Origins: Is There a
Plausible Naturalistic
Account for the Origin of
Life?
Allen Hainline
Ratio Christi Philippines
omega_sw@yahoo.com
www.OriginsDiscussion.info
Outline
• “After reading Origins of Life … it is clear
[chemical] evolution could not have occurred”
Nobel Prize winning chemist Richard Smalley
• Background / Main Thesis
• 12 reasons I’m skeptical of a naturalistic origin
of life
• Why problems not more widely known …
My Thesis: That life can naturalistically arise from non-living matter is merely
an assumption with little to no scientific support
“Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur
and others, but that leaves us with only one other possibility . . . that life came as a
supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophically because I do
not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is
scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.”
George Wald, Harvard Nobel Laureate
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Could Life Originate From Non-Life
Apart from a Creator?
Most scientists admit no plausible naturalistic scenario exists
– “A scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes
which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not been written.“
Hubert Yockey
– “The formation of the first life is viewed as a chance process that occurred in spite of
minuscule odds such as 1:10300 and which is accepted only because we are here. “
Christian Schwabe
– “No one has an adequate materialistic explanation for how life arose“ Dawkins
• Dawkins accepts Schwabe’s odds if applied to the whole universe
– 1080 atoms, 4x1017 seconds => <1:10200 chance
– U. Arizona study predicts less than 1 in a million chance of even one extra-solar rock
• Atheists must appeal to chance to even get evolution started
– “Pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms” Dobzhansky
– The first evolver cannot itself have evolved
– $1,000,000.00 was offered to anyone who can provide a plausible theory
• http://www.us.net/life/
1) Cell Complexity
Simplest organisms much more complex than previously thought
– Simplest parasite has about 450 genes
• Theoretical minimum about 200 genes
– Each gene needs a sequence of an average of 500+ base pairs (letters)
“To go from a bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a
mixture of amino acids to a bacterium.” Lynn Margulis
“Of all the problems with the hypothesis that life started as nude replicating
RNA molecules, the one I find most insurmountable is … all living things
seem to have a minimal complexity below which it is impossible to go.”
Stuart Kauffman
2) So Long to
the Soup!
– We lack evidence of a primordial organic soup
• Carbon is less than about 1 part in 1000 in earth’s crust
• Nitrogen is only 20 parts per million in earth’s crust
• High concentrations of key organic molecules is highly unlikely
– Geological depletion prevents accumulation
– Primordial soup "well past its sell-by date“ Science Feb 2010
– Organic compounds tend toward forming tar
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3) Barriers to Building Blocks
What are the Building Blocks of Life?
• Proteins, Nucleic acids (DNA, RNA), Polysaccharides, Lipids
– Comprise 90% of dry-weight of a bacterium
– These are large molecules (100’s to billions of atoms)
– Vast majority of these molecules didn’t exist on early earth except in trace amounts if at all
• Miller-Urey showed some amino acids form naturally
• Assumed unrealistic atmosphere
•
• Experiment fails if oxygen present; without it no ozone to shield from harmful UV rays
"Let us sum up. The experiment performed by Miller yielded tar as its most abundant
product....There are about fifty small organic compounds that are called 'building
blocks'.....Only two of these fifty occurred“ Shapiro
“You have to build straw man upon straw man to get to the point where RNA is a
viable first biomolecule” Gerald Joyce
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4) Information
Impediment
• Its unlikely to have formed proteins on the early earth:
– Doug Axe (Cambridge): ratio of functional to non-functional amino
acid sequences was 10-77 for short protein (150 amino acids long)
• Finding any protein stable enough for biological function was 10-74
• Number of atoms in Milky Way is about 1065
• What about finding a self-replicating RNA?
– Orgel and Joyce: a single-stranded RNA catalyst can replicate itself if
it finds a perfect RNA template match that’s its exact complement
• No replicator with sufficient fidelity found to date
• Expect length of hundreds of nucleotides
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5) Handedness Hell
(Chirality Problem)
Building blocks come equally in 2 forms – right-handed and left-handed
• But life can only use one of the forms - you can’t mix them!
“All speculation on the origin of life on Earth by chance cannot survive the
first criterion of life: proteins are left-handed, sugars in DNA and RNA are
right-handed.” Hubert Yockey
“I spent 25 years looking for a terrestrial mechanism for homochirality and
trying to investigate them and didn't find any supporting evidence. Terrestrial
explanations are impotent or nonviable.“ Organic chemist William Bonner
Right and left-handed versions of amino acids – credit NASA
6) Probability Predicament
“For biological evolution … to take off, efficient systems for replication and
translation are required, but even barebones cores of these systems appear
to be products of extensive selection.” Eugene Koonin
– Argued that 1st living cell was protein-based
– Yet to get both in 1st cell is 1 in 101018 chance; he appeals to multiverse
• Other prominent researchers:
– Francis Crick appealed to life on earth being seeded by aliens
• This proposed intelligent design seems implausible due to vast travel
distances
• U. Arizona study predicts less than 1 in a million chance of even one extrasolar rock
– Hubert Yockey – life so improbable it should be taken as axiomatic
• But we know physical life in this universe hasn’t always existed!
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7) Troublesome
Thermodynamics
• Thermodynamics opposes production of
life’s molecules
– Morowitz: increase in chemical bonding energy
in forming 1 E-Coli is equivalent to having your
bath water spontaneously increase to 360oC
• Cannot connect amino acids in the
presence of water
– Because water is by-product
– Le Chatelier’s Principle: reactions slow
considerably in presence of products
• “The formation of water in an environment
that is full of it is the chemical equivalent of
bringing sand to the Sahara.” Shapiro
• Water breaks up proteins, nucleic acids
8) Chicken-Egg
Conundrum
Numerous inter-dependent systems exist within every cell
• DNA provides blueprints for building proteins
– Numerous highly specialized proteins needed for DNA
replication
• RNA and proteins required to make proteins
• Amino acids required to proteins
– RNA and proteins required to make amino acids
How does all this randomly form in first cell and within a
membrane?
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9) Interrupting
Interferents
Forming life’s polymers is disrupted by other molecules that mix-in
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Many origin of life experiments start off with unrealistically pure reagents
– An organic soup would have a wide variety of chemicals
Amino acids more likely to bind to other organic molecules such as sugars than
to each other
Other molecules would disrupt the RNA backbone, cause termination, and lead
to side branches (any one of which would likely be fatal to self-replication)
– Glutamate, histidine, cerium cause RNA breakdown
– Once RNA attaches to mineral surfaces, it’s stuck there
Shapiro compared RNA world origin of life scenario with imagining a golf ball being
played below par through an 18-hole course by solely natural forces
• No golfer is necessary because wind, earthquakes, etc. can force a ball into a hole
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10) Automated Assembly
A punctured cell will not come
back to life
It has all the fully assembled
chemicals but never revives
• Despite extensive restoration
efforts
• Humpty-Dumpty cannot be put
back together again
Boeing 747:
5 million parts
1 cell:
billions of parts
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11) Tenuous Timeframe
Billion(s) of years
Late Heavy Bombardment
Ended 3.8 billion years ago
Life began 3.8 billion years ago Life began
Previously thought to have billion(s) of years until earth’s first life
“We are now thinking, in geochemical terms, of instant life.“ Ponnamperuma
“Presence of .. stromatolites, microfossils, chemical fossils … in early
Precambrian rocks suggests that life originated virtually simultaneously with
the formation of the crust of the earth.” Walton
– Exacerbated by need for multiple origins
• “probability of survival of life is low unless there are multiple origins” (1 in 10 survive)
Raup, Valentine in PNAS
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12) Multiple Miracles?
1) First cell probably didn’t survive to leave ancestors:
“the probability of survival of life is low unless there are
multiple origins” (1 in 10 survive) Raup, Valentine in PNAS
2) May have been multiple origins that persisted:
“The time has come for Biology to go beyond the Doctrine
of Common Descent” Carl Woese
“I think we may have thousands of recent common
ancestors and they are not necessarily so common.” Venter
If so, the similarity across life forms looks more like
common design:
“The odds of the same dictionary of arbitrary ‘meanings’
arising twice are almost unimaginably small.” Dawkins
24 January 2009 issue
Reasons for Skepticism of Naturalistic Origin of Life
1. Cell Complexity
2. So Long to the Soup
3. Barriers to Building Blocks
4. Information Impediment
5. Handedness Hell (Chirality Problem)
6. Probability Predicament
1 in 101018
Reasons for Skepticism of Naturalistic Origin of Life
7. Troublesome Thermodynamics
8. Chicken-Egg Conundrum
9. Interrupting Interferents
10. Automated Assembly
11. Tenuous Timeframe
Billion(s) of years
12. Multiple Miracles?
Why aren’t Origin of Life problems widely known?
“Many investigators feel uneasy about stating in public
that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind
closed doors they freely admit that they are baffled. There
are two reasons for their unease. First they feel it opens
the door to religious fundamentalists… Second, they
worry that a frank admission of ignorance will undermine
funding…”
Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning
of Life
What about the many breakthroughs and
discoveries by origin of life researchers?
“Many of the experiments designed to explain one or other step in the origin of life are
either of tenuous relevance to any believable prebiotic setting or involve an experimental
rig in which the hand of the researcher becomes for all intents and purposes the hand of
God.” Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution
Questions
Why we should be skeptical that a plausible
naturalistic explanation will ever be found?
“Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life” Article by Trevors and Abel
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“No natural mechanism … can explain the high information content of genomes. This is a mathematical
truism, not a matter subject to overturning by future empirical data.”
“Natural processes have never been observed to write conceptual instructions, to symbolize such
algorithmic meaning, or to translate it using code”
“No physical mechanism has been suggested for the source of abstract genetic instructions themselves.”
“Random walks … will never provide an adequate explanation for the generation of such a highly refined
translative coding system.” (nor does it explain the operating system and information processing programs)
“It is difficult to envision how the laws of physics and chemistry could explain encryption/decryption.”
“Cause-and-effect physicality has no ability to anticipate or devise a conceptual system that employs
symbolic representationalism.”
“The four known forces of physics know nothing of the phenomenon of linguistic translation.”
Eugene Koonin appeals to multiple universes
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“Any conceivable scenario of life's evolution necessarily requires combinations of highly unlikely conditions
and events prior to the onset of biological evolution, including the abiogenic synthesis of fairly complex and
not particularly stable organic molecules, such as nucleotides, the concentration of these molecules within
appropriate compartments, and their polymerization yielding polynucleotides of sufficient size and
diversity. Thus, anthropic selection appears to be an inevitable aspect of life's evolution.”
“The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions
that typify living organisms would be generated by accident is zero.” Prigogine