Abiogenesis -- Whence Came Life?

It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find an
elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance. Is it
really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest elements of which—a
functional protein or gene—is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis
of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man? (Agnostic non-creationist,
Dr. Michael Denton)

From Little Blobs to Worlds of Hypertechnology

In Darwin’s time microscopes were not very powerful. Scientists had learned that all life is divided into cells but
knew little about the interior of cells. They seemed to be little more than little blobs of protoplasm with little
specks in them, such as the nucleus. It was thought by some that such blobs could easily form by random
chance from non-living particles, under the right conditions.

This led to serious blunders, such as Bathybius haeckelii. This “primitive life,” named by Thomas Huxley after
the deceitful professor who invented the fraudulent gill-slits-in-human-embryos claim, was composed of oily
blobs that formed when alcohol was added to deep sea ooze. It was many years before it was admitted these
blobs were just that, inorganic precipitates, and not life at all (Taylor)!

By the 1920s understanding of the major components of cells was deepening and Darwinian theories were
developing. A Soviet scientist named Oparin sketched out the notion of a “biochemical soup” that existed on the
early earth, proposing that a thick concentration of organic molecules (the building blocks of life) formed
naturally. From this, it was reasoned, it would be only natural to expect the formation of the first cells.

But troubles mounted. By the 1940s research in biochemistry was proving that biological
molecules were vastly more complex than once suspected. French scientist Lecomte Du
Nouy observed that the formation of even one protein by random chance in the history
of earth was impossibly small (Coppedge). Advances in biochemistry, the discovery of
DNA, and continuing research into the complexities of the cell continued to make the “life
by random chance” view increasingly dubious. Life came to be recognized as a marvel
of hypertechnology, a nano-world of machines and processes, efficiency and integration
advanced beyond mankind's imagination (Denton).

By the 1960s Darwinian fundamentalists were in crisis. In 1967 an assembly of
evolutionary biologists were joined by mathematicians at the Wistar Symposium to solve
the issue of how life could arise without intelligent design. The meeting was frustrating.
The mathematicians, all Darwinists themselves, complained that they wanted to help, but
the biologists weren’t giving them anything to work with. Random chance was just not
plausible. The meeting ended without a resolution in sight.

The following year a young biophysicist, Dr. Dean Kenyon, proposed a new approach that seemed to offer new
hope. If life was not the product of random chance, he reasoned, then it was the natural expression of the laws
of nature operating in the universe. Not an intelligent designer, nor chance, but the inevitable result of the order
of nature, just as natural forces create orderly patterns in layers of rock or in crystals, was responsible for life.
He called this approach biochemical predestination—that is, the chemicals of life were “predestined” to appear
by the laws of nature, and thus life was the result of natural order, not chance (Kenyon & Steinman).

Kenyon’s proposal remains as the foundation of modern research in abiogenesis.
The random chance idea is recognized to be even more unlikely than ever as we
learn ever more about life. But biochemical predestination is not tenable. Despite its
position as a keystone of Darwinian fundamentalism it was refuted only a year after it
was published by a creationist scientist (Wilder-Smith). Kenyon later cited Wilder-
Smith’s critique as a factor in his own conversion to the young-earth creation position
(Morris & Parker).

Wilder-Smith pointed out that the universe does produce order, but order is not the issue. The issue is
organized complexity. The order of life is complex. The order produced by nature—such as the repeating
patterns of crystals, is not. In fact, precisely because the universe follows laws and drives matter to behave
according to orderly patterns it is impossible to justify the spontaneous formation of life without intelligent
design.

For example, consider a room of monkeys working at simplified typewriters. The goal is to get them to type the
phrase “TOBEORNOTTOBE.” As long as the monkeys type randomly they have a small chance of typing the
required phrase. It’s a lousy chance, but at least it’s a chance.

The answer is zero. The random-typing monkeys have a better chance. That’s because if the patterns of order
in the source material do not precisely match the patterns required to produce the requisite order, the orderly
behavior will actually get in the way and work against attempts to produce the sought-after effect. For
something as complex as life, extremely complex patterns of order are required as inputs to achieve the
complex, ordered results. Only intelligence produces anything like this required specificity. Indeed, our own
intelligence is lacking when it is compared to the complex order found in life, forcing us to postulate a super-
intelligence able to generate the patterns of order far more complex than our own.

That doesn’t mean Darwinian fundamentalists have given up. Instead they are working to mimic the required
complex specificity in nature by postulating an increasingly complicated series of events that would lead to life. It’
s as if, admitting that a car can’t form by chance, they are now theorizing that a robotic, automated car factory
“just happened” to exist once in the past, such that a car would be the natural and expected result. But even if
they do someday assemble a model for the origin of life that leads reasonably to the production of a cell, will
they really have explained what once happened? Insightful critics will point out that in their carefully
constructed, extraordinarily complex scenario, they will have constructed something that is even more complex,
and even more unlikely, than the random formation of a living cell.

Other Considerations

Chirality: Organic molecules can form in both “right-handed” and “left-handed” mirror images. All amino acids
are composed of “left-hand” oriented molecules, while all sugars are “right-handed.” How could random
molecules in a biological soup have filtered and sorted themselves to match this division (Sarfati)?

No Prebiotic Soup: The notion of a prebiotic soup was assumed, not demonstrated from the geologic record.
Today it is recognized that evidence for this notion is lacking (yet should have been found), and that any such
organic molecules would break down as fast as they formed before life began, preventing a concentration of
organic molecules from ever developing (Thaxton, Olsen & Bradley).

Law of Biogenesis: The famous French scientist and skeptic of Darwinism, Louis
Pasteur, proved that life comes only from life. Life has never been observed to come from
non-life, not even mind-bogglingly rich concentrations of organic molecules such as a
sealed can of food. Belief in the origin of life in the past from non-life is thus a violation of
one of the fundamental laws of biology, the Law of Biogenesis.

Origin of Life Experiments (Fox/Miller/Urey/etc.): Experiments have never formed
“life” from non-life. Even “simple” life is composed of hundreds or thousands of different
kinds of proteins, each protein specified by hundreds of amino acids, each of which is

composed of a number of atoms. The simple organic molecules formed in these experiments are of trivial
complexity by comparison. As Du Nouy realized even a single protein could never be expected by chance.
Moreover, rarely mentioned are the low concentrations of simple organic molecules formed by these experiments,
the tendency of these molecules to break right back down, and the much, much greater amounts of toxic
chemicals that formed which would have completely blocked the formation of life (Thaxton, Olsen & Bradley).

Oxygen and Ultraviolet Light: Darwinian fundamentalists long assumed the early earth had a “reducing” (that
is, oxygen-free) atmosphere, because the presence of oxygen in the air would have interfered with the chemistry
of biomolecules. This notion of a reducing atmosphere was also taught as “knowledge” despite the lack of any
geological evidence. However, oxygen in the atmosphere is necessary to have an ozone layer (since ozone is
oxygen) to block out ultraviolet light. Without it ultraviolet light would have destroyed any organic molecules. This
was a catch-22 that remains unresolved (Thaxton, Olsen & Bradley).

Origin of Information: The problem of the origin of life is largely a question of the origin of the information
contained in living cells. Where does information come from? Just as the Law of Biogenesis says that life only
comes from life, the laws of information science reveal that information comes only from intelligent sources.
Information never forms by chance. Moreover, information presupposes a language. Languages, whether human,
binary or genetic, are extremely complex systems of rules and semantic relationships, etc. that allow information to
be recognized as such. Not only does information require an intelligent source, language presupposes an even
more advanced intelligent source (Gitt).

Origin of Life in Space: Given the difficulties of explaining how life could arise on earth
some Darwinists suggest it happened somewhere else, and then traveled here. There is
no evidence for such a peculiar idea, and many difficulties. Moreover, it does not solve
abiogenesis problems, it simply transfers them somewhere else. Sir Fred Hoyle and
mathematician Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe note, “If there were a basic principle of
matter which somehow drove organic systems toward life, its existence should easily be
demonstrable in the laboratory.”

Conclusion
Origin of life research is not enabling Darwinian fundamentalists to propose better and better theories for the
origin of life without intelligent design. Instead they are stalemated and following the siren song of biochemical
predestination, which only takes them from the frying pan to the fire. The known laws of science, from
information science to biology, reveal that information requires an intelligent creator, language even more so.
Life comes from life, and ultimately from a self-existent (uncaused) Living Creator with the competence to
create life.

The speculations in The Origin of Species turned out to be wrong… It is ironic that the scientific facts throw
Darwin out, but leave [creationist] William Paley, a figure of fun to the scientific world for more than a century,
still in the tournament with a chance of being the ultimate winner…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.
(Hoyle & Wickramasinghe) LSI

Sources & Further Study

Answers in Genesis FAQ – Origin of Life: www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/origin.asp

Coppedge, James, Evolution: Possible or Impossible? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1973).

Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis ((Bethesda, MD: Adler & Adler, 1986).

Gitt, Wernher, In the Beginning Was Information (Bielefield, Germany: Christliche Literatur Verbreitung, 1997).

Hoyle, Sir Fred and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution From Space (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).

Kenyon, Dean and Gary Steinman, Biochemical Predestination (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969).

Morris, Henry and Gary Parker, What is Creation Science? (El Cajon, CA: Master Books, 1987). (Introduction
by Kenyon.)

Sarfati, Jonathan, “Origin of Life: The Chirality Problem,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 12:3, pp. 281-
284. (www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3991.asp)

Taylor, Ian, In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order (Toronto: TFE Publishing, 1991).

Thaxton, Charles B., Walter L. Bradley, and Roger L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current
Theories (Dallas: Lewis & Stanley, 1992).

Wilder-Smith, A. E., The Creation of Life: A Cybernetic Approach to Evolution (Costa Mesa, CA: Word for
Today, 1988 [1970]).