A Talk given at the University of Cajamarca, Peru, 8 June 2004

Buenas Tardes. Louis Pasteur's experiments, and those of others, seemed to end altogether the ancient idea of life appearing spontaneously. Pasteur laid down the great principle of biology that life comes from life. However, after the turn of this century, spontaneous generation started to make a comeback as a scientific theory. This was because of discoveries in biochemistry, especially proteins and viruses. (Most of the biologists today say that the virus is not true life because it has to have a cell in order to live. "On the border of the living and nonliving" is how some describe it.)

One person inspired by these biochemistry discoveries and also driven by a materialist worldview was Alexander Ivanovich Oparin (1894-1980), a Soviet biologist. In the 1920's and 30's, he developed the idea of the chemical emergence of life. Oparin argued that, as chemicals mixed together over time, they formed more complex chemicals. With longer periods of time, they formed even more complex organic chemicals. Eventually, life emerged, but at no point along this development could one say where there was an abrupt change from nonliving to living. Life was a gradual emergence, over a long period of time, from a chemical beginning. A British scientist and Marxist, J.B.S. Haldane, came up with a similar idea independently and thought the origin of life occurred in a hot, dilute soup.

Oparin was aware that his theory is not falsifiable. In the conclusion of his book, Origin of Life, he writes that "it is impossible to reproduce the process . . .." Therefore, according to the thinking of the late Karl Popper, it cannot be considered scientific. At best we can say that he was offering a guiding idea, since it is not testable (a problem, as we discussed earlier, with most origins theories).

There was not even a hint of scientific support for the chemical emergence of life theory until 1953. Then a graduate student, Stanley Miller, published the results of an experiment that seemed to support Oparin's ideas. Miller's experiment dominated the chemical origins of life discussions for three decades.

Miller's professor, Harold Urey, had been lecturing about how the earth could have had a different atmosphere, and that perhaps life formed because of that atmosphere. Miller investigated the idea in the laboratory. A diagram of his apparatus is below and to the right. He generated water flow around a glass loop by heating it until vapors were given off and then cooling it. To the water vapor he added ammonia, methane, and hydrogen, and electrically sparked this gaseous mixture. One product of the resulting reaction was a yellowish mixture that coated the glass. When he removed a sample from the water at the bottom of the loop at the tap and examined it, Miller found another product: amino acids. Amino acids are found in our bodies, and are part of the building blocks for other more complex organic materials.

Some interpreted this experiment as supporting Oparin's idea of the chemical emergence of life. It appeared that Miller had shown the first step in Oparin's emergence theory, which went from chemicals to simple organics. Now in one sense, that's not so earthshaking because, beginning in 1828 with Friedrich Wohler, chemists had been synthesizing organic compounds from inorganics. In this sense, all Miller did was to synthesize an organic compound - there was nothing sensational about that. However, what is unique is the claim made for this experiment, that it supports Oparin's theory. In a sense, this is one strength of the Miller experiment.

Another strength is that a story can be inferred from the Miller experiment: The amino acids, mixing in the oceans create what has been termed an organic soup. From this organic soup, some thought that the next steps in Oparin's theory also occurred, until life eventually emerged. A third strength of the Miller experiment is that it is easy to understand and explain. It is a simple experiment and a simple analogy: The early earth had an atmosphere of hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water vapor. Lightning formed amino acids, and thus occurred the first step in the emergence of life here on earth. The experiment encourages belief in the plausibility of such a scenario. That was back in 1953. A lot has happened since then, and it hasn't been good for the naturalistic origins story.

Initially, the Miller experiment gained acceptance because of the strengths mentioned above. As research continued, however, weaknesses arose.

1. First, no one could come up with a good naturalistic explanation for the tap where Miller removed the amino acids from the loop. If someone does not tap off the amino acids, they flow back around the loop to the spark, which then destroys them. Miller could not leave the amino acids in the loop; the rate of destruction in the spark is greater than the rate of formation, and the organics would never accumulate. He had to remove them; but what is the analog in nature for this?

2. A bigger weakness is the assumption that the early atmosphere consisted of hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water. There's no proof of that. As a matter of fact, what evidence that does exist (oxidized rocks, for example) indicates that the early earth had an oxygen atmosphere. This fact is bad news for the naturalistic scenario because if there is oxygen in Miller's loop, the experiment does not go at all. Oxygen stops it cold. Even though we need oxygen to live today, oxygen in the past would have prevented the formation of amino acids.

3. Another weakness of the Miller experiment is that hydrogen is the lightest molecule and therefore has a high diffusion capability. The earth's gravitational field is not strong enough to hold hydrogen and it would have diffused easily out of our atmosphere. So it would not have been around to help form amino acids. (Only on the bigger planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, is there is enough gravity to hold the hydrogen in, but this is not so on the smaller planets.)

4. Additionally, ammonia and methane in the atmosphere would not have lasted. In a few thousand years they would have been destroyed by chemical reactions caused by sunlight. So they would not have been around to form the hypothesized organic soup either. Sunlight in the hypothesized Miller-type of atmosphere is like a bull in a china shop - there is a lot of energy there, but most of it is destructive.

5. Atmospheric oxygen today forms the protective ozone layer. If there was no oxygen in the early earth's atmosphere, then there would have been no ozone layer and ultraviolet rays would have poured in, destroying any life that did exist. These harmful rays would also destroy any life that arrived from space.

6. If there were an organic soup, then the next weakness would be the extremely low probability of formation for DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and other large, complex molecules from the soup In more than 40 years, further experiments have not shown that amino acids naturally form anything more complex. (I will give the exact calculations for these probabilities latter in this paper.)

7. One of the greatest weaknesses of the Miller experiment (and of other naturalistic explanations) is that it does not explain the fact that only L-amino acid is found in our bodies. Most amino acids can appear in two different forms, "L" and "D." There is a left-handed form of an amino acid, "L," and a right-handed one, "D." One form rotates polarized light left, the other rotates it right. They are mirror images of each other. If you look in the mirror and raise your right hand, the image in the mirror raises its left hand. It is you in the mirror, but there is a difference - there is a "handedness" to our mirror images. It is the same thing with these amino acids. Of the twenty commonly occurring amino acids, nineteen have this mirror image capability: They are called optical isomers. The exception is glycine - it's symmetrical no matter which way you look at it, mirror image or straight on.

As mentioned, our bodies don't have the D-amino acids. This is true for all living beings. The only exception is the exoskeleton of insects, which have "D" in them. Otherwise, all living things have "L." The claim for the Miller experiment and similar naturalistic ideas is that they offer an analogy of how life could have occurred. But the Miller experiment gives D- and L-amino acids in roughly a 50-50 ratio. As a matter of fact, any way that we synthesize amino acids gives a 50-50 ratio. If we went into a lab and started mixing chemicals together, we would get a 50-50 mixture. The analogy breaks down.

Amino acids have been found in some meteorites. A good question to ask would be about the L- and D-amino acids in these meteorites. What's the ratio of the L to D in them, as far as amino acids are concerned? The answer is roughly 50-50. ⁽¹⁾ No one has come up with a good explanation of why we have only the "L" form in us when naturally occurring amino acids have roughly equal amounts of left-handed and right-handed amino acids. A possible explanation is that polarized light in the Orion nebula could have created L-amino acids. (See Science, 31 July 1998.) One problem with this scenario is that huge amounts would have to be made for the earth to get enough. Another problem is exactly how this light makes "L"-amino acids only. Of course this proposed extraterrestrial explanation undercuts the Miller experiment and any other terrestrial hypotheses. ⁽²⁾

8. Associated with this formation of complex molecules is the information content in our DNA. Where did the genetic codes come from that generate us? Also, this genetic code operates only in the presence of ribosomes, activating enzymes, transfer RNA (ribonucleic acid), etc. How all this happened naturalistically is a major unsolved problem.

9. The last and most formidable weakness of the Miller experiment is Miller himself. He designed the experiment, hoping to produce amino acids, but the first run did not generate any. It was back to the drawing board. He changed certain experimental parameters and the second run did provide the desired results. Now a supposed strength of the experiment is that it is a possible naturalistic explanation of the origin of life. The methane, ammonia, water, and hydrogen in the Miller experiment, even though of an artificially high purity, could be the earth's early atmosphere. The electric spark could be analogous to lightning, and the liquid water, the oceans. If so, then what is the analogy for Miller, the designer and modifier of the experiment? The answer is an intelligence - a designer; God, if you will, is needed for life to occur. If one thought the earlier inferences from the Miller experiment was scientific, then one has to concede that this inference of a supernatural being is also scientific.

Because of the weakness of the Miller experiment, scientists have been proposing other theories for the naturalistic origin of life. One example is an article in Insight magazine, May 1987, entitled "Evolutionary Tail." Probes of the crust of Halley's comet have led a chemist to challenge the prevailing theory of the evolution of life. Clifford Matthews at the University of Illinois reasons that since Halley's comet had a lot of hydrogen cyanide in it, therefore the early earth had hydrogen cyanide in its atmosphere. He theorizes that sunlight triggered a chemical reaction to form clouds of hydrogen cyanide in the earth's atmosphere. The cyanide formed polymers that rained down into the oceans. These were converted to protein-like compounds, and from these, life developed.

The January 16, 1988 Science News carried an article proposing another idea for the formation of life on earth. James A. Lake, a molecular biologist at UCLA, proposed that all living things evolved from a single-celled organism which lived in boiling sulfur springs. Lake arrived at this conclusion from a new computerized method of analyzing bacteria genes. Yet another solution for the origin of life is that perhaps clays were involved in the formation of life, and another one is that maybe life formed in tidal pools.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, some scientists are hypothesizing that life originated extraterrestrially. However, whether on earth or somewhere else, we will find the naturalistic generation of life is mathematically impossible.

One year I entered the Sports Illustrated magazine sweepstakes. If I had won, they would have paid me one million dollars, tax-free, in twenty-five installments of $40,000. In the fine print, the magazine said the odds of winning that year were one in 1.2 x 10⁸. This means, on the average, I would win once every 120 million years. Let's say I happen to live for the next 120 million years and the contest is conducted each year. Normally I would expect to win just once. What do you think the chances are for me to win the grand prize each and every year for the next 120 million years? Sounds impossible? According to Sir Fred Hoyle and others, I have a fantastically better chance of winning the Sports Illustrated Sweepstakes 120 million years in a row, than of life forming on earth by naturalistic means. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe calculate an extremely low probability for the formation of an enzyme: one in 10^40,000 - that's 10 with 40,000 zeros behind it. Winning the Sports Illustrated contest 120 million years in a row has a probability of only 1.44 in 10¹⁶

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are not alone in calculating very low mathematical probabilities for the formation life on earth. Others are Charles-Eugene Guye, Harold J. Morowitz, Frank B. Salisbury, and James F. Coppedge. All these probability results vary from one another because of different starting points, assumptions, and so on. But they all show the impossibility of life forming naturally.

Guye was a Swiss physicist who, having died in 1942, made his calculations before the major biochemical breakthroughs such as the study of DNA. Based on the oversimplification of two kinds of atoms ordered in proteins, he arrived at a probability of 2.02 x 10^-321. This was reported by Pierre Lecomte du Noy in Human Destiny (1947) as requiring 10²⁴³ billions of years for one protein molecule to form from an earth being shaken at the speed of light. Since the longest proposed age of the earth is five billion years and life needs more than one protein, we are basically faced with an impossibility.

Morowitz's approach, in his Energy Flow in Biology (1968) was to calculate the probability of chance fluctuations generating enough energy for the bond formation that molecules needed for a living cell. For an ocean of the correct molecules needed to make a minimal cell, this would be one chance in 10^399,999,866, again, basically an impossibility.

Salisbury realized that genes appear to be too unique to have occurred by chance. He also realized that even if genes existed, at some point a certain enzyme would be needed. Evolutionary theory predicts that this early enzyme appeared due to chance mutations of existing genes. He generously assumed 10²⁰ planets with oceans containing small DNA genes of 1,000 nucleotides in length that replicated a million times a second with a mutation happening each time. He calculated the odds of getting the desired result was one in 10⁴¹⁵, which to him seemed too improbable if the earth was only four billion (4 x 10⁶) years old. (This poses a dilemma for evolution since natural selection needs something on which to operate. ⁽³⁾)

Coppedge did several calculations, all showing the extreme improbability of life occurring by chance. For protein formation, he grants extreme conditions such as the rate of amino acids forming chains at one-third of a ten-million-billionth of a second. (This concession is 150 thousand trillions the normal speed.) ⁽⁴⁾ He arrives at the probability of one protein forming from a chance arrangement of amino acids as one in 10²⁸⁷. For the minimum set of 239 protein molecules for the smallest theoretical life, the probability of chance formation is one in 10^119,879. This to him, is impossible. ⁽⁵⁾

Coppedge realized that even with extreme probabilities of occurrences, one could always say that there is still a chance, no matter how slim the odds. His answer to this argument enlisted the work of the French probability expert Emile Borel. Borel introduced his "law of chance" in Elements of the Theory of Probability (1965). His law is that events whose probability is extremely small never occur. How small is small? In Probabilities and Life (1962) he calculates that a probability of one in 10¹⁵ as negligible on a terrestrial scale and one in 10⁵⁰ on a cosmic scale. The probabilities we have been discussing are all far greater than one in 10⁵⁰. If Borel's mathematics are correct, then it is impossible for life to occur naturalistically, both on earth and in the universe. Still, according to Borel, it is more than possible for me to win the Sports Illustrated grand prize 120 million years in a row.

When we look at the origin of life from non-life, there are three options. One is Intelligent Design (ID). The next is Necessity, which, if true, would be observable today - but it is not, so it is disproved. That leaves the choice between Chance and ID for life to form from non-life. The mathematical odds, and the lack of both L-amino acids and genetic information in non-organic matter show that life cannot occur by chance. That leaves ID. We already have seen that the Miller Experiment implies ID is needed for life to occur from non-life, is there more data?

Darwin's Black Box,

The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution New York: the Free Press (1996)

In this book, Michael Behe applies the idea of an irreducibly complex system (ICS) to life. This concept can apply to either the origin of life, or to evolution. An ICS is "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (p. 39). An example of an ICS is an ordinary mousetrap. It consists of a metal hammer bar that traps the mouse, a spring that powers the hammer bar, a holding bar that holds the hammer bar back, a sensitive catch that retains the holding bar, and a wooden platform on which all is correctly mounted. When these parts are manufactured with the right materials, designed and assembled in the correct proportion to each other, and then baited and armed, it might just catch a mouse. These are what make a functioning mousetrap irreducibly complex. It cannot catch a mouse if one of the components is missing, if it is wrongly manufactured or assembled, or if not set. It does not just catch fewer mice under these conditions, it catches no mice at all. There is no way to start with a simpler component of the mousetrap and evolve it to create the whole system. In other words the spring, by numerous, successive, slight modifications could not evolve into a trap that catches mice.

Behe is a biochemist who, in the course of his research, came to realize that large numbers of biochemical systems are irreversibly complex. Like the mousetrap, there is no way they could have naturalistically evolved from simpler components. Some examples are how vision occurs, the bloodclotting cascade, the swimming motion of the cilium, intercellular transport, the immune system, and rotary flagella.

Rotary flagella are bacteria that move about in fluids by rotating their flagellum, a long hairlike filament that has no counterpart in more complex cells. At the place where this filament joins the cell membrane is a complex rotary mechanism that consists of a rotor and a stator, the M ring and S ring shown in the figure at the right. Unlike our muscles, this rotor, an ICS, is powered by the energy flow of an acid through the bacterial membrane (pp 70-72). Just looking at the details of the figure above, shows the complexity of what was once thought to be a simple, primitive organism - primitive, yes; simple, no. This mechanism is not only complex, but irreducibly complex. No wonder "no scientist has ever published a model to account for the gradual evolution of this extraordinary molecular machine" (p. 72).

The fact that no scientist has published an evolutionary explanation of the bacterial flagellum is not an exception. It is the rule. An analysis of the articles in the Journal of Molecular Evolution (JME) shows this. The JME began in 1971 and, as its name implies, publishes research articles exclusively on how life at the molecular level came to be. The result of Behe's analysis is that "none of the papers published in JME over the entire course of its life as a journal has ever proposed a detailed model by which a complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual step-by-step Darwinian fashion" (p. 176). Again, this is not the exception, but the rule. Analyses of other research journals would give the same results. There have been abstract explanations that amount to handwaving, but no detailed accounts. Such accounts would have to deal with some very thorny questions such as: "How did the photosynthetic reaction center develop? How did intramolecular transport start? How did cholesterol biosynthesis begin? How did retinol become involved in vision? How did phosphoprotein signaling pathways develop?" (p. 176)

If fundamental biochemical systems like bloodclotting, vision, and the immune response did not evolve, then how did they occur? Behe answers that these systems are the result of supernatural intelligent design. This is a strongly-supported conclusion because biochemists have been designing and engineering the components of life for some time now. They know what intelligent design looks like. Thus they can easily infer that the machinery of life is the result of an intelligent designer, God. This conclusion was not arrived at by examining the fossil record, or by eliminating naturalistic explanations and claiming that the supernatural option wins by default, by evoking abstractions, or by comparing dissimilar systems. Biochemical systems are being compared with biochemical systems - apples compared to apples. Like the mousetrap, these systems, the nuts and bolts of life, require an intelligent designer. In the past, many scientists have remarked that life is almost a miracle. With Behe pointing out the implications of modern biochemical research, we have to say that life is a miracle. It has to have an ID.

Intelligent Design

Over fifty years ago James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA. In his book, Life Itself, Francis Crick calculated that a polypeptide chain of modest length had a probability of 1 in 10²⁶⁰of forming. He compares this with the number of fundamental particle (atoms, speaking loosely) in the entire visible universe, which is estimated to be 10⁸⁰ (p51). Had he considered longer polypeptide chains as well, the figure would have been even more immense. It is impossible for the great majority of protein sequences to have been synthesized at all, at any time.

Crick states that this organized complexity "cannot have arisen by pure chance." Crick concludes that life had to be intelligently designed. One line of support for this conclusion is that "there is one feature which is so invariant that it immediately attracts attention." This is the genetic code. "With the exception of mitochondria, the code is identical in all living things so far examined, and even for mitochondria the differences are rather small. . .." (p142)

Crick speculates that a higher civilization had developed elsewhere and sent microorganisms to earth. This extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) could not have made the trip themselves, so they sent the microorganisms instead. That is why we have not encountered ETs. This is Crick's answer to the question "If ETs exist where are they?"

Note that I used the word speculate for Crick's ETI. He has no evidence for this, but the important thing is that he has scientifically disproved the idea that life on earth can happen by chance. He concludes that ID is the only option, and he gives some scientific arguments for it. Als,o Crick is an atheist, so he is not trying to get God or religion into the picture.

Like Crick, the late Sir Fred Hoyle gives scientific reasons why life did not evolve on earth by chance, and concludes that life is the result of design. However, he speculates that the designer is not from an advanced civilization as Crick had, but is from the universe, as the title of one of his books states: The Intelligent Universe. This would make Hoyle a pantheist. He does state that this is more of an ancient Greek conception of God rather than a Judeo-Christian one.

Crick and Hoyle are two of the intelligent design theorists, but there are others who say that life cannot happen by chance and had to have an intelligent cause. Let me leave them for the sake of time and address the issue of whether scientists can detect intelligent causes. One such person is William Dembski and this is his book on intelligent design.

ETI

Below is Jodi Foster in the movie, Contact, based on Carl Sagan's book by the same name. In the book, atheist Sagan gives an answer as to how we can recognize ETI signals. Those involved in the search for ETI (SETI) have tested this concept. He is right, scientists can detect intelligent causes, and have built on the idea. Let me give the history of how we got to this point.

When radio astronomers started searching in 1958, they had presumed they could detect ETI signals. But they did not test their idea, apparently they thought it was self-evident. This was probably because anyone dialing the turning knob of a shortwave receiver hears mostly natural signals, but easily stops at an intelligent signal even if he or she doesn't know the language being spoken or the music being played.

The falsification test for recognizing intelligent signals turned out to be unplanned. Not long after they began searching the skies, radio astronomers detected an intelligent signal. They isolated and analyzed the signal. They finally figured it out. It was from a plane flying overhead!

They had not planned it, but this was a test that they could have designed to falsify their theory. Some of them could have secretly introduced a signal from an intelligence, and then see if those not in on the test design could detect it as such. In the end, they did detect intelligence. Therefore, following our definition, the SETI is scientific. Theoretically, God could send a message in the electromagnetic spectrum, but this possibility does mean that SETI is religion. The Big Bang could have been caused by God. So does that make it a religion as some argue? No.

Now ID has the same premise as radio astronomers and the SETI: Can scientists recognize intelligence in nature? Biochemists routinely design biochemical systems. They have experience recognizing intelligence in biochemical systems. Paleoanthropologists dig up artifacts all the time. By their experience, they recognize those that are the products of an intelligence. Scientists cannot only look for intelligent causes, but they are doing so, and in different disciplines.

All the arguments that have been raised against the "God-part" of ID also apply to the idea of chance. Thus, those who are attacking ID are saying that Hoyle, Crick, radio astronomers, biochemists, and archeologists are not doing science. But at the same time, they imply that the naturalistic origin of life, which is based on an unprovable and untestable notion, chance, is scientific. This is not right.

We noted that the DNA molecule carries a large amount of extremely detailed genetic information. The DNA is analogous to a computer, and the information analogous to the software. Many scientists do not see how the DNA molecule could have come about by chance. Also, as discussed earlier, the genetic code operates only in the presence of ribosomes, activating enzymes, transfer RNA, etc. We would call it a miracle if a computer formed itself in nature and then programed itself with highly sophisticated software. But this does not happen. Similarly, we can mix chemicals in the lab ala the Miller Experiment, but DNA does not happen. Where did all the genetic information, the software, come from? It doesn't happen either. It did not come about by natural selection - in the beginning there was nothing to select. Chemicals contain no genetic information, so there was nothing to vary either.

Where are the laboratory experiments showing how extremely detailed information pops into existence? There are none because, among other things, we are violating the second law of thermodynamics. Nothing happens at all. Unless of course, the initial genetic information came from an intelligent designer, be it God, an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, or whatever.

Besides cosmology and SETI, there are other disciplines that involve intelligent causes. Forensic science deals with them, as does artificial intelligence and cryptography. Biochemists routinely design biochemical systems. They have experience recognizing intelligence in biochemical systems. Paleoanthropologists dig up artifacts all the time. By their experience, they recognize those that are the products of an intelligence. So scientists use intelligent causes in different disciplines. Those opposing ID have no scientific basis for their position, so what is the reason for the opposition? The answer is their naturalistic worldview.

As Pasteur's and others' experiments indicate, life does not occur spontaneously anywhere. Also, they imply that life did not occur at any time past. Additionally, the mathematical approach and other data eliminates the option of life naturally occurring, either terrestrially or extraterrestrially. That leaves only the supernatural option. Life had to be created. It could not have happened by chance.

1. 1.J. G. Lawless and E. Peterson, "Amino Acids in Carbonaceous Chondrites," Origins of Life (1975) 6:3-8. There may be a slight (7 - 9%) excess of L amino acid in the Murchison meteorite but still not the 100% of "L" needed; see J. R. Cronin and S. Pizzarello, "Enantiometric Excesses in Meteoritic Amino Acids," Science (1997) 275:951-955.

2. 2.For a comprehensive analysis of theories of biochemical evolution see C.B. Thornton, WL. Bradley and R.L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life's Origin (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984).

3. F. B. Salisbury, "Natural Selection and the Complexity of the Gene," Nature, 1969, 224:342.

4. James F. Coppedge, Evolution, Possible or Impossible? Molecular Biology and the Laws of Chance in Nontechnical Language (Northridge, CA: Probability Research in Molecular Biology, 1993 reprint of Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1973) p. 107.

5. Ibid, pp. 114-115.