Do you agree with this "scientific" explanation?

[strugglingalong]

I was reading an article that said the following:

"Szostak’s earlier work has shown that the container probably took the form of a layer of fatty acids that could self-assemble based on their reaction to water (see video). One tip of the acid is hydrophilic, meaning it’s attracted to water, while the other tip is hydrophobic. When researchers put a lot of these molecules together, they circle the wagons against the water and create a closed loop.

These membranes, with the right mix of chemicals, can allow nucleic acids in under some conditions and keep them trapped inside in others.

That opens the possibility that one day, in the distant past, an RNA-like molecule wandered into a fatty acid and started replicating. That random event, through billions of evolutionary iterations, researchers believe, created life as we know it." (Here’s the url: blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp )

What do you all think?

Pax Christi tecum.

 

[Chirpa]

Well, does it really matter how God made the universe? If He used evolution; so be it. It isn’t a issue for me as it really doesn’t matter how and why He did it the way He did it…I believe in Him and one day it will all make sense in the afterlife. It seems to me that God does things in a way that humankind can understand…maybe this is just one of those. At any rate, our world is totally awesome and all anyone has to do is take a look at nature to see the handiwork of God!
Take care and God Bless,
Chirpa

 

[strugglingalong]

Well, does it really matter how God made the universe? If He used evolution; so be it. It isn’t a issue for me as it really doesn’t matter how and why He did it the way He did it…I believe in Him and one day it will all make sense in the afterlife. It seems to me that God does things in a way that humankind can understand…maybe this is just one of those. At any rate, our world is totally awesome and all anyone has to do is take a look at nature to see the handiwork of God!
Take care and God Bless,
Chirpa

Well my issue is primarily with the following portion:

That opens the possibility that one day, in the distant past, an RNA-like molecule wandered into a fatty acid and started replicating. That random event, through billions of evolutionary iterations, researchers believe, created life as we know it.

It promotes the idea that life is random, that cells wandered around aimlessly and just happened to get in the right place to create life over billions of iterations.

Pax Christi tecum.

 

[Ghoti]

Well my issue is primarily with the following portion:

It promotes the idea that life is random, that cells wandered around aimlessly and just happened to get in the right place to create life over billions of iterations.

Pax Christi tecum.

Atheistic science may say it’s random; that’s because they cannot explain how it happens without invoking God. Just because the process is attributed to randomness does not mean the process is wrong; it just means that it was misattributed, and that credit was not given to Whom it was due.

As a Christian, to me it is obvious that whenever “randomness” is cited, there we see the Hand of God. It does not reflect on the validity of the theory.

 

[TheDoctor]

…It promotes the idea that life is random, that cells wandered around aimlessly and just happened to get in the right place to create life over billions of iterations.

That’s one way to look at it. I look at it this way: God blinked the universe into existence and eventually created this planet and all that is on it. If he chose to start life with wandering RNA, so be it - ain’t a biggie to me.

I thought of an analogy to my marriage: I believe that God sent my wife into my life. He did not snap his fingers and create her and plop her in my room though. Did we each “wander around aimlessly and just happen to get in the right place” or did God put us on a winding path that eventually brought us together?

May that RNA was not aimlessly wandering but was on the path God put it on?

 

[Evan]

RNA molecules are too delecate to just ‘wander around’ without being destroyed by all the other molecules, light, etc. The hard part in creating life is the RNA molecule. That is where the biologists, who want to explain the creation of life, need to concentrate their efforts.

However, once you have a world full of RNA (and no life yet). This second part of the picture may be useful.

 

[SeekerJen]

Atheistic science may say it’s random; that’s because they cannot explain how it happens without invoking God. Just because the process is attributed to randomness does not mean the process is wrong; it just means that it was misattributed, and that credit was not given to Whom it was due.

As a Christian, to me it is obvious that whenever “randomness” is cited, there we see the Hand of God. It does not reflect on the validity of the theory.

What he said. Even if the molecules came together randomly, the molecules had to come from somewhere. We Christians believe that God is behind all, though we do not understand how.

 

[palmas85]

I was reading an article that said the following:

"Szostak’s earlier work has shown that the container probably took the form of a layer of fatty acids that could self-assemble based on their reaction to water (see video). One tip of the acid is hydrophilic, meaning it’s attracted to water, while the other tip is hydrophobic. When researchers put a lot of these molecules together, they circle the wagons against the water and create a closed loop.

These membranes, with the right mix of chemicals, can allow nucleic acids in under some conditions and keep them trapped inside in others.

That opens the possibility that one day, in the distant past, an RNA-like molecule wandered into a fatty acid and started replicating. That random event, through billions of evolutionary iterations, researchers believe, created life as we know it." (Here’s the url: blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp )

What do you all think?

Pax Christi tecum.

I think it is perfectly fine and very well could have happened that way.

The obvious question is though, where did the RNA like molecule and fatty acid come from? I somehow doubt they spontaneously burst into being without some outside influence being applied…

 

[EasterJoy]

It promotes the idea that life is random, that cells wandered around aimlessly and just happened to get in the right place to create life over billions of iterations.

Pax Christi tecum.

Oh, absolutely not. If you know what you are doing, you can use the laws of physics so that the effect of a multitude of random events is perfectly predictable.

One can presume God knows and has always known what He is doing!

 

[abucs]

Well i would be very interested in the work of atoms forming RNA/DNA given the conditions of the earth 4 billion years ago.
For the last century though i think that particular field of science hasn’t progressed much. As i said, i will be very interested when (if) we get there.

Of course this doesn’t mean it was random. That would be a personal interpretation of science. Not science.

I would suggest strugglingalong that you go one step back and investigate what exactly an atom is. When you suggest that cells might just wander around aimlessly before creating life, it is important to investigate what atoms are as these of course make up cells (and everything else in this universe).

The ideas of atoms as little billiard balls of electrons orbiting neutrons and protons is only a high school science device in helping people to understand atoms.

Studying further, i believe, looking at quantum mechanics, Bells theorem, uncertaintly principal, observer effect, quantum zeno effect etc made me reconsider what atoms are and thus the idea that atoms are just aimlessly wandering around under the ‘physical’ laws of nature (whatever that is) had to be abandoned to my mind.

Regards.

 

[strngrnrth]

Outside a living organism RNA is extremely unstable and unlikely to form even under hospitable conditions, which probably didn’t exist for any long period anyway. Fatty acids are also mostly the products of living things in nature. This is basically like saying a vein of iron ore and coal was exposed to a solar flare and became steel, molded around a strangely-shaped cliffside, cooled and fell in an avalanche and became all the gears and pulleys for a CD factory, and eventually the copper and other components collected as a result of shifts in the electromagnetic field and finally the plastic components formed as a result of a petroleum spout, and the whole thing was activated by lightning. Over many millions of years, spillages from the CD plant and similar accidents allowed fully wired apartment buildings and stores to form nearby and finally cars began driving down streets, attracted by magnetic deposits in the earth and the resulting waste products became the goods available in the stores. Everything that wouldn’t have been a functional part of a town disappeared by being in the way of moving objects and getting crushed. Objects replicated themselves and soon it was a big city.
Possibly, but since that would take thousands of times longer than the amount of time that actually passed, and because it is far simpler to assume that someone built at least many of these things or programmed them to build and perfect one another, I’m saying nah.

 

[EasterJoy]

There is and equal an opposite danger here, though, too (I mean, equal and opposite of the idea that life could have had no supernatural cause). That danger is that we forget that those things that happen by natural physical processes are included in those things which happen by the hand of God. This is a very common mistake, both among the lay public and among scientists: that is, the mistaken notion that if I can prove that something could possibly have happened by physical laws that I can explain, I have proven that God did not do it.

There is no time that is hidden from God. God allows our free will to operate, but God does not act and then suffer from unforeseen consequences. Moreover, God is not simply the origin of the universe. His power sustains the entire universe in every moment. Every physical process in the universe was created by God and is sustained by God. All creation praises him, in the very wonder of its being.

You don’t have to be a scientist to forget that. Actually, I have found that the more I understand how nature works, the harder it is to forget that.

 

[I_Believe]

I was reading an article that said the following:

"Szostak’s earlier work has shown that the container probably took the form of a layer of fatty acids that could self-assemble based on their reaction to water (see video). One tip of the acid is hydrophilic, meaning it’s attracted to water, while the other tip is hydrophobic. When researchers put a lot of these molecules together, they circle the wagons against the water and create a closed loop.

These membranes, with the right mix of chemicals, can allow nucleic acids in under some conditions and keep them trapped inside in others.

That opens the possibility that one day, in the distant past, an RNA-like molecule wandered into a fatty acid and started replicating. That random event, through billions of evolutionary iterations, researchers believe, created life as we know it." (Here’s the url: blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp )

What do you all think?

Pax Christi tecum.

I think the first couple of chapters in the book of Genesis explain it quite well

 

[bcuster]

That opens the possibility that one day, in the distant past, an RNA-like molecule wandered into a fatty acid and started replicating. That random event, through billions of evolutionary iterations, researchers believe, created life as we know it."
What do you all think?

Pax Christi tecum.

There is a possibility that pigs will fly!

I get so peeved by these explanations. There is no proof whatsoever! Without a Creator, it ain’t gonna happen. If I didn’t read this kind of stupidity over and over again, I would not believe that people would swallow this “scientific” mumbo jumbo.

God’s creative power is at the core of every atom!

 

[SanJudas]

Every physical process in the universe was created by God and is sustained by God. All creation praises him, in the very wonder of its being.

Of course! If you are a believer, this is the only logical position you can take. Genesis says that God created everything. The Enemy is not capable of creating; he can only destroy.

I taught high school biology for 15 years. This is the same explanation I always gave to my students, on one of the first few days of class. Many came from religious backgrounds, and their relief upon hearing another believer justify the study of science on these grounds was palpable. Some admitted to me that they had not believed anything they had been taught in previous science classes, particularly in Biology, because it had always been presented in a secular manner which seemed to put it in opposition to religious belief. Once we had established that the study of science was legitimate, it was then easier to discuss the ethics of issues such as evolution, abortion, stem-cell research, and biological weapons. They were able to see that some findings of biology (such as life beginning at conception) and Christianity can be compatible.