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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.
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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.
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, extra-universal 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.
