There’s an interesting article posted at Universe Today by Dr. Paul M. Sutter. Although he does accept unguided evolution after the origin of life, he doesn’t think that naturalism can account for the origin of life. On this blog, I’ve talked about three problem’s with life’s origin: 1) getting the right building blocks, 2) getting the right information, and 3) irreducible complexity. Let’s take a look.

Here is a link to the article from Universe Today.

Here is a quick bio of the author:

Paul M. Sutter is a theoretical cosmologist, award-winning science communicator, NASA advisor, U.S. Cultural Ambassador, and a globally recognized leader in the intersection of art and science. Paul is a research professor at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University and a visiting professor at Barnard College, Columbia University.

[…]Paul earned his PhD in physics in 2011 as a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellow at the University of Illinois. He then spent three years as a research fellow at the Paris Institute for Astrophysics followed by two years at the Trieste Observatory in Italy. Prior to his current appointment, he held a joint position as the chief scientist at the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio and as a cosmological researcher at the Ohio State University.

Now let’s turn to his article.

It’s always good to remind people what is required for the simplest kind of life, and he does that:

To succeed at evolution and separate itself from mere chemical reactions, life must do three things. First, it must somehow store information, such as the encoding for various processes, traits, and characteristics. This way the successful traits can pass from one generation to another.

Second, life must self-replicate. It must be able to make reasonably accurate copies of its own molecular structure, so that the information contained within itself has the chance to become a new generation, changed and altered based on its survivability.

Lastly, life must catalyze reactions. It must affect its own environment, whether for movement, or to acquire or store energy, or grow new structures, or all the many wonderful activities that life does on a daily basis.

I remember listening to lectures about the origin of life by Dean Kenyon, Charles Thaxton, and Walter Bradley in my younger years. If I remember correctly, the minimal functions of a living system are capture energy, store information, and replicate. Sutter does a nice job of describing an even longer list.

So what’s the problem with appealing to chance and necessity to create all that? Well, in order to do all that, we need to have three components in place: DNA, RNA and molecular machines.

He writes:

Put exceedingly simply (for I would hate for you to mistake me for a biologist), life accomplishes these tasks with a triad of molecular tools.

One is the DNA, which through its genetic code stores information using combinations of just four molecules: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. The raw ability of DNA to store massive amounts of information is nothing short of a miracle; our own digital system of 1’s and 0’s (invented because it’s much simpler to tell if a circuit is on or off than some stage in-between) is the closest comparison we can make to DNA’s information density. Natural languages don’t even earn a place on the chart.

The second component is RNA, which is intriguingly similar to DNA but with two subtle, but significant, differences: RNA swaps out thymine for uracil in its codebase, and contains the sugar ribose, which is one oxygen atom short of the deoxyribose of DNA. RNA also stores information but, again speaking only in generalities, has the main job of reading the chemical instructions stored in the DNA and using that to manufacture the last member of the triad, proteins.

“Proteins” is a generic catch-all term for the almost uncountable varieties of molecular machines that do stuff: they snip apart molecules, bind them back together, manufacture new ones, hold structures together, become structures themselves, move important molecules from one place to another, transform energy from one form to another, and so on.

Proteins have one additional function: they perform the job of unraveling DNA and making copies of it. Thus the triad completes all the functions of life: DNA stores information, RNA uses that information to manufacture proteins, and the proteins interact with the environment and perform the self-replication of DNA.

What’s the problem? The problem is that this all has to come together at the start, in order to have life. You can’t build up gradually, from one component, to two components, to three components. All three are needed at the start. This is what Michael Behe calls irreducible complexity, but others have described it as minimal complexity.

Sutter says:

The interconnected nature of DNA, RNA, and proteins means that it could not have sprung up ab initio from the primordial ooze, because if only one component is missing then the whole system falls apart – a three-legged table with one missing cannot stand.

And just to be clear, he would have to provide some evidence of “primordial ooze”. As I’ve blogged about before, life appears almost instantaneously after the cooling of the Earth. He might like to appeal to “billions of years” to get that first replicator, but he doesn’t have billions of years. Molecular oxygen, which is poisonous to origin of life chemistry, was present right after the Earth cooled. And that’s not my opinion – that’s right out of the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Nature.

Evolution News notes:

A recent Nature publication reports a new technique for measuring the oxygen levels in Earth’s atmosphere some 4.4 billion years ago. The authors found that by studying cerium oxidation states in zircon, a compound formed from volcanic magma, they could ascertain the oxidation levels in the early earth. Their findings suggest that the early Earth’s oxygen levels were very close to current levels.

[…]Their findings not only showed that oxygen was present in the early Earth atmosphere, something that has been shown in other studies, but that oxygen was present as early as 4.4 billion years ago. This takes the window of time available for life to have begun, by an origin-of-life scenario like the RNA-first world, and reduces it to an incredibly short amount of time. Several factors need to coincide in order for nucleotides or amino acids to form from purely naturalistic circumstances (chance and chemistry). The specific conditions required already made purely naturalist origin-of-life scenarios highly unlikely. Drastically reducing the amount of time available, adding that to the other conditions needing to be fulfilled, makes the RNA world hypothesis or a Miller-Urey-like synthesis of amino acids simply impossible.

I understand that naturalists want to believe that nature is self-contained, and can do it’s own creating. That belief is practically required in order to have careers in academia. Scientists have to at least claim that “naturalism can do it” or they would draw the unwanted attention of the Darwin mob – the people who got people like William Dembski, Guillermo Gonzalez, Richard Sternberg, etc. fired. However, the scientific evidence doesn’t support naturalism. I wish more people would form their views based on scientific evidence, rather than on the religion of naturalism.

Rose and I are recording episode(s) for a Bible study of the book of James. I asked Twitter’s Grok AI what everyone needs to know about the author of the book, the book itself, as well as the apologetics significance of both. I’ve pasted what Grok had for us below, and you might recognize some of the scholars and authors. I thought it would be good prep for the podcast.

The Book of James and Apologetics Connections

Author:

• • James, the brother of Jesus, known as James the Just (Eusebius, Church History).
  • Leader in the Jerusalem church, not one of the Twelve Apostles (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews).
  • Authorship affirmed; polished Greek explained by education or scribal assistance (D.A. Carson).
  • Apologetics Connection: James’s transformation from skeptic to church leader (implied in early traditions) supports the resurrection’s impact. A family member’s conversion counters claims of Jesus as a mere teacher, as skeptics rarely die for a sibling’s myth (Gary Habermas).

Author’s Fate:

• • Martyred around AD 62 in Jerusalem.
  • Thrown from temple pinnacle and clubbed to death for refusing to deny Christ (Eusebius, quoting Hegesippus).
  • Death corroborated by non-Christian historian Josephus (Antiquities 20.9.1).
  • Apologetics Connection: Josephus’s mention of James’s execution by Jewish authorities provides external, non-Christian evidence for early Christian persecution, bolstering the historicity of the New Testament (Craig Blomberg). James’s martyrdom underscores the sincerity of his faith, a key apologetic for the truth of Christianity.

Audience:

• • Jewish Christians dispersed outside Judea due to early persecution.
  • Addressed as “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (F.F. Bruce).
  • Primarily for Jewish believers, with universal Christian application.
  • Apologetics Connection: The Jewish context refutes claims of Christianity as a later Gentile invention. The epistle’s focus on Jewish believers connects to Old Testament ethics, showing continuity between Judaism and Christianity, countering supersessionist critiques (Michael Brown).

Date:

• • Written between AD 45-50, among the earliest New Testament books.
  • Early date inferred from simple church structure and absence of Gentile controversy (Donald Guthrie).
  • Precedes Jerusalem Council (AD 49-50), reflecting James’s early influence.
  • Apologetics Connection: The early date places James close to Jesus’s ministry, minimizing legendary development. Its lack of later theological debates (e.g., Gnosticism) supports the reliability of early Christian documents, challenging late-dating theories (Daniel B. Wallace).

Purpose:

• • Instructs Jewish Christians on authentic faith amidst trials.
  • Stresses practical holiness: good works, controlled speech, wisdom, perseverance (John MacArthur).
  • Complements Pauline theology, showing faith produces action.
  • Apologetics Connection: James’s emphasis on works as evidence of faith resolves apparent contradictions with Paul, strengthening the Bible’s coherence (Norman Geisler). Its practical ethics align with Jesus’s teachings, reinforcing the moral credibility of Christianity against secular critiques.

Chain of Custody:

• • Part of the Jerusalem/Judean chain, centered in the Jerusalem church (Eusebius, Church History).
  • James oversaw transmission of Jesus’s teachings to Jewish Christian communities (F.F. Bruce).
  • Distinct from Peter/John (Antioch/Asia Minor) and Paul (Gentile mission) chains; focused on Jewish believers.
  • Preserved through Jerusalem networks, later canonized with attestation by Origen and Eusebius (D.A. Carson).
  • Apologetics Connection: The Jerusalem chain ties James to the apostolic hub, ensuring reliable transmission of Jesus’s teachings (Richard Bauckham). Early canonical acceptance in the Eastern church counters claims of late or forged texts, providing a traceable lineage for the epistle’s authenticity.

Cool Apologetics Highlights:

• • Non-Christian Corroboration: Josephus’s reference to James’s death (Antiquities 20.9.1) is one of the few non-Christian sources naming a New Testament figure, offering external validation (Josh McDowell).
  • Skeptic-to-Saint Arc: James’s shift from unbeliever to martyr mirrors other apostolic transformations, supporting the resurrection as a historical catalyst (Sean McDowell).
  • Archaeological Tie: The early Jerusalem church’s setting aligns with archaeological evidence of first-century Jewish Christian communities, like the Dominus Flevit ossuary, potentially linked to James’s era (Craig Evans).

Sources: Eusebius (Church History), Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews), conservative scholars (D.A. Carson, F.F. Bruce, Donald Guthrie, John MacArthur), apologetics scholars (Gary Habermas, Craig Blomberg, Norman Geisler, Daniel B. Wallace, Richard Bauckham, Josh McDowell, Sean McDowell, Craig Evans, Michael Brown).

I wrote a lot about the anti-Christian bias of the previous Democrat party administration. The Biden administration has a long record of anti-Christian prosecution: pre-dawn raiding the homes of pro-lifers, targeting Christian schools and organizations, labeling parents as “domestic terrorists”, ignoring religious exemptions to medical mandates, etc. But now there is a new sheriff in town. Let’s see.

Here’s the story from Daily Wire, by Leif Le Mahieu.

Here’s the brief overview:

Attorney General Pam Bondi opened up the first meeting of the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias on Tuesday by hearing stories about how the Justice Department was weaponized by the Biden administration to go after Christians.

[…]Other admin officials who attended the meeting included FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

And here’s an example of a couple of the stories:

During the meeting, the task force heard from lawyer Michael Farris, who is represented the Cornerstone Church as it was under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for an alleged Johnson Amendment violation. The Johnson Amendment is a decades old provision in federal law that allows pastors to be prosecuted for making political statements from the pulpit.

The panel also heard from Phil Mendes, a Navy Seal who was relieved of duty by the Department of Defense after it denied his request for a religious exemption to the COVID vaccine.

Now, you might think that groups like the ERLC would be very concerned about religious liberty, but actually, as I blogged about previously, they have other priorities. Ethics and religious liberty just aren’t very important to “Christian” elites.

Meanwhile, there was more positive news from Dr. John Lott, writing over at Real Clear Politics:

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified a shocking plan by former President Joe Biden’s administration for dealing with domestic terrorists. Last Wednesday, Gabbard released a June 2021 document titled “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism” (henceforth “the Plan”). But despite the release receiving over 6.3 million views on X by Monday morning, the major media has ignored the document.

Keep in mind that the Biden-Harris administration thought that parents who were concerned about girls being forced to shower and change clothes with boys were “domestic terrorists”.

More:

To combat this domestic threat, the Biden administration advocated censorship, closing people’s accounts at banks or financial institutions (so-called “de-banking”), and gun control.

And who was going to be subject to these measures? Illegal immigrants who commit crimes? No. People with mental illnesses  who are taking powerful drugs, who commit violence? No. People from crime syndicates and drug cartels? No. Actually, they wanted to use these measures on law-abiding Americans who disagreed with the Democrat party on policy:

The Biden administration obliterated the line between lawful expression and criminal intent by encouraging federal agencies to monitor speech that involved no criminal activity. Once you read the declassified version of the Plan, it becomes clear that the Biden administration actions weren’t necessarily by accident. Despite repeated public denials, it followed an explicit policy of identifying people based solely on their political views.

In 2022, an FBI whistleblower exposed the rollout of a related document: the FBI’s “Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide” for identifying “Militia Violent Extremists” (MVEs). As Congressman Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the guide advised agents to be suspicious of symbols like “2A” and imagery referencing the Second Amendment. It also flagged historically significant emblems like the Betsy Ross Flag and Gadsden Flag as indicators of potential domestic terrorists.

Of course, in December 2023, reports revealed that the FBI categorized “certain Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists.” And FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend testified before Congress in May 2023 that he was tasked with recording the license plate numbers of parents who attended school board meetings and expressed concerns about topics such as critical race theory and gender ideology.

While the Biden administration publicly stated their intent was limited to criminal activities, the declassified documents reveal the targeting of individuals based on their expressions of free speech or religious practices.​ The concerns and criticisms about overreach arose from the administration’s explicit policy.

Interestingly, the report states that the Biden administration was supportive of actions taken by other countries who cracked down on their citizens for disagreeing with secular left policies:

After a March 2019 massacre at a mosque in Christchurch, the New Zealand government pushed for Twitter accounts to be locked even for simply pointing out that the murderer was “a socialist, environmentalist, who hates capitalists & free trade.” That went against the government and the media’s line. Even linking to newspaper pieces making that point resulted in censorship.

The secular left likes socialism and environmentalism, so you can’t criticize those things. Even by pointing to facts and evidence. The secular left wants you to love their ideology. They don’t want you to question the results of their policies. You have to approve of their results. You have to believe anything they say, because they want what’s best for you. You have to admire them, because they are smarter and more moral than you are. You have to trust them. You have to love them.

We got a reprieve in the last election, but it might be worth sharing stories like this with your Christian and conservative friends, so that they understand that there are many secular leftists in America who are exactly the same as secular leftists in the Soviet Union, or North Korea, or Cambodia, or anywhere else where communism has been tried. In America, there are still enough Christians and conservatives around to put the brakes on their plans. Thanks to the release of this report, we know exactly what they were planning to do to Christians and conservatives. Don’t forget.