Genesis Science Mission Blog

Why Does the Question of Origins Matter?

2022-08-02T19:16:00.003-04:00

The nature of our origin is important to who and what we are. This is because from a Biblical perspective we are special creations of God. We were created for a purpose. From a purely naturalistic and evolutionary perspective, we are nothing but cosmic accidents without any purpose whatsoever. So, the question of origins gets at the heart of who and what we are. Are we special creatures created for a purpose, or just cosmic accidents? The difference between these two makes for a big distinction.

Biblical Creation is based on the history of the Bible. That history includes creation around 6,000 years ago and a global flood around 4,400 years ago. Both of these would have been supernatural acts of God, so any effort to explain the world around us by purely naturalistic means would result in age estimates there are many times larger than they really are. This is the primary problem when it comes to dating what we see on this planet.

The fact is that the Big Bang to man evolutionary story is fundamentally atheistic. The ideas on which it was based have their roots among 18th-century atheists and deists. Modern ideas about universal common descent evolution, in particular, predate Charles Darwin and was being discussed by atheists including Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin. In fact, Charles Darwin got his ideas about universal common descent from reading his grandfather’s writings. You do not even have to look that far back to see the atheistic influence in this story. All you have to do is look at the reaction to intelligent design, or any suggestion of intelligent involvement in the process. Proponents of the Big Bang to man evolutionary story like to stress that there was no planning involved but that everything we see is just a result of unintelligent totally naturalistic forces. Yes, not everyone involved in creating it has been an atheist, but an atheistic perspective is abundantly clear.

This may come as a surprise to some people, but creationism is an alternative to naturalism, not evolution. Both creationism and naturalism are philosophical starting points for developing theories about the history of the world and universe. The Big Bang to man story is what you get when you try to explain the universe by totally naturalistic forces and exclude God from your reasoning as a starting condition. Biblical creation on the other hand not only allows for the consideration of God but requires God as an integral part of it. So, ultimately the question of origins is a question about whether or not God is taken into account when trying to understand the evidence.

There are several reasons why all this matters. The first is the logical fact that whether or not you include God when you try to explain the world around us has a profound influence on the conclusions that you come to. Furthermore, where we came from is a critical part of who and what we are. If we are just cosmetic accidents, then nothing special is lost when you slaughter millions of unborn babies or even full-grown adults. However, in the Biblical account of our origin is true then we are created in the image of God, and we are special indeed and the slaughtering of our fellow human beings is a crime against God. Finally, Jesus himself spoke of both the creation and the Genesis flood as real history. So, the very credibility of Jesus Christ is at stake in this issue. There is no room for compromise, either God created the world, or the world created itself. Which position you take affects how you see the world around us in the very evidence you are studying.

For further reading:

Scoffers: Responding to Those Who Deliberately Overlook Creation and the Flood by Simon Turpin

4 Volume Answers Book Box Set Paperback by Ken Ham

The Information Universe Part 5

2021-04-20T10:02:00.001-04:00

Here's the latest video in the information universe series

The information universe Part 3

2021-02-03T16:16:00.001-05:00

Catastrophic Martian Geology

2020-09-29T19:49:00.001-04:00

History and the Bible

2020-08-08T15:38:00.001-04:00

The Amazing Nature of Life

2020-06-25T14:43:00.001-04:00

The Anisotropic Synchrony Convention and Distant Starlight

2020-04-06T11:30:00.001-04:00

Genetics and Human Origin

2020-01-16T19:47:00.001-05:00

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 10 Snoopy for Ride Part 5

2019-05-22T14:42:00.001-04:00

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 10 Snoopy for Ride Part 4

2019-05-22T13:50:00.001-04:00

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 10 Snoopy for Ride Part 3

2019-05-22T13:01:00.001-04:00

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 10 Snoopy for Ride Part 2

2019-05-22T11:47:00.001-04:00

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 10 Snoopy for Ride Part 1

2019-05-22T11:10:00.001-04:00

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 10 Lunar Orbit Insertion

2019-05-21T10:04:00.001-04:00

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 10 TV Transmission

2019-05-20T14:09:00.001-04:00

Continuing the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 10

2019-05-18T20:54:00.003-04:00

This is the 50th anniversary the launch of Apollo 10 to the Moon

Watch coverage has it was then.

Entropy and Disorder How Do They Really Relate

2019-05-17T19:05:00.001-04:00

Here's a video describing entropy and its relationship to disorder and randomness.

SpaceX Crew Dragon Update

2019-05-06T17:01:00.001-04:00

Top 10 Reasons Abiogenesis is Not Science

2019-04-25T11:49:00.001-04:00

This is not an attack on abiogenesis itself. It is not saying that it is impossible or even wrong,. What I am saying is that it cannot be considered scientific. The following list is 10 reasons why it cannot be considered a scientific concept. The result is that abiogenesis should not be taught a public school science class. Not because it runs afoul of any religious beliefs but simply because it does not qualify as science.

#10 Abiogenesis is An atheistic presupposition

Since abiogenesis is by definition a totally naturalistic concept of the origin of life, it is inherently atheistic. This is because the idea leaves no place for God. However, its connection to atheism goes beyond this, because it is a needed presupposition of atheism and philosophical naturalism. While there are scientific reasons for life having a beginning, there are no scientific reasons requiring that it be by way of abiogenesis. Even ignoring God has a possible answer, there is no reason to not simply conclude that we do not know, and cannot know the answer. After all the origin of life took place in the past, and there are many details of the past that simply cannot be reconstructed. This is particularly true one-off events for which there were no humans around to observe and record. As a result, abiogenesis is a purely naturalistic and atheistic presupposition being forced on science and being presented as though it were scientific.

#9 It Is a Necessity of a Naturalistic Origin

Because by definition abiogenesis is supposed to be a natural process, it is ultimately a necessity of insisting on a totally naturalistic origin to life, the universe, and everything. Abiogenesis is not necessitated by science, or even implied by science. It simply results from an insistence on a naturalistic origin. It results from disallowing God as a starting assumption along with the notion that there is nothing beyond the ability of scientific explanation. In other words, they have already excluded God as an explanation and will not consider the possibility that they cannot find one. As long as you are going to insist on a totally naturalistic origin for everything, then abiogenesis is a necessity even if there is no evidence or even no possibility of. finding evidence for it.

#8 No alternative is allowed

The simple fact is that the only real alternative to abiogenesis that of life being created by an intelligent God is not allowed by establishment science. This has been made clear not only from lawsuits being used to keep this possibility out of public school science curriculum even when used in the most generic od sense but also by the reaction of religious anger that results when intelligent design shows up in a positive way in the mainstream scientific literature. What about panspermia you may ask, isn't that an alternative to abiogenesis. The answer is no it is not, this is because all panspermia does is move abiogenesis to a long time ago in a galaxy far far away and therefore totally untestable.

#7 The only evidence for abiogenesis is the assumption that it had to have happened

The simple fact is but there is no real evidence for abiogenesis. The reason why this would be that even if it did occur such chemical processes do not leave fossils. But this still means but there is a lack of actual evidence. When you for evidence for it, the answer is usually something like we exist don't we so abiogenesis must have occurred. This, of course, is nothing but circular reasoning. Sometimes, they will point to experiments the try to reproduce abiogenesis in the lab, but nothing amazing experiments demon clothes to the simplest of living cells. Furthermore, in most cases, the results of these experiments would not survive in a natural environment. It's interesting in some of these experiments are, probably really show is an interest in chemistry but not actual evidence for abiogenesis.

#6 Information Theory is a Problem for Abiogenesis

The reason that information Theory is a problem for abiogenesis is that living cells contain a highly complex digital information storage retrieval and processing system. Not only are such systems only known to be the result of intelligence, but there is not even a theoretical way that's such a system could be developed by natural processes. It exists in the form of a cell's DNA which is a quaternary molecular information storage system, are very complex one at that.

It is further complicated by the fact that all known information transfer processes have a source and transmitter as well as a receiver and destination. The problem for abiogenesis is that there is no source or transmitter for the information stored in the DNA are the first organisms. You cannot argue natural selection because until you get that first living cell you have nothing for natural selection to work on. As a result, abiogenesis has a problem with Information Theory. You can always make up Just So Stories as to where the information may have come from oh, but that is speculation and not science.

#5 Thermodynamics is a Problem for Abiogenesis

Before you start on me about the second law of thermodynamics, I am not using the second law of thermodynamics nor am I saying that abiogenesis is thermodynamically impossible. What I am saying is that it does have thermodynamic issues. First of all the energy applied to any prebiotic soup is going to be more likely to break down organic compounds that produce them. This problem gets worse has the more complex are those organic compounds becomes. Second, there are many aspects of a living cell but do not result from chemical necessity. The arrangement of the nucleotides in DNA is a perfect example of this problem. The arrangement of the nucleotides in DNA is not compelled by chemistry but it is based on the information that it contains and it can be any arrangement as needed to contain that information. The point is that there are many aspects of a cell necessary for life that simply cannot be produced by chemical processes, but they are easily broken down by thermodynamic processes.

#4 Abiogenesis is Unobservable

There are several reasons why abiogenesis is unobservable. The first is that if it did happen it would have happened in a place and time beyond our observation. The second reason is that if abiogenesis happens current ideas of it happens to take too long to be observable. Finally, any observation a new life where it had previously not been seen, could have numerous other explanations other than abiogenesis. They could include simply missing it before, contamination by our own actions or presents, the life that we find could simply come from another location, and there are many more possibilities. All of this adds up to abiogenesis being unobservable.

#3 Abiogenesis is Contrary to Actual Observation

The main reason there abiogenesis is contrary to observation is that life has only been observed to come from life. It is never been observed to spontaneously come into existence from dead matter. The simple fact is that the line between life and non-life spontaneously only goes one way, that is a living thing dies such that life becomes non-life. We do not see corpses spontaneously come back to life such that anyone seeing a dead person come back to life would rationally conclude that it was an act of God. Not only are there no examples of abiogenesis being observed, but everything we do observe says it cannot happen.

#2 Abiogenesis is Unrepeatable

Another point is that abiogenesis is unrepeatable, ultimately the best origin of Life researchers could ever do is demonstrate that life could be produced under laboratory conditions. Not only would this require a lot of intelligence and deliberate manipulation of all the components involved it has such it would not prove that such an event could actually happen in nature. The creation of life in a lab would only demonstrate that intelligence can produce life it would not be repeating true abiogenesis. Also, the origin of life on Earth whatever its source is something that happened in the past and can't be repeated. The best we could do is to try duplicate what we think happened but that's not necessarily replicating what actually happened. It would not replicate what would have happened in nature even if the origin of life were a natural occurrence. This is because any effort to do so would be done under carefully controlled laboratory conditions the would be designed to prevent the products are being destroyed.

#1 Abiogenesis is untestable

If abiogenesis did occur on Earth it can never be tested. It would be a one-of-a-kind event with no one present to observe and would not have occurred under conditions or on a scale that would leave a fossil record. Furthermore, even if all of the evidence proved beyond even an irrational doubt that abiogenesis did not occur on Earth, it could just be moved to Mars or some other planet. Once again the ultimate rescue of abiogenesis would be that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. All this shows is that abiogenesis is an untestable hypothesis and therefore does not qualify as science.

Abiogenesis does not qualify as science largely because it does not meet any of the main qualifications to be considered science. It is not based on observation, in fact. it is contrary to observation. It is not repeatable because if it happened it is a one-off event in the past for which there is no actual information. Ultimately it doesn't qualify as science because it is fundamentally untestable. Not only because it cannot be observed but because even if it can be proven impossible here on Earth it can always possible can we move it to some distant place and time that makes testing it impossible.

NASA Twin Study Report

2019-04-16T15:46:00.001-04:00

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Arabsat 6A Launch

2019-04-12T01:01:00.001-04:00

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Arabsat 6A April 11

2019-04-10T23:03:00.001-04:00

First photo of a black hole

2019-04-10T13:27:00.001-04:00

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Arabsat 6A April 10

2019-04-09T13:13:00.001-04:00

Imaging of Exoplanets Provides a Look at Its Atmosphere

2019-04-08T18:11:00.001-04:00