Biochemical Predestination

The theory propounded was summarized by Stephen Berry, a chemist; "describing the following causal chain: the properties of the chemical elements dictate the types of monomers that can be formed in prebiotic syntheses, which then dictate the properties of the occurring polymers, which finally dictate the properties of the first eobionts and all succeeding cells."[5] Kenyon's work was about virus production.[6] Intelligent design proponent Stephen C. Meyer says that the book provided a new approach which came to be known as "Self-organization".[7]

Kenyon began to doubt his theory in the mid-1970s after a student posed the question to him as to how the first proteins could have been assembled without specific genetic instructions.[9] On a fellowship at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley during the 1969–1970 academic year, he reviewed literature on the relationship of science and religion. He began to rethink his Christian faith, and explored the topic further in a 1974 sabbatical at the University of Oxford. In 1976, a student gave him a book by the young Earth creationist A. E. Wilder-Smith, and "Eventually, several other books and articles by neo-creationists came to my attention. I read some of Henry Morris’ books, in particular, The Genesis Flood. I'm not a geologist, and I don't agree with everything in that book, but what stood out was that here was a scientific statement giving a very different view of earth history. Though the book doesn't deal with the subject of the origin of life per se, it had the effect of suggesting that it is possible to have a rational alternative explanation of the past."[3] In 1976 he wrote a new section for Morris and Whitcomb's The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications. In the 1982 foreword he wrote to What Is Creation Science? by Morris and Gary Parker, Kenyon said that he no longer accepted the pro-evolution arguments in Biochemical Predestination. At the Edwards v. Aguillard trial he provided an affidavit in support of creation science and noted the book as one of his publications. Kenyon subsequently became a co-author of Of Pandas and People which rebranded creation science as intelligent design.[1][4]