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Origin of Life’s Purple Unicorn: Protocells

Image credit: Waldkunst via Pixabay.

On a new episode of ID the Future, host Eric Anderson sits down with Rob Stadler, co-author with Change Tan of The Stairway to Life: An Origin-of-Life Reality Check. The topic of discussion is protocells. Stadler notes that the simplest existing single-celled organisms are far too sophisticated to have emerged through a blind process of prebiotic evolution. He further notes that this is widely acknowledged in the origin-of-life community, but those committed to a purely materialistic origin of the first life have a fallback explanation: protocells. That is, early biological structures far simpler than anything we find today. An intriguing hypothesis, but the problems with it, according to Stadler, are legion. Listen in as Stadler and Anderson walk through several lines of evidence that appear to break against the much sought-after but ever-elusive protocell. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Jonathan Witt

Executive Editor, Discovery Institute Press and Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
Jonathan Witt, PhD, is Executive Editor of Discovery Institute Press and a senior fellow and senior project manager with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. His latest book is Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design (DI Press, 2018) written with Finnish bioengineer Matti Leisola. Witt has also authored co-authored Intelligent Design Uncensored, A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature, and The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot. Witt is the lead writer and associate producer for Poverty, Inc., winner of the $100,000 Templeton Freedom Award and recipient of over 50 international film festival honors.

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Change TanevolutionID the Futureorigin of lifeorigin-of-life communitypodcastprebiotic evolutionprotocellspurple unicornRob Stadler