{"id":110645,"date":"2025-06-09T13:21:25","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T19:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=110645"},"modified":"2025-06-09T13:50:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T19:50:35","slug":"some-notes-on-the-origin-of-life-and-the-shroud-of-turin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/06\/some-notes-on-the-origin-of-life-and-the-shroud-of-turin.html","title":{"rendered":"Some notes on the origin of life and the Shroud of Turin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Shahnameh,<\/a>
The death of Alexander the Great, in the eleventh-century Persian epic \u201cShahnameh\u201d or \u201cBook of Kings,\u201d which I taught for many years at Brigham Young University (painted for an illuminated copy of the \u201cShahnameh\u201d around AD 1330, in Tabriz). \u00a0Alexander is yet another famous conqueror whose \u201cgreatness\u201d might legitimately be viewed as, umm, problematic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A little article of mine went up this morning in Meridian Magazine<\/em>:\u00a0\u201cWhen \u201cGreat\u201d Men Are Anything But: Rethinking Power Through the Lens of Christ\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Statues may rise for those called \u201cgreat,\u201d but history often forgets the blood they shed to get there. The world crowns the conqueror, but heaven sees greatness another way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Jesus<\/a>
One artist\u2019s impression of the face of Jesus based upon the image on the Shroud of Turin (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have never had strong feelings or a firm opinion about the famous Shroud of Turin and, although I find it interesting, I haven\u2019t spent a lot of time on it or read systematically about it. \u00a0Here, though, is a brief recent article on the topic that I think some might find worth a quick read: \u00a0\u201cA Quick Bible Study Vol. 271: Shroud of Turin Expert Russ Breault Interview\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Helsinki<\/a>
A 2010 aerial view of downtown Helsinki, Finland (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m occasionally described as anti-evolution and, even, as a young-earth creationist. \u00a0I\u2019m certainly not the latter, and I can\u2019t remember a time when I ever was. \u00a0Since my childhood, since long before I became a committed Latter-day Saint, I\u2019ve had a perhaps unusually strong interest in dinosaurs and the like. \u00a0Seeing estimates for the Mesozoic Era, the so-called \u201cAge of the Dinosaurs,\u201d that place it between about 252 million years ago and sixty-six million years ago has never caused me to bat an eye. \u00a0Occasionally, I\u2019m confronted with demands that I fess up about how old I really believe the Earth to be. \u00a0My answer is that, at least according to current scientific estimates, it\u2019s about 4.543 billion years old, and that I have no reason whatever to dispute that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also not even remotely anti-evolution. \u00a0I haven\u2019t published very much on the subject, but I think that the evidence for the historical development of terrestrial life is overwhelming. \u00a0And I hope that what little I have<\/em> written about evolution (e.g., \u201cHow Can We Make Sense of Evolution?: A Latter-day Saint Perspective\u201d<\/a>) and my eagerness to solicit and to conduct such interviews as these<\/a> will make the job of fundamentally misrepresenting my opinions on the matter at least somewhat<\/em> more challenging to honest observers. \u00a0(I have absolutely no such hope for the small anonymous handful of my more determined and unscrupulous<\/em> critics.)<\/p>\n

With the preceding explanation in mind, I do think that some critics of Darwinian, or Neo-Darwinian, or unguided evolution \u2014 whatever term you prefer to use \u2014 and advocates of what is often called \u201cintelligent design\u201d have raised more than a few points that deserve thoughtful consideration rather than mere summary dismissal.<\/p>\n

Below, I share with you a trio of quotations from Matti Leisola and Jonathan Witt, Heretic: One Scientist\u2019s Journey from Darwin to Design<\/em> (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2018). \u00a0Matti Leisola, DSc, is a bioengineer and former dean of Chemistry and Material Sciences at Helsinki University of Technology.\u00a0 He is an expert in enzymes and rare sugars, having published 140 peer-reviewed articles and won the Latsis Prize from the ETH-Z\u00fcrich (the Eidgen\u00f6ssische Technische Hochschule Z\u00fcrich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).\u00a0 He served for a time as the research director of Cultor, an international biotech company, co-founded the International Society of Rare Sugars, and was the initiating editor of BIO-Complexity<\/em>.:<\/p>\n

I am not, and I don\u2019t pretend to be, a biologist. \u00a0But this passage, which Leisola and Witt cite from the last chapter of a work called Enzymes<\/em>, struck me. \u00a0It\u2019s about attempts to explain the origins of, well, enzymes<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The difficulties appear to have been greatly underestimated . . . difficulties seem to have been increased rather than diminished recently. \u00a0Unfortunately, progress has not been helped by a strong tendency to make light of those difficulties, or even to ignore them altogether. . . . \u00a0The problem in fact seems as far from solution as it ever was. . . . \u00a0We are thus led to an apparently insoluble dilemma. . . . \u00a0The subject is full of difficulties. \u00a0(25)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leisola and Witt go on to write that<\/p>\n

The story of the unguided, chemical evolution of the first life has some variations depending on whose version you hear, but its main contours can be summarized as follows:<\/p>\n