The two greatest mysteries in regard to our existence are the origin of the universe and the origin of life. The origin of the universe posed the problem of how something as large and complex as our universe could have been created out of nothing, and the origin of life the problem of how inanimate matter became a living cell. Scientists understand how living cells create new cells (technically known as biogenesis), but the question of how all the building blocks necessary for the creation of a new cell came to exist when they were needed has been (and remains) a virtually unsolvable problem.
The scientific term for any hypotheses about the chemical origin of life is abiogenesis. In his book The Way of the Cell Molecular biologist Franklin Harold wrote:
“Prehistorians, with little more than scraps, shards,.and analogy, to go by, do not reconstruct the past so much as imagine a plausible version of it.”
Harold, Franklin. The Way of the Cell. Page 244
Also known as synthetic chemists, one problem is these “prehistorians” must guess about the environment on an prebiotic Earth. And even if they guessed correctly, assembled all the necessary ingredients, and created an environment that allowed for the creation of a living cell de novo, it wouldn’t be exactly the same as if nature did it without any intervention, would it? How would that be any different that the scientist playing the role of a creator god, just not “the” creator God?
We cannot create an artificial universe in a lab as a proof of concept. We cannot create life in a lab. The closest science has ever gotten was the Miller/Urey experiment that created some building blocks for DNA, but nothing comparable to DNA itself. That’s kind of like saying the process of making a brick explains how the Empire State Building was built.
What made reading Dr. Harold’s book so refreshing was his objective candor about his own profession. Whether due to over-optimistic estimates of scientific progress because of unintentional misunderstanding or deliberate deceit, some within the scientific community have created the impression that it is simply a matter of time before all the problems surrounding the origin of life have been solved, and no longer remains a mystery. Dr. Harold explained:
“Those who believe, as I do, that living organisms are autopoietic systems capable of evolution by variation and natural selection, must keep a foot in both camps [note: those seeking the origin of life through information versus those who look at energetics] and risk being scorned by both. But the definition really sharpens the issue: the question is not only how life arose on earth, but how nature generates organized material systems to which terms such as adaptation, function and purpose can be applied. Readers will have noted that this is still a free-wheeling inquiry, in which the few solid facts need not seriously impede the imagination; let me take advantage of what has, sadly, become a very rare privilege.”
Harold, Franklin. The Way of the Cell. page 250.
Some people believe that abiogenesis, or the animation of matter, could only have occurred due to divine intervention. Others believe that it is safe to assume that purely natural processes somehow resolved the original problem within the course of the Earth’s history simply because it only had to happen once in the course of several billion years, and by extension anything that can possibly happen will eventually happen, if enough time is allowed. However, it is my contention that such logic suffers a fatal flaw of applied statistics.
For example, we know from the work of Roger Penrose and Martin Rees on the fine tuning of the universe that the random chance that blind luck created our universe is an extremely small fraction of a single percentage point. Rees identified five “fine-tuned” cosmological values defined with extraordinary precision and Penrose calculated the odds any of those values at minimum as 1 in 10300 power, making the Big Bang an absurdly improbable event. Remember how the killer in the movie No Country For Old Men forced his victims to call a coin flip that would decide whether or not they lived or died? They had a 50/50 chance of success because they only had to get one call right. To put this in perspective, imagine having to call hundreds of thousands of coin flips correctly, because one wrong call not only means you’re dead, it destroys the entire universe. According to these experts, even the slightest variation in any of these fine-tuned cosmological values were even slightly different, the universe would never have been created.
Harold continued,
“[W]e [meaning cellular biologists] are compelled by our calling to insist at all times on strictly naturalistic explanations: life must, therefore, have emerged from chemistry. Granted also that simple organic molecules were present at the beginning, in uncertain locations, diversity and abundance. Leave room for contingency, some rare chemical fluctuation that may have played a seminal role in the inception of living systems, and remember you may be mistaken. With all that, I still cannot bring myself to believe that rudimentary organisms of any kind came about by the association of prefabricated organic molecules, born of purely chemical processes in their environment.”
Harold, Franklin. The Way of the Cell. page 250
Here is where my argument about what I call the Big Picture becomes unique, I think: the probability of the spontaneous generation of the first living cell is negatively impacted by the probability of the Big Bang because abiogenesis requires the success of the Big Bang in order to become possible.
While synthetic chemists have acknowledged that the probability of abiogenesis due to random chance is extraordinarily low (at least as low as the Big Bang itself, if not worse) but for the sake of argument, let’s say that if the universe could be assumed eternal, the odds of a “lucky” origin of first life might even be as high as a fifty/fifty proposition. (0.5)
However, because of the evidence for the Big Bang known as redshift and CMB, we cannot assume the universe might be eternal. Instead we must rely on the calculations of Roger Penrose and work from the understanding that the probability of this universe being created by fortuitous accident is quite low. For the sake of clear understanding, we can use much more manageable numbers to illustrate my point. While the “real” number is a long string of zeroes coming after a decimal point, finally followed by a one, let’s pretend the probability of the Big Bang was as high as one percent, or .01. Even if the probability of abiogenesis was a flip of the coin, because it depends on a successful Big Bang, the “real” probability is a compounded value because the mere possibility of the second event is entirely contingent on the success of the first event, which in this example would be calculated as .01(Big Bang) x .5(abiogenesis) = .005.
[AUTHOR’S NOTE: the numerical values used in this article are not actual values, but chosen and used for the specific purposes of illustration to make them easier for the reader to comprehend the point being made about the relationship between multiple necessary but highly improbable events.]
The point is simply this: if one reads the popular literature from all of the “scientific experts” on existential science lucky enough to get a book contract, one is left with the unmistakeable impression that the universe shouldn’t exist, life shouldn’t exist, and you shouldn’t exist. No human should exist to be able to read this sentence, assuming logic and the laws of statistical probability apply to our “origin” questions.
Yet here we are. Of course any “actual” estimated values would be considerably less optimistic, but that’s beside the point. We’re merely attempting to illuminate the nature of these problems and the relationship between them. Just as abiogenesis absolutely requires the success of the Big Bang to become possible, before natural selection can ever be considered a viable explanation for the existence and diversity of multi-cellular organisms through sexual reproduction, single-celled organisms must first come into existence and replicate via asexual reproduction.
If Darwinian processes became possible without divine intervention, there must be a viable path from the Big Bang to abiogenesis and then natural selection, all without divine intervention. This means that a universe must be created ex nihilo, or out of nothing, and then dead, lifeless chemistry somehow managed to form a cell and began replicating. Logic would seem to dictate that the two most logical alternatives to “cause” these anomalous events would be extraordinary good luck or divine intervention.
Let’s put it a different way–if some explanation other than supernatural intelligence or incomprehensible good luck for the Big Bang and abiogenesis and the origin of species exist, what could it be? Critics will insist I’ve simply created a false dichotomy, but no one ever seems to be able to identify any third possibility. Please don’t offer vague attempts at explanations like “science” or “the laws of physics” because those are not real alternatives. The laws of physics apply to matter and the universe; we cannot assume these so-called laws of physics existed prior to the universe itself because these laws originated from the minds of humans, which didn’t exist prior to the Big Bang.
It’s like the “chicken and the egg” enigma on steroids. So many dependencies must have been resolved with such incredible precision that it boggles the mind to serendipity played any sort of rule.
In the final pages of his book Harold concludes,
“It would be agreeable to conclude this book with a cheery fanfare about science closing in, slowly but surely, on the ultimate mystery; but the time for rosy rhetoric is not yet at hand. The origin of life appears to me as incomprehensible as ever, a matter for wonder but not for explication.”
Harold, Franklin. The Way of the Cell. page 251.
That could be what the great physicist Werner Heisenberg meant when he said, “The first gulp from the glass of natural science will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Indeed. Someone who believes in the necessity of God after gaining a fundamental understanding of what creation requires. Or, they could just believe in incredibly good luck.
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