FANTASY OF LIFE'S ORIGIN

According to most evolutionists living matter arose by chance in the primeval oceans some 3,500 million years ago, through chance natural processes.¹ It is claimed that gases in the atmosphere are acted upon by lightning to form amino acids, which eventually, by some unknown, unobserved process, developed into living organisms. But is there any evidence for this? Note this comment by American evolutionist and space scientist Dr. Robert Jastrow, “There is none... The theory of the chemical origin of life is held by scientists as an article of faith without proof.”² (emphasis added). Yet in spite of such frank admissions, and the fact that the primitive idea of 'spontaneous generation' was disproved in the 19th century by scientists such as Redi and Pasteur, those who are committed to a materialistic view of life's origin still cling to belief in the impossible.

A FANTASY WORLD

Evolutionists have to imagine a fantasy world with hypothetical conditions never observed to make their theory of life's origin appear credible. They must postulate an early earth with an oxygen-free atmosphere, even though there is compelling evidence from the Precambrian rocks that oxygen was present in the beginning.³ Then they have to imagine that lightning flashes would create amino acids, but not also destroy those already formed.

Millions of people have been persuaded that life could have started in this way because of a famous 1953 experiment by Dr. Stanley Miller. He attempted to simulate the [imaginary] conditions present on the early earth, but using an apparatus containing ammonia, hydrogen, methane and water vapour to represent the 'primeval atmosphere.' By passing an electrical spark through these gases — to represent lightning — Miller produced four of the 20 amino acids with which living organisms are constructed. However, to prevent the destruction of these amino acids, his apparatus included a cold trap! There would have been no cold trap on the early earth, so if, by some stroke of luck, a flash of lightning had succeeded in forming amino acids, the next flash could just as easily have destroyed them. A further serious problem is that Miller's experiment produced a 50-50 mixture of left- and right-handed amino acids. All known life-forms use only the left-handed type, so how could random, chance processes sort out the two types, retaining only the left-handed form? In short, Miller's experiment used the wrong ingredients, simulated the wrong conditions and produced the wrong amino acids. It was worthless as far as explaining how life on earth began.

'PREBIOTIC SOUP'

Side-stepping the problems of forming the first amino acids, evolutionists have theorised how these 'building blocks of life they might have come together to form proteins. Proteins can contain as few as 50 amino acids, or as many as tens of thousands, but the exact sequence is always vital. In a protein of only 50 amino acids there are 10⁴⁵ ways of arranging them — that's 1 followed by 65 zeros! Yet only one of these ways is right. So the possibility of functioning proteins being formed by the random, chance linking of amino acids is essentially zero, and can be fairly described as impossible.

It is comparable to placing a set of alphabet cards in a hat and expecting to take them out at random to spell words and sentences? Consider the word 'creation', just 8 letters long. Even if only those 8 letters, and no others, were placed in the hat, there would be only one chance in 40,320 of the cards being drawn in the correct sequence. With all 26 letters of the alphabet present, the chances of forming single words would be exceeding remote, let alone meaningful sentences. Evolutionists then believe that when the basic organic compounds needed to make a living cell had been assembled — which as we have seen involves a massive leap of faith — they were nurtured in an ocean rich in chemical nutrients, the so-called 'prebiotic soup'. Molecular biologist Dr. Michael Denton commented, 'Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realise there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence.'⁴ So the 'prebiotic soup' is another item in the evolutionists fantasy world.

NO 'SIMPLE' CELLS!

At one time, cells were believed to be little more than 'blobs of jelly', but we now know that a cell is incredibly complex, like a tiny factory. The human body consists of around 100,000,000,000,000 of them! Even the simplest cells contain several thousands different proteins and each cell has the genetic instructions or blueprint for the organism concerned within its DNA. If written out, these instructions 'would fill a thousand 600-page books. Each cell is the world brimming with as many as two hundred trillion tiny groups of atoms called molecules... Our 46 chromosome “threads” linked together would measure more than 6 feet. Yet the nucleus that contains them is less than four ten-thousands of an inch in diameter.' A human egg, no larger than the full-stop at the end of this sentence, contains all the instructions to build another human beings — right down to the colour of the hair and eyes!

The theory that life originated by chance is nothing but a fantasy, fed by a desire to dispense with a Creator. And the idea that 'simple' things could evolve into more complex organisms over time flies in the face of Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that things become more disordered with the passing of time. Those who are wise, will say with the Psalmist [new nothing of the incredible complexity of the cell], 'I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.' (Psalm 139:14) Let us give God — the originator of all life — the credit for what He has done!

REFERENCES

1. R. Jastrow, Until the Sun Dies, Souvenir Press, 1977.
2. H. Clemmey & N. Gabham, Geology, Vol. 10, 1982, p. 141.
3. M. Denton, Evolution: a Theory in Crisis, Burnett Books, 1985, p. 261.
4. H. Gore, 'The Awesome Worlds within a Cell,' National Geographic, Sept. 1976, pp. 357-360.

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