One of the biggest science stories we rarely hear about is how with almost every discovery the Darwinian model of evolution looks weaker rather than stronger.
Even worse for any naturalistic model of origins is the problem of explaining how living things originated in the first place.
Despite occasional news releases promising that breakthroughs have been made in the field of abiogenesis (the origin of life from non-life) the problem remains unsolved and intractable. No one has come up with a plausible account of how blind, purposeless processes could accomplish the equivalent of constructing a fully functional computer in some primordial environment.
Episode 5 in the Discovery Institute's Science Uprising series highlights this problem of the origin of life. It features one of the premier organic chemists in the world, James Tour, along with protein chemist Douglas Axe and philosopher of science Stephen Meyer.
Tour is withering in his rejection of all claims that scientists have built a living cell in the lab. Claims that researchers have created “proto-cells,” he says, are like claims that someone has created a “proto-turkey” by mixing some cold cuts together with broth and a few feathers in a cooking pot.
Even more absurd, according to Tour, are claims that blind, mechanical processes could've created a cell by chance:
“All of these little pictures of molecules coming together to form the first cell are fallacious, are ridiculous. The origin of life community has not been honest.”
Strong words, but given that the information necessary for a functional cell is encyclopedic, and given that encyclopedias are, to say the least, not easy to manufacture by means of random word generators, the problem of accounting for the origin of the information necessary to build even the simplest fully functional biological cell, while excluding any intelligent input, seems insurmountable.
Here's episode 5:
