Ask the Atheist

I said closer, not close. We're nowhere near the mark, but we still know more than we did last year. That's all it takes to inspire optimism and justify further research. You are suggesting that the researchers should simply stop, on something like the third step of a journey of many miles, because they cannot see the destination.

The RNA in the experiment replicated itself as directly as any life form, because life also uses external material to do it. The only difference is that living cells generally internalise and process that material first. Food only helps us grow new cells after we eat it, but the new cells are still made from what used to be food.

The "evolution" phase of the experiment was certainly an exercise in natural selection; the stronger replicators won out. Only the mutations were artificial.

The paper plane analogy is indeed sensible. The children who actually grow up to make Boeing 747s generally start out by making paper planes. Every aeronautics engineer was a kid once. As their understanding increases, they can build more advanced models, then small parts of real aircraft, and finally oversee the design and construction of a complete flying machine.

The paper plane phase is important because it demonstrates to children that the principles of flight can apply to any material, from cardboard to titanium. All they have to do is learn and then apply them. The discovery of flight in general is similar: from lift to thrust to steering, from balloons to propellers to wings and flaps, we applied the different principles as they came to be understood. At every stage we knew it was possible, because birds did it all the time. Skeptics at the time, like the chief engineer of the US Navy, said, "If God had intended that man should fly, he would have given him wings."

While it's much more difficult to discover the principles of an event so rare it may only ever have happened once, the first spontaneous self-replicator made from organic material which didn't do this previously is a proof of concept for at least one stage in the process. Particularly when it's made of RNA, the leading candidate for the precursor of DNA in our own ancestral cells (see the RNA world hypothesis). The next step is to generate the RNA itself from something simpler.

I'll address both your numbered points at once.

The basic composition of a cell hasn't changed much since the origin of the common eukaryotic (e.g. human) cell, but there are simpler versions like the prokaryotic (e.g. bacterial) cell. That likely came from a protobiont, which by definition is not a cell at all but a simpler collection of organic molecules in a membrane. Protobionts could exhibit reproduction, metabolism and irritability, so that's half of your list covered. The membranes at least have formed in laboratories in conditions similar to the early Earth.

A protobiont with the right material in it (RNA's a good start) would function like and essentially BE a prokaryote. The chances of a given protobiont having this ideal mix were very small, but the conditions varied across Earth and the materials were abundant. The chances for the first prokaryote were almost endless.

Get the idea, Frame? If a cell-like structure gets any simpler than a prokaryote, it no longer qualifies as a cell. Therefore an "ultra-simple" cell, relative to a prokaryote, is an oxymoron, therefore there are none. Otherwise, protobionts qualify. The only objection is semantic.

Without time travel, obviously we'll never witness and verify the original abiogenesis event. That doesn't mean we'll never understand or replicate it, or that it's not worth trying. Nor does that mean it's wise to assume that it's impossible until it happens. Nor does it all mean that a more likely scenario is that a being with no origin and yet unlimited presence, with no education and yet unlimited knowledge, caused it deliberately.

It might however seem that way to someone who's already swallowed that pill; someone for whom the most complex, exotic and I would argue unlikely entity imaginable is simply a given. The impression of natural processes as hopelessly inferior to something supernatural and invisible just doesn't extend beyond religious belief.

Evolution and abiogenesis seem to take the form of gods only to those who see the handiwork of a god in everything. The difference is that in the case of evolution we can actually see how it happens without divine assistance, and in the case of abiogenesis we have several hypotheses that in principle we will be able to test. They make more sense the more we investigate, not less. Contrast this with Christian theology, where the quest to understand the nature of God is literally endless and nothing of it, even His existence, may ever be confirmed.

I said that the founders of modern science were mostly Christian, not that Christianity was the impetus. They were all white people too - do we owe modern science to the white race? No, we owe it to individuals who put their beliefs aside and looked at the evidence.

As I explained, they searched for natural explanations and did not invoke divine intervention; only afterward did they credit God for what they had found. God was not actually useful to their work, but fortunately He was not a hindrance either because presupposing His existence does not imply or predict anything one can test.

"Agnostic" is a stronger word than you think. It can imply that it is impossible to know the divine, not simply that one does not know. In the context of science, the existence of a god is currently irrelevant for two reasons. It does not change the fact that there are natural processes at work which can be investigated. It is also untestable, as I say above. Besides, you're confusing agnostic science with agnostic scientists when you bring their personal lives into this.

Science does make basic assumptions of naturalism, but it tests them. If positive evidence, rather than gaps in positive evidence, emerged which established supernatural intervention in the universe beyond reasonable doubt, these assumptions would be happily discarded. Scientists like to find out for themselves that they're wrong, because the discovery itself makes them famous and because they genuinely want to know the facts.

Only the religious suggest options 1 and 2. This is fitting, given the campaign to make natural abiogenesis sound impossible, because 1 and 2 suppose multiple abiogenesis events and make a god sound more likely. Evolutionary theory implies your un-numbered third option, not because it's easier but because genetics have shown that all life has a single common ancestor. (Evolution is undirected, yes, but it's not a chance process as long as there are good reasons why one creature outlives another.)

There is no metaphysical claim associated with any of this. The search for a natural process of abiogenesis takes no position on the existence of gods. It simply supposes that IF a god exists, it either did not intervene in this event or it set up the natural process beforehand, as Francis Collins supposes with evolution. If any stage in the process is found to be literally impossible, this may suggest direct intervention instead.

Evolution and abiogenesis, whether right or wrong, do indeed explain the observable, because we observe life. It is sometimes necessary to posit the unobserved to explain the observed, as it was with gravity and germs. Eventually, the means becomes available to observe more. Gravity waves have been detected, germs appear under a microscope, horseflies have speciated in front of us ("macro-evolution" in action) and we've watched the precursors of life do lifelike things like self-replicate.

Sandage was apparently convinced of an intelligent designer by the general complexity of the universe and by the origin of life problem, in the 1970s when abiogenesis research had produced little more than amino acids. That's also about the time when he ceased to be regarded as the pre-eminent observational cosmologist. Carl Sagan, whose career spanned about the same period as Sandage's, begged to differ. Take two minutes and read his piece Pale Blue Dot.

Evolutionary theory is crucial to medicine, for one thing. There's a new flu shot every year because influenza is evolving so fast we can feel it happening. Swine flu is one of its stronger incarnations. Here's a list of the other major uses. See which ones you like.

There's no scientific advancement or discovery that all Christian scientists would reject, because plenty of Christians will happily accept a natural explanation instead of a miracle by crediting God with nature. As I've said, God always fits around science.

However, going back to the foundation of modern science as you're fond of doing, Galileo would have told you what the Church's own science department would not accept as scientific. They only apologised to him posthumously (in the 1990s) for threatening him with torture if he continued to undermine geocentricity and Heaven's physical location outside of the largest celestial sphere. It's impossible to disprove gods, but some specific dogma is vulnerable to evidence.

Dawkins certainly wishes to overcome the impression of design because he honestly thinks it is wrong. If you read a book of his, he will tell you why. The difference between your reasoning and his is that for you God is a premise, so "Firmly In Christ" are you. The absence of gods for him, and for me, is not a premise but a conclusion.

The thing about firing in the dark is that one can see much by the muzzle flashes and ricochet sparks. Each shot is usually truer than the last. If not for decades of research, the RNA experiment this year could not have happened.

Thanks for putting "atheistic faith" in quotes, Tom. I would have too; it's nothing more than an expression by religious apologists. It's an oxymoron - what atheists have isn't faith, it's confidence based on the evidence so far.

Lee Strobel would be a fair enough apologist if he didn't claim to know all sides of the story. The man goes out interviewing to get different opinions, but only ever seems to find or feature people who are currently believers.

The first objection raised here (the excerpt doesn't say by who) is the idea that information does not form or increase by chance. It does. For a simple example, stir a bowl of alphabet soup and see how many words jump out at you. Argue this point further if you want my full position, but please, first search this site for where I've already done so.

As the recent experiment demonstrated, an RNA molecule does not need an identical molecule nearby to self-replicate. Those molecules joined together two halves of themselves. Therefore all that's needed is for the sum of a molecule's parts to be present. In another iteration of the experiment (read the article again) two very different molecules manufactured each other. This shortens the odds considerably, because the options are opened up wide.

Even if not, the odds you quote are not unassailable. As I've been saying all along, the opportunities spanned the surface area of the Earth, the depth of the ocean and a billion years.

The diameter of the Earth is 12,500 kilometres and the width of a molecule is less than 2 nanometres. That's about 10^32 molecules' worth of lateral space, or I'm much mistaken. Add a factor of a billion for volume where the ocean is just two metres deep, and then multiply by the time, say in seconds. That's about enough billions to match your bid, or at least give a fighting chance. We knew it was rare to begin with, because it hasn't apparently happened since.

The above broadly addresses the argument by Jay Roth that the starting complexity of DNA or RNA was too unlikely. Moving on, you fail to mention the full positions of the other biologists you quote to support Strobel.
- Robert Shapiro argues that metabolism and self-replication developed without RNA.
- Graham Cairns-Smith advocates an entirely different theory of abiogenesis involving clay crystals, which while not widely known or accepted is still viable today.
- Gerald Joyce conducts much of his research with both RNA and DNA, seeing them both as at least analogous to life. He merely does not think that RNA came first in our own heritage.

All of the above advocate natural abiogenesis, they are simply in the current minority pursuing other avenues they see as more productive. All of them are producing interesting work in those avenues, and progress in one does not invalidate another. Someone may actually hit upon a viable method other than the one that produced us.

That leaves only author, Moonie crusader and Discovery Institute favourite Jonathan Wells. He's been famous since his testimony at the Dover trial, so his arguments have been answered, and savaged for good measure, all over the web. Here's a taste.

You do mention Stephen Meyer, poster-child of the Expelled conspiracy theory, in your references. Another Discovery Institute front man, he embarked on a life of anti-Darwinism without having studied biology (he's a geologist). The jewel of his academic output is eviscerated here.

I'll respect the conclusions of Lee Strobel relative to biology or anything else when he runs a full interview with, not just quotes briefly, someone who genuinely opposes his point of view at the time. Until then I see him as a seeker of yes-men. That doesn't mean his arguments are invalid, it just gives me confidence that there are existing answers to them. So I go and find them.

Anonymous...that's probably you, Tom, or a friend of yours. Do remember to log in.

Did you know Michael Denton has changed his position since 1985 when he wrote Evolution: ATIC? In his second and last book Nature's Destiny he accepts common ancestry and gradual progression ("biological evolution") between all species, in stark contrast to his earlier arguments against the idea. He now argues that a fine-tuned universe made the process (and us) inevitable. He's changed from a straight creationist to a theistic evolutionist.

Now, just because Denton doesn't use an argument anymore doesn't necessarily mean it's invalid, so the link above to Evolution: ATIC contains a concise reply to the cytochrome C argument.

To summarise even further, the differences between cytochrome C in modern organisms are not so important because modern organisms are not descended from each other. There are no "living fossils", only organisms which look like much older organisms - all forms of life today are cousins. Cytochrome C has changed over time relative to our common ancestor over exactly the same amount of time, not between modern creatures. Using only non-extinct creatures in the analysis missed the real progression.

For a full and very clear reply to the argument (with pictures) by a biologist, see here.

On your other topic, there will always be "missing links", no matter how many fossils are unearthed. Say a fossil is found which forms a perfect link between two species; we can then look for two intermediate links between that fossil and those either side of it in the progression. EVERY unknown species is a missing link until it's discovered. The difference from WMDs is that, like these two examples in the last month, they just keep turning up.