Evolution at Its Finest

The headline is too priceless for me to not comment on. Over at "Right End of the Telescope," my friend Ken points to an amazing scientific experiment that is going on right now. Scientists are on the verge of "creating new life form" by making living matter out of non-living matter. This, I suppose, will be enough to once and for all show that there is no need for an Intelligent Designer.

The article starts by proclaiming that "a team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life." And then it boldly proclaims, "Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe" (emphasis added).

The article goes on: "That opens the possibility that one day, in the distant past, an RNA-like molecule wandered into a fatty acid and started replicating. That random event, through billions of evolutionary iterations, researchers believe, created life as we know it."

Nevermind the fact that there are a lot of qualifiers there ("could," "might," etc.). What strikes me as incredibly ironic is that these intelligent scientists are trying to prove that non-living matter can turn into living matter, by intelligently guiding the process - thus eliminating the need for a Creator (or so the theory goes).

But wouldn't we call such an exercise "Intelligent Design"?

It sounds an awfully lot like something I read in Genesis: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground [non-living matter], and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being [living matter]" (Gen 2:7).

To the articles credit, the writer does go on to say, "The entire line of research, though, begs the question: where would DNA, or any other material carrying instructions for replication, have come from?"

Yes, it does beg the question! Where did any matter - or any "laws" that govern that matter - come from, if not the hand of God?