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Theory of Darwinism (Origin of
Species – 1859). In 1973,
Dr. Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate for discovering the DNA structure and Leslie
Orgel, chemist at California’s SALK Institute, rejected the notion of a random,
chance start to life on earth. First, life as we know it depends on
traces of the rare element molybdenum, and it is argued that it would more
likely have evolved on a planet in which the element was more abundant. Second, there is but a single genetic code
to all life, and, if it had developed by chance in ‘some primordial ocean,’
then with multiple chance beginnings, more than one genetic code would be
expected. The idea that life could have
arrived by meteorite is rejected, because of the radiation damage during its
long space journey. The field of
possibility, therefore, has been narrowed to the choice between miraculous
supernatural creation and life having been deliberately brought to earth by
intelligent extraterrestrial beings in the remote past. [i] Of course that theory (Panspermia) requires
faith in the spontaneous generation of life on some other planet and a seeding
visit from galactic space. In 1979,
Sir Bernard Lovell, British physicist and radio
astronomer, the first Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory from 1945 to 1980, made the
following statement in his book In the Centre of Immensities: “The operation of pure chance would
mean that within half a billion year period the organic molecules in the
primeval seas might have to undergo 1050 (one followed by fifty
zeroes) trial assemblies in order to hit upon the correct sequence. The possibility of such a chance occurrence
leading to the formation of one of the smallest protein molecules is
unimagibably small. Within the boundary
conditions of time and space we are considering it is effectively zero.”[ii] In 1980 an historic conference was held in Chicago’s
Field Museum, attended by 160 of the world’s top paleontologists, anatomists,
evolutionary geneticists, and developmental biologists. The content of the conference directly
challenged the uncertain position of the neo-Darwinian theory, which had
dominated evolutionary biology for the previous decades (“neo” because this was
already a theoretical “mutation” of 1930 on the 1859 initial theory). The most important outcome of the meeting on
which most were agreed was that the small changes from generation to generation
within a species can in no way accumulate to produce a new species. This was a radical and major departure from
the “evolutionary” faith. Before the
conference a scientist could fail an exam or lose a job for not subscribing to
the neo-Darwinian mechanism. After
1980, that unbelief is no longer worthy of excommunication. The “punctuated equilibria” theory took a
rather prominent position at this conference and, although not accepted by the
die-hard neo-Darwinists, was generally well received and will undoubtedly
occupy tomorrow’s textbooks as the new faith.[iii] In 1981, Sir Fred Hoyle, atheist,
and professor of astronomy at Cambridge, wrote in his article “The Big Bang in
Astronomy,” for New Scientist: “Anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the Rubik cube will concede
the near impossibility of a solution being obtained by a blind person moving
the cube faces at random. Now imagine
1050 blind persons (standing shoulder to shoulder, these would more
than fill our entire planetary system) each with a scrambled Rubik cube and try
to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved
form. You then have the chance of
arriving by random shuffling (random variation) of just one of the many
biopolymers on which life depends. The
notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell
could be arrived at by chance in a primordial soup here on Earth is evidently
nonsense of a high order. Life must
plainly be a cosmic phenomenon.”[iv]
[i] Ian Taylor, In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order (Toronto, TFE Publishing, 1991), pp.195 and 196. [ii] Bernard Lovell, In The Centre of Immensities, (London: Hutchison, 1979), p.83. Cited in Taylor, In the Minds of Men, pp.201 and 202. [iii] Ibid., p.166. [iv] Fred Hoyle, The big bang in astronomy,” New Scientist, London 92, 19 November 1981, p.571. Cited in Taylor, In the Minds of Men, p.202. |