This may be far more than you were asking, but I’ll share if interesting to you…
if i could be so bold to offer this example… (and if not personal to home to share on the Biologos site, I hope and trust this doesn’t appear an ad hominem…), but a prime example of my concerns was Darrel Falk’s review of Stephen Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell… I read Meyer’s book some years ago, and was also interested to read the best critiques in order to “fact check” Meyers’s arguments. i’d read Meyer’s book and found it compelling, but wanted to see what others more experienced and studied in biology saw in terms of holes or counter arguments in Meyer’s case that i wasn’t seeing…
i’m afraid Dr. Falk’s review confirmed to me the very concerns i had been seeing elsewhere:
One of Dr. Falk’s main critiques / counter examples was in critiquing Meyer’s claim that
Meyer suggests that the two different conditions for making two of the key building blocks that characterize an RNA molecule are incompatible… As he was writing these words, however, some elegant experiments were taking place at the University of Manchester that showed there is a way, a very feasible way that both building blocks could have been produced through natural processes (emphasis mine).
And then, to emphasize even further in the footnote to that point, he adds:
Even as he [Meyer] was delcaring that no further progress would be made, the problem had been solved. (emphasis mine)
Now, to a casual reader, this is striking - proof positive that natural processes could indeed accomplish this particular said critical feat of abiogensis and stating in no uncertain terms that "the problem had been solved. Case closed, indeed! I seem to recall being struck that perhaps Meyer’s point was weak here if Dr. Falk could make such a strong statement.
But Meyer’s explanation in his surrejoinder is striking, though - he points out that the experimenter in question 1) intentionally selected non-racemic isomers of the initial compounds, 2) utilized numerous intermediate steps wherein the chemists purified the reaction, removing problematic byproducts, and 3) followed a carefully planned procedure of introducing only specified reagents and only in a specific order…
Just like in nature.
If such a distinguished scientist can examine a carefully designed, step-by-step designed process, carefully at each step only taking those extremely precise, guided, purified, selected chemicals, at the right time and the right order… and conclude that this was “a very feasible way that both building blocks could have been produced through natural processes”…? Then an observer like me cannot help but think that there were some extra steps in his thinking between the experiment and his conclusion that this demonstrates a “very feasible way” this process can be produced by natural processes… This strikes this observer as simply wishful or fanciful thinking, not scientific conclusions following from actual data.
A second “counter-example” provided by Dr. Falk involved an experiment in which he described:
In just 30 hours their collection of RNA molecules had grown 100 million times bigger through a replication process carried out exclusively by evolved RNA molecules. So another dead-end pronouncement by Meyer was breached even while the book was in press."
Again, at first glance, given the choice of language, this sounds like a slam dunk against Dr. Meyer’s claims against RNA replication. I recall being struck that, if this is true, then it immediately debunks Dr. Meyer’s observations. But again, exploring further and reading Dr. Meyer’s surrejoinder, it appeared that Dr. Falk’s claim was, in this humble reader’s opinion, wildly exaggerated. When I read from Dr. Falk that RNA molecules grew through a “replication process” carried out by “evolved RNA molecules”, this sure sounded impressive. But what actually happened was that 1) a very specifically designed and sequenced RNA molecule catalyzed 2) a single chemical bond, thus “replicating” other RNA by 3) joining two pre-designed and already existent, essentially pre-staged, carefully “intelligently designed” sequenced RNA halves together.
While this may well have been an impressive experiment in itself, it doesn’t remotely come close to demonstrating what Dr. Falk apparantly wanted it to demonstrate. When I explored it in more depth, I realized it would be akin to showing off a monstrous, 1,000 piece exquisite completed lego set, and boldly bragging that my two-year old had built it… when in reality I had built the entire thing on my own but kept them separated in two halves only needing one last final step to snap the two halves together into one whole… then I set it up on the table, guided my two-year old’s hands carefully in place, and instructed him to push the two pieces together that would “complete” the lego set. Then boldly bragged that my two year old had, “by himself”, built that lego set.
Again, the experiment itself may well be very impressive in its own right, if limited in its claims. But the logical step from reading about an experiment combining two such pre-staged and practically-almost completed by design of the experimenter RNA halves into one by another carefully-designed RNA molecule that catalyzed a single chemical bond… to concluding that RNA can indeed “replicate” itself “exclusively by evolved RNA molecules”… strikes this reader as absolute desperation… this is a logical “leap” that is in the category of the kind Neil Armstrong made… One small step for science, one giant leap of logic…
Finally, I continually notice a striking tendency to beg the very question under consideration, and was especially struck by how Dr. Falk made this fallacy. The very question that Dr. Meyer was raising in his book was as to whether or not materialistic processes could, or could not, account for the introduction of large amounts of complex specified information in a system.
In response, Dr. Falk simply asserted:
There is no question that large amounts information have been created by materialistic forces over the past several hundred million years.
I’ll simply observe that, to someone like me who is asking if evolution is true, i.e., if information can indeed be created by materialistic forces, it is not an impressive “argument” to assert that evolution is true and therefore information is de facto proven able to be created by materialistic forces.
The entire approach looks to this observer far more like a desperate attempt to arrive at a foregone conclusion, using whatever crumbs of evidence and whatever desperate leaps of logic are necessary, to reject Intelligent Design and arrive at the pre-selected conclusion that “materialistic forces alone are sufficient,” than a genuinely scientific approach willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads, and only so far as it actually leads. Hence another plank in my continued skepticism.
For what it is worth.