First life forms
Scientists
believe life on earth began in the water. Charles Darwin, who advanced the
theory of evolution in his 1859 book On
the Origin of Species, once wrote to a friend that life might have begun in
“some warm little pond.” His evolutionary theory assumes that, billions of
years ago, microscopic life spontaneously appeared.
Spontaneous generation?
Richard Dawkins, an atheist, summarizes the idea in his
book, The Selfish Gene (1976): “The
newly formed Earth had an atmosphere made up of carbon dioxide, methane,
ammonia, and water. These simple compounds were broken up by energy from
sunlight, lightning, and exploding volcanoes, then reformed into amino acids.
These accumulated in the sea and combined into protein-like compounds, producing
a potentially ‘organic soup.’ Then, ‘a particularly remarkable molecule was
formed by accident’ – a molecule that had the ability to reproduce itself.”
(The accident, the author admitted, was exceedingly improbable.) Similar
molecules clustered together, and then, by an exceedingly improbable accident
again, wrapped a protective barrier of other protein molecules around
themselves as a membrane. Thus, it is thought, the first “living” cell
generated itself. (In the preface to his book, Dawkins says: “This book should
be read almost as though it were science fiction.”)17
The
first organic molecules are said to have been simple sugars and amino acids,
the building blocks of proteins. Proteins, in turn, are the building blocks of
living cells. The first living cell is presumed to have been anaerobic
(surviving without oxygen), using methane for energy.18
The
sudden appearance of life all by itself from non-living matter is called
“spontaneous generation” or abiogenesis,
which comes from the Greek words a (“without”),
bio (“life”) and genesis (“birth”). However, this theory violates the law of
biogenesis, which states that all life must come from preceding life of its
kind.
Spontaneous dissolution. “Spontaneous generation” has serious
problems. First, the same energy from sunlight, lightning, and volcanic
explosions that split up the compounds in the atmosphere would have even more
quickly destroyed any amino acids that formed. So, the amino acids had to reach
the oceans quickly for protection. However, science writer George Wald observes
that in the water “spontaneous dissolution is much more probable, and hence
proceeds more rapidly, than spontaneous synthesis.”19 Mike Riddle, a
creationist, explains that water immediately destroys amino
acids by hydrolysis (“water
splitting”). The entry of a water molecule between two bonded molecules (such
as amino acids) causes them to split. The “water tends to break chains of amino
acids apart. If any protein had formed in the oceans 3.5 billion years ago,
they would have quickly disintegrated.”20
“Catch 22” situation. If there was no oxygen in the
atmosphere, there would have been no ozone layer, and the ultraviolet rays from
the sun would have instantly destroyed any newly forming amino acids. If there
was oxygen, it would have soon oxidized and destroyed any self-organizing amino
acids. Either way, the emergence of life was doomed from the start. Author
Michael Denton notes in his book Evolution:
A Theory in Crisis (1985): “What we have is a sort of a ‘Catch 22’ situation.
If we have oxygen we have no organic compounds, but if we don’t have oxygen we
have none either”21 It was a no-win
situation. But then something, or Someone, intervened.
Biogenesis vs. Abiogenesis
In
the 1600s scientists believed life could arise from decaying matter, because
maggots and flies emerged from dung, rotting meat, and
garbage. Italian biologist Francesco Redi demonstrated in 1668
that maggots did not appear in meat if kept away from flies.22 In
1768 another Italian, naturalist Lazzaro Spallanzani, proved that substances
originally containing microorganisms, when boiled and then sealed, remained
microbe-free.23
It
did not keep German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), a rabid Darwinian,
from promoting abiogenesis. Biochemist Michael Behe says: “From the limited
view of cells that microscopes provided, Haeckel believed that a cell was a
‘simple little lump of albuminous combination of carbon,’ not much different
from a piece of microscopic Jell-O. So it seemed to Haeckel that such simple life,
with no internal organs, could be produced from inanimate material.”24
Famous
French microbiologist Louis Pasteur refuted abiogenesis in 1862 in his “On the
Organized Particles Existing in the Air.” He showed that microbes would grow
only if a solution was exposed to air with spores of bacteria. In 1869, British
physicist John Tyndall demonstrated that when dust was present putrefaction
occurred; in the absence of dust, no decay took place.25
Lab-created “life”?
In
1953 chemist Stanley Miller, a graduate student at the
However,
the experiment used a manmade “atmosphere” that did not
include oxygen, which would have produced a different result. The process also had
“unnatural” components such as a “trap” (which quickly removed chemical
products from the destructive energy sources that made them). Further,
biologist Gary Parker notes: “The molecules Miller made did not include only
the amino acids required for living systems; they included even greater
quantities of amino acids that would be highly destructive to any ‘evolving’
life.”26
Besides,
half the amino acids produced were chemically “right-handed.” Every living protein, whether in animals, plants, molds, bacteria,
and even viruses -- except in some diseased or aging tissue –
is made up of at least 300 amino acids, practically all of them structurally
“left-handed.” Hence, the probability of a living protein being formed through
sheer chance is equal to unerringly getting 300 “heads” in a row from the toss
of a coin.
Co-authors
Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe calculated the odds for a living
protein to form solely by chance in one place as just one chance in 1040,000.
In comparison, statisticians regard a probability of less than 1 in 1050
to be an absolute impossibility. They concluded that it was “an outrageously
small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted
of organic soup.”27
The
Miller-Urey experiment (and all other experiments after it) failed to produce
even one single living protein – never mind that a protein still has a long,
long way to go before becoming a complete living cell.
Enough time and chance?
Some
scientists argue that, given enough time, as well as chance, all things are
possible – even the emergence of the first living things from inanimate matter.
Writer C. Folsome asked them in the magazine Scientific American: “Can we really form a biological cell by
waiting for chance combinations of organic compounds? Harold Morowitz, in his
book Energy Flow and Biology,
computed that merely to create a bacterium would require more time than the
Universe might ever see if chance combinations of its molecules were the only
driving force.”28
Chemist
Ilya Prigogine, 1977 Nobel Prize laureate, sums it up in Physics Today: “The idea of the spontaneous genesis of life in its
present form is therefore improbable, even on the scale of billions of years.”29
Gerald Schroeder informs us that: “Since 1979, articles based on the premise
that life arose through chance random reactions over billions of years are not
accepted in reputable journals.”30
The “simple” cell.
Charles
Darwin believed that single-celled organisms were most primitive. Until the
first half of the 20th century, scientists called the most basic
living unit the “simple cell” -- made up of nothing more than a jelly-like
“protoplasm.”
In
1963 Dr. George Palade of the Rockefeller Institute discovered a complex
network of minuscule tubes and sacs within the protoplasm, now called the
“endoplasmic reticulum.”31 It became evident that
there is no such thing as a “simple” cell. Even the earliest unicellular
organisms on earth were unimaginably complex. Molecular biologist Jonathan
Wells and mathematician William Dembski concur that “the simplest life forms we
know, the prokaryotic cells (such as bacteria, which lack a nucleus), are
themselves immensely complex. Moreover, they are every bit as high-tech as the
eukaryotic cells…”32 Single-celled animals can “catch food, digest
it, get rid of wastes, move around, build houses, engage in sexual activity…
with no tissues, no organs, no hearts and no minds…”33 They even
communicate with each other using chemicals.
We read in the National
Geographic: “Each cell is a world brimming with as many as two hundred
trillion tiny groups of atoms called molecules.”34 Newsweek is quite graphic: “Each of
those 100 trillion cells functions like a walled city. Power plants generate
the cell’s energy. Factories produce proteins, vital units of chemical
commerce. Complex transportation systems guide specific chemicals from point to
point within the cell and beyond. Sentries at the barricades control the export
and import markets, and monitor the outside world for signs of danger.
Disciplined biological armies stand ready to grapple with invaders. A
centralized genetic government maintains order.”35
In addition, the “simple” cell has one capability not even
today’s most advanced machines can do: It can replicate its entire structure
within a matter of a few hours.
____________________
17.Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1976, p. 16
18.ScienceDaily,
Mar. 22, 2006, Internet
19.George Wald, “The
Origin of Life,” Scientific American,
August 1954, pp. 49-50
20.Mike
Riddle, “Can Natural Processes Explain the Origin of Life?”, The New Answers Book 2, 2008, p. 66
21.Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985, p.
261
22.Spontaneous
Generation, World Book 2005
(Deluxe)
23.Spontaneous
Generation, Microsoft Encarta
Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004
24.Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical
Challenge to Evolution, 1996, pp. 23-24
25.Spontaneous
Generation, op. cit.
26.Gary Parker and
Henry Morris, What Is Creation Science,
1982, p. 40
27.Fred Hoyle and
Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from
Space, 1981, p. 24
28.C. Folsome, “Life:
Origin and Evolution, Scientific American,
1979; quoted by Schroeder, op. cit., p.
89
29.I. Prigogine, et
al. , “Thermodynamics of Evolution,” Physics
Today, Nov. 1972, pp. 25:23, and Dec. 1972, pp. 25:38
30.Schroeder, op. cit., p. 89
31.Petersen,
op. cit., p.
92
32.Jonathan Wells and
William Dembski, How to Be an
Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (or Not), 2008, p. 4
33.L.L. Larison
Cudmore, The Center of Life, 1977,
pp. 13-14
34.Rick Gore, “The
Awesome Worlds Within a Cell,” National
Geographic, September 1976, pp. 357-360
35.Peter Gwynne,
Sharon Begley and Mary Hager, “The Secrets of the Human Cell,” Newsweek, August 20, 1979, p. 48
(Excerpted from
Chapter 5, Early Earth Enigmas, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the
Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)
