How did we come to be here? Did God create us out of nothing, or did we evolve from inanimate matter by natural processes? This is the question I want to address in a series of posts. Since many have been here before, and much of the ground has been worked over many times, my intention is to look in some detail at a few key issues, starting with the origin of life itself, attempting only to make a small contribution in limited fields of enquiry.
According to the dominant scientific paradigm, as expounded by Richard Dawkins for example, life began when naturally occurring substances synthesised by natural and undirected physico-chemical means into self-replicating entities. It is thought that no intelligence was involved in the first emergence of life in the universe, and indeed that there was no mind at all until more advanced organisms evolved with brains and neural networks.
the miller-urey experiment
On 15 May 1953, less than three weeks after Crick and Watson suggested the double helix molecular structure for DNA in Nature, Stanley Miller reported in Science that he had synthesised amino acids under conditions meant to simulate a possible ancient earth atmosphere:
Continue reading Darwin on the horns of a dilemma: how did life begin?