Blood From A Stone?

Jonathan Amos, a Science Correspondent for the BBC, has a piece on their website that is a classic illustration of the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo that is being passed off on the public as science fact. Prof. Dimitar Sasselov, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has apparently discovered a rocky planet that has a mass 17 times that of earth. This, so the report tells us, contradicts all previous models for planet formation and has stumped the scientific community. What caught my eye, however, was the closing quote from Prof. Sasselov, which is uncritically recorded by Amos, “Finding Kepler-10c tells us that rocky planets could form much earlier than we thought. And if you can make rocks, you can make life”. If you can make rocks, you can make life? Really? Do tell us more!

I have recently been reading a book by Prof. Antony Flew, the notorious former atheist who has ‘converted’ to deism, “There Is No A God” published in 2007 by HarperCollins. In an appendix to the book, his co-author, Roy Abraham Varghese proposes the following thought experiment:

“Think for a minute of a marble table in front of you. Do you think that, given a trillion years or infinite time, this table could suddenly or gradually become conscious, aware of its surroundings, aware of its identity the way you are? It is simply inconceivable that this could or would happen. And the same goes for any kind of matter. Once you understand the nature of matter, of mass-energy, you realize that, by its very nature, it could never become “aware,” never “think,” never say “I”. But the atheist position is that, at some point in the history of the universe, the impossible and the inconceivable took place. Undifferentiated matter (here we include energy), at some point became “alive,” then conscious, then conceptually proficient, then an “I.” But returning to our table, we see why this is simply laughable. The table has none of the properties of being conscious and, given infinite time, it cannot “acquire” such properties. Even if one subscribes to some far-fetched scenario of the origin of life, one would have take leave [sic] of one’s senses to suggest that, given certain conditions, a piece of marble could produce concepts. And at a subatomic level, what holds for the table holds for all the other matter in the universe.”

Now I appreciate that the arguments around the origin of life are different to the arguments relating to the origins of conscious thought, but they are closely linked. This is a pretty compelling debunk of the airy notions that are thrown out by some in the scientific community and all too uncritically repeated by the media. I have no doubt that Prof. Sasselov genuinely believes his statement that “if you can make rocks, you can make life”, but we should recognise it for what it is – a pronouncement of faith. Faith in blind forces in the universe that came out of nothing, that have no meaning and no end goal. Faith that such forces can miraculously overcome the laws that are universally recognised in this universe. Above all, Prof. Sasselov is driven to this dogma by the over-whelming belief that there is no God. Any arrant nonsense will do to fill the void that this leaves!

This entry was posted in Apologetics and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.