Indeed, dearest sister in Christ! The way the paleontologist explains his finding may have little if anything to do with what the microbiologist has found in his lab. On the question of the spontaneous origin of life, for instance, Doron Aurbach, professor of chemistry at Bar Ilan University, Israel, has written (in Divine Action and Natural Selection, 2009):
We, the scientists, struggle on a daily basis with chemical reactions and experience their complexity, the difficulties in reaching the desirable efficiency, and the unexpected diversity if the products that chemical reactions may produce. Based on our daily experience with these reactions, we perceive the chemistry of life to be simply astonishing. Researchers have received Nobel Prizes for their success in producing natural products, where they had to design highly complex, multistage reactions, starting with kilograms of starting materials, and, at the end of a long and complex process, demonstrating the achievement of their goal with milligrams of pure materials. [In comparison, in] ... photosynthesis, each leaf of a plant conducts hundreds of simultaneous processes, all occurring at 100% efficiency, and milligrams of starting materials are converted by multistage processes to milligrams of desired products with no undesirable residues.My question is: If the origin of life can't be explained in this way — i.e., as the culmination of accidental reactions produced by chance — then why should we think the theory of evolution — itself based on accidental reactions produced by chance, culminating in mutations, which are then "selected" for fitness value — could fare any better?Many polymers that comprise living tissues such as proteins are composed of building blocks, or molecules, and, in the case of proteins, amino acids, which have the lowest symmetry possible. Such molecules are termed chiral and possess a property that is called optical activity (related to their interaction with polarized light). This low level of symmetry is of itself of signal importance in order to have proteins with very specific structures and active sites that can act as enzymes. However, all the usual syntheses of low symmetry compounds [in the lab] produce mixtures of molecules that are called racemic mixtures, which possess no optical activity. The production of optically-active molecules requires the so called asymmetric synthesis in which chiral, optically-active molecules must be involved. Here we have another chicken and egg situation: how did nature begin to produce chiral, optically-active materials that could then continue to direct most of the natural syntheses to produce chiral, optically-active materials?
Clearly, even as we better understand the chemistry of life, it does not enable us to suggest solid and sound routes for its spontaneous beginning. All this invokes our increasing wonder at the ingenious design of amazing, highly complicated and simultaneous processes that make life possible. It should be emphasized that the simultaneous manner of all the multistage chemical processes of life is crucial to its existence. The failure of a single system or a single reaction may, in most cases, lead to failure of the entire living system.
In conclusion, the origin of life cannot be explained by spontaneous, sporadic, accidental reactions that, by chance, crystallized into the amazing and inspiring chemistry of life that we are struggling to decipher.
As Aurbach puts it, "Giving sporadic mutations (in series) the ability to form functional organs is nothing but an absurd belief in the power of accidents to evolve into ingenious design."
Evolutionists list findings related to fossils, remnants of ancient animals, and the like in order to prove their theories. There is no question that our world has a history that is reflected by ruins and fossils, and it is clear from these relics, which have been found almost everywhere on earth, that there were species that lived during certain epochs and then disappeared. There have been many events of mass extinction of the flora and fauna of our planet.... There is strong evidence that the earth's climate has changed over the years, and that our planet underwent pronounced geological and geographical changes since its inception. However, do any of these findings really prove that there was macro-evolution, namely, processes whereby species developed and became increasingly more complex and sophisticated as the result of random, accidental genetic changes and mutations that were attenuated and selected by environmental constraints? Definitely not! Real science, true science, involves cycles of induction and deduction and can only be conclusive in relation to the present, not to the past.... Any conclusions related to the past, especially the prehistoric past from which we have no written documentation, are, by definition, speculative. Therefore, any scenario suggested as the history of our planet cannot really be proven. [Itals added for emphasis]Aurbach's point about the "speculative" is precisely the point I've been trying to make to atlaw, who evidently wants me to say how the findings of microevolution are capable of being extrapolated to the case of macroevolution. What I was trying to suggest is that this cannot be done in principle if what you want at the end of the day is science — not speculation, or the corroboration of one's blind faith in the efficacy of nature as a blind, chance process.
To conclude with another observation from Aurbach: "All the technological advances from which we benefit so much nowadays have only come about because nature is governed by rules that can be precisely and mathematically described. Hence, it is a great pity that science has been enlisted improperly by some groups to support invalid theories that describe reality as accidental."
Thank you so very much for your thoughtful, perceptive analysis, dearest sister in Christ!
I just wrote on another thread:
My first degree was in chemistry, and though I no longer work directly in the field, it has been my experience that chemists and biochemists are among the least enthusiastic of scientists when it comes to believing that all life evolved from a single-celled organism. I'm probably in the minority here because I do believe that the facts support evolution, but, say (hypothetically), a seal evolving into a walrus is a long way from a microbe evolving into a human.
It's easy for a structural biologist to point to microbes with a spot sensitive to light and say, "Look, all eyeballs evolved from that tiny speck." From the chemical point of view, there is a vast difference in complexity. We don't have thousands of chemicals in our bodies just looking for something to do. Every chemical has its purpose. For example, it wasn't all that long ago that scientists did not understand the role that nitric oxide plays in the human body.