How Did Life Begin?
Introduction
Concerning the origin of life, we have only two options. Either life emerged through natural processes, or life was created by a supernatural intelligence, that is, God.
If we’re brave enough to face the question, then each one of us will eventually have to decide what to believe. For Bible believing Christians, the answer is easy. God created all of life on earth through the power of his word.[1] That may seem like a lot of faith to some people. But it’s not blind faith. In fact, it’s a very reasonable faith.
In this post, I will try to explain how the origin of life question always leads us straight to God.
Natural Selection Can’t Help
For the person with a commitment to Naturalism, the only explanation for life is Darwinian evolution. That is, natural selection acting on rare, beneficial mutations.
But natural selection only works on living things. We have to ask: how can non-living chemicals organize themselves into the first self-reproducing organism? If natural selection doesn’t help, then all the evolutionist has is chance.
Let’s consider what chance would look like.
The Simple Cell
The basic building blocks of all living systems are proteins. Proteins are huge molecules that operate inside the cell to keep the cell functional and alive. Without proteins, there would be no life. The simplest known cell requires over 600 proteins just to stay alive.[2]
Proteins are made up of smaller chemical compounds called amino acids. There are 20 different kinds of amino acids used in all the proteins found in life. For a protein to be constructed and work properly, the correct amino acids must be arranged in the right sequence along a chain. Then the chain is folded up into the protein’s final form. The simplest known protein contains 100 amino acids. The average protein contains 300.
Now, given a primordial ocean filled with amino acids, what are the odds of forming just one of the simplest proteins by chance, through random interactions?
Consider the Probability
To build even the simplest protein, the correct amino acid out of a possible twenty must be placed in each position in the chain. We have a 1 in 20 chance of getting it right for each position. But we have 100 positions to fill. The chance of getting all 100 positions filled with the correct amino acid is:
(1/20)100 = one chance in 1.26 x 10130
Biologists have estimated that on a planet covered by a primordial ocean filled with all 20 types of amino acids, the time necessary to construct a functional protein of 100 units would be roughly equivalent to the oldest estimated age of the universe (15 billion years) multiplied by 10 to the 60th power.[3]
But despite this inconceivable timeframe, even if this protein somehow correctly self-assembled, the mystery of life’s origin is still far from resolved. Why?
Because even the simplest cell requires at least 600 proteins to keep it functional and alive.
Some people say that if there is still just a chance, then it could happen. But not according to the laws of probability. If the chance of an event occurring is smaller than 1 in 1050, then the event will never occur.[4]
Undiscovered Laws of Chemistry?
Mainstream scientists no longer think that life and the building blocks of life could have originated by chance. They are now looking for a way to explain the origin of life through some form of law or combination of laws that would allow it to happen.[5]
The problem with this idea is that the laws of chemistry as we understand them today actually oppose the natural formation of amino acids and proteins.
Any primordial oceans would have surely contained water. But if any organic molecules such as proteins or amino acids had begun to form, the water would have immediately destroyed them through the process of hydrolysis.
Hydrolysis, which means “water splitting,” is the addition of a water molecule between two bonded molecules, in this case two amino acids, which would cause them to split apart. So water naturally breaks chains of amino acids. Any proteins that might have formed in the early oceans would have been quickly destroyed by the water.[6]
On the other hand, if we consider that life might have begun on land, we have a problem with oxygen.
Oxygen destroys biological molecules, specifically amino acid bonds. Oxygen is a poisonous gas that oxidizes organic and inorganic materials, so it is lethal to any organism that has not developed protection against it. Oxygen in the early atmosphere would have destroyed amino acids faster than they could form.
Yet, if there was no oxygen in the atmosphere, then there would be no ozone layer. Without the ozone layer, ultraviolet rays from the sun would destroy any exposed biological molecules. Michael Denton comments that:
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.[7]
Let’s Not Forget Information
As if all of this isn’t bad enough, we need to remember the information in DNA. DNA carries the instructions for building proteins and is present in the nucleus of every living cell.
It would be impossible for an organism to reproduce if it did not have these coded instructions preserved and available for use from one generation to the next.
The very simplest bacteria known today contains 482 genes consisting of 580,000 bases in its DNA.[8]
Even the simplest form of life is an information processing machine. And information does not emerge through natural processes. Just like information contained in the printed page of a book, information anywhere always requires an intelligent source.
Physicist Dr. Werner Gitt has said:
There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter.[9]
Physicist (and evolutionist) Paul Davies says:
How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software? Nobody knows… There is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing.[10]
Life From Outer Space?
Some secular scientists have suggested that life might have come from outer space. This idea is known as Panspermia.
But this just pushes the problem farther away. If it’s impossible for life to emerge by natural processes here on earth, then how can we believe that it would be possible on a different planet? By definition, the laws of chemistry are universal and will be in operation everywhere.
Conclusion
Recall that concerning the origin of life, we have only two options. Either life emerged through natural processes, or life was created by a supernatural intelligence, that is, God.
Considering what we now know about the complexity of even the simplest cell, it is clear for anyone to see that life could not possibly have come about through natural processes.
Since the evidence naturally leads to God, then a belief in God is a reasonable faith. To believe otherwise is a blind faith, because this means believing something despite the evidence to the contrary.
The famous British cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle abandoned his atheism when he said,
The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 naughts 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 any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.[11]
You might be reading this and you’ve always been skeptical about belief in God. That’s okay. But maybe you’ve never heard this kind of information before. And perhaps you’re wondering if God might be real after all.
If this is you, then you’re not alone. It’s never too late to make a decision to change what you believe. Can I just encourage you to consider turning toward God? And if you’d like to learn more of what Christianity is all about, a good starting place would be: the Christian Story.
[1] Genesis chapter 1.
[2] From the movie Unlocking the Mystery of Life, Illustra Media, 2010.
[3] Unlocking the Mystery of Life, Illustra Media, 2010.
[4] Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge, gen eds., The New Answers Book 2 (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2020), 72.
[5] Unlocking the Mystery of Life, Illustra Media, 2010.
[6] The New Answers Book 2, 66.
[7] M. Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, MD: Adler & Adler, 1985), 261.
[8] Achilles heels page 94.
[9] Dr. Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2006).
[10] Rober Carter, ed., Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels (Powder Springs, GA: Creation Book Publishers, 2014), 85.
[11] Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels, 97.
WOW…This is remarkable Greg…so much study to relate and display all this information! It all makes sense! I would certainly turn to God, if I didn’t know Him and believe in Him already!
Elaine