Category: Essay

Abiogenesis and Dr. James Tour

This is the final video in a course on abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour. If the subject of the naturalistic origin of life from nonlife intrigues you, it may be good to keep in mind how unlikely something like that actually is. And yet here we are. How did we get here? If you don’t like Genesis, that question is not easy to answer and so far it has not been answered.

Regardless what you might hear in the media or the hype from origins of life researchers, no one has been able to create life from nonlife in a laboratory. They have done many amazing things with already existing life, but they have not started with nonliving chemicals and produced life. There are many reasons why this problem is difficult.

  • Life requires homochirality. Molecules do not naturally separate into left and right handed versions, but biological molecules have to for a cell to function without overheating.
  • Carbohydrates are the hardest to synthesize in a modern lab. How they could have synthesized in a prebiotic environment without lab equipment or trained technicians running that equipment is a mystery.
  • Peptides are also difficult to synthesize. Any partial success in the lab involves processes unavailable in a prebiotic environment.
  • Nucleotides may be easier until one tries to link them together, because they depend on synthesizing carbohydrates to get the ribose that joins them.
  • Lipids are sometimes said to form spontaneously. Tour said that “spontaneously” is an origin of life researcher’s code word for “I have no idea how that happened”.
  • Chiral-induced spin selectivity requires homochirality. It permits cell functions without overheating while maintaining the purity of the cell’s components.
  • RNA can not replicate enough of itself to be useful. Linking parts of it together leads to errors which make it useless. It is also unstable. The RNA World hypothesis that relies on RNA alone cannot even get started.
  • Life requires a non-random DNA code that can usefully direct the cell’s functions. Not just any random code will do. So even if you get past the other problems of synthesizing a cell from chemicals, the information problem blocks the process. How does mindless nature know what a useful code sequence could be?
  • Life is highly ordered with low entropy and high energy. How does nature produce life without violating the laws of thermodynamics?

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While writing this essay this morning I listened to one of Greg Bahnsen’s audio lectures, Amoebas, Apes and Adam that SlimJim referenced in his post Free Bahnsen Lectures: Getting Down and Dirty.

Even though Bahnsen’s lecture is some decades older than Tour’s course, Bahnsen’s chemical arguments against life coming from nonlife is in line with what Tour had to say. And Tour’s objections to abiogenesis reinforced Bahnsen’s assessment of evolution in general, not just abiogenesis, as a “grand fairy tale for adults”.

Lachish

Lachish was a Canaanite city. Douglas Petrovich presents five significant archeological finds at Lachish in the process of giving you a history of this important biblical city.

The following map from Bible Mapper shows Lachish in relation to other cities during the time when it fell to the Assyrian Sennacherib.

Douglas Petrovich is active on Academia.edu where you can find many of his papers. He is also the author of The World’s Oldest Alphabet, Origins of the Hebrews and Nimrod the Empire Builder.

Finding Sodom and Gomorrah by Finding Zoar

There were five cities mentioned in Deuteronomy 29:23 and Genesis 19 that were subject to destruction: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. Although Zoar was in the middle of those five cities it was not destroyed, because Lot fled there.

Joel P. Kramer shows the sulfur that destroyed the cities and provides evidence that these were the actual cities mentioned in the Bible. He also shows why other sites which some have claimed to be Sodom, such as Hammam, could not have been.

He reports that archeologists have even found the cave where Lot and his two daughters likely stayed (Genesis 19:30) after leaving Zoar.

Kramer has a wonderful book, Where God Came Down: The Archeological Evidence that is beautifully illustrated and clearly written.

Genesis 19:17-22 KJV – 17 And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.
18 And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord:
19 Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die:
20 Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live.
21 And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken.
22 Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

REVIEW: Glenn Earls, It Happened in Hell: The Victory Below

The following is a review of a book I received as an early reviewer. Normally, I post such reviews on Amazon and Library Thing where I received the book. Since I was puzzled enough by Matthew 16:181 to write a story about it, I am posting my review here as an alternate way of looking at that verse.

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This is a powerful book on many levels. It makes an argument for universal salvation of all human beings in the past, present and future. Since God wills all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:42), there are biblical grounds for this position.

This is the first volume of a proposed trilogy. It addresses the concept of the “harrowing of hell”. This harrowing occurred after the death of Jesus when He descended into hell and it was completed before He rose. This was when the gates of hell fell from the inside. They could no longer prevail against the church (Matthew 16:18) to keep the church captive. The church now included everyone on both sides of the gulf which separated Lazarus from the rich man (Luke 16:19-313). Everyone, every captive, left. Christ is the Victor, the hero of this event.

The author makes his argument by first discussing the meanings of “Sheol” or “Hades” as the place where the spirits of the dead waited for salvation, “Gehenna” as an actual garbage dump and “Tartarus” as a place for angels. He then describes the divide within Sheol mentioned in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Paul revealed that the Gospel was also for the gentiles, the people with the rich man on other side of the divide.

The victory over Hades from (Matthew 16:18) is next explained as a Trojan horse kind of attack on hell from within. He provides an early church confirmation of his position and especially noted the vision of Perpetua from 208 AD which referenced crushing of the head of the serpent.

With the above argumentation in place, the author provides a three part imaginative narrative of what happened during this harrowing. The story is powerful and brings the argument to life. You will encounter Adam and Eve, Moses and Elijah, the thief on the cross along with even Jesus’ betrayer Judas.

The last chapter goes through a history of church teaching on the harrowing of hell from the early church which took it for granted to the modern church which viewed it as allegory if at all. Indeed, I don’t recall hearing the term before. A week before reading this book, I was trying to make sense of Matthew 16:18. Was the church the rock catapulted against the gates of hell from the outside to bring those gates down? Was this an event we were still to prepare for? Those were the kinds of thoughts going through my head. I understand better now what happened after reading this book.

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  1. Matthew 16:18 KJV – And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. ↩︎
  2. 1 Timothy 2:4 KJV – Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. ↩︎
  3. Luke 16:19-31 KJV – 19 There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:
    20 And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores,
    21 And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
    22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
    23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
    24 And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
    25 But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
    26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
    27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
    28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
    29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
    30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
    31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. ↩︎

Review of Three Channels

About five years ago I realized I was a biblical creationist. Much before that I would have said that birds came from dinosaurs and the world was gazillions of years old.

This has been one of the most interesting rabbit holes I have EVER gone down. I know you may be glad you didn’t go down yourself, but if you ever decide to take the plunge, below are three YouTube channels that I now regularly watch and highly recommend.

Standing For Truth

This episode covers Jason Lisle’s Anisotropic Synchrony Convention (ASC) and the model which predicted before the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reported back data that we would see fully formed galaxies at further red shifts that had heavy elements in them.

When JWST confirmed the predictions of Lisle’s model it falsified the big bang as we know it. A corrected big bang story will need to be devised by those who won’t give up on the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, but Lisle’s ASC model needs no modification.

Examining Origins

My first introduction to Cornelius Hunter came from this channel. He is a philosopher of science who views biological evolution as a “theological research project”, not a science, although it could become a science if it started to take itself seriously.

Since listening to him a few months ago I have read his books, Darwin’s God and Science’s Blind Spot, both of which I recommend if you are interested in biology and the philosophy and history of science.

Logos Research Associates

In this episode John Whitmore provides an overview of the Coconino Sandstone. The beds of this layer are slanted rather than flat. A flat layer can easily be seen as having been laid down by a huge water catastrophe (think, the global flood of Genesis 6-9). However, can the tilted layers of the Coconino Sandstone also be viewed as deposited by water?

Concluding Remarks

The discussions on these channels are lively. Although the hosts are creationists, many evolutionists comment to challenge them. So, it is not a totally one-sided experience.

For a quick jump down the rabbit hole, these three channels are good places to start. You might even find, as I have, that you prefer it down there.

Review: J.C. Walton’s Compact Time

Book: J.C. Walter, Compact Time: Radiocarbon Dating & the Case for a Young Earth, New Creation, 2025.

The main difference between compact time (CpT) which the author promotes and deep time (DpT) is that geological time is based on a calculated adjustment of ages provided by the decay of Carbon-14 (14C) rather than the decay of uranium or other such radioactive isotopes.

14C decay by itself provides a reliable measure of time for the past 3000 or so years and it is used in archeological research. However, for objects much older than that age it runs into problems with known historical dates. CpT is a calculated adjustment for 14C to agree with better known archeological dates.

Also since 14C is present throughout the fossil record this suggests strongly that the fossil record itself is not very old. This falsifies DpT. Soft tissue in dinosaur fossils confirms the shorter age as well. If one applies CpT to the fossil record one gets a geological time measurement that agrees with archeology and suggests a possible age for the fossil record.

A short age implies that the hypothesized catastrophes of the past forming the geological mega-sequences should be lumped together into one “giga-catastrophe” which can be associated with the biblical flood of Genesis 6-9 along with stories of the flood in many other cultures. The author puts the giga-catastrophe about 5350 years ago which is close to the estimate used by the Associates for Biblical Research for the biblical flood. The years since the giga-catastrophe is a parameter in the model for CpT given in Chapter 5.

The author provides a clear presentation that is well documented for those who would like to try using CpT or research it further.

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Interview of chemist John C. Walton by Henry B. Smith Jr of the Associates for Biblical Research

Evolutionary Magic vs Mutation Rates

To pull a rabbit out of a hat you need a rabbit, a hat and a lie. The lie of abiogenesis provides the rabbit – if you believe the lie.

But where did the hat come from?

To get the hat dark matter magically guides stuff the big bang blew up down gravity rabbit holes to produce stars by overpowering the normal functioning of the natural law of hydrostatic equilibrium. Then stars blow up again only to coalesce again and again. After a gazillion years a hat appears in the magician’s hand.

There are easier ways to get a hat, but what does the magician really have up his sleeve? And why are we watching the show?

Rebekah Davis of Examining Origins interviews Matt Nailor of Standing For Truth

How To Look

I added the following time markers with my notes to the video above because it is rather long. These parts stood out for me in this battle between evolutionary magic and evolution-refuting mutation rates.

0:50 Mutation rates are FAST. They are based on observed pedigree data, but evolutionists need them to be SLOW so their calibrations fit the long phylogenetic chronology they have read into the fossil record.

14:45 Genetic diversity is measured by mutations in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). However, not all regions of the mtDNA mutate at the same rate. The most accurate regions as far as a clock goes are the two hypervariable regions.

20:15 Thomas Parson’s pedigree study using the FBI blood bank filled with samples from diverse people groups focused on the two hypervariable regions of the mtDNA. They provide the most useful data for forensic science. From this data our earliest female ancestor, Mitochondrial Eve, was estimated to have lived about 6,500 years ago.

40:55 Other pedigree studies confirmed Parson’s results. Genealogical rates also aligned with the pedigree studies.

50:55 Slowing the mutation rate by 15% to add in selection that evolutionists need only pushes Biblical Eve from 6,500 years to a maximum of 7,657 years ago. It fits the Septuagint biblical chronology even better covering the date for Creation at 5554 BC which would be 7,578 years ago (where 7,578 equals 5554 BC plus 2025 AD minus 1 overcounted zero year).

52:30 The genetic diversity for whales, thoroughbred horses, cats and chickens all align with human mtDNA data. There is no time for anything to have evolved from a single common ancestor that evolutionists predicted had occurred.

1:09:00 Everything we see around us that can be historically dated only goes back about 5,000 years. That includes written records, pottery, astronomy, mathematics, metallurgy, brewing beer, irrigation, or the oldest leather shoes. Claims that there are sites which are much older, such as Göbekli Tepe, are easily discredited. This fits nicely in the Septuagint flood date of 3298 BC which was about 5,322 years ago (where 5,322 equals 3298 BC plus 2025 AD minus 1 overcounted zero year).

1:15:00 All of this lands right on the biblical timeline and even in the biblical places after the flood. The only thing that disrupts this are the conflicting, but old, radiometric measurements of the ages of rocks that evolutionists hang onto like a life raft. But rocks aren’t alive. As far as life is concerned, the creationist model is the only one that can handle the data.

1:16:40 Genetic diversity across species varies much less than expected or needed by evolutionists. These species emerged about the same time as humans from what evolutionists see and need as a global bottleneck since species also have genetic boundaries that are too distinct for evolutionist tastes. It was almost as if all species got in a boat two by two which saved them from a global catastrophic flood in order to replenish the earth once more. Evolutionists need some global bottleneck to account for the lack of genetic diversity, but they insist it was NOT the biblical flood.

1:46:00 Why not the flood? Now we are positioned to look up the magician’s sleeve. The theory of evolution started as a lie with an agenda. The goal was to free science from Moses by discrediting the historicity of the biblical record. That is why evolutionists will not consider the biblical flood as their needed bottleneck. If they did, that would credit the Bible with providing accurate information suggesting that creation itself might have occurred.

2:06:00 Bottom line: Evolution is “pseudo-science to the max”. Even as magic, evolution is not very convincing once one looks up the magician’s sleeve.

When a rabbit pops out of a hat
stay alert. Check those sleeves looking at
what might harbor a lie.
Keep on looking. Pass by
that sly grin gracing Alice’s cat.

Theological Naturalism and the Elephants in One’s Living Room

Most people don’t want elephants in their living rooms. If we have any and we don’t know they are there, it’s because we have a blind spot. It’s not that we don’t bump into those elephants multiple times. We do, but we can always come up rationalizations to explain why the walls keep moving about without having to admit that there are elephants in our living rooms.

While chasing out my own elephants, I ran into Cornelius Hunter whom Rebekah Davis has interviewed multiple times on her YouTube channel, Examining Origins. Hunter is a philosopher of science and a biologist. He is also a Christian, but for scientific reasons he is neither a creationist nor an evolutionist.

That means evolutionists don’t like him, because he allows for evolution to be false. They think he is compromising with creationism. That also means creationists don’t trust him, because he allows for evolution to be true. They think he is compromising with evolutionism even though he has shown that evolution has been scientifically falsified so many times that it is useless as a model of origins.

Theological Naturalism

Theological naturalism is neither atheism nor skepticism. Rather, it is a naturalism that arose out of Judeo-Christianity polluted over the millennia with Gnosticism and Greek philosophy. It is a naturalism justified by ideas of God as too omnipotent, too good, or too omniscient to be bothered with our messy (think, evil) world. Such involvement would damage His dignity.

Theological naturalism puts God on a pedestal. It is a theological position that removes God from His messy creation by handing His creation over to the idols of natural law and chance. It is a theological position that rejects Genesis 1-11 where we are told how evil entered the world.

As Hunter puts it in his book, Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism:

The move to [theological] naturalism is neither atheism in disguise nor a scientific discovery. Instead, the move to naturalism was mandated largely by thinkers within the church. Religious skeptics gladly accepted the move, but their position has always been a parasitic one.1

Hunter notes that in spite of evolution being a failed scientific model, few want to reject it. They reason (correctly) that if they did reject it, the only alternatives would be some form of creationism, but any form of creationism, biblical or not, would bring God too close to the messiness of the universe.

Science As Useful Modeling

Hunter wants to separate science from theology or metaphysics. He points out that science is much easier to do than metaphysics. In science you make a public statement. Then you make vulnerable predictions from that statement, that is, predictions which are falsifiable. Others check the predictions against reality. If the model survives these checks, it can be provisionally accepted – not as true, but as useful – until a better model with tighter predictions comes along.

Bottom line: a scientific model or theory makes useful predictions.

Metaphysics and theology on the other hand go after a bigger prize that is more difficult to achieve. They want truth. Often they only rely on reason to get that prize. That is, they don’t want to rely on revelation such as that provided in the Bible. All they are willing to use to ground their rationalizations are mere assumptions that they think must somehow be true. But mere assumptions lead one into all kinds of nonsense.

Getting back to those elephants, my take away from Hunter is to recognize the difference between science and metaphysics. As soon as I confuse them, I’ve got an elephant in my living room. To get rid of these elephants I have to see them for what they are: theologically motivated rationalizations masquerading as useful science.

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  1. Hunter, Cornelius. Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism (p. 32). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩︎

The Hebrew Invention of the Alphabet

An important chronological study is Douglas Petrovich’s Origins of the Hebrews published 2021. He traced biblical events from Joseph’s being sold into slavery to the Exodus aligning them with Egyptian history.

Before finishing that study Petrovich realized that he had evidence from Egypt and Sinai that the first alphabet was created by Joseph’s eldest son, Manasseh, after the Israelites arrived in Egypt in 1876 BC. Manasseh knew how to write the Egyptian language and provided a way for the Israelites to now write their own language without having to learn Egyptian hieroglyphics. Those findings led to Petrovich’s first book, The World’s Oldest Alphabet, published in 2016, where he provided evidence that the letters of our alphabet came from the Hebrews.

Not everyone agrees with this idea. For the last few centuries there has been way too much theorizing assuming that little to nothing of what was written in the Bible could have actually happened. These skeptics demanded corroborating evidence outside of the Bible before they would take the Bible seriously as history.

Those promoting such beliefs justified them using arguments from silence. Since they knew of no evidence (except what was in the Bible which they refused to accept), they assumed the Bible must be false. They reasoned: How could some guy named “Moses” – if he ever existed – in the 15th century BC write the Torah without having a script to write it in?

But theories based solely on reason quickly lose touch with reality, because they are grounded not on evidence but assumption. Petrovich brings us back to reality. By the time Moses was writing the Torah after the Exodus in 1446 BC the Israelites already had a script that they had used for hundreds of years since nearly the beginning of their 430 years of sojourn in Egypt.

This evidence of Hebraic writing is also evidence to skeptics that the Israelites did indeed spend centuries in Egypt just as the Bible said they did.

In the video below Petrovich provides an overview of the evidence for these claims.

Petrovich concludes at the end of this video:

So all of this demonstrates that it’s the Israelites who are the inventors of the alphabet and there are amazing inscriptions that attest to this. 58:51

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For those seeking more information, the Associates for Biblical Research provides articles on Douglas Petrovich, reviews of his books, interviews with him and even articles by him. As archeologists they also provide chronological information linking events in the Bible with the history of the Ancient Near East validating the historical reliability of the Bible for those who refuse to take the Bible seriously without such corroborating evidence.

The Book of Daniel Was Written By Daniel In The 6th Century BC

The Associates for Biblical Research is the first place I go for chronological information about the Bible. In this video 10 pieces of archeological evidence summarize support for the view that the Book of Daniel was written by the prophet Daniel in the 6th century BC.

Henry B. Smith Jr, who interviewed Bryan Windle, authored the 2018 paper that is often referenced supporting the Septuagint’s version of the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. The Septuagint version provides a date of creation that is about 1500 years older than that provided by James Ussher in 1650.