On "Cambridge Round Table on Science and religion: Dr James Tour and Dr Lee Cronin" from 2023

The origin of the video to be discussed can be found on youtube but looking up "Cambridge Round Table on Science and Religion: Dr James Tour and Dr Lee Cronin" T here have been a lot of bold claims made about Origin of Life Research.In a recent study wherein 84% of the people were college educated with most having degrees, the following two claims found great acceptance. 1, Have scientists created Frogs in a lab? A third of the public said yes. 2, Have scientists working under simulations of Earth’s early atmosphere mixed molecules together in a laboratory to create single-cell life forms? (AKA bacteria) 67% of the public said yes. There has been an ongoing battle over whether these claims are true and whether the claims being made harm science. Lets meet some of the players. Dr James Tour is quite an accomplished synthetic organic scientist and professor. His bona fides are incredible and he is well recognized in his field of synthetic chemistry. As a rough gauge, scientists have what is known as their “H-index” which takes into account their peer-reviewed published papers, how often those are interacted with, cited and so forth. A score of 20 is 40, 40 impressive and by the time you reach 60 you are exceptional. One study showed that something like 84% of Nobel Prize winners in the science disciplines had a H-index of 60 or better. Tour sits at 150. I believe the highest ever recorded is 172…so…he is up there. He brings in a tremendous amount of funding for research to Rice University, in collaboration with his students they have started numerous businesses, hold a bunch of patents and they have invented some really cool things. Check out his “nanocars” as just one example. A few years ago he started to fall out of favor with a certain segment of the Origin of life scientific community. He had the temerity to notice that some claims that were being made were not what the papers being published said and he pointed that out. Repeatedly. As he began to object more strenuously, pointing out that the chemical interactions were impossible it drew the ire of an internet personality who calls himself “Professor Dave” on Youtube, and his name is Dave Farina. Things escalated to the point they had a public debate at Rice. The debate is hard to watch. Farina, completely out of his depth in the chemistry portion, resorts to ad hominem, profanity laced bromides while Tour, upset that Farina cannot see the chemistry Tour has written on the board for all to see, responds with an escalated voice and shouting. They then fire shot after shot on youtube. And from an informational and factual standpoint Tour absolutely destroys Farina. He goes into the papers that Farina has taken the abstract and point by point by point shows that the papers not only do not prove the claims in the abstract but often contradict them. Farina responds by calling Tour clueless and a fraud without showing an iota of evidence. He then manipulates some videos to make it look like experts in the field agree with him. Tour talks directly to the experts who mostly have never even heard of Farina much less talked to him and who universally say that Farina’s claims are wrong. Tour also goes and shows how each of Farina’s experts actually confer with Tour. And then he reaches the moment of truth. He lays out a challenge to 10 leaders in the research field, primarily those whose papers are the bulk of the debate. He selects 5 questions and the ten experts. Questions he weights heavily in their favor. He lays out 5 questions and suggests that if any of the ten key researchers can answer any of the 5 essential questions they are allowed to decide if they answered any of the 5 questions and if they so decide, he will remove all his content. He lets them start with a lof of stuff that could not exist in the conditions being discussed (more on this below) -All 19 canonical chiral amino acids, nucleotides, monosaccharides in 100% enantiomeric purity You have to make 1) Polypeptides 2) Polynucleotides 3) Polysachharides 4) Come up with the origin of specified information 5) Form them into textbook definition of a cell Answer any one of those. Of the 10 experts, 2 sort of engaged. Steve Benner claimed he could answer one of them in an hour. Tour offered to fly to his office while Benner did the work but he said because of health and time he could not solve it. Bold answer…something that has never been answered he can answer in an hour…but doesn’t have the time to. Okay. Lee Cronin did answer. This seems like a good time to meet Cronin, who is no slouch himself. He is a chemist professor at the University of Glasgow with an H-index of 81. In case you are curious…that puts him in the top 2% of people in his field. He is also one who as long ago as 2010 in a Ted Talk said he would make life in his lab within 2 years. (Others in the challenged list made similar time claims.) He is to be commended because, while he either could not or would not reveal the answer to any of the five questions (spoiler alert: could not as comes out in the video), he agreed to meet with Tour ina Cambridge Round Table on Science and Religion to be held at Harvard. That just happened and it was illuminating. So lets take a look at each person’s beliefs and what they are trying to do as it really colors what happens in the video. Tour makes no bones about it. He believes in God and believes deeply. He also is extremely scrupulous in his teaching, in his scientific research, and in his presentations to speak only from and about science. The only time you hear God brought up is people accusing him of putting God into it. He believes in the billions of years or “deep time” teaching and believes evolution did occur. He just thinks the research has not only not shown how life began, that it is nowhere close with any number of fatal flaws, but he has explicitly stated many times, “I believe we will discover how it began. We just haven’t done that yet and we need to stop lying to people that we have.” Cronin on the other hand is a proud atheist whose hatred of God comes out in many of his videos, tweets and speeches. He also believes in deep time, evolution as originator and guide of development of life and will freely admit that we haven't discovered the answer yet. In a way, that is what makes this Round Table both funny and tragic. These guys believe the same thing but are arguing about it as if they don’t. When the video begins the moderator is unintentionally funny. There are two rules for this Round Table on Science and Religion. First, the speakers will only speak from science, no religion allowed. I mean…it is in the title…but okay. Your show, your rules and I actually think in this case it is a good one. And as the night goes on, Tour speaks exclusively from, by, and about science. Cronin takes at least three shots at God and those who believe and multiple panelists bring God into it, mostly trying to say Tour only challenges the science because of his belief in God. The second rule is even better. One person speaks at a time, both in the initial presentation, later in the smaller groups at the various tables, and then in the final panel. I have generally found debates to be worthless and largely because this rule is seldom followed. I have had people show me any number of videos from tabloids like CNN, Fox, the View, or professional agitators like Kendi, Shapiro or Kirk. They are pointless and valueless. Neither side allows the other to finish their question or expound on it, they almost inevitably devolve into both sides shouting past each other with little to no informational content and the person whose mind is changed by these bits of theater ought to have their head examined. That goes for the upcoming Presidential debates. Take a relatively simple idea…say what is inflation. Try to explain the causes, effects, and ramifications in an hour. Now condense that to 3 minutes when the opponent is spouting feel-good rehearsed sound bites that say nothing but win the crowd. Pointless. Well, Tour makes several excellent points that I will try really hard to condense and highlight without just repeating what he said. First off is he is looking at the definition of Abiogensis: Life springing from non-living matter taking into account earth as it existed 4 billion years ago and the materials must be pre-biotically relevant so you are restricted to the materials, procedures and conditions that might have been available on early earth. Well, lets take a look at just this opening salvo. Assumption 1) life springing from non-living matter It is shocking that in a world that has seen Louis Pasteur do his famous experiments on spontaneous generation that this is still considered legitimate. Well, not that shocking because as is replete in the scientific literature, the very scientific thought that “the other option is God and we know there is no God so it must have happened” shows why this base assumption is taken seriously. Assumption 2 “earth as it existed” Papers are continuously being written on what elements did or did not exist when the earth formed. Papers are constantly being written trying to figure out how the earth formed as…well, in the community it is a well known fact that under the Big Bang model, earth cannot exist as it does because the proximity to the sun would not allow water to stay in those conditions and the “planetary accretion model” that allegedly formed the earth has been disproven but we know the earth is here so even though there is no known way for it to have formed under the models, we assume the models are right. Look at the papers, I am not kidding, that is the situation. Assumption 3 “4 billion years ago” I could write so much on deep time but I don’t want to spoil a lot of the work I have been doing in preparation for next year. There are so many holes in the deep time hypothesis that we will just leave it at this; you can throw out whatever number you want and as long as it is long people will not argue it. They can’t show it and it is based on huge numbers of guesses and assumptions, but as long as it is billions you will find acceptance. Assumption 3 Pre-biotically relevant (sub-heading materials) This is several assumptions rolled into one.Nobody really knows, if the earth formed out of the elements thought to have been created by the Big Bang, which ones were present in what proportions. You can basically just plug and play and add a dash of this and a pinch of that to your heart's content knowing that since nobody knows, your guess is as good as theirs and is better since it is you and not them. Assumption 4 Procedures We think of there being 3 laws of Thermodynamics. This is not accurate but it is a thought. We also know of gravity, atoms, and so forth. When did these laws develop? How? What keeps them in place? These are important questions. For example, in the planetary accretion model it is thought that swirling clouds of gas and dust became small rocks. These rocks banged together and, improbably, instead of breaking into smaller ones, stuck together. This happened again and again until they became large enough to have their own gravity field large enough to pull in more material and behold, planets formed! Of course, gravity doesn’t work that way. For that matter, neither do rocks slamming into each other at high speed. So the procedures? Why, those are whatever we think might work and are, by definition, guesses and assumptions. Assumption 5: Conditions Not knowing the elements present, or the quantities they are in, or what laws of nature are functioning as they currently are believed to, how can you get to any reasonable facsimile of an intelligent guess at what the world was like? The “Prebiotic Soup” model will come up a bunch…and for good reason. It can be whatever the paper writer wants it to be knowing nobody can prove it wrong. They can’t show it right…but since so many levers can be pulled, it can’t be conclusively shown wrong. As becomes a theme, “you can’t prove a negative.” As Tour continues, he states one goal: Paraphrased, he says, “We are seeking an experimentally verifiable hypothesis of how life might have originated.” I can appreciate that. They are not even trying to determine what happened, just one of however many ways it could have happened. They are trying to find out if it is even possible. That feels like a far cry from “all life arose from a single celled organism to become rabbits, radishes, rhinocereous, and guys named Rand.” Care to guess whether the public believes that is already known as a proven fact? Tour uses some of Cronin’s statements and it is one Tour agrees with…a shocking theme on the evening I am not sure the two of them even realize. They believe the same thing. HEre is the paraphrase: The most basic unit of matter that could undergo Darwinian Evolution is the cell. It must exhibit these features: Genetic code Mating Metabolism Adaptation Homeostasis He reiterates his theme, which I emphasize because of how many times he says it and how as we will see people do not understand what he is trying to do. Tour: “I think that we will one day find out how life began. But I don’t think we are anywhere close.” He then makes some excellent points: we have learned a lot about the cell, how it is assembled, how it works and functions. But as we learn one thing, it opens us to previously unknown questions. Answering one question might give rise to 3, 5, 10 or more questions. Solve one of those and even more are opened up. As the night goes on at one point he demonstrates that given all the components of a cell we don’t know how to assemble one. Think of the ramifications of that. A lot of well-funded, very smart people working in teams in sophisticated labs with incredibly powerful computational devices in all their wisdom cannot assemble what they think happened by being randomly put together in incredibly hostile environments that would not allow time for it to survive much less reproduce. He then addresses another key point that is well worth thinking on. “Chemistry is the language of living systems”. Most of the rest of his opening statement is pointing out issues that have arisen: -molecules have never been known to move toward life, either on their own or through deliberate research efforts - reaction chemistry is really hard to force toward life if even possible He also points out a basic flaw, and while he cites Cronin you will find this is true in the Origin of Life community as a whole: “..calls the “Probiotic Soup Model’ a good model without any rationale as to what makes it a good model”. This is part of a sub-theme. He calls a key Cronin paper, “Formation of Oligopeptides in High Yield Under Simple Programmable Conditions” garbage and has similar words about “Taming the Combinatorial Explosion of the Formose Reaction via Recursion Within Mineral Environments”. This hurts Cronin’s feelings and as he later says, paraphrased, “Calling a paper garbage without saying why it is garbage is garbage.” Valid point and he is right to be hurt. But both elements are there: models aren’t good “because I say so” or bad for the same reason. Show the strong points and date or the weak points and contradictions. He then sets out a series of problems of which any single one is a fatal blow to any claim that we have established Origin of Life and how it even could have happened, much less how it did Nobody has shown a method to make the 4 elements (Lipids, Polysaccharides, Polynucleotides, and polypeptides) Nobody has shown a way we can use substances that landed on earth via meteorites Nobody has solved the mass transfer problem in chemical transformation from small molecules to a cell Nobody has shown probiotic route to polymerization You can’t hook the sugars together to get there Nobody has solved the side chain issue Nobody has solved the protein folding problem to do even one and you need to have several; it would take 10 to the 95th power to fold one, we think 10/40 is time allowed and 10 to the 19th is the estimated number of elements in the universe Nobody has solved the polymer stability problem when dealing with single molecules….time is the enemy Example: RNA molecule lifetime is 4 hours in a pristine lab…if the right Rna and DNA happen to form in “early earth conditions” you need 13 days and you have 4 hours at most Nobody has solved the problem with half of the amino acids needing side chain protection Nobody has solved the code problem for ordering the nucleotides/saccharides/proteins One of my favorites, nobody has ever shown that life could form with lower enantiomeric-excess mixtures which would mitigate the need for chiral induced spin selectivity… Nobody has made any higher order structures; he lists 12, of which none have been made for even the simplest cell Nobody, even if given the 4 classes of molecules, in any order desired order and being given the informational code coupe prepare even the most simple cell He spends some time discussing the 5-question challenge he laid out and addresses Cronin’s email reply where Cronin says, “I don’t even agree with the questions. The emergence of life goes beyond these narrow questions.” A fine answer that loses a bit when you realize he has published papers on two of them and addressed two others recently in podcasts. So he at the least thinks about them. Then we get into some sniping where he uses quotes Cronin has made about him not understanding information and making use of a lengthy Cronin quote about Origin of Life research being a scam. Cronin will pass that off as a joke. Read his statement or watch the video where he says it…interpret for yourself if it is a joke. Whether he meant it to be or not, he makes some really telling points about the gap between what people say they have done and what they have done, between what they say they know and what the research shows is known… And coming toward the latter portion, Tour spends time talking about Cronin’s recent publication “Assembly Theory”. He then quotes responses to it that pretty much call it a fatally flawed theory that is a pale imitation of Huffman’s coding scheme that counts repetitions in strings of data and quotes a statement, “though, unlike Assembly Theory, Huffman actually counts correctly…” Ouch. But Tour also points out that Assembly Theory abandons reaction chemistry, the underlying point being that reaction chemistry is what these guys believe makes the first non-living cell suddenly become living work. So that is a pretty telling accusation. Tour is nearing the end of his opening statement and he lays out a series of predictions: Cronin, a chemist, will not discuss anything tonight about the chemical reaction leading to life’s origin Cronin will remain silent on polypeptides, polynucleotides, and polysaccharides or any sort of polymerization Asks will people leave with more understanding of cell assembly. Let's throw up a big, blinking neon “Spoiler Alert” sign here: Cronin will not discuss chemical Reactions. He will not discuss the 4 elements. He will not explain in any meaningful way how cells could assemble. He then clearly, explicitly states his goals. This is a huge moment; he has said this repeatedly.. He has said it in published papers. He has said it in his debate versus Farina. He has said it in numerous videos. He said it earlier on this evening. Stop overambitious projections regarding the state of Origin of Life research. Don’t Abandon the basic reactions of chemistry. Concede that we do not YET (emphasis his) sufficiently understand chemical reactions to project toward life. There are enormous scientific mysteries left to unfold and we might still be hundreds of years from understanding. This last point is one he has mentioned several times in his videos, lectures, and so forth. A favorite example of his has to do with 250 years ago it was not even known there was such a thing as a human genome and now it is mapped. That is a tremendous leap forward in knowledge that has raised even more questions. Consider the progress and how much more we need to learn but what will we know in 100, 200, 300 years from now? And he concludes with a joke, “I agree with Lee Cronin.” and he shows a Cronin tweet that simply says, “Origin of Life Research is a scam.” Lee Cronin Opening Statement So then Cronin gets his time to present his case. He addresses a key theme for him early. As mentioned earlier, he addresses the “calling a paper garbage without saying why it is garbage is garbage.” Note that he does not defend the paper. In fact, as he goes on he will defend none of his work including Assembly Theory, admitting it “might be wrong” without countering the things that show it to be wrong. His issue is more how the statement that it is wrong is presented. He interjects this thought repeatedly. As he starts a wandering diatribe on how our galaxy or solar system is now seen as heliocentric. He takes time to talks about “All the problems? Yes, we can solve them” without explaining how or addressing that people believe them solved. This is the central point of disagreement. He and Tour both know there are problems. They both know the public has been deceived. To Tour this is a big deal and to Cronin the big deal is not even what Tour says but how he says it. Which brings us back to his discussion of the heliocentric. Without understanding his issue with Tour, the digression makes zero sense. What he is trying to do is show that once perhaps it was thought the earth was thought the center of the universe and then it became known the earth orbits the sun. Progress! The problem was only a problem for a time. In other words, as per his email, he is taking the time honored tactic of not answering the question asked but rather answering the question you wish was asked. He takes another shot at the volume Tour delivered his remarks in due to his passion. He cannot assail the content so he makes ad hominem attacks and tongue in cheek insults and is fine with his way of doing it because it isn’t loud. It is pretty ingenious and a deep level of hypocrisy that he will not be called out on over the course of the evening. He goes on to make assumption after assumption after assumption…”What we see here is a product of evolution, learning and selection.” His point is the tables, tablecloths, dishes and utensils are a result of evolution. These inanimate objects were designed and assembled by people who his assumption says are a product of evolution, learning and selection. Get used to that word selection., It is Cronin’s god within his god of evolution and make no mistake…they are his gods. He returns to two of his themes: the insults and whether problems are problems, saying Tour says “I am a bad chemist. I am here to say these aren’t problems, they are opportunities. We can solve them.” Again…he is in agreement with Tour that these things will be solved, it is just not known when. It is hilarious and sad at the same time how much these two agree with each other but don’t see it because of the approach. Reframing a problem as an “opportunity” is a nice bit of terminology sleight of hand. An opportunity to learn? Sure. Something that investigation may reveal heretofore unknown knowledge, issues and potentially solutions? Yes…but they are still fatal problems as the state of the field now stands and simply renaming them does not change that basic fact. Therein lies their disagreement. Starting to sound familiar? He has a very insightful remark when he says of Perceptual Filters that when new “technologies of perception emerge, they allow us to see more of reality.” This is so true. More powerful microscopes have allowed us to delve ever further into the world of atoms. Particle Accelerators allowed us to find quarks. More powerful telescopes are showing further into space and (as I quite enjoy) causing a spate of new research articles pointing out the new James Webb images are causing a raging debate where some scientists, seeing they new distant images don’t fit the model declaring the Big Bang model dead while others are saying those people don’t know what they are talking about… See, the new perceptions and seeing more of reality then fall into the realm of interpretation. As many scientists like to say, “science doesn’t say anything. It produces data to be interpreted” or similar phrases. Well, part of Cronin’s new technology of perception is his recent paper on Assembly Theory. His defense of it is amazing. He doesn’t address the problems, he doesn’t say they are incorrect. He says, “Yes, there may be problems, but look at the engagement. Yes, it might be wrong, but it might be less wrong.” As he goes on about it he makes a fascinating statement that, again, shows him in agreement with Tour who in his remarks talks about finding a way life might have begun. Cronin: “...why I think it is not relevant to look at THE origin of life, is I want to accept that chemistry, and I am a chemist, chemistry does not take billions of years to produce a life form. Evolution does take a long time, but reaction chemistry seems faster. So there’s a quandary here.” This is as close as he comes to discussing chemistry. Potentially this is a partial response to Tour pointing out all the claimed time in the universe is not enough time for a single protein to fold, that there is not enough time for a cell to form before the elements would kill it, that said cell even if it somehow miraculously formed would not have time to reproduce. Cronin’s answer? “Well, it is fast.” The answer he gives to it is not fast enough is…”it is fast.” Color me convinced! No further questions, your honor. I mean, sure, it doesn’t address the problem, just gives a GM Hand Wave and off we go. He then invokes his god to dismiss any other God, saying, “If we aren’t in a simulation and not some other fictitious creation, then there is another process going on.” See, some people who have seen the numerous fatal problems the Big Bang has going on have proposed a couple of really fun ideas to explain how we exist. One is the “multiverse” where there are infinite universes where every possible thing that could happen, no matter how unlikely, has happened…including one where I am typing this, exact in every detail except I have one fewer hair in my left eyebrow and another where I have no eyebrow and another where… And if this is not ridiculous enough, then knowing how hard it is for non-life to produce life, the idea is we are not alive at all. You don’t exist, I don’t exist…except as a computer program. Some hyper-intelligent race has developed such computing power that they are running a program simulating what life would be like under thus and such circumstances. Not thinking that idea is stupid enough yet? Well, Simulation Theory then posits that inside that simulation is a society so market they have their own simulation so we might be in that one…or the one that one created… We are well past any even thought of science and into the realm of science fiction with a healthy does of banality. It also just moves the problem of initial life to whoever started the first simulation. Well, Cronin is not going down the road of simulation. He is not going down the road of figuring out how life started. He wants to talk about the problem of what does exist. Did you see the sleight of hand he used to completely shift it? He purports to be an Origin of Life researcher. But he is not going to research how it started. He is going to start after life has already developed. See, he has never left his thoughts on Assembly Theory even as he takes these side trips. See, with Assembly Theory, you assume you have whatever building blocks you want. If say…a saccharide ever existed, the universe has a memory of it. How does a universe that has no guiding force, no mind, no goal, no end it is working toward, no brain or storage function have memory? It just does, so stop asking questions. Remember, problems aren’t problems, they are opportunities. There will now be a brief pause as I rolled my eyes so hard they are in the other room. See, he likes to say the universe is big, but combinatorial space is bigger. And so random peptides and saccharides and lipids form…not all at once…but the universe has a memory of them and with all that time and so many chances at some point they combine and abracadabra, you have a cell. I use Abracadabra because it is the word he uses to dumb down Assembly Theory for us mere mortals. Count the A’s. Once you have one, why, you can use it as much as you want. Oh, look, AB in combination…we have almost spelled Abracadabra. It is that easy to assemble these parts! My sarcasm gene is in high gear at this point. And he goes on with a series of guesses.. “If this…if this…if that…then maybe”. Color me convinced that this incredibly unlikely thing that violates pretty much every scientific principle happened because otherwise how can we explain it? Guesses and saying how it might have happened are enough! And then, knowing how weak his argument is, he brings in his god while mocking God the Creator in one go. “...some other designer…NO. It was made by one process and one process alone…selection and evolution. The watchmaker was evolved, was he not?” Well…no, no he was not. See, Cronin holds so tightly to the idea that this mindless force selection moves things towards success. How do you define success when you have no goal and no intellect pushing it? Well, one process and one process alone…selection and evolution. Let me do a quick count…selection, that is one, evolution, that is one…yep, the math checks out. I know, cheap shot, but some of his cheap shots really irritated me and this was pretty low hanging fruit. Especially as he would consider selection as part of evolution. This seems like an excellent time to point out another major problem with his philosophy. Evolution as he believes it to be has no intellect, no mind, no brain, no goal, no structure…evolution to him is a name to explain what he believes we see has happened. And yet he assigns it every trait one would expect of his mortal enemy (and mine, truth be told), “Intelligent Design”. This selection he harps about…it is not a law of nature. It is, for Cronin, inextricable from evolution as it occurred, and inviolable. It guides and steers, corrects and creates. And of course he has to return to two of his favorite themes. “I like making provocative statements to get people to think, not to get people to shout at me until they are hoarse.” A clear shot at the volume and passion Tour has. And then, referring to his paper, “When the Creationists got unhappy because it wasn’t creation-y enough, I was like, take a day off, my job is done.” There may be someone somewhere that objects for that reason. He would know. The objections I saw from Creationists were because of the major, major issues Assembly Theory has. Problems, I repeat, he never says are not actual problems, problems he admits are there, problems he does not try to solve. But that is okay, even if it is bad science, even if it is untenable, if it gets the right people upset then it is good enough for him. This is a major, major problem in the scientific community we will return to in the panel questions when talking about citations. It is not about their accuracy but who is using them… I particularly like, in his explanation and definition oAssembly Theory, the very well researched, very well developed, extremely well thought out explanation of how having previously had that building block works. “You can reuse any memory. You somehow have a memory…so it is not like Hofman coding.” Well…that settles it nicely. You have memory for the time-honored parental reason. “Because I said so.” Well…he sure told me! As he is winding down, he returns to a favorite topic. Paraphrased, he says, “You have a problem. You develop a theory. You experiment. You get an explanation. Yes, you may not be accurate but that is the process. We want criticism.” The unspoken part is “but just the right criticism from the right people. When we overstate what we know and can do, don’t call us out on that. And certainly don’t do it with a loud voice. And when what we say is pure unadulterated horse droppings, don’t point that out. And if you must point it out, don’t shout.” He then closes with his picture of a bunch of Lego bricks that have a diagram assembling them to build a man. See? If you just have all the Legos, it is easy to build a Lego Man. I don’t think he even realizes how this diagram makes Tour’s point, not his. Think about this, for a few moments. Legos are made of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene.. This is an engineered thermoplastic created from three polymers. Do you know what a polymer is? Britannica will tell you is is “any of a class of natural or synthetic substances composed of very large molecules, call macromolecules, that are multiples of simpler chemical units called monomers.”(1) Now, we start out several steps up the chain already in Cronin’s building block example. Worse, think of all the other missing pieces: to build a single Lego pieces, you don’t just need to get these monomers to combine to make the polymers, you then need to mold them. Go look up the Lego plant in Billund Denmark. It is incredibly cool to look at. Check out all the machines required to get the ABS ready to mold into the various shapes. Consider how those are assembled. Think about how the material for the walls, the nails and brackets in the walls, the roofing material, siding material were made. Consider all the transport vehicles and how much technology and design those have in them. The fuel for the plant, the fuel for the machines, the electricity for the lights… We are talking millions and millions of things that had to be discovered, researched, experimented on, carefully designed to make the plant that takes a material which itself needs much of that to produce that building block of a brick. Sure, building a Lego man is easy if you just assume all that is in place. The cell is more complicated than all of these things combined… Look up some version of “How complicated is a cell”. You will get answers ranging from “more complicated than rush hour in New York City” to “more complicated than the space shuttle” to “the cell is more complex than the biggest city we have ever built”. But for Cronin…eh, don’t sweat the small stuff. We can’t explain how something so complex spontaneously formed in impossible conditions but we know it did because it is here so we will just jump ahead millions of steps and start with a functional cell.” So to sum up his opening statement: He is saying yes, James Tour, all the problems you mention and more exist and we don’t know the answers but don’t say it while shouting. We can’t explain it so we will just skip it with a hand wave but anyone who says God did it is a moron. My science may have been shown to be defective but it might be less defective than some other science. Be nice. Criticize, but only in the ways and of which subjects I approve. The video then moves to the Dinner Table Segment Dinner Table The overall moderator is at the table with Cronin and Tour and makes a telling admission. He admits it “never occurred to me that evolution might have its flaws”. He is, whether advertently or not admitting that when Tour says the overclaims are miseducating the public it is being done and done effectively. Indeed, even if anyone reads all this that I write, I suspect there will be those among the readers who believe Darwinian Evolution, from non-life to single celled organism to descent with modification into species where all life comes from that initial cell is a proven fact. It demonstrably is not. It is a patchwork of guesswork, assumptions, overriding evidence, and loud statements. What it is not in any way, shape, or form is proven. Far from it. As Tour pointed out, the more we learn the further we are from being even remotely close to being able to prove any of it and there is not only no evidence of life spontaneously generating, there is no evidence, no observed case, no case reproducible int he fossil record of any species ever becoming another species. And yet people are hardline convinced it has been proven. During the table conversation Cronin makes two interesting statements. The first is that Darwinian Evolution “is not about more complex, it is about fitness in the niche” and expounds on it explaining that sometimes it is a move towards the simple that fits the niche rather than something more complex. There are so many ramifications there a book could easily be written about that concept alone. The second is a scathing indictment of evolution even though he does not realize it. He points out, “If I can’t measure or falsify it, it is garbage.” Darwinian Evolution has never been observed. It has never been measured. It is never been reproduced. And it is carefully framed in such a way as to make it so it cannot be falsified. Any experiment that is done that shows the impossibility of change between species gets the same generic handwave. “Oh, it may not have happened that way but we know it happened.” It is a magnificent defense that sidesteps the scientific process, all history of knowledge, and anything that goes against it. The round table is great as first one of the other people at the table breaks loose with, “since this is a round table on science AND (his emphasis) religion, what are the stakes for you?” TOur points out, “I did not inject religion into it all,” and starts talking about a relatively recent discovery from the last 25 years about something we did not know about previously, spin-induced chirality. But Tour also points out the problem with the overclaims is claims that life has been successfully created have made it into text books from middle school on up through university and says this is bad…but not because it is false, but because if people think it is solved they will not go into the field. Weird bit of reasoning. I understand what he is saying but I think it is a serious problem that things people know are false are intentionally placed in textbooks to deliberately teach lies and falsehoods to kids and the problem is not, “We are lying”, it is “people might not keep doing this thing that leads to lies.” As the conversation goes on both Tour and Cronin keep going to the “there is a lot we have yet to learn” but the goal of it differs for them; to Tour it is “stop making claims we are close. There is a long way to go.” For Cronin it continues to be “don’t disagree THAT way” He keeps pushing his “selection guides everything” idea along with “combination”. They also have an exchange that I wonder how many people caught. In discussing how molecules decay too rapidly to have a second generation to form in any specific time, the answer is, “Jim doesn’t look over a long enough time scale”. Sure, it may be impossible in each specific segment of time but if you just stretch out the time long enough you can claim it could have happened at some point in that time frame. It is another neat dodge that allows a monstour handwave…”yes, being able to perform the necessary functions is impossible in any set amount of time but over long enough the impossible can be done because…time.” Pe3r Cronin’s own words”it is garbage”. What you can measure and falsify says it can’t happen so you just say, “with more time it did happen without being able to measure or falsify it”. I genuinely wonder if he does not see the logical and factual holes in his thoughts or if he is outright dishonest. I think there are clues in some of his other videos that show a lot of his views and assumptions but I am not in his head so will not go so far as to say I know. The Panel They move to a panel with the moderator, Cronin and Tour and three or four people who will be allowed to ask questions one at a time. Right out the gate Randy Isaac points out it is a round table on science and religion and asks what the stakes are for religion in the debate. Note how when the science is discussed it was pretty clear…with what is currently known, it is impossible for life to arise from non-life. There is a tremendous amount of work being done with varying amounts of forward progress but the more is learned, the further it ends up from showing any method by which life could have spontaneously generated, how life could have survived, how it could have developed, how it could have learned how to make eyes, lungs, hearts, veins, blood vessels, etc…and the answer is, “but religion”. Why do they keep going back to the religious question? Because it is obvious that there are two options, life was a random, chance occurrence that defied the odds to exist at all and yet functions as if designed quite carefully…or it was created that way. The inference is if you point out a flaw in the spontaneous generation, your motivation is not scientific progress but rather trying to prove God even if you never mention Him, allude to Him, or address Him. Even if you speak from and about science for the purpose of advancing science you must be trying to bring in God. Cronin does, however, respond with some real insight when in his response to it he says “it is about culture. It is about understanding how special or common we are. It is about understanding what life is.” Tour in his turn states he believes the Scripture that “all things were created by Him and for Him” and then goes right back to talking about, “you don’t have to be a believer to do great science.” His takeaway is the stakes for him are a greater appreciation WHEN (emphasis his) we figure out how life originated and evolved. Isaac then tips his hand. “Tour, you don’t agree with Intelligent Design, but they use your work.” They have an exchange where Tour points out his work is published. He neither gives nor denies anyone permission to cite his papers. It is simply there to be read, discussed, cited.. This causes Isaac great consternation. See, Isaac cannot point out any flaws in the science people are doing but he hates their world view and thinks it is terrible they are allowed to cite scientific work. This is a key issue. If you don’t think “the right way” then anything you do cannot be real science. You might use real data, perform real experiments, show real results but since you are not coming from their world view, and although they cannot find or point to a single flaw in your work, it is reprehensible in the eyes of people like Isaac that they be allowed to use the work of “real scientists”. To people like Isaac, the No True Scotsman logic fallacy is their guiding principle. Bow at the altar of and worship Darwinian Evolution or you are not a real scientist. Point out the flaws in Darwinian Evolution and you are not a real scientist. Find data, perform experiments, write papers that do not match up with Darwinian Evolution and you are not a real scientist. In fact, one favorite attack of people like Isaac…I don’t say Isaac, I know little about him…but for the Darwinian Evolution community, they dismiss Creationists out of hand because “you are not published in these journals”. That is generally a true statement. What is not revealed is they do not accept submissions from Creationists. So it is impossible to get published in those journals. Pretty neat trick.We don;t let you publish here and since you can’t publish here you have no credibility because you aren’t published here. Now, that is just another in the many flaws we see in the whole “peer review” process. Tour elsewhere has talked about how many things are submitted to him to “peer review” and freely admits he doesn’t have time to study the research, tables, data etc to verify it, “no one does”. Even a far-left publication like the Guardian talked about how the nearly 5500 retractions in 2022 was nearly certain to be a vast underrepresentation of the amount of “research misconduct and error”. Look up the article Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus published in August of 23 pointing out the massive problem. Remember how Elizabeth Holmes built Theranos, the fraudulent blood-testing business? Blatant fraud in full public view that took years to discover. In this case they did not publish through normal channels… But Diederiik Stapel did. Repeatedly. And fraudulently. Hwanf Woo-suk ring a bell? 25 articles from Dipak Das telling you how healthy red wine is? You can find hundreds of such cases. Peer review is a pretty obviously flawed system that gatekeepers use to keep excellent scientists from publishing while allowing outright fraud to go through just fine. Well done. Melissa Franklin creates a hypothetical on another subject that sums it up nicely. When Tour replies, she says, “That’s not what I want to hear, “ and explains what he should say. Tour chides her, “you know what you want to hear” indicating she is not asking a legitimate question but instead asking a question that she will only accept her predetermined answer for. She then switches tacts and says, :Should we be thinking more about time?” Tour again points out it would take longer than the universe has existed for a single protein to fold, yet there are several proteins that need to fold just to get a molecule. Cronin, never tired of making the same mistake, says, “I think protein folding is a category error. Proteins do not fold in isolation. Selection promotes molecules that can exist for a long enough time…” And Later in the statement, :As soon as chemistry could start remember the selection process started”. Do you see the massive, glaring holes? Proteins make up a molecule. Cronin wants to skip all that and jump ahead, the molecule already developed. It doesn’t matter how. It doesn;t matter that it is impossible to make the steps that lead to the molecule…we HAVE the molecule so even though they are impossible, those steps happened. Ask yourself, does chemistry have a brain? What is the mysterious, guiding force that has no brain, has no agenda, has no sense of time or reality, yet has memory and guides selection? This is Cronin’s god. This is his unyielding assumption that defies all logic, that defies all reality. If you just say that “selection”, and undefined process with no purpose or rules, in combination with “memory” that exists nowhere, combined with time, you have the impossible. In the final word of the evening Tour says something interesting. “I have seen changes, they are a lot more measured.” He is referring to claims of origin of life researchers. On the whole, it was an interesting evening. I would be shocked indeed if anyone had their mind changed. This is particularly true as both Tour and Cronin do believe life spontaneously occurred billions of years ago in some unknown fashion that led from a single molecule forming everything from a carrot to a rabbit, from a stinkbug to a potato, from bacteria to you and I. They just disagree on how claims should be presented to the public. I am not sure they see that. And yet if you just look at what was said on the evening and look at the foundations of what they are saying you can clearly see that in the depths of their belief they themselves show so many fatal flaws in Darwinian Evolution. https://www.britannica.com/science/polymer

The tragedy of my sisters death

The real tragedy of Sue's passing is it is hard to conceive of it as a tragedy. She lived as she chose and died the same way. A life of promise and hope ended as what, from where I sit, seems a sad, lonely, miserable, wasted life. But it was her choice. If you are looking for one of those “preach her into heaven, she is an angel” memories, this is not it. If you think there is going to be some heartwarming moment of reconciliation…you will be bitterly disappointed. My interactions with Sue in the last 3 or 4 decades of her life were almost universally awful. When I look at Sue’s life, I see little but disaster. The picture of her with her dogs was cool…it is the first legit smile I remember seeing on her since she was maybe 12. Nearly four decades of misery. It did not start that way of course. There are some home movies from back when we were in Illinois of her riding her trike, me dragging my bum on the ground on the back step. Back in Oregon, there were some great times. One of our favorite things to do growing up was going to Grandma Aldas and going swimming. The easy way to tell it was a 55 and older park was they had a Fanta soda machine. It was a super special treat when Mom, Sue and I would go to Grandmas, usually get pizza, go swimming, visit for a while, learn to play various versions of Rummy… In fact, another favorite family memory was going to the Organ Grinder. Watching the old black and white movies, hearing the Organ. There were a lot of smiles and laughs and love. Of course it didn’t last. School started pretty well. She went to Zatterbergs Kinder College a year ahead of me. Then a couple years at Montavilla Christian , then it became Crossroads. Our years in school give a clue as to how tragic her life became because it could have…and should have…been so different. To brag on her first I have to brag on me for a bit. The ACE system involves Paces. It took 12 paces to equate to a years worth of schooling. For people who exceeded the basic requirements you got a trophy at I think it was 40, 60, 75, 100 and “most in the school” or something along that line. At the end of the school year they had a ceremony where everyone who completed 40 paces got a trophy and there were several. Then those that finished 60 got one. Fewer. 75, maybe 3. 100 or more 2. In every subject I was exceeding 75 paces and most subjects 100. I was doing more than anyone else in the entire school by 25 or more paces. And Sue was doing that many more than me. When I say “everyone in the school” it really should read “everyone in the school except Sue who exceeded me at virtually every turn”. She was smart. She was really smart. Well, in 4th grade, for a variety of reasons the finances did not allow continuation of going to private school in Portland. So we were put into public school. This began the downhill slide. Oh, not right away. She started hanging out with different people. She got sneaky. Just one small example; my friend Carl and her friend Missy lived next door to each other. When it was time to come home, I was to leave Carls’, pick her up at Sue and we would walk home. Lets say curfew was 8. I would leave Carls at 7:50. 4 houses is not far to walk. Well, Sue would be like, “no, they don’t mean be home by 8, they mean leave at 8” and would stretch it out. I knew better but I went along with it. I could lay the blame on her if it came to that. Not a decision I was proud of…I was on my way to being a deceptive, manipulative, potentially dishonest person too. Well, that is minor and no big deal but things like that became a pattern. Like I mentioned she started hanging out with different people. Many of them were older and none of them were better people. She started smoking the occasional found cigarette, hanging out with much older people. When Mom and Dad would go out, she would sometimes have them over. They were old enough to drive…I was 11 or 12 which means she was no older than 13 or 14 at that point. Yep, we are heading that way. Sure enough, at some point Dad found out and forbid her from seeing these guys who were too old. Some of my siblings can tell you the name of the school counselors and teachers that caused the problems to get worse. They got her taken out of the home and placed with the older guy she wanted to sleep with. Things got worse. It became a legal matter with a lot of high powered attorneys involved and it was ugly. At one point they threatened to take me out of the home. Now, this is my reaction but there is no question it terrified me and impacted our relationship for the rest of our lives. I was in a caring loving home and knew it. Here were people threatening to take me away from my mom, dad and sisters because of my older sister who was doing stuff she shouldn’t? The lawyers working with Mom and Dad won and the counselor and those evil teachers were banned from contact. They should have spent decades in jail. The destruction they wreaked has carried on to other generations. I hope they found repentance because they were evil. Evil. Evil. It does not reflect well on me how things got between Sue and I after that. We argued and fought a lot. When I say fought, and it is to my shame…I mean punching, kicking type fights. I have mentioned the penultimate incident before…Sue, Carl, Missy and I were playing in Carls back yard. She incited me and I, being who I was, wrecked everything in my path. She got home first and if I recall correctly, that was the time I broke the front window. I think that was our last physical fight but we were certainly not the close friends we had been when younger. And her pattern of behavior was getting worse. I have long had a vivid memory of the time she had 3 boys in their early 20s over when Mom and Dad were at an appointment with the twins. There was alcohol involved, and boy she had it figured real close when they would be home and those boys taillights were going down LeMont street as Mom and Dad drove up 7th. I was no help to her during these years either. I was bitter, resentful and angry at her for nearly getting us pulled out of home. I despised her for her lies and her running around and her drinking. One day a friend was over for dinner. I don’t remember what started it but she and I must have been silently fighting at the dinner table. She started voicing disapproval and Mom & Dad, oblivious to the undercurrents, asked what was going on. She shouted in years, “he is looking at me”. We had reached a point in our relationship where I could anger her just by looking at her and where I could rejoice that she got in trouble for her reaction. My friend and I laughed about “the look” for a few months. Today I feel shame for it. If I had been a better brother would she have kept down the path she took? Probably. But I did very little to stop it and that lies at my feet. I am not responsible for her behavior…but I very much am for mine. And where it was shameful, like this, I am shamed and repentant. It was wrong and I wish I could change it. Once she got married and moved out I had only brief flashes of interactions with her for the rest of her life. And it did not make me sad. Because every time I did see her things got worse. I wanted to see her less than I did. A few years after she left, about the time she goaded some bad behavior from someone else that has led to their life being more difficult than it needed to be, it came to my attention she had made some horrific accusations against me. The first time I saw her after that we had a loud screaming match about it and by the end she admitted she lied and said it because she was mad. But she made no apology. In fact, she blamed me. For her lie and horrid accusation. I don’t remember seeing her from about the time I was 17 or 18 until Mom was on her death bed in 1995. I would hear dribs and drabs of info about her. None of them were good. I remember how badly Mom was hurt when Sue changed her name. She had been named for Mom…Paralee Suzanne. She changed her name. The story on why seems to have changed. I was there when she told Mom she changed it because she didn’t like it. I have seen the story that will appear at the memorial and it is much nicer. It is also much more recent. It was something that bothered Mom until the day she died, whether right or wrong she took it as a rejection and it hurt deep. Well, as some people know, Mom had a lengthy battle with various cancers. She spent the last few months of her life bedridden as the cancer ravaged her body. Moms friends gathered round. They were super helpful and a comfort. Then along came Hurricane Sue. Suddenly realizing her Mom was dying, she came charging back from California. She worked so hard and so obnoxiously to keep anybody but herself away from Mom that one of Moms two closest friends stopped coming around and left the house the last time in tears because of Sue’s behavior. Again, this is not something that was told to me…I was there. I watched it happen. At one point not too many days before Mom died, Sue and I had a screaming match in which I told her, and this is not a direct quote but it is not far off, “We have been here all along and you have no right to come barging in here and run the people who actually care about Mom off”. I later learned that Mom had heard the whole thing. It was typical of the Sue I had known for 20ish years. Selfish, caring about nobody and nothing except herself. Causing pain, misery and heartache wherever she went. Estranging those she shouldn’t. Someone she had influenced to move away from home had by this time reached the very justified point they would not be in the same room with her. I don’t even remember her at Mom’s memorial. I assume she was there. Next time I saw her was at Greg’s memorial. I was inspired to attempt to make peace. I was a better person at that point than I had been when younger and was willing to forgive her and wanted her to get straight This was in no small part because of Greg’s example of not just forgiving people who had wronged them but trying to help others. Well, Sue elected to stay up in Oregon for a few days. A couple of us went over to talk to her and try to make peace and reconciliation. Not long into it, she started the same accusations against Dad and myself and started making them about others. Things went horribly sideways, my wife (at the time) and I left in anger and tears after me having told her I would never be in the same room as her again. And I meant it. Nor was it undeserved. She remained the same evil, lying, manipulative, self centered individual she had ever been. It was so bad that when Dad and I talked about it he said something I would never have believed. He had given up on her. This is a man who pretty much would have found something good to say about Judas. Even he had enough. He thought she was beyond hope and redemption. He would later revise this, but to even hear it once was something I have never forgotten as it was so surprising. I believe the next time I saw her was at Dad and Arlene’s wedding. I kept my distance from her. I would not sit in the same row or be within any appreciable close proximity to her. But she proved too crafty and figured her way into seeing me walking where there was nobody being within a few feet of me and cornered me. She was crying and apologetic…and begging. She did not have enough money to get home. Could I please find some way to loan her some money. To me the real danger was her being in Oregon any longer than necessary. I wanted her gone so I gave her more than I could afford at the time just to ensure she would be gone. Literally every penny I had on me at the time. And I used to carry however much cash I could afford to spend for two weeks. Crying in gratitude (allegedly), she said, “I just don’t want you to think I am pathetic.” There were not many better words she could think of for how I considered her at that point in time. Maybe a better word would have been contempt still at that point. Some combination of those two would have been applicable. Please note; I am not saying that was right. It wasn’t a Godly attitude and I have come to repent of that. But if I am not going to gloss over wrong done, that includes mine. I have thought about it and prayed about it countless times in the intervening years. I do remember at one point somewhere in these years when I was going to most likely Great America and she was living in Pleasanton CA at the time. I was asked to drop something off to her. There were very few things in life I would have been less interested in but because of who was asking I did. She could not walk but a couple blocks at the time and yet she lived in a nice apartment. I did not understand it. Where did the money come from? I have heard rumors but that is all they were to me and I shall not repeat them here. But it did mystify me. As the years went by from time to time she would call Dad and he, being ever the optimist, would say, oft with tears in his eyes, “Sue has come home, she figured it out” and would tell how Sue made some oblique reference to a passage, often something along the lines of “doesn’t it say in Proverbs that a good kid will be good again?” by which she meant “train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it”. He was always hopeful, always thinking she was on the right path. Then she would worm her way into visiting his friends with him and steal their medications. Then she would find repentance again allegedly…he was the only person I knew who saw that side of her. Well, in recent years there has been one other. She had lived such a hard, miserable life that although she was just a couple years older than me, she looked 30 years older than me. You could have told me she was in her late 60s when in her 30s and I would have believed you if I didn’t know any better. She hit it off pretty well with Arlene and one of Arlene’s daughters. She became a semi-regular presence at Dad’s place. I made sure to seldom show up. Our encounters were few and rarely pleasant. To her credit, she was starting to show some signs of becoming a better person. The first thing I had seen her do that was not completely selfish since she was like 15 was when Dad and Arlene were away on a trip and she painted a room or two and tried to put some wallpaper up around the top of the kitchen to make it look nicer. It was a genuine attempt to do something nice. And there were certain indications she might still have at least some of her early life brilliance left. I have been told she invented several things. I don’t know what or when so can neither confirm nor deny…but I will say that it would not surprise me. She had been very, very smart. She is one of the very few people I have met in my entire life who were better at school than me. It is a small pool of people. Very small. Arlene’s memorial was one of the last times I saw her. She showed up at the pre-memorial breakfast. Then, in a series of events that mystifies me, she found a way to be part of the dinner that we siblings and our spouses were having. Nobody will admit to having told her about it much less invited her. Because she had expanded who she made false accusations against in one case and an occurrence between her and another sibling it is not my right to divulge, two people absolutely refused to be seated near her nor were children allowed to be seated next to her. She earned every bit of that. Because I was the oldest responsible person, she ended up sitting next to me. And I had to tell her multiple times to stop rubbing my knee. It was repulsive, disgusting, and her refusal to stop ensured she would not be allowed to any other gatherings even if she found out about them. It was bad enough I was paying for all her meals. I didn’t need her of all people creeping on me. Some time in the last couple years she caught…was it pneumonia? Dad wanted to see her so I drove him down to the hospital she was in. I saw her from a distance, laying unconscious in the hospital bed, full of tubes to keep her breathing. It was soon obvious she would not recover consciousness any time soon and there was nothing we could do to communicate with her, although Dad being Dad and the ever-eternal optimist, he may still say she squeezed his hand when he asked her if she had considered her salvation. Maybe. I hope so for her sake. There was really only one good thing we could do. I found one thing where she was growing as a person. Her dog. Later dogs. She really cared about and loved those dogs. In my experience…other people’s experience may vary, I can only speak for myself…those dogs were the first living beings besides herself that she had cared about since she left home. Dad and I spent a fair amount of time trying to get her room secured and the dogs cared for. Because she had separated herself from pretty much everyone nobody could get a hold of anybody who knew anything. We were not successful. Interestingly, even at this late date she was not done causing trouble. After Dad and I got home, the kids were having a family meeting discussing possible routes of getting her cared for. We talked about funding a care home. We talked about hiring a personal care worker. At some point the conversation drifted to if she moved up to Oregon to live at Dads. People who have sacrificed a great deal in order to be able to take care of Dad made it clear if she came they would move. She had sunk so low even recently as to accuse a kid who lived at Dad’s place of improper behavior. She had gone to that well so many times I doubt anyone would believe her…but the risk is too high. Some things you just don’t take chances with. This led to some internal dissension where at least one person was defending her behavior whereas three of us who had been directly victimized by her either in physical attacks or false accusations were pointing out “forgive but still keep yourself safe”. And by her own behavior, repeated, and never apologized for or even admitted fault…she had put herself in a position where I wholeheartedly concurred with the idea that being around her was dangerous. This led to an argument over what actually constituted forgiveness. Fair question. Worth thinking about. I have seen or heard nothing that changes my mind. When someone has for nearly 40 years demonstrated a pattern of false accusation, lies, theft, manipulation, and complete lack of sorrow for their deeds or forgiveness, it behooves one to be careful of their interaction. That was never resolved and we did not happen. We were going to find a way to get her taken care of because regardless of all else, she was still family and still in need. It was a discussion about how to get her cared for, not whether she would be cared for. We also had some pretty extravagant plans in place to make sure that, if they could be found and she was still stuck in the hospital, her dogs would be cared for until she was ready to have them back. I have made no secret of the fact that those were the only things in her sad life that brought her genuine pleasure and that she truly seemed to care about. Regardless, it never came to pass. Despite our asking, it was not told us when she was released from the hospital. Her social worker never returned a single call. Her behavior, rumor has it, had her go through multiple care workers in the last few months of her life top the point I know of nobody who knew who had her in their care. We could not find anyone who knew anything. At some point Dad actually reached a point he just assumed she had died and due to how hard it was to get information we just had not been informed. He came to peace with it. So when we got actual, legitimate news of her passing, it did not have the impact you would think it would. As one person who was closer to her than I ever was said, “She died the way she wanted…alone”. Now, my experience with her is just that. My experience. It is entirely possible others had different interactions. At least one sister has been a staunch supporter of hers for years. People who grew up with her probably see her in a different light. In fact, when I was discussing her with one of the very few people who had any sort of regularity and mentioned how Dad kept having hope for her, she said that yes, there was a change in the way Sue talked, the things she said…that there were signs she may have legitimately been trying to find God. Another person suggested that certain results from the autopsy may suggest other things. Each person has to look at their own interactions with Sue and make their own decision. For me, I have prayed multiple times that God have mercy on her soul. I have looked long and hard at myself and looked at places I need to work on. I have worked on many, I have many more to go. I think it is a common phenomenon when someone dies to look at things and wish to have talked to them more or reacted differently the last time(s) a person saw them, to have regret. I have none of those. I tried, at least for the last 10-20 years, to help her when and where possible without having to have interaction with her. I felt sorry for her on one level but on another level looked at her as someone who consistently, repeatedly made bad choices, had no sorrow over those choices and was living with the results they had earned. When given chances to change the direction of her life she refused intentionally, repeatedly, and often. I did not pull a lot of punches in this. A couple in regards to things told me in confidence or where it might needlessly hurt someone. But towards her and myself? None. I was no angel in our early year relationships. The fighting was inexcusable and wrong, I bear the shame of that behavior and definitely grieve over it. I cannot change it but I can sure repent of it as I have done numerous times and work hard to improve myself so it is never in danger of happening again. I like to think that people who have known me for any length of time have been able to observe changes in my behavior, thought processes, and actions. I made my attempts to make peace with her and when those were rejected I simply kept my distance. But even there I was ready to help her where and when I could, preferably with an intermediary between us. I think Emily was a little surprised, kept waiting for me to have a grief-stricken breakdown. The only people I grieve for are those whom deserved better from her and did not get it. That is their story to tell if they choose, not mine. From where I sit, she made decisions repeatedly that led her to where she ended, did so knowing the outcome, not caring and ending up having lived a sad, lonely, pain-filled life but being unwilling and undesirous of changing anything.

I don't Believe in Fairy Tales

If you frequent scientific blogs, news articles, and research sites, it will not be long before you come across some sort of the following in the comment section.


"God did thus and such".


Instantly there will be numerous responses which are some form of (if not the exact words) "I don't believe in fairy tales. Keep your superstition off science sites."


It is an interesting claim. Most often these threads are on astronomy, biology, chemistry, environmental discussion, or something to do with evolution. The inference is that science has proven whatever point and God is a made up thing from a book of made up stories (dismissed as  myth most often), that the claim being made for science is iron clad and backed up by facts whereas any and all claims about God are of course made up and devoid of evidentiary backing.


Is that true? A lot of it comes down to one question; is evolution true or is creation true? At this point it is important to define both terms.

Definition of evolution

1a : descent with modification from preexisting species : cumulative inherited change in a population of organisms through time leading to the appearance of new forms : the process by which new species or populations of living things develop from preexisting forms through successive generations Evolution is a process of continuous branching and diversification from common trunks. This pattern of irreversible separation gives life's history its basic directionality.— Stephen Jay Gouldalso : the scientific theory explaining the appearance of new species and varieties through the action of various biological mechanisms (such as natural selection, genetic mutation or drift, and hybridization) Since 1950, developments in molecular biology have had a growing influence on the theory of evolution. — Nature In Darwinian evolution, the basic mechanism is genetic mutation, followed by selection of the organisms most likely to survive.

Creation is defined as

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1, NASB

A couple of things to note. In the definition of evolution, I went with Merriam Webster dictionary. I had to choose one of the hundreds of choices out there. They reference Stephen Jay Gould but could have referenced numerous others, there are competing ideas of what evolution is, how it was accomplished, and they are often mutually exclusive. We will look at that more as we go along.

In the definition of creation, this is not all the Bible claims on behalf of God. Hebrews 11:3 discusses a key creation principle, several Scriptures discuss Him stretching out the Heavens, Proverbs 8:28 discusses the springs of the deep which the submarine Alvin discovered in 1977...several thousand years after the Bible writers claimed they were there. But that is getting ahead of the story.

Lets take a look at some evidence and see if we can figure out who believes in fairy tales.

The Truth Claim

1) How things came into being

God claims to have created the Heavens and the earth.

It is hard to source this as chasing this claim to its source is impossible. Again and again you find statements along the lines of "most scientists believe" or "reputable scientists know" or something along that line. The claim is approximately 13.8 billion years ago nothing exploded into something via the Big Ban and everything in existence came from that event.

Most of these scientist hold to Naturalism; only observable, reproducible events that can be tested and falsified are genuinely scientific.

2) The means of things coming into being

This one is a tricksy Hobbit.

God claims to have neither beginning nor end. He is self-existent, outside time, space and matter. This is untestable and unknowable. Seemingly the only way of gauging this claim is to take the provable claims we see and verify their truth or falsehood. Knowing His accuracy on knowable claims can offer insight into the credibility or lack thereof of claims we cannot examine.

Science claims nothing created something. Nothing existed (or alternatively, everything that exists was compressed into the space of, depending on who you believe, the size of a pin or a peach are the two I come across most commonly; in both cases you have the same problem; where did the something come from? we can grant the same self-existent to it I would think except there is no way for it to claim that for itself) and then suddenly exploded outward in the Big Bang.

3) The means of development

God claims things were created as they are.

Gen 1:11 Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them...vs 12 bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind...

The whole of Genesis 1 is a claim for how things developed. God created them in finished form. The sun and moon, the stars governing day, night, signs for seasons, days and years. This is also a claim for God inventing time.

Verses 20-21 are animals being created to reproduce after their kind. Vs 24 is more of the same. Vs 26-28 say man and woman were created as humans.

Evolution claims as the universe cooled stuff started sticking together and became planets and stars.

As the universe developed planets, on earth a primordial soup came into being, there is still debate of where, chemicals interacted and somehow started life. Random events caused that life to become carrots and dinosaurs and man and bacteria and lettuce and everything we see and everything that has gone extinct. These happened by random chance with no guiding force other than the oft made claim of natural selection wherein the things most fit to survive did so.

4) The source of the claim

Moses is the claimed author of the first 5 books of the Bible. This is important to note; he was not an eyewitness. To believe Moses wrote is the believe the Biblical flood occurred. There is one obscure claim that the Book of Jashur predates the flood and was claimed to be on the ark and Moses somehow to have used it for reference. I bring this up because this is almost assuredly a fraudulent claim made by someone so desperate to prove God true they had to invent something.

Moses lived approximately 2260 years after the claimed date of creation. In his writings, it is repeatedly claimed he spoke with God face to face. Exodus relates this repeatedly. It would seem fair to claim that God guided his writing. If God created, He would have the power to do so and it would seem He would want to guide His people in truth and did so by relating to and/or guiding Moses in his writing of how creation happened. However, this claim is, to the best of my knowledge,, nowhere made in Scripture and is something arrived at by logic.

Evolution has a much older source than you might think. Ancient philosophers in Egypt, Greece, and Phoenicia to name three, discussed forms of it as potential sources for the meaning of life. To be fair, they also had the world on the back of a turtle, or Atlas or similar devices.

More recently it was highly popularized and became part of scientific inquiry following the 1859 publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species. This claim would come 13.8 billion years into the claimed development, a hair longer than the 2260ish years between origin and claim of Scripture.

5 The credibility Question

Pierre -Simon Laplace, a French polymath who had a huge impact on the development of science, famously said, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness." You have heard a modern version of this. Carl Sagan popularized it as "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

For example, if I tell you that this morning for breakfast I consumed 4 pieces of French toast, 2 scrambled eggs, a glass of orange juice and 2 pieces of bacon, you might nod and say "There is a reason your stomach exceeds your hips."

 Conversely, if I claim for breakfast I ate  400 pounds of steak, 6 gallons of milk, 4 dozen eggs...you might want to see pictures or video of the deed and even then would likely not believe it. If you saw multiple unedited videos of me performing this epic task and heard from 200 hundred people who had gathered in an auditorium and actually watched me do it, then you might believe it.  

So lets check some credibility of both claims. For years people have claimed the Bible is a book of fables and myths. The flood is claimed false, Sodom and Gomorra being destroyed an example of Biblical falsehood, the walls of Jericho falling outward, and many more. To this day people claim Jesus never existed.

Here are some other things the Bible has been accused of getting wrong that we now know it was right about (I held this to the Old Testament and just a few because if I covered them all there would be no room for anything else)

When Abraham has dealings with camels that was a demonstrable error in the Bible as camels were not known in his time. Except...they then discovered camels actually were there prior to Abraham and after him as well. There is a figurine dated to 3000 bc of a man by a kneeling camel and another dated to 2600 bc that was found at Lagash among other evidence.

It was long claimed Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible as he lived in pre-literate times. Then it was discovered not only had writing existed long before Moses came round but being educated in the court of the Pharaohs he would have been among the best educated people alive. 

It was long claimed  the Hittites did not exist. This would be a major problem as they play a massive role in the Old Testament. Then we found their library in Turkey. Not only did they exist, they were a major power.

It was long claimed David did not exist. David was a key player in the line of Christ, the source of His claim to kingship. No David, all of the New Testament falls apart. In 1994 at Tel Dan they found pottery with inscription referencing the House of David, one of several references since discovered.

We could talk about Jericho, Lions in Ninevah and Babylon, the existence of Belshazzar, Moses writing law code, the paths of the sea, the fountains of the deep, the prophecies of Daniel (including stories of Darius the Mede being shown the prophecy of himself, called by name) but to what point.

The Bible has often been accused of being false but been proven true. This has not caused a reconsideration of its accuracy by those who were wrong. Stunningly, despite the Bible showing true and them being shown in error, they use this as proof they are right about the Bible being wrong elsewhere. "See, our inquiry led us to the truth, it works, therefore we are right". Uh...the Bible was right all along.

Sadly, some people have performed fraud trying to prove the Bible true. Catholicism is a fountain of this. During the Crusades so many slivers of "the true cross" were dispensed you could build a cathedral from them. The Shroud of Turin. Oded Golan and his awfully suspicious looking things like the Joash Tablet and the James Ossuary.

Here is an important distinction. The Bible itself has zero frauds and forgeries in its pages. People looking to profit from people seeking to prove the Bible true have many.

Evolution on the other hand has a massive credibility problem. Consider Ernst Haeckel. Famously known as "Darwins Bulldog on the Continent" (also as "the Huxley of Germany" he was an early and important force in the spread of belief in evolution. His fraudulent recapitulation drawings have been in textbooks as recently as Donald Protheros Bringing Fossils to Life; An Intorduction to Paleobilogy (Columbia University Press, 2013) despite having been known to be frauds almost since their inception. This is not an outlier, this was a major figure.

I emphasize that because when looking at these things, we don't want to look at the people who are of limited knowledge. As an example Ken Ham, a noted Creationist, debated Bill Nye, a noted clown. This debate lessens seriously the credibility of Ham. If you want to engage in a scientific debate, debate a Neil De Grasse Tyson or a Kevin Leland, a Gerd B Muller, someone reputable. To debate a pop culture figure indicates A) he is credible and B) you cannot debate a serious scientist.

Contrast that with someone like astrophysics scientist Jason Lisle who debates astronomer Hugh Ross. Ross believes in evolution guided by God. He is a strong and reputable opponent who acquitted himself well for what he believes. If we are to seek truth, we don't want the softballs, we want the best each side has to offer.

Evolution meanwhile has often been claimed true only to be shown false.

Lamarckism was long thought true until in the 1930s it was shown false by new discoveries. Yeah, I know, seems weird to lead with something 90 years out of date. But you will detect a trend.

Recapitulation.

Preformationism.

Telegony.

Some guy named Darwin and pangenesis. (Gemmules)

Darwins Tree of Life.

Furthermore, in trying to figure out how life began a dizzying array of things have been suggested.

RNA first

DNA first

formed on land

formed near hot springs in the ocean

struck by rock

struck by meteors and/or comets

struck by lightning

various atmospheres

note the sheer number of guesses, assumptions, and other violations of their claim that science is only that which is observed and reproducible.

Most if not all have been discarded or should be due to insurmountable problems. Yet I still see people discussing the RNA first or DNA first paradox.

Perhaps the most famous is the Miller-Urey experiment which purports to have created life. Now, remember a few things; 1, they are trying to recreate what happened by chance by 2, carefully designed and refined experiments they continually adjusted to get the results they wanted.

They decided what they thought was in the atmosphere during the formation of life. It could not be the current atmosphere. The presence of oxygen would prevent the chains of amino acids to hold together. (Also notable is his mix of methane and ammonia are no longer believed...not many think it was a mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen...in other words, they keep guessing what was there and claiming it as fact). However, to survive it would require oxygen...which didn't exist.

Regardless, in an impressive bit of science, they did in fact create amino acids. Amino Acids combine to produce proteins, the so-called building blocks of life.

Ah, but wait; the amino acids this carefully designed experiment produced could not, in fact, produce life. See, amino acids are "handed". They are either right handed or left handed. The original experiment produced almost 50% of each. Yet to form proteins requires only left handed amino acids. So Miller tweaked his tubes and contents and did manage to get to about 60% left handed. Not nearly enough.

Look very long and you will see Miller's experiment referenced as proof of life being able to develop by chance. It is off by orders of magnitude. There are fascinating mathematical models showing the probability of forming even the smallest chain of proteins by chance.

This has led to a hilarious counter. Let me sum up; the smallest known modern life sequence is 400 proteins which leads to the chance of it forming by chance to be a staggering 10 to the 164th power. That would be 10 with 164 zeroes after it. So the reply is to make up "well, there were simpler organisms (that we have zero proof for) that could have needed only 256 or even fewer".

Further, a frequent claim is that "well, that would be sequential but this was happening all over the place with billions of things bumping into each other so the chance is much higher."

Ah, okay. So lets examine that claim briefly. Lets say that, against all odds, of the 20 necessary amino acids needed for life (of the 300 different types), did actually assemble and not only that, assemble in the correct order to create a protein. That protein has to survive and reproduce. Multiple times. Then the corruptions of that have to turn into everything from a carrot to you. All these steps surviving and reproducing.

Really? that does not strain credibility, that a harsh atmosphere (required for a comet or meteor or lightning strike to move some combination of chemicals to beat fantastic odds to form the first protein) is gentle enough for it to survive, reproduce and change?

We then have to have mutations occur. We know overwhelming numbers of mutations are harmful. Yet we are to believe a single cell bacteria, surviving in a primordial soup that could not support life as we know it, reproducing, experiencing primarily negative mutations, somehow have enough beneficial mutations to become fish and fowl, plants and people. Where are the numbers of these amazing survivalists coming from? How, after surviving that, did they manage to die out without leaving some record of their existence? (See the fossil record)

Knowing there is no explanation for the beginning of life, many evolutionists then claim "we don't know how life started, but it doesn't matter because what we know is evolution happened, how it started is not important." This nonsense strains credibility, but we will give a look at that under point 8.

6) Could the claimed methodology have happened?

The God created claim relies on a couple of assumptions and likely numerous others we will not; first, that what we have been told is accurate, and that He has the power He claims. These two are intertwined.

The question of whether what we have been told is vital. Claim after claim in Scripture references the act of Creation as the source of its validity. Spiritual authority, historical accuracy, the meaning of Christianity itself hinge on the truth claim that God created.

Does He have the power? He certainly has demonstrated supernatural knowledge. Things such as man being of one blood, the uncountable stars, the circle of the earth, the earth hanging on nothing, the paths of the sea, the fountains of the deep, the life is in the blood, the hydrologic cycle, the idea of quarantining (check out Leviticus 13:46 and surrounding).

Essentially the question of His power comes down to how we view the evidence in front of us.

Evolution relies on guesses and assumptions for how the universe started, how life began, how it developed far enough to survive and differentiate. Like the creation claim by God, change between species has never been observed even with careful experimentation (check out the fruit fly experiment). Mathematically it is impossible, logically it makes no sense. Its strongest argument is that if evolution did not happen then God created, a thought that cannot be allowed.

The second strongest claim for evolution is something along the lines of "God does not exist, we are here, therefore evolution happened, it is just a matter of figuring out how."

7) The Logic Question

Richard Dawkins wrote the The Blind Watchmaker in 1996.  On the very first page he stated, "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."

In fact, we see a lot of evidence that if things were not exactly as it is life on earth could not exist. This ranges from the distance of the earth from the sun to the proportional difference in difference of the earth to the moon in relation of the sun. Gravitational pull.

We also see a lot of evidence that there are actual laws of nature. Mathematics works because it always works. If you have 2 apples and someone gives you 2 more, you will always have 4 apples at that point in time. I saw an argument not long ago that this is not true.

Essentially it went like this: you have a rock in a bag. Someone drops another rock in, it breaks the first into 5 pieces. You now have 6 rocks."

Nice sleight of hand. they changed the unit of measure. one in the bag, a second enters the bag. There are two rocks in the bag. Then, they collide and split. You have now changed the circumstances. Splitting 1 into 5 will always result in having 5. Those five added to the one not split will always be 6.

Why am I pointing this out? If the universe generated by chance...where did rigid, reproducible, incontrovertible laws of math come from? Why does 2+2 not sometimes equal green? Why would  we not believe them subject to change at any moment? There is nothing holding the laws we rely on together and no reason to believe they will continue to exist.

If things arose by chance they should change by chance. If a single celled organism became all that we see today why do we never see change between species today? we see change WITHIN species. In fact, there is some beautiful work being done showing how fast we can get from a Chihuahua to an English Mastiff. But if chance guides, why would we not see two chihuahuas mate and a tanrantula come out?

The common answer is that ironclad laws of nature have guided evolution...but logically, if things arose by chance, then ironclad laws make no sense. They should be chance.

Instead, everything we see shows evidence of a very careful design. Indeed, when the Scripture says in Psalm 139:14 "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" it is on my mind every time I take medicine. I love modern medicine. It can do some great things. I had high blood pressure. They tried various meds until they found one that works. And it does work. It also doesn't work. While it controls my blood pressure, it "breaks" other things. After being on it for a while, it caused some water problems, causing me to take a second pill to fix that. Which it did...but it dropped my potassium levels. So then I had to take potassium pills. The human body is put together in such intricate detail that everything is intricately connected and we are still learning more about things.

Note that I am unequivocally not a believer in intelligent design. That movement tries to straddle the line between evolution and millions of years and believing Gods claims. The aforementioned Hugh Ross is a prime example of this belief system.

But that is an aside. Logically, if we are put together by chance and random happenings mystically selected for advantage, all the body should not be so interdependent.

8_ Upstream or downstream

If God created, we can easily go either direction. God created Adam. We have near continuous records from that moment until now. We know how man was formed. We know how animals were formed. We know how plants were formed. We know how the universe itself was formed.

Conversely, we can work backwards. We can start today and go back to the beginning.

Contract this with evolution. It cannot start at the beginning. Indeed, I may do another of these showing the complete guesswork underpinning belief on how the stars and planets formed. Nor can it start at the present and work backwards, showing evidence each step of the way. The furthest they can go back are Neanderthals...a group that has the same appearance, structure, anatomy, habits, and dna as we have...in other words, humans. It is amazing when you see the claims that humans and Neanderthals co-existed and mated , recent discoveries show they had art, tools... they are indistinguishable from humans right down to skeletal structure falling within norms of humans. They are different because...we are told so.

You can neither work backwards nor forwards to see evolution in action.

This is hardly a comprehensive look at these issues. Indeed, this is a distillation of hundreds of hours of reading books by noted people on both sides of the issues, watching their videos. Thinking on it. Reading more. Finding objections, explanations, counter explanations, counter counter explanations.

I encourage you to look at these things but don't look at just anyone. I will leave you with the story of one video suggested to me by someone as a "powerful argument that Christianity is a hallucination". In it, this person starts by asking what notable doctrine is changed if only Paul and Peter saw Jesus after the resurrection. He posits none. He then goes on to say that if only two people saw Jesus after the resurrection, consider this; Peter "saw" him from a prison cell and Paul saw a great light. The takeaway is that all of Christianity might depend on nothing but two hallucinations.

Now, this grade school level error is pretty easy to pick apart; here are a few ways. One, John also claims to have seen Jesus. Two, Jesus appeared  multiple times to the apostles, and over 500 hundred people in another appearance, to James and the apostles multiple times. So his argument is "if you ignore the claims to document multiple appearances, and the claims of two people who died for their belief, and all the time they spent with Jesus prior to Hs resurrection, and all the other elements of the Bible proven true, then this might be false."

A second would be a guy named Aron Ra who attempts to discredit the Bible with wisdom such as "bats aren't birds". Well played. First off, basic textual research tells us that the Bible never claims they are (Lev 11:13 and 19) where the word used was "owph" which means "owner of a wing". One need not even get into the artificiality of Linnean classification to see the flaw in this.

It is a waste of time to look at people like this; spend your time with the forefront.

A couple of resources I strongly recommend are Spike Psarris, former engineer in the US military space program,  and Jason Lisle, an "astrophysicist with a PH.D in physics and astronomy (with a minor in Mathmatics) from Ohio Wesleyan University and masters and PhD in astrophysics from University of Colorado at Boulder.

You will find a lot of back and forth on things if you know where to look. I just encourage you to look at the best.

When I look at the body of evidence, on the one hand I find a claim that has been backed up with evidence numerous times and never contradicted.

On the other hand I find a patchwork of guesses, assumptions, errors, and constant need for adjustment. It is not a hard call.