evolution is a fairytale for adults | Dr Stephen Grocott about Evolution | Creation vs Evolution

evolution is a fairytale for adults

Dr. Stephen Grocott, you have a PhD in physical and inorganic chemistry, but you also come with a wealth of experience in that field.

 

Yes, I've been working in the field of chemistry for 40 years, hopefully it doesn't show, but I did a PhD in my 20s.

I moved into industrial careers doing research and development, in process development of new chemical processes. I worked for many prominent global companies. I also had a lot of interactions with universities where I used to co-supervise PhD students. I have many refereed publications and patents So, a lifelong and enjoyable career in science.

 

So, evolution is a fairytale for adults. Bold statement. Why do you say that?

 

Well, firstly, I want to stress that I'm not trying to insult science or scientists here. I am a scientist. I earn my living doing, amongst other things, a lot of science.

So, I'll explain though

Why I call it a fairytale, because a fairytale starts with the theory of ones upon a time and finishes with a, they all lived happily ever after or in some dark version and they all died. So, the origin of life is a fairytale I maintain because it starts with once upon a time there was nothing and then it exploded. That’s the so-called Big Bang Theory, which is becoming under increasing criticism from the secular scientific community. Then you end up with the next once upon a time, once upon a time a bunch of lifeless simple molecules joined together, became a bit more complex and then they became more and more complex and more and more complex. And so, you had some moderately complex molecules. And then once upon a time, those moderately complex molecules self-assembled into even more complexity.  And once upon a time it became self-replicating a living organism. And once upon a time when all this was happening, all the normal laws of chemistry and physics were suspended   and these molecules did not start falling apart. So I call it a once upon a time theory of the origins of life. It is not supported by observational science.

So you have mentioned observational science. I wonder if you could talk to us about that because I feel like I have heard, and I have read in textbooks, a lot of scientists seem to agree with evolution. So you just speak to us about that.

The majority of scientist do believe in evolution I used to believe in evolution but I never Studied it, I never looked at it, I was just assumed it was true because that’s what I was told I just assumed it was true because that’s what other scientist were told but when you look at the data when you look at the science you make the tests, you make the measurements, you do not see simple molecules self-assembled into complex molecules, surviving the oppressive forces of time and water and temperature pushing them back in the opposite direction and becoming more complex. You do not see that that’s not observational science; you cannot even repeat it in a laboratory experiment. You cannot conduct a laboratory experiment to make these molecules that are the precursors to the precursors, to the precursors of living beings.

So you saying that because we are not able to test it in a lab today, we are not able to see could a big bang occur?

So, not so much big bang, so I am not talking about the chemistry, the molecules other can talk about the big bang. I shall the digress, you know? (Chuckles) too long. But self-assembly of molecules, they do not self-assemble under the so called primordial soup conditions. Even if you invent the most imaginably, wonderfully supportive conditions, you will not form living molecules. I am going to use a really gross example here:

 “ I hate cockroaches I am going to put a whole bunch of cockroaches, 500 cockroaches in my blender and I am going to blend it. And apart from being a very gross thought experiment, what I have just created is a collection of non-living organic molecules and I shall give it a quick zap with radiation in case there is any bacteria in there that survives so to kill off the bacteria. But now I have got the most perfect soup, far, far more favorable for living organisms forming than you will get in a so-called primordial soup. So I can leave this blender full of yuck cockroaches out in the sun, the right temperature, the right atmosphere, the right conditions, everything perfect, I am not going to form a living molecule. ”

Scientists know that, so why do they maintain that under less favorable circumstances I am gonna form life. They appeal to time; time is enemy. The longer I leave this cockroach soup out there, it is going to get worse and worse and worse.

But what you're saying, Stephen, is that even though a lot of people in the scientific community understand that a molecule won't be formed, they're relying on millions of years or billions of years to make this a possibility?

That's one of the things that they do rely upon.

Now, as I've just said, when you ask them and you probe them and they will agree that actually time's an enemy because the complexity that you're building is not being preserved, it's falling apart.

 

So the train's heading in the wrong direction. So, appealing to time and chance does not help because chance is sending you in the wrong direction. Time is sending you in the wrong direction.

 

Do you mean that over time things degenerate, they don't improve?

It's called the second law of thermodynamics or the law of entropy, or the law of decay, or the law of randomness. It's in an exorable law of chemistry and physics, no known exceptions. So, people try to appeal to, well, if I control the environment, I can create complexity.

Yes, that requires a designer and it requires a lot of intelligence and it requires the right systems, the right specified complexity.

That comes about by a designer.

It doesn't come about by accident.

No known exceptions.

 

 Is a designer the only alternative to the evolution fairytale?

It's the only one that I think fits the field of observational science because I can... I can't prove creation, I can't prove evolution. I can't prove that a flying spaghetti monster didn't create the universe.

So why can't you prove those things?

Because they sit in a field called forensic or historical science. So, take a forensic movie. You know, they do a DNA test and they say, "Ah, this person was the murderer because their DNA has been found at the crime scene." And it may be unlikely but there are other explanations for it. They happen to have walked past there in the past or somebody had contact with them and had contact with the weapon. I mean there are other explanations. You cannot prove it. So that's forensic science.

But even the best forensic science points to a divine creation, a super intelligent being that created these systems for these not self-assembly but directed assembly of molecules into such complexity that you had a living organism.

 

So you're saying that forensic science focuses on what has already occurred and is trying to piece that together?

 

Yeah, forensic scientists, science is actually getting into the field of history. So science can't prove that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Science can't prove that. That's historical. If there were eyewitness accounts who recorded it at the time and it was independently verified by other people, you can prove it. Science can't prove that. Science can't prove what I had for breakfast last year. That's history. If I wrote it down at the time, if I videoed it and date stamped it, then that's history. That's not science.

 

So, it sounds like, Stephen, you're actually excluding all other options and just focusing on the possibility of a designer. Isn't that a bit narrow-minded?

It might be considered narrow-minded. And I think people should be open-minded but not so open-minded that their brains fall out.

Yeah? You look at the data and you use the data, you use the observations, you use the repeating of the experiments to narrow and exclude hypotheses. And what you are ending up with is one possibility. And many people may not think it's the God of the Bible, but they do acknowledge there is a divine creator. There is a divine footprint. Life happened about, not by chance.

Even the late almost Nobel Prize winning physicist, Sir Fred Hoyle said the chance of even a single complex molecule precursor to life forming is the same chance as if you filled the solar system wall to wall with blind men each with their own Rubik's cube, and they all came up with a solution at the same time. He says it's a non-sense of the highest order that this happened by chance. And by the way, Fred Hoyle was not a Christian, but he recognized on the basis of science that there was another force at work here. It's not a force of science, not a force of nature. It was a divine footprint.

So you are saying that you're actually following a scientific procedure where you have multiple hypotheses and you work through your data until you come up with the most likely answer. And for you, that is a divine creator?

Correct!

So, I've eliminated other possibilities. This is the only one that I see fits the science and fits the data. It doesn't prove it because it's not in the field of observational science until I can repeat the events that led to living organisms.

Now, as a believer in a divine creation, I can't go and repeat those. So I can't prove it using operational science. As a believer in evolution, before I changed my viewpoints, I could not go and repeat the experiments that led to more complex life and life arising. And I could not refer to an observer who was there to watch the first fish emerges of amphibian and over millions and millions of years turned into a philosopher. That was not observed so it's outside history and it's not seen in experimental science.

 

So Stephen, I wonder if you could talk me through your journey from evolutionist to creationist. What is some of the evidence that has brought you to believe that evolution is a fairytale?

That's a ripper question. I might even go back a little bit further than that.

When I was doing my PhD, I was working in a laboratory with some very intelligent and capable fellow PhD students. One of them happened to be a believer in a recent creation, a young Earth. He was a Christian and he used to ask and challenge me and my colleagues with these scientific questions. I could never answer them. I never had answers to the challenging questions that he gave me.

I used to feel uncomfortable that I as a scientist, I did not have an answer. And I also used to feel uncomfortable when I saw how some of my peers dealt with him. They didn't answer his scientific questions, they didn't deal with the science. They attacked him as a person and they attacked his beliefs. Sometimes it was nasty, sometimes it was just a bit humorous. But I remember feeling uncomfortable. I can't answer these questions. From a science perspective, I cannot answer what he's telling me.

 

So, what did I do about that? I went on a great searching journey.

No!

I flushed the questions because they're uncomfortable because I didn't wanna think about them. And it wasn't until much later that I was forced to think about these questions and think, my goodness, there's structure and order in the universe that didn't come about by accident. There is a divine creator and the divine creator I see is the God of the Bible.

What are some of those pieces of evidence that you have personally found so compelling as a scientist to believe, actually, this couldn't have come about by chance?

Yeah, there's some neat ones.

My favorite element in the periodic table is actually Helium.

It's the second lightest element. I like it 'cause it's in helium balloons and they're fun. I like it because during my PhD we used to have a cylinder of helium and you take a lung full, don't do this at home by the way. You take a lung full and your voice becomes like Donald duck because the velocity of sound in helium is different from the velocity of sound in air. But it's a fun element. But here's where it comes into age of the Earth.

Helium is effectively is an alpha particle, alpha radiation we've heard of when parent radioactive elements decompose or decay through alpha particle emission and alpha particles just to helium atom with no electrons. The alpha particle picks up a couple of electrons like that. It's really easy and it becomes helium. Now when this decay happens inside a rock, into inside a mineral grain, that helium is trapped in there. Now helium's a small element and it diffuses, it leaks out very quickly, which is why your helium balloon is got metal coating on the inside because if it's just a normal rubber balloon, it'd be flat in no time at all. So, helium leaks out quickly.

Now, you can calculate how fast the helium, or in fact you can measure how fast the helium leaks out of the mineral grain and you can calculate how much helium should have formed in there because you've got the daughter elements that led to it. And you find in these mineral grains there's miles too much helium. All of the helium should have leaked out over the millions and billions of years but most of it is still there.

And so, what do you infer?

The mineral grain must be young. - Much younger. - But if I have a different paradigm, I'll say there must be a process I don't understand because clearly the mineral grain is old, therefore there's some way that the helium's still in there. It leaked in. That's been proven not to be correct. There must be slower leakage back in history. That's a wild assumption. Unsubstantiated. There are no explanations for this other than the helium shows, this must be a young mineral grain, not millions of years old.

So, that was one neat piece of evidence that I really liked.

What's another piece of evidence that you have personally found compelling?

All the molecules that I've ever built fall apart if I don't put them in the right environment. And I'm talking about some pretty simple molecules. So they fall apart. So, precursors to living organisms, unless you preserve them in a careful way, they disintegrate. Another neat one is something called chirality or optical activity.

Now, let me explain that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So I've got a left hand and I've got a right hand. You know, I've got thumb, index finger, all the way through to my little finger. So, they're not identical though, they're mirror images of each other. I cannot put one hand on top of the other, superimpose them exactly 'cause it's the wrong order. I can superimpose them when they're mirror images. Now a lot of biological molecules come in left hand and right hand. So for instance, the proteins in our body, the amino acids in our body are left-handed exclusively amino acids. But when I make an amino acid in a laboratory starting from simpler molecules, I end up with a 50/50 mixture of left and right.

So, how on earth did biological systems only come to be comprised of only the left-handed? That doesn't make sense. And if I get a soup, even starting with all left-handed, over time and it doesn't take very long, it starts decomposing, converting into some right-handed and before you know it, you've got quite a lot of right-handed ones as well as left-handed ones. And if I take a peptide, a lot of amino acids strung together, and I substitute one of the left-hand, and one's for a right-handed one, I'm gonna damage its function. And often the damage to the function is sufficient to kill the organism. So, it's just, I don't even know how to put it into words. It's a fairytale to believe this happened by accident, that these unstable molecules formed equal mixture, then you only got the left-hand ones, and they all survived and it didn't revert. I mean, I'm sorry. It's too big a construct for me. It takes more faith to believe in a natural origin of life than for a designer.

 

What would you say to someone who says, "But surely with enough time, with enough time, we could come to a point where they would all be left-handed or where the helium would leak to the right amount. Or maybe it's just an anomaly." What would you say to someone that said that?

I'd say to somebody, well, on that basis of thinking, if you keep withdrawing from the bank for a long enough time, you're gonna become rich. Now the process is going in the wrong way. You keep withdrawing from the bank, you become poorer. And these molecules get poorer and poorer over time. They're unstable.

Time's an enemy. So, complexity goes to simplicity. The only thing that preserves complexity is a designer, is an overarching system to control it. Living organisms can self-replicate, they can preserve complexity. But to get to a living organism, you go through this incredibly complex cascade, upwards cascade of processes. And along the way, along that journey, the forces are pushing you back down the hill constantly. It's inexorable, it's pushing you in the wrong direction. So by the time I've and I'm trying to make a 50 amino acid peptide, by the time I've got to 10, the first one's dropping off. By the time I've got to 20, it's split into two tens. By the time I've got to 30, it's split into six fives. I don't have it anymore. I don't even get to the 50 and that's only one of millions of complex molecules that needed to be self-assembled. So time's an enemy.

 

So you've spoken a lot about evidence from your field of chemistry. Is there anything from another scientific field that you'd like to bring in?

 

This might sound a little bit arrogant, but the Chemical Institute of which I'm a professional member, I've used to say chemistry, the central science. And I sort of feel that it pervades everything. So, maybe I'm just gonna give you a divergent or a peripheral chemical argument.

Sounds good.

I use one biological system that has, died, Fossils. Now, I've already mentioned that proteins are made of left-handed amino acids. So that's all you get. Now we can measure the rate at which the left-handed turn into right-handed and you end up with a 50/50. That's easily measured and it's over a short period of time. And it gets worse with temperature and with acidic waters and soils or alkaline waters and soils. So under the perfect environment, even in a freezer, you know? In years you're seeing the decay, some of the lefts becoming rights.

Now you dig up a fossil and you're finding protein fragments in soils and in fossils and in rock strata you can find protein fragments. Over thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, the left has become a mixture of left right is what you should see. Instead what do you see? When you dig up something that's supposed to be millions of years old, it's dominantly left-handed.

Why would that occur?

Because it's not millions of years old. There is no other explanation. So what do non-creator believing scientists, scientists who exclude the divine foot in the door, how do they explain millions of years old and they only see left-handed stuff? Well, they've got all these theories that are all proven wrong. They say, "Well, it must be contamination. It must be recent contamination." No, you can prove that it's not. It must be preserved for longer than we thought. Well, that is a possible hypothesis. Let's do an experiment under the best possible conditions. How do we preserve the left-handedness? And you find there is no chemical system which preserves that left-handedness for millions of years.

So again, by process of elimination, and I think it was Sherlock Holmes who had allegedly said that when you've eliminated all possibilities, the one remaining possibility, no matter how ridiculous it seems, must be correct. Now that is gonna make some people uncomfortable. But you know, the only thing that grows while it's comfortable is a potato. We grow by discomfort.

So, if the viewer or listener is uncomfortable at what I'm saying, and maybe even if they're angry at what I was saying because I used to get angry when I used to hear this, I encourage them, you think you've got a fine mind? Use it. Look at the evidence, look at the data. What makes sense? When you see your name written on the sand, in the sand on the beach, you know there's a designer there. Living organisms are vastly more complex than a few billion grains of sand. Think where did this come about? There are no natural processes that lead to it. Therefore, I'm Sherlock. There's only one possibility, there is a divine creator.

Is there, in closing, anything you'd like to add?

Yes!

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I mean, I do love talking about science, but more importantly than that, how this viewpoint has changed my life, turning it on its head, I just encourage people to think through the issues that we've talked about because they are life-changing consequences to the paradigm that you have. Thank you.

 

Thank you, Dr. Stephen Grocott, for your time.