Wednesday, July 23, 2008

By Chance Given Time

Ok, I haven't written in a while, but I was just reading some online articles and one caught my eye called New Research Suggests Simple Approach to Beginning of Life, by Michael Schirber of LiveScience.com. In the article, which I've quoted below, we once again find the popular scientific formula for the formation of life. It goes like this: Space+Time+Chance=Life.

In a previous post I wrote called The Soft Pillow of Science (Wednesday, July 11, 2007), I wrote how scientists today ascribe power to the word chance; and not just any power, but the power to create something from nothing. You can go back and read that post to understand what I mean. Here is the quote found in the article:

Primordial soup

Many scientists believe the origin-of-life story is that complex biological compounds assembled by chance out of an organic broth on the early Earth's surface. This pre-biotic synthesis culminated in bio-molecules being able to make copies of itself. The first support for this idea of life arising out of the primordial soup came from the famous 1953 experiment by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, in which they generated amino acids — the building blocks of proteins — by applying sparks to a test tube of hydrogen, methane, ammonia and water. If amino acids could come together out of raw ingredients, then bigger, more complex molecules could presumably form given enough time.


That quote (emphasis mine) shows the prevailing alternative to the idea of life being created by a self existent, eternal, purposive Being who is the cause of all effects; the Unmoved Mover as Aristotle called Him. Chance is not a thing! It can not create anything no matter how much time is allowed.

Oh, and by the way, if I were around in 1953 I would have asked Stanley Miller and Harold Urey if they could recreate their primordial soup experiment once again, only this time they first need to also create their own hydrogen, methane, ammonia and water starting with nothing. How did those chemicals get in place before a stray lightning bolt caused the supposed reaction? Ex nihilo nihil fit!

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