Re: More fusillades in the ID wars

Keith Miller wrote:

"...If God is the Creator of the very stuff of creation, and the author of all of its laws and regularities, what is the implication if the creation is incapable of bringing forth that which God desires...."

No necessary implication. The creation is obviously capable, but (I assert for the sake of argument) not without outside help. No Christian creed claims for the world what Howard Van Till ascribes to it. There's no reason for Christians as Christians to think that God might not have provided the outside help. Their thinking need not fit criteria for elegance, etc.

"From a different perspective, I recently attended the Gordon Conference on the Origin of Life in Ventura, CA. It was a very interesting event. While the issues and problems are numerous, one of the clear impressions is that the transition to living systems is far from impossible...."

The jury of course is still out. However, until it shows signs of coming closer to a decision, I side with Francis Crick in believing that we're dealing here with the impossible.

Gerald Schroeder in The Science of God speaks of "...an exotic property of molecular self-organization rapidly [joining] the necessary chemicals into self-replicating molecules and then a yet-to-be discovered series of catalysts [developing] these fecund molecules into life itself." Just like that. If it's anything like that, once we figure out under what conditions chemicals lead to living cells, we should be able to create such living cells routinely in the lab, because long periods of time apparently weren't part of the recipe--and in fact probably couldn't have been, if you think about it.

Unless I see some fairly clear supporting evidence, I choose not to believe such scenarios. The world was not a carefully controlled lab when life arose. Yet, with the best high-tech controls available, and after all we've learned about biochemistry, we today can't approach the solution even piecemeal.

Don

 
Received on Fri Feb 4 02:12:52 2005