The "Ministry of Materialism" Keeps Giving Us Untrue News About the Origin of Life

A substantial case can be made that a particular belief system marketed as "science" is itself a religion or a religious position or a faith-based ideology. The particular belief system I refer to is what we may call Darwinist materialism. Below is one way to describe the tenets of this creed:

1. "Earthly biology can be explained entirely by naturalistic explanations such as natural selection and random mutations."
2. "The human mind can be explained entirely by brain activity."
3. "Charles Darwin provided some brilliant insight that eliminated the need to postulate any design or purpose in nature."
4. "Life appeared on our planet purely because of lucky random combinations of chemicals."
5. "Everything is pretty-well explained by science professors who assume there is just matter and energy; so there's no need to believe in anything like souls, spirits, or the paranormal."

Although constantly marketed and branded simply as “science,” Darwinist materialism seems to involve a very large element of faith. In particular, it has never been proven that any one complex visible organism or any of its organs or appendages or cell types has ever appeared mainly because of natural selection, or natural selection and random mutations. We can imagine no mathematically credible scenario under which natural selection could invent the very many types of fine-tuned protein molecules upon which life depends, each of which typically consists of hundreds of parts that must be well-arranged in a very specific way for the protein molecule to be functional.  In the scientific paper here, a Harvard scientist says, "A wide variety of protein structures exist in nature, however the evolutionary origins of this panoply of proteins remain unknown."

The average protein molecule has a length of about 375 amino acids, and getting an arrangement of such amino acids by chance to produce the functionality of the protein molecule requires an arrangement with a chance likelihood of less than about 1 in 10 to the two-hundredth power (even if you assume only about half of the amino acid sequence has to match the actual sequence of amino acids in the protein for a functional protein molecule to exist). It would seem such molecules cannot appear through any gradually rewarded "each step yields a benefit" kind of process, because half-versions or quarter-versions of such molecules are useless. Yet Darwinist materialism wishes us to accept natural selection as an explanation for most or almost all the wonders of biology. Since there seems to be a very large element of faith here, it would seem that we should at least be calling Darwinist materialism a kind of faith-based ideology.

But would it be correct to go even farther, and brand Darwinist materialism as a kind of religion? A supporter of such a belief system would immediately dismiss such an idea as an absurdity. He would vigorously argue: religion is some belief in God, and Darwinist materialism does not entail that.

But such a definition of “religion” is too narrow. Let's consider Eastern religions. These include Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. There are certainly major forms of each of these religions that do not require any belief in a deity. One can be either an atheist or a theist, and still follow either Taoism, Confucianism, or Buddhism. In a religion such as Buddhism, there are some sects that pray to some entity that might be called a deity or the equivalent of a deity, but there are other sects that do not do that. Consider also a modern American religion such as Scientology. Again we have a religion which does not have any belief in a deity at the core of its teachings. As a Scientologist, you can be either an atheist or a theist.

It seems, therefore, that defining religion as some belief in a deity or some system of worship is too narrow a definition of the word “religion.” Scholars have offered many conflicting definitions of “religion,” some of which are too narrow to cover some of the known religions such as Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. We need a definition that seems to cover almost all cases of religious belief.  One such definition was given by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. He defined a religion as " a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." 

Here is another rather similar definition: we can define a religion as  a set of beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality and life, or a recommended way of living, typically stemming from the teachings of an authority, along with norms, ethics, rituals, roles or social organizations that may arise from such beliefs. This definition covers Christianity, Islam, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Scientology, religions which stem from authority figures such as Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, the writers of the Bible, Lao-Tzu, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, and L. Ron Hubbard. Interestingly, using the same definition of religion, it seems we should also classify Darwinist materialism as a religion. It is a fundamental way of looking at the nature of life, stemming from the teachings of an authority figure (Charles Darwin).

The creed of Darwinist materialism is not propagated by any organization calling itself a church. But it is propagated by a large social infrastructure dedicated to preaching the tenets of Darwinist materialism. Such an infrastructure consists of people such as professors, PhD's, credulous science journalists, editors, web site owners, book publishers, university officials and high school biology teachers. What term would be appropriate to describe such as infrastructure?

It would not be unfair to refer to such an infrastructure as the Ministry of Materialism.  Two of several definitions that the Merriam-Webster dictionary gives us for "ministry" are below:

• the body of ministers of religion : CLERGY
• a person or thing through which something is accomplished : AGENCY, INSTRUMENTALITY

Given that the agents professing the stealth religion of Darwinist materialism very much act like clergy by dogmatically professing unproven belief tenets, it seems fair enough to refer to such agents as part of a Ministry of Materialism. The diagram below gives a crude sketch of such a power structure, which is far more complicated than the diagram suggests.  Key players in the power structure include the so-called skeptics mentioned at the bottom right, who do their best to suppress the reporting and studying of thousands of observations that conflict with the materialist worldview, while gaslighting, disparaging and defaming those who report or mention such observations. In psychology analysis of groupthink conformity, such agents are called "mindguards." 

In the past century one of the most notorious tendencies of such a Ministry of Materialism has been to pass off untrue news about the scientifically groundless idea of abiogenesis, news stories falsely suggesting that scientific activity is doing something to substantiate this scientifically unfounded claim. Abiogenesis is the idea that life can arise from non-life. Everything we know about the complexity and amount of organization in living things argues against this idea. Even the simplest living thing is a cell that requires hundred of different types of protein molecules to exist and reproduce. Each of those types of protein molecules is a separate complex invention as unlikely to arise by chance as a well-written 100-word paragraph from a random arrangement of shells and pebbles and seaweed at a seashore.

There are no experiments supporting the idea of abiogenesis. No one has ever produced a living thing from any experiment realistically simulating lifeless early Earth conditions. No one has ever produced a functional protein molecule (one of the building blocks of one-celled life) from any experiment realistically simulating early Earth conditions. No one has ever even produced one of the building blocks of the building blocks of one-celled life (an amino acid) from any experiment realistically simulating early Earth conditions. The Miller-Urey experiment which produced some amino acids was not a realistic simulation of early Earth conditions, for reasons discussed in my post here.

The latest bit of untrue news in the long, long series of very misleading news stories about the origin of life coming from the Ministry of Materialism is a story that had the headline "New 'Origin of Life' Chemical Reactions Discovered" on the Neuroscience News site (a frequent purveyor of untrue headlines about brain research), and had the headline "Scientists discover new 'origins of life' chemical reactions" on the site phys.org, and had the same headline on the SciTechDaily.com site. No, scientists did not discover any chemical reactions producing life from non-life. Scientists also did not-discover any chemical reactions producing a protein molecule, one of the building blocks of one-celled life. 

Did scientists at least run some experiment that produced a mere amino acid (one of the building blocks of the building blocks of one-celled life) in any experiment simulating early Earth conditions? No, not even that was done. The scientific paper makes no such claim. The abstract of the paper insinuates that some amino acids may have been produced, but makes no claim at all to have produced any amino acids through any experiment simulating early Earth conditions. 

It's almost always the same when scientists studying life's origin insinuate that they've produced some chemical without claiming to have simulated early Earth conditions. Almost invariably upon reading the paper, you will find that the chemical was produced in some modern lab, using a variety of modern scientific equipment such as glass beakers, test tubes and fancy electronic equipment, and using a variety of purposeful interventions by chemists trying to produce a particular result.  Such work does nothing to make it more likely that life would have naturally arisen from non-life on the early Earth.

The source of the news stories mentioned above was a Scripps Research press release that was carelessly parroted word-for-word on July 29 by various news sites. In the original press release  we had this untrue statement: "Now, scientists at Scripps Research have discovered a new set of chemical reactions that use cyanide, ammonia and carbon dioxide—all thought to be common on the early earth—to generate amino acids and nucleic acids, the building blocks of proteins and DNA."  The scientific paper ("Prebiotic synthesis of α-amino acids and orotate from α-ketoacids potentiates transition to extant metabolic pathways") did not actually claim to have produced a nucleic acid, and does not mention any nucleic acids. And rather than nucleic acids being building blocks of DNA, DNA is instead a type of nucleic acid.  

If a nucleic acid (an RNA or DNA molecule) was produced by some chemists trying to simulate the origin of life in conditions like the early Earth, it would be the scientific achievement of the decade, and we cannot imagine that scientists making so monumental a discovery would fail to mention  it in both the abstract and the title of their paper. Obviously no such nucleic acid was produced by the research described in the above paper. 

The original version of the press release has given us an inaccurate statement sounding as if the writer did not even understand the difference between a nucleotide and a nucleic acid.  But we should not be surprised. University and institutional press releases on scientific topics are routinely written by press office copywriters with little understanding of the very complex topics being discussed. In such press offices there is often an "it's fine just as long you made it sound like a breakthrough" attitude. Very many scientists condone outrageous press-release misstatements about their research in a "wink and a nod" kind of way, aware that such inaccurate hype will help achieve the goal that to them is paramount: the goal of increasing paper citations.  

The news stories that arose about July 29, 2022 from the Scripps Research press release were more "origins of life" untrue  news. No "origin of life" chemical reactions were discovered or produced. No nucleic acids were produced. Nothing has been done to realistically simulate the early Earth. Nothing has been done to substantiate claims of abiogenesis.  This is just the latest in 70+ years of untrue news about origin of life research which we have got from the Ministry of Materialism. The kind of "assistant priests" of that ministry (including workers at various "science news" sites) pass on word-for-word whatever nonsensical press releases promote the cherished tenets of the professor priesthood, no matter how self-contradictory or groundless or bogus-sounding the claims are.  

On the day I read the stories above (July 29, 2022), I sent an email to the press office at Scripps Research, suggesting that they had incorrectly claimed in their press release that nucleic acids were produced, making a claim not matching any claim in the scientific  paper the press release discussed. Below is the full text of my email:

"I  am puzzled by a claim in your recent press release below.

https://www.scripps.edu//news-and-events/press-room/2022/20220728-krishnamurthy-origins-of-life-chemical-reactions.html

The press release makes an untrue claim that 'scientists at Scripps Research have discovered a new set of chemical reactions that use cyanide, ammonia and carbon dioxide—all thought to be common on the early earth—to generate amino acids and nucleic acids, the building blocks of proteins and DNA.'

But the abstract of the paper makes no actual claim to have produced nucleic acids. And nucleic acids are not building blocks of DNA. DNA and RNA are types of nucleic acids.

Later, your press release above states that in the 'process of studying their chemical soup, Krishnamurthy’s group discovered that a byproduct of the same reaction is orotate, a precursor to nucleotides that make up DNA and RNA.' Nucleotides are mere building blocks of DNA and RNA. If a mere precursor to such building blocks was discovered, there would be a vast difference between that and producing a nucleic acid.  Claiming that you produced a nucleic acid when you merely produced orotate would be like claiming you wrote a textbook when you merely planted a tree (a precursor to paper, one of the building blocks of textbooks).  

It would seem that your press release is making a sensational-sounding but very much untrue claim that nucleic acids were produced."

 

Now, I must give a little salute to the good folks at Scripps Research. They did not at all ignore my email. On Tuesday August 2, 2022 I received an email back from the press office of Scripps Research stating exactly this:

"Dear Mr. Mahin,

 

Thanks very much for bringing this to our attention. We have corrected it in the press release (subtitle and first paragraph).

 

Best,

 

Scripps Communications Office."

Now, when I look at the press release on the web site of Scripps Research, I see a change. The press release originally stated the following:

Now the press release has a correction. The erroneous reference to "nucleic acids" has been replaced with a reference to "orotic acid." So now the press release says, "Now, scientists at Scripps Research have discovered a new set of chemical reactions that use cyanide, ammonia and carbon dioxide—all thought to be common on the early earth—to generate amino acids and orotic acid, the building blocks of proteins and DNA."  In the original version of the press release (repeated in so many news stories), that sentence said "nucleic acids" where it now says "orotic acid." 

It is good that Scripps Research made that correction (apparently because of the email I sent them). But there are still several problems:

(1) The internet is now littered with many a "science news story" that repeated the original erroneous claims about nucleic acids being produced, and such stories have not been updated merely because the Scripps Research press release was updated. So the internet still has many an erroneous story incorrectly claiming that nucleic acids were produced in orgins-of-life research. 

(2) The Scripps Research press release (and the news stories based on it) still contain the misleading claim that "origins of life" chemical reactions were discovered.  The not-very-impressive results of the experiments were not at all "origins of life" chemical reactions, and produced neither a functional protein molecule nor a nucleic acid (DNA or RNA).  
(3) The revised Scripps Research press release now claims that orotic acid is a building block of proteins or DNA, and orotic acid is not a building block of either. 

(4) The revised Scripps Research press release still contains the boastful PR hype claim by an assistant professor claiming, "We’ve come up with a new paradigm to explain this shift from prebiotic to biotic chemistry," something that was not actually done. 

(5) The revised Scripps Research press release still advances the groundless idea that before life existed there was a "primordial soup." No experiments realistically simulating the early Earth have ever produced any such "primordial soup," and the Miller-Urey experiment was not any such experiment, for reasons discussed here. There is no geological, astronomical or meteorological reason for thinking that amino acids existed in anything other than negligible amounts before life existed, and there is no evidential basis for believing that there ever existed any such thing as a prebiotic "primordial soup" that was rich in either the building blocks of proteins (amino acids) or the building blocks of DNA (nucleotides). 

But let's at least give one cheer (not three cheers) to an example where science journalism turned out to be at least a little bit self-correcting, thanks to some good person at Scripps Research who reads his emails carefully. 

The Fallacies of the “Science and Religion Apartheid” Reasoners

When people wish to exclude others from considering any possibility that might be associated with the paranormal or the religious, such people often use a type of reasoning I might call the “that's religion, not science” argument. Most commonly this is used as a rationale for completely excluding any thought that our universe may be the result of something more than just blind chance. If someone, for example, suggests that the origin of the universe may have been some kind of divine creation, such a hypothesis may be excluded under the grounds that such thinking is not science, but religion.

The same reasoning can be used to try to justify a kind of “gag rule” in scientific publications – a rule forbidding mention of anything that might be considered from the world of the paranormal or the religious. Got some evidence that suggests the possibility of some design or purposeful direction in the origin of life or the evolution of life? Sorry, discussing that is not allowed because that's religion, not science. Got some evidence based on near-death experiences that there might be such a thing as a soul that survives death? Sorry, you can't discuss that in a scientific publication, because that's religion not science. Got some evidence that there may be some power of the mind beyond that which neurology can account for? Sorry, you can't present that evidence because that's religion not science. You get the idea. This “that's religion not science” argument ends up being very convenient for the materialist or physicalist, and it has a superficial plausibility.

This type of reasoning involves a kind of “science and religion apartheid” thinking. The idea is that there's the science box and the religion box (like two cardboard boxes on different parts of the floor), and that we have to place a particular idea or writing in either one box or the other. Paraphrasing the famous statement about East and West, you might express this assumption by stating this slogan: science is science, and religion is religion, and never the twain shall meet.

But is this type of reasoning valid? No, it isn't, as I can show with an important historical example. In the 1920's a Belgian priest by the name of Georges Lemaître first proposed the idea that the universe suddenly began ages ago in a state of inconceivable density that he called a primordial atom. At the time the idea that the universe had a sudden origin was an idea from the world of religion, not the world of science. For one thing, there was no known evidence for such a theory. Scientists favored a different idea, that the universe had existed forever. No doubt many scorned Lemaître's idea, saying “That's religion, not science.” But in the next few decades the evidence for such a sudden beginning of the universe began piling up. Now scientists accept such an idea, which they call the Big Bang theory.

So we have here an important example of an idea from the world of religion – the idea of the sudden origin of the universe – that started out as unsubstantiated (not science), but then actually became science (and not just trivial science, but one of the most important findings of modern science). What lesson must be draw from this example? The lesson is: an idea should not at all be excluded from further consideration by scientists merely on a basis such as “that's religion, not science.” This example proves that an idea that originally seems more religious than scientific may end up becoming an important part of science.

So the “that's religion, not science” type of reasoning is not valid as some basis for exclusion. But why exactly is this reasoning fallacious? I can give two reasons.

Reason #1: There Are Several Definitions of Science

The “that's religion, not science” type of reasoning takes advantage of the fact that science is defined in two different ways that are quite different. The first definition is what we may call the “facts on the shelf” definition. People sometimes speak of science as the body of facts collected by scientists. Using this definition, you can attempt to categorize almost all theoretical ideas that scientists discuss as being “not science,” on the grounds that they are not yet proven facts. Just as you can exclude almost everything from the world of the paranormal or the religious as “not science,” you can exclude many scientific hot topics such as string theory, the cosmic inflation theory, the multiverse, neo-Darwinism, and many other theories which are not yet regarded as well-proven as, say, the existence of gravitation or the existence of bacteria.

But there's a second definition of science – what we can call the “process” definition. According to this definition, science is the process of seeking truth through systematic efforts that involve observations, experiments, and theorizing. According to this definition, almost anything that involves honest, systematic and well-organized observations, experiments, or evidence-based theorizing is science (whether it be professional science or what is called citizen science carried out by non-professionals). So according to this definition, almost everything that is typically excluded on the basis of being “religion not science” is actually science. That doesn't mean that it's proven to be entirely correct, but merely that it does fall under the category of “the process of seeking truth through systematic efforts that involve observations, experiments, and theorizing,” which is one of the main definitions of science.

So, in fact, it is not all clear that those items typically excluded as being “religion, not science” are in reality “not science.” They may well be science (either today or in the future) depending on which definition of science you use.

Reason #2: Ignoring the Possibility of an Overlap

The second major fallacy in “that's religion, not science” type of reasoning is the assumption that the realm of science truth claims and the realm of religious truth claims are mutually exclusive areas that can never overlap to any degree (so that once we have identified something as a religious truth claim it can be excluded as a science truth claim). The assumption may be illustrated by Model 1 in the diagram below.

Such an assumption may be incorrect, because there may be some overlap between the realm of religious truth claims and the realm of science truth claims. The truthful situation may be as illustrated as Model 2 in the diagram above, in which some truth claims can exist in both the realm of science and the realm of religion.

What reasons are there for thinking that the correct model is the second of these models, not the first? For one, there's the simple fact that human realms of thought do not naturally tend to be entirely mutually exclusive without any overlap. For example, there is a political realm of thought that includes the notion that “all men are created equal.” But the fact that a truth claim of human equality has been made in the realm of politics does not mean that we should exclude it from the realm of science. For example, if you were doing a scientific study on intellectual abilities in different races, it would hardly make sense to say, “I must at the beginning rule out the idea that all races are equal, because the idea that all men are equal belongs to politics, not science.”

Another reason for thinking that the second diagram is the correct one is that we have the huge historical example of the claim “the universe suddenly originated.” That is a currently a claim existing in both the realm of science and the realm of religion. So this proves there is some overlap between the realm of science truth claims and the realm of religious truth claims. We could easily add another “overlap” example involving claims that the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned. I could make a list of statements along these lines by scientists and religious people, without identifying the person who made the statement; and you would have a hard time distinguishing between the statements by the religious and the statements by the scientists.  One might also add as examples of overlap between science and religion some of the items that Fritjof Capra called attention to in his famous book The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism.

What is the proper attitude that a scientist should take to a truth claim that he has identified as one that is being made by some religion or religious person? The proper attitude is not one of automatic exclusion because of such a thing, but instead an attitude of indifference toward such a thing. For example, if you are a scientist considering whether there is some evidence for the soul, you should not be saying, “I will rule that out because some religious people believe it,” but instead you should be saying, “I will pay no attention to how many people believe it, but judge the matter purely on the facts and the evidence.”

But such a principle is ignored by many who try to keep science as illogically exclusionary as a 1950's Alabama country club.