These posts are based off of a project I presented for my History and Logic of Science class. I decided to put them up here as a possible resource for Christians. Too many Christians have given up the intellectual battle against atheism and evolution and all they stand for. We have been bullied into thinking that we don't even get a seat at the table to discuss such things. Christians need to know that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive, in fact they go hand in hand. Christians need to know that believing in the Bible and in a God who created the universe and everything in it is intellectually defensible.
Did Life Begin Spontaneously?
In 1924 biochemist A.I. Oparin published a theory suggesting that the first cell or cells formed very gradually over time. This theory was furthered by biochemist J.B.S. Haldane, who thought that ultraviolet light from the sun simple gases found in the early earth atmosphere into organic compounds through which cells could gradually develop. This came to be known as the Oparin Hypothesis (Davis and Kenyon 43). There are several erroneous assumptions on which these men based their theory.
Assumption No. 1- Reducing Atmosphere: The earth’s early atmosphere contained little or no oxygen. This assumption is necessary in order for Oparin’s theory to work. If the earth’s early atmosphere had a significant amount of oxygen it would react with the organic compounds in a destructive process called oxidation.
Assumption No. 2- Preservation: The simple organic compounds formed in the soup were somehow preserved, so that the energy that caused them to form did not also destroy them. It would have taken a lot of energy to form these complex compounds which could have been provided through ultraviolet light from the sun, cosmic rays, electrical energy from a lightening bolt, heat, or radioactivity. The organic compounds would have had to be formed and then some how protected from being destroyed by the same force that created them.
Assumption No. 3- Reservation: Enough biological compounds were reserved for combination with the “right” molecules (rather than being tied up by reacting with useless molecules) to form the large molecules useful to life. These compounds not only had to develop but had to react with the right kind of other compounds.
Assumption No. 4- Uniform Orientation: Only L-amino acids combined to produce the proteins of life, and only the D-sugars reacted to produce polysaccharides, or nucleotides. This says that the amino acids making up living things had to also be shaped in a particular way even though other formations occurred as well.
Assumption No. 5- Simultaneous Origins: The genetic machinery that tells the cell how to produce protein and the protein required to build that genetic machinery both originated gradually and were present and functioning in the first reproducing protocells.
Assumption No. 6- Specified Complexity: The highly organized arrangement of thousands of parts in the chemical machinery needed to accomplish specialized functions originated gradually in coacervates or other protocells. Oparin thought that these primitive forerunners to living cells would have competed for “food” sources and natural selection would have taken place.
Assumption No. 7- Photosynthesis: A chemical system called photosynthesis, the process of capturing, storing, and using energy of sunlight to make food, gradually developed within coacervates. Somehow a decline in the food source for these protocells declined and they were able to develop a way of using sunlight for a food source.
This theory was put to the test by Stanley Miller (pictured above) and Harold Urey. They attempted to use these assumptions that Oparin has set up and see if they could simulate the conditions and get the same result. Using a complex apparatus they were able to simulate the conditions and the result was the collecting of some organic acids. This was a success in their eyes and to the scientific community as a whole. It has now been found that the assumptions that Oparin’s theory suggested are false. The earth’s atmosphere did most likely contain some oxygen, and only 1% would be needed to destroy any organic compounds. Also the Miller-Urey experiment did not properly simulate early earth in the sense that once the amino acids were collected they were no longer exposed to the electric current used to form them, unlike their early earth counterparts. The Miller-Urey experiment also did not form any organic compounds that would have been useful to life. Regardless of the numerous problems with the Miller-Urey experiments, many scientists agree that the appearance of amino acids in them gives experimental support to their belief that life began in some spontaneous way.
Bibliography
Behe, Michael J. Darwin’s Black Box. New York: Touchstone, 1996.
Behe, Michael J. “Evidence for Intelligent Design from Biochemistry”
(http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_idfrombiochemistry.htm)
Chambers, Roger. “Darwin in Fantasyland” Christian Standard. Oct. 17th, 1982.
Davis, Percival and Dean H. Kenyon. Of Pandas and People. Dallas: Haughton
Publishing Company, 2004.
Denton, Michael. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Bethesda: Adler & Adler, 1986.
Ham, Kent. “Creation, Where’s the Proof?” Answers In Genesis.
(http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i1/creation.asp)
Johnson, Phillip E. Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1993.
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