Elsewhere on this website, I assert that no informed person believes life came from inert chemicals.
What then to make of the Youtuber Veritasium? In his episode “If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand evolution”
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX7PdJIGiCw
Veritasium presents a theory that life did come from non-life. How strong is his case?
His scenario begins with chemical soup and energy. From this point, molecules form, and then blobs of molecules form until ultimately some megablobs become self-replicating.
He doesn’t acknowledge it, but he has just invoked a miracle.
The only known self-replicating molecules are the DNA and RNA molecules inside living cells. There are no known self-replicating molecules outside of a living cell. They do not exist. The world outside the cell is simply too hostile for these fragile molecules, if they form, to last any significant amount of time.
But in his telling, the delicate RNA or DNA came first, survived somehow, then somehow built protective structures around itself. This narrative denies reality. Therefore it can be fairly characterized as a miracle.
His argument is dead at this point, but we’ll assume it is possible in order to evaluate the rest of the argument.
There is a recently coined expression one sees a lot in short, pithy on-line writing: ” Expression is doing a lot of work in this sentence.” It perfectly fits some of his statements. He states that the self-replicating megablobs “stumble upon” ways to move or “stumble upon” mutations to aid survival. “Stumble upon” is doing a lot of work in these sentences. He is saying that random mutations eventually lead to better megablobs.
We know that cells need DNA information in order to build structures. This information tells the cell what the structures are to be, and how they are to be built. Blueprint-type information. Specifications. Where does this information come from? Information does not come from random processes. The only known source of information is an intelligent mind.
Veritasium’s “stumble upon” narrative essentially claims that random mutations created the information needed to build out the rest of the cell. This is the Monkey theory: That an infinite number of monkeys typing away on typewriters will eventually reproduce Shakespeare. This is nonsense. Professor Gerald Schroeder has proven that even a single 488 letter sonnet can’t be reproduced, even if the entire universe is converted into high speed computer chips producing a billion sonnet trials per second, and assuming the big bang timeline.
http://www.geraldschroeder.com/ScientificMyths.aspx
Information from random processes is the second miracle that Veritasium invokes. With these two miracles, Veritasium has magicked away gigantic, insurmountable obstacles to evolution.
He then adds a simulation that provides a veneer of rigor to the analysis. Humbug. The simulation has both miracles built in.
His world view does not seem to allow him to acknowledge our Creator God. What he has done is come up with the best possible explanation for life that excludes our Creator God.
I reaffirm my assertion: No informed person thinks life came from inert chemicals. The only persons that claim to do so have slipped miracles into their narrative.
