Episode Transcript
Welcome to faith and science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
A few days ago I was talking with a person who works as a teacher in a christian school. And at this particular school there are a lot of students who are in their particular class. Most of the students were from a secular background.
And as this person was talking to them about the overwhelming evidence for creation that life itself could not form by random processes, he explained that it was just so difficult for the students to accept that now, because prior to that, they'd been through a lot of education. Some of them come from other schools and their own background, that it was just so hard for them to accept. They were so firmly entrenched in evolution, explaining everything and particularly the origin of life.
And a couple of days later, I came across, well, actually, I was at a creation programme and one of the speaker at the programme referred to an article that had come out a few years ago now, published in the February 28 edition of Scientific American. And the article was titled don't tell a creationist, but scientists don't have a clue how life began. Now, it's interesting that this author, John Horgan, writes that exactly 20 years ago I wrote an article for Scientific American that, in draught form had the headline above.
My editor nixed it, so we went with something less dramatic. And so the title that they published back in February 1991, the title of the article in Scientific American, was in the beginning. Scientists are having a hard time agreeing on when, where and most important, how life first emerged on earth.
It then writes, that edit is gone now. So I get to use my own headline, which is even more apt today. Now, as you read down through the article and we look 20 years later, from 1991 to 2011, scientists still don't have a clue how life began.
Now he goes down, and near the end of the article, he comments, well, look, you just can't say that God did it as creation, because who created God? And that poses a very, very interesting question that I think many evolutionists and secularists miss, and that is that God wasn't created, he's always existed. And there's a logical case for this. When you think about, look, if you stop and think at the moment, why should anything exist? Why should there be anything? And I've often pondered this, why should there be anything, any matter? Why should there be any stars? And where did the laws come from that govern, like gravity, electromagnetism, all these sort of things, the nuclear forces, where did they come from? How did they arise? And then, of course, the laws that govern the synthesis of the different elements.
But why should there be anything? Why should anything exist? Why isn't there just nothing, like nothing, absolutely nothing. So no consciousness, no people, no anything. Why is there anything? And when you think about it, the limitations that secularists have, and particularly the scientists and educators that are trying to remove God from our education system today, don't realise that, okay, we've got this material universe that we can detect.
We can see it with our eyes. We can look out and see the stars, which are the light of which the photons are entering in through our eyes and being focused. And that information then is being carried to our brain, and we're interpreting and we're creating a picture in our mind, and we can go and touch things.
As I'm making this broadcast, I'm sitting at a desk, I can touch it, I can see my hand, I can see the recording equipment. It's real, it's here, it's made out of matter. We know these things exist.
But it's obvious to me that there is something. Non material must have existed in order for the material to exist. And I think this is pretty obvious, because why should there be anything? We can't explain why there should be anything.
Material matter just can't suddenly come into existence. There has to be. It's just illogical that there's absolutely nothing.
Absolutely nothing. And then suddenly there is something. Why? And it defies all the known laws of physics and chemistry that we've observed and studied.
Instead, however, the human mind can make new things. We've made mobile phones that never existed before. We've made photocopiers and jet planes, nuclear bombs, all these sort of things.
And amazing medical devices, amazing new medical drug compounds have been synthesised, all from the human mind. We can create things. And so to me, it's logical that while secularists just limit the existence of everything to just this world and this universe, to me it seems so obvious that there is a different existence that is non material and that has existed forever, has always existed.
And so that's the other view that you can have. So I think, to me, it's very obvious that nothing can just suddenly become something, but there can be something that has existed forever that is non material. See, the problem with having material things existing forever is that material things rely on energy.
We know we have evidence the universe is sort of running down in a way. Things are burning up. And there's a lot of overwhelming evidence that the universe has had a beginning.
But the creator of the universe does not have to have a beginning. And that's why I think the argument put up by John Horgan in his Scientific American article, well, you just can't blame it on and say God did it. Well, we can, because God is a totally different person.
He's a totally different existent. He is not material. He is supernatural, and he's eternal.
Now, this raises a very interesting and very important question that I think that is deep in the heart of everyone, and that is, why should we die? Why can't we live forever? Now, somebody was talking to me again the other day about some multibillionaire, one of the world's richest persons was doing a whole lot of studies into how they can keep themselves young to live longer. And you think you have all this money, billions of dollars, probably couldn't really spend it in a way that you could enjoy it. You could spend it in a way that could help lots of people in the world.
But if you take from a selfish perspective, what can I do? I've got all these things. I can do just about anything I want to do, have anything I want to have. I'm enjoying life.
I'm doing all these things that I want to do. But my life's slowly ticking and my body is wearing out. The biochemical reactions in my body are slowly changing.
And one day the biochemistry, part of the biochemistry in my body is going to fail and I'm going to die. And so here, in a way, I was thinking about, it must be terrible for somebody like that to have all this money, all this opportunity, but they're going to die. And so there's this earnest longing to live forever.
Now, it's interesting that God talks about that, that if we connect with him, that he gives us the guarantee of eternal life, which is the Holy Spirit, and this is a non material entity. Again, so God describes himself as being a spirit. He's non material, and he's the creator of life.
That's why in the Bible it's referred to as our heavenly Father. Now, again, what God says and when he came to earth, as Jesus explained, of course, the Old Testament, through their images of the sanctuary service and so forth, point that we die because of the evil that we do. And it's very interesting that the essential requirements, or just as there are laws in physics, that there are laws of morality that define sort of evil, I guess, and they were defined as the ten Commandments.
They're quite simple and straightforward, that we have no other God, no other sort of person that we worship other than the creator himself, God himself. And we don't attempt to make images of that God. And we don't take the name of that God in vain.
In other words, claim to be a follower when we're not, and so forth. And also to remember every 7th day, the 7th day of the week, that God is the creator. To remember that we were created, that he is here.
In other words, remember him. Remember the person that gave us life. Sure, our physical father here, our earthly Father here, gave us life in the beginning, fertilised our mother's egg and that became us.
But that whole ability to generate life came from the creator. That whole ability for us to live, our whole ability for us to have a mind and comprehend came from the creator who created the first Father, Adam, and the first mother. And so God is saying, remember that.
Remember that I created you. And the next commandment is honour your father and mother. And so again, this is another rule.
And just like that, we're to honour our creator. And then of course we have the other laws. Do not commit murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal and do not covet, do not desire other people's things.
So we scheme to get them. And essentially those laws define morality. They define really the behaviour as God describes us in his kingdom.
And because it's just now a nature that we've inherited. And the Bible explained how sin entered the world, how evil entered the world, how we've inherited these evil attributes from our tendency towards some evil and selfishness from our parents. It's a smart part of our makeup now.
And that's one of the reasons why we don't have eternal life. We can't live forever propagating evil. God doesn't want that.
But God loves us so much that as he said that the death that we should die, the death that this multi billionaire is fearing and trying to put off as long as possible, Jesus came and died in our place. God came to earth as a man, died in our place, in the man. Jesus Christ died in our place so that we can have eternal life.
And it's a simple thing too. God says as you believe that, Jesus said, as you believe that I'm the son of God and you want to be in my kingdom, you are a person that chooses that. Really? You want to live by those ten commandments.
That's the sort of person you want to be. You want to love God and love your neighbour. As Jesus summed up those ten commandments, and what God says is, I will give you the Holy Spirit.
I will place my spirit, part of me inside you, which will be the guarantee of your inheritance to eternal life. You can read about in the Book of Ephesians there, as Paul explains it so well. And of course, you can read about Jesus' promises in the Book of John, in chapter five and chapter six in particular, where Jesus sets it out so clearly.
And so here we have this amazing explanation that we can have eternal life. It's something that God promises, something that God wants, God, the creator of this universe, in essence, wants that relationship with us. And really, more and more signs is pointing towards that, that this material world isn't all there is.
It's interesting that article don't tell the creations, but science don't have a clue how life began. And it's interesting that in new scientists published on the 5 August 2020. New Scientists, the 5 August 2020, there was an article and has a really interesting title.
It's called a radical new theory, rewrites the story of how life on earth began. Now, notice this is a theory, right? It hasn't been proven yet. And the subheading is it has long been thought that the ingredients for life came together slowly, bit by bit.
Now, there is evidence it all happened at once in a chemical big bang. And of course, what they go on, and further down, it claims that it turns out that all the key molecules of life can form from the same simple carbon based chemistry. And they easily combine, markling, startling lifelike protocells and all this sort of thing.
Well, of course, if they don't cite that, this actually has been proven, but this is the conjecture, because, as I said, as I've said in previous broadcasts, if you consider the work of Dr. James Tour, one of the top synthetic chemists in the world, he points out that these claims, which are essentially probably based on the work that came out of Harvard uni, that was then published in nature, that essentially simplified the oversimplified the chemical reactions required for life to form. And of course, notwithstanding that you would have to have millions of these reactions occurring at the same time, in the same place and producing the same compounds, as I've explained before.
But James Tour explains how, in actual fact, it's impossible these claims were made on an incorrect understanding of the chemistry that's involved. And of course, if you google, I think it's something chemists don't have a clue, still don't have a clue on how life began. James Tour, Andrews University.
So that was a talk he gave in September, obviously, just after this new scientist article came out in 2020. But one of the interesting things is, too, when we look at the evidence I came across an interesting article in this book that I've mentioned, Design and Catastrophe by Andrews University Press. And there's an article in there titled the Origin of Life: By Design or Chemical Evolution, and it's by Elena Titova.
And she works at the Belarusian Republican foundation for Fundamental Research. And she earned her doctorate phd in the Institute of Photobiology at the Belarusian Academy of Sciences. And she's authored many scientific articles on the metamorphic characteristics of photosynthesis, the photosynthesis apparatus.
And it's very interesting. She is very strong creationist, and she has some comments on this. She writes the defenders of the hypothesis of chemical evolution, which is again, what this radical new big bang, chemical Big Bang theory now that they're proposing.
And if I just digress for a moment, isn't it fascinating? What they're saying is that it can't have happened over a long period of time, must have happened very rapidly. And that's exactly what the Bible says. The Bible says life was created in six days.
And we know when we look at this and how ecology works, how different ecosystems work, how they're so dependent on one. The plant animal kingdom is interdependent and bacteria and so forth, it just makes so much sense, the order in which God created things. It just fits in that it was very rapid.
It was all over at a very short period of time. And so the scientific evidence is supporting that now. But of course, is this being taught to the young people now? Is it being taught in our state schools that the overwhelming evidence now is for creation? The overwhelming evidence that explains our existence, is a non material being outside time and space that does not have a beginning.
It makes so much sense and it makes me so feel so cranky that young people are being deprived of this knowledge. But Dr. Titova goes on to say the defenders of abiogenesis, which is how non living molecules somehow formed a living organism, believe that organic substances form from inorganic components in an atmosphere under the action of radiation and electrical discharges.
They consider that the early atmosphere was generally reducing, in this case, biologically significant organic matter, as known, would be destroyed by the ultraviolet radiation in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen and the shielding protection of an ozone layer. Other scenarios suggest the first organic matter could have come from space or been synthesised near submerged volcanoes in deep sea vents. She goes on to write, if amino acids or protein monomers, so they're the little short bit building blocks of protein, could move to the broth through highly hypothetical processes.
As substances with high reactivity, they would actively interact with aldehydes, acids, bases and other compounds that are exposed, expected to be present in the broth, there would be an unimaginable mixture of all sorts of organic compounds in which substances necessary for biological components would be at a negligible fraction. And this is the whole issue. People talk about these reactions, they forget there's all these side reactions that take place, that will take place in preference to the synthetic reactions required for life.
These other compounds would spontaneously react with each other in different ways in the presence of activators and inhibitors, resulting in the formation of tarlike mixtures not capable of further reactions relevant to the origin of life. And so when we look at the actual chemistry and what happens, it doesn't form the molecules that formally, it forms compounds that actually are very resistant to life. And she points out that in order for amino acids to form peptides, which are like several chain blocks long, or proteins, which are lung polymers with specific properties suitable for living systems, the reactions between the initial substances must be strictly selective on a number of points.
And so she now lists a whole list of reasons why chemical compounds can't form living systems. And she says firstly, monomers must be only an alpha amino acids. Monomers must be only l spatial or left handed forms of amino acids.
D amino acids are not included in cell proteins because they inhibit the formation of their tertiary structure, which is necessary for functional activity. In other words, only left handed amino acids can form. Now, in normal chemical reactions you get a mixture of both.
And she points it out. In laboratory synthesis, DNL forms of a specific amino acid are formed in equal amounts and both forms are chemically equivalent. Therefore, L amino acids or the left amino acids could not selectively be included in the protein structure.
Secondly or thirdly, rather, only 20 types of amino acids are involved in protein synthesis out of more than 300 that could be formed in undirected chemical reactions. And then fourthly, to obtain the proteins, only peptide bonds must occur between the amino acids. In the laboratory, synthesis of even one dipeptide is complex and must be strictly controlled by blocking amino acid and carboxyl groups with protective groups which are not involved in the formation of the peptide bond and activating carboxyl group which are also involved in the reaction.
In addition, she writes, the spontaneous formation of peptide bonds in the broth is impossible because one of the reaction products is water. And so here we have chemical known chemical factors that inhibit the production of living organisms or the compounds required for living organisms in nature. She then goes on to say that amino acids must be arranged in a strict linear sequence without branches and cycles, and these reactions don't flow spontaneously, but require continuous supply of energy.
And she goes on and shows that, look, the probability of one of these reactions forming is essentially impossible. And so we have really good chemical reasons. We know the chemistry now, why the structures required for a living cell can't form, and yet we know the evidence is pointing that it must have happened rapidly.
You know, science is continually pointing all the time that life must have been created. When we look philosophically at our existence and why we're here, it all points to a non material, supernatural creator outside space and time. And that's exactly what the Bible talks about.
And the Bible makes so much sense. And just the other day, I bought a book on the history supporting the biblical account, the secular history, the archaeological history, supporting, in so many fine details, the accuracy of the biblical account. As I produce these programmes, we have so much evidence that there is a loving Creator God who wants that relationship to us, with us, as described in the Bible.
And I would encourage you, if you are listening to this programme and you found this programme helpful, to put up links to this programme on your Facebook sites, on your personal media sites, tell your friends so it can be spread, so that more young people can know there are tremendous resources out there. The website creation.com, just www.creation.com, has an amazing amount of resources out there, reference to the scientific literature that people can access and go to.
So remember, if you want to relisten to these programmes, just Google 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the listen button.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia radio.
