By James M. Rochford

In preparation for a 2014 conference in Japan (called “Open Questions on the Origin of Life”), research biologist P. L. Luisi writes:

The scientific question about the origin of life is still unanswered: it is still one of the great mysteries that science is facing… Which conceptual progress have we made…? It is too much to say that we didn’t really make any, if we look at data under really and honest prebiotic conditions? Adding that this situation is not due to shortage of means and finances in the field—but to a real lack of difficulty to conceive conceptually how this nonliving-living passage really took place?^[1]

Let’s consider some of the problems facing a naturalistic account for the origin of life.

The Timeline of Life’s Arrival

When did life arise on Earth? Did life evolve over billions of years? The evidence demonstrates that it appeared about as quickly as it could have:

Life couldn’t have begun on Earth before 3.8 billion years ago (bya)

We know that life couldn’t have started before 3.8 bya for a number of reasons:

First, Earth’s oldest rocks are from roughly 3.8 bya. These were found near Greenland’s capital: Nuuk. Rana and Ross explain, “Scientists may never discover rocks much older. Prior to about 3.85 bya, early Earth had not yet cooled sufficiently to form a solid crust and oceans as permanent features.”^[2]

Second, our sun was in an earlier stage in its development at this time. As a young star, it spewed ionizing radiation at the Earth, making life impossible up until this point.^[3]

Third, asteroids bombarded the Earth before this time (between 4.0 and 3.8 bya). This cosmic bombardment would have made life non-existent.^[4] Geologists refer to this as the “Hadean Era.” It gets its name from the hellish fires of “Hades.”

Fourth, RNA assembly is highly dependent on having the proper temperature. These “hellish” conditions would not have allowed life to form before this time period.^[5] For these reasons, the conditions on Earth were simply too hostile for life to form before 3.8 bya.

Life dates from 3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago (BYA)

Scientists debate the exact beginning of first life, but there is a good case for believing that life began sometime between 3.8 bya (at the earliest) and 3.5 bya (at the latest):

First, our earliest fossils of life come at 3.5 bya. In 2011, David Wacey (from the University of Western Australia) found fossils in sandstone in West Australia which date to almost 3.4 bya.^[6] Biochemist Christian de Duve writes, “Advanced forms of life existed on earth at least 3.55 bya. In rocks of that age, fossilized imprints have been found of bacteria that look uncannily like cyanobacteria, the most highly evolved photosynthetic organisms present in the world today.”^[7] If we have fossils at this time, then life must have preceded it for some time.

Second, there are many geochemical markers that indicate life dates back to 3.8 bya. For instance, regarding the pelagic shale in West Greenland, professor Minik Rosing (of the Natural History Museum in Denmark) writes, “There is evidence for the presence of life on Earth 3800 mya from the ratio of carbon isotopes in graphite from metamorphosed sediments in Isua, West Greenland.”^[8] This presence of graphite in 3.8 billion year old rocks suggests the presence of photosynthetic microbes that must have produced it. Rana and Ross write, “The fossil and geochemical data recovered from some of the world’s oldest geological formations consistently tell the same story. Life was present early in Earth’s history. Prokaryotic microorganisms were firmly entrenched on Earth at 3.7 bya. The record for ancient life may well date beyond this to 3.8+ billion years in age.”^[9] Of course prokaryotic stromatolites were most likely the first life. This gave rise to photosynthesis and an oxygen rich atmosphere—giving rise to eukaryotic life.

Third, life did not take billions of years to evolve. Instead, life began far sooner than biologists originally predicted. First life only had a narrow window of about 50 million years.^[10] While 50 million years might seem like a lot of time, it is actually an inconceivably short. Biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould writes,

We are left with very little time between the development of suitable conditions for life on the earth’s surface and the origin of life. Life is not a complex accident that required immense time to convert the vastly improbable into the nearly certain. Instead, life, for all its intricacy, probably arose rapidly about as soon as it could.^[11]

Paleontologist Niles Eldredge writes, “In the very oldest rocks that stand a chance of showing signs of life, we find those signs—those vestiges—of life. Life is intrinsic to the Earth!”[12]

The Complexity of First Life

In the 1830’s, biologists Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann (working independently from one another) discovered that life is comprised of cells. Because they lacked sophisticated microscopes, they were only able to observe the cell wall, the nucleus, and the protoplasm. Therefore, during this time, scientists believed that a cell was nothing more than a wall surrounding a nucleus with a jellylike protoplasm.

Today, by contrast, biologists have discovered that the cell is unbelievably complex. Even the simplest cells are composed of thousands of different proteins.

What are proteins?

Proteins are made of long chains of amino acids. It takes roughly 20 different types of amino acids to create a protein, creating roughly 30,000 distinct types of proteins. Amino acids create proteins by folding into certain functions. However, if the amino acids are not arranged in the proper order, they will not create the protein properly. If this happens, the cell will not function. This would only account for one protein. But we need many for cells to function.

What is DNA?

Amino acids are organized according to the information and directions of another large molecule within the cell called Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA stores instructions and information for sequencing these amino acids into proteins. Without DNA, these amino acids would not be sequenced in the proper order. When the cell replicates, the helix of the DNA splits and messenger RNA copies the information to build the protein. The copied information leaves the nucleus and attaches to the ribosome. Translation begins at this point. The messenger RNA builds a chain of amino acids, which are hundreds of units long. The arrangement of these amino acids determines the type of protein that they will become. When translation is finished, it is folded into a precise shape—critical for its function in the cell. This entirely complicated process is all necessary for life to exist. Thus, DNA literally serves as information.

DNA as information

Even atheist Richard Dawkins explains DNA as information: “The genetic code is truly digital, in exactly the same sense as computer codes.”^[13] Intelligent Design theorist Stephen Meyer writes, “In Darwin’s time few, if any, biologists talked about biological or genetic information, but today they routinely refer to DNA, RNA, and proteins as carriers or repositories of information… Life does not consist of just matter and energy, but also information.”^[14] Origin of life biochemist Leslie Orgel writes, “Living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals… fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity.”^[15] However, DNA contains both complexity (i.e. improbability) and specificity (i.e. a specific pattern).

Consider a recent experiment from Harvard University. Researchers used DNA as a storage system for information. Sebastian Anthony writes,

One gram of DNA can store 700 terabytes of data. That’s 14,000 50-gigabyte Blu-ray discs… in a droplet of DNA that would fit on the tip of your pinky. To store the same kind of data on hard drives—the densest storage medium in use today—you’d need 233 3TB drives, weighing a total of 151 kilos.^[16]

The information encoded in each living cell is extraordinary. In regard to the information storage of the cell, atheist Richard Dawkins writes,

There is enough storage capacity in the DNA of a single lily seed or a single salamander sperm to store the Encyclopaedia Britannica 60 times over. Some species of the unjustly called ‘primitive’ amoebas have as much information in their DNA as 1,000 Encyclopaedia Britannicas.^[17]

Agnostic Paul Davies compares the contents of a cell to that of a “supercomputer.”^[18] He writes, “To be sure, life uses chemistry to enact its agenda, but the key to its near-magical qualities lies with the way cells process and replicate information.”^[19]

How complex was the first living cell?

Minimum Complexity of First Life

Microbiologists run “minimal complexity” experiments to hypothesize how simplified life could possibly be:

Minimum complexity of DEPENDENT life

Parasitic organisms (like bacteria) contain somewhere between 250 and 350 gene products (i.e. proteins or functional RNAs).^[20] The Mycoplasma genitalium requires only 482 proteins.^[21] Though Meyer writes, “Some scientists speculate (but have not demonstrated) that a simple one-celled organism might have been able to survive with as few as 250-400 genes.”^[22]

Minimum complexity of INDEPENDENT Life

Independent organisms contain somewhere between 1,500 and 1,900 gene products.^[23] Biologist Colin Paterson writes that the 1,700 genes of the Methanococcus is “perhaps close to the minimum necessary for independent life.”^[24] Consider the smallest genome sizes in existing species today:

Could life have evolved somehow?

Unfortunately for naturalistic thinkers, this isn’t even a possibility for a very obvious reason: We are considering the origin of life. Of course, Darwinian evolution is dependent on life already existing before it can get going.

This is why atheist and ardent Darwinist Richard Dawkins admits, “The origin of life, by contrast, lies outside the reach of [evolution], because natural selection cannot proceed without it.”^[26] Likewise, theoretical biologist Howard Pattee explains, “There is no evidence that hereditary evolution [natural selection] occurs except in cells which already have… the DNA, the replicating and translating enzymes, and all the control systems and structures necessary to reproduce themselves.”^[27] And Theodosius Dobzhansky (a leading 20^th century evolutionary biologist) writes, “Prebiological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.”^[28] Thus the question which faces us is a difficult one: How did the first cell come together in the ancient Earth?

Problems facing the origin of life

There are several insuperable problems facing those in search of a naturalistic account for the origin of life:

1. Chicken and egg problem: Enzymes and DNA

A “chicken and egg” problem is one where it isn’t possible to get “one without the other.” For instance, M.C. Esher’s famous “Drawing Hands” picture, where two hands are drawing each other, where we need one hand to create the other (and vice versa). Likewise, in order to have a self-replicating cell, we face another “chicken and egg” problem: We need DNA to create enzymes in the cell, but we need enzymes to unzip the DNA. Molecular biologist David Goodsell explains that this “is one of the unanswered riddles of biochemistry: which came first, proteins or protein synthesis? If proteins are needed to make proteins, how did the whole thing get started?”^[29] Harvard evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin notes,

No living molecule [i.e., biomolecule] is self-reproducing. Only whole cells may contain all the necessary machinery for self-reproduction…. Not only is DNA incapable of making copies of itself, aided or unaided, but it is incapable of ‘making’ anything else…. The proteins of the cell are made from other proteins, and without that protein-forming machinery nothing can be made.^[30]

In 1971, French biologist Jacques Monod noted,

The code is meaningless unless translated. The modern cell’s translating machinery consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in DNA: the code cannot be translated otherwise than by products of translation.^[31]

The late British philosopher Sir Karl Popper wondered,

What makes the origin of life and the genetic code a disturbing riddle is this: the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a really baffling circle: a vicious circle it seems, for any attempt to form a model, or a theory, of the genesis of the genetic code.^[32]

2. The chirality of amino acids

There are two versions of each amino acid: left-handed and right-handed. This is sometimes called the chirality of amino acids. Proteins only allow for left-handed amino acids, while sugars only allow for right-handed. This only adds to the improbability of getting the proper sequence. Meyer writes,

Functioning proteins tolerate only left-handed amino acids, yet in abiotic amino-acid production the right-handed and left-handed isomers are produced with roughly equal frequency. Taking this into consideration further compounds the improbability of attaining a biologically functioning protein. The probability of attaining, at random, only L–amino acids in a hypothetical peptide chain 150 amino acids long is (1/2)¹⁵⁰, or again roughly 1 chance in 10⁴⁵. Starting from mixtures of D-forms and L-forms, the probability of building a 150-amino-acid chain at random in which all bonds are peptide bonds and all amino acids are L-form is, therefore, roughly 1 chance in 10⁹⁰.^[33]

3. The specified complexity of amino acid sequencing

Last but certainly not least, in order to have a functional protein, we need a specific ordering of amino acids—not just any old arrangement. Meyer writes,

In some cases, changing even one amino acid at a given site results in the loss of protein function. Moreover, because there are 20 biologically occurring amino acids, the probability of getting a specific amino acid at a given site is small—1/ 20.^[34]

For every combination of amino acids that produces a functional protein there exists a vast number of other possible combinations that do not… Even a relatively short protein of, say, 150 amino acids represents one sequence among an astronomically large number of other possible sequence combinations (approximately 10¹⁹⁵).^[35]

On the assumption that each site in a protein chain requires a particular amino acid, the probability of attaining a particular protein 150 amino acids long would be (1/ 20) ¹⁵⁰, or roughly 1 chance in 10¹⁹⁵.^[36]

If we do not assume that each amino acid needs to be specified (and some variance is allowed), this figure drops. Biochemist Robert Sauer (and his MIT team) determined that even with variance the figures are still astronomical (10⁶³) for a 100 amino acid string. Other researchers—like Douglas Axe—have determined that 10⁷⁷ is a better figure.^[37] When all of this is combined, Meyer concludes, “The odds of getting even one functional protein of modest length (150 amino acids) by chance from a prebiotic soup is no better than 1 chance in 10¹⁶⁴.”^[38] This is why atheist Francis Crick (discoverer of DNA) writes, “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.”^[39]

Conclusion

When we consider the improbability of life arising from natural causes, this is good evidence for an alternate solution—like design. Consider words of scientists who have studied the subject. In 1988, biochemist Klaus Dose writes,

More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.^[40]

In 1996, James Shapiro (a leading molecular biologist from the University of Chicago) writes,

There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations. It is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation for such a vast subject—evolution—with so little rigorous explanation of how well its basic theses work in illuminating specific instances of biological adaptation or diversity.^[41]

In his 1999 book The Fifth Miracle, agnostic Paul Davies writes,

When I set out to write this book, I was convinced that science was close to wrapping up the mystery of life’s origin… Having spent a year or two researching the field, I am now of the opinion that there remains a huge gulf in our understanding… This gulf in understanding is not merely ignorance about certain technical details; it is a major conceptual lacuna.^[42]

More recently in 2010, Davies explains, “All that can be said at this time is that the problem of life’s origin is very far from being clearly formulated, and nowhere near being solved.”^[43] In 2001, agnostic microbiologist Franklin Harold writes,

Of all the unsolved mysteries remaining in science, the most consequential may be the origin of life… The origin of life is also a stubborn problem, with no solution in sight.^[44]

This scientific evidence for the origin of life persuaded one of the world’s leading atheists, Antony Flew, to begin to believe in God. In his 2007 book There is a God, Flew explains, “The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such ‘end-directed, self-replicating’ life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind.”^[45]

We might conclude by asking: If this scientific evidence is not persuasive, then why did one of the world’s leading atheists begin to believe in God because of it?

Common Objections

Isn’t this just a “god of the gaps” argument for theism?

Doesn’t the RNA world theory solve the origin of life?

Doesn’t biochemical predestination solve the origin of life?

What about the Stanley Miller experiment?

Haven’t scientists (like J. Craig Venter) created life in the lab?

Couldn’t life have been brought from outer space?

Further Reading

Davies, P. C. W. The Fifth Miracle: the Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Rana, Fazale, and Hugh Ross. Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face off. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004.

Rana, Fazale. The Cell’s Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator’s Artistry. Baker Publishing Group. 2008.

Meyer, Stephen C. Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. New York: HarperOne, 2009.

Meyer’s book is the best book on the subject of the origin of life from a theistic perspective.