Life: an insurmountable problem for atheism

Now that we have the basic introductions out of the way, let's get down to why the first question in the Question Evolution! Campaign, "How did life originate?", is so important to both creationists and evolutionists. First, why is it important to evolutionists? Well, that's easy enough. Because of the evolutionary assertion that life was not created but rather evolved as is expressed by evolutionary biologists such as Julian Huxley who said:

"In the evolutionary pattern of thought, there is neither need nor room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion." -   The Humanist Frame (1961) p. 18

The problem of course is that Julian Huxley had no idea how life on Earth actually evolved from nonliving material into biological organisms and now, 50 years later, evolutionary biologists still have no idea. That is why they have to pour millions of dollars of taxpayers money into research to figure it out. The assertion that life evolved is made in complete ignorance of how it could have possibly done so; not because they know but in spite of the fact that they don't know. Not only that but such an assertion is in direct contradiction to what we do understand about the Law of Biogenesis, that life only comes from life.

Now, in all fairness then, the question arises, "How can we know that life was created?" or more simply put, "Was life created?" and if so, "How was life created?" These are the questions that I have personally been working on for a good many years. You could call it my own personal Question Creation campaign in a sense because I have investigated these questions for myself long before the initiation of CMI's 15 questions for evolutionists.  

The primary question to answer then is this, "If life was created then what should we find?" Or,
More specifically, "If living organisms were created by God then what should we find?"

First we need to define some terms.
From the "Merriam-Webster" dictionary online:

Definition of CREATEtransitive verb
1 : to bring into existence <God created the heaven and the earth — Genesis 1:1(Authorized Version)>2 a : to invest with a new form, office, or rank <was created a lieutenant>

b : to produce or bring about by a course of action or behavior <her arrival created a terrible fuss> <create new jobs>3 : cause, occasion <famine creates high food prices>4 a : to produce through imaginative skill <create a painting>

b : design <creates dresses>

The first definition here is "to bring into existence" as in "God created the heaven and the earth" but I also want to bring attention to another word, Design, because it is listed as a definition and has specific implications to aspects of the creative process.

Definition of DESIGNtransitive verb
1 : to create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan: devise, contrive2 a : to conceive and plan out in the mind <he designed the perfect crime>

b : to have as a purpose : intend <she designed to excel in her studies>

c : to devise for a specific function or end <a book designed primarily as a college textbook>

3 archaic : to indicate with a distinctive mark, sign, or name

4 a : to make a drawing, pattern, or sketch of

b : to draw the plans for <design a building>

intransitive verb
1 : to conceive or execute a plan

2 : to draw, lay out, or prepare a design

Now, it is the definition of "design" that gives a particular scope to answering the question, "Were living organisms created?" because of the close similarity of things which we Know are designed (such as motors, electronic information transmittion and storage systems, digital cameras and video recording equipment, and so forth) to biological organs and organelles. So, if we know that motors, computers and video equiment were designed (because we can trace those designs back to their designers) then it would be only rational to believe that flagellar motors, brains and eyes were also likewise designed. This is pure common sense.

But, there's more. When we look closer at the molecular structure of a living cell we find that there is something about the operational function within the components which presents several conundrums, Catch22s, which would lead one to believe that they must have been designed by a supernatural designer. For example; a ribosome is composed of ribosomal RNA(rRNA) strands which are wound up and held in place by ribosomal binding proteins which keep these rRNA strands from coming unraveled. Now, we know that ribosomes manufacture proteins but proteins are what hold ribosomes together so they can do so. Here's the problem with a purely naturalistic attempt such as the RNA World Hypothesis to explain this conundrum. In order to support the RNA World Hypothesis you need a functional ribosome which is NOT composed of these structural proteins and is capable of producing these structural proteins AND it should be shown both how these structural proteins became incorporated into the ribosomal structures and how their codon instructions were encoded into DNA.

Now, another more puzzling question arises.

If these ribosomal structural proteins were not necessary for protein synthesis in the first place then why are they now present in every single living organism we have studied?

Such a Catch22 as the Ribosomal Structural Proteins is exactly the kind of thing that one would expect to find if biological organisms were created by God and this is exactly what we find.
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I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forget their use. Galileo Galilei

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Origin of Life Questions and Answers

Key articles

• 15 loopholes in the evolutionary theory of the origin of life: summary
• The origin of life: A critique of current scientific models
• Why the Miller–Urey research argues against abiogenesis
• Evolutionist criticisms of the RNA World conjecture

What are some basic problems with the naturalistic origin of life?

• Tinned sardines: clue to the origin of life?
• Fish in the bathtub
• Life from life … or not?
• Quote: Primeval soup—failed paradigm
• Life’s irreducible structure—Part 1: autopoiesis

How do the laws of statistics and probability describe the evolutionary claim that life came about by chance?

• Could monkeys type the 23rd Psalm?
• Monkey madness
• Huff and Bluff: Can ‘quantum magic’ save chemical evolution?
• How simple can life be?
• Answering another uninformed atheist: Galileo, Miller–Urey, probability

What are some scientific problems with the idea that life arose due to ‘chemical evolution’?

• Origin of Life: The chirality problem
• Origin of life and the chirality problem: Is magnetochiral dichroism the solution?
• Origin of life: The polymerization problem
• Origin of life: Instability of building blocks
• Self-replicating enzymes
• Hydrothermal origin of life?
• World record enzymes
• Does ribozyme research prove Darwinian evolution?
• Is RNA self-replication evidence for evolution?
• Natural selection cannot explain the origin of life
• ‘Acellular’ first life?

Have scientists been able to create living cells from non-living matter in a lab, as the media claim?

• Did Craig Venter really create life in a test tube?
• Creating life from scratch?
• Creating life in a test tube?

Could DNA and the genetic code evolve by chance?

• DNA: marvelous messages or mostly mess?
• Dazzling design in miniature
• Decoding and editing design: double sieve enzymes
• Man’s achievements vs amazing ‘living computer’ technology
• New DNA repair enzyme discovered

What is ‘irreducible complexity’ and how does it pose a problem for evolution? What are some examples of irreducible complexity?

• Chapter 10: Irreducible complexity (from Refuting Evolution 2)
• Irreducible complexity: some candid admissions by evolutionists (PDF)
• Design in living organisms: motors
• Did cells acquire organelles such as mitochondria by gobbling up other cells?
• World record enzymes

Did life originate in outer space?

• Life on Mars? Separating fact from fiction
• Did life come from outer space?
• Moon microbes? Remember the ‘Life from Mars’
• Sugars from space? Do they prove evolution?
• Nucleic acid bases in Murchison meteorite?
• Panspermia theory burned to a crisp: bacteria couldn’t survive on meteorite
• Extrasolar planets with organic materials
• Designed by aliens? Discoverers of DNA’s structure attack Christianity

DNA - ORIGINS and EVOLUTION - An Embarrassing Condundrum 

Why is evolutionary ‘just-so’ story-telling tolerated?

Question #12:                                                                                  

Why is evolutionary ‘just-so’ story-telling tolerated? Evolutionists often use flexible story-telling to ‘explain’ observations contrary to evolutionary theory. NAS(USA) member Dr. Philip Skell wrote, “Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive—except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed—except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery.”8  creation.com/sexstories (Sourced from the 15 Questions for Evolutionists)

Story-telling, a main accusation many evolutionists use as a claimed reason to not believe the Bible, but dismiss it as an unreliable religious text – just a bunch of stories meant to persuade or cause people to behave in a certain manner, has become the stock-in-trade of evolutionists.  Evolutionists claim the Bible to be filled with stories on the same level of mythology as the Greek gods of Olympus, or the Egyptian gods, or even fairy tales.

Yet, when it comes to explaining exactly how any step of hypothetical evolution occurred, the evolutionist has no actual evidence that can be experimentally tested and repeated, but must rely upon stories that happened “just-so”; not because they were witnessed, are repeatable or confirmable, but because they absolutely must have happened “just-so” for their faith in the hypothetical series of occurrences to have continued from nothing-to-the uninhabited universe with chemicals-to all living things as we know them today.

Case in point, the hypothetical evolution of non-living chemicals into the first “living” cell.

For goo-to-you evolution to have occurred, non-living chemicals (against all scientific fact, experimentation and observation) had to evolve into the first self-reproducing living cell.  In other words, evolution (molecules-to-microbiologists) had to violate science in order for evolution (pond scum-to-people) occur and become a “known scientific fact”.

Evolutionists will claim that given enough time, and just the right chemical mix, and just the right conditions and just the right timing, nature can violate the law of biogenesis; you know, the scientific law that states every living thing in nature came from a prior, already existing, living thing.

At this point the evolutionist has one of two choices: 1) claim that biogenesis is not a law, or 2) claim that abiogenesis obviously happened at least once because we are here.

A police officer clocks you going 85 mph in a 55 mph zone, where 55 mph is the clearly and obviously posted speed limit.  When you go to court, will you be able to claim the law does not limit you to a legal maximum speed of 55 mph?  Sure, you could claim that all day long, however, every time you go back to the scene of your crime, you will see the sign “SPEED LIMIT 55” clearly posted, according to the traffic laws of the jurisdiction you were speeding in.  Claim the 55 mph speed limit is not a law all you like, you will still be wrong, and still be guilty of lying and of speeding.

 Just the same way, every time you see a new life, or a new living organism, come into being, it is as a result of reproduction from an already existing living organism.  The scientific law of biogenesis is a law because it has NEVER been witnessed to have been violated.  Some evolutionists try to prove this wrong in a laboratory, however they forget, their experiments are actually proving the absolute need for an Intelligent Designer to gather the necessary materials and arrange them in a specifically designed order, creating all the working pieces necessary, and making all the pieces properly work together.  In the laboratory, the intelligent designer is the scientist manipulating the experiment according to his will.

 So, now we are left with the “just-so” story of abiogenesis, an unproven, unscientific, unobserved hypothesis that must have happened “just-so” in violation of science and the laws of science or else goo-to-you evolution could never have happened.  So amazing is this “just-so” never witnessed and never repeated story that non-living chemicals were able to assemble the over 200 parts necessary for a single cell to survive and reproduce with no instructions for operation or cooperation of the parts that were being “evolved”, and no instructions for their assembly, and no instructions for the parts that were actually needed or that parts were indeed needed in the first place.  The tiny little non-living chemicals just kept on trying over, and over, and over for millions, possibly billions of years until they got it right and had a huge honking party to celebrate their success!

Really?  Evolutionists claim this is science.  Even the existence of a Tooth Fairy is more plausible.  But you know, evolutionists will tell you it is an absolutely undisputable fact of science, evolution happened...“just-so”.

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8 Skell, P.S., Why Do We Invoke Darwin? Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology, The Scientist 19(16):10, 2005.

Charles Darwin and modern science on life’s origins

You may think that considering life to have come about when lightning struck a swamp (or, plump this up with the impressive sounding scientific language of your choosing) is the stuff of the Victorian Era—oh my, why, I’ve never! That’s, like, so 141 years ago!

Well, no, no, no, no one believes that anymore as it was just a product of the thinking of days gone by. We no longer believe in life from a “warm little pond.” No, indeed, 141 year later we are considering whether life came into being in “hot little puddles.”

BBC’s science reporter, Rebecca Morelle, reports, “Darwin's warm pond idea is tested”:

Life on Earth was unlikely to have emerged from volcanic springs or hydrothermal
vents, according to a leading US researcher. Experiments carried out in volcanic pools suggest they do not provide the right conditions to spawn life.

As a side note; note what John Horgan noted about what Stanley Miller (yes, that Stanley Miller) noted about the vent hypothesis:

[Stanley Miller] calls the…the vent hypothesis 'garbage'….Miller does not like
vents-at least, not as the original seats of life. He notes that modem vents
seem to be short-lived, lasting only for a few decades before they are plugged
up.
Moreover, he and Jeffrey L. Bada…at the University of California at San Diego, have done experiments that suggest the superheated water inside the vents-which sometimes exceeds 300 degrees Celsius (572 degrees Fahrenheit)-would destroy rather than create complex organic compounds. If the surface of the earth is a frying pan, Miller says, a hydrothermal vent is the fire…

And while we are at it…sure why not?:

[Stanley Miller] calls the…pyrite theory 'paper chemistry'…

[Miller] calls the organic-matter-from-space concept 'a loser'…

Miller…agrees that the field needs a dramatic finding to constrain the
rampant speculation…

Miller replies. 'I think we just haven't learned the right tricks yet,' he says…

'Running equations through a computer does not constitute an experiment,' sniffs Stanley L. Miller…

Miller…'You have a chorus of people with mathematical models saying there is no methane,' he says, 'but they have absolutely no real evidence'…

'I'd love to see the experimental evidence,' Miller says…

From John Horgan, "In the Beginning…" Scientific American (Vol. 264, February 1991, pp. 116-125)—see here.

Back to the BBC report:

David Deamer, emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of California at
Santa Cruz, said ahead of his presentation: "It is about 140 years since Charles Darwin suggested that life may have begun in a 'warm little pond'.
"We are now testing Darwin's idea, but in 'hot little puddles' associated with the volcanic regions of Kamchatka (Russia) and Mount Lassen (California, US)."
"The results are surprising and in some ways disappointing. It seems that hot acidic waters containing clay do not provide the right conditions for chemicals to assemble themselves into 'pioneer organisms.'"
Professor Deamer said that amino acids and DNA, the "building blocks" for life, and phosphate, another essential ingredient, clung to the surfaces of clay particles in the volcanic pools.
"The reason this is significant is that it has been proposed that clay promotes interesting chemical reactions relating to the origin of life," he explained.
"However," he added, "in our experiments, the organic compounds became so strongly held to the clay particles that they could not undergo any further chemical reactions."

The report also reports on reported life from Mars:

"It is presumed that life arose in a soup rich in carbon compounds, but where
did these organic molecules come from?" said Dr Max Bernstein from the US-based Seti Institute.
He believes the answer may lie in interstellar dust, and will be talking about the possibility that a comet or asteroid may have provided Earth with the raw ingredients needed for life…
Professor Monica Grady, from the UK's Open University, will explore the possibility of a Martian existence at the meeting.
She will discuss whether a Martian biosphere once existed by examining research into the carbon chemistry of Mars…"One possibility is that life really did begin in a 'warm little pond', but not in hot volcanic springs or marine hydrothermal vents," he added.

In light of the ongoing attempts to force the atheist Darwinian evolution origins of life the video below is quite timely. It is titled, “Atheist Darwinian Evolution Origins of Life.”

Kick back and enjoy the show: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll slap your forehead repeatedly at some of the stuff that is still being put forth as science.

Dawkins is all up in there, PZ Myers, Peter Atkins, Dr. Seuss, and many more: