origin of life requires what currently appears to be a remarkable series of coincidences. Living organisms require a series of building blocks of ever increasing size: amino acids, proteins, nucleotides, DNA, and genes. Once in place, these key cellular components must coalesce to form single-celled organisms that subsequently diverge to produce plants, animals, and ultimately the human race. Every key biological development requires a remarkable level of complexity that increases as the precursors are incorporated within ever larger structures.
Interpreting the results of origin-of-life experiments is complicated by the practical limitations of reproducing conditions of early earth on a grand scale—no one wants a Big Bang in their back yard. Complicating the analysis of these intriguing experiments is identifying the origin of the information required to assemble complex biomolecules. Purely random events generate diversity that requires a sorting mechanism to retain the information present in the new molecular entities. At the current time the sorting mechanism is unknown and the rapid emergence of life so soon after earth became habitable remains an enigma.
Science has been remarkably successful in discovering how life works; for example, the discovery of DNA, mapping of the human genome, and cloning. Discovering the origin of life would make all prior Nobel Prize discoveries pale in comparison. However, from a philosophical perspective, there is no reason to believe that science should be able to discover the origin of life, nor, even if science discovered the origins of biological organisms, would this answer the philosophical questions this book raises. The driving force to search for answers to such difficult questions as the origin of life is largely because of science’s proven ability to discover new knowledge in the past and the likelihood that future benefits will accrue regardless of whether the original question is answered.
Prebiotic experiments demonstrate a remarkable synthesis of life’s building blocks despite gaps in current origin-of-life theory. For some, the experiments provide a compelling explanation for the spontaneous formation of life on earth while others believe such chance occurrences require some type of divine guidance. In the past, people have suggested specific developmental interventions, formation of the eye in particular. Time has harshly treated these God-of-the-gaps arguments. More recently, God’s input has been identified more within the unfolding of life on earth: God as the grand designer who continuously acts to bring the world into being. For religious people who experience God’s intervention in their lives, the question naturally arises as to why God would not similarly intervene in creation. The God of Genesis stresses the relationship of people to God as the key to understanding life. The figures of speech describing God’s attributes in human terms: making and speaking, conveying God as being personal and knowable, set the stage for an intimate relationship. God’s “hovering over the waters”29 makes his presence difficult to detect, and yet is consistent with God’s invitation to search for him in the world, leaving the interpretation of the evidence up to each individual.
Discussion Questions
1. The creation story in Genesis has often been interpreted as a literal six-day creation with the aim of creating men and women in relationship with God. How would the relationship between people and God be different if God were to create humans by a slow evolutionary process?
2. Is the idea of God consistent with an evolutionary process based on chance, waste, and suffering?
3. When a rose is picked from a rosebush, at what point is the rose “living” and “dead”?
4. A person who has just died leaves a body that no longer has life. What is the difference between the lifeless body and the virtually identical living person who inhabited the body just a few seconds or hours earlier? Is there a difference?
5. One proposal to explain the formation of high-energy biomolecules in the absence of cellular machinery is by a “frozen accident.” The idea is that an accidental occurrence generates a molecule that somehow becomes codified into the living process. What is the difference between the scientific postulate of a frozen accident and a religious assertion of divine intervention in the evolutionary process?
6. What guidelines should accompany the interpretation of lab experiments designed to mimic infrequent, long-term processes?
7. Amazing experiments are being performed to understand how life began, and with remarkable success. Should there be any limits to the forms of life that scientists can create? If so what would these be and why?
8. Richard Dawkins has written that “living organisms exist for the benefit of DNA rather than the other way round.”30 Does this statement ring true with the experience of life?
9. DNA is a remarkably complex molecule performing the intricate task of replicating cellular information. Is DNA designed? What are the indicators for or against DNA being designed?
Further reading for “The Origin of Life: Who or What Creates Life?”
1. Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2004. Provides a comprehensive summary of recent advances in understanding the chemical and biological origin of life with extensive references to primary literature, reviews, and conference summaries. The material is covered from a Christian perspective, and requires an undergraduate education with familiarity in science.
2. Pier Luigi Luisi, The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Covers the transition from prebiotic chemistry to synthetic biology with a clear focus on identifying the origin of life. Written for graduate students, the material is intensive but clear for those with an undergraduate degree in chemistry or biology.
3. Michael Denton, Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe. New York: Free Press, 1998. Denton surveys a host of biological processes that point to the universe being finely tuned for the emergence of life. The fitness of a diverse set of chemical and biological processes is surveyed in an easily understandable level, and yet the material becomes somewhat overwhelming.
4. Christian de Duve, Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative. New York: Basic, 1995. Biochemist and Nobel laureate de Duve surveys the rise of biomolecules through the primordial soup to the development of modern humans. De Duve does not invoke God or chance directly but seems to concede that because life is statistically unlikely the universe still seems programmed for life.
5. Paul Davies, The 5th Miracle. The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life. New York: Touchstone, 1999. Science popularizer Paul Davies engages the most perplexing questions on the origin of life in an easy-to-read style. Davies weaves possible biological theories together with theories of life on Mars, Panspermia, and other planets that build on his earlier writings on cosmology. Davies is one of the finest, fairest writers with a poetic style who keeps the mystery of life and engages a few of life’s grand questions along the way.
6. Dean Overman, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization. Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Overman collects a vast array of information, largely from popular books, to argue that life is too complex to have arisen by chance. Overman presents the material in short sections comprising just a few pages and marshals the arguments like a lawyer, which he is.
15. Einstein, “Religion and Science.”
16. John Paul II, Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to Reverend George V. Coyne.
17. Gen 1:1–31
18. Gen 1:3
