Lesson 5 – The Origin of Life

Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures.”
-- Genesis 1:20

In some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity present … a protein was formed ready to undergo still more complex changes.

-- Charles Darwin


Chemical evolution

Evolutionary “origin of life” research says that all living (organic) molecules were created by the naturalistic encounter of various non-living (inorganic) chemicals and energy sources. This theory is called chemical or molecular evolution and is the starting point for the neo-Darwinian explanation of the origin of life.

Have you seen pictures of a 1950’s era high school biology classroom? Hanging on the walls are drawings of early planet earth, and a landscape strewn with smoking volcanoes. There is a dark cloudy atmosphere, punctuated by spectacular lightning bolts above a turbulent ocean of chemical slime -- the so-called “primordial ooze” or “prebiotic soup”. Within the slime, the molecules are randomly colliding, supposedly forming the early building blocks of life. Have you seen pictures of the 1950’s era laboratory chemists with their test tubes and flasks attempting to simulate these imagined conditions of the early earth atmosphere? Do you recall the reports of the “creation of life in a test tube?” Today, this sort of “origin of life” research has arrived at a massive dead-end, but the myth of the creation of life out of the primordial ooze continues in spite of the massive amount of evidence that shows otherwise.

The “primordial ooze”

Although Darwin himself did not directly extend his theory in the origin of the species to include the origin of life’s basic molecules, the possibility that life’s emergence could be explained in naturalistic evolutionary terms had occurred to him. In The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1888), his son Francis Darwin, himself a most respected scientist, quotes his father as saying: “It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present which could ever have been present. But, if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, and electricity present, that a protein was formed ready to undergo still more complex changes...”

In 1924, A. I. Oparin, a Russian chemist, proposed a theory about the origin of life. In 1928 that theory was extended by the English chemist J.B.S. Haldane. These hypotheses generally state:

1. The “primoidal ooze” originated over millions of years by the massive accumulation of elements in the ponds, oceans and rivers of early earth. The first cells arose gradually through chemical reactions of the inorganic atoms in the ooze, e.g. hydrogen (H2), water vapor (H2O), methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3).


2. Ultraviolet light from the sun and other energy sources, e.g., lightning, cosmic rays, volcanic heat, radioactivity, shock waves, tidal forces, etc., converted the inorganic molecules into the organic molecules of life -- amino acids, nucleic acids, simple sugars and other organic compounds. This happened over very long periods of time, strictly by chance and naturalistic laws.


3. Over more time the organic compounds came together even more so to form the basic building blocks of life, i.e. organic molecules such as proteins, DNA, and RNA. Subsequently over time, chance plus natural selection evolved these basic building blocks into the complex life forms of the species.

In 1953, Stanley Miller[i] made up a gaseous mixture of inorganic molecules in a test tube simulating the primordial soup and early earth atmosphere, and supplies energy to the experiment with an electrical charge simulating lightning. He was able to convert the inorganic molecules into a couple of amino acids, which are some of the basic organic building blocks. Since that time, 19 out of the 20 amino acids necessary for building a protein; and all five of the chemical bases necessary for creating nucleic acids (the required building blocks of DNA and RNA); and, several important sugars, have been synthesized in the laboratory. Around the same time Sidney Fox, at a University of Miami laboratory, heated mixtures of amino acids which eventually joined together and formed long chains of molecules that vaguely resembled molecular chains known as polypeptides. Fox called these synthesized chains “proteinoids.” They looked somewhat like a bacterial cell and had faint chemical properties of organic molecules (e.g., catalytic activity).[ii] This is the body of experimental evidence that supports the theory of chemical evolution. Many scientists believe that the results of the Miller and Fox experiments provide strong support for the Oparin/Haldane hypothesis. Astronomer Carl Sagan, creator of the popular PBS series Cosmos, said that the Miller experiment was the single most significant step in convincing many scientists that life evolved on earth and is likely to be abundant throughout the universe. Unfortunately for these scientists recent experimental evidence lines up strongly against the theory.

Major empirical problems with the theory

After fifty years of work in the laboratory, the primoidal ooze theory has arrived at a dead end.

Geological Evidence -- Although the notion persists at the popular level, and is reported routinely in textbooks, there is no geological evidence to support that there ever was a prebiotic soup. At the ocean bottoms we would expect to find large amounts of hydrocarbon or carbon. We do not. We would expect to find nitrogen containing organic compounds adsorbed on the clay particles. We do not. There is no physical evidence that this soup ever existed. Evolutionary experts Brooks and Shaw have said, “If there ever was a primitive soup, then we would expect to find at least somewhere on this planet either massive sediments containing enormous amounts of the various .... organic compounds, amino acids, ..., and the like, or alternately in .... sediments we should find vast amounts of ... (graphite-like materials). ... In fact, no such materials have been found anywhere on earth,” Origin and Development of Living Systems. Few, if any, biology textbooks inform students of this fact.

Early Earth Atmosphere -- Even if there was a prebiotic soup, the concentration of the original chemicals would have been so small that the chemical reactions could not have taken place in a natural setting. The lab experiments that generate these chemicals do not take into consideration an oxygen atmosphere – the current understanding of the early earth atmosphere. If oxygen were present in the early earth atmosphere (even in only miniscule amounts), it would have been impossible for organic compounds to have been produced and accumulated the way they did in the Miller apparatus.[iii] The amino acids would oxidize. If an electrical discharge (e.g., lightning) were introduced into a hydrogen and oxygen atmosphere, the result would have been an explosion and the subsequent destruction of any organic molecules. To avoid this problem it became popular to conceive of an early earth atmosphere with no oxygen. Recent scientific studies, however, discredit that notion. Science believes that oxygen must have been present in the early earth atmosphere -- today oxygen makes up 21% of the atmosphere. Many high school biology textbooks fail to mention the incongruity between the Miller experiment and the current scientific understanding of the early earth’s atmosphere.

Chemical Reactions -- Few evolutionary texts mention the destructive effects that continuous energy bombardment from the sun would have had on any newly formed amino acids: they would have been destroyed immediately upon being formed. Miller biased his experiments by collecting the amino acids in an isolated part of the laboratory apparatus, thus providing a safe harbor for them far away from any destructive sparks. Miller used “intelligent intervention” to avoid ruining his experiment and his theory. Most of today’s textbooks don't mention these destructive effects nor comment on Miller’s “intervention.”

Cross-reaction, another destructive effect, is downplayed in the biology textbooks. These are the detrimental chemical reactions (by-products) which would have taken place in the soup. The laboratory experimenters conveniently siphon off the destructive chemical by-products (again showing the necessity of intelligent intervention), never allowing the soup to reach equilibrium, i.e., the final “settled-down” state. That’s cheating! In reality, the synthesis of life molecules would have been short-circuited at every moment by cross-reactions. As soon as equilibrium was reached, the steady-state concentrations of amino acids would have been so small that any chemical evolution would have been impossible -- not just infinitely unlikely!

“Left-handedness” – Perhaps the most devastating of all the disconfirming chemical evidence against molecular evolution is the “handedness” (homochirality) of the organic molecules that make-up life: the amino acids that make-up the any protein are always “left-handed.” (Certain sugars are always “right-handed.”) Biochemists are baffled by this. To illustrate, open your left hand with palm facing toward you and fingers spread (thumb is pointing to the left). Your hand represents the structure of an amino acid; your fingers and thumb represent the molecules. Similarly, open your open right hand (thumb is pointing to the right). This hand represents the structural “mirror image” of the same amino acid molecule. Both amino acid molecules have identical chemical properties, differing only in the physical placement of the hydrogen atom (represented by the thumbs of both hands). Life chemistry operates only with 100% left-handed amino acids. If just one amino acid molecule were to be right-handed the entire life process shuts down. A living organism would be paralyzed or die! It would be like throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of a machine. Left-handed and right-handed amino acids have the exact same chemical properties, but operate the life machine totally differently.

In the Miller-type experiments, the amino acids naturally produced are always 50% left-handed and 50% right-handed (called a racemic mixture). In the laboratory scientists cannot produce the 100% left-handed amino acids required by life chemistry unless they purposefully intervene. That is, nature alone produces a racemic (50/50) mixture. To get the 100% left-handedness mixture requires intelligent intervention. Scientists are unable to understand how nature’s preferential mechanism for handedness developed. This is a devastating problem for the theory of chemical evolution and is grossly underplayed in the literature. This issue alone is sufficient to discredit the entire notion of chance molecular evolution.

Fox used only left-handed amino acids in his experiments to make his “proteinoids.” His intelligent intervention is, in effect, cheating! Many scientists now agree that Fox’s use of selected and purified amino acid mixtures is “not realistic.” Even if nature could produce a proteinoid, it is a trivial chemical achievement as compared to the making of a protein. It is like comparing the complexity of forming a raindrop by natural law to the complexity of manufacturing a computer by intelligent design. Furthermore, for life chemistry to operate, evolution must additionally synthesize DNA and RNA. These molecules are almost inconceivably more complex than a protein. Knowledgeable and honest scientists now admit that it is beyond human imagination to “manufacture” the building blocks of life chemistry by natural selection.

It should be pretty clear to the unbiased observer that however life on earth began the usually conceived notion that life emerged from a prebiotic soup of organic chemicals by natural selection is an impossible hypothesis -- a myth of the neo-Darwinian Synthesis. Even Miller was quoted in a 1991 Scientific American article as saying, “The problem of the origin of life has turned out to be much more difficult than I, and most other people, envisioned.” Nobel laureate Sir Francis Crick said in his book, Life Itself, “The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going.” Yet, the myth of the prebiotic soup continues to persist in popular and educational venues.

The probability of random chance forming a life molecule[iv]

Fortunately, because it would be “almost a miracle” for life to form by random chance, that notion is out of vogue right now among scientists. Unfortunately, however, the idea is very much alive at the popular level. For many college students who speculate about these things, chance is still the hero. “They think if you let amino acids randomly interact over millions of years, life is somehow going to emerge … It’s true that this scenario is still alive among people who don’t know the facts, but there is no merit to it,” says Steven Meyer, Director and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute in Washington. For example, to “create” a minimal protein you have to have at least 75 amino acids. You need the right bonds between the amino acids and they must all be left-handed; then they need to be linked in a specified sequence. Calculate the odds of this happening by chance for just this one protein and you find it to be in the range of 1 in 10125 (that means 10 with 125 zeroes after it). In practical terms, this means it is impossible, e.g., 1 chance in 1050 can mathematically be translated “impossible” (there are only 1080 atomic particles in the entire universe). And that is only one protein molecule. A minimally complex cell would need 300-500 protein molecules. Says Meyer, “To suggest chance against those odds is really to evoke a naturalistic miracle." It’s a confession of ignorance. It’s another way of saying, ‘We don’t know.’”

Self-organization theories

Because of the strong evidence against prebiotic natural selection, many origin-of-life theorists after the mid-1960’s attempted to address the problem of the origin of life in new ways. Some suggested that the laws of nature and chemical attraction may themselves be responsible. They argued that just as electrostatic forces draw a sodium ion (Na+) and a chlorine ion (Cl-) to form the highly ordered patterns within a crystal of table salt (NaCl), so too might the amino acids automatically arrange themselves to form proteins. Hence, the origin of life might have been “biochemically predestined” by chemical attraction.[v] Others argued that living systems might have organized themselves as some “open systems” in nature have been observed to do. For example, gravity producing highly ordered vortices in a draining bathtub.[vi] Others have hope that sophisticated computer simulation models will reveal that a system of simple chemicals can reach a critical level of diversity and connectedness and undergo a dramatic “phase transformation” combining into larger molecules of increasing complexity and catalytic capability.[vii]

What does the evidence reveal?

The most prominent early advocate of biochemical predestination, Dean Kenyon, now repudiates his own theory as both incompatible with empirical findings and theoretically incoherent. First, differing chemical attractions do not explain the multiplicity of amino acid sequences that exist in naturally occurring proteins, nor does it explain the sequential ordering of any single protein. In the case of RNA and DNA, this point is made even more dramatically. While energy in a system can create patterns of symmetric order such as whirling vortices, there is no evidence that energy alone can “encode” the specified amino acid sequences necessary to form life molecules.[viii] The reason? The mechanism to encode anything requires information processing. To explain the origin of life in this manner requires one to explain the origin of the information required. The properties of matter do not (and can not) explain the complexity and specificity of information. It simply exceeds the creative capacities of matter and energy to do so. The origin of biochemical information is the “missing link” the naturalists so desperately seek. Information arises only from “intelligent agency.” Molecular biology has revealed that a living system is an intelligently engineered high-tech system with information storage and transfer capability; functioning codes; sorting and delivery systems; regulatory and feedback loops; and signal transducing circuitry. Everywhere you look in the biological cell you find a complex, mutually interdependent network of parts all operating in accordance with the information it has been encoded by.

Information theory

Information theorist Hubert Yockey and chemist Michael Polanyi have shown that even if you could come up with a naturalistic theory that explained some of the encoding within a DNA sequence, it would not contain information at the level of complexity required for life functions. Rather it would be a simple repetitive pattern and not the irregular pattern required to convey information. Consider the 5 letter repetitive pattern (1) T (2) O (3) SPACE (4) B (5) E. With a reasonable probability we could find a naturalistic mechanism that “by chance” or “natural law” could form the sequence “TO BE” -- e.g., by throwing Scrabble letters on the floor until it happened. But you will never find a naturalistic mechanism that could generate Hamlet. Imagine doing that by throwing Scrabble letters on the floor! Furthermore, the DNA molecule is more like a library than it is just one book in it. DNA stores the detailed instructions to assemble over 20,000 different kinds of proteins that make-up the 100 trillion cells that comprise our body. There are over 3,000,000,000 codes that make up the human genome – equivalent to more than 75,000 newspaper pages of printed codes. Bill Gates of Microsoft said, “DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we’ve ever devised.” There is no naturalistic mechanism that generates software programs. Only intelligent agents can do that.

How do you generate information?

When archaeologists discovered the Rosetta Stone, they didn’t think the inscriptions were the result of random chance, natural law, self-organization processes. They did not even consider that (by faith) someday a new miraculous naturalistic mechanism would be discovered.[ix] No! They immediately knew that intelligence created the inscriptions. The same principle is true with DNA. The encoded regions of the DNA molecule have exactly the same properties as a computer code or a programming language. Whenever you find a sequential arrangement that’s complex, but corresponds to a previously known and independent pattern (such as a language)[x], then it is ALWAYS the product of intelligence. Transcriptions on rocks, writing in books, coding in a computer program, and the chemically encoded sequences found in DNA are all designed by intelligence. The presence of this type of information in DNA directly implies an intelligent source generated it. Information is not something derived from material properties -- in a sense, it transcends matter and energy. Naturalistic theories that rely solely on matter and energy are not going to be able to account for information -- only intelligence can. And intelligence is the hallmark of mind. The conclusion is compelling: an Intelligent Mind has literally spelled out the evidence of His existence though the chemical coding in the genetic code. It’s almost as if the Creator autographed every cell! When Francis Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project commented on the decoding of their success he said that human DNA was “our own instruction book, previously known only to God.” And, President Clinton told reporters that scientists were “learning the language in which God created life.”

Just assume chemical evolution is true -- we’ll come up with the evidence later!

Committed naturalistic evolutionists don’t seem dismayed by the impossibility of life molecules forming by chance and undirected natural means. They just assume it must have happened -- otherwise, we would not be here to talk about it. This is obviously circular reasoning (conveniently assuming the conclusion one is trying to prove). They reason that over infinite time the probability of any event occurring (even the creation of the DNA, RNA and protein molecules) is 100% (i.e., it is certain). However, even this “safe harbor” has been taken away from them by big-bang cosmology. Even if the molecular chemistry of evolution could be made to work (which it cannot), there is not infinite time for life to develop on earth. Scientific authorities place the age of the earth at approx. 4.6 billion years old and place life forming around 4 billion years ago. That would leave some 600 million years for the chance process of forming life molecules to succeed. Even "billions of years" is clearly short of the infinite number of years sought for supporting the evolutionary assumptions. In true circular reasoning fashion, however, committed evolutionists when confronted with such evidence calmly conclude that the chemical evolution of life must have been easier than we had supposed since it happened so rapidly on early earth! This is not science, but wishful thinking at best and fairy-tale writing at worst.

Origin-of-life “science” is pure speculation

On July 7, 1999 the featured article in the science section of the San Diego Union-Tribune said, “The fact is origins-of-life-science is in constant flux, an entirely fluid subject awash with bold experimentation and bolder thinking. It does not lack for hypotheses.” May I add, it does not lack for wishful thinking either? Set-back by the lack of evidence for the primordial soup theory, some scientists now speculate that since life couldn’t arise on the surface of early earth, maybe life arose under the earth, or above it in outer space.

• Life began underwater or underground
  Encouraged by the discoveries of bacteria, fungi and algae in underground rocks, and complex marine creatures living near hot magma oozes at the bottom of the ocean, some scientists speculate that life originated there; energy being supplied by underground volcanoes rather than the sun. The ocean would have provided a shield from the destructive effects of meteors or elements in the atmosphere (such as oxygen). This hypothesis, however, doesn’t address the fundamental issues, viz., the impossibility of the simplest of living cells assembling themselves by chance from inorganic material; the destructive chemical cross-reactions that would necessarily occur; nor the required “left-handedness” of the organic molecules that make up life. Neither does it take into consideration the origination of the information required to encode the required specified amino acid sequences into a protein. It only moves the location for the origination of life.



• Life began under the ice
  Some scientists are speculating that the levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere 4 billion years ago may not have been sufficient to trap and retain significant heat; hence the earth was very cold. Beneath its ice-covered oceans, hydrothermal vents supplied methane, ammonia and other life-building components. After the ice melted, intense asteroid impact supplied the heat energy required and the naturalistic creation story begins there. Again, the basic issues of the origination of life chemistry and information are never addressed – just pushed off to another place.



• Life began as an extraterrestrial
  Neither does this speculation explain the origin of life. It translates the event to some planet in a far off galaxy about which even less (actually nothing) is known. It offers even less explanatory power than the prebiotic soup theory it supposedly replaces.

What should we conclude? Is there an alternative explanation?

What does the empirical data tell us about the theory of chemical evolution? Despite all the selective and guided experimentation in the laboratory; the computer simulation models; and, despite the speculation regarding the origination of the elements of life and energy -- what researchers really end up proving is that is takes intelligence to direct the processes that originate life. An intelligent lab worker initially conceives the goal for an experiment. The lab worker guides the experiment to achieve his goal. Experience and science teach that information-rich systems are the result of intelligent causes, not naturalistic ones. Yet origin-of-life biology artificially limits its explanatory search to naturalistic causation rather than seeking out the ramifications of intelligent agency. The general persistence in defending chemical evolution is based on an ideological commitment quite apart from science. It takes as much (more?) faith to believe that the chance encounter of molecules over a long period of time would create life; or that inorganic molecules miraculously and spontaneously self-organize or undergo phase transformations to create the building blocks of life -- than it does to believe in intelligent design. We should not be timid about reaching a conclusion of intelligent design and building upon it. Also, there is no reason for science not to remain open to the possibility that the “God-hypothesis” may be true. Why not follow the scientific method to discover the truth – wherever the path may lead? That means determining whether a hypothesis is valid or not by evidence and analysis, not by assuming it away; or arbitrarily declaring it “out of bounds;” or pejoratively dismissing it as “religion.”

What does the Scripture teach about creation?

The Bible talks about God as the Creator of all things from cover to cover. A beautiful overview of this is seen in a panorama of verses in Isaiah, chapters 40-66. Verses 40:28; 41:13; 42:5, 8; 43:7; 44:24; 45:9, 12, 18, 22-23; 46:9, 10; 48:11-13; 55:8-9; 65:17,18a; 66:1-2 teach that, in contrast to evolution:

• God is an infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, present-everywhere spirit Being who possesses personality and will.


• God is self-existent and transcendent. He is uncreated -- apart from, and beyond His creation.


• God created space, time, matter and energy, and all living things (plants, animals and human beings) for His own purposes. He is the initial “cause” of all things
.

• God is a Heavenly Father who continually sustains His creation. Mankind is the paragon of His creation. God created man and woman is His own image and He cares for them as a loving Father.


• God creates for His own purposes as a Divine Artist, Grand Designer, or a Master Potter would do.


• The things He creates may have similar characteristics, but there are major discontinuities (many different “kinds”) in His creation.


• The only “common ancestry of all things” is that they all came from the same Creator, not that they evolved from a prior common ancestor.


• God determines what survives and what perishes, which explains the fossil record of extinction.


• The entire creation exists for a single purpose -- to glorify God.
  
  Oh give thanks to the LORD, call upon His name. All the ultimate causes (gods) of the peoples are non-existent (idols). The LORD made the heavens. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name. Tremble before Him all the earth. Let the peoples among the nations say, “the LORD reigns.” He is coming to judge the earth. Oh give thanks to the LORD for He is good and His lovingkindness is everlasting. Then say, “Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather us and deliver us from the nations to give thanks to Thy holy name, and glory to Thy praise.” Blessed be the LORD God from eternity to eternity. Then all the people said, “Amen!” and praised the LORD.
- adapted from 1 Chronicles 16:8-36

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[i] At the time Stanley Miller was a graduate student at the University of Chicago working under Professor Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry.
[ii] In evolutionary theory, Fox’s experiments allegedly demonstrated the Darwinian transformation from amino acids to the threshold of life.
[iii] Miller biased his experiments. He didn’t allow oxygen to be present.
[iv] This and some subsequent sections are based on an interview of Dr. Meyer conducted by Lee Strobel for his book, The Case for a Creator (Zondervan, 2004).
[v] D. Kenyon and G. Steinman, Biochemical Predestination, (McGraw Hill, 1969).
[vi] I. Prigogine and G. Nicolis, Self Organization in Non-equilibrium Systems (Wiley, 1977); I. Prigogine, From Being to Becoming, (Freeman, 1980).
[vii] S. Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity, (Oxford University Press, 1995).
[viii] It was popular for a while for scientists to speculate that the RNA molecule was first formed by naturalistic processes and then it evolved into DNA. This hypothesis is also arriving at a dead end. Evolutionist Robert Shapiro, a chemistry professor at NYU, said the idea “must be considered either a speculation or a matter of faith.” Origin-of-life researcher Graham Cairns-Smith said the “many interesting and detailed experiments in this area” have only served to show that that the theory is “highly implausible.”
[ix] Evolutionist Robert Shapiro, in his book, Origins: A Skeptics Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, said that one would have to have faith that some previously unknown “magic mineral” would have to be discovered.
[x] Intelligent design proponents call this “specified complexity,” i.e., a sequential arrangement that is complex, but it corresponds to a previously known and independent pattern.