Other Origin Of Life Theories Aren’t Plausible Either

“So Science Has Updated The Theory Of Life’s Origin A Bit – What’s The Issue?”

As we saw in the previous article, Life Started In A Pond Of “Primordial Soup”, Right?, the theory of life starting in a small pond of primordial soup has been invalidated – despite still being taught in schools.  In its place are other theories including the creation of life’s building blocks in hydrothermal volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean and arriving on earth from somewhere else in space.

Right now you might be saying, “Okay, fair enough, science has updated the theories for how life began.  Old theories replaced by new theories and that sort of thing.  That all sounds perfectly normal.  So, what’s the problem?”

There Are More Issues

We’re probably starting to get too deep but it’s important to highlight some of the issues with even these more current theories.  Here’s a summarized list of other problems cited in The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy, by Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen and others.  The key point here is creating life anywhere from basic building blocks like amino acids is not as viable as the established science would suggest:

• Volcanic hydrothermal vents are typically greatly separated from each other preventing interactions among the building blocks created in each
• Those vents also don’t last over geologically significant times; perhaps thousands of years but certainly not millions – lowering the likelihood that life had sufficient time to get started
• The early earth was not just amino acids and 4-5 essential molecules.  Other elements, molecules and compounds were also present creating competing chemical reactions that dramatically lower the likelihood of creating amino acid in high concentrations.  Modern theories and experiments typically ignore this very important issue
• There’s no fossil evidence pointing to the existence of areas where building block components were highly concentrated
• The Water Paradox: on one hand, water allows essential elements to move around and interact with each other. On the other hand, water causes essential cell components like nucleic acids (e.g., DNA) and proteins to quickly break down

• The earth is 4.57B years old.  The oldest fossil is 3.47B years old.  Life did not have billions of years to form – as commonly assumed.  Some scientists estimate that it only had 100-200 million years – only ~2% -4% of the time earth has been in existence.  Fully resolved life, enough for a complete fossil, was present on the earth VERY early in its existence!
• Regarding panspermia, it’s known that spores can’t survive the intense level of radiation found in outer space – beyond the solar system.  Seeding the earth from planets in other parts of the Milky Way or any other galaxy is not possible.
• Amino acids may be able to survive on rocks transported from elsewhere within the solar system but, at the time when life first formed per just above, solar radiation was much more intense making such transport far less likely than it would be today.
• The panspermia concept doesn’t really answer how life was created; it just moves all the problems somewhere else.  All the issues of ponds, vents, etc would exist there too – in a likely far less hospitable environment.  Is it possible that some want to believe in panspermia because it sounds like cool science fiction?

As you can see, there’s no easy answer that reliably addresses the question of how even the most basic elements of life formed.  Scientists are clearly not aligned and certainly have not produced a model that addresses all the factors present in the early earth environment.  And that’s just for the most basic building blocks of life.

In addition, established models rely heavily on chance – chance that amino acids and other compounds “just came together” for no real reason (there’s no science to explain why they’d be drawn together) over millions of years, stay together to form more and more complex forms of life and then propagate in sufficient numbers such that they became prevalent in the environment.  Chance.  Like we’re that lucky?  Is that the best that science can do – we’re just lucky?!?!  Hmm.  It’s difficult to find facts and evidence for “luck”.  We need to keep looking for better, more real answers based on legitimate science.

To find some better science, let’s jump ahead and ask a more interesting question: how was real life – like the first real cell – created from those basic building blocks.  Said differently, let’s assume some theory overcomes all the issues cited above to reliably create amino acids in an environment that allows them to easily interact with each other in sufficient concentrations, over sufficient time, without risk of excessive radiation, dilution or breakup.  Then what?  How do we get from there to DNA or other complex molecules required for the creation of the first cell?

As we’ll see, this is a huge leap – going from a blind, inanimate chemical compound to a molecule that begins the process of life.  In fact, it’s such a huge leap that the facts and evidence become overwhelming.  More importantly, the conclusions that they lead to may be too much to handle.

Red Pill Or Blue Pill?

Before we proceed any further, you need to make a choice:  As in The Matrix, you have to choose the Blue Pill or the Red Pill.  Choose the Blue Pill and return to the world you already know, confident that some some scientist will eventually fully explain how life was created from inanimate chemicals or arrived here from space or whatever.   If you choose the Blue Pill, stop here and read no further.  Leave this God Created Life set of articles confidently knowing that God had no role in the creation of life and that all such arguments are based on unproven myths, ancient stories and religious texts with no facts nor evidence to support them.  But be forewarned that by doing so you will also be casting aside the truth based on legitimate, testable science.

Or you can take the Red Pill and see the legitimate, testable science surrounding the creation of life as it really is.

Conclusion

• As with the Primordial Soup theory, there are many issues with the alternate explanations for the origin of life – based on chemical processes and random chance – that make them equally implausible
• All the explanations from science rely heavily on random chance and luck.  Relying on luck is a poor excuse for science.  There are no facts nor evidence for “we’re just that lucky”