Heretic Quotes

“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.18”
― Matti Leisola, Heretic: One Scientist's Journey from Darwin to Design

“James Tour is a leading origin-of-life researcher with over 630 research publications and over 120 patents. He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015, listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters in 2014, and named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine. Here is how he recently described the state of the field: We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins were made and how they could have coupled in proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea on how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say that they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say, “Oh this is well worked out,” they know nothing—nothing—about chemical synthesis—nothing. … From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks, let alone assembly into a complex system. That’s how clueless we are. I have asked all of my colleagues—National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners—I sit with them in offices. Nobody understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, if your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking about.23”
― Matti Leisola, Heretic: One Scientist's Journey from Darwin to Design

“behind the birth of modern science were men like Galileo, Boyle, Faraday, Maxwell, Newton, Pascal, and Pasteur, scientists who believed in real design in nature and in a cosmic designer, a faith that inspired them to go looking for the underlying rational order of the natural world.”
― Matti Leisola, Heretic: One Scientist's Journey from Darwin to Design

“Mutations can be caused by chemicals, radiation, or extreme heat or cold. But in nature mutations generally occur spontaneously for no clear reason. More to the point, mutations are rarely beneficial, and cells generally work to keep the number of mutations as few as possible. A Nobel Prize was given in 2015 for the discovery of this error-correcting system. It’s as if every cell has its own personal copy editor. This copy editor is not perfect, but it is extraordinarily effective, and essential. Without it our fertilized egg cells would die long before developing to an embryo. Thanks to this error-correction system, only about one mutation for every ten billion DNA letters is inherited by the next generation. If we could hand-copy the more than four million letters in the complete plays of William Shakespeare with the same speed and accuracy that bacteria read and copy their genomes, we could dash off some 200 copies of all his plays in twenty minutes with only a single typo in just one of the 200 copies.”
― Matti Leisola, Heretic: One Scientist's Journey from Darwin to Design