The Origin of Life Circus Adds Old and New Acts
New and old miracle acts for the origin of life are added continually, to see if people will keep coming with money.
Here is some of the latest media fluff about life’s origin without design. Notice how sky-high the perhapsimaybecouldness index rises in each of them. The Origin of Life Circus (as Susan Mazur described it) is funded by the federal government, to give the illusion to taxpayers that they’re getting free entertainment.

Mazur interviewed all the leading lights in the materialist origin-of-life field.
Scientists identify protein that may have existed when life began (Rutgers University, reprinted by NASA Astrobiology Magazine). “When life began, proteins were likely much simpler, perhaps just 10 to 20 amino acids long.” Short proteins, even if they existed, have no function alone. They can only function as part of pre-existing metabolic complexes directed by a genetic code. They wouldn’t last long, anyway, without a membrane and a purpose for their existence. Rutgers materialists speak of “Legos of life” coming together without a kid to put the pieces together into a truck or airplane.
Researchers reveal hidden rules of genetics for how life on Earth began (NASA Astrobiology Magazine). We’re seeing more institutions named for ‘health’ dealing in materialist philosophy. This one comes from “University of North Carolina Health Care.” How exactly has materialism improved your health lately? These materialists take one of the most complex systems known in life, the genetic code and its transcription/translation mechanisms, to weave a tale about how life evolved. In a nutshell, the idea goes: if it exists, it must have evolved.
A Century-Old Model for Life’s Origin Gets Significant Substantiation (Weizmann Institute via NASA Astrobiology Magazine). Some Israelites are still worshiping false gods, like Oparin. The Russian atheist’s views about molecules coming together by chance into ‘coacervates’ rises like zombie science from the dead in this story. Droplets, Lipid World, Composomes – you can give new jargon names to a bad idea, but it’s still a bad idea. The discovery of the genetic code killed Oparin’s fat-bubble theory, but it’s baaaaack: “This lends credence to the scientists’ assumption that life could emerge before the advent of DNA and RNA.” Credence is in the mind of the hearer.
‘Living Fossils’ of Earth’s Oldest Life-Forms Found in Tasmania (Live Science). Stephanie Pappas performs divination on Tasmanian goo for her storytelling performance. Could the goo reveal stromatolites made by earth’s earliest life? Oh, the power of suggestion.
Building blocks for bottom-up biology (Current Biology). Michael Gross presents another Lego story for the children, telling how the building blocks of lie came together for a grand creation myth. But then he crosses over to the other side, describing how what he just said about the materialistic origin of life might help scientists use intelligence to design useful proteins.
New Study Identifies Possible Ancestors of RNA (NASA Astrobiology Magazine). Some of the best-known actors of OOL, Nick Hud, Stanley Miller and Leslie Orgel make curtain calls in Joelle Renstrom’s new rendition of the RNA World story. She knows that the RNA World hypothesis begs the question of where the RNA came from, and that Orgel called the idea a “gloomy prospect.” Cue the lightning from Miller’s flask; maybe that did it. It never worked before, but maybe enough wishful thinking can work the magic.
The spark that created life (Science Daily). The storytellers at Monash University commit the ‘directed evolution’ fallacy as they begin their yarn. To catch readers’ attention, they set up some conflict, to create tension, after first singing a hymn to Father Darwin:
Evolution by Darwinian natural selection is immensely powerful — both in nature and within laboratories. Using ‘laboratory evolution’, we can take an enzyme which combines random mutations and functional selection, and improve its function by more than 1000 times. You can see evidence of science taking advantage of evolution across the field, from synthesised medications used to prevent the reoccurrence of heart attacks (beta blockers) to the development of tumor-targeting antibody therapeutics.
However, nothing evolves unless it already exists. When life started more than three billion years ago, what was the spark that created something from randomness?
Their work “may” do this, and it “may” do that, and it “does shed light on the evolution of protein structures,” they claim. Their hope is built on nothing less than lifeless mud and randomness.
Liquid crystals and the origin of life (American Chemical Society). Oooh: this is New-Agey. Crystals! They may hold the secret of our beginnings. You may have seen liquid crystals organized by intelligent design in your watch or cell phone. “However, liquid crystals may have played a far more ancient role: helping to assemble Earth’s first biomolecules.” So cool. Just imagine! Maybe the RNA World used liquid crystals to hold things together. Aren’t you glad the National Science Foundation pays for these acts to entertain us? Wait; NSF? That’s our money!
How long do storytellers like this get to play to the public? Forever, unless people complain. Stop the circus clowns and get back to the business of science: observability, repeatability, testability. This isn’t science; it is materialistic philosophy masquerading as science, using molecules as props for their propaganda plays (25 Sept 2018).
To show how ridiculous it is to believe life came together by chance, we asked artist J. Beverly Greene to portray a famous quote by Edwin Grant Conklin (1863-1952), who said, “The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory.”

Illustration by J Beverly Greene for Creation-Evolution Headlines.
Comments
“Their hope is built on nothing less than lifeless mud and randomness.” Okay, that clever allusion to a hymn made me LOL!