This is part of a series debunking Lee Strobel’s video, “Case for a Creator”. View the rest of the series here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04hjrPXcAZA[/youtube]

Part 2 continues Wells’ challenge of Miller’s experiments. Wells conducts a thought experiment: Take a sterile test tube, fill it with the “perfect” conditions for life, insert a single-celled organism, and puncture it. The test tube now contains all the molecules necessary for life, but no life can be developed from this condition.

First, the early Earth consisted of a lot more than a glass tube and a static solution.

Second, I suggest that Wells actually conduct this experiment. If it does fail, try doing the same thing in a large flask with a few trillion shredded single-celled organisms and various energy sources. Don’t expect cellular life, or anything beyond self-replicating patterns of amino acids, unless you have a couple billion years to dedicate to this experiment.

Third, contrary to popular belief, the “Cell” is NOT the basic form of life. Viruses are much simpler than cells, and are indisputably biologically active, if not completely alive. Various amino acids, captured in a lipid bubble, could operate much like a virus. A self replicating protein, inside a lipid bubble, would incorporate any other amino acids the bubble happened to absorb. If the bubble were punctured, all of these newly formed proteins could then be captured by other lipid bubbles, to repeat the cycle.

Aside from the lipid bubble, there are numerous theories that offer similar results, and some combination of these various theories is the likely origin of cellular life. Unfortunately, we do not have definitive proof that any of these theories is actually true, but we have absolutely no evidence that there was conscious thought behind any of it.

At about 1:30, they begin on the “Science doesn’t know how these non-living components could become the first cell” argument, and at 2 minutes, Strobel concludes (at least twice!) that lack-of-evidence equated to evidence of the contrary: Science cannot (yet) explain a “materialistic” origin of life, therefore Science is wrong. There is (as of yet) no evidence for Darwin’s “Tree of Life”, therefore scientific explanations must be wrong.

First, science DOES have plausible theories about a natural origin of life, and Second, while there may not be sufficient evidence to say that all life spawned from a single organism, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that various modern species had a common ancestral species. In fact, domesticated animals demonstrate that this can occur: All breeds of dogs can trace their ancestry to a wolf-like species. Domesticated dogs separated (speciated) from this line about 10,000 years ago. Monkeys, Apes, Orangutans, and Humans can all trace their ancestry back to a common species of primates. DNA evidence shows us how long it has been since these speciations occured.

The “Cambrian Explosion” argument basically says that evolution suddenly accelerated, from unicellular to multicellular, to complex life forms in the span of a few hundred million years, and that this rapid period of change disproves a natural origin for some reason. The evidence does little more than suggest that multicellular life forms evolve more rapidly than unicellular, a fact that is easily demonstrated. Asexual reproduction is far less conducive to evolutionary processes than the sexual processes common in the “higher” lifeforms that originated in the Cambrian era.

At 7:40, Strobel says “Darwinism would require me to make a blind leap of faith that I had no good reason to make” – once again, lack of evidence is not evidence of the contrary. Certain facets of evolutionary theory are as-yet unexplained. Do we conclude that we simply haven’t absolutely proven all aspects of the theory, or do we conclude that any contrary theory must be true?

Finally, at 7:50, we allude to to so-called “positive evidence” – cosmological evidence supported by philosopher William Lane Craig, then a break, and part 3.

This is part of a series debunking Lee Strobel’s video, “Case for a Creator”. View the rest of the series here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Chris commented on this post, and recommended Lee Strobel’s “Case for a Creator” as something a “truth loving person” should read or watch. He claimed: “You will see proofs of God’s hand in creation that no scientist or Darwinist can explain away.”

I’ll take that challenge!

I located Strobel’s video on Youtube in 6 parts, and I’ve written rebuttals for each of Strobel’s major arguments. The 6 parts into which it was cut do not line up with the transitions as Strobel intended. I’ve included an embedded video and my arguments against the contents of that video in each post.

Before we start watching, let me point out that Darwin’s theory and modern evolutionary theory are not exactly equivalent. Many parts of Darwin’s original theory have been discredited, and later discoveries have expanded other parts of his theory far more than Darwin ever predicted. Darwin may have originated evolutionary theory, but it is in the same manner as Ford originated the automotive industry. Ford would probably be lost inside a modern vehicle with all its switches, buttons, knobs, glowing indicators, and computerization. Similarly, Darwin would be quite surprised about certain aspects of modern evolutionary theory.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-_rDZ76Z0[/youtube]

The intro is 8 minutes of part 1, and can be skipped without missing Strobel’s arguments. Stanley Miller’s old experiment about building amino acids is mentioned, and we discover that Strobel’s motivation was to understand positive changes in his wife, which she attributes to God after her “conversion” from agnosticism to Christianity.

At about 8:30, Stanley Miller’s experiment – which built amino acids from hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water, is allegedly discredited because science no longer thinks that these elements and compounds were predominant in the atmosphere.

Hydrogen is H2, and can be readily extracted from other compounds through chemical or electrical interactions. Ammonia is NH3 – nitrogen currently makes up 70% of our atmosphere, and to the best of my knowledge, nitrogen has always been the predominant atmospheric gas. Methane is CH4. Carbon is found in just about everything on the planet, and water is H20.

What we can conclude from Miller’s experiment is that amino acids can be built without a purpose, and without design. Miller could not predict the exact types of amino acids that would be built, nor could he predict how those acids would subsequently interact. Wells statement about the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere narrows the possible locations as to where amino acids could have developed as in Miller’s experiment, but it does not refute that conditions can occur where amino acids develop without a conscious effort to create them. That the experiment failed using the alternative gases mentioned is immaterial: it merely indicates that life could not have originated in this manner above the Earth’s Surface. As far as I know, no significant scientific body presents “flying” as the initial state of life on earth, deferring to either inland swamps, littoral areas, deep-ocean volcanic vents, or even the open ocean.

Jonathan Wells, credited as “Biologist, Discovery Institute” is hardly an objective party. In his book, “Why I went for a Second Ph.D”, Wells writes:

Father’s [Sun Myung Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.