In hmolscience, Dean H. Kenyon (c.1939-) is an American biophysicist noted for his 1969 Biochemical Predestination, co-authored with Gary Steinman, wherein they theologically distort Jacques Monod’s "necessity" term into "predestination" as a type of anti-chance god-through-chemistry divination argument for where "biological information" came from, approximately.
Education
In 1959, Kenyon, while studying physics as an under graduate at the University of Chicago, went to the Darwin centennial celebration and listed to people speak, which sparked his interest in evolution vs creationism conflict; which piqued his interest, therein giving him direction of what he would do in graduate school. (Ѻ)
Kenyon eventually completed his PhD at Stanford (and or Berkeley) under biochemist and origin of life researcher Melvin Calvin; and by the late 1960s had become steeped in the origin of life literature and was well aware of Jacques Monod’s so-labeled “conceptual dichotomy between chance and necessity”, as Stephen Meyer (2009) phrases it. [3]
Necessity | Predestination
Kenyon, supposedly, interpreted Monod’s ideology such that “necessity”, i.e. the law-like forces of physics and chemistry, was the logical alternative to “chance”; Kenyon reasoned, according to Meyer, that if “chance events” couldn’t explain the origin of “biological information” (Meyer’s term, supposedly), then, Kenyon thought, perhaps necessity could. Meyer teamed up with colleague Gary Steinman and together they renamed necessity as “predestination” or “biological predestination”, which became the title of their 1969 book. Meyer seems, of note, to think that Kenyon and Steinman, here, were the originators of the “self-organization” theory of the origin of life. [3]
The gist of Kenyon’s theory, as summarized by Meyer, is anti-chance (unlike Oparin), employs “deterministic chemical reactions”, but is in some blurry way is creator-chosen; something along the lines of the following argument, as summarized by Meyer: [3]
“From a purely chemical point of view nothing discriminates the silver in a spoon from that in a knife or fork. Nor does the chemistry of these items explain their arrangement in a standard place setting with the fork on the left and knife and spoon on the right. The chemistry of the silverware is indifferent to how the silver is arranged on the table. The arrangement is ‘determined’ NOT by the properties of the silver or by chemical laws describing them, but by the ‘choice’ of the rational agent to follow a human convention.”
Here, supposedly, this a “sneaking god in the chemistry” type argument; though a reading of the actual book will be needed to corroborate the details of the misalignments in the argument.
Creation science
In the mid-1970s, Kenyon began to doubt his chemical predestination theory, or aspects of it, and switched over from Roman Catholic in belief to young earth creationism ideologies, such as were being argued by Henry Morris. [4]
In 1993 Kenyon was removed from teaching Biology 101 at San Francisco State University. On December 6, 1993 the Wall Street Journal published an article detailing Kenyon’s treatment: "Unlike Scopes, the teacher was forbidden to teach his course not because he taught evolutionary theory (which he did) but because he offered a critical assessment of it.” (Ѻ)
Related | Creationist cuckoos
The following are AZQuotes’ group of "birds of a feather flock together" authors related to Kenyon: [2]
People, at Amazon, who bought Kenyon’s Biological Predestination also bought Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box.
Quotes
The following are representative quotes:
“If the association of amino acids were a completely random event, there would not be enough mass in the entire earth, assuming it was composed exclusively of amino acids, to make even one molecule of every possible sequence of a low-molecular weight protein.”
— Dean Kenyon (c.1975) [3]
“Let us dispose of a common misconception. The complete transmutation of even one animal species into a different species has never been directly observed either in the laboratory or in the field.”
— Dean Kenyon (c.1975) [2]
“It is my conviction that if any professional biologist will take adequate time to examine carefully the assumptions upon which the macro-evolution doctrine rests, and the observational and laboratory evidence that bears on the problem of origins, he or she will conclude that there are substantial reasons for doubting the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, I believe that a scientifically sound creationist view of origins is not only possible, but it is to be preferred over the evolutionary one.”
— Dean Kenyon (c.1975) [2]
References
1. (a) Kenyon, Dean and Steinman, Gary. (1969). Biochemical Predestination. McGraw-Hill.
(b) Strobel, Lee. (2004). The Case for a Creator: a Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence that Points Toward God (pgs. 287-88). Zondervan, 2009.
(c) Meyer, Stephen C. (2009). Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (§11: Self-Organization and Biochemical Predestination, pgs. 229-). Zondervan.
2. Dean H. Kenyon – AZQuotes.com.
3. Meyer, Stephen C. (2009). Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (§11: Self-Organization and Biochemical Predestination, pgs. 229-). Zondervan.
4. Biochemical Predestination – Wikipedia.
Further reading
● Thaxton, Charles B., Bradley, Walter L., Olsen, Roger L., and Kenyon, Dean H. (1992). The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (ch. 7: “Thermodynamics of Living Systems”, ch. 8: “Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life”). Lewis and Stanely.
External links
● Dean H. Kenyon – Wikipedia.
● Dean Kenyon – Discovery Institute.
