Origin of Life Research Provides Evidence for Design

Introduction

In 1864, French Chemist Louis Pasteur confidently predicted that the idea of life spontaneously arising from non-life had been defeated.[1] His earlier experiments demonstrated that living organisms did not appear from non-living material. However, in the 1920’s, Russian biochemist Alexander Oparin, along with British biologist J.B.S. Haldane, proposed that the first life could have arisen from non-living chemicals (abiogenesis). They put forward the idea that the molecules needed for life, like sugars and amino acids, could emerge from simple gases in the atmosphere of a prebiotic Earth.[2] In 1952, American chemists Harold Urey and Stanley Miller supposedly showed how the Oparin-Haldane idea could happen by producing amino acids from a mixture of reducing gases assumed to be present on the early Earth. Miller and Urey’s experiment purportedly demonstrated that simple molecules could react to form the larger building blocks needed for life through a purely unguided naturalistic process. Following this work, many expected we would soon find a naturalistic pathway to abiogenesis. Instead, it was later discovered that Miller and Urey’s assumption of a reducing prebiotic atmosphere was incorrect, making their experiment irrelevant to the origin of life on Earth.[3]

This trend of prebiotic chemistry being inapplicable to abiogenesis continues. In addition, the more origin of life research we do, the more improbable a naturalistic beginning becomes.[4] Evidence from the early Earth reveals that complex life appeared as soon as our planet could support it. In the chemistry lab, we have simulated many of the reactions that possibly could create the molecules necessary for life. Ironically, instead of advancing a naturalistic origin, this work provides evidence that a mind was necessary to create life. Current origin of life research supports the idea that life was designed and created instead of originating through an unguided, naturalistic process.

Complex Life Appeared Early

A purely naturalistic origin of life would have taken time. An unguided chemical evolutionary pathway to the first living organism requires a gradual, step-by-step process. Basic molecules and compounds such as carbon dioxide, water, methane, hydrogen, and ammonia must first react to form the larger molecules necessary for life: sugars, phosphates, amino acids, lipids, and nitrogenous bases. These larger building blocks would then need to polymerize: the sugars, phosphates, and bases into polynucleotides and the amino acids into polypeptides (proteins). These polymers would then need to assemble in the protective environment provided by a lipid membrane for the first life to emerge. There is no evidence for a naturalistic, slow, step-by-step process leading to the first life. Instead, the data overwhelming supports the early and sudden appearance of life.

In 2016, evidence was found for 3.7 billion years ago (bya) stromatolites that grew in a “shallow marine environment.”[5]This early life includes photosynthetic and chemoautotrophic organisms, both of which contain a remarkable degree of complexity and cell activity.[6] Stromatolites contain “cyanobacteria and. . .complex, symbiotic, microbial interactions.”[7]Furthermore, geochemical and isotopic evidence demonstrate abundant life existing on Earth 3.83 bya.[8] Carbon-13 to carbon-12 ratio measurements from 3.8 billion-year-old rock formations confirm that photosynthetic life was present on Earth at this time.[9]Because of the advanced nature of these 3.8 bya microorganisms, Norio Kitada and Shigenori Maruyama, researchers at the Tokyo Earth-Life Science Institute, infer the origin of life occurred between 4.1 and 4.2 bya.[10] Isotopic signatures for life have also been detected in 4.1 bya zircons.[11] Regardless of the exact dates, complex life appeared early on Earth.

Additional support for biochemically and metabolically complex early life comes from research attempting to determine the minimum requirements for life. One of the simplest organisms is Mycoplasma genitalium. Craig Venter’s Synthetic Biology Group found that “it is likely that all of its 482 protein-coding genes are in some way necessary for effective growth in its natural habitat.”[12] This research demonstrates that minimal life must be amazingly complex. Philosopher of Biology and Evolution Paul Nelson states: “This lower threshold of minimum complexity for life has been well-mapped now in several different groups and it is astonishing just how high this threshold is.”[13] This threshold for a minimum cell to operate includes the following partial list: Machinery to replicate and repair deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), hundreds of proteins, the machinery to make those proteins, ribonucleic acid (RNA), chemical transport mechanisms, machinery to generate the molecule used for energy (adenosine triphosphate, ATP), and metabolic machinery. Venter also found that several of these minimum necessities have redundant systems.[14]

Research demonstrating the complexity of the simplest life reinforces the evidence that early life on Earth was also very intricate. Life appearing through an unguided, naturalistic, step-by-step process does not predict an early appearance of complex life, nor does it predict basic life to be so intricate. Earth’s earliest life appeared suddenly as a fully functioning, multifarious molecular machine with highly specified and purposeful parts. The only cause ever observed for an exquisitely engineered and purposeful machine made up of several parts is a mind. The evidence regarding the earliest organisms on Earth and research attempting to determine life’s minimal complexity both support the idea that life was designed and created by an intelligent entity.

It is unknown how this early, complex life could arise under the conditions of early Earth. Due to the collision which formed the moon, life could not have existed or emerged on Earth until at least 4.4 bya. The Earth was also pummeled by meteorites, heating the surface to a molten state for much of its early history. There are indications this bombardment was intense, with dozens of sterilization events occurring between 4.5 and 3.84 bya; the worst being at the end.[15] There are also indicators that the surface of the Earth was pelted with acid rain during that time.[16] Due to the moon forming collision, the meteorites, and the acidic nature on the surface due to acid rain, it is improbable that life could have formed on Earth prior to 3.84 bya. Since we are finding evidence of life possibly as early as 4.1 bya, life must have appeared as soon as conceivably possible and most likely under harsh conditions that would make the slow, step-by-step process of small molecules to polymers to cell formation impossible. This evidence makes a naturalistic origin of life improbable but makes sense if the Earth and life were both designed and created by a mind.

Life Appeared Early, But How?

The evidence for early, complex life appearing under impossible conditions is so strong that origin of life researchers as prominent as Francis Crick, Leslie Orgel, and Sir Fredrick Hoyle have supported the proposal that life formed somewhere else in the universe and then was somehow transported to Earth.[17] Part of the reason for this belief that life formed elsewhere in the universe is that organic synthesis is difficult. Even under controlled, pristine lab conditions, producing the specific, complex, organic molecules necessary for life is error-filled with very small yields. As difficult as it is to create these molecules in the lab, it is inconceivable how these molecules could form under harsh and unguided conditions. I will demonstrate the impossibility of synthesizing the organic molecules necessary for life under the conditions of early Earth with three examples: lipids, ribose, and ribonucleic acid (RNA).

Lipids

Lipids, made from fatty acids and glycerol, are necessary for a protective membrane surrounding any first cell that would appear on Earth. Fatty acids are formed from long chain hydrocarbons. Lipids needed for life commonly contain fatty acids with hydrocarbon chains that are 12—18 carbons long. We know of no pathway for a fatty acid or a long-chain hydrocarbon to form on prebiotic Earth. Even in a perfect lab environment, we have trouble producing carbon chains longer than three carbons. The Fischer-Tropsch-type reactions that can form hydrocarbons from hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide can’t come close to making carbon chains long enough to create the type of lipid needed for a living organism.[18]

Even if the proper lipids could be produced on the early Earth, it is highly unlikely that a naturalistic process could form a cell membrane. Cell membranes, even in the most basic life, are extraordinarily complex. All cell membranes have very specific embedded proteins to control what goes in and out of the cell. Walter Bradley and Casey Luskin, scientists from Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, explain that this “is no mere passive wall—it’s a smart, active gatekeeper capable of allowing water and nutrients in, and letting waste products out. Specialized machines embedded in this smart membrane discriminate between helpful and harmful substances through a variety of biochemical pathways and molecular pumps.”[19] But these specific proteins are only part of the complexity of a cell membrane. Lipid bilayers surrounding the simplest known cell contain thousands of very particular and very different lipids in a coordinated system.[20]

Protein gates and nonsymmetric but organized microsystems of lipids add to the complexity of the barrier needed for the first life. Synthetic Organic Chemist James Tour reveals even more complexity by adding that “all lipid bilayers have vast numbers of polysaccharide (sugar) appendages, known as glycans.”[21] These complex saccharides (the glycans) are crucial for “nanosystem and microsystem regulation” and cell to cell communication.[22] All cells we know about have a vast array of complex, information-bearing glycans covering the surface of their membranes. 

Proponents of a naturalistic pathway to the first life will point to the tendency of simple, uniform lipids to self-organize into micelles as a possible membrane for the first cell.[23] These simple micelles, which lack the needed bilayer, also lack multiple types of lipids, lack protein gates, and lack glycans. Uniform monolayers of one type of lipid are essentially soap bubbles and could not act as the membrane necessary for life to emerge. The coordinated and complex structure of the cell membrane required for the first life is evidence that life was designed and created by a mind.

Ribose

Ribose, a carbohydrate (sugar) also necessary for the first life, is one of the molecules needed for RNA (the “R”). Formaldehyde is the most likely precursor to ribose present on the early Earth.[24] We can synthesize ribose in the lab from formaldehyde using an inorganic catalyst like calcium hydroxide. Ribose itself has 16 isomers (molecules with the same chemical formula but a different arrangement of atoms) in the closed form. Only one of these possible arrangements of ribose is the correct one needed for life. Ribose only has one hydroxyl group (an oxygen and a hydrogen bonded to a carbon) on each of three specific carbons. If the conditions aren’t carefully controlled, you can get any number of hydroxyls stuck on any of the five carbons in ribose. Even one hydroxyl group out of place makes the molecule a different carbohydrate, rendering that molecule useless for life. Even the ability to carefully control pH, temperature, and type of solvent in which you are working doesn’t guarantee one specific sugar; the ribose producing reaction still produces a mixture of several different carbohydrates that must be then be purified.

When we make ribose in the lab, we can use pure starting reagents and separate out the specific sugar. Nature can’t purify, nor use pure starting reagents, so there is no control over what is mixed in with the reacting molecules. On the early Earth, significant amounts of formaldehyde, as well as the ribose, would be used up by side reactions. These unwanted reactions create useless mixtures of chemicals. Harvard Professor of Chemistry Steven A. Benner summarizes this as “the Asphalt Paradox: “An enormous amount of empirical data has established, as a rule, that organic systems, given energy and left to themselves, devolve to give useless complex mixtures, ‘asphalts’.”[25] Nature isn’t able to pull out the specific needed molecule from the asphalt mixture.

Ribose decomposes rapidly due to its short half-life: 73 minutes at pH 7 and 100 ^OC in a pure solution.[26] This decomposition is faster under early Earth conditions as the original reacting solution and other compounds would be present to react with the ribose. Most organic compounds required for life, like ribose, are kinetic products, meaning they are not the most stable result of the reaction. In the lab, ribose must be quickly removed from the reaction and stored in a freezer under inert conditions to stop the reaction from proceeding to the more thermodynamically stable but useless products.  The molecules required for life could not sit around and wait for the other necessary compounds to be made. For example, if ribose did happen to be produced, it would undergo caramelization long before it came into contact to bond with another chemical to create a larger molecule needed for life. Because of the impossibility of forming ribose under the conditions of the early Earth, Stanley Miller (of the Miller & Urey experiment) has conceded that “the backbone of the first genetic material could not have contained ribose or any other sugars because of their instability.”[27]

Organic synthesis to produce the one specific ribose needed for life to begin cannot be done under the conditions of early Earth, and definitely not in a purely naturalistic and uncontrolled manner. Miller claims that life must have emerged without the use of any carbohydrate (sugar). Cell membranes, RNA, DNA, the simplest life, and the earliest first life found on Earth all need very specific sugar molecules. Because useful sugars could not have formed under the conditions of early Earth, it is improbable that life could have emerged through a purely naturalistic process. Complex life appeared early and contains many types of very specific sugars. This is evidence that life was designed and created. 

RNA

RNA presents us with another problem that renders the naturalistic origin of life unlikely. Because RNA is a self-replicating molecule, one of the main proposals for the origin of life is an RNA first scenario.[28] To create RNA, the nitrogenous base adenine must bond with ribose, so both molecules must be formed in the exact location at the same time. However, adenine and formaldehyde (needed to make ribose) react with each other and would consume each other before the ribose could form. Ribose and adenine also could not have been made individually and then wait until the other was produced because adenine, like ribose, decomposes too quickly.[29] If you could somehow form RNA, it would also quickly decompose. In a lab environment, RNA samples must be stored in a buffer at -80^OC.[30] In addition, the polymerization needed to form RNA is a condensation reaction, which doesn’t happen in water.[31] This makes any water-based scenario for the formation of RNA unrealistic. In 2002, after summarizing the problems with forming several types of organic molecules on the early Earth, origin-of-life researcher Leslie Orgel proclaimed, “It would be a miracle if a strand of RNA ever appeared on the primitive Earth.”[32] If you can’t form RNA, there is no possibility of an RNA world. Without a naturalistic scenario to form RNA, there is no step-by-step, purely naturistic pathway to life. The most basic, as well as the earliest organisms contain RNA as part of their purposeful machinery. This is evidence that life was designed and created by a mind. 

The dates at which we are finding the presence of complex life on Earth are so early that, to gain the time needed for a step-by-step process, many are suggesting that life began elsewhere in the universe and traveled to Earth. An alternative proposal to gain the needed time is that life emerged in a protected location earlier on Earth and somehow survived the meteorite bombardment and acid rain. A common proposed location is a hydrothermal vent.[33] For many of the reasons already discussed, this favorite location for life to have started on Earth is not viable. The temperature and pH of underwater vents would frustrate any prebiotic synthesis, enhancing the problems described above. The presence of water also decomposes RNA and denatures proteins.[34] Because hydrothermal vents are unable to provide all the building blocks necessary for life, origin of life researchers at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing state that hydrothermal vents could be a “transmigrant site for life to survive in spite of the extreme environment, but it is not the birthplace of life.”[35] Life evolving in a hydrothermal vent may solve the early appearance problem, but the conditions in a vent will not allow for life to emerge. 

Origin of life researchers at the University of Manchester School of Chemistry have proposed a pathway to RNA which circumvents the ribose and adenine problem.[36] They claim to have found a route to activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides, a precursor to an RNA polymer. Their method may avoid the problems discussed above, but all their reactions are accomplished under conditions that have no resemblance to the early Earth. Pure reagents are used in their reactions, and they carefully control the pH by using pure solutions of sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. When a needed molecule is produced in one step, they proceed to the next step with purchased, pure reagents instead of using the molecule they created in the previous step.[37] Their method also requires using a pure solution of sodium dihydrogen phosphate. Due to the insolubility of naturally occurring phosphorus compounds, dissolved phosphate is highly unlikely to have been present on the early Earth in any useful concentration.[38] The Manchester researchers claim they have discovered a possible naturalistic pathway to RNA. On the contrary, their use of pure reagents and their control of the reaction conditions instead make a case for a creator.

Human Intervention

Life emerging through unguided, naturalistic processes under the conditions on the early Earth borders on the impossible. However, many origin-of-life researchers still argue that a naturalistic pathway to life still exists because they can simulate many of the needed reactions in the lab. Instead of demonstrating a viable naturalistic pathway, the researchers are unknowingly providing evidence for the creation of life by a mind. In every example, the necessary organic chemistry requires an intelligent agent (the chemist) to manipulate something in the experiment to successfully produce the needed organic molecules. Reactions begin with pure reagents and the conditions such as pH and temperature are carefully controlled. To form ribose in the lab, a chemist must add an initiator molecule (glycoaldehyde) to start the reaction. Without the initiator, formaldehyde simply reacts to form methanol and formic acid instead of the needed ribose. Ribose is always produced with a mixture of other sugars, so the chemist must remove the needed ribose from the mixture as it is produced. Fischer-Tropsch reactions that make the longer carbon chains necessary for lipids require a chemist to control the very specific lab conditions and add already purified catalysts at the exact moment.[39] Like for lipids and ribose, it is highly improbable that pathways to the molecules needed for life existed on early Earth; we can simulate them in a lab only when a mind intervenes. 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.”[40] An intelligence is necessary every time we duplicate origin of life chemistry, but a naturalistic pathway to life 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.

Conclusion

Evidence for life being designed and created by an intelligence include the following: Complex life appeared on Earth at the first possible instant, organic chemical synthesis would have been impossible on the early Earth, and origin of life research needs a mind to intervene. Life appearing through a purely naturalistic, unguided process predicts exactly the opposite. Benner summarizes: “We are now 60 years into the modern era of prebiotic chemistry. That era has produced tens of thousands of papers attempting to define processes by which ‘molecules that look like biology’ might arise from ‘molecules that do not look like biology’. . .And yet, the problem remains unsolved.”[41]

If life was designed and created by a mind who also created the Earth for life, we should expect life to appear as soon as the Earth was ready, without a gradual, step-by-step progression. This is precisely what the research shows: biochemically and metabolically complex life appearing suddenly on Earth as early as possible without any viable naturalistic pathway. The only cause known to produce an engineered, fully functioning machine with highly specified and purposeful parts is a mind. The evidence from origin of life research leads to the reasonable conclusion that an intelligent entity designed and created life on this planet.

 

 

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[1] Walter L. Bradley and Casey Luskin, “Did Life Arise by Purely Natural Means (Abiogenesis)?” in The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos, edited by William Dembski, Casey Luskin, and Joseph Holden (Eugene OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2021), 270.

[2] Ibid.

[3] John Cohen, “Novel Center Seeks to Add Spark to Origins of Life,” Science 270, no. 5244 (December 22, 1995): 1925-1926, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2888811.

[4] James Tour, “The Mystery of the Origin of Life,” lecture at the 2019 Dallas Science and Faith Conference, Discovery Science, YouTube, March 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU7Lww-sBPg&list=PLR8eQzfCOiS3wfVsVizCzTu9k8zfNOT58&index=2&t=1918s.

[5] Allen P. Nutman, Vickie C. Bennett, Clark R.L. Friend, Martin Van Kranendonk, and Allen R. Chivas, “Rapid emergence of life shown by discovery of 3,700-million-year-old microbial structures,” Nature 537 (September 22, 2016): 535-539, doi:10.1038/nature19355.

[6] Fazale Rana & Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off, (Covina, CA: Reasons to Believe, 2014), 78.

[7] Ibid., 66.

[8] Ibid., 63-70.

[9] Manfred Schidlowski, “Carbon Isotopes as Biogeochemical Recorders of Life over 3.8 Ga of Earth History: Evolution of a Concept,” Precambrian Research 106, no.1 (2001): 117-134. doi:10.1016/50301-9268(00)00128-5.

[10] Norio Kitada and Shigenori Maruyama, “Origins of building blocks of life: A review,” Geoscience Frontiers 9 (2018): 1117-1153.

[11] Elizabeth A. Bell, Patrick Boehnke, T. Mark Harrison, and Wendy Mao, “Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon,” PNAS 112, no. 47 (November 24, 2015): 14518—14521, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517557112.

[12] John I. Glass, Nacyra Assad-Garcia, Nina Alperovich, Shibhu Yooseph, Matthew R. Lewis, Mahir Maruf, Clyde A. Hutchison III, Hamilton O. Smith, and J. Craig Venter, “Essential genes of a minimal bacterium,” PNAS 103, no. 2 (January 10, 2006): 425-430, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0510013103.

[13] Paul Nelson, “Origin of Life Video M7-3,” Video Lectures for CSSR 530, Biola University, accessed March 2022. 

[14] Glass, Assad-Garcia, Alperovich, Yooseph, Lewis, et al., “Essential genes,” 425-430.

[15] Rana & Ross, Origins of Life, 82—83; S. Marchi, W. F. Bottke, L. T. Elkins—Tanton, M. Bierhaus, K. Wuennemann, A. Morbidelli, and D. A. Kring, “Widespread mixing and burial of earth’s Hadean crust by asteroid impacts,” Nature 511, (31 July 2014): 578, doi: 10.1038/nature13539.

[16] Takayuki Ushikubo, Noriko T. Kita, Aaron J. Cavosie, Simon A. Wilde, Roberta L. Rudnick, and John W. Valley, “Lithium in Jack Hills zircons: Evidence for extensive weathering of earth’s earliest crust,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 272, Issues 3—4 (15 August 2008): pages 666-676, https//doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2008.05.032.

[17] Shigenori Maruyama, Ken Kurokawa, Toshikazu Ebisuzaki, Yusuke Sawaki, Konomi Suda, and M. Santosh, “Nine requirements for the origin of earth’s life: Not at the hydrothermal vent, but in a nuclear geyser system,” Geoscience Frontiers 10 (2019): 1337—1357, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2018.09.011.

[18] Daoping He, Xiaoguang Wang, Yang Yang, and Fangmig lin, “Hydrothermal sunthesis of long-chain hydrocarbons up to C₂₄ with NaHCO₃-assisted stabilizing cobalt,” PNAS Open Access 118, no. 51 e2115059118 (December 15, 2021): https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2115059118.

[19] Bradley & Luskin, “Did Life Arise,” 274.

[20] Bradley & Luskin, “Did Life Arise,” 274.

[21] Ibid.

[22] James Tour, “An Open Letter to My Colleagues,” Interference 3, no. 2 (August 2017): https://inference-review.com/article/an-open-letter-to-my-colleagues.

[23] Alonso Ricardo and Jack W. Szostak, “Origin of Life on Earth,” Scientific American 301, no. 3 (September 2009): 54-61, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0909-54

[24] Leslie Orgel, “Prebiotic Chemistry and the Origin of the RNA World,” Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 39 (2004): 101, doi:10.1080/10409230490460765.

 

[25] Steven A. Benner, “Paradoxes in the Origin of Life,” Orig Life Evol Biosph 44, (2014):339-343, doi: 10.1007/s11084-014-9379-0.

[26] Rosa Larralde, Michael P. Robertson, and Stanley Miller, “Rates of decomposition of ribose and other sugars: Implications for chemical evolution,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 92, Chemistry (August 1995): 8158-8160. 

[27] Ibid.

[28] Norio Kitada and Shigenori Maruyama, “Origins of building blocks of life: A review,” Geoscience Frontiers 9 (2018): 1138, https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2017.07.007.

[29] Sigma-Aldrich Product Information Sheet, Adenine, Catalog Number A8626.

https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/deepweb/assts/sigmaaldrich/product/documents/119/460/a8626pis.pdf

[30] Dr. James Tour, A Course on Abiogenesis, YouTube, February 14, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UColdwL6T062LNo65OHngXAQ.

[31] Ricardo & Szostak, “Origin of Life.”

[32] Leslie Orgel, “The RNA World and the Origin of Life,” lecture, ISSOL 2002, quoted in Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off, by Fazale Rana & Hugh Ross (Covina, CA: Reasons to Believe, 2014), 117.

[33] Kitada & Maruyama, “Origins,” 1120.

[34] Stanley Miller and Jeffrey Bada, “Submarine hot springs and the origin of life,” Nature 334, no. 18 (August 1988): 609-610.

[35] Shigenori Maruyama, Ken Kurokawa, Toshikazu Ebisuzaki, Yusuke Sawaki, Konomi Suda, and M. Santosh, “Nine requirements for the origin of earth’s life: Not at the hydrothermal vent, but in a nuclear geyser system,” in Geoscience Frontiers 10 (2019):1337—1357, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2018.09.011.

[36] Matthew W. Powner, Beatrice Gerland, and John D. Sutherland, “Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically conditions,” Nature 459, (May 14, 2009): 239-242, doi:10.1038/nature08013.

[37] Ibid., supplementary information.

[38] Barrie Winn and Fazale Rana, Phosphates and the Origin of Life, Reasons to Believe, YouTube, June 20, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdsEEnKtRuE.

[39] Kitada & Maruyama, “Origins of building blocks,” 1132-1133.

[40] Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 41.

[41] Benner, “Paradoxes,” 340.