...is by far the weakest strut of the chassis of modern biology. The origin of life is a science writer’s dream. It abounds with exotic scientists and exotic theories, which are never entirely abandoned or accepted, but merely go in and out of fashion (1996, p. 138).
In the entire realm of science no class of molecule is currently known which can remotely compete with proteins. It seems increasingly unlikely that the abilities of proteins could be realized to the same degree in any other material form. Proteins are not only unique, but give every impression of being ideally adapted for their role as the universal constructor devices of the cell ... Again, we have an example in which the only feasible candidate for a particular biological role gives every impression of being supremely fit for that role (Denton, 1998, p. 188, emphasis in original).
The problem of the early evolution of life and the unfounded optimism of scientists was well put by Dawkins. He concluded that Earth’s chemistry was different on our early, lifeless, planet, and that at this time there existed
...no life, no biology, only physics and chemistry, and the details of the Earth’s chemistry were very different. Most, though not all, of the informed speculation begins in what has been called the primeval soup, a weak broth of simple organic chemicals in the sea. 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—a replicator. This may seem like a big stroke of luck... Freakish or not, this kind of luck does happen... [and] it had to happen only once... What is more, as far as we know, it may have happened on only one planet out of a billion billion planets in the universe. Of course many people think that it actually happened on lots and lots of planets, but we only have evidence that it happened on one planet, after a lapse of half a billion to a billion years. So the sort of lucky event we are looking at could be so wildly improbable that the chances of its happening, somewhere in the universe, could be as low as one in a billion billion billion in any one year. If it did happen on only one planet, anywhere in the universe, that planet has to be our planet—because here we are talking about it (Dawkins, 1996, pp. 282–283, emphasis in original).
spontaneously from organic compounds in the oceans of the primitive Earth. The proposal assumes that primitive oceans contained large quantities of simple organic compounds that reacted to form structures of greater and greater complexity, until there arose a structure that we would call living. In other words, the first living organism developed by means of a series of nonbiological steps, none of which would be highly improbably on the basis of what is know today. This theory, [was] first set forth clearly by A.I. Oparin (1938) ... (Newman, 1967, p. 662).
An astounding number of speculations, models, theories and controversies still surround every aspect of the origin of life problem (Lahav 1999). Although some early scientists proposed that “organic life ... is eternal,” most realized it must have come “into existence at a certain period in the past” (Haeckel, 1905, p. 339). It now is acknowledged that the first living organism could not have arisen directly from inorganic matter (water, carbon dioxide, and other inorganic nutrients) even as a result of some extraordinary event. Before the explosive growth of our knowledge of the cell during the last 30 years, it was known that “the simplest bacteria are extremely complex, and the chances of their arising directly from inorganic materials, with no steps in between, are too remote to consider seriously.” (Newman, 1967, p. 662). Most major discoveries about cell biology and molecular biology have been made since then.
Aristotle believed that decaying material could be transformed by the “spontaneous action of Nature” into living animals. His hypothesis was ultimately rejected, but, in a way, he might not have been completely wrong. Aristotle’s hypothesis has been replaced by another spontaneous generation hypothesis, one that requires billions of years to go from the molecules of the universe to cells, and then, via random mutation/natural selection, from cells to the variety of organisms living today. This version, which postulates chance happenings eventually leading to the phenomenon of life, is biology’s Theory of Evolution (Wynn and Wiggins, 1997, p. 105, emphasis mine).
In the 1870s and 1880s scientists believed that devising a plausible explanation for the origin of life
would be fairly easy. For one thing, they assumed that life was essentially a rather simple substance called protoplasm that could be easily constructed by combining and recombining simple chemicals such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen (Meyer, 1996, p. 25).
The German evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel (1925) even referred to monera cells as simple homogeneous globules of plasm. Haeckel believed that a living cell about as complex as a bowl of Jell-o ® could exist, and his origin of life theory reflected this completely erroneous view. He even concluded that cell “autogony” (the term he used to describe living things’ ability to reproduce) was similar to the process of inorganic crystallization. In his words:
The most ancient organisms which arose by spontaneous generation—the original parents of all subsequent organisms—must necessarily be supposed to have been Monera—simple, soft, albuminous lumps of plasma, without structure, without any definite form, and entirely without any hard and formed parts.
Haeckel taught that the basis of life is a substance called “plasm,” and this plasm constitutes
the material foundations of the phenomena of life ... All the other materials that we find in the living organism are products or derivatives of the active plasm: In view of the extraordinary significance which we must assign to the plasm—as the universal vehicle of all the vital phenomena [or as Huxley said “the physical basis of life”]—it is very important to understand clearly all its properties, especially the chemical ones ... In every case where we have with great difficulty succeeded in examining the plasm as far as possible and separating it from the plasma-products, it has the appearance of a colorless, viscous substance, the chief physical property of which is its peculiar thickness and consistency ... Active living protoplasm ... is best compared to a cold jelly or solution of glue (1905 pp. 121,123).
Once the brew was mixed, eons of time allowed spontaneous chemical reactions to produce the simple “protoplasmic substance” that scientists once assumed to be the essence of life (Meyer, 1996, p. 25). As late as 1928, the germ cell still was thought to be relatively simple and
...no one now questions that individual development everywhere consists of progress from a relatively simple to a relatively complex form. Development is not the unfolding of an infolded organism; it is the formation of new structures and functions by combinations and transformations of the relatively simple structures and functions of the germ cells (Conklin, 1928, pp. 63–64).
Furthermore, molecular biology has demonstrated that the basic design of the cell is
essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals... In terms of their basic biochemical design... no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth (Denton, 1986, p. 250).
- The method used in constructing these hypothetical replicators is not stated, nor has it ever been demonstrated to exist either in the laboratory or on paper. The difficulties of terrestrial abiogenesis are so great that some evolutionists have hypothesized that life could not have originated on earth but must have been transported here from another planet via star dust, meteors, comets, or spaceships (Bergman, 1993b)! As noted above, panspermia does not solve the origin of life problem though, but instead moves the abiogenesis problem elsewhere. Furthermore, since so far as we know no living organism can survive very long in space because of cosmic rays and other radiation, “this theory is ... highly dubious, although it has not been disproved; also, it does not answer the question of where or how life did originate” (Newman, 1967, p. 662).
