The question of the origin of life arguably poses the most significant dilemma for evolution. This episode examines the gaping scientific holes in the concept of abiogenesis – the naive belief that biological life somehow formed from non-living matter via random chemical processes. Mounting scientific evidence points to the impossibility of life evolving spontaneously via natural processes. As a Professor of Biology (not a creationist) at the University of North Carolina recently posted on the university website: “The problem of abiogenesis is very severe indeed for the theory of evolution”.

VIDEO AND PODCAST LINKS

VIDEO PRESENTATION, EPISODE 7: THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

AUDIO PODCAST, EPISODE 7: THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Episode 7 of Evidence For Belief, a series which examines evidence for the existence of God. In this Episode, we are going to discuss the problem for atheists of Abiogenesis – the need to explain how life could have formed from non-living chemicals in the very beginning. We have already touched on this topic in the previous three episodes when we’ve examined the physical structures of the cell, the DNA in its nucleus and the thousands of incredible molecular machines that operate within the cell. But in this Episode, I want to focus exclusively on the concept of the origin of biological life and the huge problem that this poses for those seeking an explanation apart from a supernatural Creator.

The most difficult problem facing evolutionists, or anyone who does not believe in a Creator God, is explaining abiogenesis – how non-living matter could have given rise to organic life in the very beginning. Evolution teaches that the vast array of species in existence today ultimately originated from single-celled organisms which somehow began to exist. Yet that “somehow” is precisely the problem. How did the first living cell form? What possible process could account for the creation of a living biological organism from dead, inanimate matter? To the present day, scientists have not been able to propose a viable means whereby this could have occurred, nor have they been able to create anything remotely close to a living cell in laboratories, even with the most advanced technology available to us today.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION

But this hasn’t deterred belief in abiogenesis. For thousands of years, scientists and philosophers believed in the spontaneous generation of life. Aristotle taught that oysters arose from slime, scallops from sand and limpets from the hollows of rocks.

By the Middle Ages, scientists believes that maggots arose from decaying meat, frogs from stagnant ponds, earthworms from manure, insects from the morning dew and mice from warm, moist soil. In fact this was the prevailing view right up until the mid-19th century!

But with the advent of modern science, various experiments proved that what had previously been interpreted as spontaneous generation of life had simply been the result of contamination and egg-laying within those various mediums by pre-existing organisms. But these experiments didn’t convince everyone. Belief in spontaneous generation continued well into the mid 1800s.

For instance, even as late as 1859, Dr. Felix Pouchet published a major work, entitled “Heterogenie”,[i] disputing the recent contradictory experiments and continuing to argue strongly for the validity of spontaneous generation.

And it was in that same year, 1859, that Charles Darwin published his “On the Origin of Species”, at a time when there was still significant, widespread belief that life could arise from non-living matter by chance natural processes. Darwin had grown up in a world that believed in spontaneous generation, and it is this belief in self-perpetuating natural causes that underpins his theory.

It was only three years later, in 1862, that Louis Pasteur published the findings of his brilliant set of experiments, finally putting an end to this superstitious belief in spontaneous generation. Unfortunately, by then, Darwin’s theory of natural selection had taken off and gathered an unstoppable momentum of its own.

PHILOSOPHICAL CONUNDRUM

If spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter does not occur, however, this leaves the atheist with a problem. How can the creation of life in the very beginning be explained? Dr. George Wald (1906 – 1997), a biologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1967, commented on this quandary:

“We tell this story [the overturning of belief in spontaneous generation] to beginning students of biology as though it represents a triumph of reason over mysticism. In fact, it is very nearly the opposite. The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation. The only alternative was to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this reason, many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a ‘philosophical necessity.’ It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.”[ii]

Or are they left with nothing? Forced to reject the creationist view of the origin of life, modern scientists have reinvented the concept of spontaneous generation under a new name: abiogenesis.

 ABIOGENESIS

Abiogenesis refers to the supposed process whereby non-living, inorganic matter gave rise to the first living organisms in the beginning of earth’s biological history.

Russian biochemist, Dr. Alexander Ivanovich Oparin, was one of the strong proponents of the abiogenesis theory in the 20th century. He proposed that the chemical composition of primordial earth’s atmosphere and oceans was such that everything needed for the construction of the simplest living cell was present. He theorised that, given sufficient time, and with the addition of heat and electrical energy from lightning, chemicals could combine and form simple molecules, and, with further time, these molecules could arrange themselves into increasingly complex amino acids and other building blocks necessary for the creation of the first cell.

Oparin’s landmark book, “The Origin of Life”,[iii] published in 1967, outlined his theory of the possible chemical evolution of life, building upon the theories and experiments of several other scientists in the preceding decades. In his book, he comments:

“A careful survey of experimental evidence reveals that it tells us nothing about the impossibility of generation of life at some other epoch or under some other conditions.”[iv]

Dr. Stanley Miller’s experiments in the mid-1950s, initially generated great excitement. He heated and electrically sparked a mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water, and managed to produce some very basic amino acids.[v] However, subsequent experiments completely failed to show how all the more complex chemical components of a cell could spontaneously form, let alone how they could then all arrange themselves into the precisely balanced, steady-state equilibrium necessary for a cell to form and become a living organism. To use an analogy, Miller discovered how to make a few small rocks, but failed to demonstrate how they could turn themselves into a cathedral. To the present day, scientists are unable to replicate or even theorise how a simple cell could arise from non-living matter by chance.

ABIOGENESIS IS UNOBSERVED IN NATURE

 Significantly, the Wikipedia page for Abiogenesis states:

“Abiogenesis, or informally the origin of life, is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. While the details of this process are still unknown, the prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing complexity that involved molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Although the occurrence of abiogenesis is uncontroversial among scientists, there is no single, generally accepted model for the origin of life, … for how abiogenesis could have occurred.”[vi]

This comment on Wikipedia is typical of the unfounded evolutionary belief in abiogenesis. Evolutionists are effectively saying, “we don’t know how it happened, we haven’t witnessed it happening today, there is no OBSERVABLE evidence that it ever happened in the past, and we haven’t been able to replicate it in our laboratories, but it must have happened, because the only alternative is to believe in a Creator!”

Despite the failure of scientists to either propose or demonstrate how abiogenesis could possibly have occurred, unsupported statements claiming abiogenesis to be a “fact” abound in textbooks and academic papers. For example, in an article in the Scientific American journal, Dr. Jack Szostak, genetics professor at Harvard University, wrote:

“… the first life arose from non-living matter around 3.7 billion years ago.”[vii]

 Similarly, the popular university Biology textbook by McKee and McKee states:

“The earth was formed from a cloud of condensing cosmic dust and gas about 4.5 billion years ago. Life arose soon thereafter.”[viii]

LIFE FROM NON-LIFE?

But could life really have arisen on its own? Could “dust and gas” ultimately give birth to complex living organisms?

In the previous three episodes of this series I examined the irreducible complexity of the physical structures of the living cell, the incredibly complex biological coding in each cell which we call DNA, and the irreducible complexity of the vast army of molecular machines within the cell. And in each of those cases I explained how none of those things could have come into existence via some kind of spontaneous generation through random combinations of chemicals. The problem facing evolutionists, is to explain how all this could come into existence by chance, from dead matter.

Biologist and author, Dr. John F. Ashton, expresses this problem clearly:

“For the first life to start from non-living matter, thousands of specialised large complex molecules must somehow be synthesised in very large numbers from simple, small inorganic molecules. These molecules then have to come together randomly, over and over again, until somehow the structure of the cell is formed. This remarkable and complex structure would still, however, not be alive. To become alive, hundreds of metabolic reactions would have to be initiated, with the metabolic intermediates already in place at just the right concentrations so that the reactions went the right way. Common sense tells us that these sorts of reactions don’t just happen by chance – in fact, we cannot even make them happen.”[ix]

MATHEMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITY

The fall-back position of evolutionists is that, given enough time, random processes must eventually result in the right chemical combinations to bring about life. In previous episodes I’ve already explained the statistical impossibility of proteins forming by chance combinations of chemicals to produce the right amino acids in the right sequence. But just to be sure you get the concept, let me give you another example, this time relating to the supposed abiogenesis of DNA.

I won’t even bother with human DNA, which contains 3.2 billion base pairs (pairs of chemicals joined together and arranged in a spiralling double helix). The simplest DNA in the smallest known virus that we know of today contains only 5,000 base pairs.[x]

The possible combinations of base pairs for this, simplest of DNA molecules, if they formed randomly, is 1 in 10 to the power of 1,505 (10 followed by 1,504 zeros)![xi] Given that the universe has supposedly existed for only 4 x 10 to the power of 17 seconds (4 followed by 17 zeros),[xii] the formation of DNA by chance is absurdly impossible. There haven’t been enough seconds in the universe’s existence to form even this simple strand of DNA. In fact, the universe would have to have existed 10 to the power of 1,487 times longer than it has it has to have had ANY chance of randomly producing even the simplest strand of DNA. And this is assuming that there is some natural mechanism out there that is randomly producing new combinations of base pairs at the rate of one every second – and we have NEVER observed ANY such mechanism in the natural world! NEVER!

In dealing with statistical probabilities, we must also realise that there is a limit beyond which an event may still be assigned a probability in theory, but be considered impossible in practice. Take for example, tossing a coin. The chance of tossing heads is 1 chance in 2. The chance of tossing two heads in a row is 1 chance in 4. The chance of 10 in a row is 1 in 1,024.

The chance of 100 in a row is 1 in 1,268,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (there isn’t even a name for this number!). Although the mathematics of statistics can assign a number to the probability of throwing 100 heads in a row, it would never happen in the real world. Thus, while an event may be possible statistically, a point is reached where it must be considered to be impossible practically.

Mathematician, Dr. William A. Dembski, author of “Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities”, explains that “chance must be discounted as a plausible explanation for an event once it requires resources greater than the available resources of a system.”[xiii]

In regard to the statistical probability of evolution having occurred by chance, the available resources are the limited time that the universe has existed (estimated by evolutionists to be 14.5 billion years, or 4 x 10 to the power of 17 seconds) and the limited number of atoms within the universe that are available for random chemical combinations (estimated to be 10 to the power of 80). The limited time that the universe has existed and the limited number of atoms that the universe contains are the available resources that place a constraint upon the probability of evolution having occurred. They define the upper limit of plausibility. If evolution by random processes would require more than the upper limit of available resources, then it must be regarded as implausible.

We have already seen, however, that the probabilities of even the simplest building blocks of life being formed by chance are billions or trillions of times higher than these upper limits of plausibility. Trillions of times more seconds would be needed, and trillions of times more atoms, to serve as the raw material for chance combinations, would be needed, in order for even the simplest DNA molecules to have formed by random processes. We must conclude, therefore, that it is completely impossible for even the simplest of life to have evolved by chance. Abiogenesis defies the logic of both biology and mathematics!

 Recognising this impossibility, Dr. Eugene V. Koonin (not a creationist) states:

“The origin of life is the most difficult problem that faces evolutionary biology and, arguably, biology in general. Indeed, the problem is so hard, and the current state of the art seems so frustrating, that some researchers prefer to dismiss the entire issue as being outside the scientific domain altogether, on the grounds that unique events are not conducive to scientific study.”[xiv]

In other words, Dr. Koonin is saying that we have no idea how life could have originated; the problem is too difficult to solve, so some of us are just choosing to ignore it! He also appears to be admitting that the answer to the origin of life must lie BEYOND the realm of science and naturalistic causes.

MYSTERIOUS “HIGHER LAWS”?

Other scientists, however, have not given up trying to account for the origin of life. In recognition of the impossibility of purely random, mechanistic forces creating life on earth, some scientists have postulated the existence of, as yet, unknown biological forces or laws that predispose the natural universe to produce biological life. According to this theory, biological life is inevitable in a universe with the right pre-existing conditions, because there are mysterious biological forces at work, which are overriding the probabilities of blind chance and steering the natural world inexorably towards the creation of life.

For example, Dr. Alexander I. Oparin, in his book, “The Origin of Life”, refers to the existence of “laws of a higher order”.[xv] Similarly, Dr. Stephen J. Gould writes:

“Life, arising as soon as it could, was chemically destined to be, and not the chancy result of accumulated improbabilities.”[xvi]

 Biochemist, Dr. Christian DeDuve, agrees with Gould:

“Another lesson of the Age of Chemistry is that life is the product of deterministic forces. Life was bound to swiftly arise under the prevailing conditions, and it will arise similarly wherever and whenever the same conditions obtain… Life and mind emerge not as the result of the freakish accidents, but as natural manifestations of matter, written into the fabric of the universe.”[xvii]

In this way, evolutionists are able to conveniently side-step the statistical and biological impossibility of abiogenesis, by claiming the existence of mysterious natural laws that have not yet been discovered. This sounds like a “Star Wars-like force” that pervades the universe; a predetermined bias of the universe to stack the deck and load the dice to ensure that life is created. But this is not science! This is merely unsubstantiated wishful thinking!

ALIENS CREATED US?

Not all scientists, however, are comfortable with the belief in imaginary “higher laws”. Instead, some have chosen to believe that life was seeded upon the earth from outer space. This theory was popularised by the noted astronomer and astrophysicist, Dr. Sir Fred Hoyle (1915 – 2001), in his book, “Evolution From Space”.

 In the book, he states:

“I don’t know how long it is going to be before astronomers generally recognize that the combinatorial arrangement of not even one among the many thousands of biopolymers on which life depends could have been arrived at by natural processes here on the earth. …The notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order. Life must plainly be a cosmic phenomenon.” [xviii]

In other words, life on Earth originated somewhere out there in the cosmos! He goes on to say:

“The likelihood of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it…It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”[xix]

It is important to note that Dr. Hoyle was not a Christian, nor a believer in God. His reference to “purposeful intelligence” is a reference to his belief in aliens who seeded our planet with life. In subsequent chapters of his book, Dr. Hoyle explains his theory further. In chapter 5, “Evolution by Cosmic Control”[xx], he argues that aliens seeded the universe with genetic material, “cosmic genes”, allowing them to drift through space until they reached a suitable planet on which to thrive. In chapter 6, “Why Aren’t The Others Here?”[xxi], he even proposes a variety of speculative reasons why these aliens have not yet visited us.

More recently, outspoken atheist, Dr. Richard Dawkins has offered a similar postulation. In an interview with American journalist and commentator, Ben Stein, Dr. Dawkins was pushed to explain how life could have originally started on earth. After conceding that there was no known natural biological process whereby life could have possibly formed, he made the following extraordinary statement:

 “It could be that, at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilisation evolved, by probably some kind of Darwinian means, to a very, very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto, perhaps, this planet.”[xxii]

The idea that aliens created life on earth, however, raises two very obvious questions: Where are they? And, more importantly, who created them? Suggesting aliens as the originators of life on earth merely pushes back the question of ultimate origin by an additional step. It does not solve the problem of how any life can evolve from non-living matter anywhere in the universe!

PANSPERMIA

An alternate view to the alien hypothesis that is suggested by some scientists is the idea that molecules and spores of biological life exist throughout the universe, clinging to space dust, comets and meteors. This is the concept of “panspermia”. These biological spores supposedly drifted to earth from other parts of the universe, hitching a ride on space dust and planetary debris, and bursting into life again once it collides with Earth’s favourable conditions.

Some advocates of panspermia even suggest that these life spores may have originated on Mars, and that life on Earth may be the second evolution of life in our galaxy after life on Mars died out.[xxiii] Thus, humans may really be Martians who have are enjoying a second evolution of life. As Mark Wall, senior writer for the online magazine, Space.com, wrote in an article in August 2013: “We may all be Martians.”[xxiv]

But once again, the theory of transpermia begs the most obvious question: How did that life originate from non-living matter in the beginning? Such an obvious objection, however, has not deterred the theory from taking root within a small but growing segment of the scientific community. Speaking at the “Origins Symposium” in April 2009, Dr. Stephen Hawking stated his opinion that life may well have been transported throughout the universe, carried within meteors.[xxv] In October 2018, some Harvard astronomers published a theoretical model for how dormant biological spores could be transported across the vast distances of space between galaxies.[xxvi]

CONCLUSION

The theory of abiogenesis, like its predecessor, the historical and naive belief in spontaneous generation, has been overwhelmingly discredited. The concept of biological life arising from dead, inanimate matter has been shown to be biologically, genetically, chemically and mathematically impossible.

Evolutionists who recognise the impossibility of abiogenesis are currently left with three alternate theories for the origin of life:

• Mysterious “higher laws” (for which we have no evidence) led to the creation of life on earth.
• Aliens (for which we have no evidence) seeded life on earth.
• Biological spores from life on other planets (for which we have no evidence) seeded life on earth.

These are all wildly fanciful theories, completely devoid of evidence, conjured up from the speculative imaginations of scientists who are desperate to avoid belief in a Creator God.

But even if one of those theories is true, it doesn’t answer the question of ultimate origin. Where did the aliens come from? Where did the biological spores come from? Where did the mysterious deterministic, star-wars-like higher power come from?

 The only explanation that offers an answer to the question of ultimate origin is the simple statement in the first sentence of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.

For more information on any of these topics, you can check out my books, 7 Reasons to Believe and No More Monkey Business; Evolution in Crisis, which are available on my website, smartfaith.net, where you can also subscribe to my weekly blog.

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FOOTNOTES:

[i] Felix Archimedes Pouchet, “Heterogeny, or the treatise of spontaneous generation” , Paris, 1859

[ii] Wald, George. 1954. The origin of life. Scientific American 191:46.

[iii] Oparin, A. I. “The origin of life”, translation by Ann Synge. In: Bernal, J. D. (ed.), The origin of life, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1967,

[iv] Oparin, A. I. “The origin of life”, translation by Ann Synge. In: Bernal, J. D. (ed.), The origin of life, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1967, p. 29.

[v] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment

[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

[vii] Alonso Ricardo and Jack W. Szostak, “Origin of Life on Earth”, Scientific American, Vol. 301, Sept. 2009, p.38.

[viii] Trudy McKee and James R. McKee, “Biochemistry: The Molecular basis of Life”, 3rd edition, New york, McGraw Hill Publishers, 2003, p.58.

[ix] John F. Ashton, “Evolution Impossible”, Green Forest, AR, Masterbooks, 2013, p.43.

[x] Lawrence Lessing, “DNA: At The Core of Life Itself”, New York, Macmillon Co. 1966, p.15

[xi] Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, “Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity”, San Bernadino, CA, Here’s Life Publishers, 1981, p.134

[xii] https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/numbers.html

[xiii] William A Dembski, “Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities”, Quoted in John F. Ashton, “Evolution Impossible”, Green Forest, AR, Masterbooks, 2013, p.43.

[xiv] Koonin, Eugene V., The logic of chance: The nature and origin of biological evolution. Pearson Education, NJ. 2012, p.351.

[xv] Alexander I. Oparin, “The Origin of Life”, New York, Dover publications, 1965. p.60.

[xvi] Gould, Stephen J. 1990. Enigmas of the small shellies. Natural History: October:16-17. p.16.

[xvii] DeDuve, Christian. 1996. Vital dust. Basic Books, New York, NY. p.15.

[xviii] Hoyle, Sir Fred. 1981. The big bang in astronomy. New Scientist 92:526-527.

[xix] Hoyle, Sir Fred, Wickramasinghe, Chandra. 1984. Evolution from space. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY., p.148.

[xx] Hoyle, Sir Fred, Wickramasinghe, Chandra. 1984. Evolution from space. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY., Chapter 5. For a summary see: http://wasdarwinwrong.com/kortho47.htm

[xxi] Hoyle, Sir Fred, Wickramasinghe, Chandra. 1984. Evolution from space. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY., Chapter 6. For a summary, see: http://wasdarwinwrong.com/kortho47.htm

[xxii] Video Clip of interview between Ben Stein and Dr. Richard Dawkins, “Richard Dawkins Believes Extraterrestrials Created Man.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiVoS78lNqM

[xxiii] https://www.space.com/22577-earth-life-from-mars-theory.html

[xxiv] https://www.space.com/22577-earth-life-from-mars-theory.html

[xxv] Weaver, Rheyanne (April 7, 2009). “Ruminations on other worlds”. statepress.com. Archived from the original on July 24, 2011. Retrieved 25 July 2013

[xxvi] Shostak, Seth (26 October 2018). “Comets and asteroids may be spreading life across the galaxy – Are germs from outer space the source of life on Earth?”. NBC News. Retrieved 31 October 2018.