There’s an old story about a chemist, a physicist, and an economist
stranded on a desert island with nothing to eat but a can of soup. Puzzling over
how to open the can, the chemist says, “Let’s heat the can until it swells and
bursts from the buildup of gases.” “No, no,” says the physicist, “let’s throw it
off that cliff with just enough kinetic energy to split it open on the rocks
below.” The economist, after thinking a moment says, “Assume a can
opener.”
There’s more than one trade that deals in assumptions. The way Darwinists
approach the origin of life is a lot like that economist’s idea for opening the
can. The Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection explains
everything about life, we’re told—except how it began. “Assume a
self-replicating cell containing information in the form of genetic code,”
Darwinists are forced to say. Well, fine. But where did that little miracle come
from?
A new discovery makes explaining even that first cell tougher still.
Fossils unearthed by Australian scientists in Greenland may be the oldest traces
of life ever discovered. A team from the University of Wollongong recently
published their findings in the journal “Nature,” describing a series of
structures called “stromatolites” that emerged from receding
ice.
“Stromatolites” may sound like something your doctor would diagnose, but
they’re actually biological rocks formed by colonies of microbes that live in
shallow water. If you visit the Bahamas today, you can see living
stromatolites.
What’s so special about them? Well, they appear in rocks most scientists
date to 220 million years older than the oldest fossils, which pushes the
supposed date for the origin of life back to 3.7 billion years
ago.
This, admits the New York Times, “complicate[s] the story
of evolution of early life from chemicals...” No kidding! According to
conventional geology, these microbe colonies existed on the heels of a period
when Earth was undergoing heavy asteroid bombardment, making it virtually
uninhabitable. This early date, adds The Times, “leaves comparatively little
time for evolution to have occurred…”
That is an understatement. These life forms came into existence virtually
overnight, writes David Klinghoffer at Evolution News and Views. “Genetic code,
proteins, photosynthesis, the works.”
This appearance of fully-developed life forms so early in the fossil
record led Dr. Abigail Allwood of Caltech to remark that “life [must not be] a
fussy, reluctant and unlikely thing.” Rather, “[i]t will emerge whenever there’s
an opportunity.”
Pardon me? If life occurs so spontaneously and predictably even under the
harshest conditions, then it should be popping up all over the place! Yet
scientists still cannot come close to producing even a single cell from raw
chemicals in the lab.
Dr. Stephen Meyer explains in his book “Signature in the Cell” why this
may be Darwinism’s Achilles heel. In order to begin evolution by natural
selection, you need a self-replicating unit. But the cell and its DNA blueprint
are too complicated by far to have arisen through chance chemical reactions. The
odds of even a single protein forming by accident are astronomical. So Meyer and
other Intelligent Design theorists conclude that Someone must have designed and
created the structures necessary for life.
Meanwhile Darwinists, faced with a fossil record that theoretically
pushes the origin of life back further into the past, are forced to assume the
metaphorical can opener. They just don’t know how these early cells came into
existence, and the more we dig up, the more improbable—rather than likely—life
becomes.
For them at least. Breakpoint.
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