Saturday, June 24, 2006

 

Ken Miller & Francis Collins open to an ID explanation for the origin of life

Just to bring to your attention this fascinating report by William Dembski on how two prominent 'theistic evolutionists' in America have recently made some comments about how God - and therefore how an intelligent design explanation of any type - could have been directly involved in bringing about the origin of life.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1253

Dembski reporting on Ken Miller: 'The most interesting part of the talk for me came at the end when the following question was posed: “Since biologists don’t really have a good grasp on the origin of life itself, and since life has clearly resulted some kind of self-organization to go from a bunch of chemicals to the point where we are today, couldn’t the origin of life be the point at which God’s involvement in creation was direct?” As this question was posed, at least a third of the students in the crowd nodded their heads yes. The professors in the crowd just looked confused; and scared. To my surprise however, Dr. Miller said, “absolutely!” That made the professors look even more confused.'

Dembski reporting Collins: 'Four billion years ago, the conditions on this planet were completely inhospitable to life as we know it; 3.85 billion years ago, life was teeming. That is a very short period—150 million years—for the assembly of macromolecules into a self-replicating form. I think even the most bold and optimistic proposals for the origin of life fall well short of achieving any real probability for that kind of event having occurred. Is this where God entered? Is this how life got started? I am happy to accept that model, but it will not shake my faith if somebody comes up with a model that explains how that the first cells formed without divine intervention.'



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