a

. An authoritative study concluded that the early biosphere contained oxygen before the earliest fossils (bacteria) formed. Iron oxides were found that “imply a source of oxygen enough to convert into insoluble ferric material the ferrous solutions that must have first formed the flat, continuous horizontal layers that can in some sites be traced over hundreds of kilometers.” Philip Morrison, “Earth’s Earliest Biosphere,” Scientific American, Vol. 250, April 1984, pp. 30–31.

Charles F. Davidson, “Geochemical Aspects of Atmospheric Evolution,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 53, 15 June 1965, pp. 1194–1205.

Steven A. Austin, “Did the Early Earth Have a Reducing Atmosphere?” ICR Impact, No. 109, July 1982.

“In general, we find no evidence in the sedimentary distributions of carbon, sulfur, uranium, or iron, that an oxygen-free atmosphere has existed at any time during the span of geological history recorded in well-preserved sedimentary rocks.” Erich Dimroth and Michael M. Kimberley, “Precambrian Atmospheric Oxygen: Evidence in the Sedimentary Distributions of Carbon, Sulfur, Uranium, and Iron,” Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 13, No. 9, September 1976, p. 1161.

“What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on earth? The answer is that there is no evidence for it, but much against it.” [emphasis in original] Philip H. Abelson, “Chemical Events on the Primitive Earth,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 55, June 1966, p. 1365.

b

. R. T. Brinkmann, “Dissociation of Water Vapor and Evolution of Oxygen in the Terrestrial Atmosphere,” Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 74, No. 23, 20 October 1969, pp. 5355–5368.

c

. “It is difficult to imagine how a little pond with just these components, and no others [no contaminants], could have formed on the primitive earth. Nor is it easy to see exactly how the precursors would have arisen.”  Francis Crick, Life Itself (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), p. 85.

d

. “But when multiple biopolymers must all converge at the same place at the same time to collectively interact in a controlled biochemical cooperative manner, faith in ‘self-organization’ becomes ‘blind belief.’ No empirical data or rational scientific basis exists for such a metaphysical leap.” Abel and Trevors, p. 9.

e

. “I believe this [the overwhelming tendency for chemical reactions to move in the direction opposite to that required for the evolution of life] to be the most stubborn problem that confronts us—the weakest link at present in our argument [for the origin of life].” George Wald, “The Origin of Life,” p. 50.

f

. “The conclusion from these arguments presents the most serious obstacle, if indeed it is not fatal, to the theory of spontaneous generation. First, thermodynamic calculations predict vanishingly small concentrations of even the simplest organic compounds. Secondly, the reactions that are invoked to synthesize such compounds are seen to be much more effective in decomposing them.” D. E. Hull, “Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Spontaneous Generation,” Nature, Vol. 186, 28 May 1960, p. 694.

Pitman, p. 140.

Duane T. Gish, Speculations and Experiments Related to Theories on the Origin of Life, ICR Technical Monograph, No. 1 (El Cajon, California: Institute for Creation Research, 1972).

g

. “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”  Crick, p. 88.

Francis Crick, a Nobel Prize winner and the co-discoverer of the DNA molecule, did not give up. He reasoned that if life could not have evolved on earth, it must have evolved somewhere else in our galaxy and been transported to earth—an old theory called panspermia. Just how life evolved on a distant planet is never explained. Crick proposed directed panspermia—that an advanced civilization sent bacteria to earth. Crick (p. 15) recognized that “it is difficult to see how viable spores could have arrived here, after such a long journey in space, undamaged by radiation.” He mistakenly thought that a spacecraft might protect the bacteria from cosmic radiation. Crick grossly underestimated the problem. [See Eugene N. Parker, “Shielding Space Travelers,” Scientific American, Vol. 294, March 2006, pp. 40–47.]

h

. Robert Shapiro, Origins (New York: Bantam Books, 1986).

The experiments by Harold Urey and Stanley Miller are often mentioned as showing that the “building blocks of life” can be produced in the laboratory. Not mentioned in these misleading claims are:

These “building blocks” are merely the simpler amino acids. The most complex amino acids have never been produced in the laboratory.

Most products of these chemical reactions are poisonous to life.

Amino acids are as far from a living cell as bricks are from the Empire State Building.

Half the amino acids produced have the wrong handedness. [See “Handedness: Left and Right” on page 15.]

Urey and Miller’s experiments contained a reducing atmosphere, which the early earth did not have (see Endnote “a” above), and components, such as a trap, that do not exist in nature. (A trap quickly removes chemical products from the destructive energy sources that make the products.)

All of the above show why intelligence and design are necessary to produce even the simplest components of life.

“The story of the slow paralysis of research on life’s origin is quite interesting, but space precludes its retelling here. Suffice it to say that at present the field of origin-of-life studies has dissolved into a cacophony of conflicting models, each unconvincing, seriously incomplete, and incompatible with competing models. In private even most evolutionary biologists will admit that science has no explanation for the beginning of life.”  Behe, “Molecular Machines,” pp. 30–31.