Francis Crick is quoted on Apologetics 315 as follows:
"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. But this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions. The plain fact is that the time available was too long, the many microenvironments on the earth's surface too diverse, the various chemical possibilities too numerous and our own knowledge and imagination too feeble to allow us to be able to unravel exactly how it might or might not have happened such a long time ago, especially as we have no experimental evidence from that era to check our ideas against."
- Francis Crick
I've followed Brian and have added more context to Crick's comments. I like the quote...even the longer one. The thing I need to point out that the shorter quote does not endorse a belief in God or the Bible. I think the only thing that the longer quote does is point out the awesome wonder of the origin of life given what we know contrasted with what we do not know.
Sunday Quote: Francis Crick on Origin of Life - Apologetics 315
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On Apologetics 315, Brian has been good enough to add the proper context to that quote, which substantially changes its meaning. I hope that you are prepared to do the same.
ReplyDelete@Johnathan West
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out to me that Brian has added more of the quote to put it into context. I've added it too because I don't want to misrepresent anyone. The thing is I don't think it changes the meaning of the quote at all. I understood that Crick was not endorsing the Bible or any religion. He was pointing out how little we know about the origins of life. I think you may have been accusing Brian and I of trying to make the quote say something that neither one of us was trying to say.