Robert Goette
Life From Nonlife
Macroevolution — the idea of life originating from non-life—begins with a scenario much like the one put together from a number of evolutionary origins theories and summarized John Horgan in a recent issue of Scientific American.
Scientific Version of Genesis begins with the condensation of the solar system from a cloud of gas and dust 4.5 billion years ago. Organic chemicals could have been delivered by impacts or synthesized in the atmosphere, tidal pools or deep-sea hydrothermal vents. These chemicals combined to form more complex organic compounds, including proteins and nucleic acids. Impacts and a stifling greenhouse effect, caused by carbon dioxide spewed from volcanoes, could have rendered the earth’s surface unfit for life until 3.8 billion years ago. But by 3.5 billion years ago—give or take about 300 million years—photosynthetic microbes resembling blue-green algae had emerged. These primitive organisms sometimes formed dense mounds, called stromatolites, along the shores of shallow seas. (Horgan 1991:117)
What is the evidence for such a scenario as described above? The Scientific American stated in a headline at the top of the article, “Scientists are having a hard time agreeing on when, where and — most important — how life first emerged on the earth.” The rest of the article verifies this statement by pointing out weaknesses in each of the proposed theories.
A Difficult Problem
Stanley Miller, one of the pioneer ‘origin of life’ experimenters, is quoted as saying, “The problem of the origin of life has turned out to be much more difficult than I, and most other people, envisioned” (Horgan 1991:117). Actually this current statement differs little from what Miller confessed 17 years ago in book coauthored with Leslie Orgel:
It must be admitted from the beginning that we do not know how life began. … While we cannot be certain that these compounds and mechanisms were important for the most primitive organisms, it is simplest to suppose that most of them were. … we are attempting to reconstruct a historical process. It is not possible to test a hypothesis concerning the origin of life by running rapidly through the entire process in the laboratory … related systems should be studied in such a way that extrapolation to primitive earth conditions is possible … we do not yet have one plausible, detailed, and complete hypothesis. (Miller and Orgel 1974;1–2, emphasis added)
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Biogenesis
There are evolutionists who accuse creationists of confusing first cause with evolution. They say that it does not matter how things got started. Once they did, change took place and that was evolution. Those who follow this line of reasoning are making several presuppositions. First, they are assuming the evolution is true and has been observed. Second, they are assuming that change within limits or variation (evolutionists call it microevolution) is the same as macroevolution (unlimited change). Given enough time, they say, new organisms will eventually result, thus proving evolution. An example of this error in thinking (variation = macroevolution) is shown in a recent article sent in by a reader.
The researchers tested the mathematical model (animals that are preyed on as adults will evolve to produce as many babies as they can, as early in life as possible) by simply moving 200 guppies from the base of a 20-foot waterfall in the Aripo River [Trinidad], where predatory fish called cichlids gobble only adult guppies, to the top of the waterfall. There, the single predator is a killifish, a species that devours only young guppies. After 60 generations, the experimental guppies had evolved in their new environment just as the model predicted. The fish now reach sexual maturity nine days later than their downstream counterparts and they are larger when they first give birth. (Brownlee 1990:117)
It took eleven years to complete this research, but the guppies were still guppies! In this example and other similar ones cited by evolutionists, it is inaccurate to extrapolate the results and say that the organism will change into a different one given a sufficient amount of time. This has never been observed.
In correspondence recently received from an evolutionist, it was stated,
The creationist authors you cite (and others as well) seem to feel they need to confuse the two [first cause and evolution]: that is, if it is impossible for either the universe or life to begin naturally, then evolution couldn’t have occurred.
This was in reference to statements such as the following made by Ph.D. evolutionists in 1960 and 1985, respectively.
There is, however, little evidence in favour of biogenesis and as yet we have no indication that it can be performed. There are many schemes by which biogenesis could have occurred but these are still suggestive schemes and nothing more. They may indicate experiments that can be performed, but they tell us nothing about what actually happened some 1,000,000,000 years ago. It is therefore a matter of faith on the part of the biologist that biogenesis did occur and he can choose whatever method of biogenesis happens to suit him personally; the evidence for what did happen is not available. (Kerkut 1960:150, emphasis added)
Science can only deal with repeatable or recurrent events. A unique or very improbable event can never be the subject of scientific investigation. If life is unique to Earth then this means that it has only arisen once in all cosmic history, which would essentially exclude any sort of scientific approach to the problem of its origin. Before the study of the origin of life can be put on a serious scientific footing, the possibility that life is unique to Earth has to be excluded. (Denton 1985:255)
Life From Outer Space?
In his Scientific American article, John Horgan examined, bone-by-one, the various theories for the origin of life which he had combined into the scenario cited at the beginning of this article, and then listed the weaknesses of each theory. The fact that
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none of these theories are adequate to explain the origin of life has caused some evolutionists to turn to the idea that organic compounds were imported from outer space. This, of course, does nothing to answer how these materials formed, but only moves the problem one step back.
Others point out various problems with this theory. For example, how did the amino acids survive the enormous heat created by the meteor’s impact with earth? Francis Crick, co- discover of the DNA-RNA inheritance mechanism, has written, “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.” Harold P. Klein of Santa Clara University and chairman of the National Academy of Sciences Committee that recently reviewed origin-of-life research (and found that more research was needed!) has said, “The simplest bacterium is so …. complicated from the point of view of a chemist that it is almost impossible to imagine how it happened” (Horgan 1991:120). Horgan adds, “Even if scientists do create something with lifelike properties in the laboratory, they must still wonder: Is that how it happened in the first place?” (1991:120).
Added to this is the question of the effect of experimenter interference. Evolutionists ask us to believe that life came about by chance, yet all experimentation takes place under extremely closely controlled conditions with highly trained expertise being brought to bear on the laboratory studies!
A Supernatural Force?
In the final paragraph of this nine-page article, Horgan writes,
What the field needs now, [Stanley] Miller comments, is not more theories or far-flung searches for alien life but more experiments. Does he ever entertain the possibility that genesis was a miracle not reproducible by mere humans? Not at all, Miller replies. “I think we just haven’t learned the right tricks yet” he says. (125)
This last statement is an excellent example of philosophical naturalism, meaning that “all events have purely natural causes and that there is nothing else — no purpose, no meaning, no intelligent agent behind the scene” (Pearcey 1990:7). Phillip Johnson says,
The assumptions of naturalism are not themselves established by scientific investigation. They are held a priori as unchallengeable — and often unexamined — components of the “scientific” world view. As long as science is defined as naturalism, any explanation appealing to an outside force or mind directing things is ruled out from the beginning. (Pearcey 1990:7, emphasis added)
Those evolutionists working in the area of origin of life experiments typically do not bother to investigate whether the evidence favors a naturalistic or non-naturalistic approach to the origin of living things. Rather, they just assume that all phenomena are the result of only natural causes and go from there. This leads to faulty conclusions since naturalism was a beginning presupposition! Fruitless searching continues, all because of the presupposition of naturalism, thus seeking only natural causes for the origin of life. When Carl Sagan makes his well-known statement,
The Cosmos is all that there is or ever will be … we are ourselves the most spectacular of all the transformations — the remote descendants
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of the Big Bang, dedicated to understanding the Cosmos from which we spring (1980:4, 21),
he is speaking not as a scientist, but rather as a prophet of philosophical naturalism!!
Origin of Life a “Singularity”
Creationists Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen have helped us greatly in thinking about what ‘science’ can and cannot properly study. The origin of life is a singularity — a one-time happening. They say,
According to wide usage, a valid theory of science must pass a three-fold test: 1) Its ability to explain what has been observed. 2) Its ability to explain what has not yet been observed. 3) Its ability to be tested by further experimentation and to be modified as required by the gathering of new data.
Notice, however, that this approach to testing theories only works if there is some pattern of recurring events against which theories can be checked and falsified if they are false … We shall call the domain operation theories operation science for these theories are concerned with the recurring phenomena of nature. Examples of operation science include the recurring motion of planets about the sun, the swinging of a pendulum, the parabolic trajectory of a cannonball, a single cell turning by stages into a fully formed organism, the recurrent cubic structure of table salt crystallizing out of water solution and the migration of a Monarch butterfly … On the other hand an understanding of the universe includes some singular events, such as origins. Unlike the recurrent operation of the universe, origins cannot be repeated for experimental test. The beginning of life, for example, just won’t repeat itself so we can test our theories. In the customary language of science, theories of origins (origin science) cannot be falsified by empirical test if they are false, as can theories of operation science. … The investigation of origins may be compared to sleuthing an unwitnessed murder. Such scenarios of reconstruction may be deemed plausible or implausible. … The best we can ever hope to achieve with wrong ideas about origins is to render them implausible. By the nature of the case, true falsification is out of the question. (1984:202–204)
Origin of life — by design or chance? I would join the growing group of scientists who vote for intelligent design as being the most reasonable answer to how life originated and how it was programmed to reproduce after its kind!
Bibliography
Brownlee, Shannon. 1990. Sex, Predators and the Theory of Evolution. U.S. News & World Report August 13:60.
Denton, Michael. 1985. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. London: Burnett Books.
Horgan, John. 1991. In The Beginning… Scientific American 264/2:116–25.
Kerkut, G.A. 1960. Implications of Evolution. Oxford: Pergamon.
Miller, Stanley & Orgel, Leslie. 1974. The Origins of Life. Engelwood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Pearcey, Nancy. 1990. Anti-Darwinism Comes to the University: An Interview with Phillip Johnson. Bible-Science Newsletter 28/6:7–11.
Sagan, Carl. 1980. Cosmos. New York: Random House.
Thaxton, Charles; Bradley, Walter; Olsen, Roger. 1984. The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories. New York: Philosophical Library.