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Marcos Eberlin: Unguided Origin of Life “Sold to Us,” but Its Assumptions Are “Insane”

Origin of Life

On a new episode of ID the Future, distinguished Brazilian organic chemist Marcos Eberlin talks with host Andrew McDiarmid about chemical evolution and the origin of life, reflecting on comments by Rice University synthetic organic chemist James Tour in Science Uprising, Episode 5, and on Eberlin’s own Nobel laureate-endorsed book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. The idea of an unguided origin of the first life has been “sold to us,” he says, but its assumptions are “insane … many, many times impossible.” Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Dr. Eberlin illustrates from three essential cell features: the cell membrane, protein folding, and molecular chaperones. We’re “further away than ever” from making life in the lab, he says, and it’s time now to “surrender to the data,” which as he argues, points to the works of foresight and planning in the origin of the first life.