“The Cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be.” If you are between 35 and 55 years of age you probably remember that quote from Carl Sagan very well and most likely spent much of high school science class watching his video series Cosmos. Implicit in that statement is the assumption of materialism – the belief that matter is all that exists. This same philosophy is echoed by current day scientists Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Richard Dawkins. Is there a way to test this assumption? Is the data that nature is revealing to us indicating that matter is all there is, or is the data trending in the direction of much more?
If matter is all that exists, then as we do more science, we should be more and more convinced that we can describe everything in terms of blind forces and random motions of atoms. But if materialism is not true, and instead there is an intelligence that exists that created and designed the universe, then the data we find as we learn more about the universe should increase in support of a super intelligent mind who planned and created the universe for us.
Because of evolution, biology is probably the most common branch of science used to show that God does not exist. Richard Dawkins is famously quoted as sayingthat “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Every day we make discoveries that add to humanities knowledge and understanding of the origin of life; do these discoveries support materialism or as we learn more biology and biochemistry does what we find make belief in a creator more reasonable?
If life appeared through a purely materialistic process, there should be evidence for a prebiotic chemical soup on the early earth; we should find evidence in the oldest rock formations of some mixture of chemicals that could organize into the first life. We do not find any evidence at all to support this; instead, what we do find is strong evidence that life is designed and created. Measurements of the carbon-13 to carbon-12 ratios in the earliest rock formations show that no concentration of pre-biotic molecules existed; no known abiotic process can explain the ratio that is measured while the number is easily explained as coming from already existing life. Measurements of the nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14 ratio, along with the finding that the concentration of ammonia on early earth is inadequate to sustain prebiotic chemical pathways, confirm that no primordial soup ever existed.[1]
Earth’s early atmosphere was also neutral to mildly oxidizing from the beginning, therefore it could not have sustained the production of prebiotic molecules which could only be produced in a reducing atmosphere. The presence of oxygen shuts down prebiotic chemistry pathways, but even if there was no oxygen, there still would be no way for prebiotic molecules to persist because the lack of ozone would allow ultraviolet light to break apart any molecules that happened to form. Even if we assume the pre-biotic chemicals existed, the favorite locations for life to have begun on earth are not viable. Volcanoes produce oxidizing gases, so they are not an option as locations for prebiotic molecules to form and the temperature of underwater vents would frustrate any prebiotic synthesis. Even the purest water today has a higher concentration of amino acids (by a factor of 100 million!) then what could have possibly been delivered from space into Earth’s oceans.[2]Steven Benner, University of Florida Professor and Founder of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, summarized all this evidence at the 2017 International Society for Study of the Origin of Life, “The building blocks of the building block molecules of life are either missing on the early earth or they existed at abundance levels far too dilute to be of any use.”
The early appearance of biochemically and metabolically complex life provides evidence for a designer; if God created life, then we would expect it to show up as early as it could and we would expect it to appear without going through a gradual, step by step process. Cyanobacteria, as well as complex ecosystems with all types of bacteria were present 3.5 billion years ago; just 350 million years after the oceans became established. Prokaryotic microorganisms were firmly entrenched on Earth at 3.7 billion years ago and quite possibly prior to 3.8 billion years ago. We have geochemical and isotopic evidence for abundant life existing on Earth 3.83 billion years ago.[3]Life appeared in a geologic instant on earth with no evidence for a prebiotic concentration of the chemicals necessary for life. Niles Eldredge, an evolution specialist, is said to have commented that life seems to be intrinsic to Earth.
The more origin of life research we do, the harder it becomes to explain life’s origins through a purely materialistic process. Life appearing on earth in a fairly advanced state as early as physically possible is solid evidence for a creator. The extreme variability of the sun's luminosity and the intensity of the sun’s ionizing radiation would not have allowed life to exist prior to 3.9 billion years ago and up until about 3.85 billion years ago, Earth suffered dozens of sterilization events from meteorites bombarding the planet, known as the late heavy bombardment. Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee comment in their book Rare Earth,“Life appeared simultaneously with the cessation of the late heavy bombardment.” In addition, during the 50 million years following the bombardment, the surface temp of earth was 158-194OC! Most proteins denature well below this and all four of the RNA nucleotide building blocks will degrade at these temperatures! According to James Tour, a synthetic organic chemist who specializes in nanotechnology, “Every day it gets harder to have the origin of life. The origin of life becomes more and more complex every day.” No wonder Nobel prize winner Francis Crick, along with origin of life chemist Leslie Orgel, proposed that life may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.
There was no pre-biotic mixture of chemicals and fairly complex life appeared on earth as early as physically possible. But there is more evidence from organic chemistry that makes a naturalistic origin of life almost impossible. If you have ever taken an organic chemistry lab, you know how difficult it is to do organic synthesis – even in a pristine laboratory environment. The large, very specific, complex organic molecules necessary for life could not have been produced on the early earth for several reasons. First of all, organic synthesis reactions don’t just stop on their own! For most large molecules, reactions, such as polymerization, will continue to occur if the products are not removed and separated from the starting materials. Second, since most organic compounds required for life are kinetic products, they must be stored in a freezer under inert conditions to keep them from decomposing. This also means that the molecules required for life cannot sit around and wait for other compounds to be made! For example, if a needed carbohydrate did happen to be produced, the odds are that it would undergo caramelization before it could come into contact with another chemical needed for life. Third, there are more ways than you can count that most organic molecules can hook together and it takes very specific controlled conditions to get the specific molecule you want. From the trillions of ways that carbohydrates can connect, only one works when dealing with a certain life structure or process; there is no way nature can purify a large mixture of chemicals to get the specific one that is needed. Conditions such as pH, temperature, and the type of solvent you are working in all need to be carefully controlled to guarantee the correct arrangement of atoms and functional groups on the very specific needed compound.
The organic synthesis reactions required for life to begin all require a researcher to control some aspect of the experiment to get the needed result. Evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris has pointed out, “Many of the experiments designed to explain one or other step in 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.”[4]An intelligence is necessary every time we duplicate origin of life chemistry; materialism predicts that these reactions should occur on their own. The more origin of life research we do, the more evidence we get for a creator.
Evidence for biological systems being designed by a mind and not occurring as a product of a purely materialistic process include:
1. The lack of a prebiotic chemical soup on the early earth.
2. The fact that life appeared on earth at the very instant it was first possible.
3. The fact that the organic synthesis reactions needed to make the specific organic molecules needed for life could not have happened under the conditions of early earth.
4. The fact that we can’t create the materials necessary for life without using our own intelligence.
From this evidence, you can reasonably conclude that a mind, which we can call God, created life on this planet.
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