Chemistry Refutes Chance Origin of Life: Part II

By Jon Covey, B.A., MT(ASCP)
Edited by Anita Millen, M.D., M.P.H., M.A.

Why can’t anyone remove all the cellular components from bacteria or any cell type, put them in a physiologically balanced solution with proper sources of energy and wait for living cells to compose themselves? I would give evolutionists that much of an edge to begin proving that life came from inanimate matter.

Successfully making a living cell from cellular components would prove that the transition from inanimate to animate matter might be possible. If life cannot arise from a carefully balanced solution and preformed cellular components, why all this effort and expense in origin-of-life research at the bottom level of biochemistry? This bottom level research has acted like a smoke screen.

Abiotic formation of amino acids, and even proteins, is analogous to having a handful of nuts and bolts and claiming to have produced a car. Try driving to San Francisco on the head of a sheet metal screw and a few bolts! So far, the origin-of-life experiments have all been very trivial. Let us see if we can build the organism and turn it on! Then, once we have succeeded with this, let’s peruse the early mechanisms of formation.

Stanley Miller’S Origin-of-Life Experiment

Most biology and biochemistry textbooks present Stanley Miller’s 1953 experimental results as evidence that life arose from the fortuitous organization of atoms. What Miller did is create amino acids by duplicating materials and conditions assumed to be present on the early, abiotic earth. Dr. Miller filled a flask with water, and put some ammonia, methane and hydrogen together in the upper chamber. Electrodes discharged sparks to simulate lightening. Miller let his experiment run for a week, recycling the water and using a trap to keep the newly formed amino acids away from the sparks, so that they wouldn’t be destroyed. Miller’s results were very impressive to an ignorant public and to hopeful evolutionists who were looking for something to bolster their faith.

Facts Dispel Early Earth Myth

Miller wanted to show that it was possible for amino acids to form spontaneously in conditions comparable to what were supposed to have existed when the earth was young. Many assumptions have been made about the initial conditions of our planet, and new ones will be made as the evidence warrants, but disproved hypotheses have a way of surviving in textbooks long after they are outdated. Even the presumed age of the earth (4.6 billion years) is speculative.

Ernst Haeckel’s biogenetic law (1866), which is summed up in the catchy phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," supposed that a developing embryo reflects its alleged evolutionary ancestry. Embryologists thoroughly repudiated and rejected this idea in the 1920s, but it is still published in textbooks and taught. Recently, some have tried to revive a remnant of Haeckel’s idea, Stephen Jay Gould being the best known, but there are just too many contrary facts in embryology to give it much credence. Of course, the most flagrant example of perpetuated false assumptions is Darwin’s idea that the fossil record documents descent with modification from a common ancestor through graded series of fossil organisms. There is not one qualified paleontologist who believes that. Darwin had hoped future investigators would prove his case by finding transition forms, which he believed were legion.

Miller was influenced by the famous Russian biochemist A. I. Oparin in guessing what conditions existed on the early earth. He and most evolutionists believe the early earth had no oxygen in the atmosphere, because oxygen has an extremely corrosive effect on the kinds of molecules postulated to have originated life, and oxygen would have destroyed them as they formed. There is evidence, however, in what are considered to be the oldest rocks that oxygen has always been present in the earth’s atmosphere. [1]

An important source of oxygen on the early earth would have been water photodissociation. Ultraviolet light would have split atmospheric water into hydrogen and oxygen. Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen’s book The Mystery of Life’s Origin contains a full discussion of this topic (800-999-3777).

In a way, this presence of oxygen is a relief to some, because if there were no oxygen, there could be no ozone layer, and ozone is needed to shield biochemicals and living things from ultraviolet radiation. A Christian evolutionist friend of mine recently said that the early atmosphere of ammonia and methane would have been opaque to ultraviolet radiation and this would have shielded amino acids formed in the atmosphere. The lack of evidence that there were significant quantities of ammonia or methane in the alleged early atmosphere (see below), is extremely damaging to present prebiotic evolutionary hypotheses.

No Trace Of Methane Products in Rocks

If methane had been part of the early earth atmosphere, as Miller and many other investigators suppose, it would have polymerized (formed chains) and fallen into the ocean and onto the earth’s surface. [2] This would have formed an oil slick from 1 - 10 meters deep over the surface of the earth. [3] This should be noticeable in the sedimentary rocks, but nothing even vaguely resembling it has been found, putting the correctness of a methane-rich early atmosphere in doubt. Even if methane had been there, the rapid polymerization and subsequent precipitation of methane would have rendered it unavailable to form amino acids.

Rapid Ammonia Loss

Atmospheric ammonia would have been rapidly destroyed in 30,000 years by splitting into hydrogen and nitrogen to a level too low for forming amino acids. [4] Furthermore, ammonia is very soluble in water; about 750 liters will dissolve in one liter of water. The atmospheric ammonia concentration would have quickly decreased as it dissolved in the ocean, leaving too little in the atmosphere to take part in the kinds of reactions postulated by Miller and other researchers. Therefore, the early earth couldn’t have had an ammonia rich atmosphere, and renders void my friend’s suggestion that an opaque ammonia/methane atmosphere would have protected the newly formed amino acids from UV destruction.

Miller’s experiment didn’t have the problem of insufficient ammonia, because he saturated both the water and the atmosphere, assuring that the reactions he wanted would happen. Remember too, the same electrical sparks used to form the amino acids would have rapidly destroyed them if Miller had not created a trap to take them out of the reaction chamber.

Based on the above, Miller’s experiment was clearly not realistic, but it is still always mentioned whenever the origin of life is discussed. I think if evolutionists want to prove their point, they should work backwards from living cells, to whole cell components, see if life will develop. If it does, then work backward to the next less complex level, breaking down the organelles and cell structures into their basic units and see if they will reform. Why should we ever assume life could form spontaneously over vast ages from simple amino acids if it will not do so from the higher levels of cellular organization?

Continued in Part III

References

1. Dimjroth, E. and M.M. Kimberley, "Pre-Cambrian Atmospheric Oxygen: Evidence in the Sedimentary Distribution of Carbon, Sulfur, Uranium and Iron," Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 13:1161-85, (1976).

2. Cloud, Preston E., Science 160:729, (1968).

3. Lasaga, A.C., H.D. Holland, and M.J. Dwyer, Science 174:53, (1971).

4. Abelson, P.H., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S., 55:1365, (1966).