Hello, and welcome to Episode 6, Part 2 of Foundations Restored, a Catholic perspective
on origins.
I'm your host, Keith Jones.
This episode explains that despite biology textbook claims, studies in natural science
have not uncovered a viable naturalistic explanation of how lifeless or inorganic matter somehow
self-organized to become the first living organism.
This line of study is generally called biochemical evolution, and you will soon see that as with
other evolutionary icons, false claims about the origin of life are routinely presented
to students and biology textbooks in an attempt to further the Cartesian-Darwinian narrative.
In general, those who accept biochemical evolution as a viable naturalistic explanation of life
believe that the first life form arose from non-living matter, which amounts to a scientifically
acceptable form of the long-ago debunked theory of spontaneous generation.
This spontaneous generation is supposed to have come about through the undirected assemblage
of one or a few functional biological molecules.
Then over billions of years of time and random interactions, these molecules not only replicated
themselves but spontaneously assembled into the first hypothetical primitive life form,
presumably resembling what we now know today as bacteria.
The questions we will be addressing in this bonus segment are whether inorganic material
can spontaneously give rise to biologically functional organic molecules, and if so, whether
it is at all probable that these spontaneously generated molecules could assemble into the
first cell.
While biochemical evolution has not been formally codified into a scientific theory, scientific
observations and experiments can be used to objectively evaluate the plausibility of the
spontaneous generation of organic matter from inorganic matter, and by extension, evaluate
the plausibility of life arising from non-life, or what is called abiogenesis.
We will here examine the most common evidences put forward for biochemical evolution and
discuss their implications.
The most frequently cited piece of evidence in the discussion of biochemical evolution
is the Miller-Urey experiment, originally conducted in the 1950s.
The concept dates to the 1920s, when A. I. Operon and J. B. S. Haldane independently
conjectured that the Earth's early atmosphere was highly reducing, meaning that it contained
little to no oxygen.
This is important, as a reducing environment would have been favorable to the formation
of organic molecules.
Some 30 years later, Stanley Miller, a graduate student under the direction of Harold Urey,
decided to test this hypothesis in the laboratory.
Miller mixed highly reducing gases that he thought would have been abundant in the Earth's
early atmosphere, mostly hydrogen, methane, and ammonia, over heated water, which contributed
water vapor to the mixture, and he passed a spark through the artificial atmosphere
to stimulate lightning.
Hopeful that he would find something, Miller could not have been entirely prepared for
what accumulated in his apparatus.
He had formed not only simple organic molecules, like cyanide and formaldehyde, but also long-chain
hydrocarbons and what was more, the holy grail of biochemical evolution at the time, amino
acids.
Amino acids are key because they are the molecular building blocks of proteins, a key component
in living organisms, and thought, at the time, to be instrumental in uncovering the mechanism
for Darwin's idea of descent with modification.
As a result, the so-called Miller-Urey experiment was immediately hailed as a breakthrough in
evolutionary biology, and a summary of the experiment soon began to appear in the textbooks
as evidence that biochemical evolution had occurred.
But did Miller really offer substantial evidence in favor of abiogenesis?
As we have seen with other icons of evolution, a closer look at the evidence is warranted.
To begin our discussion, it's helpful to know that biological life makes use of four
categories of macromolecules.
The two most important to our discussion are proteins and nucleic acids.
Proteins are highly complex molecules made from an alphabet of 20 different amino acids.
The variable side chains of these amino acids give the proteins their unique three-dimensional
structure.
This structure, in turn, gives the protein its ability to perform its specific function.
A specific sequence of amino acids is required, in all cases, in order to have a biologically
active protein.
An alteration to the three-dimensional structure can reduce or eliminate the protein's ability
to function.
Nucleic acids, on the other hand, are a bit different structurally.
Existing as only two types, DNA and RNA, nucleic acids are formed from an alphabet of four
nucleotides, abbreviated G, C, A, and T, and their shape is very repetitive.
Yet despite this seeming simplicity, these molecules contain all of the genetic information
available to an organism.
Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, were the molecules produced in the Miller-Geary
experiment.
Amino acids come in two different forms.
These forms are mirror images of each other and are referred to as chiral molecules.
Chiral amino acids are referred to as being left-handed, L-form, or right-handed, D-form.
Proteins formed inside living organisms use only one kind of chiral amino acid, the L-form.
This form is sorted and selected for by the complicated subcellular machinery that assembles
proteins.
Only living things are able to incorporate just L-form amino acids into a protein as
it is being built.
Proteins that would form under purely natural, prebiotic conditions would end up with a roughly
half and half mix of both chiral forms of amino acids.
In the Miller-Geary experiment, L-form and D-form amino acids were produced in roughly
equal proportions.
If this mimics the conditions found in Earth's early atmosphere, the chances of a single
protein being formed from all L-form amino acids are astronomically low.
The chances of all proteins forming in this way are unimaginably lower.
But the Miller-Geary experiment has a fundamental flaw that is even more problematic than chirality.
And this problem lies in the mixture of atmospheric gases chosen by Stanley Miller to test his hypothesis.
Further research has indicated that some gases Miller needed to produce amino acids would
not have been present in sufficient concentration in the early atmosphere to facilitate the
formation of his products.
Another research suggests the presence of gases in the early atmosphere that would have
prevented the formation of any biologically relevant compounds at all.
The methane-ammonia mixture, which formed the bulk of Miller's experimental atmosphere,
was reported to be an inaccurate representation of the atmosphere on primitive Earth by geologists
as early as the 1960s.
In 1966, Philip Abelson of the Carnegie Institute of Washington wrote,
If the methane-ammonia hypothesis were correct, there should be geochemical evidence supporting it.
What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on Earth?
The answer is that there is no evidence for it, but much against it.
The methane-ammonia hypothesis is in major trouble with respect to the ammonia component.
For ammonia on the primitive Earth would have quickly disappeared.
The article cites the rapid degradation of ammonia under exposure to ultraviolet radiation,
stating that even if ammonia were present in the same concentration as nitrogen in the
atmosphere today, roughly 70%, it would have degraded in approximately 30,000 years.
This does not leave nearly enough time for biochemical evolution to have occurred.
Additional studies of low molecular weight compounds present in the atmosphere suggest
that even if ammonia had not degraded from UV exposure, it would likely have escaped
from the early atmosphere due to its low molecular weight and consequent high volatility.
The article goes on to comment that methane, due to its low atomic weight, would have been
subject to similar volatility and would have been as little likely to be present in high
concentrations in Earth's atmosphere as ammonia.
This view, that the Earth's atmosphere would likely not have been reducing, has been confirmed
and is now generally accepted among scientists.
Recent textbooks claim that even without the methane-ammonia atmosphere, the Miller-Urey
experiment produces organic molecules, provided that the atmosphere is not oxidizing.
However, this claim stands in direct contradiction to published scientific research, indicating
that in such a neutral atmosphere, the primary product of chemical reactions amongst atmospheric
components would be cyanic acid, a molecule not used in the synthesis of organic compounds.
It also does the evolutionary hypothesis no good if evidence is put forward that the early
atmosphere may have been oxidizing.
And this is just what has happened.
As early as the 1980s, geologists had identified a high oxygen content in the earliest dated
rocks.
Further work at the turn of the century confirmed the presence of oxygen in rocks that were
dated as significantly older than when oxygen was supposed to have first formed in the atmosphere.
Taken together, recent studies indicate that the atmospheric oxygen content was likely
high in the early Earth, too high for amino acid formation, as the presence of oxygen
reduces Miller's primordial amino acid-generating atmosphere into a useless soup of unstable
intermediate products.
Miller and Urey themselves confirmed that no amino acid synthesis would occur in an
oxidizing atmosphere.
The design of Miller's experimental setup is questionable in other ways as well.
The apparatus included a specially designed trap to catch any amino acids that would have
been synthesized and concentrate them in a specific location.
Without the trap, the amino acids would have been exposed to the continued energy input
from the sparks and likely have been degraded.
UV radiation, which was used in later experiments, would have resulted in similar damage, and
the reports of the experiment's success are greatly exaggerated.
After a week of sending sparks through the experimental atmosphere, Miller obtained primarily
the two simplest amino acids, glycine and alanine, and both at yields of 1% or less.
This is hardly the concentration that would be required for successful organic synthesis.
And without a way to trap the amino acids together in nature, they would never have
been in close enough contact to react anyway.
Jonathan Sarfati, a physical chemist from the Victoria University of Wellington, points
out another general flaw that plagues origin-of-life experiments like Miller and Urey's.
Origin-of-life simulations purport to show that life could arise by time and chance.
In reality, even the meager results obtained are only possible because of the design of
the experiment.
A common procedure is to find a trace of compound A in a spark discharge experiment and compound
B in another simulation, sometimes with mutually incompatible conditions, then claim C, A and
B can be produced under realistic primitive Earth conditions.
They then obtain pure homochiral concentrated A and B from an industrial synthetic chemicals
company, react them to form traces of the more complex compound C. Then the news is
trumpeted that C will form under primitive Earth conditions.
But this doesn't show that dilute A and B can react that way, that they can be produced
together or that they won't react with contaminants D, E or F that were also formed in the first
experiments.
In short, the evolutionist simulations have an unacceptable level of intelligent interference.
In addition to the inappropriate atmosphere in the experiment, and all the laws of physics
and chemistry that would have to be bent or broken for amino acids to be spontaneously
formed on the early Earth, there was also the problem of the nature of the molecules
being formed in the Miller-Urey experiment.
Primordial molecules must be capable of replication, with at least a modicum of fidelity, and so
it is generally accepted that they must carry genetic information, at least in some way.
When Miller was conducting his experiment, scientists of his era were still hotly debating
whether DNA or protein was the hereditary material of the cell, the molecule that allowed
information to be passed from one generation to the next about body plan, color, size and
other physiological factors.
Formation of amino acids from this simulated early atmosphere was particularly exciting
to scientists because it provided them with the building block of what many at the time
assumed was the genetic code.
Unfortunately, the same year that Miller was conducting his experiments, Alfred Hershey
and Martha Chase provided irrefutable evidence that it was in fact DNA, not protein, that
was the genetic material.
Experiments continued, however, with Miller's primordial amino acids.
Despite the new discoveries concerning the nature of DNA, it was still thought that proteins
might be capable of organizing and reproducing themselves.
Subsequent experiments showed that this was not the case.
In addition, though DNA was simpler in its three-dimensional structure than protein,
it was a much more fragile molecule and it was incapable of replicating itself without
the aid of a sophisticated array of proteins.
This means that even if a DNA molecule could have formed spontaneously, it would not have
been capable of passing its genetic information along to a progenitor and so could not serve
as an ideal origin-of-life candidate due to its inability to perform any functional biological
processes.
Biologists were thus left with a formidable problem, for it seemed that the proteins could
not exist without the information coded in the DNA, and the DNA could not exist without
the action of the proteins.
In the words of preeminent evolutionary biologist, Gerald Joyce,
A sophisticated replication machinery is needed to maintain a sizable genome, but a
sizable genome is needed in the first place to encode a sophisticated replication machinery.
This is a difficulty that cannot be waved away by assuming a bootstrapping process of
steady improvement in replication efficiency and fidelity permitting progressively larger
genomes.
A new precursor molecule was needed, one that could replicate itself and ideally could carry
genetic information, and so the RNA world hypothesis was born.
The ideas behind the RNA world are frequently advanced as a second major evidence of biochemical
evolution, but these arguments are far more theoretical than empirical and offer no real
support for the idea that life could spontaneously arise from non-living chemicals.
Jonathan Sarfati, in a recent contribution to the book, Evolution's Achilles Heels,
lists 11 biological reasons against inferring an RNA world.
His objections include, among other things,
The complexity of the RNA molecule which make it unlikely to arise spontaneously.
The extreme instability of RNA, which is less stable even than DNA.
The complexity of the nucleotides or building blocks of the RNA.
The lack of cytosine production in any spark-discharge experiments like the Miller-Urey experiment,
which means that one of the four letters of the RNA alphabet would be missing.
The chirality of nucleotides which presents a similar problem to that described for amino
acids earlier.
And the extremely limited chemical functionality of RNA, which is insufficient to account for
the minimal processes needed to form self-replicating life.
Sarfati adds,
Even if such polymers could form, which first must have been without a pre-existing template,
they would then have to be able to replicate themselves.
This replication must be accurate, otherwise it would lose any information it managed to
acquire by chance.
Even 96.7% accuracy, as per one highly touted case, would be nowhere near accurate enough.
The result would be error catastrophe.
Human DNA replication has an error rate of approximately one mistake every billion, thanks
to the well-designed, sophisticated error correction machinery.
As Gerald Joyce, the leading proponent of the RNA world hypothesis, himself stated in
an article in Nature,
There may never be direct physical evidence of an RNA-based organism, and the assumption
that an RNA world or pre-RNA world ever existed is inferred by considering the requirements
for Darwinian evolution and the biochemical properties of RNA.
The claims set forth for biochemical evolution have much fanfare but little basis in truth.
This icon of evolution is necessary to the worldview of naturalism, and yet the real
evidence strongly suggests that life did not spontaneously arise from non-life.
Darwinian naturalism demands naturalistic causes and rejects all non-naturalistic causes
before discussion can even be opened.
Any compromise on this point is rejected out of hand.
The origin of life and the study of evolution are not simple subjects.
If they were, there would be little debate surrounding them.
All of the criticisms against chemical evolution offered here can be argued against, but these
arguments remain primarily speculative, and they are speculations that are being raised
against compelling empirical data.
The defense of evolution then becomes a creative mental exercise with little or no testable,
observable basis.
If science is to be treated as a way of knowing based on physical reality, purely hypothetical
arguments without a physical basis must be rejected when they conflict with empirical
data.
Evolutionary biologists do not have the right to make science into a philosophical popularity
contest.
In addition to the problems discussed here with the formation of biological molecules,
more and more scientists are admitting that even simple life is not so simple as once
thought.
Even if it were not almost astronomically impossible to form a single macromolecule,
the odds against spontaneously forming the simplest possible single-celled organism from
pre-existing macromolecules are still unimaginable.
An article in New Scientist in 2009 stated,
There is no doubt that the common ancestor possessed DNA, RNA and proteins, a universal
genetic code, ribosomes, the protein-building factories, ATP, and a proton-powered enzyme
for making ATP.
The detailed mechanisms for reading off DNA and converting genes into proteins were also
in place.
In short, then, the last common ancestor of all life looks pretty much like a modern cell.
This doesn't sound like evolution at all.
As early as 1999, evolutionary biologist James Patterson stated that the minimum necessary
for a free-living organism was about 1,700 genes, comprising about 1.7 million nucleotides
of genetic information.
He based his report on studies of Methanococcus bacteria, one of the simplest free-living
organisms.
In 2006, an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences stated
that this minimum was somewhat lower and closer to the Mycoplasma bacterium at 420 functional
genes.
In 2011, the minimum of simplicity was revised when scientists hypothesized that this universal
common ancestor must have had a universal organelle to accommodate the storage of high-energy
compounds.
This was an extraordinary statement considering that no bacterium currently known contains
organelles, so the original common ancestor is now theorized to have been more complex
than the simplest life on Earth today.
Frederick Hoyle, a long-time proponent of the evolutionary hypothesis, calculated the
odds against forming all the functional proteins necessary for life in just one place by random
events where one chance in 10 to the 40,000.
This number is so large that some calculators refuse to accept it.
While odds calculations can be difficult to represent accurately, it should give the casual
observer pause that there are only 10 to the 80 atoms in the known universe, approximately
10 to the 12 atomic interactions per second, and supposedly 10 to the 18 seconds since
the Big Bang according to evolutionists' erroneous timescales.
This leaves us with a hypothetical 10 to the 110 atomic interactions since the universe
began.
So Hoyle's calculations indicate that the likelihood of life evolving through pure chance
would be 10 to the 39,890 times less likely than finding one specific atomic interaction
in the entire universe.
Such odds do not just approach the universal probability boundary, they far exceed it,
rendering the events they describe logically and statistically impossible.
As we've seen, evolution once again fails.
It fails to spontaneously generate organic monomers, let alone polymers, under what geologists
have discovered are the probable conditions of Earth's early atmosphere.
It fails to provide any direct evidence for the alternative RNA world.
It fails to account for the astronomical odds against the formation of even simple
forms of life, presuming that somehow functional biological molecules could randomly assemble.
In short, evolution fails to explain a naturalistic origin for life, just as it fails to provide
an adequate mechanism to account for the diversity of life, just as it fails to provide any convincing
examples of macroevolution.
Darwinism is a failed hypothesis.