Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: The Future, a podcast about Intelligent Design and evolution.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Greetings. I'm your guest host this episode for ID the Future. My name is Robert J. Marks. If you do like this podcast, I would invite you to go over to the website Mind Matters AI where we host podcasts weekly on artificial and natural intelligence. Mind Matters AI is associated with the Walter Bradley center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence which is also an arm of Discovery Institute. But we're not here to talk about that today. We're here to talk to Dr. Roger Olson who is one of the co authors of an incredible book that started off the Intelligent Design Movement. The release of the mystery of life's origin in 1984 can be marked as the beginning of the modern ID movement. The authors of the book were Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley and Roger Olson. The Walter Bradley center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence is excited to announce the re release of an updated version of the book.
Our guest today on I.D. the future is co author of this landmark book, Dr. Roger Olson. Dr. Olson received his Ph.D. in 1979 in geochemistry from from the Colorado School of Mines. He has lots of publications and presentations concerning chemical contamination in the environment.
He has been and is currently the Senior Vice president of CDM Smith, that's an environmental engineering consulting company and he's a board certified environment scientist. In fact, he was one of the first 20 scientists to be certified by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists. Roger, greetings.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Thank you. It's great to be here.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Thank you. The original three authors of the Mystery of Life's Origin had different specialties. They combined to write such an authoritative book which has really stood the test of time. That was 35 years ago. What are the general specialties of the co authors and what was your specific contribution?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Yes, first of all, there was Dr. Walter Bradley.
the time he was a professor of metallurgical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines where I was a student. And his my specialty is material science and engineering. Particularly he was an expert in thermodynamics and he authored essentially the chapter 7, 8 and 9 on thermodynamics.
I was asked to look at more my specialty which is geochemistry and I specialized in reactions in the environment and I ended up writing chapter five on the atmosphere of the ancient Earth and its conditions and chapter nine on protocells. And then Charles Saxton was a chemist specializing in organic chemistry and molecular biology and he was really the main author and wrote all the rest of the chapters on prebiotic simulation experiments and detailed the chemistry behind Those.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Okay. As you were a geochemist and you are a geochemist, and the contribution, as I understand, is determining the atmosphere on early Earth by looking at rocks. How do you determine what the atmosphere was by looking at rocks?
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Well, it turns out that actual rocks, and here we look at some of the most ancient rocks that are on the Earth. They look at some. According to the evolutionary theory, the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. And now they have rocks that date back very early in that history, and they continue to look at those. And actually, by looking at the minerals, minerals and the isotopes in there, they can determine whether it was an oxidizing or reducing environment.
For instance, uranium minerals have both oxidized minerals and reduced minerals, and you find them both.
And likewise, some of the most recent research has been looking at some very specific isotopes that some exist under oxidizing conditions and some existing under reducing conditions.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: I see.
Now, I remember one of the experiments that you were actually able to dethrone was the Miller Urey experiment, which assumes that Earth's atmosphere at a specific history and time was such that it was favorable for the formation of life. But your analysis kind of showed otherwise, didn't it?
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Exactly right. And the evolutionary chemists at that time when they first did these experiments and continue to do a lot of these experiments, essentially for the molecules of life, the amino acids and eventually the proteins, and just your basic building blocks of DNA, they need essentially to have highly reducing conditions to form those molecules that they need for the basic buildings of life. So if there's any oxygen at all, essentially that type of environment destroys these chemicals, and you really can't get the formation of the molecules they need to form life.
And likewise, there was identified another problem in that essentially because of the harsh conditions on the ancient Earth that they really theorized that these building blocks took millions and sometimes billions of years to build up.
So looking at the current research in this area, some of the most ancient rocks that they've now found, they've actually said that they find traces of life.
They call them microfossils or fossil life.
They find life in some of these ancient rocks that look like life, and they also find conditions that are more oxidizing. So back in 1984, I actually made kind of a bold statement that life almost appeared instantaneously.
It's been kind of interesting to see that just recently, in fact, last year, some Canadian science, based on their most recent research, said that life appeared almost instantaneously on the ancient Earth. And then some professors from UK Said it appears that very early in the Earth's history that the atmosphere was almost like we have today, that is oxidizing. So, you know, this almost pushes us, in my opinion, to say that there was an intelligent act behind this, that it was almost miraculous that life appeared so suddenly on the Earth.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: So that's very interesting. How far back can you go in terms of determining the chemical makeup of the atmosphere?
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Again, some of the.
The actual oldest rocks that they have found, you know, using evolutionary dating methods in the atmosphere, the Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
They have now found zircons that date back to 4.4 billion years ago. And that's about the oldest rock they found. So, and essentially that in geologic terms is. Is looking at those and finding oxidizing conditions in those.
There's also some containing rocks that they date back at 4.3 billion years old, where they find evidence of life, microfossils. So when I say it's almost instantaneous, that's the evidence that they actually say, so they have rocks and microfossils that date very close to actually the formation of the Earth.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: That's really amazing that 4.4 billion years ago, there's evidence of what the Earth's atmosphere was that is very akin to some of the claims made by Guillermo Gonzalez. This planet, this Earth that we live on, is built for discovery. We can go back 4.4 billion years. That's incredible. Well, let's get back to the book. How did you become involved in the book?
[00:08:23] Speaker B: As I previously said, Walter Bradley was a professor of mechanical and metallurgical engineering in the Colorado School of mines in the 1980s. And we are good friends and worked on campus ministries together.
And at that time, John Buell of the foundation of Thought and Ethics asked Dr. Bradley, Walter, to write a book on evolution.
Walter Bradley, you know, knew his expertise and discussed with me about how it could join in that book.
And really, we wanted to focus on areas that we were specialized in and came to the conclusion that that would have been the part of what is called chemical evolution or the origin of life, as I've said, how the formation of the first molecules of living matter formed on the ancient Earth, according to the evolutionary people, that these came together to form living cells. And this was all by, you know, random and natural processes.
So we decided to focus on this. And after several years writing, we had a manuscript and gave it to John Buell. At the time, Charles Thackson was on the staff with John Buell there, and he read it and he really pushed back and said, you need a lot more chemistry in there.
And so obvious as a chemist, we coerced him and he volunteered to pick up and rewrite those chapters and add quite a few more that really added to the book, I think.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Were you a graduate student at the time that you wrote this?
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I was a graduate student.
I actually was teaching at the School of Mine. I was an instructor there as a graduate student and then finally got my PhD in geochemistry from the School of Mines in 1979 and at that time join industry. So I was actually in the industry, the environmental field when it was published in 1984.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: So what sort of feedback did you receive about the book? And especially as a young, tender, vulnerable PhD, did it have any effect on your career?
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Well, yeah, that's interesting question. It was kind of interesting. At the School of Mines when you have your Ph.D. almost done, you have to give a seminar and most people elect to give it, you know, on their thesis, which mine wasn't very interesting.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: So I decided your thesis wasn't interesting. Okay.
You know the true confessions here.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, as you know it, sometimes it's more a matter of patience than anything when you're writing your thesis down.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Yes, understood.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So I decided to give my faculty seminar on chemical evolution. So I found that much more interesting than my thesis. Yes, so I did. And you know, it was a small, small department, the Department of Chemistry and Geochemistry. So you know, I had gone to undergraduate school there and you know, so by the time I gave that seminar, I'd been there almost 10 years.
You know, I love school.
So I mean there wasn't a lot of pushback from the other faculty. Some of them actually, you know, said in the seminar, you know, that kind of re quoted what I said and said, yeah, that all makes sense. I think it was because I'd been there so long and was teaching with the professors and they respected me.
Once I went out in the industry, you know, I was a. I was aware of some of the reviews that were coming out and hadn't been really that closely involved. You know, Charles and John Buell had been pushing the publication.
So I was aware of some of the reviews. But my field that I was in, you know, most of my colleagues weren't aware of that with the ones I knew that had like mind. You know, I shared some of that and shared my book with them and continued to speak in various conferences on evolution and the faith and in various churches and was pretty active at that time. So I don't think it really affected my career at all in the field that I had chosen.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Well, I do know that many of the people that endorsed your book, including the ones in print in the first edition, like Jastrow and Dean Kenyon, were extraordinarily visible in the field. They were big people, and to get endorsements from them was really, really special.
So I've read many of the reviews of the book, and most of them were actually positive, except for one or two that actually focused in on the epilogue where you actually talked about the possibility of a creator being responsible for the creation of life. And they didn't like that. Even though you didn't address this in the book, all the book was just solid science. It was only at the end of the epilogue where you actually addressed the possible causes of that. And I think you were very fair having read it. You talked about panspermia, the idea that life was planted here on Earth, and the other possibilities. And one was the role of a creator in creating life. By the way, there's one other that's been added, and that was by Elon Musk. He thinks we're all here, and all this complexity we see is a result of a master computer program and we're living here and we're all simulations. So this is another view of intelligent design, which is really, really kind of strange. Well, I want to catch up on what you've done in the last 35 years since then. I've talked to you offline, and some of the stuff that you're doing is fascinating in terms of, I would call it appropriate technology.
You're bringing technology to different countries that don't need the latest whiz bang sort of AI. They don't need a new supercomputer, but they need technology which is appropriate for their country. And we said in the beginning that you were an environmental sort of engineer.
Just tell us what you do. You go in and you help some of these places where the Soviet Union left them terribly polluted.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Yeah, as I said, my main line of work is environmental chemistry or geochemistry.
And that's really. People ask me what geochemistry is all the time, and that's really applying chemical reactions to the environment. Rock, water interactions. Water. Water interactions. Chemical interactions in the environment. So, you know, last 35 years, I've been in that field and mainly going around the world and in the United States, addressing contaminated water, particularly groundwater, contaminated soil and contaminated sediments, and surface water, too. And this has been a very productive field. You know, we. We continue to find new chemicals that are potentially toxic to human beings and to the ecological systems out there. So that's what I've been doing. A lot of the third world countries don't have the money to address those chemicals in the environment. And so I've been working with two nonprofits.
One's called Share International and we've been working in Kazakhstan for almost 30 years. And the other one is Joint Developments Associates.
And we've worked in Uzbekistan, northern Afghanistan, and now we're working in northern Iraq, in the Kyrgyzstan area.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: One of the things you mentioned was that you actually go in and some of these places have soil which is so badly polluted that the kids can't play on it. And you're actually able to get the playground and the play area such that it's safe.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Particularly in Kazakhstan, which essentially was under the control of Russia. Kazakhstan was rich in mineral resources. And particularly in an area called Chimkan, they had a smelter.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Say that again. How do you spell that name? That's a city there, right?
[00:16:37] Speaker B: Chimkan. Yeah. Excuse me. That's S H Y M K E N T. That's in the southern part of Kazakhstan, near the Uzbekistan border.
And that smelter, which. A smelter is where you take the. In this case the lead ore and process it, grind it up, produce a concentrate and then you heat it to very high temperatures to produce molten lead, which at that time was used for bullets for World War II for the Russia.
In fact, over 80% of the bullets for World War II were produced in this particular smelter. But unfortunately they didn't have any pollution control in the smelter in those days. And dust of lead came out and settled, you know, all over the territory.
And the smelter was built and then the housing for the workers was built right around it. And then the smelter continued to operate until just two years ago. We were finally able to put enough pressure on it to shut it down. But in the meantime, the lead had contaminated a large area around the smelter which the houses were there, the kids were there, they walked to school in this lead contaminated soil.
In some of the, what they call kindergartens, which are really daycare centers. We found over 4% lead in the soil. And we actually tested blood for lead contamination. There was a new instrument that you could essentially take a prick and you could determine the lead bud concentration.
And that's, that's the way you determine the impact on the children.
It turns out that lead damage the nervous system, that damage is permanent. It decreases the child's IQ.
These kids are severely impacted. Their IQs are decreased.
There's probably 40,000 kids in this area that will never be productive in society just because of the damage that's been done.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: 40,000, my goodness.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just a terrible environmental impact. So we've been working with the government and they promised over and over to clean it up. We've done experiments on how to clean it up.
Some of the more small things you can do is like these kids were, you know, they play, they play soccer and it's a very dry, dusty area and they were breathing in the dust and so creating clean play areas, you know, that you can clean off and things like that's been a goal of ours.
Just personal hygiene of cleaning homes and keeping them clean of the dust.
Simple things like washing your hands after you're outside, getting the dust off of them so you don't have hand to mouth contact. All those things. Public education.
And just last year we went back and said, you know, we, we still need to get rid of this contaminated soil and there's ways to do that. So it's been a long, long journey.
Lots of promises, but still hopeful that we can change this environment that these kids are in.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Well, that's wonderful what you're doing to address this problem. We've been talking about what you've done the past 35 years. Let's talk about the past 35 years. In the short time that we have remaining about what has changed in the area that you wrote about in the Mystery of Life's Origin, has there been anything that you know of that has changed your conclusions or has it been fortified?
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Yes, we appreciate that question, Bob. And the new edition has some outstanding chapters by some really outstanding scientists.
They really showed in a lot of areas that there's really been no advances made in improving chemical evolution.
And the evidence is even more overwhelming today than it was when we wrote the book that there had to be a source of information, that intelligent designer behind all this. You know, my particular areas, first of all in the protocells, taking all the molecules of life, if they ever did exist and forming into cells.
They just really haven't been able to make any, any advances in that area. And anything they have is still a surficial resemblance of any true cell. And the second area we've already talked about assessing the Earth's ancient atmosphere and the conditions on the Earth and you know, what I said in 1984, that life appeared almost instantaneously has been confirmed by Scientists in saying and using those exact words. It was just amazing to me that a scientist would actually use that same phrase that end quote. An almost instantaneous emergence of life and an oxidizing environment was on the earth. And the implications of that to the theory of evolution, as we said, it just relates back to this instantaneous appearance of life.
Had to have some intelligent designer behind it.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Okay, so that in the epilogue, that was the last question I was going to ask you, but in the epilogue it went through the different possibilities for the origin of life. I was going to ask you which one you favored and you just kind of answered it, didn't you?
So this is great. Roger, what a blessing to talk to you. We've been talking to Dr. Roger Olson. He's one of the co authors of the original book, the Mystery of Life's Origin. It has been reissued, sponsored by the Walter Bradley center for Natural and artificial intelligence at Arma Discovery Institute and it's available on Amazon.com, both in print and in Kindle version. Dr. Olson, thank you. You've done some great work as the co author of the Mystery of Life's Origin and you've really had a meaningful career helping to minister to people that really need it. So it's incredible. Very impressive. Thank you for spending your time with us today on ID the Future.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Thank you, Bob.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Okay, until next time, be of good cheer.
This program was recorded by Discovery Institute Institute's center for Science and Culture. ID the Future is copyright Discovery Institute.
For more information visit intelligent design.org and idthefuture.com.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: It.
