human Origins", Simon & Shuster: New York NY, 1987, pp.312-314. Emphasis original)
24/01/2007
"PROOF THAT THE EARTH IS A FREAK (generally based on conclusions from the book `Our Solar
System' by the same author) Collision of the Asters. It has been shown in the above mentioned book that
the Sun is a normal average single star, and that its internal nuclear processes produce higher element
gaseous blobs of hot gases from hydrogen, violently ejected from its surface. The blobs which were ejected
into a disc surrounding the Sun's equator took up orbits and coagulated into sets of twin planets. The sets
of planets were at sequential distance doubling for each set. The planets themselves on coagulating created
internal temperatures and pressures to cause similar internal explosions and ejections like the Sun, providing
their rocky core size was over 20'000 km diameter. The planet's natural moons were formed in this way in
equatorial discs round the planet, again as sets of twins, with the sets at sequential distance doubling for
each set. ... Without the Aster twins collision the Earth would be like one of Jupiter's moons. That is the first
reason to be a freak. It would also have no atmosphere, no water, no life of any kind, rotate in an 83 hour
day, - a little brother to our Moon." (Grundy, A.H., "Amazing Unbelievable Freak Earth: New Discoveries,"
The Book Guild: Sussex UK, 1991, p.108. Emphasis original)
24/01/2007
"Paul knows of the Lord's apostles [Gal. i. 17 ff], of whom Peter and John are mentioned by name as `pillars'
of the Jerusalem community, [Gal. ii. 9] and of His brothers, of whom James is similarly mentioned [Gal. i. 19,
ii. 9]. He knows that the Lord's brothers and apostles, including Peter, were married [1 Cor. ix. 5] -an
incidental agreement with the Gospel story of the healing of Peter's mother-in-law [Mk. i. 30]. He quotes
sayings of Jesus on occasion-e.g., His teaching on marriage and divorce [1 Cor. vii. 10 f], and on the right of
gospel preachers to have their material needs supplied [1 Cor. ix. 14; 1 Tim. v. 18; cf. Lk. x. 7]; and the words
He used at the institution of the Lord's Supper [1 Cor. xi. 23 ff.]." (Bruce, F.F., "The New Testament
Documents: Are They Reliable?," [1943], Inter-Varsity Press: Leicester UK, Fifth Edition, 1990, p.78)
24/01/2007
"Even where he does not quote the actual sayings of Jesus, he shows throughout his works how well
acquainted he was with them. In particular, we ought to compare the ethical section of the Epistle to the
Romans (xii. 1 to xv. 7), where Paul summarizes the practical implications of the gospel for the lives of
believers, with the Sermon on the Mount, to see how thoroughly imbued the apostle was with the teaching
of his Master. Besides, there and elsewhere Paul's chief argument in his ethical instruction is the example of
Christ Himself. And the character of Christ as understood by Paul is in perfect agreement with His character
as portrayed in the Gospels. When Paul speaks of `the meekness and gentleness of Christ' (2 Cor. x. 1), we
remember our Lord's own words, `I am meek and lowly in heart' (Mt. xi. 29). The self-denying Christ of the
Gospels is the one of whom Paul says, `Even Christ pleased not himself (Rom. xv. 3); and just as the Christ
of the Gospels called on His followers to deny themselves (Mk. viii. 34), so the apostle insists that, after the
example of Christ Himself, it is our Christian duty 'to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please
ourselves' (Rom. xv. 1). He who said: `I am among you as the servant' (Lk. xxii. 27), and performed the menial
task of washing His disciples' feet (Jn. xiii. 4. ff.), is He who, according to Paul, `took the form of a slave'
(Phil. ii. 7). In a word, when Paul wishes to commend to his readers all those moral graces which adorn the
Christ of the Gospels he does so in language like this : `Put on the Lord Jesus Christ' (Rom. xiii. 14.)."
(Bruce, F.F., "The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?," [1943], Inter-Varsity Press: Leicester
UK, Fifth Edition, 1990, pp.78-79)
24/01/2007
"In short, the outline of the gospel story as we can trace it in the writings of Paul agrees with the outline
which we find elsewhere in the New Testament, and in the four Gospels in particular. Paul himself is at pains
to point out that the gospel which he preached was one and the same gospel as that preached by the other
apostles [1 Cor. xv. 11] - a striking claim, considering that Paul was neither a companion of Christ in the days of His flesh
nor of the original apostles, and that he vigorously asserts his complete independence of these ."
(Bruce, F.F., "The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?," [1943], Inter-Varsity Press: Leicester
UK, Fifth Edition, 1990, p.79)
25/01/2007
"Morowitz [Morowitz, H.J., "Energy Flow in Biology," Academic Press: New York, 1968, p.66] has estimated
the increase in the chemical bonding energy as one forms the bacterium Escherichia coli from simple
precursors to be 0.0095 erg, or an average of 0.27 ev/atom for the 2 x 1010 atoms in a single bacterial cell.
This would be thermodynamically equivalent to having water in your bathtub spontaneously heat up to 360
degrees C, happily a most unlikely event." (Thaxton C.B.*, Bradley W.L.* & Olsen R.L.*, "The Mystery of Life's
Origin: Reassessing Current Theories," [1984], Lewis & Stanley: Dallas TX, 1992, Second Printing, p.121)
26/01/2007
"Though Paul had not been a follower of Jesus before the crucifixion, yet he must have made it his business
after his conversion to learn as much about Him as he could (see chapter vi). What did Peter and Paul talk
about during the fortnight they spent together in Jerusalem about AD 35 (Gal. i. 18)? As Professor Dodd
puts it, `we may presume they did not spend all the time talking about the weather.' [Dodd, C.H., "The
Apostolic Preaching and its Developments," Hodder & Stoughton: London, 1936, p.26] It was a golden
opportunity for Paul to learn the details of the story of Jesus from one whose knowledge of that story was
unsurpassed." (Bruce, F.F., "The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?," [1943], Inter-Varsity
Press: Leicester UK, Fifth Edition, 1990, p.79)
26/01/2007
"Like so many of the literary men of his time, George Lyttelton [1709-1773] and his friend Gilbert West were
led at first to reject the Christian religion. ... Fully persuaded that the Bible was an imposture, they were
determined to expose the cheat. Lord Lyttelton chose the Conversion of Paul and Mr. West the Resurrection
of Christ for the subject of hostile criticism. Both sat down to their respective tasks full of prejudice: but the
result of their separate attempts was, that they were both converted by their efforts to overthrow the truth of
Christianity. They came together, not as they expected, to exult over an imposture exposed to ridicule, but to
lament over their own folly and to felicitate each other on their joint conviction that the Bible was the word
of God. Their able inquiries have furnished two of the most valuable treatises in favor of revelation, one
entitled `Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul' and the other `Observations on the Resurrection of
Christ."' West's book was the first published. Lyttelton's work appeared at first anonymously in 1747, when
he was thirty-eight years of age. The edition which lies before me contains seventy-eight compact pages. It
is addressed in the form of a letter to Gilbert West. In the opening paragraph he says, "The conversion and
apostleship of St. Paul alone, duly considered, was of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity
to be a divine revelation." (Campbell, J.L., "Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul by
Lord Lyttelton," in Torrey, R.A., Dixon, A.C., et al., eds, "The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the
Truth,"[1917], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Reprinted, 1996, Vol. II., p.354)
26/01/2007
"Let us now turn to an examination of the book itself. Lyttelton naturally begins by bringing before us all the
facts that we have in the New Testament regarding the conversion of St. Paul; the three accounts given in
the Acts; what we have in Galatians, Philippians, Timothy, Corinthians, Colossians and in other places.
(Acts 9:22-26 [should be Acts 9;22;26]; Gal. 1:11-16; Phil. 3:4-8; 1 Tim. 1:12,13; 1 Cor. 15:8; 2 Cor. 1:1; Col.
1:1, etc.) Then he lays down four propositions which he considers exhaust all the possibilities in the case. 1.
Either Paul was `an impostor who said what he knew to be false, with an intent to deceive;' or 2. He was an
enthusiast who imposed on himself by the force of `an overheated imagination ;' or 3. He was `deceived by
the fraud of others;' or, finally, 4. What he declared to be the cause of his conversion did all really happen;
`and, therefore the Christian religion is a divine revelation.' ... Our author considers that he has furnished
sufficient evidence to show (1) that Paul was not an impostor deliberately proclaiming what he knew to be
false with intent to deceive; (2) that he was not imposed upon by an overheated imagination, and (3) that he
was not deceived by the fraud of others. Unless, therefore, we are prepared to lay aside the use of our
understanding and all the rules of evidence by which facts are determined, we must accept the whole story
of Paul's conversion as literally and historically true. We have therefore the supernatural, and the Christian
religion is proved to be a revelation from God." (Campbell, J.L., "Observations on the Conversion and
Apostleship of St. Paul by Lord Lyttelton," in Torrey, R.A., Dixon, A.C., et al., eds, "The Fundamentals: A
Testimony to the Truth,"[1917], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Reprinted, 1996, Vol. II., pp.353-365. Emphasis
original)
26/01/2007
"One of the first times we met, I wanted to know how Billy Graham interpreted the Bible. `Are you a Bible
literalist? And what about evolution versus creationism?' Graham: I don't think anyone is really a literalist
because you don't say that, when Jesus gave the parable of the rich man that had died and gone to hell and
the poor man that had gone to heaven-he said that he went to Abraham's bosom. Now, that didn't mean that
he literally climbed down into Abraham's bosom. So no one really is a complete literalist in the Bible. We
know when we read the Bible, our common sense tells us. Frost: But, I mean, what do you view-do you
view, for instance, the creation of the world as it's shown in the Bible as a parable and, at the same time,
accept scientific suggestions about the age of the world? Graham: Oh, I don't think that there's any
conflict at all between science today and the scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the scriptures
many times and we've tried to make the scriptures say things that they weren't meant to say, and I think we
have made a mistake by thinking that the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The
Bible is a book of redemption, and of course, I accept the creation story. I believe that God did create the
universe. I believe he created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point he
took this person or this being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did
create man. ... I personally believe that it's just as easy to accept the fact that God took some dust and blew
on it and out came a man as it is to accept the fact that God breathed upon man and he became a living soul
and it started with some protoplasm and went right on up through the evolutionary process. Either way is
by faith and whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God."
(Frost, D., "Billy Graham in Conversation," Chivers Press, Bath UK, 2000, pp. 71-72. Emphasis original)
26/01/2007
"One satisfying feature of the scheme is that a single, generally accepted principle, Darwinian natural
selection, is extended back to the time of the first replicator. It is interrupted by certain periods of molecular
cooperation in the early stages, but nonetheless, it dominates the entire development of life. The most
important gap in these entire proceedings concerns the steps prior to the appearance of the first replicator.
Natural selection does not apply, and we are left with only chance itself. Spontaneous generation crawls out
of the woodwork once again, but in a more limited way. We are not asking for an entire cell, but only for a
single fragment, one molecule, the replicator. The idea is actually not a recent one. A Harvard biochemist, L.
T. Troland (he was cited by Muller as a forerunner of his thinking wrote in 1914: `Consequently we are
forced to say that the production of the original life enzyme was a chance event.... The striking fact that the
enzyme theory of life's origin, as we have outlined it, necessitates the production of only a single molecule
of the original catalyst, renders the objection of improbability almost absurd ...and when one of these
enzymes first appeared, bare of all body, in the aboriginal seas it followed as a consequence of its
characteristic regulative nature that the phenomenon of life came too.' We need only substitute `nucleic
acid' for `enzyme' and `replicative' for `regulative' in Troland's account to update it. Oparin's 1924 paper, as
we have mentioned, also invoked chance to generate his first crucial structure: `a gel in a colloid solution."
(Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth," Summit Books: New York NY,
1986, pp.166-167)
26/01/2007
"In Wednesday's Tale in the Prologue, I paraphrased a modern popular account, by Robert Jastrow, of the
chance creation of the replicator [Jastrow, R. "Until the Sun Dies," [1977], Fontana/Collins: London,
Reprinted, 1979, pp.46-49]. Others have appeared recently. For example, Richard Dawkins wrote in 1976 in
The Selfish Gene: `Processes analogous to these must have given rise to the `primeval soup' that
biologists and chemists believe constituted the seas some three to four thousand million years ago. The
organic substances became locally concentrated, perhaps in drying scum round the shores or in tiny
suspended droplets. Under the further influence of energy, such as ultraviolet light from the sun, they
combined into larger molecules ...in those days large organic molecules could drift unmolested through the
thickening broth. At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident. We will call it
the Replicator. It may not necessarily have been the biggest or the most complex molecule around, but it
had the extraordinary property of being able to create copies of itself.' [Dawkins R., "The Selfish Gene,"
(1976), Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, New Edition, 1989, pp.14-15. Emphasis original] Dawkins then
continues along the lines put forward by George Wald. Such an event would be unlikely, but it only had to
arise once in a billion years. `Actually a molecule which makes copies of itself is not as difficult to imagine as
it seems.... The small building blocks were abundantly available in the soup surrounding the replicator.'
[Ibid., p.15] We badly need the point of view of the Skeptic once again. Obviously, the chances for the
spontaneous generation of a nucleic acid replicator are better than those for an entire bacterium. But the
latter case was so hopeless that there is room for enormous improvement, and matters could still be
hopeless." (Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth," Summit Books: New
York NY, 1986, pp.166)
27/01/2007
"Genes and enzymes are linked together in a living cell two interlocked systems, each supporting the other.
It is difficult to see how either could manage alone. Yet if we are to avoid invoking either a Creator or a very
large improbability, we must accept that one occurred before the other in the origin of life. But which one
was it? We are left with the ancient riddle: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? In its biochemical form,
protein versus nucleic acid, the question is a new one, dating back no further than Watson and Crick and
our knowledge of the structure and function of the gene. In its essence, however, the question is much
older, and has provoked passion and acrimony that extend beyond the boundaries of science. In an earlier,
broader form, the question asked whether the gene or protoplasm had primacy, not only in the origin but
also in the development of life." (Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth,"
Summit Books: New York NY, 1986, p.135)
27/01/2007
"The Skeptic protested that he was not concerned with the theories of the past. He wanted an answer on
which there was full agreement today. When he was told that no such consensus existed, he then requested
that explanation which had received the most acceptance. The Guru promised to tell it on Wednesday, and
began promptly the next morning. Wednesday's Tale The earth was four billion years old. The sky looked
much as it does now, but its gases were strange. In place of oxygen, the atmosphere contained methane,
hydrogen, and fumes of ammonia. Life was absent. The planet was covered with a shallow, sterile sea. Bleak
islands provided the only lands; no continents existed yet. The landscape was not quiet, however. Roaring
volcanoes sent forth lava. Steam and poisonous gases escaped into the air from hot springs bubbling
nearby. Now and then a thunderstorm lashed out at our planet. Flashes of lightning illuminated the scene.
The electrical discharges agitated the gases of the atmosphere, causing them to combine with each other
and with water. Strange new molecules were formed, called amino acids and nucleotides. They had not been
seen previously on the earth. They were the building blocks of living matter. Gradually, more and more
amino acids and nucleotides filled up the seas, creating a rich organic soup, more concentrated than a
chicken broth. The molecules collided in the broth, and every so often stuck together. Larger and larger
molecules were formed. In the course of hundreds of millions of years, all manner of molecules were created
by random collision. Some had spiral shapes, other were spherical, and still others had long strands. Finally,
after billions of chance events, a molecule was formed that had the magical talent of copying itself. This
magic molecule had two long chains of nucleotides twisted around one another. When the chains separated,
each attracted nucleotides to itself and constructed a copy of its earlier partner. Two giant molecules then
existed in place of one. Reproduction had taken place. This replication process occurred over and over
again. Soon offspring of the original parent molecule dominated the waters of the young earth. They were
the earliest forms of life. In the billions of years that followed, these early self-reproducing molecules
evolved, and ultimately produced the variety of creatures that fill the earth today germs, plants, mice, and
men. Each creature is made of cells, and the cells are made of the same building blocks, amino acids and
nucleotides. At the center of every living cell lies a descendant of the first living molecule. We now call it
DNA. This time the Skeptic looked almost satisfied at the end of the tale. He had encountered that story
many times, in slightly different forms, in schools, museums, and the popular media. He liked this particular
version, and was glad to hear that it was accepted by many scientists. What about the remainder? Would
they soon come around as well? The Guru agreed that this story had been told many times. He had taken his
version from an account given by the astronomer Robert Jastrow in his book Until the Sun Dies [Jastrow,
R. "Until the Sun Dies," [1977], Fontana/Collins: London, Reprinted, 1979, pp.46-49]. It was not likely,
however, that the scientists who rejected this theory now would accept it in the future. In fact, there were
more dissenters now than there had been twenty years ago. The Skeptic asked why this was so. He was told
that a growing number of scientists now believed that neither the atmosphere described nor the soup had
ever existed. Laboratory efforts had also been made to prepare the magic molecule from a simulation of the
soup, and thus far had failed." (Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth,"
Summit Books: New York NY, 1986, pp.18-20. Emphasis original)
27/01/2007
"The Miracle The earth is one billion years old. A chill is in the air, for the sun is a young and relatively weak
star, radiating only half the heat and light that it will produce later when i man walks on the earth. The sky seems
familiar; its colour is a deep blue, spotted by puffs of white cloud. But its gases are strange; in place of oxygen,
the atmosphere contains pungent fumes of ammonia, the odourless menace of methane, and traces of hydrogen.
A shallow sea covers the surface of the planet. Its waters are sterile; life will flourish in them later, but has not yet
appeared. The continents do not yet exist; they will appear later also. In a few places, islands of black volcanic
rock break the surface of the clear water. The islands are bleak and unfriendly; no touch of green relieves the eye.
Gradually the interior of the earth grows hotter; its surface seethes with volcanic activity; new islands form; the
observer of today, transported back to that plutonic scene, is deafened by the sudden roar of a violent outburst.
The ground shakes beneath his feet. A fountain of rock and scalding water rises two thousand feet into the air
above a cauldron of lava in the central crater of a nearby volcano. On the slopes of the volcano, at some distance
from the crater, hot springs bubble out of the cracks in the still cooling lava; here and there, a fumerole spurts
steam into the thin air, and poisonous gases enter the atmosphere. Now a thunderstorm lashes the surface of the
planet. The panorama is illuminated sporadically by flashes of lightning; in each electrical discharge, the gases of
the atmosphere - methane, ammonia, water, and hydrogen - fuse together to farm strange new combinations of
atoms, not previously seen on the earth. Those groups of atoms are the molecules known as amino acids and
nucleotides. The appearance of amino acids and nucleotides marks the first step along the path to life. These
molecules are the building blocks of living matter. Later, put together in different combinations like the parts of an
erector set, they will make up every variety of organism on the earth - a tree, a germ, a mouse, a man. But those
forms of life are not yet present; at this point, only the building blocks are here. Gradually, the amino acids and
nucleotides drain out of the atmosphere into the oceans, creating a rich soup of organic matter, like a chicken
broth but more concentrated. Now and then, collisions occur between neighbouring molecules in the broth; in
some collisions, two small molecules stick together to form a large one; then another small molecule collides and
sticks, and still another ... In this way, during the course of a billion years, every conceivable size and shape of
molecule is created by random collisions. Some molecules are in the shape of long, thin strands; others are
wound up into tight clumps of matter; still others are twisted into spirals. Eventually, after countless millions of
chance encounters, a molecule is formed that has the magical ability to produce copies of itself. The magic
molecule consists of two long strands of nucleotides side by side. The two strands are fastened together down
the middle like a zipper. The molecule unzips; each unzipped half attracts new nucleotides from the water around
it and fastens them to itself; then, forces of attraction between adjoining atoms zip the pieces together. Now there
are two giant zipper-like molecules, where before there was one. The molecule has reproduced itself. The original
molecule was the parent; the copies are its daughters. The daughter molecules unzip, divide, and reproduce
again; soon their offspring are very numerous. In a short time they dominate the population of molecules in the
waters of the young earth. Today the descendant of those self-reproducing molecules is the double strand of
nucleotides called DNA, which lies in the centre of every living cell. Whenever a cell divides, the DNA molecule,
unzipping just like that first parent molecule, becomes two complete copies, each in the centre of its own cell.
DNA is the essence of life. Without DNA or a molecule like it inside a cell, the cell could not divide; without cell
division, an organism could not grow. When the first DNA-like molecule appeared in the waters of the earth, the
threshold was crossed from the non-living to the living worlds. The earliest forms of life were simple, and
scarcely more than the non-living molecules that preceded them. The only property they possessed that could be
called life was the ability to divide and reproduce. During the billions of years that followed, these simple, self-
reproducing molecules evolved into the variety of plants and animals that now populate the earth. Today the
land is carpeted with many shades of green; one hundred thousand kinds of fishes swim in the seas; a carnival of
animals plays across the continents. According to this story, every tree, every blade of grass, and every creature
in the sea and on the land evolved out of one parent strand of molecular matter drifting lazily in a warm pool.
What concrete evidence supports that remarkable theory of the origin of life? There is none." (Jastrow, R. "Until
the Sun Dies," [1977], Fontana/Collins: London, Reprinted, 1979, pp.46-49. Emphasis original)
27/01/2007
"If science could find a remnant of the chemical reactions that occurred during the first billion years in the
earth's history - some complex molecule, lying on the threshold between non-life and life - the proof of the
theory would be in hand. Suppose a scientist discovered a rock formed when the earth was a billion years
old, and that rock contained a fossilized strand of molecular matter that looked like DNA but seemed simpler
and more primitive; suppose he then discovered another rock, formed later, with a fossilized molecule that
was closer in its structure to the modern DNA. Placing the two ancient molecular fossils on the table in front
of him and comparing them with the modern DNA, he would see before his eyes the metamorphosis of a
non-living molecule into a living organism. However, that is not likely to happen. Those earliest fossils have
not been found, because the rocks that might have contained them have been pulverized, and their dusty
residue has been spread over the surface of the earth. Powerful forces have erased the record of the period
when life began on the earth; erosion by wind and running water have warn down the oldest rocks on its
surface, and washed their remains into the oceans; volcanic eruptions have flooded the planet repeatedly
with fresh lava and covered over the remaining materials. No trace is left of events that took place during the
first billion years of the earth's existence - the magic period when life appeared here. When the fossil-hunter
picks up the trail of life, more than a billion years have passed, and the fragile remains of the first organisms
have disappeared. The earliest indications of life he finds are blurred outlines of microbes and simple plants.
They must have evolved out of even simpler kinds of life, but the scientist can find no hint of those. By the
time the fossil record begins, the molecular strands of matter that were supposedly the start of it all have
vanished; the planet teems with microscopic but fully developed forms of life, and all chance has been lost
of finding out how that life came to be here." (Jastrow, R. "Until the Sun Dies," [1977], Fontana/Collins:
London, Reprinted, 1979, pp.49-51)
27/01/2007
"Frustrated in his hopes of finding evidence in ancient rocks, the scientist turns to the laboratory for clues
to the origin of life. Can he devise a series of experiments that will display the steps by which simple
molecules turned into living organisms? Some progress has been made along these lines. In one experiment,
scientists duplicated the primitive atmosphere of the earth by mixing the gases methane, ammonia,
hydrogen, and water vapour in a flask. The bottom of the flask was covered with liquid representing the
earth's ocean. Then an electric spark, imitating a stroke of lightning in an early thunderstorm, was
discharged through the mixture. Soon the reservoir of water at the bottom of the flask turned a light pink;
after a week it became dark red in colour. The colour came from the presence of enormous numbers of the
molecular building blocks of life. This pool of water was filled with amino acids - one of the main ingredients
of living matter. In other experiments performed later, nucleotides - the building blocks of the DNA molecule
- also were produced in the laboratory. Those experiments fire the imagination of the scientist. He sees the
lightning and hears the thunder of a storm in the earth's primordial atmosphere; he smells the pungent
mixture of ammonia, methane, and water. Nature's experiment is unfolding; the elements of life are
accumulating in the waters of the earth; soon the first living organisms will emerge ... But they never do; at
least, not in the laboratory. The scientist's experiment always stops short of its goal; the elements of living
matter accumulate in his flask, but no life climbs out. His experiment shows how the building blocks of life
could have been produced in nature, but the next step - the construction of a living organism - eludes him.
Why does the experiment fail? The answer is that it lacks one ingredient; the missing ingredient is time.
Nature required several hundred million years of ceaseless, random experimentation to discover the chemical
pathways to life on the earth, and the scientist's ingenuity has not been equal to the task of imitating her in a
week, or even a lifetime. Many chemists have tried, and their results shed some light on the problem, but the
gap between non-life and life remains. At present, science has no satisfactory answer to the question of the
origin of life on the earth." (Jastrow, R. "Until the Sun Dies," [1977], Fontana/Collins: London, Reprinted,
1979, pp.51-52)
27/01/2007
"Perhaps the appearance of life on the earth is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their
choices are limited; either life was created on the earth by the will of a being outside the grasp of scientific
understanding, or it evolved on our planet spontaneously, through chemical reactions occurring in
nonliving matter lying on the surface of the planet. The first theory places the question of the origin of life
beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. It is a statement of faith in the power of a Supreme Being not subject
to the laws of science. The second theory is also an act of faith. The act of faith consists in assuming that
the scientific view of the origin of life is correct, without having concrete evidence to support that belief."
(Jastrow, R. "Until the Sun Dies," [1977], Fontana/Collins: London, Reprinted, 1979, p.52. Emphasis original)
27/01/2007
"Now the planet swarms with tiny bits of living matter. Their origin is a mystery. The earth has yielded up
their remains, preserved in a few widely scattered places where ancient rocks are found. Some of these early
fossils resemble microbes; others look like simple plants called blue-green algae. They are unsophisticated
individuals; each one is composed entirely of a single cell. Most modern forms of life are more complicated;
an earthworm, for example, contains more than a billion cells in its body, and the body of a man is made up
of trillions of cells working together in subtle harmony. Yet a single cell already represents a very advanced
stage in evolution. Cells are exceedingly complex chemical factories, in which the basic ingredients of life are
assembled into DNA and other giant molecules. " (Jastrow, R. "Until the Sun Dies," [1977], Fontana/Collins:
London, Reprinted, 1979, p.53)
28/01/2007
"The basic building blocks of life were synthesized from simple chemical elements that were in ample supply
on the primitive Earth. The compounds thus generated then managed to combine somehow, eventually
forming the first living organisms. At this point, Darwinian evolution and natural selection could begin
working their magic to generate the myriad complex living forms we see today." (Casti, J.L,. "Paradigms Lost:
Images of Man in the Mirror of Science," Cardinal: London, 1989, pp.73-74. Emphasis mine
28/01/2007
"A crucial aspect of the credibility of this picture is the very long time span of more than 4 billion years
that evolution has had to play with to create the myriad organisms we see on Earth today. ...While the above
skeletal outline serves to underpin most scientific investigations of the origin of life, the fun really begins
when it comes time to spell out the details of the precise mechanisms Nature used to breathe the spark of life
into a haphazard mixture of simple chemicals." (Casti, J.L,. "Paradigms Lost: Images of Man in the Mirror of
Science," Cardinal: London, 1989, p.74. Emphasis mine)
28/01/2007
"The Limits to Selection If selection could, in principle, accomplish `anything,' then all the order in
organisms might reflect selection alone. But, in fact, there are limits to selection. Such limits begin to demand
a shift in our thinking in the biological sciences and beyond. We have already encountered a first powerful
limitation on selection. Darwin's view of the gradual accumulation of useful variations, we saw, required
gradualism. Mutations must cause slight alterations in phenotypes. But we have now seen two alternative
model `worlds' in which such gradualism fails. The first concerns maximally compressed programs. Because
these are random, almost certainly any change randomizes the performance of the program. Finding one of
the few useful minimal programs requires searching the entire space-requiring unthinkably long times
compared with the history of the universe even for modestly large programs. Selection cannot achieve such
maximally compressed programs. Our second examples are NK landscapes. If the richness of epistatic
couplings, K, is very high and approaches the maximum limit, K = N - 1, landscapes approach and
become completely random. Again, locating the highest peak or one of the few highest peaks requires
searching the entire space of possibilities. For modestly large genomes, this is simply impossible. But the
matter is even worse on such random landscapes. If an adapting population evolves by mutation and
selection alone, it will remain frozen in an infinitesimal region of the total space, trapped forever in whatever
region it started in. It will be unable to search long distances across space for the high peaks. Yet if the
population dares try recombination, it will be harmed, on average, not helped." (Kauffman, S.A., "At Home
in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity," [1995], Penguin: London,
Reprinted, 1996, p.183)
28/01/2007
"There is a second limitation to selection. It is not only on random landscapes that selection fails. Even on
smooth landscapes, in the heartland of gradualism, just where Darwin's assumptions hold, selection can
again fail and fail utterly. Selection runs headlong into an `error catastrophe' where all accumulated useful
traits melt away. Let us return to our image of a population of bacteria evolving on a rugged fitness
landscape. The behavior of the population depends on the size of the population, the mutation rate, and the
structure of the landscape. Suppose we consider holding population size constant-say, by using a
chemostat-and landscape structure constant, and tuning the mutation rate from low to high by some
experimental technique. What will happen? Suppose the population is initially genetically identical; hence all
bacteria are located at the same point in genotype space. If the mutation rate is very low, then at long
intervals a fitter variant arises and rapidly sweeps through the population. Thus the population as a whole
`hops' to the fitter neighboring genotype. Over time, the population performs just the kind of adaptive walk
we have considered, climbing steadily uphill to some local optimum and remaining there." (Kauffman, S.A.,
"At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity," [1995], Penguin:
London, Reprinted, 1996, pp.183-184)
28/01/2007
"But what happens if the mutation rate is so high that many fitter and less fit variants are found over very
short intervals? Then the population will spread out from the initial point in genotype space and climb in
many directions. The more surprising property is this: even if the population is released on a local peak, it
may not stay there! Simply put, the rate of mutation is so high that it causes the population to `diffuse' away
from the peak faster than the selective differences between less fit and more fit mutants can return the
population to the peak. An error catastrophe, first discovered by Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen and
theoretical chemist Peter Schuster, has occurred, for the useful genetic information built up in the population
is lost as the population diffuses away from the peak." (Kauffman, S.A., "At Home in the Universe: The
Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity," [1995], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1996, p.184)
28/01/2007
"To summarize: as the mutation rate increases, at first the population climbs a local hill and hovers in its
vicinity. As the mutation rate becomes higher, the population drifts down from the peak and begins to
spread along ridges of nearly equal fitness on the fitness landscape. But if the mutation rate increases still
further, the population drifts ever lower off the ridges into the lowlands of poor fitness. Eigen and Schuster
were the first to emphasize the importance of this error catastrophe, for it implies a limit to the power of
natural selection. At a high enough mutation rate, an adapting population cannot assemble useful genetic
variants into a working whole; instead, the mutation-induced `diffusion' over the space overcomes selection,
pulling the population toward adaptive peaks." (Kauffman, S.A., "At Home in the Universe: The Search for
Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity," [1995], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1996, p.184)
28/01/2007
"This limitation is even more marked when seen from another vantage point. Eigen and Schuster also
emphasized that for a constant mutation rate per gene, the error catastrophe will arise when the number of
genes in the genotype increases beyond a critical number. Thus there appears to be a limit on the
complexity of a genome that can be assembled by mutation and selection!" (Kauffman, S.A., "At Home in
the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity," [1995], Penguin: London,
Reprinted, 1996, p.184. Emphasis original)
28/01/2007
"Selection, then, confronts twin limitations: it is trapped or frozen into local regions of very rugged
landscape, and, on smooth landscapes, it suffers the error catastrophe and melts off peaks, so the genotype
becomes less fit." (Kauffman, S.A., "At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and
Complexity," [1995], Penguin: London, Reprinted, 1996, pp.184-185)
28/01/2007
"Extraterrestrial Origin of Life CRICK and ORGEL, suggested in 1973 that life may not have originated on
Earth but was sent here long ago in the form of germinal material, from elsewhere in the universe. This
hypothesis based on an old theory of panspermia proposed by ARRHENIUS in 1908, has been revised by
the authors together with a rationale why any society might have considered such a course of action and
why we, too, might consider it. SAGAN (1974) concedes that life could have originated on Earth but views
our preoccupation with eking out the answer by getting to know more and more about what did happen
here on Earth, as parochialism and provincialism. Sagan proposes that: "It is only the discovery and
characterization of extraterrestrial life-even if very simple forms are found-which can deprovincialize
biology." At best, such suggestions represent a retreat from the reality of the origin of life on Earth, or our
ability to solve the problem in that context. Such suggestions serve, also, as a thinly-veiled justification for
further costly space ventures." (Keosian, J., "The Crisis in the Problem of the Origin of Life," in Noda, H.,
ed., "Origin of Life: Proceedings of the Second ISSOL Meeting, the Fifth ICOL Meeting," Center for
Academic Publications: Japan, 1978, pp.569-574, p.570. Emphasis original)
28/01/2007
"A more recent argument for the extraterrestrial origin of life has been proposed by BROOKS and SHAW
(1977). They have found materials closely related to sporopollenin in the oldest sediments. The authors
make a number of controversial assumptions, thus jeopardizing their conclusion." (Keosian, J., "The Crisis
in the Problem of the Origin of Life," in Noda, H., ed., "Origin of Life: Proceedings of the Second ISSOL
Meeting, the Fifth ICOL Meeting," Center for Academic Publications: Japan, 1978, pp.569-574, p.570.
Emphasis original)
29/01/2007
"The Origin of Life on Earth There has been life on earth for at least the last few billion years. Presumably
there was a time, just after the earth was formed, when it was lifeless; the physical conditions then were
such that the known forms of life could not function. Somehow, life developed out of this original
lifelessness. Many answers have been suggested to this question of the origin of life, both within and
outside the framework of science. Scientists have even reproduced in the laboratory some of the chemical
processes that may have been among the first steps along the road to life on earth. Nevertheless, none of
the answers that have been proposed thus far come close to being satisfactory. Much more thought and
research will be necessary before we know how life started. ... The first individual living things on earth were
undoubtedly very simple, probably even simpler than present-day bacteria and algae. We have no evidence
that more complex multicellular organisms existed prior to about one billion years ago, whereas single-celled
life dates to at least three billion years ago. But even the simplest of living things are extraordinarily complex
by comparison with objects in the nonliving world. One way to express the problem of the origin of life is to
ask how something as complex as a bacterium could originate from nonliving matter. The same question can
be asked about some of the individual parts of living things, such as the nucleic acid chains that carry
hereditary information, or the proteins that catalyze the chemical processes in all known life forms. It is
inconceivable that such complex molecular structures as proteins and nucleic acids could arise in a single
chance encounter of simple molecules, even if such encounters were taking place in all the oceans of earth
over a period of a billion years. This does not mean, in spite of what some scientists, such as Fred Hoyle,
have suggested, that one must seek for some divine or mystical explanation for the origin of life." (Feinberg,
G., "Solid Clues: Quantum Physics, Molecular Biology and the Future of Science," Heinemann: London,
1985, pp.112-113. Emphasis original)
30/01/2007
"Most of today's biochemists and geologists are convinced that life on earth began, a few billion years ago,
with the appearance in earth's primeval seas of one or more carbon-containing molecules of something
resembling nucleic acid, perhaps combined with something resembling protein, and capable of self-
replication. The appearance of such a molecule (or molecules) does not require, these scientists believe, the
intervention of supernatural power. It can be explained satisfactorily in terms of physical laws, combined
with the laws of mathematical probability." (Gardner, M., "The Ambidextrous Universe: Mirror Asymmetry
and Time-Reversed Worlds," [1964], Penguin: Harmondsworth UK, Second Edition, 1982, p.125)
30/01/2007
"Such a view is deeply disturbing to a certain type of religious believer. In the United States there are still
millions of Protestant fundamentalists, most of them in the South, who do not believe in evolution. These
fundamentalists are convinced that about six thousand years ago, in a series of stupendous magic tricks,
God created all living things. Millions of other devout Christians, Catholic and Protestant, accept the theory
of evolution but believe that, at some moment in earth's history, several billion years ago, a special creative
act of God caused the first living molecule (or molecules) to appear on earth. Let me confess at once that I
find something profoundly impious, almost blasphemous, about setting limits of any sort on the power of
God to bring things about in any manner He chooses. If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing
in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that He cannot make use of those laws to
cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures? A god whose creation is so imperfect that he must
be continually adjusting it to make it work properly seems to me a god of relatively low order, hardly worthy
of worship. The belief in a miraculous creation, miraculous in the sense that natural laws are momentarily
suspended by a special act of God, is what I like to call the `superstition of the finger'-the belief that God
periodically reaches into His universe, so to speak, to tinker around with it in various ways." (Gardner, M.,
"The Ambidextrous Universe: Mirror Asymmetry and Time-Reversed Worlds," [1964], Penguin:
Harmondsworth UK, Second Edition, 1982, pp.125-126)
30/01/2007
"If this union of nature and chance can be God's method of creating new species, why cannot a similar
union of nature and chance be God's method of creating the first `living' molecules? Such a view does not
make life any less wonderful or mysterious. As Loren Eiseley has said with such eloquence (at the end of his
book The Immense Journey), it only makes the elementary particles more wonderful and mysterious. `If
"dead" matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men,'
he writes, `it must be plain even to the most devoted materialist that the matter of which he speaks contains
amazing, if not dreadful powers, and may not impossibly be, as Hardy has suggested, 'but one mask of many
worn by the Great Face behind.' [Eiseley, L.C., "The Immense Journey," [1946], Vintage: New York NY,
Reprinted, 1957, p.210]" (Gardner, M., "The Ambidextrous Universe: Mirror Asymmetry and Time-Reversed
Worlds," [1964], Penguin: Harmondsworth UK, Second Edition, 19827, p.126)
30/01/2007
"Let us travel back in our mind to those desolate, primordial ages, three or four billion years ago, when no
living thing moved on the face of the earth or in its waters. How did the first `live' molecule come to be? Did
God stretch out his hand and with his finger (I speak metaphorically) push together some atoms of carbon,
oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and sulfur into the pattern of a giant polymer capable of self-replication? We
cannot say that such an event did not take place. But we can look for an explanation more dignified, more in
keeping with a larger concept of deity." (Gardner, M., "The Ambidextrous Universe: Mirror Asymmetry and
Time-Reversed Worlds," [1964], Penguin: Harmondsworth UK, Second Edition, 1982, pp.126-127)
30/01/2007
"Perhaps spores of living molecules, from somewhere else in the universe, fell into earth's oceans and found
there an environment capable of supporting them. A number of scientists have favored such a theory.
Svante Arrhenius, a famous Swedish chemist, wrote an entire book in defense of this view, Worlds in the
Making (an English translation of which was published in 1908). In this book he argued that life on earth
might have arisen from deep-frozen spores that had been propelled here through interstellar space by the
pressure of radiation from the stars. A similar idea, that living spores were earned to the earth by meteorites,
has recently been revived by several studies of the composition of certain types of meteorites rich in
carbon. In 1961 a group of American scientists reported they had found a number of complex hydrocarbons,
very much like those found on earth in living things, in a sample taken from a meteorite owned by the
American Museum of Natural History. Later that year another group of U.S. scientists found in meteorites
some microscopic particles that may be fossils of simple plant life. one scientist announced that he had
extracted living microorganisms from a meteorite, but the consensus among experts is that what he found
were contaminants picked up from the earth's atmosphere. Biochemists are prepared to admit that meteorites
may contain fossil evidence of once-living things. They are inclined to doubt strongly that life itself could
survive the radiation hazards of a journey through space, either on a meteorite or in the form of free spores.
There is, however, no longer any doubt that fairly complex carbon compounds, so essential to life as we
know it, have been formed by chemical processes outside the earth. On the morning of September 28, 1969, a
meteor exploded over the town of Murchison in Australia. It was of a type called carbonaceous chondrite,
extremely rich in carbon compounds. A team of scientists, headed by Cyril Ponnamperuma, a Sri Lankan
biochemist, later found a variety of amino acids in a fragment of this meteorite. Since then, other meteorites
have been found to contain amino acids. In 1978, a carbonaceous chondrite meteor, found on top of
Antarctic ice, was shown by NASA scientists to contain methane. It was the first proof that methane exists
outside our solar system. Amino acids had been reported before 1969 in meteorites, but the prevailing
opinion was that they were the result of contamination. `You have only to make a thumbprint on a beaker
and shake with water to obtain amino acids,' was how Ponnamperuma put it. But in the case of the
Murchison meteorite this possibility was ruled out. The main reason for ruling it out was that each amino
acid showed most equal amounts of left- and right-handed forms. Had they been of earthly origin, all of them
would have been left-handed. At about the same time that amino acids were found in meteorites, another
startling discovery of a similar nature was maple by radio astronomers. They obtained strong evidence that
dozens of organic molecules were present in interstellar space. Billions of alcohol molecules, for example, are
drifting about in the constellation of Sagittarius. Formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, and formic acid have
also been identified. It seems as if there are forces capable of creating complex organic molecules almost
anywhere in the universe." (Gardner, M., "The Ambidextrous Universe: Mirror Asymmetry and Time-
Reversed Worlds," [1964], Penguin: Harmondsworth UK, Second Edition, 1982, pp.127-128)
30/01/2007
"On a more fanciful level, science-fiction writers have imagined higher forms of intelligence traveling about
the cosmos and "seeding" planets that have physical and chemical conditions favorable to life. Thomas
Gold, the English astrophysicist, once suggested that life on earth may have arisen from microbes in the
garbage left by nonterrestrial astronauts who visited our planet several billion years ago. Most biochemists
today reject the view that life on earth had an extraterrestrial origin. Their reasons are not so much the lack
of evidence for this view, or the difficulties of explaining how life could withstand cosmic radiation on its trip
through space; their views rest mainly on the growing evidence that living organisms could easily have
arisen spontaneously right here on earth."(Gardner, M., "The Ambidextrous Universe: Mirror Asymmetry
and Time-Reversed Worlds," [1964], Penguin: Harmondsworth UK, Second Edition, 1982, p.128)
30/01/2007
"`Spontaneous generation, in the sense of a constantly occurring production of living things from '
nonliving matter, was vigorously defended by many great biologists from the time of Aristotle up to the time
of Pasteur. Before the theory of evolution became well established, it was widely thought that all sorts of
living forms, even mice, were generated spontaneously from ooze and slime or decaying animal tissue. In
Pasteur's day most chemists believed that microbes were spontaneously generated in stagnant water. In a
series of simple but brilliantly conceived experiments Pasteur proved once and for all that this was not the
case. Biologists who thought they had found evidence for it had simply not been careful enough to prevent
airborne microbes from sneaking into their flasks. Today no reputable biochemist thinks that
microorganisms are being generated, anywhere on earth, from nonliving matter. The most that could happen
would be the occasional appearance of primitive half-living molecules on the sea's surface, where they
would be quickly gobbled up by living microorganisms. Even this seems extremely unlikely. Nevertheless,
biochemists believe that spontaneous generation must have taken place at least once, 3 or 4 billion years
ago, when chemical and physical conditions on the earth were vastly different from what they are now. The
saltless oceans probably contained great quantities of ammonia and carbon dioxide. No free oxygen was
then present in the atmosphere to form a protective layer of ozone that would shield the earth from the
powerful ultraviolet radiation of the sun. This radiation, beating down on primeval waters, could have
supplied enough energy to change some of the simple hydrocarbon molecules in the sea to more complex
chain molecules. Other sources Of energy could have been the earth's heat, which may have been much
greater than now, the lightning that must have played over the sea's surface, radiation from radioactive
substances within the earth, and radiation from cosmic rays. Over a long period, perhaps more than a billion
years, with the vast oceans swirling and churning, it is not unreasonable to suppose that millions of
different complex carbon-containing molecules could have taken shape." (Gardner, M., "The Ambidextrous
Universe: Mirror Asymmetry and Time-Reversed Worlds," [1964], Penguin: Harmondsworth UK, Second
Edition, 1982, pp.128-129)
* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists. However, lack of an
asterisk does not necessarily mean that an author is an evolutionist.
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Created: 23 December, 2006. Updated: 19 February, 2007.