A recent article I saw on Facebook which had originally been published by CNN, claimed that scientists have constructed a cell for the first time. Scanning the comments I came across one person revelling in the news as a means of mocking creationists. He pictured creationists wringing their hands, shutting their ears and refusing to listen to the facts. Did he have good reason to gloat? Is the news correct, and if so, does it conclusively prove, as this person seemed to think and as many people I’ve known think, that life came about by random natural processes?
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I have to admit to personally not believing anything uttered by CNN. I’ve witnessed their political propaganda over many years and as far as I’m concerned they have no scruples and are on a mission to promote the most godless society possible. Secondly, while I’m no scientist myself, I’ve done a little research over the course of my Christian life into theories of abiogenesis and found that scientists are as far from creating life or understanding how it may have happened naturally as we are from Alpha Centauri. As I noted in a related article I wrote several years ago, in which I considered the common belief that the Miller experiments and subsequent efforts succeeded in creating simple life in the lab, the truth is that all they really made was a few amino acids. They were as far from creating life as someone who might dig up some aluminum, make some plastics and solve a few math equations are from creating a space shuttle, or more recently, Artemis II. In fact, a living cell – even the “simplest” kind – makes Artemis II look like a child’s toy in comparison.
The CNN article by Katie Hunt is titled, “Scientists say they have built a cell from scratch for the first time”. I notice she protected herself by admitting that scientists “said” they have done so: she has seen no evidence to confirm it. I also knew without having to be a scientist that the claim is totally fanciful and wishful thinking. The first paragraph confesses that the alleged “built” cell is “synthetic”. It also claims that researchers at the University of Minnesota “constructed the cell piece by piece from nonliving components”.
INTELLIGENCE. What commentators and scientists seem to miss, perhaps sometimes willingly, is that even if scientists were to create a cell or parts of a cell they would be using intelligence, scientific process and designed and created equipment to do so. They then intentionally refuse to consider the idea that life – being incredibly complex – had to have a designer and creator. God is the Master scientist, but Neo-Darwinism has replaced the Person of God with impersonal Nature. Nature is their God, their creator. Life created itself, in their eyes, yet without any observable evidence of such a thing occurring: it’s theory and speculation. Nature took a couple of billion years to create life, but they can do it in a couple of months!
In a short video by Dr. James Tour, a synthetic organic chemist and a Christian, Tour puts the truth briefly in perspective. We see another secular scientist making the following claim: “We are here today to announce… the first synthetic cell”, and Tour’s reality check. Tour, who has been very public in challenging the scientific community with profound roadblocks to evolutionary theories of abiogenesis, answers the claim of the first synthetic cell with cold, hard facts:
“What people have done and claimed synthetic cells is to take a working cell already, make a copy of its genome outside the cell, remove the initial genome and put the copy of the genome into that cell and then cell started operating. But the cell was already in place and that’s what they call the synthetic cell. The life was already there. They just put in a different computer control chip (figuratively). That’s not making life – they already started with an existing cellular life. We’re so far from being able to do this” (1).
Tour goes much more deeply into the science of the monumental task needed and as yet unfulfilled to even begin creating a cell, in a video titled, “The Science, Theology and Philosophy of Life”.
CLUELESS. Speaking of the scientific community collectively in a separate short, he says, “We don’t know how to describe what life really is when it comes to even a simple cell. That’s how clueless we are”.
Tour continued, “Bioengineers have already figured out what is the minimum… what are the fewest components that you need to have the cell operating. Let’s say we make all those components – by the way, none of those fifteen components have been made. If you could make them, what do you do? Just putting them in proximity – is this going to run? Nobody in their right mind would say ‘yes'” (2).
When you’ve made the choice to ignore God or to at least consider alternatives to evolution, you have to come up with ways to bolster your own theories. However, even if we imagine the successful creation of a cell we cannot discount the existence of God as some would wish, since intelligence, design, work and effort would be required to make that cell. Then we must realize that intelligent observation of real living cells would have to occur first to begin the process, along with the copying of already designed components and processes. The cell would be a copy of something already created, and not at all a tool to bash creationists with. Finally, you would still be light years from creating a living animal with its own intelligence.
1 YouTube: “Creating Life with Synthetic Cells?” Dr. James Tour.
2 YouTube: “Have Scientists Created a Cell in the Lab?” Dr. James Tour.
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