Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny

Although Darwin’s first book (1859) was titled On the Origin of Species, Dennett admits that “Darwin doesn’t even purport to offer an explanation of the origin of the first species, or of life itself.” Of course not. Natural selection can’t create life, nor can it function until species already exist. As inorganic chemist Stephen Grocott points out,

“If one believes in evolution, then one has to also account for the origin of life—the very first step. Without this, the whole subject of evolution hangs on nothing. . . . The weight of evidence against the spontaneous origin of life on earth is, in my opinion, overwhelming. . . .

"Suppose you could go back in a time machine to a time when, according to evolutionists, a lifeless world existed. Assume that you have taken with you an ocean full of organic precursors of life. What would happen to them? They would all decompose to simpler and simpler molecules and mostly would end up as lifeless common inorganic substances. . . .

"The complexity of the simplest imaginable living organism is mind-boggling. You need to have a cell wall, the energy system, a system of self-repair, a reproduction system, and means for taking in “food” and expelling “waste,” a means for interpreting the complex genetic code and replicating it, etc., etc. The combined telecommunications systems of the world are far less complex, and yet no one believes they arose by chance.”