- Can life start, just by itself?
- This idea is called: Abiogenesis or spontaneous biogenesis or spontaneous generation.
- If non-living matter cannot form into living matter, then evolution fails at the first step.
- The 1953 Miller/Urey experiments started with ammonia NH3, water H2O, methane CH4 and hydrogen H2 and subjected the mixture to heat and sparks.
The results were never living matter (usually: 85% tar, 13% carbolic acid, 2% amino acids and other chemicals).
- Despite countless attempts (at laboratories all over the world) nobody has been able to transform non-living matter, into living matter.
- The production of amino acids (the building blocks of life) is not the same as living matter, just as a pile of house bricks doesn't make a house.
The bricks need to be arranged in the correct sequence, to become a house - and that requires external intelligence.
Q1: How did non-living matter figure out life?
- Paul Davies, author of The Goldilocks Enigma:
"Biological organisms are immensely complex - far more complex than Paley could have realized.
To a physicist, they look nothing short of miraculous.
The many and diverse components function together in a coherent and amazingly orchestrated manner.
The living cell contains minuscule pumps, levers, motors, rotors, turbines, propellers, scissors, and many other instruments familiar from a human workshop, all of them exquisite examples of nanotechnology.
The entire assemblage runs itself with great efficiency, sometimes autonomously, sometimes in collaboration with other cells through a sophisticated network of intercellular communication based on chemical signaling.
The command and control functions of the cell are encoded in its DNA database, which implements instructions through intermediary molecules using an optimal mathematical code to convert software instructions into hardware products with customized functionality.
And this is just one cell.
In a larger organism, vastly many cells get together and cooperate to form organs such as eyes, ears, brains, livers, and kidneys, many of them immensely elaborate in their structure and function.
The human brain alone has more cells than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
So it all adds up to a package of marvels that boggles the mind.
The total lack of any kind of experimental evidence leading to the re-creation of life; not to mention the spontaneous emergence of life... is the most humiliating embarrassment to the proponents of naturalism and the whole so-called 'scientific establishment' around it... because it undermines the worldview of anyone who wants naturalism to be true."
Answer: Life cannot start by itself.
