Tag: origin of life

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post

Author
Stephen C. Meyer

Date
June 2, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
Allan Sandage, argument from ignorance, beginning of the universe, Biological Information, Brian Josephson, Brian Keating, causal adequacy, complex specified information, Cosmological Argument, Evolution, fine tuning, God, God hypothesis, God of the gaps argument, Henry Quastler, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, Isaac Newton, mind-brain, origin of life, Robert Jastrow, teleological argument, Thomas Aquinas}

Return of the God Hypothesis: Q&A with Stephen Meyer, Pt. 2

_{Stephen C. Meyer

June 2, 2021

Intelligent Design}

On today’s ID the Future Stephen Meyer continues fielding questions about his new book, Return of the God Hypothesis. The occasion was a live Zoom event for people who had pre-ordered the book. Daniel Reeves emceed, and here in the second part, Meyer rebuts the objection that intelligent design is an argument from ignorance. He also answers another objection, namely that our uniform experience with designing minds is that minds are embodied in material brains and yet Meyer seems to infer a non-embodied mind as the explanation for the design of life and the universe. Meyer also lists some prominent scientists who have either endorsed the book or championed key arguments in the book. Meyer is the Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science Read More ›

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post

Author
Brian Miller

Date
May 24, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, Brian Miller, building blocks of life, chemical evolution, Dave Farina, Duke University, entropy, James Tour, MIT, Natural Selection, origin of life, prebiotic chemistry, Professor Dave, Rice University, Richard Dawkins, self-organization, synthetic organic chemistry, The Blind Watchmaker}

Brian Miller Distills the YouTube Debate between Dave Farina and James Tour

_{Brian Miller

May 24, 2021

Evolution}

On today’s ID the Future, host Eric Anderson and physicist Brian Miller, research director for Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, discuss a recent debate between YouTube science educator Dave Farina and Rice University synthetic organic chemist James Tour. Tour has argued that no one—not even the most elite of origin-of-life scientists–has a clue how life could have arisen through blind natural forces on the early earth. Farina created a YouTube response on his channel arguing that Tour is wrong and that origin-of-life researchers are well on their way to solving the mystery of life’s origin. Tour then responded in his own YouTube video series. Now Miller and Anderson boil it all down and argue that Tour is right Read More ›

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post

Author
William A. Dembski

Date
May 19, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
abiogenesis, argument from evil, chance, common descent, conservation of information, Douglas Axe, Evolution, genetic code, homochirality, Intelligent Design, Junk DNA, law of small probability, Miller-Urey experiment, minimal complexity of a cell, multiple universes, multiverse, Natural Selection, origin of life, probabilistic resources, replicator, self-reproducing machines, simple life, theistic evolution, universal probability bound}

James Tour Interviews William Dembski, Pt. 2

_{William A. Dembski

May 19, 2021

Intelligent Design}

Today’s ID the Future again features Rice University synthetic organic chemist James Tour and intelligent design pioneer William Dembski. Here in Part 2 they discuss information theory, probability theory, the origin of life, evolution, the multiverse hypothesis, and Dembski’s contributions to the theory of intelligent design. Their conversation is borrowed, with permission, from Dr. Tour’s Science & Faith podcast.

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post

Author
William A. Dembski

Date
May 17, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
abiogenesis, Evolution, genetic code, God, information theory, Intelligent Design, Natural Selection, origin of life, Shannon information, specified information, synthetic organic chemistry, teleology}

James Tour Interviews William Dembski, Pt. 1

_{William A. Dembski

May 17, 2021

Intelligent Design}

Today’s ID the Future features Rice University synthetic organic chemist James Tour and intelligent design pioneer William Dembski discussing information theory, information as a meaningful reduction of possibilities, Shannon information versus specified information, and how natural selection has come to function as a God substitute for many scientists, despite the lack of evidence. The conversation is borrowed, with permission, from Dr. Tour’s Science & Faith podcast.

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post

Author
Eric Hedin

Date
May 12, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, Academic Freedom, Arthur Hobson, Ball State University, Biological Information, entropy, Evolution, generalized second law of thermodynamics, information, Intelligent Design, life comes from life, Omne vivum ex vivo, origin of life, quantum theory, second law of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics}

Physicist Eric Hedin Talks Entropy and the Origin of Life

_{Eric Hedin

May 12, 2021

Evolution}

On today’s ID the Future, host Eric Anderson sits down with Canceled Science* author and physicist Eric Hedin to discuss Hedin’s new book and, in particular, the book’s take on the origin-of-life problem. Hedin says the second law of thermodynamics poses a serious problem for the idea of a mindless origin of the first single-celled organism from prebiotic materials. Such an event would have involved a breathtaking increase in new information, and Hedin says that physics tells us pretty clearly that mindless nature degrades information; it doesn’t create it. Are there workarounds? Listen in as he explains why he’s not optimistic. And grab a copy of his new book to get his extended take. (*As an Amazon Associate, Discovery earns Read More ›

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post

Author
Stephen C. Meyer

Date
May 10, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
action at a distance, Atheism, Big Bang, Biological Information, constant spirit action, deism, fine tuning, General Scholium, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, guided evolution, hypothesis non fingo, Intelligent Design, inverse square law, Isaac Newton, mechanical philosophy, multiverse, occult properties, origin of life, Principia Mathematica, quantum cosmology, RNA World hypothesis, scholastic philosophy, scientific revolution, singularity, Theism, theistic evolution, theory of gravity, unguided evolution}

God Hypothesis Returns: Frank Turek and Stephen Meyer Report

_{Stephen C. Meyer

May 10, 2021

Intelligent Design}

Today’s ID the Future episode features excerpts from a lively conversation with Frank Turek as host and Stephen Meyer as guest. The focus: Meyer’s new USA Today bestseller, Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe.* The two discuss the new book, and Meyer fields questions from the audience. The conversation originally appeared on Turek’s national radio show, CrossExamined, and the excerpts from that longer interview are used here with permission. (*As an Amazon Associate, Discovery Institute earns from qualifying purchases.)

Couple standing on the beach at sunset are having problems with each other

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post

Author
Brian Miller

Date
May 3, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, alkaline thermal vents, Biological Information, Brian Miller, cell membrane, DNA, early Earth, entropy, Evolution, Helen Hansma, Intelligent Design, interfering cross reactions, Jack Szostak, Jeremy England, lipid bilayer, mica hypothesis, mica sheets, Michael Russell, natural templating, Nick Lane, origin of life, polymerase, prebiotic chemistry, protocell, raw energy, RNA, RNA World hypothesis}

Brian Miller Talks Star-Crossed RNA Strands and the Origin of Life

_{Brian Miller

May 3, 2021

Evolution}

On today’s ID the Future, physicist Brian Miller continues his conversation with host Eric Anderson. Here they explore more problems facing the idea that life began as strings of RNA. In their discussion of the RNA World Hypothesis and the origin of life generally, they touch on ideas advanced by Jeremy England, Jack Shostak, Nick Lane, Helen Hansma, and others. One of several big problems with the RNA-first hypothesis underscored by Miller and Anderson: For it to have even a slender chance of working, you need prebiotic Earth to generate not one but two information-rich RNA strands, and they somehow need to find each other before falling apart, and do so despite the fact that they aren’t looking for each Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Stephen C. Meyer

Date
April 26, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
anthropocentrism, Big Bang, chance hypothesis, cosmology, design hypothesis, divine action, divine extravagance, divine profligacy, fine tuning, genetic code, genetic information, God, Henry Quastler, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, multiverse, Natural Theology, Occam’s Razor, origin of information, origin of life, panspermia, pontentia absoluta, potentia ordinata, Richard Dawkins, scientific revolution, Sean M. Carroll, specified information, teleology, Theism, theodicy, William Dembski}

Stephen Meyer Defends His New Book to Cosmologist Brian Keating, Pt. 3

_{Stephen C. Meyer

April 26, 2021

Intelligent Design}

Today’s ID the Future concludes the conversation between Stephen Meyer, author of the newly released USA Today bestseller Return of the God Hypothesis, and UC-San Diego physicist Brian Keating. In part three they discuss divine extravagance and the question of why, if the universe was made for humans, did it take so long before humans came onto the scene? From there Meyer turns to the evidence for intelligent design from the digital information embedded in DNA and RNA. Is this book just another intelligent design argument, similar to his previous two books? Meyer says it is that, but it goes further, combining an intelligent design argument with evidence from science outside the scope of ID science in order to draw some inferences about the nature of Read More ›

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post

Author
Brian Miller

Date
April 14, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, amino acid sequences, ATP Synthase, Biological Information, enzymes, Every Life on Fire, high energy, Ilya Priogine, Jeremy England, low entropy, Michael Russell, Molecular Machines, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, origin of life, origin-of-life research, Proteins, self-organization, Thermodynamics}

Brian Miller on Life, Thermodynamics and Jeremy England

_{Brian Miller

April 14, 2021

Evolution}

In today’s ID the Future physicist Brian Miller discusses fellow physicist Jeremy England’s book Every Life Is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origin of Living Things. Has England made a significant step toward solving the mystery of how life first began? In Miller’s conversation with host Eric Anderson, he argues that while England’s laboratory work is fascinating and innovative, what’s happening in his experiments differs dramatically from what is required of even the simplest life, so much so that the experiments do not shed the kind of light on the mystery of life’s origin that some may hope they do. Moreover, life does certain crucial things with energy that are unknown outside of the biological realm, Miller says, and Read More ›

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post

Author
Rob Stadler

Date
April 5, 2021

Tagged
abiogenesis, amino acids, cell membrane, cell membrane gates, cell membrane pumps, Craig Venter, devolution, diffusion gradient, E. coli, early Earth, Evolution, gene loss, homeostasis, lipid bubbles, membrane, minimal bacterial genome, minimal cell, minimal organism, origin of life, phospholipid, phospholipid bilayer membrane, pre-biotic chemistry, Proteins, protocells, reverse engineering, ribose operon, Richard Lenski, single-celled organisms}

Origin of Life’s Purple Unicorn: Protocells

_{Rob Stadler

April 5, 2021}

On today’s ID the Future, host Eric Anderson sits down with Rob Stadler, co-author with Change Tan of The Stairway To Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check. The topic of discussion–protocells. Stadler notes that the simplest existing single-celled organisms are far too sophisticated to have emerged through a blind process of prebiotic evolution. He further notes that this is widely acknowledged in the origin-of-life community, but those committed to a purely materialistic origin of the first life have a fallback explanation–protocells. That is, early biological structures far simpler than anything we find today. An intriguing hypothesis, but the problems with it, according to Stadler, are legion. Tune in as Stadler and Anderson walk through several lines of evidence that appear to Read More ›