Without Reason You Are Blind, Without Faith, You Are Dead
So at work today, we had this chat about creationism and spontaneous generation of life. We were all pretty much agreed about a few points. But I think I made the guys think a little.
- Don't confuse "evolution" with "spontaneous life origination". They are very different. Evolution is what happens when genetically stronger lions are better hunters so weak lions die before they can breed. Eventually every lion is genetically predisposed to be strong. Spontaneous life origination is when source elements somehow get together and form a protein. Then that protein meets other proteins and then DNA happens and then somehow a cell happens. Only morons don't think that life evolves. Every year, flu season makes that rock solid case. Spontaneous generation, however, is conceivable, but ridiculously improbable, and so far, completely un-doable in a laboratory.
- One possibility for the origin of life is that God created everything. It is conceivable, no less probable than any other idea, and completely un-debatable in a scientific context.
- Another possibility is that since life could not have originated on such a young planet as earth (I mean come on! a few trillion years for all that Amino MAGIC), it must have originated somewhere else (in an elecro-chemical environment that is unknown to us) over a few quadrillion years, and then hitched a ride on an asteroid and then landed on earth to begin the slow evolutionary process. Seems about as likely as any other idea, and that adds a few years to that time window in which life was supposed to have originated.
- So we have all of these ideas that are pretty much equally plausible (unless you have a closed mind). I guess then it comes down to what you feel most comfortable believing. Maybe another way to put it is: if you are basing your argument for the non-existence (or existence) of God on the origin of life, then you make a very bad argument. The fact that life and the evolutionary process exist neither prove nor disprove the existence of God as anything more than a semantic necessity. I.e. God fills the semantic hole of "first" or "best" or "forever" and all that stuff. Don't get me wrong - I am not arguing that God doesn't exist. Far from it. I'm just saying here that mixing up all the good science that's going on with any theological argument doesn't do service to either side of the debate.
