"Biogenesis is a term in biology that is derived from two Greek words meaning life and birth. According to the theory of biogenesis, living things descend only from living things. They cannot develop spontaneously from nonliving materials. Until comparatively recent times, scientists believed that certain tiny forms of life, such as bacteria, arose spontaneously from non-living substances."— * "Biogenesis, " in World Book Encyclopedia, p. B—242. (1972 edition.)

Spontaneous generation was believed by many scientists prior to the careful experiments of Spallanzani (1780), and Pasteur (1860), which totally disproved that foolish idea. People thought that fruit flies spontaneously came forth from fruit, geese from barnacles, mice from dirty clothes, and bees from dead calves. Even Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, *Hegel, and *Shilling believed it, but that did not make it right. Great people believing an error does not make the error truth.

"Pasteur's demonstration apparently laid the theory of spontaneous generation to rest permanently.

"All this left a germ of embarrassment for scientists. How had life originated after all, if not through divine creation or through spontaneous generation? . .

"They [scientists] are [today] back to spontaneous generation, but with a difference. The pre-Pasteur view of spontaneous generation was of something taking place now and quickly. The modern view is that it took place long ago and very slowly."—*Isaac Asimov, Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984), pp. 638-639.

LIFE COMES ONLY FROM LIFE—Vegetation is placed in an open container. Seeds within the vegetation sprout. Living creatures have access to it, so they come, feed, and reproduce their young. Life continues on, but it did not originate within this jar.

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NON-LIFE CANNOT PRODUCE LIFE— Food is placed in a closed container and then heated sufficiently to kill all living organisms and their seeds. It is kept closed and no life originates within it or within the atmosphere surrounding it. Life will not originate within this jar, and if it appears to, the cause will have been insufficient initial heat to kill all life spores (mold, etc.) brought in from outside.

In contrast, true science teaches "biogenesis," which means, in general, that life can only come from life, and, specifically, that species can only come from living parents in the same species. Speaking of Rudolf Virchow, the Encyclopedia Britannica tells us: 

"His aphorism 'omnis cellula a cellula' [every cell arises from a pre-existing cell] ranks with Pasteur's `omne vivum e vivo' [every living thing arises from a preexisting living thing] as among the most revolutionary generalizations of biology."— *Encyclopedia Britannica, 1973 Edition, Volume 23, p. 35.

" 'Every cell from a cell.'—Rudolf Virchow, German pathologist 'Every living thing from a living thing.' 'Spontaneous generation is a chimera [illusion].'—Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist."—Quotations in Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), p. 193.

In the year 1860, Louis Pasteur, a creationist, concluded experiments a year after the publication of *Darwin's Origin of the Species, showing that broth in sterile flasks did not spoil. Microbes from outside could not get in, and germs could not generate spontaneously inside the flasks although both broth and air inside were ready to support them. His work demolished the ancient idea, held at least since the time of the Greeks, that flies spontaneously create themselves out of manure, fruit flies from fruit, and frogs from pond water.

Pasteur's concept, called the law of biogenesis, holds that life only comes from living material of the same kind. This law is taught in every basic biology class in our schools. But, down the hall in the historical biology class, the students are taught a totally opposite "principle," a fundamental error of evolution: living things originated from non-living materials.. 

INSTANT SUCCESS NECESSARY—In order for life to arise from non-life, there would have to be instant success. All the parts would suddenly have to be there, and all would have to function with essential perfection.

In the next chapter (chapter 10), we will learn that, in order for life to occur, DNA a protein would have to link up with ease into long, extremely complicated coded strings. In addition, thousands of other complicated chemical combinations would have to be accomplished within a few moments. How long could you live without a beating heart? how long without blood? And on it goes, item after item. The situation would be no different for the simplest of life forms. Everything would have to be in place—suddenly—instantly. In structure, arrangement, coordination, coding, chemical makeup, feeding, elimination, respiration, circulation, and all the rest,—everything would have to be perfect!

IMMEDIATE REPRODUCTION NEEDED—Biologists are deeply concerned how that first living cell could have originated, but *Montalenti goes a step beyond that point and says "what really matters, to start life is . . the faculty of reproduction." (*G. Montalenti, Studies in the Philosophy of Biology (1974), p. 13.) What good would one cell be if it did not have all the needed DNA coding and fission ability to divide, or the reproduction ability—and a mate—to produce offspring?

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND LABORATORIES—Complicated chemical compounds are prepared in well-equipped laboratories, staffed by intelligent, highly skilled workers. They do not work with the sand in the back lot, but with shipments of specialized chemicals which arrive at their loading dock.

About all that most evolutionists offer for the original primitive environment for the first amino acids, proteins, etc., is dirt or sea water. Yet when scientists want to synthesize amino acids, they go to a very well-equipped laboratory, with instruments, gauges, apparatus, chemicals, and machines costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They use high-temperatures, special solutions, sparking devices, and glass traps. They do not go down to the sea shore and start sloshing around in sea water in the hope of producing those amino acids.

Because they are intelligent and trained, they know to do it in laboratories fitted out with expensive equipment and jars of chemicals; yet, according to evolutionary theory, sea water somehow did it by itself.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND THE LAW OF MASS ACTION—Evolutionists recognize that, if a life form suddenly appeared from nothing, it would probably have had to do it in an ancient sea. It is generally felt that water would have had to be present.

But "the Law of Mass Action" would immediately neutralize the procedure and ruin the outcome. This is because chemical reactions always proceed In a direction from highest to lowest concentration (assuming that the exact amount of energy is even present to perform that reaction). (assuming that the exact amount of energy is even present to perform that reaction).

"It is therefore hand to see how polymerization [linking together smaller molecules to form bigger ones] could have proceeded in the aqueous environment of the primitive ocean, since the presence of water favors depolymerization [breaking up big molecules into simpler ones] rather than polymerization."—*Richard E. Dickerson, "Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life, "Scientific American, September 1978, p. 75.

We are told that amino acids miraculously formed themselves out of sea water. But the sea water, needed to make the amino acids, would prevent them from forming into protein, lipids, nucleic acids and polysaccharides! Even if some protein could possibly form, the law of mass action would immediately become operative upon it. The protein would hydrolyze with the abundant water and return back into the original amino acids! Those, in turn, would immediately break down into separate chemicals—and that would be the end of it.

"Spontaneous dissolution is much more probable, and hence proceeds much more rapidly, than spontaneous synthesis . . [This fact is] the most stubborn problem that confronts us." —*George Wald, "The Origin of Life," Scientific American, August 1954, pp. 49-50.

The law of mass action would constitute a hindrance to protein formation in the sea as well as to the successful formation of other life-sustaining compounds, such as lipids, nucleic acids, and poly-saccharides. If any could possibly form in water, they would not last long enough to do anything.

This law applies to chemical reactions which are reversible,—and thus to all life compounds. Such reactions proceed from reactant substances to compounds produced in the manner normally expected. But these reactions tend to reverse themselves more easily and quickly.

" 'All molecules result from an electrochemical tendency to neutralization. They are therefore expressions of tendencies toward stability.' Unhappily for materialists, however, life is characteristically unstable, and 'it is incredible that the complex of substances, all tending towards a state of stability, would produce the permanent chemical instability which is characteristic of animate matter.' Thus it is inconceivable that an organic compound should ever be formed in the absence of life: 'No condition of inorganic matter is even thinkable in which carbon, oxygen and hydrogen could combine to form a sugar rather than water and carbon dioxide."—*"Review of R. Shubert-Soldem's Book, Mechanism and Vitalism," in Discovery, May 1962, p. 44.

Not just a few, but hundreds of thousands of amino acids had to miraculously make themselves out of raw sea water devoid of any life. But the amino acids would separate and break up immediately and not remain in existence long enough to figure out how to form themselves into the complex patterns of DNA and protein. The problem here is that, as soon as the chemical reaction occurred, that made the amino acids, the excess water would have had to be removed immediately.

"Dehydration [condensation] reactions are thermodynamically forbidden in the presence of excess water."—*J. Keosian, The Origin of Life, p. 74.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND CONCENTRATION—Evolutionists generally recognize that only warm sea water, by the edge of some ancient sea, could provide the needed environment (although admittedly a very poor one) for amino acids to appear. But we never find the concentrations of chemicals in sea water that would be needed for amino acid synthesis. All the elements are there, but not in the proper concentrations. Most of what is in sea water—is just water!

"it is commonly assumed today that life arose in the oceans. . But even if this soup contained a goodly concentration of amino acids, the chances of their forming spontaneously into long chains would seem remote. Other things being equal, a dilute hot soup would seem a most unlikely place for the first polypeptides to appear. The chances of forming tripeptides would be about one-hundredth that of forming dipeptides, and the probability of forming a polypeptide of only ten amino acid units would be something like 1/10²⁰. The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all [mathematical] probability."—*H.F. Blum, Time's Arrow and Evolution (1968), p. 158.

For additional information see quotation supplement, "3 - The Primitive Ocean," at the end of this chapter.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND PRECIPITATES—Even if water loss could occur, enzyme inhibitors would neutralize the results. The problem here is that a powerfully concentrated combination of chemicalized "primitive water" would be needed to produce the materials of life,—but those very chemicals would inhibit and quickly destroy the chemical compounds and enzymes formed.

"It is clear that enzymes were not present in the primordial soup. Even if they were formed, they would not have lasted long since the primeval soup was by definition a conglomeration of nearly every conceivable chemical substance. There would have been innumerable enzyme inhibitors present to inhibit an enzyme as soon as it appeared. Thus, such molecules could not have formed; however, even with the assumption that they had formed, they could not have remained."—David and Kenneth Rodabaugh, Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1990, p. 107.

Even if they could survive the other problems, many organic products formed in the ocean would be removed and rendered inactive as precipitates. For example, fatty acids would combine with magnesium or calcium; and arginine (an amino acid), chlorophyll and porphyrins would be absorbed by clays.

Many of the chemicals would react with other chemicals, to form non-biologically useful products. Sugars and amino acids, for example, are chemically incompatible when brought together.

The chemical compounds within living creatures were meant to be inside them, and not outside. Outside, those compounds are quickly destroyed, if they do not first destroy one another.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND FLUID CONDENSATION—In addition to synthesis problems, there are also condensation problems. Fats, sugars, and nucleic acids can come from the proteins only by very careful removal of fluid, amid other equally complicated activities conducted by the laboratory technicians. Those experts spent years in college learning how to do this, yet it is expected that the sea water earlier did it by itself, using native ingenuity.

Without water loss, proteins cannot form in water.

"One well-known problem in the formation of polymerized proteins in water is that water loss is necessary for this process. Living organisms solve this problem with the presence of enzymes and the molecule ATP. It is clear the enzymes were not present in the primordial soup."—David and Kenneth Rodabaugh, Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1990, p. 107.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND WATER—So most of the chemicals needed by life could not arise in a watery environment, such as sea water. In fact, the lab technicians do their work with fluids other than water! They do not use sea water or even regular water to make dead amino acids. (That which they synthesize is always dead; it never has life in it.)

"Beneath the surface of the water there would not be enough energy to activate further chemical reactions; water in any case inhibits the growth of more complex molecules."— *Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe (1982), p. 65.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND ENERGY—And then there is the problem of an energy source. Scientists know that there had to be some form of energy to work the chemical transformations. They generally think it would have had to have been a bolt of lightning, since there were no wall outlets back in the beginning to plug electrical cords into. But anything struck by lightning is not enlivened, but killed!

"[Arrhenius] contends that if actual lightning struck rather than the fairly mild [electrical] discharges used by Miller [in making the first synthetic amino acids], any organics that happened to be present could not have survived."—*Report in Science News, December 1, 1973, p. 340.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND OXYGEN—As we consider all the conditions necessary for a primitive environment in which amino acids and other biological chemicals could form, we encounter many problems. One of these is the atmosphere. It is a well-known fact among biochemists that the chemicals of life will decompose if oxygen is in the air.

"First of all, we saw that the present atmosphere, with its ozone screen and highly oxidizing conditions, is not a suitable guide for gas-phase simulation experiments."— *A.L Oparin, Life: Its Nature, Origin and Development, p. 118.

Living plants and animals only have certain proportions of the 92 elements within their bodies. These elements are arranged in special chemical compounds. Chemists say they have been "reduced." When these particular chemicals are left in the open air, they decompose, or, as the chemists say, they "oxidize." (A similar process occurs when iron is left in a bucket of water; it rusts.)

In the presence of oxygen, these chemicals leave the reduced (or chemical combination) state, and break down to individual chemicals again. A similar example would be this: Paper will burn in the presence of oxygen and change back into its member chemicals. Without oxygen, that chemical change cannot occur.

"The synthesis of compounds of biological interest takes place only under reducing conditions [that is, with no free oxygen in the atmosphere]. "—*Stanley L. Miller and Leslie E. Orgel (1974), p. 33.

"With oxygen in the air, the first amino acid would never have gotten started; without oxygen, it would have been wiped out by cosmic rays."— *Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe (1982), p. 65.

Later in this chapter, as well as in the chapter appendix, we go into greater depth on atmospheric problems associated with the primitive environment.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND SUPPLY—There simply would not be enough other chemicals available to accomplish the needed task.

Since most biochemicals contain nitrogen, it has been discovered by Gish, a biochemist, that there never has been enough concentration of nitrogen in the air and water for amino acids to form by themselves. It does not occur naturally in rich enough concentrations.

Similar studies have been made on the availability of phosphorus by *Bernal. There would not have been enough phosphorus available for the many chemical combinations needed. Phosphorus is needed for DNA and other high-energy compounds. But phosphorus concentrations are too low.

Even worse news: *Carl Sagan found that adenosine triphosphate (high energy phosphate) could not possibly form under the prebiological conditions.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND RICH MIXTURES—Since such a rich mixture of chemicals would have had to be required for the alleged formation of the first living molecule, there ought to be places in the world where such rich mixtures are found today, but they do not exist.

"If there ever was a primitive soup, then we would expect to find at least somewhere on this planet either massive sediments containing enormous amounts of the various nitrogenous organic compounds, amino acids, purines, pyrimidines, and the like, or alternatively in much metamorphosed sediments we should find vast amounts of nitrogenous cokes. . In fact, no such materials have been found anywhere on earth . . There is, in other words, pretty good negative evidence that there never was a primitive organic soup on this planet that could have lasted but a brief moment."—*J. Brooks and *G. Shaw, Origins and Development of Living Systems (1973), p. 360.

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4 — PROTEIN AND OTHER SUBSTANCES

PROTEIN SYNTHESIS—Protein is a basic Constituent of all life forms. It is composed of amino acids. There are 20 essential amino acids, none of which can produce the others. How were these made? How could they make themselves? First, let us examine the simplest of them: glycine.

*Hull figured out that, due to inadequate chemicals and reaction problems, even glycine could not form by chance. There was only a 10-²⁷ (minus 27) concentration of the materials needed to make it. If one glycine molecule was formed, it would have to hunt through 10²⁹ other molecules in the ocean before finding another glycine to link up with! This would be equivalent to finding one person in a crowd that is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times larger than all the people on earth!

But what about the other nineteen amino acids? Checking out the others, *Hull found that it was even less possible for them to form. After careful research, the scientist discovered that as the complexity of each molecule increased, the possibility of its forming decreased. The concentration needed for glucose, for example, would be 10-¹³⁴. That is an extremely high improbability!

But there is still more:

PROTEINS AND HYDROLYSIS— Even if protein had been made by chance from nearby chemicals in the ocean, the water in the primitive oceans would have hydrolyzed the protein. The chemicals that had combined to make protein, would immediately reconnect with other nearby chemicals in the ocean water, and self-destruct the protein! The tendency would be for the chemicals to form more simple organic molecules, such as aldehydes and amines, than the more complex amino acids. These aldehydes and amines would automatically react with the amino acids, making them unusable for protein construction. A research team at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, said that this complication would make the successful making of just one protein totally impossible, mathematically. It would be 1 chance in 10¹⁵⁷. They concluded that no proteins were ever produced by chance on this earth.

"In the vast majority of processes in which we are interested, the point of equilibrium lies far over toward the side of dissolution. That is to say, spontaneous dissolution [automatic self-destruct process] is much more probable, and hence proceeds much more rapidly, than spontaneous synthesis [accidental put-together process] . . The situation we must face is that of patient Penelope waiting for Odysseus, yet much worse: each night she undid the weaving of the proceeding day, but here a night could readily undo the work of a year or a century."—*G. Wald, "The Origin of Life," in The Physics and Chemistry of Life (1955), p. 17.

Automatic dissolution is always easier than accidental once -in-a-thousand -lifetimes putting-together. Regarding this massive obstacle to the initial formation of life, *Wald says it is "the most stubborn problem that confronts us." (Ibid.) Randy Wysong, in his excellent book, The Creation-Evolution Controversy, provides us with a clarification of what is involved in this immense hurdle to the initial formation of life:

"It is conceivable that wind might blow a pile of toothpicks dumped from a picnic table into an arrangement resembling a model airplane. Given enough time, it could happen. But if that freak event does happen, would it remain, if still subject to time and gale winds? Would it even complexify [later become more complex]? Isn't time not only the creator, but more efficiently the enemy of the freak event? Will time not surely destroy the order fortuitously created?"—R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy, p. 141.

FATTY ACID SYNTHESIS —Scientists are not able to even theorize how fatty acids could have originally come into existence.

"No satisfactory synthesis of fatty acids is at present available. The action of electric discharges on methane and water gives fairly good yields of acetic and propionic acids, but only small yields of the higher fatty acids. Furthermore, the small quantities of higher fatty acids that are found are highly branched."—*S. Miller, and *L. Orgel, The Origins of Life on the Earth (1974), p. 98 .

OTHER SYNTHESES—There is more to a living being than merely chemical compounds, proteins, and fatty acids.

There are also enzymes, which scientists in laboratories do not know how to produce. Yet there are thousands of enzymes in a typical animal!

Then there are the massive DNA and other coding problems. Has any scientist ever synthesized a new animal code? No, he would have no idea how to successfully accomplish the task. The emphasis here is on "successful." If he could interject a new code, it would only damage the organism. The list of necessities goes on and on. But what about life itself? One minute after it dies, an animal still has all its chemicals, proteins, fatty acids, enzymes, codes, and all the rest. But it no longer has life. Scientists cannot produce life; why then should they expect rocks and seawater to have that ability?

ATMOSPHERE WITHOUT OXYGEN—Could a non-oxygen atmosphere ever have existed on Planet Earth? It surely seems like an impossibility, yet evolutionary theorists have decided that the primitive environment had to have a "reducing atmosphere," that is, one without any oxygen. Now, the theorists do not really want such a situation, but they know that it would be totally impossible for the chemical compounds needed for life to be produced outside in the open air. If oxygen was present, amino acids, etc., could not have been formed. So, in desperation, they have decided that at some earlier time in earth's history, there was no oxygen in the air! And then later it got it somehow!

"At that time, the 'free' production of organic matter by ultraviolet light was effectively turned off and a premium was placed on alternative energy utilization mechanisms. This was a major evolutionary crisis. I find it remarkable that any organism survived it."—*Carl Sagan, The Origins, p. 253.

But there is a special reason why they would prefer to avoid a reducing atmosphere: There is no evidence anywhere in nature that our planet ever had a non-oxygen atmosphere! And there is no theory that can explain how it could earlier have had a reducing atmosphere—which later transformed itself into an oxidizing one! As *Urey himself admitted, a non-oxygen atmosphere is just an assumption—a flight of imagination—in an effort to accommodate the theory.

"This problem practically disappears if Oparin's assumptions in regard to the early reducing character of the atmosphere are adopted."—*Harold Urey, "On the Early Chemical History of the Earth and the Origin of Life, " in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 38 (1952), p. 352.

*Stanley Miller was one of the pioneers in laboratory synthesis of non-living amino acids in bottles with a non-oxygen (reducing) atmosphere. (He was afterward hailed by the press as having "created life." Miller later said this:

"These ideas are of course speculation, for we do not know that the earth had a reducing atmosphere when it was formed."—*Stanley L. Miller, "Production of some Organic Compounds under possible Primitive Conditions, " in Journal of the American Chemical Society, 77 (1955), p. 2351.

A "reducing atmosphere" could have had carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen, ammonia, nitrogen, and water. An oxidizing atmosphere, such as now exists, would have carbon dioxide, water, nitrogen, and oxygen.

But a reducing atmosphere could not have existed earlier on our planet, and especially not when life was supposed to spontaneously generate. Here are some of the reasons against a reducing atmosphere:

(1) Oxidized Iron. Early rocks have partly or totally oxidized iron in them (ferric oxide). Oxidized rocks existed at the time when spontaneous generation is supposed to have taken place. That proves that the atmosphere had oxygen at that time.

(2) Water means Oxygen. You will notice, above, that a reducing atmosphere would have had water in it in order for life to form. There would have had to be water in the atmosphere if there was water on the earth! Water vapor would continually be arising from the oceans. In the air, that atmospheric water would be split into hydrogen and oxygen. If our planet once had no oxygen, it could not have had water either!

Referring to that fact, one scientist said it would be very unlikely for a reducing atmosphere to have existed when biopoiesis (spontaneous generation of life from non-life) is supposed to have occurred.

"Appreciable oxygen concentrations might have evolved in the earth's atmosphere before the evolution of widespread photosynthesizing (oxygen producing) organisms. It does not seem that early evolution could have proceeded in such an atmosphere."—"R.T. Brinkman, "Dissociation of Water Vapor and Evolution of Oxygen in the Terrestrial Atmosphere, " in Journal of Geophysical Research, 74 (1969), p. 5366.

(3) No Life without it. Did you catch another point in the above quotation? It would have been impossible for living things to survive, much less evolve, in a reducing atmosphere! How long would animals live without oxygen to breath? How long would plants live without carbon dioxide? Without it, they could not make chlorophyll. When plants take in carbon dioxide, they give out oxygen. But a reducing atmosphere has neither oxygen nor carbon dioxide! Therefore no plants could either live or be available for food.

(4) Deadly Peroxides. In addition, a reduction atmosphere could form, through the photolysis of water, into peroxides, which are deadly to living creatures.

"The hypothesis of an early methane-ammonia atmosphere is found to be without solid foundation and indeed is contradicted."—*P. Abelson, "Some Aspects of Paleobiochemistry, " in Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 69 (1957), p. 275.

(6) Ultraviolet Light. Ironically, it could do more: Just as oxygen in the air would destroy the chemicals of life, ultraviolet light beaming in through a sky unshielded by ozone would do the same!

Recent studies of the ozone layer have revealed that, without it, most living organisms now on our planet would die within an hour, and many within a second or two!

(7) Not With or Without. Evolutionists are locked into a situation here that they cannot escape from. Spontaneous generation could not occur with oxygen—or without it! With it there would be rapid oxidation of life chemical compounds and amino acids into separate chemicals; without it there would be deadly ultraviolet light destroying both the life chemicals and the life formed from them.

Either way, amino acids would not have formed, or would quickly break down back into chemicals. On this point alone, it would be impossible for life to originally have formed out of non-life on Planet Earth.

FORMULA FOR THE PRIMITIVE ATMOSPHERE—The present atmosphere—the air which we breathe—is composed of carbon dioxide (C0²), nitrogen (N²), oxygen (O²), and water (H²0).

The generally postulated primitive atmosphere would have had to have been composed of almost totally different chemicals: methane (CH⁴), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO²), ammonia (NH²), nitrogen (N²), hydrogen (H²), and water (H²0).

INSTANT ATMOSPHERIC CHANGE!—As you might imagine, all this bad news brought evolutionary origins to something of a crisis; especially the problem about the atmosphere.

The response on the part of intransigent evolutionists was to come up with the really wild theory that at the very instant when life was created on earth,—at that instant it just so happened that the entire world changed its atmosphere! It dramatically shifted suddenly from reducing to oxidizing! That piece of amino acid which had made itself in the restless oceans, was now able to make itself into part of a protein. (Forget about the fact that the Law of Mass Action would quickly destroy the amino acid before it could form protein; forget about the fact that the very presence of oceans made the atmosphere non-reducing before life began.)

But this possibility collapsed when a "University of Chicago study found that the plants could not suddenly have made all that oxygen,—and it had nowhere else to come from! If all the plants NOW on earth were suddenly formed on Day One of living things on our planet, it would still take them 5,000 years to produce as much oxygen as we now have!

However, the plants were not there at that time, and whatever plants might have been there would all have died soon after, since they themselves need oxygen for their own cellular respiration.

In order to avoid the problem of mass action degradation of amino acids formed in sea water, someone else suggested that the amino acids were made in dry clays and rocks. But in that environment either the oxygen or ultraviolet light would immediately destroy those amino acids.

UNUSUAL CHEMICALS—Men began to beat their brains against the wall, trying to figure out a way for those amino acids to form by themselves in the primitive environment.

*Sidney Fox suggested that the amino acids were made on the edges of volcanoes, *Melvin Calvin decided that dicyanimide (a compound not naturally occurring in nature) did the job, and *Shramm declared that phosphorus pentoxide in a jar of ether ether did it! Another research worker came up with an even more deadly solution: hydrogen cyanide—as the environment in which all the amino acids made themselves.

But again tragedy struck: It was discovered that the volcanic heat would ruin the amino acids as soon as they were formed. Phosphorus pentoxide is a novel compound that could not possibly be found in earth's primitive atmosphere. The hydrogen cyanide would require an atmosphere of ammonia, which geological evidence shows never existed in our atmosphere. Dicyanimide would not work, because the original mixture in which the first amino acids were made had to have a more alkaline pH.

"Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I determine I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation running after too few facts."—*Francis Crick, Life Itself (1981), p. 153. (Crick received a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA.)

The laboratory apparatus he used to accomplish this consisted of two confluently interconnected, chemical flasks (or bottles), arranged one above the other. The lower flask was heated and contained boiling water. The upper flask contained a mixture of gases including ammonia, methane, hydrogen and water vapor. (The upper flask had the presumed "primitive atmosphere," since it was known that if oxygen was present, the experiment would be a failure.)

First, he boiled a mixture of water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen gases in the upper bottle, while a small electric spark continually played over them all. (that was supposed to be equivalent to a gigantic lightning bolt in the primitive environment which might strike the spot once every so many years, instantly destroying everything it touched.) The lower bottle of water was kept boiling in order to keep the mixture in the upper bottle stirred up and circulating. (the "primitive ocean" must have been pretty hot!) There was a trap in the bottom of the glass apparatus to catch any soluble organic products, so they would not be broken down after formation by the spark (chemists knew that the Law of Mass Action would almost immediately have destroyed the amino acids which were formed, without a trap to catch them quickly. (The "primitive ocean" must have had similar bottle traps in it.)

After a week of this, the fluid in the traps were chemically analyzed—and were found to have microscopic traces of a few L and D (right- and left-handed) nitrogen-containing compounds—"amino acids," they called them—which had been formed. (Of course, if both L and D amino acids were formed by chemical action—as they always are when formed outside of living cells—it would be impossible for the amino acid which formed to be usable for life purposes.)

Newspapers around the world heralded the news: "Life has been created!" But no life had been created, just a few biochemical compounds. Remember that neither nitrogen compounds nor amino acids are, of themselves, living things. Just because they are in living things, does not make them living things.

In summary then, *Stanley Miller's experiment was one of the early origin-of-life attempts. It used a reducing atmosphere (with no oxygen in it). A significant part of his experiment was a "cold trap." This was a glass cup at the bottom of the tubing which caught the products of the weeklong water-chemical-spark activity. The purpose of the trap was to keep the reaction going in the right direction. If it had not been there, the simple amino acids would have been destroyed faster than they could be made!

"'This is the primitive atmosphere,' said Stanley Miller, the chemistry professor at the University of California at San Diego, as he pointed to the transparent mixture of gases inside the globe. `And this represents the primitive ocean,' he said, indicating a pool of water in the bottom of his apparatus."—*Rick Gore, "Awesome Worlds Within a Cell, " National Geographic Society, September 1976, p. 390.

"In 1953 two scientists, Harold Urey and Stanley Miller, performed one of the most striking experiments of the twentieth century. In a pressure vessel they mixed simple molecules simulating the primordial atmosphere of Earth. Then they zapped the vessel with electricity to simulate lightning bolts . .

"The notion that biological substances could arise from a purely natural process made scientists cheer and gave the clergy chills. But on reflection, less had happened than met the eye. Though the goo in Urey and Miller's beaker contained ingredients used by life, it did not come to life. It was just interesting goo. Now as then, nobody has any idea what makes chemicals start living. The origin of life is perhaps the leading unknown of contemporary science."—*G. Easterbrook, "Are We Alone?" in The Atlantis, 262(2):32 (1988).

What does that complicated lab experiment have to say about the possibility of nature doing it by accident—without the help of man? Outdoors, it could not be done without his help, or with it.

"What we ask is to synthesize organic molecules without such a machine. I believe this to be the most stubborn problem that confronts us the weakest link at present in our argument. I do not think it by any means disastrous, but it calls for phenomena and faces, some of which are as yet only partly understood and some probably still to be discovered."— *G. Wald, "The Origin of Life," in the Physics and Chemistry of Life (1955), p. 9.

 

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The test tube attempts to "create life" have only resulted in dismal failure.

"In 1953, at the University of Chicago, Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey mixed ammonia, water vapor, hydrogen and methane to simulate Earth's early atmosphere, then crackled lightning—like electrical sparks through it . .

"Unfortunately, as Margolis admits, ‘no cell has yet crawled out of a test tube,' and thousands of similar experiments have produced gooey organic tars, but no recognizable life. Decades of persistent failure to 'create life' by the 'spark in the soup' method (or to find such productions in nature) have caused some researchers to seek other approaches to the great enigma. [Panspermia theories are then discussed.]"—*Richard Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 274.

NOT THE RIGHT AMINO ACIDS—Not only do the Miller-type experiments not produce the proper "handedness" of amino acids (left-handed amino acids only, instead of both-handed ones), but that type of experiment—which has been repeated many times in the decades since Miller first did it—consistently does not produce just the crucial amino acids needed for life. Out of the hundreds of possible combinations, there are 20 essential amino acids, and laboratory synthesis of amino acids produce only a few of them—along with a lot of non-essential or even useless ones.

"In considering Miller's 1953 experiment and subsequent experiments where amino acids were formed through applying heat to elements alleged to be in the primordial atmosphere, the author mentions: (1) that these amino acids were racemic (both D and L forms) and thus proteins formed from these would not support life; (2) the majority of amino acids [formed by laboratory synthesis] do not belong to the 20 amino acids that occur in natural protein molecules."—David and Kenneth Rodabaugh, "Book Review," Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1990, p. 107.

THE OPARIN EXPERIMENT—Somewhat before *Miller, *A.I. Oparin, a Russian chemist, attempted something similar. He had a "coacervate hypothesis" which he believed would eventually produce living cells. "Coacervates" are like fat droplets in a bowl of soup. He carefully kept all oxygen away from the soup and the bowl, and he hoped that, given enough time, they would join together and, somehow, life would enter into them!

Oparin discovered that coacervates are highly unstable. The thin outer film breaks easily. Collections of them break apart easily. They quickly unite with other nearby molecules. There would be no selectivity as to molecules absorbed. Harmful as well as helpful ones would be as easily absorbed. No reputable chemist today considers Oparin's theory to be of any value.

THE FOX EXPERIMENTS—After Miller's experiment, *Sydney Fox in 1960 worked out a different arrangement, but he began his with amino acids already formed! He claims that his method is how it was done in the primitive environment. This should have been good news for the evolutionary world, but when we learn his complicated procedure, we can understand why few scientists have any faith in the possibility that the Fox procedure was done by chance in the ocean, near a volcano, or in a mud puddle.

"Typical panpolymerization: Ten grams of L-glutamic acid [a left amino acid] was heated at 175-180 C. [347356F.] until molten (about 30 minutes), after which period it had been largely converted to lactum. At this time, 10 g. [352 av. oz.) of DL-aspartic acid and 5 g. [.176 av. oz.] of the mixture of the sixteen basic and neutral (BN) amino acids were added. The solution was then maintained at 170 + or -2 under an atmosphere of nitrogen for varying periods of time. Within a period of a few hours considerable gas had been evolved, and the color of the liquid changed to amber. The vitreous mixture was rubbed vigorously with 75 ml. [4.575 cu. in.] of water, which converted it to a yellow-brown granular precipitate. After overnight standing, the solid was separated by filtration. This was washed with 50 ml. [3.05 cu. in.] of ethanol, and as substance S dialytically washed in moving Multidialysers in water for 4 days, the water being changed thrice daily. (The term dialytic washing indicates dialytic treatment of a suspension.) In some preparations, the solid was dissolved completely in sodium bicarbonate solution and then dialyzed. The dialysis sacs were made of cellulose tubing, 27/32 in., to contain 50 ml. [3.05 cu. in.]. The nondiffusible material was ninhydrin-negative before the fourth day. The non-aqueous contents of the dialysis sac were mainly solid A and a soluble fraction B recovered as solid by concentration in a vacuum dissicator. The mother liquor of S was also dialyzed for 4 days, and then dried to give additional solid C."—*S. W. Fox and *K. Harada in Journal of the American Chemical Society, 82 (1980). p. 3745.

There may be some words and chemical processes in the above description with which you are unfamiliar, but it is clear that what those men did required an exceedingly complex procedure, superior intelligence, high-level training, a well-equipped laboratory, and many, many days of hard work carried out according to an elaborate plan.

We commend *Sydney Fox and his associates for their remarkable intelligence and excellent lab equipment, and the university scientists who trained them so well to perform such experiments, but we can make no such commendation of sand, gravel, and seawater which is supposed to have done the same thing by itself.

Fox began with a quantity of left-only (no right) amino acids and made sure no sugars were present, since they would nullify each other. Then he underwent a lot of tedious work that requires a high degree of intelligence, careful planning, and many adjustments with pH, temperature, cooking time, etc., as he proceeded with a staff of assistants to help him succeed:

Fox then heated the amino acids for 10 hours 150-180⁰C [302-356⁰F]. He said that this originally happened for 10 hours in a dry spot on the edge of an ancient volcano, so 150-180⁰C [302-356⁰F] for 10 hours with a total lack of moisture would be necessary.

Where would you find such conditions in nature? *Stanley Miller, who first synthesized amino acids in a laboratory later stated that his own experiment could not possibly have been done by chance outside of a modern laboratory. Others agree.

"The degree to which experimental conditions actually simulate primitive earth conditions is very often the subject of considerable controversy among workers in the field [of biochemistry]."—*A.I. Oparin, Life: Its Nature, Origin, and Development, p. 33.

The tiniest living organism (a bacteria) has many specific functional parts, with each part dependent on the other. There is a purpose to everything within it. Can all that be made in non-oxygen containers, cold traps, 10 hours of hot, dry heat, or subjection to a week of sparking?

"Such experiments are no more than exercises in organic chemistry."—*P. Mora, "The Folly of Probability, "in Origins of Prebiological Systems and their Molecular Matrices, Ed. S. W. Fox (1965), p. 41.

Three key ingredients are (1) proper chemicals in exacting amounts, (2) a continuous energy source (such as a continuous spark), and (3) quick-dry apparatus. As soon as the amino acids are made, they must be immediately dried out. (Living tissue never contains dried-out amino acids or comes from it.) *Fox tells us the reaction must be "hot and dry" (Origins of Prebiological Systems and their Molecular Matrices, p. 378).

"To keep a reaction going according to the law of mass action, there must be a continuous supply of energy and of selected matter (molecules) and a continuous process of elimination of the reaction products. "—*P. More, "The Folly of Probability, " in Origins of Prebiological systems and their Molecular Matrices, Ed. S. W. Fox (1965), p. 43.

And there is a fourth key ingredient: careful organization with specific purposes by intelligent, highly-trained minds doing the work on the chemicals. No one tosses the chemicals into a pan in the laboratory, walks off, and hopes it will all produce amino acids by itself.. No one tosses the chemicals into a pan in the laboratory, walks off, and hopes it will all produce amino acids by itself.

A living organism is not just dried out ocean soup. It is highly integrated, complex, and purposive. It also has life, which no man can produce.

COMPLICATED AND INTERRELATED REQUIREMENTS—There are far more requirements for life to successfully evolve than one might at first think. Indeed, the more thought we give to the matter, the more we realize that only the ignorant could conceive of a random self-origination and evolving of living creatures.

A Nobel Prize laureate and a confirmed evolutionist made this comment:

"Randomness caught on the wing, preserved, reproduced . . and thus converted into order, rule, necessity. A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself."—*Bur, quoted in *Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (1972), p. 98.