Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God's guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.Be that as it may, we have frequently noted on Viewpoint that most people who reject God as an explanation for the origin of things do so not on the basis of evidence but because there's no room for God in their materialistic, naturalistic worldview. In other words, they reject the God hypothesis because they simply don't want it to be true. This comes across pretty clearly in a post by Rabbi Moshe Averick at Algemeiner.com
Averick has collected almost two dozen quotes from prominent scientists remarking on the mystery of the origin of life (OOL), how it seems to be nothing short of miraculous, and how there's really no plausible naturalistic explanation for how it could have happened. Even so, these scientists are committed to finding a naturalistic explanation, not because science can only admit of such explanations, but because, at least for some of them, they simply don't want to think that there's a God. Here are a few of the quotes Averick lists:
- I have said for years that speculations about the origin of life lead to no useful purpose as even the simplest living system is far too complex to be understood in terms of the extremely primitive chemistry scientists have used in their attempts to explain the unexplainable that happened billions of years ago. Dr. Ernst Chain, Nobel Prize Medicine, 1945.
- There are only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility.... I will not accept that [a supernatural creative act of God] philosophically because I do not want to believe in God, therefore I choose to believe that which I know is scientifically impossible; spontaneous generation arising to Evolution. Dr. George Wald, Nobel Laureate 1954.
- The first assumption was that non-living things gave rise to living material. This is still just an assumption...There is, however, little evidence in favor of abiogenesis (the origin of life from non-living matter) and as yet we have no indication that it can be performed...it is therefore a matter of faith on the part of the biologist that abiogenesis did occur and he can choose whatever method…happens to suit him personally; the evidence for what did happen is not available. Dr. Gerald Kerkut, Profesor Emeritus of Neuroscience at the University of Southampton, 1960.
- All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did. Dr. Harold C. Urey, Nobel Prize Chemistry, 1962.
- Indeed, such a theory (intelligent design) is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific....From my earliest training as a scientist I was very strongly brain-washed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has had to be very painfully shed. I am quite uncomfortable in the situation, the state of mind I now find myself in. But there is no logical way out of it; it is just not possible that life could have originated from a chemical accident. Sir Fred Hoyle, 1984.
- We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. Dr. Richard Lewontin, Geneticist, 1997.
- I should like to say that the scientific attempt to explain the origin of life proceeds from the assumption that whatever it was that happened was a natural process: no miracles, no supernatural intervention. It was by ordinary atoms doing extraordinary things that life was brought into existence. Scientists have to start with that assumption. Dr. Paul Davies, Physicist, 2002.
- Dennis Overbye just wrote a status report for the New York Times on research into life’s origin, based on a conference on the topic at Arizona State University. Geologists, chemists, astronomers, and biologists are as stumped as ever by the riddle of life. John Horgan, Senior Writer Scientific American, 2011.
- Despite many interesting results to its credit, when judged by the straightforward criterion of reaching (or even approaching) the ultimate goal, the origin of life field is a failure – we still do not have even a plausible coherent model, let alone a validated scenario, for the emergence of life on Earth. Certainly, this is due not to a lack of experimental and theoretical effort, but to the extraordinary intrinsic difficulty and complexity of the problem. A succession of exceedingly unlikely steps is essential for the origin of life...these make the final outcome seem almost like a miracle. Dr. Eugene Koonin, Molecular Biologist, 2011.
