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Origins of Life
Biblical and Evolutionary Models
Face Off
How Life Arose
• Life arose from nonliving matter in a
prebiotic soup.
• The chemicals in the early Earth’s oceans
became life’s building blocks when
lightning struck the water.
• Stanley Miller (1953) conducted an
experiment showing how chemical
reactions could produce amino acids.
Stanley Miller’s Experiment:
Hydrothermal Vents
• Life could have emerged near these
submarine hot springs, in which seawater
seeps through cracks in the bottom until
the water comes close to hot magma...
Hydrothermal Vents
• …The water is superheated and expelled
forcibly, carrying a variety of dissolved
molecules from the superheated rocks.”
• These molecules react and form amino
acids and other essential ingredients for
life.
—Integrated Principles of Zoology. Twelfth
Edition, 27.
Problems with Stanley Miller’s
Experiment
• “Miller’s experiments have been
criticized in light of current opinion
that the early atmosphere on earth
was quite different from Miller’s
strongly reducing simulated
atmosphere.”
—Integrated Principles of Zoology. Twelfth
Edition, 27.
Hydrothermal Vents—Sites of
Life’s Origins?
• A team led by Stanley Miller concluded
that the same conditions that produce the
necessary amino acids and/or nucleotides
also destroy them.
—Stanley L. Miller and Jeffrey L. Bada,
“Submarine Hot Springs and the Origin of
Life,” in Nature 334 (1988), 609-611
Where’s the Soup?
• “The significance of the isotopic enhancement
of 12c [carbon-12] in the very old kerogen in
the Isua rocks in Greenland is that there never
was a primordial soup and that, nevertheless,
living matter must have existed abundantly on
Earth before 3.8 billion years ago.”—Hubert P.
Yockey, “Comments on ‘Let There Be Life:
Thermodynamic Reflections on Biogenesis and
Evolution’ by Avshalom C. Elitzur,” in Journal
of Theoretical Biology 176 (1995).
Richard Dawkins Writes:
• “Darwinian evolution proceeds merrily
once life has originated. But how does life
get started?”
• “I watch from the sidelines with engaged
curiosity, and I shall not be surprised if,
within the next few years, chemists report
that they have successfully midwifed a
new origin of life in the laboratory…
Richard Dawkins Continues
• …Nevertheless it hasn’t happened yet, and
it is still possible to maintain that the
probability of its happening is, and always
was, exceedingly low—although it did
happen once!”—Richard Dawkins, The
God Delusion, 164, 165.
Can Science Detect Evidence of
Intelligent Design (ID)?
• Science routinely deals with phenomena
that are not directly observable, such as
forces, fields, and subatomic particles.
• Scientists infer the properties and monitor
the effects of unobservable causes
indirectly by examining observable
macroscopic phenomena and effects
directly with their senses.
Scientific Fields that Seek to
Detect Intelligent Design
• Anthropology
• Archaeology
• S.E.T.I. (Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence)
• Francis Crick’s and Leslie Orgel’s directed
panspermia (Francis Crick and Leslie E.
Orgel, “Directed Panspermia,” Icarus 19
(1973), 341-346).
Supernatural Intelligent Design
• By extension, life’s appearance on Earth
resulting from a supernatural, extrauniversal Intelligence should also be
detectable and testable.
• How can this idea be tested?
What is a Scientific Model?
• The schematic description of a set of
phenomena that accounts for its observed
and inferred features.
• It’s a scenario that offers reasonable
explanations for the entire origin and
history of a particular system in nature, as
well as for its relationship to other
phenomena.
Reason to Believe (RTB)
• A science-faith organization that highlights
ways that recent scientific discoveries
support Christianity.
• The science team consists of astronomer
Hugh Ross, astronomer Jeff Zweerink, and
biochemist Fazale Rana.
RTB Creation Model
• The proposed creation model derives its
framework from the biblical description of
God’s creative activity.
• The process of building this model is
ongoing.
• Refinements continue taking place as new
information and insight becomes available.
RTB Creation Model
• The model begins with the collation of
data from all relevant Scripture passages,
not just Genesis 1 and 2.
• The statements touching on God’s creative
activity are integrated and interpreted.
• All plausible interpretations are evaluated
for internal consistency.
RTB Creation Model
• The interpretation that best fits the biblical
data is then recast in scientific terms,
rendering the Bible’s creation account
testable.
RTB Creation Model
• Empirical scientific evidence supports a
“Day-Age” interpretation of the creation
accounts found in the Bible.
• The Hebrew word for “day,” “Yom,” can
be translated as a long period of time.
• Denies that macroevolution occurs.
RTB Creation Model Covers
• The universe’s origin
• The first life’s origin
• The origin of animals
• Humanity’s origin
The Universe’s Origin
• God declares that He brought into
existence the entire physical universe—
matter, energy, and all the space-time
dimensions associated with matter and
energy (“In the beginning…”—Genesis
1:1).
The First Life’s Origin
• The frame of reference shifts to the
narrator's vantage point to the surface of
Earth above the water but below the cloud
layer.
• Genesis 1:2 describes the initial conditions
of primordial Earth: its surface was dark,
covered with water, empty of life, and
unfit for life.
Predictions Concerning the Early
Earth’s Conditions
• The early earth was shrouded in darkness
(as Genesis 1 states).
• The early Earth was unsuitable for life’s
existence.
Predictions Concerning the Early
Earth’s Conditions
• Early in Earth’s history, its atmosphere
underwent a dramatic transformation,
which enabled light to reach the surface of
the planet such that day and night could
be differentiated by an observer on the
planet’s surface.
• The surface of the earth was completely
covered with water.
Origins of Life Predictions
• Evidence will indicate that life appeared
early in Earth’s history (while the planet
was still in its primordial state).
• Life will prove to have originated under
and persisted through hostile conditions
on early earth.
Origins of Life Predictions
• Evidence will show that life originated
abruptly (seemingly out of nowhere &
within a narrow, if not instantaneous, time
window).
• Earth’s first life forms will display
substantial complexity.
Origin of Life Predictions
• Life in its minimal form will prove to
biochemically complex.
• Life’s biochemistry will display hallmark
characteristics of design.
• The first life forms on Earth should be
qualitatively different from life-forms that
first came into existence on creation days
three, five and six.
Predictions Concerning the Early
Earth Confirmed
• Genesis 1 depicts the early Earth’s surface
as being “a seething desolate mass,
covered with boiling waters.”—Henry H.
Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook: An
Abbreviated Bible Commentary, 20th ed.,
rev. (Chicago: Halley, 1955), 60.
“The Earth was Desolate”
• Science confirms that the early Earth was
desolate.
• Scientists call this period of Earth’s history
the Hadean Era, after Hades, the Greek
word for hell.—Fazale Rana and Hugh
Ross, Origins of Life, 38.
“Darkness Covered…”
• Darkness did indeed cover the Earth since
the Earth used to have a much thicker
atmosphere.
• This thick atmosphere prevented the Sun’s
light from reaching the Earth’s surface.
“Let There Be Light…”
• Astronomers currently think that a Mars
sized object struck the early Earth when
the Earth was only 30 to 50 million years
old, reducing the Earth’s atmosphere’s
thickness.—Robin M. Canup, “Simulations
of a Late Lunar-Forming Impact,” Icarus
168 (April 2004): 433-456.
“Over the Waters…”
• Scientific data indicates that the early
Earth’s oceans became permanent around
3.9 billion years ago, and for the first third
of Earth’s history thereafter, oceans
dominated Earth’s surface.
—Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee,
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is
Uncommon in the Universe, 202.
Life Appeared Suddenly
• “Most major animal phyla appear in the
fossil record within a few million years at
the beginning of the Cambrian period.
This appearance has been called the
“Cambrian explosion” because before this
time, fossil deposits are mostly devoid of
any organisms more complex than single
celled bacteria.”—Integrated Principles of
Zoology. Twelfth Edition (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2004), 32.
Life Contains Information (DNA)
• “The software stored and sold on a
compact disc resulted from the design of a
software engineer.”
• “The great works of literature began first
as ideas in the minds of writers—Tolstoy,
Austen, or Donne.”
Life Contains Information (DNA)
• “What, then, should we make of the
presence of information in living
organisms?”—Stephen C. Meyer, Signature
in the Cell, 16.
Conclusion and Resources
• Origin of life evidence is more compatible
with a biblical model than a naturalistic
model of life’s origins.
• Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary
Models Face Off (2004), by Fazale Rana
and Hugh Ross.
• Signature in the Cell: DNA and the
Evidence for Intelligent Design (2009), by
Stephen C. Meyer.