Laboratory efforts had also been made to prepare the magic molecule from a simulation of the soup, and thus far had failed. Even if the purported soup existed elsewhere in the universe, and DNA were brought to earth by meteorite, comet, or some other means, there remains the enigma of how it was synthesized. The 10-20 billion year time frame presently assigned to our universe is far too short a period, given known mutation rates. In observing the sheer elegance and ingenuity of nature's purposeful designs, scientists like Denton can hardly resist the logic of analogy. Another enigmatic problem is the absence in fossil strata of transitional forms between major groups of species, i.e., between reptiles and birds, land mammals and whales, and so forth.
Artificial breeding shows that extreme variations are usually sterile or weak.
But no one has yet artificially bred, genetically engineered, or observed in nature a series of chromosomal changes, micro or macro, resulting in a species of a higher genus. Trees remain trees, birds birds, and the problem of how higher types originate has not been solved by Darwin or his successors. We do not give up our dogmas easily, scientific or religious. But with science's recognized ignorance of first causes and macroevolutionary mechanisms, as well as the failure of scriptural literalism to provide satisfactory explanations, there remain the questions about our origins, purpose, and destiny. The answers to these questions are, in a sense, nature's secret doctrines.