One Step Closer to Life?

Scientists have learned that
many of life’s molecular building
blocks can form spontaneously under
the right conditions. This is true not
only in the laboratory but also in outer
space. While nothing alive has ever
been found on a meteorite, we keep
finding more examples of life’s chemical
building blocks on space rocks.
That’s pretty intriguing. Does this
mean time and chance could have
gathered all the chemical ingredients
for life, and evolution could be the
cook that brewed up life itself?

Ingredients They’ve Found So Far

Let’s start by looking more closely at
what scientists have found. Scientists
now know that nonliving processes
can produce the four essential building
blocks of living cells.

DNA Bases Found on Meteorites

Some meteorites contain organic
materials, including nucleobases.
These are like “letters” in the genetic
“alphabet” that combine to make DNA.

How is it possible for nonliving
sources to produce such substances?
Living cells need help from specialized
tools, called enzymes, to form organic
substances efficiently. We now know,
however, that many ordinary chemical
reactions produce organic materials.
Enzymes simply speed up chemical
reactions that could still happen
without them, so it is no surprise that
nonbiological processes can produce
some organic molecules.

After all, God created chemistry.
He made the same rules to govern
the behavior of atoms and molecules
whether they are found in living cells
or inanimate matter. So the fact that
many chemical reactions occur in
both living and nonliving settings is
no problem for creationists.

DNA’s Sugar Backbone Can Form in
the Lab

In addition to nucleobases,
DNA requires a second component—a
sugar backbone. DNA’s backbone is
derived from a sugar called ribose.

Scientists haven’t found ribose on space debris, but in 2016 they reported an experiment showing ribose forms
spontaneously when ultraviolet light
shines on a frozen cocktail of water,
methanol, and ammonia. Evolutionists
believe these substances were
common in space when our solar system
formed. If true, the newly evolved
sun could have cooked up lots of ribose
from these chemicals, raw material for that magical moment when life
popped into existence.

Do you see any problems with this
scenario? What if these conditions
never existed? Observational science
does not show that the solar system
formed the way evolutionists claim
it did. And then there’s the problem
of joining the ribose and nucleobases
together in a meaningful way, but
more on that in a moment.

Amino Acids Found in Meteorites

Proteins are the chemical workhorses
of the cell. Proteins, a third critical
component of life, are made of amino
acids. Many different amino acids
have been found on meteorites, along
with some simpler chemicals that
react to produce them. Is the origin of
life from chemistry starting to sound
convincing? Let’s look at the next
ingredient before commenting.

Building Materials for Protective
Membranes Found in Meteorites

Living cells need a fourth component,
membranes around them to control
what comes in and out. These barriers
are built from fatty acids. Fatty acids
have been found on meteorites. And
under certain conditions, fatty acids
spontaneously react with other simple
chemicals to produce phospholipids,
molecules found in all cell membranes.

Moreover, some of these building
blocks naturally organize themselves
into arrangements that mimic membranes.
For example, fatty acids can
arrange themselves like the two-layered
structure of a cell’s membrane,
forming tiny bubbles that isolate everything
inside from whatever is outside.

Could these sorts of things be showing
us how the first cell membranes
evolved? Many evolutionists think so.

The Missing Ingredients

By finding how simpler organic molecules
form spontaneously, evolutionists
hope to show how they could go on
to form highly complex cellular macromolecules
and assemble themselves
into a living cell. Is this reasonable?

No, not by a long shot. Even if all
the chemical ingredients were present
under optimal conditions, and even if
some combined in ways that imitated
a very simple sort of membrane, that
chemical collection would not be alive.

To be alive, even the simplest cell
also needs the genetic information
telling its parts how to function and
how to reproduce itself.

But don’t DNA bases and the sugar
backbone do this? Once the nucleobases
are all strung together, don’t
they spell out the information of life?

No amount of time could create
a meaningful code containing
instructions and the machinery
to decode and carry out those
instructions.

A sequence of randomly linked
nucleobases has no more meaning
than a string of letters randomly
typed by a monkey. It spells nonsense
unless there is a preexisting code, or
language, giving the sequence meaning.
The only reason dots and dashes
mean anything in Morse code is that
we have a preexisting key. Without a
language, Morse would be gibberish.

Living things also operate by a
preexisting code, the genetic code,
which has strict rules of grammar.
The patterns in this code contain real
information. Living things also have
machinery to decode and carry out
instructions!

No, the evolutionists’ hope that life
arose out of a “prebiotic soup” is dead
in the water. Scientific observations
show life comes only from other living
organisms that already contain the
information to operate each part and
to replicate themselves.

Random chemical reactions can’t
produce living organisms any more
than a pot of vegetables and spices
can produce full-grown bean and carrot
plants. Instead of a chemical soup,
a real information source must have
endowed every kind of organism with
the wealth of information needed to
fill this earth with such marvelous
varieties of life. The only scientifically
supportable answer is that every kind
of organism came from the only source
of life—and information—that existed
before the world began: the all-wise
Creator God, the Author of life.

Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell earned her MD from Vanderbilt
University School of Medicine. Specializing in obstetrics and
gynecology, she practiced medicine until she retired to be a
stay-at-home mom. Since 2011 she has written regularly on
both ancient history and science news for the Answers in
Genesis website and various ministry publications.