Could life on Earth be much older than supposed?

A team of researchers based at the Curtin University of Technology near Perth, Australia, believe they have evidence that life may have begun 700 million years earlier than traditionally assumed. According to their July 3, 2008 announcement,

The 4.2 billion year old diamonds found trapped inside the Jack Hills zircon crystals are the oldest-known samples of Earth’s carbon. The Curtin led team’s discovery of very high concentrations of carbon 12, or “light carbon” within these crystals is remarkable as it is a feature usually associated with organic life.

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Evidence for ancient life stretches back in time to at least 3.5 billion years ago, in the form of single-celled organisms that did not require oxygen. The discovery of light carbon in the Jack Hills crystals raises the question – did a simple life form exist on Earth 700 million years earlier than previously thought?

According to geologist team leader Alexander Nemchin,

The discovery challenges our fundamental understanding of processes active in the early history of the Earth. It suggests that life may well have appeared on Earth long before the period of heavy-meteorite bombardment believed by some to have initiated the emergence of life on Earth.

Alternatively, light carbon doesn't necessarily signal life.

If life really appeared on Earth long before heavy meteor bombardment, theories that involve any kind of gradual Darwinian process for the origin of life are pretty much dead.

We are then left with either an extraterrestrial origin of life or an origin coded into the formation of Earth itself - an intelligent design hypothesis.

Evolve already, huffingtons

In "Big Bang on the Bayou", Ken Connor reflects on the way in which public education Louisiana has become a cause of alarm in the wake of Louisiana's "assault on Darwin":

So why are the denizens of blogs like the Huffington Post in such a huff? Because "science" is their "truth," and it is blasphemous to question their beliefs.

Secularists are unwilling to have their orthodoxy challenged. Just as Galileo had to fight against the church and government of his day, those who dare to question today's "settled" theories are banished by scientific and political Inquisitors. The implications of being wrong are too much to fathom; therefore, the secularist worldview must go unchallenged.

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Thus, any analysis that calls into question any aspect (no matter how small) of the theory of evolution becomes an educational and/or constitutional crisis.

Actually, for most of the huffingtons, Darwinian evolution is not a theory, it is their state-supported religion. It is as subject to criticism in North American schools as Islam is in Saudi Arabian schools or the glorious Communist Party in Chinese schools.

And for the same reason too: Those who do not trust themselves to demonstrate a truth try to enforce it.

Evolve already, huffingtons. The alligators are laughing at you.

What happens when we assume there is no design in life?

Friends remind me of an excerpt from a debate between intelligent design advocate Phillip Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, and Darwinist philosopher William Provine, in which Provine proclaims,

First, the argument from design failed. There is no intelligent design in the natural world. When mammals die, they are really and truly dead. No ultimate foundations for ethics exist, no ultimate meaning in life exists, and free will is merely a human myth. These are all conclusions to which Darwin came quite clearly. (Stanford University, April 30, 1994)

Provine has said this elsewhere over the years, most notably in the Expelled movie.

A friend comments that he admires Provine for at least being honest about where materialist atheism leads - as opposed to Richard Dawkins, who moralizes with abandon, without recognizing that his belief system cannot privilege one morality over another by definition.

What happens then? Well, what happens then is being played out in Canada right now, and all across Europe. All ethical systems come under attack, and degenerate into a swamp of unfocused feelings. In Canada, a quasi-judicial body known as a "human rights commission" - with far more power over individual Canadians' lives than any court would ever have - is alike empowered to pass judgment on a clergyman's pastoral advice and a late-night comic's jokes - based on assorted individuals' feelings of hurt or offense. One astonishing decision follows another, and you can read about many of them on a regular basis at civil rights lawyer Ezra Levant's blog.

Straw in the wind: When Levant recently tried debating an establishment lawyer, the establishment lawyer began to claim that Levant "needs counselling" - there are few more ominous words in a rapidly degenerating materialist society. The establishment neither has nor needs arguments for its position; it only needs to flow in whatever direction it is driven by the moods of the moment, and those whose moods (not "ideas", notice) are out of synch - "need counselling."

As Mario Beauregard and I put it in the The Spiritual Brain, the root of this sort of abuse is materialist atheism, in which

“science-based, effective and progressive policies” are not offered by a self to other selves, but driven by an object at other objects.” (p. 117)

That, I think, is what breeds the totalitarian impulse. The materialist has first dehumanized himself, then he dehumanizes others.