Let us look at the origin of life. There are only two possibilities for the existence of life:
If you deny the existence of a Creator, scientific studies demonstrate that you must believe each of the following things about the origin of life:
Scientific Facts |
Solution |
|---|---|
| Homochirality somehow arose in the sugars and amino acids of prebiotic soups, although there is no mechanism by which this can occur (1) and is, in fact, prohibited by the second law of thermodynamics (law of entropy). (2) | reject the second law of thermodynamics |
| In the absence of enzymes, there is no chemical reaction that produces the sugar ribose (1), the "backbone" of RNA and DNA. | "science of the gaps" |
| Chemical reactions in prebiotic soups produce other sugars that prevent RNA and DNA replication (1). | discard chemistry data "science of the gaps" |
| Pyrimidine nucleosides (cytosine and uracil) do not form under prebiotic conditions and only purine (adenine and guanine) nucleosides are found in carbonaceous meteorites (1) (i.e., pyrimidine nucleosides don't form in outer space either). | discard chemistry data "science of the gaps" |
| Even if a method for formation of pyrimidine nucleosides could be found, the combination of nucleosides with phosphate under prebiotic conditions produces not only nucleotides, but other products which interfere with RNA polymerization and replication (1). | discard chemistry data "science of the gaps" |
| Purine and pyrimidine nucleotides (nucleosides combined with phosphate groups) do not form under prebiotic conditions (3). | discard chemistry data "science of the gaps" |
| Neither RNA nor DNA can be synthesized in the absence of enzymes | "science of the gaps" |
| Enzymes cannot be synthesized in the absence of RNA and ribosomes. | "science of the gaps" |
| Nucleosides and amino acids cannot form in the presence of oxygen, which is now known to have been present on the earth for at least four billion years (4), although life arose ~3.8 billion years ago (5). | discard geological data discard chemistry data |
| A massive increase of meteor bombardment occurred in the inner Solar System 3.9 billion years ago (6), which would have destroyed all complex organic molecules on the earth up to that point. The first rocks date to that era, but contain no carbon. The first evidence of carbon (3.85 billion years ago) was formed from living organisms (determined from 12C/13C ratios) (5). There is no evidence of a "prebiotic soup." | discard geological data |
| Comparison of the dates of meteor impacts on the moon, Mercury, and Mars indicate that at least 30 catastrophic meteor impacts must have occurred on the earth from 3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago (7). These impacts were of such large size that the energy released would have vaporized the entirety of the earth's oceans (8), destroying all life. | Life spontaneously arose by chance at least 30 separate times, each within a period of ~10 million years |
New theories, such as assembly of biomolecules on mineral surfaces, are constantly being proposed to attempt to get around the problems associated with the spontaneous origin of life. However, even if you put purified chemicals together (which can't be synthesized prebiotically), you can get polymers only up to 50 mer (obviously not enough for life) (9). Therefore, none of these theories has been able to get around the fundamental chemical problems required for life to have begun on the Earth. Some quotes from evolutionists are cited below:
"It's a very long leap from [mineral] surface chemistry to a living cell." Norman Pace (evolutionary biologist, University of California, Berkeley). (10)
"On theoretical grounds, however, it [mineral clay synthesis] seems implausible. Structural irregularities in clay that were complicated enough to set the stage for the emergence of RNA probably would not be amenable to accurate self-replication." (Leslie Orgel)
'There is now overwhelmingly strong evidence, both statistical and paleontological, that life could not have been started on Earth by a series of random chemical reactions.... There simply was not enough time... to get life going." Niles Eldridge (paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History). (11)
"There is no agreement on the extent to which metabolism could develop independently of a genetic material. In my opinion, there is no basis in known chemistry for the belief that long sequences of reactions can organize spontaneously -- and every reason to believe that they cannot. The problem of achieving sufficient specificity, whether in aqueous solution or on the surface of a mineral, is so severe that the chance of closing a cycle of reactions as complex as the reverse citric acid cycle, for example, is negligible." Leslie Orgel, 1998 (The Salk Institute for Biological Studies). (12)
Prebiotic chemistry would produce a wealth of biomolecules from non living precursors. But the wealth soon became overwhelming, with the "prebiotic soups" having the chemical complexity of asphalt (useful, perhaps, for paving roads but not particularly promising as a wellspring for life). Classical prebiotic chemistry not only failed to constrain the contents of the prebiotic soup, but also raised a new paradox: How could life (or any organized chemical process) emerge from such a mess? Searches of quadrillions of randomly generated RNA sequences have failed to yield a spontaneous RNA replicator. Steven A. Benner, 1999 (professor of Chemistry at the University of Florida). (13)
Even origin of life researchers are now admitting that getting the basic building blocks for an RNA world is virtually impossible:
G. F. Joyce and L. E. Orgel lead us into the RNA world with a description of the difficulties in achieving the direct synthesis of nucleosides and nucleotides from prebiotic precursors and conclude that the de novo appearance of oligonucleotides on primitive Earth amounts to a "near miracle" W. Keller, 1999 (14).
Researchers are now examining alternative, simpler possible genetic molecules, such as pyranosyl RNAs (pRNAs) that pair up in double helices. However, it seems unlikely that these pRNAs could have been a source of genetic material in early life forms. Pairs of complementary pRNAs form double helices that are structurally very different from those formed by DNA and RNA. According to Leslie Orgel:
"Consequently, pRNAs and RNAs are not able to form duplexes with each other, which would preclude exchange of information between these two molecules, suggesting that pRNAs are unlikely to have been the genetic material that preceded RNA." Leslie Orgel, 2000 (15)
Recently, researchers have synthesized threose-based nucleic acid (TNA) as potential precursors of RNA and DNA (since it is obvious that RNA and DNA could not form spontaneously on primitive earth). Researchers have found that complementary TNA's form double helices among themselves and even with complementary RNAs and DNAs (16). How could a primitive organism that used TNA as its genetic material switch to RNA? There are two potential mechanisms, both of which suffer major, almost certainly fatal, problems. In one mechanism, a TNA-based primitive organism would have synthesized RNA's for a purpose other than replication, such as a means to inhibit TNA synthesis in a competing organism. Under such a scenario, RNA replication would have evolved independently of TNA replication and ultimately took over as the means by which cells reproduce themselves. However, since the two genetic systems never interacted no useful genetic information would have been transferred from TNA to RNA. It is unclear how the original TNA replication system could have been turned off, or the more important problem of how a complete RNA genetic system could have evolved in the absence of natural selection. In the alternative mechanism, RNA bases were at first substituted randomly a few at a time in TNA sequences until the proportion of RNA components increased over time from almost zero to 100%. The information present originally in the TNA sequence was, at least in part, preserved in the final RNA sequence. However, this theory suffers the major drawback that the introduction of a substantial number of RNA bases at random would almost certainly destroy the catalytic function of any particular TNA sequence (a fatal "mutation") in addition to probably preventing replication of TNA, rendering evolved TNA sequences useless.
As can be seen from the above table and information, the atheist's position is becoming more extreme and less reasonable as more knowledge is gained through scientific studies. Atheists are becoming desperate and are now offering $1 million for an explanation that "corresponds to empirical biochemical and thermodynamic reality, and be published in a well-respected, peer-reviewed science journal(s)." In contrast, the revelation of creation from the Bible is being confirmed with the advancement of science.
Last updated 05/29/01