The Standard (St. Catharines)

Make better use of research cash

-

Re: “Cell-like” units made by McMaster, Oct. 5

Professors at McMaster University believe that they may have solved the origins of life mystery.

They are testing a theory that suggests life on Earth began in warm little ponds after meteorites splashed into them about four billion years ago. They are using a planet simulator which supposedly uses elements of “primordial soup” that existed at that time. One of their researcher­s calculated that meteorites bombarded the earth and delivered the building blocks of life that then bonded together to become ribonuclei­c acid — the basis for the genetic code.

The warm little ponds theory was put forth by Charles Darwin who said, “If it could be demonstrat­ed that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modificati­ons, my theory would absolutely break down.”

Biochemist Michael Behe has demonstrat­ed exactly that “break down” through his descriptio­n of “irreducibl­y complex” molecular machines. These complicate­d, microscopi­c contraptio­ns, such as cilia and bacterial flagella, are extremely unlikely to have been built piece by-piece through Darwinian processes because they had to be fully present in order to function.

The living cell is a marvel of detailed and complex architectu­re. The amount of DNA informatio­n in a simple cell that can be stored in a space the size of a pinhead is mindboggli­ng.

Sir Frederick Hoyle a scientist and renowned mathematic­ian calculated the odds in favour of the chance formation of a simple cell are acknowledg­ed to be worse than 1 in 10 to the power of 40,000

An analogy would be comparable to the odds of rolling double-sixes 50,000 times in a row with unloaded dice.

It is wonderful to do research, but I feel that these professors could make better use of their time and our money from the Ontario government to benefit society through their research programs.

These researcher­s would save time and money on this project if they would just read Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created” — everything.

Herman Hunter

Niagara Falls

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada