On a classic episode of ID the Future, I continue my conversation with mathematician and author David Berlinski about his latest book Science After Babel. Berlinski explores a chicken-and-egg problem facing origin-of-life research. He critiques the RNA world hypothesis, which suggests RNA was the initial life form. He explains the sheer complexity inherent in the transition from non-life to a modern cell, and why the field of abiogenesis is getting stuck due to "insuperable chemical obstacles." He also discusses a blindness afflicting some evolutionists focused on human origins, and he challenges Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould's idea that the difference between humans and chimpanzees is merely one of degree but not kind, calling this notion "utterly ridiculous."
Berlinski also sheds light on the mystery of why modern science almost flowered in ancient Greece, early Medieval China, and in the Muslim-Arab Medieval Empire. He says these sophisticated civilizations came "achingly close" but didn't take the next crucial step. Instead, the scientific revolution would emerge out of Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries with a systematic approach to investigating nature that arose from Judeo-Christian assumptions about the world.
Download the podcast or listen to it here. This is Part 2 of a three-part conversation. Listen to Part 1.