Poking with Needles, Running with Scissors

noctiluca has posted an interesting article on talk.origins, "The Humpty Dumpty argument - the wit and wisdom of Jonathan Wells." noctiluca quotes Jonathan Wells from a Lee Strobel DVD called"The Case for the Creator." (If you go to the site you can actually watch clips showing the IDiots in action!)

It comes down to this: no matter how many molecules you can produce with early earth conditions, plausible conditions, you're still nowhere near producing a living cell.

And here's how I know: If I take a sterile test tube and I put in it a little bit of fluid with just the right salts, just the right balance of acidity and alkalinity, just the right temperature - the perfect solution for a living cell, and I put in it one living cell, this cell is alive, it has everything it needs for life. Now I take a sterile needle and I poke that cell, and all its stuff leaks out into this test tube, you have in this nice little test tube all the molecules you need for a living cell, not just the pieces of the molecules but the molecules themselves, and you can't make a living cell out of them.

You can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So what makes you think that a few amino acids dissolved in the ocean are going to give you a living cell? It's totally unrealistic.

You can't make this stuff up. And you wonder why we call them IDiots?

The talk.origins article closes with, "My wife didn't know if I was laughing or crying." Thanks noctilura, for sharing that with us. :-)

We tell little children not to run with scissors. We should not forget to warn them against poking at things with needles.