At least it was in the religion section
In today’s Missoulian:
The science of God
It’s a review of Finding God in the Questions by Timothy Johnson. It seems pretty silly:
Could all this have appeared by accident? Yes, says Johnson, if there was enough time. But the actual question is whether that’s at all probable, which he doubts. And if there’s design, there must be a designer – or capital-D Designer.
Johnson quotes Sir Fred Hoyle, the eminent astrophysicist who compared random accidents producing higher organisms with the odds that “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747.”
Hoyle is debunked here. Citing that statistic is enough to cast doubt on the usefulness of this book.
Johnson disputes those who think Darwin’s theory of evolution removed the need for a Creator as an explanation. Evolution minus God, Johnson concludes, cannot say how living cells developed from nonliving chemicals. Evolution explains only organisms that already exist.
Of course, this is true. It’s hard to see how he presents it from the article, but evolutionary theory doesn’t purport to explain how life originated, just how we got to this point. Abiogensis does. I knew this even when my knowledge of evolution was very limited.
Johnson finds further support for God in two obvious realities about human existence: our inborn moral conscience and need for relationships.
This is….dumb.
Didn’t Darwin write “The ORIGIN of Species,” which in turn led to the theory of natural selection or evolution? If I’m missing the finer points, let me know. Isn’t “origin” implied in the theory of evolution? We’re talking about how life began, are we not?
No, it’s not implied at all. The “origin” in Darwin’s book (I’m assuming, I haven’t read it) is referring to what it specifically says, the origin of “species” not “life,” meaning it purports to explain how life evolved from lower forms into the complex forms and the divisions we label species. Something along that line, anyway.
Look at it this way: Say there is a god and he created life which was say, bacteria and we evolved up from there. That is perfectly consistent with the theory of evolution, though not of the current theory of abiogenesis, which is much more speculation that evolution. Evolution does not depend on a certain way life first formed, just that it did. Which, I think we can agree on.
Sorry for the late response, if you even see this.