Nexus - 1001 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

life. A comet, they argue, is unlikely ever to have been part of a _— Perfect for us! Corrosively acidic? Couldn't be better! planet, and life could not possibly have generated itself in or on a Today they are known as extremophiles, and they exist frozen comet. alongside many other prokaryotic bacteria that thrive in milder Directed panspermia means life was delivered to Earth by intel- conditions. It would appear that those milder-living prokaryotes ligent means of one kind or another. In one scenario, a capsule could not have survived on primordial Earth, so how did they could have been sent here the same way we sent Voyager on an come to be? According to Darwinists, they "evolved" from interstellar mission. However, if it was sent from outside the solar extremophiles in the same way humans supposedly evolved on a system, we have to wonder how the senders might have known parallel track with apes—from a "common ancestor". Earth was here, or how Earth managed to get in the way of some- Darwinists contend such parallel tracks don't need to be thing sent randomly (a la Voyager). traceable. All that's required is a creature looking reasonably like In another scenario, interstellar craft manned by extraterrestrial another to establish what they consider a legitimate claim of beings could have arrived and delivered the two prokaryote types. evolutionary connection. Extremophiles clearly existed: we have This requires a level of openmindedness that most scientists res- their 4.0-billion-year-old fossils. Their descendants clearly exist olutely lack, so they won't accept either version of directed today, along with mild-environment prokaryotes that must have panspermia as even remotely possible. Instead, they cling to their | descended from them. However, transitional forms between them "better" explanation of undirected panspermia because it allows cannot be found, even though such forms are required by the tenets them to continue playing the "origin" game within the first bound- of Darwinism. Faced with that embarrassing problem, Darwinists aries set out by Charles Darwin: undirected is "natural"; directed simply insist that the missing transitional species do exist, still is "less natural". hidden somewhere in the fossil record, just as the "missing link" Notice it can't be said that directed panspermia is "unnatural". between apes and humans is out there somewhere and will indeed According to Darwinists, no matter where life originated, the be discovered someday. It's simply a matter of being in the right rocess was natural from start to finish. All they have to concede place at the right time. is that it didn't take place on Earth. However, acknowledging that For as expedient as the "missing link" has been, it's useless to forces them to skirt dangerously close to admitting the reality of explain the next phase of life on Earth, when prokaryotes began extraterrestrial life, and their ongoing sharing the stage with the much "search" for such life generates mil- larger and much more complex (but ions in research funding each year. still single-celled) eukaryotes, which This leaves them in no hurry to make To Interventionists like me, appear around 2.0 billion years ago. clear to the general public that, yes, The leap from prokaryote to eyond Earth there is at the very least the notion of prokaryotes eukaryote is too vast even to pretend the same primitive bacterial life we consuming each other to create a missing evolutionary link could ave here. There's no doubt about it. eukaryotes is every bit as account for it. A dozen would be But, as usual, they keep the lid on this needed just to cover going from no reality, ne exactly hiding it on improbable as the divine fiat thi b ‘0 one that Tunetions wy. ing no effort to educate the public to oe is, by the way, is also true of the the notion that we are not, and never of Creationists. leap between so-called pre-humans ave been, alone. The warm pond and humans, which will be discussed still holds water, so why muddy it in Part Two). with facts? How to explain it? Certainly not plausibly. Fortunately, Darwinists have never lacked the creativity A PATTERN EMERGES to invent "warm-pond" scenarios to plug holes in their dogma. Tame hank Dy fan Vau Bao To Wenn the notion of prokaryotes consuming each other to create eukaryotes is every bit as improbable as the divine fiat ~£ A att A PATTERN EMERGES In my book, Everything You Know Is Wrong, | discuss all points mentioned up to now, which very few people outside academic cir- cles are aware of. Within those circles, a hard core of "true believ- ers" still seizes on every new discovery of a chemical or organic compound found in space to try to move the argument back to Darwin's original starting point that somehow life assembled itself on Earth "naturally". However, most objective scholars now accept that the first forms of life had to have been delivered because: (1) they appear as two groups of multiple prokaryotes (archaea and true bacteria); (2) they appear whole and complete; (3) the hellish primordial Earth is unimaginable as an incubator for burgeoning life; and (4) a half-billion years seems far too brief a time-span to permit a gradual, step-by-step assembly of the incredible complexity of prokaryotic biology and biochemistry. Even more damaging to the hard-core Darwinist position is that the prokaryotes were—quite propitiously—as durable as life gets. They were virtually indestructible, able to live in absolutely any environment—and they've proved it by being here today, looking and behaving the same as when their ancestors were fossilised 4.0 billion years ago. Scalding heat? We love it! Choked by saline? Let us at it! Frozen solid? We're there! Crushing pressure? DOING THE DOGMA SHUFFLE Since it's clear that a "missing link" won't fly over the prokaryote-eukaryote chasm, why not assume some of the smaller prokaryotes were eaten by some of the larger ones? Yeah, that might work! But instead of turning into food, energy and waste, the small ones somehow turn themselves—or get turned into—cell nuclei for larger ones. Sure, that's a keeper! Since no one can yet prove it didn't happen (Thank God!), Darwinists are able to proclaim it did. (Keep in mind, when any critic of Darwinist dogma makes a suggestion that similarly can't be proved, it's automatically dismissed, because "lack of provability" is a death sentence outside their fraternity. Inside their fraternity, consensus is adequate because the collective agreement of so many "experts" should be accepted as gospel.) To Interventionists like me, the notion of prokaryotes consum- ing each other to create eukaryotes is every bit as improbable as the divine fiat of Creationists. But even if it were a biological pos- sibility (which most evidence weighs against), it would still seem fair to expect "transition" models somewhere along the line. Darwinists say "no" because this process could have an "overnight" aspect to it. One minute there's a large prokaryote NEXUS = 51 To Interventionists like me, of Creationists. DECEMBER 2002 — JANUARY 2003 www.nexusmagazine.com