Thoughts in a Haystack

The Sensuous Curmudgeon is already on on this. The Discoveryless Institute claims Harry Lonsdale, a retired chemist and entrepreneur, is wasting the $2,000,000 he is putting up over the next five to seven years to study abiogenesis because, after "150 years of work," there has been no progress on a naturalistic origin of life. In a supreme irony, they call abiogenesis "a myth."

That 150 years is based, dishonestly (as always with the DI), on the fact that Darwin referred to life possibly arising in "a warm little pond." But Darwin had no illusions that the science of his time could even begin to address that problem. As he said:

I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant "appeared" by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.

Of course, Pentateuchal creation is precisely what the DI is out to promote. And the notion that it could be shown that natural processes could give rise to "life" is a real threat to that agenda.

Not only is it dishonest to claim that there has been any serious scientific research into abiogenesis for 150 years, it is dishonest to suggest that $2,000,000 is a lot of money. As the Curmudgeon points out, in just 3 years the DI had roughly $14,000,000 to spend on the "search" for a "Designer" and they haven't come close.

But this is what got to me:

If any investors want to send even a small portion of Lonsdale's promised funding to support biomimetics projects or intelligent design organizations, such as Biologic Institute, Discovery Institute or Illustra Media, they can rest assured it won't take 150 years to show some returns.

The Biologic Institute has produced even less scientific results than abiogenesis research so far. The DI is nothing but a propaganda outlet and Illustra Media is a "documentary" producer.

It's like they are claiming that the "Science Channel" is doing real scientific research!

Oh, wait a minute! To the DI, "science" is just PR!