Has biochemistry sidelined a Creator God?
Early Earth was composed solely of abiotic (non-living) chemicals, so how did the first living cells arise? The Bible teaches that God created life on Earth, but has science provided a valid alternative?
A defining characteristic of a living organism is that it can self-replicate, creating copies of itself.(1) In 1953, chemists Miller and Urey passed an electrical spark through inorganic gases to produce amino acid molecules: this set the world abuzz because these are the building blocks of proteins, which in turn are required for self-replication. Since then, it’s popularly assumed that laboratory technicians are able to create the fundamentals of life by imitating random natural processes that took place in a “primordial soup” of prebiotic chemicals on primitive Earth. This is claimed to remove the need for a divine Guiding Hand in the formation of living cells. But is this the case?
Well-known biologist and staunch atheist Richard Dawkins provides this strangely unscientific explanation:
“The account of the origin of life that I shall give is necessarily speculative . . . At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident.”(2)
“Nobody knows how it happened but, somehow, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, a molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying.”(3)
This doesn’t seem to tell us much. And George Whitesides, who was awarded the Priestley Medal for Chemistry in 2007, frankly expresses a similar lack of certainty:
“Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea.”(4)
As recently as 2018, geoscientists Kitadai and Maruyama published an extensive review of research results regarding the origin of self-replicating molecules, and they conclude that several key steps in the process are still unconfirmed and remain highly hypothetical.(5) In short, after seventy years of intensive research, scientists remain unable to account for the arising of life through purely mechanistic processes.
Below are just three of the unresolved problems they continue to wrestle with.
Problem 1: Protein and DNA — a chicken-and-egg dilemma
For a living cell to replicate, protein and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) must both be present. DNA plays a critical role because it holds the genetic codeinformation required for building proteins. But here we encounter a problem, because this genetic information can only be accessed if proteins are already present! Philosopher of science Karl Popper explains this chicken-and-egg problem:
“What makes the origin of life and of the genetic code a disturbing riddle is this: the genetic code is without any biological function unless it is translated; that is, unless it leads to the synthesis of the proteins whose structure is laid down by the code. But . . . the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a really baffling circle.(6)
In their article, “Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life,” two theoretical biologists point out that the DNA-protein problem remains a scientific enigma.(7)
To avoid this dilemma, scientists have been trying to identify a molecule that arose before DNA, which could play both roles: provide genetic information and promote self-replication. This might be the RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecule or an even simpler and earlier molecule. However, this precursor molecule has still not been identified,8 and in any case, “all of the arguments concerning the relationship between the fidelity of replication and the maximum allowable genome length would still apply to this earlier genetic system.”(9)
Problem 2: Successful experiments might not replicate conditions on early Earth
While research scientists are able to create some building blocks of proteins, they might be using materials that did not occur in adequate amounts or distribution on early Earth. In particular, it’s highly unlikely that a suitable “primordial soup” ever existed in open ponds:
“No one has found conditions as yet that could result in the formation of ribonucleotides on the primitive Earth. . . Darwin’s ‘warm little pond’ as well as a pond filled with self-copying RNA molecules and concentrated solutions of all the biochemical precursors of RNA could scarcely exist.”(10)
Scientists are therefore exploring alternative sites where the first living molecule might have been formed by accident. These include geothermal and hydrothermal systems, mineral surfaces, or meteorite impact locations, but these all have severe shortcomings.(11) As a result, some scientists propose that organic molecules were formed elsewhere in the universe and were carried to Earth on meteors to provide the biological basis for life. But this merely transfers the problem of life’s origins to a different location.
Problem 3: Random processes have almost zero probability of success
The successful laboratory synthesis of biotic molecules involves extremely complex procedures with constant monitoring and interventions, so this does not model the effects of random natural processes.(12) The proposed steps for forming living molecules from prebiotic chemicals include at least eight different reaction conditions in a specific order,(13) which are hardly likely to arise through a series of fortunate accidents.
Professor Robert Shapiro, an expert in DNA chemistry, describes how extremely improbable it is that natural interactions could just happen to form an RNA molecule:
“Suppose you took Scrabble sets, or any word game sets, blocks with letters, containing every language on Earth, and you heaped them together and you then took a scoop and you scooped into that heap, and you flung it out on the lawn there, and the letters fell into a line which contained the words, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” That is roughly the odds of an RNA molecule, given no feedback — and there would be no feedback, because it wouldn't be functional until it attained a certain length and could copy itself — appearing on the Earth.”(14)
Two Nobel-award chemists share Shapiro’s opinion:
Christian de Duve: ““Contrary to what is sometimes intimated, the idea of a few RNA molecules coming together by some chance combination of circumstances and henceforth being reproduced and amplified by replication simply is not tenable.”(15)
Ilya Prigogine: “The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of the billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred.”(16)
In other words, any explanation that fundamentally claims, “Time did it,” is no more scientific than saying, “God did it.”
Conclusion
The scientific verdict is that there exists an “insuperable gap between prebiological chemistry and the first living systems.”17 According to research chemist Leslie Orgel, mapping a plausible route from prebiotic chemicals to replicating molecules on the ancient Earth remains “the Molecular Biologist’s Dream.”(18)
Contrary to popular thinking, science therefore cannot explain how biological life could have arisen on earth through random mechanistic processes, so it’s perfectly logical to consider the role of divine guidance. And this is not a “God-of-the-gaps” argument: it’s not just that we don’t yet understand the science of life’s origin—it’s that the science of probability tells us this could not have been the result of purely random processes.
But despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, dominant scientific theories continue to assume that natural processes alone can provide a complete explanation for the origin of living cells. This is because modern science is heavily biased towards a materialistic worldview, as atheist geneticist Richard Lewontin admits:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs . . . because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.(19)
Marcos Eberlin, a winner of the Thomson Medal in Chemistry, summarised relevant scientific findings in his 2019 book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, which is endorsed by three winners of Nobel Prizes in science. Eberlin reaches this conclusion about the evidence regarding the origin and development of life on Earth:
“[It] seems to point beyond any blind evolutionary process to the workings of an attribute unique to minds—foresight. And yes, I know: We’re told that it’s out of bounds for science to go there . . . [but] I urge you to inspect the evidence.”(20)
To sum up: has biogenetics proven that the role of a Creator God can be replaced by purely random mechanistic processes? The answer is clear:
No, it has not.
1. Other attributes of a living organism include metabolism, growth and adaptation.
2. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1989, pp. 14–15 (emphasis added).
3. Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable, 1996, p. 259 (emphasis added).
4. Whitesides, “Revolutions in Chemistry,” 2007, p. 15 (emphasis added).
5. Kitadai and Maruyama, “Origins of building blocks of life: A review,” 2018, pp. 1117, 1142.
6. Popper, “Scientific Reduction and the Essential Incompleteness of All Science,” 1974, p. 270.
7. Trevors and Able, “Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life,” 2004, p. 734.
8. See Orgel, “Prebiotic Chemistry and the Origin of the RNA World,” 2004, p. 117. 9. Robertson and Joyce, “The Origins of the RNA World,”2012, p. 9.
10. Kolomiytsev and Poddubnaya, “The Diffuse Organism as the First Biological System,” 2010, pp. 69–70.
11. Kitadai and Maruyama write, “Various sites for the origin of life have been proposed, including transient melt zones in a frozen ocean, hydrothermal systems within volcanos, and subterranean lithic zones. Although each setting has advantages in some stages of chemical evolution, unsolved problems also remain” (“Origins,” 1121). Regarding the role of meteorite impacts, the two chemists point out that “amino acids could have been formed on the primitive Earth through meteorite impacts and comets. However, yields of amino acids from nonreducing gas mixtures (e.g., CO2 and N2) are extremely low . . . [and] the contribution of the impact event to the origin of life on Earth would therefore be minor” (“Origins,” 1126).
12. Biochemists De Capitani and Mutschler provide insight into the immense complexity of this laboratory work in their article, “The Long Road to a Synthetic Self-Replicating Central Dogma” (Biochemistry 2023, 62, 7, 1221–1232). They point out that there remain problems with achieving true self-replication in “PURE” (Protein synthesis Using Recombinant Elements) systems: “While current versions of PURE can synthesize fully functional proteins, the expression levels of such proteins are not yet sufficient to sustain self-replication. Current estimates suggest that the expression capacity of PURE systems would have to increase at least 87-fold to achieve complete regeneration and ultimately self-replication of all PURE proteins. In other words, without substantial optimization of its transcriptional and translational machinery, PURE cannot remake PURE” (p. 1222). https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.biochem.3c00023
13. See Kitadai and Maruyama, “Origins,” 1117. These eight conditions are: (1) reductive gas phase, (2) alkaline pH, (3) freezing temperature, (4) fresh water, (5) dry/dry-wet cycle, (6) coupling with high energy reactions, (7) heating-cooling cycle in water, and (8) extraterrestrial input of life’s building blocks.
14. https://www.edge.org/conversation/robert_shapiro-robert-shapiro%E2%80%94life-what-a-concept
15. De Duve, “The Beginnings of Life on Earth,” 1995, p. 432.
16. Prigogine et al., “Thermodynamics of Evolution,” 1972, p. 23.
17. Kolomiytsev and Poddubnaya, “Diffuse Organism,” p. 76.
18. Orgel, “Prebiotic Chemistry,” p. 119.
19. Lewontin, “Billions of Demons,” 1997, p. 30.
20. Eberlin, Foresight, pp. 13–14.