I like what this author has to say. And in particular:
How do I respond to students like this? I point out that some religion-bashing Darwinians exaggerate the power of evolutionary theory. For example, Richard Dawkins was wrong — egregiously wrong — when he claimed in his 1986 bestseller, The Blind Watchmaker, that life ‘is a mystery no longer because [Darwin] solved it.’ Even when bolstered by modern genetics, evolutionary theory does not explain why life emerged on Earth more than 3 billion years ago, or whether life was highly probable, even inevitable, or a once in a universe fluke. The theory doesn’t explain why life, after remaining single-celled for more than 2 billion years, suddenly spawned multi-cellular organisms, including one exceedingly strange mammal capable of pondering its own origins.
But of course the thing that really sets me off is that the argument is always boiled down to evolution vs. creation, as if there are no other considerations. What if geologic evolution is smack-dab on the money accurate, but biological evolution is not quite so . . . how should I say . . . on the money? (That, by the way, doesn’t presuppose biblical creationism as the only other solution.) Can we not entertain other options? Are there really no other scientifically plausible possibilities to consider?
I’m not attempting to provide an answer here. I’m just looking around and asking more questions.
Horgan’s quote from Dawkins is spot on. We don’t have a clue what life is. We really don’t. We have no idea what “life” consists of. Life is like the wind; we see things respond to its presence and its passing, but we don’t see the thing itself.
Life is not the organism it animates. We know a lot about things that life enervates, but almost nothing about the energy we call life.
A dam holds back water, but a dam is not the force, or energy, that is holding back the water. The dam is the edifice in which that force temporarily resides. Likewise, the water is constantly seeking a way around, through, under or over that dam. There’s a force there that never sleeps or rests, a force that resides in or with the water, but is different from the water.
Let’s talk fiction. Dr. Frankenstein didn’t create life. He reanimated a formerly animated creature, by reintroducing “life” into the carcass. Life is the force, not the carcass. (Stay with me.) Frankenstein built a dam and put some water behind it, but he didn’t (couldn’t) create the forces that make the dam a dam, and the water, water.
See? Now wasn’t that easy?
I’m scaring myself.
Perhaps more coffee will help . . .
