Did Evolution Really Start Life on Earth? - SC2540

SPEAKER 1 Welcome to Science Conversations. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. What are 12 reasons why evolution cannot explain the origin of life on Earth? Joining me to discuss part one of this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program, Dr. John. SPEAKER 2 Hello Kaysie. SPEAKER 1 Dr. John Ashton has written a book entitled Evolution Impossible and today we will be summarising the first five reasons covered in his book why evolution is impossible. Now, we've obviously, in the previous episodes in this series, gone through a lot of detail on some of these key reasons, but in this last set, we're just gonna get right to the heart of it and talk about it in a nutshell. So take us through some of those first five reasons and the focus of them. SPEAKER 2 Right. So I think one of the very important things is that particularly in science, science is supposedly based on evidence. the problem is that people are taught that we as humans have evolved from some primitive organism that somehow formed from non-living matter. And that's how we came to be here. That's how all the living systems on the planet came to be here. But the actual scientific evidence doesn't point to that. Now, a lot of people claim that this is the case. And so the whole purpose of writing the book was to set out systematically the evidence from so many different areas that point to the fact that evolution is absolutely impossible. It could not have happened. And also the Earth can't be, and the Earth forms can't be as old as claimed. So this is a number of areas that are conflicting with the claims in textbooks. and the other issue is, too, that there are a lot of really highly qualified, really experienced scientists that also recognize this. And they have written articles. Some of them have written books, and some of them have held, you know, really high positions, like, you know, Dr. Avital, who was the chief scientist for the Israeli Ministry of Education and was very much against students just being taught that they evolved from some ape-like creature and wanted them to you know, challenge and look at the actual evidence. And yet, for just saying that, he was sacked from his position. And so this, again, should ring alarm bells in people's minds that anybody that dares now to challenge Darwin's theory of evolution or the new understanding of evolution as the origin of life and how we came to be here seems to be attacked in some way and every effort made to either discredit them. Very few efforts are made to actually challenge the evidence that they put up. Why? Because the evidence is very strong. And so, for example, some of the examples of this evidence that I point out is that mutations, which are chemical reactions that are destroying parts of the DNA code, don't produce new, meaningful code. because they're random, they're not oriented, you know, not directed in a specific way to make some new functional element. They're just random chemical processes that occur, and they actually destroy the code. And there's no known examples where they actually add new meaningful code that then works. No examples at all. There are plenty, and people get confused and they say, oh, well, you know, we observe evolution occurring, and sure, as we've discussed, that does happen, but it happens as a result of either pre-existing code being implanted in or bits of code destroyed that allow other pieces of code now to dominate in some way. These sort of things. We don't see big slabs of new code arising from mutations that enable some new body part or some new biochemical system. to form. SPEAKER 1 So this is our first reason, or this is the first reason you highlight in this book, that it's a big problem because it's essential, isn't it? For evolution to occur as is theorized. SPEAKER 2 Yes. SPEAKER 1 We absolutely need that to be happening in large scale. SPEAKER 2 That's right. And the other reason I point out is while people can theorize that mutations might do this, produce new codes, it's never actually been observed. So that's another very important fact to look at. Now, some people, of course, claim that it has been absorbed. You know, and Richard Dawkins talks about the Lenski experiments at Michigan State University where they bred E. coli through tens of thousands of generations. But again, they were still E. coli at the end. They hadn't changed into a yeast. They hadn't changed into a more sophisticated form of organism over tens of thousands of generations occurring. This is very, very important to understand. And so there's no known mechanism to explain how new, meaningful code can arise. There's no known mechanism. And as a matter of fact, at one stage, I don't know whether it's been taken down, But the University of California Berkeley website on biology education, one of the things that they raised as problems with evolution was that scientists were still trying to figure out how evolution happened. And this is the reality. They're clinging to the theory, but there's no known mechanism that can explain how that happened. Then this is very important. The other factor is too that the codes are so complex that the probability is astronomical of any meaningful code forming. So even if a little piece did form, the probability of another meaningful piece forming would require almost an infinite number of universes to explain, which, and the whole theory then becomes meaningless. You know, the only way you can explain is an infinite number of universes and somehow every possible infinite Infinity is a huge number. So somehow every possible combination of everything has occurred, you know? So, but this is just so unrealistic it would seem. And a much simpler and more straightforward explanation is that there is a supernatural creator who created these systems. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, it seems like it would be more believable to, to have that than to assume that, you know, thousands, millions, billions of new code have formed by chance, like as you said. SPEAKER 2 That work. SPEAKER 1 That actually work that are perfectly as well. SPEAKER 2 That's right. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, you can appreciate how that is just so fantastic. SPEAKER 2 And then you have all the other systems that have to work, you know, insects that fit perfectly to pollinate certain plants, all those sort of things. And there's so many symbiotics. systems that are out there. The reproductive systems are so complex and yet matching and all this sort of thing. Going into the details of this, for the codes for these were extremely complex and yet they match. Again, statistically, it's just absolutely impossible for it to occur by these random processes. It must have been directed, it must have been designed, it must have been a big picture designed to start with. so that everything that was made then was made in the right place at the right time and worked. And then the other major problem is, and a lot of people challenge the title of the book and say, well, the author talks about non-life becoming life. That's not part of evolution. Well, that's true, but life has to start somehow. And that's a similar problem. How do non-living matter molecules form a living system. And again, it's statistically impossible. It's impossible for the basic components of life to form by random chance, net alone then to be assembled, and then once they are assembled, to be made alive. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. SPEAKER 2 And this is something, again, that people don't realize. You know, we can kill an E. Coli cell, right? By putting a tiny little drop of toluene on its membrane, disrupt the The whole metabolism. All the parts are there. We can't start it up again. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 We can't set in place hundreds of biochemical reactions and just the right state of disequilibrium so that they will all move towards their, you know, their objective of creating the next part in the biochemical pathway. So, and the other thing is that a biogenesis has never been observed. You know, we've done lots of experiments. People talk about the Eurya Miller experiment back in the early 50s where they were able to synthesize a few basic amino type compounds. This is just so far removed from any living organism, you know, and people have done calculations, you know, since then showing that absolute impossibility of the basic reproductive RNA systems and so forth arising by chance is just astronomical. And again, no one has ever observed these more complex molecules forming. So these are the facts, these are the data, and the book sets out this evidence systematically, together with the references to the scientific literature, to the leading scientists that are saying this and that are raising these problems. And when you put all these reasons together, it shows that it's absolutely impossible for evolution to occur. And the theory really has been disproved. But I guess because, you know, there's a movement out there that doesn't want to let God into the picture, they're just clinging to these outdated theory, which essentially has been disproved. and essentially trying to close down anyone that is trying to show, hang on, we've got major problems here. In the meantime, we just keep on teaching our children. We teach the teachers that are gonna be teaching our children. And so we're propagating this false understanding of science. And to me, this is really bad. And that's one of the reasons I put the book out. There are lots of different books out there, but I want to systematically show that we have overwhelming scientific evidence that evolution is impossible. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, very powerful things to consider, and especially the fact that, you know, true science, we want to look at all the evidence, even if it contradicts what we thought was a good theory. We have to look at it to be a true scientist, to consider that, you know, we may have to progress to a new theory or something like that. That's how the scientific method works, isn't it? SPEAKER 2 Exactly. SPEAKER 1 And there's a lot of problems with that happening today where a wrong example is being set with throwing some of this evidence under the bus because it doesn't fit what we thought was true. That's not scientific. SPEAKER 2 No, no, certainly not. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. So I appreciate you putting the evidence forward for us to consider in these summaries especially. And so in our next session, we are going to consider some more of these reasons as we look at the 12 reasons why evolution cannot explain the origin of life on Earth. Be sure to join us for that.