Origin-of-life specialist Rob Stadler joins a new ID the Future episode to discuss the latest Long Story Short science video. The cheeky video (below) investigates a problem that faces all materialist origin-of-life scenarios: To be viable, a cell must have sophisticated machinery, including ATP synthase, to turn raw energy into constructive energy. But how could prebiotic chemicals harness raw energy on the way to evolving into a viable self-reproducing cell without first having the sophisticated machinery to harness raw energy and convert it to useful work? Are the energy sources that have been proposed for chemical evolution realistic? In his conversation with host Eric Anderson, Dr. Stadler argues that, no, they aren’t. This isn’t the sort of hurdle that mindless natural processes can overcome, but it is precisely the sort of problem that a designing mind could solve. Download the podcast or listen to it here.
