Not quite news, but new enough to some of us, Jack Szostak from Harvard Medical School is “trying to build a synthetic cellular system that undergoes Darwinian evolution” to shut up once and for all the creationists and Intelligent Design proponents out there. Well, Good Luck with that!
Szostak is of course driven by his own demonstrably irrational materialist belief in taking this initiative, but at least he got his Nobel Prize before beginning to chase ghosts. It’s also telling that he feels Darwinian evolution is not “settled science” and in fact it badly needs the experimental proof Szostak and others seek.
Success in this initiative will of course not put an end to creationism and ID (after all Szostak himself is a pretty intelligent designer), not that linking to the failed 1952 Miller-Urey experiment (which did not produce any life) among others augurs any imminent breakthrough.
But what about the young, and no doubt intelligent, members of Szostak’s team? Is he leading them to the Promised Land or to a dead end in the scientific desert? And what about the numerous other groups out there wasting their intelligence on chasing the same ghost? Of course, a few alchemists also stumbled upon important discoveries, but a lot more useful science would have resulted had these alchemists focused instead on solving real problems.
Links:
https://origins.harvard.edu/pages/research-spotlight-jack-szostak