The most difficult and intractable issue evolutionists face is the origin of first life. The naturalistic (evolutionary) worldview claims that life arose from non-living chemicals. That first organism, whatever it was supposed to be (usually assumed to be some type of microorganism living near hydrothermal sea vents), eventually gave rise to our supposed evolutionary ancestor. This organism is often called LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor), and it supposedly gave rise to all other lifeforms on earth—archaebacterial, bacterial, fungal, plant, animal, and human.
The idea that life can spontaneously generate from non-life goes back at least as far as the philosophers of ancient Greece, likely to Anaximander (610¬–546 BC) or possibly even his mentor, Thales (c. 623–545 BC). Later Greek philosophers, for example, Aristotle (384–322 BC), also believed in spontaneous generation (now called abiogenesis). There were several experiments carried out in the 17th century which at the time were thought to prove abiogenesis, but in the end were shown to be flawed and false.
However, the death blow to spontaneous generation came in 1859, the same year as Darwin's Origin was published. Louis Pasteur performed experiments using meat broth kept in a flask with an elongated and bent neck that trapped dust particles and other contaminants before they could reach the body of the flask. The meat broth inside never became cloudy. But when the neck of the flask was broken off, the broth, being newly exposed to air, eventually became cloudy, indicating microbial contamination. Pasteur had demonstrated conclusively that “spontaneous generation” (or what is now called abiogenesis) was a fallacious idea.
As we have seen in the last page, the laws of physics present an impenetrable barrier to evolution. But since evolutionary scientists believe that evolution has actually taken place, they have been forced to accept flawed solutions to many issues, abiogenesis being the most difficult for them.
In an effort to prove that evolution is possible, evolutionists have continued to go to great lengths to find laboratory evidence that life could have started on its own, without the aid of a Creator.
Reports of biochemists succeeding in these experiments have been not only exaggerated but also outright deceiving. These experiments make use of know-how and machines (enzymes) to form self-replicating entities. They certainly do not do so with chance alone, which is what evolutionary theory requires. Thus, from an experimental point of view we now know that matter plus energy plus know-how can produce some sort of life. The type of life produced is another matter. As we shall see, the type of life produced in these experiments is nothing that could have been the precursor of life on earth.
One of the earliest contemporary lab experiments to propose a possible origin of life scenario was performed by A.I Oparin in 1924. Chemists categorize the chemical effect of different atmospheric conditions into a range, from oxidizing, to neutral, to reducing. These are terms for the ability of the atmosphere to remove (oxidize) or add (reduce) electrons to an atom, ion, or molecule. Our atmosphere contains abundant free oxygen and is referred to as an oxidizing atmosphere.
Oparin knew the presence of oxygen would destroy all organic molecules through the process of oxidation, so he had no choice but to suggest that the primitive earth atmosphere contained no free oxygen. He assumed a strong reducing atmosphere, since this is the most favorable to formation of organic molecules. Thus was born the myth of the primitive reducing atmosphere.
The evidence from Oparin’s experiments and the theory he proposed was never good, though it was widely accepted because it conformed to the philosophy of naturalism, and because there was no better alternative.(1) The main result of his work, though was developing the idea that a reducing atmosphere devoid of oxygen must have existed. This was now the basis going forward for all laboratory experiments meant to prove life could have begun on its own.
In 1953 the now famous Urey-Miller prebiotic experiment was performed to try to simulate the origin of organic molecules. This experiment used a reducing atmosphere claimed at the time to represent the primitive earth. The experiment produced detectable quantities of amino acids. The public was told his experiment demonstrated how earth naturally originated the molecules of life. Many similar experiments have been done since with similar results. However, there are serious flaws, both in the construction of the experiments and in the interpretation of the results.
These prebiotic experiments begin with a few molecule types, said to represent the primitive earth. Typically, a reservoir of these is provided, yet these ingredients are always unnaturally pure. Many commonplace natural compounds and their by-products which would interfere with the desired results have been unnaturally excluded from the experiment by the researcher. In addition, the arrangement and proximity of the various pieces of apparatus are unnatural and not to be expected from nature.
However, in addition to the few organic molecules produced, the experiments also produced an abundance of unwanted compounds that would detrimentally affect the next stage of biosynthesis. The researchers don’t pay much attention to these unwanted compounds, but they cannot be ignored out of existence. They cause a legitimate problem for the proponents of these experiments.
In addition, there is a fatal problem with the assumed reducing atmosphere. If the primitive atmosphere contained no free oxygen, then this lack of free oxygen would have left the upper atmosphere without an ozone layer to filter out ultraviolet rays from the sun. These rays, unchecked, would directly destroy most exposed organic matter since they can penetrate tens of meters beneath the ocean surface. Ocean currents would periodically circulate even the deep water and expose its organic contents to destruction, so even deep water would not provide ultimate protection.
Ultraviolet rays would also have a destructive effect indirectly. The ultraviolet sunlight converts surface minerals into materials that will destroy organic molecules even more effectively than will oxygen gas.(2) Ultraviolet light also breaks apart water vapor into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen, due to its light weight, escapes into space leaving the oxygen behind. Scientists now believe this mechanism can be a substantial source of atmospheric oxygen, rivaling production by plant photosynthesis. This mechanism would have rapidly oxidized the atmosphere, thereby destroying organic molecules.
The actual idea of a reducing atmosphere in general is also fatally flawed. A strongly reducing atmosphere would itself have been destroyed by sunlight. Geologists now realize that a reducing atmosphere of methane and ammonia would have been destroyed within a few thousand years by chemical reactions caused by sunlight. In addition, the idea of a reducing atmosphere is not borne out by the geological evidence. The geological evidence indicates that the primitive atmosphere was not reducing.(3,4,) So all of this is academic anyway.
This evidence has forced theorists to revise their model. They now believe the primitive atmosphere was nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and a small amount of hydrogen. This would be nearly neutral, with only a slight reducing power. However, prebiotic experiments have not shown favorable results for such an atmosphere. The simplest of all the amino acids—glycine—is virtually the only one produced by experiments with a neutral atmosphere, and only in trace amounts. Obviously this falls far short of originating life. No matter what the set-up and what conditions are chosen, it has become clear that if the Urey-Miller experiment is repeated using a realistic simulation of the Earth’s actual primitive atmosphere, it just doesn’t work.
The tragic part of this story is the way the general public is still being mislead by the evidence. As late as March 1998, an issue of National Geographic carried a photo of Miller standing next to his experimental apparatus. Several pages later, the article admits that most scientists suspect that the early atmosphere was different from what Miller assumed. But the picture and caption make the biggest impression. Even a careful reader is left with the impression that the Urey-Miller experiment showed how easy it was for life to originate on the early Earth.
High school, college and even graduate level text books continue to be deceptive in describing these experiments as if they provided the last link in the chain of evidence for chance biogenesis. One popular high school biology textbook includes a drawing of the Miller-Urey apparatus with the caption:
By re-creating the early earth atmosphere…and passing an electric spark (lightning) through the mixture, Miller and Urey proved that organic matter such as amino acids could have formed spontaneously.(5)
This is clearly untrue and not supported by facts. It is an example of how our children are being indoctrinated from an early age to accept evolution as fact. This indoctrination starts at an early age and continues through the highest levels of our education system.
In any event, the problems and questions related to the conditions of the early Earth are academic. Origin of life scientists face another situation which they rarely admit and cannot overcome. That is the biochemical fact of chirality. And this issue directly affects the few molecules produced in these origin of life experiments.
Approximately twenty amino acids comprise the basic building blocks of life. Without these, life as we know it today could neither originate nor exist. Some of these amino acids, under certain circumstances, can be formed in the atmosphere through chance lightning. But to state, as many experts do, that these amino acids which are formed by chance can be used to build living protoplasm is certainly grossly in error. They are, in fact, entirely useless for such purposes.
To explain this we need to understand chirality. Two otherwise chemically identical molecules possessing mirror-image structures constitute chirality in chemical language. Thus two molecules of which one is the mirror image of the other, will differ only in their spatial, three dimensional structure and not in their chemical analysis. These stereostructures are often referred to by “handedness”, i.e. either right-handed or left-handed.
Any long chain consisting of left-handed molecules will differ structurally from any chain of right-handed molecules or from mixtures of both left and right forms. Amino acid chains that contain a mix of both right and left handed forms are also called racemates.. The three-dimensional properties (chirality) of the amino acids involved determine the properties of the resulting proteins.
Nearly all biological polymers must be homochiral or optically pure, that is, all of its component monomers must have the same handedness to function. It has been found that the proteins which contribute to living protoplasm are almost exclusively left-handed forms. In our body, every single amino acid of every protein is found to have left-handed chirality exclusively. Right-handed amino acids and proteins occur very seldom in living protoplasm. They (right-handed amino acids) form proteins which do not fit into the metabolism of living organisms. Often proteins consisting of right-handed amino acids are lethal. Thus left-handed chirality is an absolute necessity in the amino acids of life Right-handed forms are simply incapable of supporting life.
But this chiral specificity goes even further. Whereas the amino acids of the living proteins are exclusively left-handed, all nucleic acids (including DNA & RNA) exhibit an exclusive right-handed configuration.(6)
Cell metabolism may be compared to one chemical substance entering another, just as a left hand enters a left-handed glove. In a chain of 10,000 left hands entering into a chain of 10,000 left-handed gloves, if even as much as one right-handed glove appears, this one right-handed glove can stop the whole vibratory process. Thus the whole metabolic process is brought to a standstill. Mixtures of right-handedness and left-handedness, (racemates,) can never produce a “fit” for metabolism. These racemates can never offer any basis at all for the metabolism of life.
Here is why this is so important. The amino acids produced by Miller, and every other origin of life experiment, are exclusively and entirely racemates, and hence are completely unsuitable for any type of spontaneous biogenesis. Under no circumstances whatsoever is a racemate capable of forming living proteins or life-supporting protoplasm of any sort. (7)
This applies to any and all randomly formed substances and amino acids. This statement is categorical and absolute and cannot be affected by special conditions. For biogenesis to take place, all building blocks (amino acids) of living protoplasm must be left-handed. It is impossible that the primeval cell was built up from right-handed or racemate forms of amino acids. It is a universally accepted fact of chemistry that chirality cannot be created in chemical molecules by a random process.
For more than 80 years, reputable scientists have attempted in vain to produce homochiral, or optically pure, amino acids by random inorganic methods. This failure is a major obstacle blocking the scientific credibility of present-day materialistic theories concerning the origin of life. Probably for this reason modern textbooks often do not even mention this major difficulty of chirality. But any honest evolutionary chemist knows this fatal problem exists.
Up to a few decades ago, origin of life theorists believed organic molecules collected in the oceans and formed a “primordial soup”, thick with nutrients “like a chicken broth.” According to that scheme, the building blocks of the first cell were formed by chance lightning in the primeval atmosphere and then developed in the primeval ocean. Miller’s experiments succeeded in producing small but definite amounts of amino acids, although as we've seen, these amino acids were useless racemates. Now, if these amino acids dissolve in water any two of them will allegedly combine, releasing a molecule of water and forming a peptide (a molecule of linked amino acids and the basis of proteins). The peptides then form proteins and so on, as life supposedly evolved.
This all seemed reasonable. However, upon examining the chemical equations, fatal flaws were found. Examination reveals the reactions to be reversible, that is, they take place forward or backward depending on experimental conditions. Therefore, the reactions can either form peptides and proteins or revert to their original components, the amino acids. The direction in which the reaction takes place depends on the concentration of reagents on both sides of the equation.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s just consider one reagent…the water which is released during the reaction. If the water is removed as soon as it appears then peptides should be obtained in the reaction. Conversely, if this water remains present no peptides or only very few will be formed. Thus, if excess water is present in the reacting mixture, peptide synthesis does not take place. This phenomenon is covered by the law of mass action. It is valid for all reversible reactions. Briefly said, in reactions of this type, synthesis of polypeptides from amino acids does not take place in the presence of excess water.(8)
The consequence of this well-known fact of organic chemistry is extremely important to any primordial soup theory. Concentrations of amino acids will combine only in minute amounts, if they combine at all, in a primeval ocean to form polypeptides. Any amounts of polypeptide which might be formed will be broken down into their initial components (amino acids) by the excess water. The ocean is thus practically the last place on this or any other planet where the proteins of life could be formed spontaneously from amino acids.(8)
Evolutionary scientists have come to recognize this problem and have looked for ways around it. The current theory in vogue has to do with hydrothermal vents and dissolved CO2 in the sea water.. When a volcano breaks through the surface of the ocean, glowing lava comes into contact with the water while it is still hot. A crust is formed between the lava and the water. The water continually evaporates on the crust due to the heat of the lava. The excess water is now gone overcoming the problem and allowing the peptides to form. This seemed like the perfect solution to the excess water problem.
Using lab experiments combined with specially programmed supercomputers, results have hinted at chemical processes that may have been underway. However, even with human intervention, know-how and the use of supercomputers, they have only found hints of possible chemical production. Although the theorists pat themselves on the back thinking they have solved the problems, an unsolvable problem remains. The molecules produced are still only racemates! So they would have only formed proteins that are incapable of life !.
There are additional problems with the hydrothermal vent theory. We are all aware that if we were to boil an egg, it can never hatch thereafter. The proteins and the other vital materials are irreversibly “denatured” or coagulated by the heat of the boiling water and can no longer support life. So if proteins are formed from amino acids in a primeval ocean at hydrothermal vents, then any proteins which would have been formed will simultaneously be denatured by the heat during their formation. Such denatured proteins are useless for biogenesis.
In either theory, if life began in the ancient ocean, there must have existed for many millions of years a rich mixture of organic compounds in the ocean. Some of this material would very likely have been trapped in the sedimentary rocks lain down in the seas of those remote times. Yet the rocks of great antiquity have been examined over the past several decades and in none of them has any trace of organic compounds been found.
Today, theorists doubt that the primordial soup ever existed:
…doubt has been cast on two of the basic premises, the reducing atmosphere and the prebiotic soup.(9)
There is growing doubt about the idea that the primitive oceans would have been full of organic molecules.(10)
Hubert Yockey, who is a physicist and information theorist, is very critical of the primordial soup theory of the origin of life. He believes that "the origin of life is unsolvable as a scientific problem.” He is not a creationist. Yockey has stated:
Belief in a primeval soup on the grounds that no other paradigm is available is an example of the logical fallacy of the false alternative. In science it is a virtue to acknowledge ignorance. This has been universally the case in the history of science as Kuhn (1970) has discussed in detail. There is no reason that this should be different in the research on the origin of life.(11)
The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual machine is in probability. The extremely small probabilities calculated in this chapter are not discouraging to true believers … [however] A practical person must conclude that life didn’t happen by chance.(12)
Again, Yockey is not a creationist. He's just telling it like it is. Science now knows the modern cell does not synthesize its proteins with the aid of random chance. It does so through strictly genetically programmed, coded biochemical processes. If modern science provides us with insight into the past, then the primeval cell must also have formed its optically pure proteins with the aid of similar programming and similar coding—that is with know-how and programming—and not with non-programming or chance.
The insight into the chemistry of living protein synthesis has been mandatory for the discovery of the genetic code. It is high time that it influenced our concepts concerning the mechanism of the origin of life. If programming and not chance represents the principle behind present-day life, then the only question remaining is “where did the original programming in the primeval cell, originate?” This question is consistently ignored since its answer obviously leads to an intelligent creator.
The evidence clearly shows that the conditions did not exist for life to have formed spontaneously on this or any other planet. Even it the conditions were right, another fatal problem for spontaneous generation of life is the great gulf that exists between inorganic material and life. The existence of a definite discontinuity between life and the inorganic world was only established after the revolutionary discoveries of molecular biology in the early 1950s. Before that time it was still possible for evolutionists to hope that perhaps advances in science would reveal a number of intermediates between inorganic chemistry and the living cell.
Instead of revealing a multitude of transitional forms through which the evolution of the cell might have occurred, molecular biology has served only to emphasize the enormity of the gap. We now know not only of the existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of nature !
Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive. Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.
Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system is essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are identical. The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells. The size, structure and component design of the machinery that synthesizes protein is practically the same in all cells. According to Monod:
The simplest living system know to us, the bacterial cell...in...its overall chemical plan is the same as that of all other living beings. It employs the same genetic code and the same mechanism of translation as do, for example, human cells. Thus the simplest cells available for us to study have nothing "primitive" about them....(19)
According to author and molecular biologist Dr Michael Denton:
In terms of their basic biochemical design, therefore no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth.. For those who hoped that molecular biology might bridge the gulf between chemistry and biochemistry, the revelation has been profoundly disappointing. (20)
To explain the origin of the cell in evolutionary terms it is necessary to postulate a series of far simpler cell systems, leading gradually from a solution of organic compounds through more complex aggregates of matter to the typical cell system today. The only possible precursor to the existing cell system would, of course, be one that was less perfect. Obviously, the less perfect proto-cell system would be bound to have been far more prone to making errors when synthesizing proteins.
The hypothetical proteins produced by such an imperfect translational system have been termed “statistical proteins” and called “very crudely made proteins” by Francis Crick.(13) The trouble with “crudely made proteins” is that everything we have learned about protein structure and function over the past 70+ years implies that the function of a protein depends on it being very accurately manufactured and possessing exact highly specific configurations (chirality). Therefore, we are forced to contradict one of the basic axioms of modern biochemistry in envisioning the origin of the cell !!
The very cyclical nature of cellular replication guarantees that imperfections inevitably lead to death. Modern organisms get by despite mutations because the rate of mutation is very low. However, if the mutation rate is raised then this leads to an accumulation of errors down a chain of replication which is ultimately lethal to the clone.
Compounding the problem, the translation system of protein synthesis is just one of a myriad of systems. There is much more to the cell than the “mere” origin of the apparatus that synthesizes proteins. There are numerous sets of mechanisms that cannot function without the presence of other mechanisms. The interdependence of the various mechanisms multiplies the problem of the origin of life exponentially and cannot be explained away.
As Nobel Prize winning biochemist Francis Crick, in his book Life Itself, concedes:
An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the condition which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.(14)
In addition, and which will be covered in the Intelligent Design page, is the question of information. Every function in every part of the living cell is controlled by information. The question is, where does this actual information come from, and how could it have developed naturally? In Steps Toward Life, Manfred Eigen states what he considers the central problem facing origins-of-life research:
“Our task is to find an algorithm, a natural law that leads to the origin of information.”(15)
This is a ghost that will never be found as neither algorithms nor natural laws are capable of producing information. The great myth of modern evolutionary biology is that information can be gotten without recourse to intelligence. Algorithms and natural laws are in principle incapable of explaining the origin of information. Algorithms and natural laws can explain the flow of information and the transmission of already existing information. What they cannot do, however, is originate information.(16)
The science of biochemistry clearly shows that gradualism is impossible in describing the origin of life. This has left some to propose even wilder scenarios. Francis Crick, who is most noted for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, has conceded that life originating on earth by random natural processes may after all be extremely improbable. Incredibly, he felt forced to turn to the idea of panspermia—the notion that life did not originate on earth but instead was sent here as bacteria from outer space. (17). British astronomer Fred Hoyle and his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe have, for similar reasons, also raised the possibility of panspermia.(18)
Nothing illustrates more clearly just how intractable a problem the origin of life has become for evolutionists than the fact that world authorities can seriously toy with the idea of panspermia. These scientists admit that life could not have occurred on earth by random chance. However, even the idea of panspermia requires some foreign environment that could supposedly support spontaneous generation of life. Imagining such an environment is just fantasy.
The depth to which our culture clings to evolutionary principles is profound. In light of all this scientific evidence, they still believe they will eventually prove life started on its own, without a Creator. These intractable barriers to naturalistic origins on Earth leads many of these scientists to believe that life must be widespread in the universe. This is why so much money and effort is spent trying to detect messages from outer space and trying to find signs of life on Mars. They are desperate for some sort of vindication of their beliefs.
But the problem of the huge chasm between inorganic chemicals and the simplest form of life would still exist anywhere in the universe and simply cannot be crossed. Claiming this could have happened on a distant planet just moves the problem farther away from us so they can imagine the problem is solved and therefore don’t have to deal with it. However, the biochemical facts still apply, no matter where in the universe.
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