origin-of-life researcher Leslie Orgel was overheard saying, “It would be a miracle if a strand of RNA ever appeared on the primitive earth.”23
Organic compounds degrade ever more quickly as the structures become more complex. In essence, macromolecular DNA has a much shorter “sell by” date than the small constituent nucleotide precursors. Although temperatures near freezing would give a better chance for the accumulation of the sufficient concentrations of organic compounds in the ocean, -21oC would be ideal for chemical evolution. If the early earth were some 20oC cooler than today because of less sunlight, there would be far fewer thunderstorms on the earth because thunderstorms are generated by warm, moist air coming into contact with cold, dry air. But thunderstorms are proposed as the most efficient energy source for generating prebiotic molecules. Origin of life research is plagued by this type of quandary; thunderstorms provide the right type of energy for condensing the basic building blocks of life, but the ideal conditions for preventing the degradation of the biopolymers, DNA, and amino acids, occurs at low temperatures where thunderstorms are extremely unlikely.
The difficulty in identifying an efficient mechanism for assembling prebiotic molecules has led some people to suggest that these molecules came from outer space. Meteorites, such as the Murchison meteorite in Australia, have been found to contain amino acids. The most predominant was the simplest amino acid glycine, comprising about 40 percent of the total amino acids in the case of the Murchison meteorite. The exact amount of amino acids arriving from meteorites is under dispute but has been estimated at 0.5 g each year during the time when life first appeared. Further complicating these estimates is the contamination of meteorites with amino acids already present in earth’s environment, particularly bacterially derived amino acids present in groundwater.
Life on earth is based on proteins and DNA. Forming these polymeric units involves assembling numerous precursors in a specific sequence in order to create functional biomolecules. Currently no broadly agreed sorting mechanism exists by which the correct sequence might be achieved. A similar puzzle exists at the atomic level where the formation of amino acids and nucleotides requires new molecules to form from atoms of low prevalence in the earth’s crust. Evidence from spark discharge experiments provides a tantalizing mechanism to explain the formation of amino acids and at the other end of the biological spectrum, all of life rests on proteins and DNA or RNA. The transition between these points remains a great mystery.
Divinely Guided Evolution?
Most scientists regard faith as something relegated to religion and are surprised to learn that science rests on several assumptions that amount to articles of faith. Belief forms the basis of scientific advances because, in proposing any hypothesis, scientists are effectively stating a belief about the world’s structure. The belief may be true or contain truth, and the refining nature of the scientific method leads to an understanding based on evidence that may be far from the original belief. Scientists operate on several axioms taken on faith:
1. Nature is Orderly. Nature has an underlying order shown in patterns and regularities that can be discovered. The orderly structure of nature is often thought to be self-evident; yet awareness of that order is relatively recent. Kepler (1571–1630) is often credited as identifying the underlying mathematical structure of the universe, which he believed stemmed from uncovering God’s purposeful design.24 John’s Gospel opens with a statement that explains the source of the purposeful order as stemming from God’s nature: “In the beginning was the Word,”25 the logos, the personal force, the understandable, ordered, rational principle on which all creation rests. In light of the logos infusing the world with rationality, including people, the validity of this understanding reflects the two-way, rational relationship intended between God and man. Einstein, in reflecting on the intelligibility of the universe and the ability to understand much of the complexity through science wrote: “God is subtle but malicious he is not.”26 In other words, the universe may be complex and contain unexpected patterns, but those are part of an orderly fundamental structure that can be understood. The world is not capricious but is a structured universe capable of being understood.
2. Nature is Uniform. The forces of nature are uniform throughout space and time. What happens in one laboratory in one country is reproducible under the same conditions anywhere around the world at any time.
3. Senses Perceive Reality. Coupled with the underlying order of nature is the ability of the human intellect to detect patterns and understand the meaning of the information inherent in the patterns. Reliable data can be obtained from the human senses or their extensions. Scientific instruments are assumed to give consistently reliable information about the way the world is despite not being able to directly “see” the object being interrogated. No-one has actually seen an electron, though scientists all believe they exist. Sensing reality is critical in scientific discovery because all abstract scientific discoveries are made first in the mind and then tested. Most of Einstein’s work falls in this category precisely because many of his theories were counter-intuitive.
4. Simplicity. If two theories or explanations fit the data, the simpler is usually to be preferred. For example, Copernicus’s solar-centric system did not provide more accurate data than that of the Ptolemaic geo-centric system—the advance, recognized by mathematicians, was a simpler calculation. Similarly, the most famous scientific equation of all time, E=mc2, simply and elegantly summarizes an awesome, fundamental truth underlying the universe’s structure.
The axioms on which science rests are philosophical assumptions. Scientist’s faith in these assumptions leads some individuals to make statements that are actually philosophical assertions. Each episode of the television show Cosmos began with Carl Sagan intoning that “The Universe is all there is . . .”—clearly a belief statement.27
Science cannot tell us why the universe is understandable or why the patterns in nature are so easily comprehended. Scientists simply make these assumptions, consciously or unconsciously, because they are so fruitful. Why people have brains capable of understanding remarkably intricate features from quantum theory to cosmology when these intellectually demanding areas have little immediate biological survival value is perplexing. From a religious perspective, the attributes of intelligence, power, and understanding are a natural consequence of people being made in God’s image.
The Origin of Information
Prebiotic evolution assumes a key role of chance, in the sense of a random occurrence, to provide the right chemicals for the transition from non-living components to the first living organism. Direct laboratory simulations of conditions on an early earth must address the problem inherent in trying to reproduce a process that apparently took millions of years. Detecting chance events with small probabilities requires a long time. A scientific approach to shorten the time requires an intentional, rational experiment to replicate the “chance” events that might have produced living organisms from non-living components. Usually, experiments with low probabilities are performed under intense conditions with greater frequency to improve the chance of a favorable outcome. Experimental design involves selecting pure chemicals that are subjected to geologically plausible conditions of energy input (heat, electric discharge) and environment (temperature, concentration, and pH). Successful experiments generate biologically significant molecules whereas unsuccessful experiments are refined and repeated until they are successful. This repeated give and take constitutes a necessary input of information from the experimentalist and a sorting of the output to find what is experimentally relevant.
Experimentally, the sorting is provided in the analysis of the reaction mixture. Most reactions generate a mixture of products from which one or two potential precursors are carefully identified and separated. Any intervention represents an input of information. Which products are significant? This depends on what you’re looking for, in other words, the experimental design has a specific type of product in mind for selection. This is like going to the beach and collecting shiny shells from the morass of sand and dead sea-life left along the shoreline.
