(1) There was just the right atmosphere—and it was totally different than the one we now have.

(2) The ground, water, or ocean where life began had just the right combination of chemicals in it—which it does not now have.

(3) Using an unknown source of just the right amount of energy, amino acids then formed in sufficient quantities that—

(4) they could combine into lots of proteins and nucleotides (complex chemical compounds).

(5) They then reformed themselves into various organs inside a main organism.

(6) They did some careful thinking (as with all the other points, beyond the mental abilities of even our best scientists today), and developed a genetic code to cover thousands of different factors.

(7) At this point, they were ready to start reproducing young. —Of course, this last point reveals that all the previous six had to occur within the lifetime of just one bacterium. Since microbes and bacteria do not live very long, this first one had to think and act fast.

Charles Darwin did a lot of daydreaming in his letters and in his book, Origin of the Species. Here was one of his hopeful wishes, as expressed in a letter to a close friend:

"But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity etc., present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes."—*Charles Darwin, in *Francis Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887 ed.), p. 202 (the parenthetical comment is his also).

*Darwin was totally puzzled as to how even one of the plant or animal species could have originated, much less the millions we have today. Yet he wrote a book which, according to the title, explained the problem. An ardent evolutionist refers to the difficulty:

"Since Darwin’s seminal work was called The Origin of Species one might reasonably suppose that his theory had explained this central aspect of evolution or at least made a shot at it, even if it had not resolved the larger issues we have discussed up to now. Curiously enough, this is not the case. As Professor Ernst Mayr of Harvard, the doyen [senior member] of species studies, once remarked, the ‘book called The Origin of Species is not really on that subject,’ while his colleague Professor Simpson admits: ‘Darwin failed to solve the problem indicated by the title of his work.’

"You may be surprised to hear that the origin of species remains just as much a mystery today, despite the efforts of thousands of biologists. The topic has been the main focus of attention and is beset by endless controversies."—*Gordon R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 140.

One of the greatest scientists of the last 200 years said this about the possibility of life making itself out of water and mud:

 DARWIN’S FAMOUS "POND" STATEMENT—Reprinted below is a page from *Charles Darwin’s letter in which he conjectured as to the possible origin of living creatures. That conjecture was about as far as he took the process; for nowhere, in his Origin of the Species, is the origin of the species discussed or even hinted at.

The present writer does not have a printed copy of the last part of the scribbled note, below. Blanks (on the left) represent portions difficult to decipher. The spelling and punctuation was revised when *Francis Darwin later (1887) placed in print an edited version of his father’s writings. (*Darwin died in the year 1882.)

"Mathematics and dynamics fail us when we contemplate the earth, fitted for life but lifeless, and try to imagine the commencement of life upon it. This certainly did not take place by any action of chemistry, or electricity, or crystalline grouping of molecules under the influence of force, or by any possible kind of fortuitous concourse of atmosphere. We must pause, face to face with the mystery and miracle of creation of living things."—Lord Kelvin, quoted in Battle for Creation, p. 232.

OUR WORLD BEGINS—Evolutionary theorists tell us that long ago, our world spun off from a stellar condensation or collision of some kind. At first it was a molten mass of very hot rock. Gradually this is supposed to have cooled over a period of millions upon millions of years.

THE PRIMITIVE ENVIRONMENT—(*#1/20 The Primitive Environment*) Finally it was time for life to originate by spontaneous generation from (according to which theorist is speaking) warm wet dirt, seashore, hot and dry dirt, ocean water, desert sand, lake, poisonous chemicals or fumes, electrified mud puddle, a volcanic rim, or something else. An atmosphere of some type had formed, and occasionally lightning would strike the earth.

Scientists have tried to analyze what conditions would have had to be like in order for spontaneous generation of life from non-life to occur. They call this the "primitive environment."

What were conditions like at that first moment when life is supposed to have created itself by random chance out of a mud hole or sloshing seawater? Evolutionists have figured this out. Their conclusions are not only astonishing; but, in this chapter, we will learn—they further disprove evolution!

The theorists tell us that the first life-form developed from nothing about 4.6 billion years ago. But *Steven Jay Gould of Harvard, one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the latter part of the twentieth century, maintains that there would have been very little time for this highly improbable event to have occurred:

"We are left with very little time between the development of suitable conditions for life on the Earth’s surface and the origin of life . . Life apparently arose about as soon as the Earth became cool enough to support it."—*S.J. Gould, "An Early Start," in Natural History, February 1978.

*Fred Hoyle wrote in the November 19, 1981 issue of New Scientist, that there are 2000 complex enzymes required for a living organism,—yet not a single one of these could have been formed on earth by shuffling processes in even 20 billion years!

2 - THE ERROR OF LIFE FROM NON-LIFE

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION—(*2/9 Spontaneous Generation*) Life from non-living things is the Dark Ages error of "spontaneous generation," an error which was not fully eliminated until more than a century ago. Modern evolutionists believe in and teach spontaneous generation, which they now call biopoiesis, so students will not recognize that they are still advocating spontaneous generation. (Earlier in the twentieth century, it was called abiogenesis.)

In contrast, Biogenesis is the scientific name for the important biological truth confirmed by Louis Pasteur and others, that life can only come from life.

"Biogenesis is a term in biology that is derived from two Greek words meaning life and birth. According to the theory of biogenesis, living things descend only from living things. They cannot develop spontaneously from nonliving materials. Until comparatively recent times, scientists believed that certain tiny forms of life, such as bacteria, arose spontaneously from non-living substances."—*"Biogenesis," World Book Encyclopedia, p. B-242 (1972 edition).

Spontaneous generation was believed by many scientists, prior to the careful experiments of Spallanzani (1780), and Pasteur (1860), which totally disproved that foolish idea. People thought that fruit flies spontaneously came forth from fruit, geese from barnacles, mice from dirty clothes, and bees from dead calves. Even Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, *Hegel, and *Shilling believed it, but that did not make it right. Great people believing an error does not make the error truth.

Evolution teaches spontaneous generation. Think about that for a moment. We’re returning to the Dark Ages!

"Pasteur’s demonstration apparently laid the theory of spontaneous generation to rest permanently. All this left a germ of embarrassment for scientists. How had life originated after all, if not through divine creation or through spontaneous generation? 

"They [today’s scientists] are back to spontaneous generation, but with a difference. The pre-Pasteur view of spontaneous generation was of something taking place now and quickly. The modern view is that it took place long ago and very slowly."—*Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s New Guide to Science (1984), pp. 638-639.

In contrast, true science teaches biogenesis, which means, in general, that life can only come from life and, specifically, that species can only come from living parents in the same species. Speaking of *Rudolf Virchow, the Encyclopedia Britannica tells us:

"His aphorism ‘omnis cellula e cellula’ [every cell arises from a preexisting cell] ranks with Pasteur’s ‘omne vivum e vivo’ [every living thing arises from a preexisting living thing] as among the most revolutionary generalizations of biology."—*Encyclopedia Britannica, 1973 Edition, Vol. 23, p. 35.

" ‘Spontaneous generation is a chimera [illusion].’—Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist."—*Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), p. 193.

INSTANT SUCCESS NECESSARY—In order for life to arise from non-life, there would have to be instant success. All the parts would suddenly have to be there, and all would have to immediately function with essential perfection.

In the next chapter (chapter 8), we will learn that, in order for life to occur, DNA and protein would have to link up with ease into long, extremely complicated coded strings. In addition, thousands of other complicated chemical combinations would have to be accomplished within a few moments. How long could you live without a beating heart? How long without blood? And on it goes, item after item. The situation would be no different for the simplest of life-forms. Everything would have to be in place, suddenly,—instantly. In structure, arrangement, coordination, coding, chemical makeup, feeding, elimination, respiration, circulation, and all the rest,—everything would have to be perfect—right at the start!

The formation of amino acids, protein, DNA, enzymes, and all the rest needed to form the first living creature had to occur within an extremely short amount of time! It would all have had to occur within far less than a single generation or even half-hour. It would have had to occur within a single moment! Otherwise the next moment the organism would be dead. Millions of functions had to come together all at once.

IMMEDIATE REPRODUCTION NEEDED—Biologists are deeply concerned how that first living cell could have originated; but *Montalenti goes a step beyond that point and says "what really matters, to start life, is the faculty of reproduction" (*G. Montalenti, Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, 1974, p. 13). What good would one amoeba be, if it did not have all the needed DNA coding and fision ability to divide, or the reproduction ability—and a mate—to produce offspring?

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND LABORATORIES—Complicated chemical compounds are prepared in well-equipped laboratories, staffed by intelligent, highly skilled workers. They do not work with the sand in the back lot, but with shipments of specialized chemicals which arrive at their loading dock.

About all that most evolutionists offer for the original primitive environment for the first amino acids, proteins, etc., is dirt or seawater. Yet when scientists want to synthesize amino acids, they go to a very well-equipped laboratory, with instruments, gauges, apparatus, chemicals, and machines costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They use high-temperatures, special solutions, sparking devices, and glass traps. They do not go down to the seashore and start sloshing around in seawater in the hope of producing those amino acids.

Because they are intelligent and highly trained, they know to do it in million-dollar laboratories, fitted out with expensive equipment and lots of purified chemicals. Yet, according to evolutionary theory, seawater somehow did it by itself.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND THE LAW OF MASS ACTION— Evolutionists recognize that, if a life-form suddenly appeared from nothing, it would probably have had to do it in an ancient sea. It is generally felt that water would have had to be present.

But the Law of Mass Action would immediately neutralize the procedure and ruin the outcome. This is because chemical reactions always proceed in a direction from highest to lowest concentration (assuming that the exact amount of energy is even present to perform that reaction).

"It is therefore hard to see how polymerization [linking together smaller molecules to form bigger ones] could have proceeded in the aqueous environment of the primitive ocean, since the presence of water favors depolymerization [breaking up big molecules into simpler ones] rather than polymerization."—*Richard E. Dickerson, "Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life," Scientific American, September 1978, p. 75.

We are told that amino acids miraculously formed themselves out of seawater. But the seawater needed to make the amino acids would prevent them from forming into protein, lipids, nucleic acids and polysaccharides! Even if some protein could possibly form, the law of mass action would immediately become operative upon it. The protein would hydrolyze with the abundant water and return back into the original amino acids! Those, in turn, would immediately break down into separate chemicals—and that would be the end of it.

"Spontaneous dissolution is much more probable, and hence proceeds much more rapidly, than spontaneous synthesis . . [This fact is] the most stubborn problem that confronts us."—*George Wald, "The Origin of Life," Scientific American, August 1954, pp. 49-50.

The law of mass action would constitute a hindrance to protein formation in the sea as well as to the successful formation of other life-sustaining compounds, such as lipids, nucleic acids, and polysaccharides. If any could possibly form in water, they would not last long enough to do anything.

This law applies to chemical reactions which are reversible,—and thus to all life compounds. Such reactions proceed from reactant substances to compounds produced in the manner normally expected. But these reactions tend to reverse themselves more easily and quickly (*"Review of R. Shubert-Soldern’s Book, Mechanism and Vitalism," in Discovery, May 1962, p. 44).

Not just a few, but hundreds of thousands of amino acids had to miraculously make themselves out of raw seawater devoid of any life. But the amino acids would separate and break up immediately and not remain in existence long enough to figure out how to form themselves into the complex patterns of DNA and protein. The problem here is that, as soon as the chemical reaction that made the amino acids occurred, the excess water would have had to immediately be removed.

"Dehydration [condensation] reactions are thermodynamically forbidden in the presence of excess water."—*J. Keosian, The Origin of Life, p. 74.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND CONCENTRATION—(*#3/4 The Primitive Ocean*) We never find the concentrations of chemicals in seawater that would be needed for amino acid synthesis. All the elements are there, but not in the proper concentrations. Most of what is in seawater—is just water! (*H.F. Blum, Time’s Arrow and Evolution (1968), p. 158).

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND PRECIPITATES—Even if water loss could occur, enzyme inhibitors would neutralize the results. The problem here is that a powerfully concentrated combination of chemicalized "primitive water" would be needed to produce the materials of life,—but those very chemicals would inhibit and quickly destroy the chemical compounds and enzymes formed (David and Kenneth Rodabaugh, Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1990, p. 107).

Even if they could survive the other problems, many organic products formed in the ocean would be removed and rendered inactive as precipitates. For example, fatty acids would combine with magnesium or calcium; and arginine (an amino acid), chlorophyll and porphyrins would be absorbed by clays.

Many of the chemicals would react with other chemicals, to form non-biologically useful products. Sugars and amino acids, for example, are chemically incompatible when brought together.

The chemical compounds within living creatures were meant to be inside them, and not outside. Outside, those compounds are quickly destroyed, if they do not first quickly destroy one another.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND FLUID CONDENSATION—In addition to synthesis problems, there are also condensation problems. Fats, sugars, and nucleic acids can come from the proteins only by very careful removal of fluid, amid other equally complicated activities conducted by the laboratory technicians. Without water loss, proteins cannot form in water.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND WATER—So most of the chemicals needed by life could not arise in a watery environment, such as seawater. In fact, the lab technicians do their work with fluids other than water! They do not use seawater or even regular water, when they prepare dead amino acids. (That which they synthesize is always dead; it never has life in it.)

"Beneath the surface of the water there would not be enough energy to activate further chemical reactions; water in any case inhibits the growth of more complex molecules."—*Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe (1982), p. 65.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND ENERGY—And then there is the problem of an energy source. Scientists know that there had to be some form of energy to work the chemical transformations. They generally think it would have had to be a bolt of lightning, since there were no wall outlets back in the beginning to plug electrical cords into. But anything struck by lightning is not enlivened, but killed!

"[Arrhenius] contends that if actual lightning struck rather than the fairly mild [electrical] discharges used by Miller [in making the first synthetic amino acids], any organics that happened to be present could not have survived."—*Report in Science News, December 1, 1973, p. 340.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND OXYGEN—(*#4/20 Fighting It Out Over Early Environment*) Another problem is the atmosphere. It is a well-known fact among biochemists that the chemicals of life will decompose if oxygen is in the air.

"First of all, we saw that the present atmosphere, with its ozone screen and highly oxidizing conditions, is not a suitable guide for gas-phase simulation experiments."— *A.L Oparm, Life: Its Nature, Origin and Development, p. 118.

Living plants and animals only have certain proportions of the 92 elements within their bodies. These elements are arranged in special chemical compounds. Chemists say they have been reduced. When the chemicals found in living beings are left in the open air, they decompose or, as the chemists say, they oxidize. (A similar process occurs when iron is left in a bucket of water; it rusts.)

In the presence of oxygen, these chemicals leave the reduced (or chemical combination) state and break down to individual chemicals again.

"The synthesis of compounds of biological interest takes place only under reducing conditions [that is, with no free oxygen in the atmosphere]."—*Stanley L. Miller and *Leslie E. Orgel (1974), p. 33.

"With oxygen in the air, the first amino acid would never have gotten started; without oxygen, it would have been wiped out by cosmic rays."—*Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe (1982), p. 65.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND SUPPLY—There simply would not be enough other chemicals available to accomplish the needed task.

Since most biochemicals contain nitrogen, Gish, a biochemist, has discovered that there never has been enough concentration of nitrogen, in air and water, for amino acids to form by themselves. It does not occur naturally in rich enough concentrations.

Similar studies have been made on the availability of phosphorus by *Bernal. There would not have been enough phosphorus available for the many chemical combinations needed. Phosphorus is needed for DNA and other high-energy compounds. But phosphorus concentrations are too low.

Even worse news: *Carl Sagan found that adenosine triphosphate (high-energy phosphate) could not possibly form under the prebiological conditions.

CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS AND RICH MIXTURES—Extremely rich mixture of chemicals would be required for the alleged formation of the first living molecule, there ought to be places in the world where such rich mixtures are found today, but they do not exist.

"If there ever was a primitive soup, then we would expect to find at least somewhere on this planet either massive sediments containing enormous amounts of the various nitrogenous organic compounds, amino acids, purines, pyrimidines, and the like, or alternatively in much metamorphosed sediments we should find vast amounts of nitrogenous cokes . . In fact, no such materials have been found anywhere on earth. There is, in other words, pretty good negative evidence that there never was a primitive organic soup on this planet that could have lasted but a brief moment."—*J. Brooks and *G. Shaw, Origins and Development of Living Systems (1973), p. 360.

PROTEIN SYNTHESIS—Protein is a basic constituent of all life-forms. It is composed of amino acids. There are 20 essential amino acids, none of which can produce the others. How were these made? How could they make themselves? 

First, let us examine the simplest of them: glycine. *Hull figured out that, due to inadequate chemicals and reaction problems, even glycine could not form by chance. There was only a 10-27 (minus 27) concentration of the materials needed to make it. If one glycine molecule was formed, it would have to hunt through 1029 other molecules in the ocean before finding another glycine to link up with! This would be equivalent to finding one person in a crowd that is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times larger than all the people on earth!

But what about the other nineteen amino acids? Checking out the others, *Hull found that it was even less possible for the other 19 amino acids to form. The concentration needed for glucose, for example, would be 10-134. That is an extremely high improbability! (*D. Hull, "Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Spontaneous Generation," in Nature, 186, 1960, pp. 693-694).

PROTEINS AND HYDROLYSIS—Even if protein had been made by chance from nearby chemicals in the ocean, the water in the primitive oceans would have hydrolyzed (diluted and ruined) the protein. The chemicals that had combined to make protein would immediately reconnect with other nearby chemicals in the ocean water and self-destruct the protein!

A research team, at Barlian University in Israel, said that this complication would make the successful making of just one protein totally impossible, mathematically. It would be 1 chance in 10¹⁵⁷. They concluded that no proteins were ever produced by chance on this earth.

PROTEINS AND SPONTANEOUS DISSOLUTION—Evolutionists bank on the fact that, somehow, somewhere, in some way,—a small bit of inorganic matter formed some amino acids. Yet even if such an impossible event could have happened,—it would rapidly have disintegrated away!

"In the vast majority of processes in which we are interested, the point of equilibrium lies far over toward the side of dissolution. That is to say, spontaneous dissolution [automatic self-destruct process] is much more probable, and hence proceeds much more rapidly, than spontaneous synthesis [accidental put-together process] . . The situation we must face is that of patient Penelope waiting for Odysseus, yet much worse: each night she undid the weaving of the proceeding day, but here a night could readily undo the work of a year or a century."— *G. Wald, "The Origin of Life," in The Physics and Chemistry of Life (1955), p. 17.

In the world of biochemistry, automatic dissolution is always easier than accidental once-in-a-thousand-lifetimes putting-together. Regarding this massive obstacle to the initial formation of life, *Wald says it is "the most stubborn problem that confronts us" (ibid.).

FATTY ACID SYNTHESIS—Scientists are not able to even theorize how fatty acids could originally have come into existence.

"No satisfactory synthesis of fatty acids is at present available. The action of electric discharges on methane and water gives fairly good yields of acetic and propionic acids, but only small yields of the higher fatty acids. Furthermore, the small quantities of higher fatty acids that are found are highly branched."—*S. Miller, and *L. Orgel, The Origins of Life on the Earth (1974), p. 98.

OTHER SYNTHESES—There is more to a living organism than merely chemical compounds, proteins, and fatty acids. There are also enzymes, which scientists in laboratories do not know how to produce. Yet there are thousands of complicated, very different enzymes in a typical animal!

There are also massive DNA and other coding problems. Has any scientist ever synthesized even one new animal code? No, he would have no idea how to accomplish the task successfully. The emphasis here is on "successful." If he could interject a new code, it would only damage the organism. Scientists are now able to slightly adapt existing codes (genetic engineering); but they do not invent brand new ones. The list of necessities goes on and on.

WHAT ABOUT LIFE ITSELF?—But what about life itself? One minute after it dies, an animal still has all its chemicals, proteins, fatty acids, enzymes, codes, and all the rest. But it no longer has life. Scientists cannot produce life; why then should they expect rocks and seawater to have that ability?

ATMOSPHERE WITHOUT OXYGEN—Could a non-oxygen atmosphere ever have existed on Planet Earth? It surely seems like an impossibility, yet evolutionary theorists have decided that the primitive environment had to have a "reducing atmosphere," that is, one without any oxygen. Now, the theorists do not really want such a situation, but they know that it would be totally impossible for the chemical compounds needed for life to be produced outside in the open air. If oxygen was present, amino acids, etc., could not have been formed. So, in desperation, they have decided that at some earlier time in earth’s history, there was no oxygen! And then later it somehow got it!

"At that time, the ‘free’ production of organic matter by ultraviolet light was effectively turned off and a premium was placed on alternative energy utilization mechanisms. This was a major evolutionary crisis. I find it remarkable that any organism survived it."—*Carl Sagan, The Origins, p. 253.

But there is a special reason why they would prefer to avoid a reducing atmosphere: There is no evidence anywhere in nature that our planet ever had a non-oxygen atmosphere! And there is no theory that can explain how it could earlier have had a reducing atmosphere,—which later transformed itself into an oxidizing one! As *Urey himself admitted, a non-oxygen atmosphere is just an assumption—a flight of imagination—in an effort to accommodate the theory (*Harold Urey, "On the Early Chemical History of the Earth and the Origin of Life," in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 38, 1952, p. 352).

*Stanley Miller was one of the pioneers in laboratory synthesis of non-living amino acids in bottles with a non-oxygen (reducing) atmosphere. (He was afterward hailed by the press as having "created life.") Miller later said the theory that the earth once had no oxygen is just "speculation" (*Stanley L Miller, "Production of Some Organic Compounds under Possible Primitive Conditions," in Journal of the American Chemical Society, 7, 1955, p. 2351).

A "reducing atmosphere" could have had carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen, ammonia, and nitrogen. An oxidizing atmosphere, such as now exists, would have carbon dioxide, water, nitrogen, and oxygen.

(1) A reducing (non-oxygen) atmosphere never existed earlier on our planet; yet, without it, biological chemicals could not form. (2) If a reducing atmosphere had existed, so biological chemicals could form (and if they could somehow be injected with life), they would immediately die from lack of oxygen!

Here are some of the reasons against a reducing atmosphere:

(1) Oxidized iron. Early rocks contain partly or totally oxidized iron (ferric oxide). That proves that the atmosphere had oxygen back then.

(2) Water means oxygen. A reducing atmosphere could not have oxygen. But there is oxygen—lots of it—in water and in the atmosphere. According to *Brinkman, this fact alone disproves the origins of life by evolution (*R.T. Brinkman, "Dissociation of Water Vapor and Evolution of Oxygen in the Terrestrial Atmosphere," Journal of Geophysical Research, 74, 1969, p. 5366). Are the evolutionists daring to tell us that, anciently, our planet did not have water?

(3) No Life without it. How long would animals live without oxygen to breath? How long would plants live without carbon dioxide? Without it, they could not make chlorophyll. When plants take in carbon dioxide, they give out oxygen. But a reducing atmosphere has neither oxygen nor carbon dioxide! Therefore no plants could either live or be available for food.

(4) Deadly peroxides. In addition, a reduction atmosphere would form, through the photolysis of water, into peroxides, which are deadly to living creatures (*Abelson, "Some Aspects of Paleobiochemistry, "in Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 69, 1957, p. 275).

(5) No ozone layer. If there were no oxygen in the atmosphere, there would be no ozone either. Without the ozone layer, ultraviolet light would destroy whatever life was formed.

(6) Ultraviolet light. Ironically, it could do more damage in an atmosphere without oxygen. Just as oxygen in the air would destroy the chemicals of life, ultraviolet light beaming in through a sky unshielded by ozone would be deadly!

Recent studies of the ozone layer have revealed that, without it, most living organisms now on our planet would die within an hour, and many within a second or two!

(7) Not with or without. Evolutionists are locked into a situation here that they cannot escape from. Spontaneous generation could not occur with oxygen—or without it!

FORMULA FOR THE PRIMITIVE ATMOSPHEREOur present atmosphere (the air which we breathe) is composed of carbon dioxide (C02), nitrogen (N2), oxygen (02), and water (H20).

The generally postulated primitive atmosphere would have had to have been composed of almost totally different chemicals: methane (CH4), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (C02), ammonia (NH3), nitrogen (N2), hydrogen (H2), and water (H20).

INSTANT ATMOSPHERIC CHANGE—As you might imagine, all this bad news brought evolutionary origins to something of a crisis, especially the problem about the atmosphere.

So the intransigent evolutionists came up with the wild theory that at the very instant when life was created on earth,—at that instant it just so happened that the entire world changed its atmosphere! It dramatically shifted suddenly from reducing to oxidizing!

But this possibility collapsed when a *University of Chicago study found that the plants could not suddenly have made all that oxygen,—and the oxygen had nowhere else to come from! If all the plants NOW on earth were suddenly formed on Day One on our planet, it would still take them 5000 years to produce as much oxygen as we now have!

However, the plants were not there at that time, and whatever plants might have been there would all have died soon after, since they themselves need oxygen for their own cellular respiration.

In order to avoid the problem of mass action degradation of amino acids formed in seawater, someone else suggested that the amino acids were made in dry clays and rocks. But in that environment either the oxygen or ultraviolet light would immediately destroy those amino acids.

UNUSUAL CHEMICALS—Men began to beat their brains against the wall, trying to figure out a way for those amino acids to form by themselves in the primitive environment.

*Sidney Fox suggested that the amino acids were made on the edges of volcanoes, *Melvin Calvin decided that dicyanimide (a compound not naturally occurring in nature) did the job, and *Shramm declared that phosphorus pentoxide in a jar of ether did it! Another research worker came up with an even more deadly solution: hydrogen cyanide—as the environment in which all the amino acids made themselves.

But again tragedy struck: It was discovered that the volcanic heat would ruin the amino acids as soon as they were formed. Phosphorus pentoxide is a novel compound that could not possibly be found in earth’s primitive atmosphere. The hydrogen cyanide would require an atmosphere of ammonia, which geological evidence shows never existed in our atmosphere. Dicyanimide would not work, because the original mixture in which the first amino acids were made had to have a more alkaline pH.

On and on it goes, one conjecture after another; always searching for the magic mixture and fairyland environment needed to make life out of nothing.

"Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I determine I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation running after too few facts."—*Francis Crick, Life Itself (1981), p. 153. [*Crick received a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA.]

THE MILLER EXPERIMENT—It was *Stanley Miller in 1953 who first produced amino acids from chemicals. We want to know how he did it, for THAT is the way the so-called "primitive environment" would have had to do it by merest chance:

The laboratory apparatus he used to accomplish this consisted of two confluently interconnected, chemical flasks (or bottles), arranged one above the other. The lower flask was heated and contained boiling water. The upper flask contained a mixture of gases including ammonia, methane, hydrogen and water vapor. (The upper flask had the presumed "primitive atmosphere," since it was known that if oxygen were present, the experiment would be a failure.)

First, he boiled a mixture of water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen gases in the upper bottle, while a small electric spark continually played over them all. (That was supposed to be equivalent to a gigantic lightning ball in the primitive environment which might strike the spot once every so many years, instantly destroying everything it touched.) The lower bottle of water was kept boiling in order to keep the mixture in the upper bottle stirred up and circulating. (The "primitive ocean" must have been pretty hot!) There was a trap in the bottom of the glass apparatus to catch any soluble organic products, so they would not be broken down after formation by the spark. (Chemists knew that the Law of Mass Action would almost immediately have destroyed the amino acids that were formed, without a trap to catch them in quickly. The "primitive ocean" must have had similar bottle traps in it.)

 MILLER’S LABORATORY APPARATUS—This is how *Stanley Miller simulated lightning hitting some dirty water. The few non-living amino acid specs, which he produced, had equal amounts of L and D forms, so were biologically useless.

 Here is *Miller’s simulation of a "primitive environment":

Where in the world could you find such a "primitive environment"?

After a week of this, the fluid in the traps were chemically analyzed—and were found to have microscopic traces of a few L and D (right- and left-handed) nitrogen-containing compounds—"amino acids," they called them—which had been formed. (Of course, if both L and D amino acids were formed by chemical action—as they always are when formed outside of living cells—it would be impossible for the amino acid which formed to be usable for life purposes.)

Newspapers around the world heralded the news: "Life has been created!" But no life had been created, just a few biochemical compounds. Remember that neither nitrogen compounds nor amino acids are, of themselves, living things. Just because they are in living things, does not make them living things.

In summary then, *Stanley Miller’s experiment was one of the early origin-of-life attempts. It used a reducing atmosphere (with no oxygen in it). A significant part of his experiment was a "cold trap." This was a glass cup at the bottom of the tubing that caught the products of the week-long water-chemical-spark activity. The purpose of the trap was to keep the reaction going in the right direction. If it had not been there, the simple amino acids would have been destroyed faster than they could be made!

" ‘This is the primitive atmosphere,’ said Stanley Miller, the chemistry professor at the University of California at San Diego, as he pointed to the transparent mixture of gases inside the globe. ‘And this represents the primitive ocean,’ he said, indicating a pool of water in the bottom of his apparatus."—*Rick Gore, "Awesome Worlds Within a Cell, "National Geographic Society, September 1976, p. 390.

What does that complicated lab experiment have to say about the possibility of nature doing it by accident—without the help of man? Outdoors, it could not be done without his help, or with it.

"What we ask is to synthesize organic molecules without such a machine. I believe this to be the most stubborn problem that confronts us—the weakest link at present in our argument."—*G. Wald, "The Origin of Life," in the Physics and Chemistry of Life (1955), p. 9.

The test tube attempts to "create life" have only resulted in dismal failure.

"In 1953, at the University of Chicago, Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey mixed ammonia, water vapor, hydrogen and methane to simulate Earth’s early atmosphere, then crackled lightning-like electrical sparks through it . 

"Unfortunately, as Margolis admits, ‘no cell has yet crawled out of a test tube,’ and thousands of similar experiments have produced goopy organic tars, but no recognizable life. Decades of persistent failure to ‘create life’ by the ‘spark in the soup’ method (or to find such productions in nature) have caused some researchers to seek other approaches to the great enigma. [Panspermia theories—bacteria flying in from outer space—are then discussed.]"—*Richard Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 274.

NOT LEFT-HANDED AMINO ACIDS—All types of proteins in the animals are left-handed (L-aminos). None are ever right-handed (D-aminos). Yet all amino acids synthesized in laboratories consist of an equal amount of left- and right-handed amino acids (a racemic mixture). It would require days of work in the laboratory to separate just a few L from D forms. Researchers cannot figure out how to produce only the L form. Yet no animals or man could live if they had any of the D form in them. This is a major problem to the evolutionists. More on this in the next chapter.

NOT THE ESSENTIAL AMINO ACIDS—Out of the hundreds of possible combinations, there are 20 essential amino acids, yet laboratory synthesis of amino acids produces only a few of the 20 essential amino acids—plus a lot of non-essential or even useless ones.

THE OPARIN EXPERIMENT—Prior to *Miller, *A.I. Oparin, a Russian chemist, tried to produce living cells from coacervates, which are like fat droplets in a bowl of soup. He carefully kept all oxygen away from the soup and the bowl, and he hoped that, given enough time, they would join together and, somehow, life would enter into them! But the outer film kept breaking apart, and no life entered into them. *Oparin was disappointed. No reputable chemist today considers Oparin’s theory to be of any value.

THE FOX EXPERIMENTS—After Miller’s experiment, *Sydney Fox in 1960 worked out a different arrangement, but he began his with left-handed amino acids already formed. He took them from a dead animal! He claims that his method is how it was done in the primitive environment. This should have been good news for the evolutionary world; but, when we learn his complicated procedure, we can understand why few scientists have any faith in the possibility that the Fox procedure was done by chance in the ocean, near a volcano, or in a mud puddle.

Here is how nature, armed with time and chance, is supposed to have produced that first dead amino acid:

"Typical panpolymenzation: Ten grams of L. glutamic acid (a left-handed amino acid] was heated at l75o-l80o C. [347°-356° F.) until molten (about 30 minutes), after which period it had been largely converted to lactum. At this time, 10 g. [.352 ay. oz.] of DL-aspartic acid and 5 g. [.176 ay. oz.] of the mixture of the sixteen basic and neutral (BN) amino acids were added. The solution was then maintained at 170° + or -2° under an atmosphere of nitrogen for varying periods of time. Within a period of a few hours considerable gas had been evolved, and the color of the liquid changed to amber. The vitreous mixture was rubbed vigorously with 75 ml. [4.575 Cu. in.] of water, which converted it to a yellow-brown granular precipitate. After overnight standing, the solid was separated by filtration. This was washed with 50 ml. [3.05 cu. in.] of ethanol, and as substance S dialytically washed in moving Multidialyzers in water for 4 days, the water being changed thrice daily. (The term dialytic washing indicates dialytic treatment of a suspension.) In some preparations, the solid was dissolved completely in sodium bicarbonate solution and then dialyzed. The dialysis sacs were made of cellulose tubing, 27/32 in., to contain 50 ml. [3.05 cu. in.]. The nondiffusible material was ninhydrin-negative before the fourth day. The non-aqueous contents of the dialysis sac were mainly solid A and a soluble fraction B recovered as solid by concentration in a vacuum dissicator. The mother liquor of S was also dialyzed for 4 days, and then dried to give additional solid C."—*S.W. Fox and *K Harada, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 82(1960), p. 3745.

We commend *Sydney Fox and his associates for their remarkable intelligence and excellent lab equipment, days of exhausting work, and the university scientists who trained them to perform such experiments. But we can make no such commendation of sand, gravel, and seawater, which is supposed to have done the same thing by itself.

Fox began with a quantity of left-only (no right) amino acids and made sure no oxygen, sugars, etc. were present, since they would doom the experiment. Then he underwent a lot of tedious work that requires a high degree of intelligence, careful planning, and many adjustments with pH, temperature, cooking time, etc., as he proceeded with a staff of assistants to help him succeed:

Fox is modest about his abilities, for he says that random events, in a broad sea or on the slopes of a volcano, could have done it just as easily. But HE began with pure, left-handed amino acids, which are available nowhere outside of living things; he did not begin with pebbles, mud, and water.

Fox then heated the amino acids for 10 hours at 150°-180° C [302°-356°] for several hours. Pretty hot way to make amino acids!

Where would you find such conditions in nature? *Stanley Miller, who first synthesized amino acids in a laboratory later stated that his own experiment could not possibly have been done by chance outside of a modern laboratory. Other scientists have agreed.

"Such experiments are no more than exercises in organic chemistry."—*P. Mora, "The Folly Of Probability," in Origins of Prebiological Systems and their Molecular Matrices, Ed. *S. W. Fox (1965), p. 41.

Three key ingredients are (1) proper chemicals in exacting amounts, (2) a continuous energy source (such as a continuous spark), and (3) quick-dry apparatus. As soon as the amino acids are made, they must immediately be dried out. (Living tissue never contains dried out amino acids or comes from it.) Fox tells us the reaction must be "hot and dry" (op. cit., p. 378).

"To keep a reaction going according to the law of mass action, there must be a continuous supply of energy and of selected matter (molecules) and a continuous process of elimination of the reaction products."—Op. cit., p. 43.

And there is a fourth key ingredient: Whether done in nature, or by researchers in a high-tech laboratory, these life substances are always the result of careful organization with specific purposes by a high-level intelligence. No one tosses the chemicals into a pan in the laboratory, walks off, hoping it will produce amino acids all by itself.

A living organism is not just dried out ocean soup. It is highly integrated, complex, and purposive. —It has life, which no man can produce. And that living creature had to have all its parts on Day One of its existence. And it had to have a mate and be able to reproduce offspring.

Not even *Darwin could figure it out.

"Darwin never really did discuss the origin of species in his [book] On the Origin of Species."—*David Kitts, "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, Vol. 28, September 1974, p. 466.

Reputable scientists tell us that life could neither originate nor continue without intelligence being involved.

"Any living thing possesses an enormous amount of ‘intelligence’ . . Today, this ‘intelligence’ is called ‘information,’ but it is still the same thing . . This ‘intelligence’ is the sine qua non of life. If absent, no living being is imaginable. Where does it come from? This is a problem which concerns both biologists and philosophers, and, at present, science seems incapable of solving it."—*Pierre-Paul Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms (1977), p. 3.

A Nobel Prize laureate wrote this:

"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."—*Francis Crick, Life Itself, Its Origin and Nature (1981), p. 88 [co-discoverer of the DNA molecule].

Even *Sydney Fox, the researcher who went through so much scientific rigmarole to make amino acids out of amino acids, admits it:

"The present laws of physics . . are insufficient to describe the origin of life. To him this opens the way to teleology, even, by implication, to creation by an intelligent agent . . If he thinks he has shown conclusively that life cannot have originated by chance, only two rational alternatives remain. The first is that it did not arise at all and that all we are studying is an illusion."—*S.W. Fox, The Origins of Prebiological Systems and Their Molecular Matrices (1965), pp. 35-55.

Another Nobel Prize laureate and, like the others, a confirmed evolutionist made this comment:

"All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did."—*Harold C. Urey, quoted in Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 1962, p. 4.

THE MAGIC FORMULA—The formula for the evolutionary origin and development of life goes something like this:

NOTHING + TIME + CHANCE = "SIMPLE" CELL

ONE CELL + TIME + CHANCE = MAN

Is this modern science or is it a fairy tale? It is an astounding thought that all modern biological, genetic, and geological science is keyed to such a mythical formulation.

One evolutionist explains in philosophical rhetoric how it all happened:

"Randomness caught on the wing, preserved, reproduced . . and thus converted into order, rule, necessity. A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself."—*Bur, quoted in *Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (1972), p. 98.

That is neither true nor scientific. If randomness can produce such living wonders as are all about us, then highly intelligent scientists, working in well-equipped laboratories, ought to be able to produce eyes, ears, and entirely new species in a few months’ time.

The Great Evolutionary Myth is that randomness plus time can do anything; the Truth is that randomness, with or without time, can accomplish almost nothing. And those changes which it does accomplish will quickly be blotted out by the next random action or two,—that is, if they are constructive changes. If they are erosional, they will remain much longer.

Throughout inorganic nature we see randomness producing decay and inertness; we do not find it building houses and, then, installing the plumbing in them.

"All the facile speculations and discussions published during the last ten to fifteen years explaining the mode of origin of life have been shown to be far too simple-minded and to bear very little weight. The problem in fact seems as far from solution as it ever was."—*Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe (1982), p. 68.

THE EVOLUTIONARY ORIGIN OF LIFE IN A NUTSHELL—The origin of life by random means is an impossibility. Only evolutionists and the authors of children’s fairy tales say otherwise.

The following evolutionary five-step theoretical program of events consists of little more than armchair guessing combined with Alice in Wonderland hopefulness. Here it is:

"Evolution Model for the Origin of Life on the Earth:

"According to the evolution model, the story of life on the earth began some five billion years ago and gradually unfolded through a series of five stages:

"Stage 1. Evolutionists have imagined that the atmosphere of the early earth was quite different from the present atmosphere. In contrast to the present oxidizing atmosphere, which contains 21 percent free oxygen (02), 78 percent nitrogen (N2), and 1 percent of other gases, supposedly the early earth was surrounded by a reducing atmosphere made up mostly of methane (CHi), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H3), and water vapor (H20).

"Stage 2. Because of ultraviolet light, electric discharge, and high-energy particle bombardment of molecules in a reducing atmosphere, stage 2 came about with the formation of small organic molecules such as sugars, amino acids, and nucleotides.

"Stage 3. Presuming all of this happened billions of years ago in a reducing atmosphere, then stage 3 is imagined during which combinations of various small stage 2 molecules resulted in formation of large polymers such as starches, proteins, and nucleic acids (DNA).

"Stage 4. These large molecules supposedly joined together into a gel-like glob called coacervates or microspheres. Possibly these coacervates attracted smaller molecules so that new structures, called proto-cells, might have formed.

"Stage 5. Evolutionists believe that finally, at least one of these globs absorbed the right molecules so that complex molecules could be duplicated within new units called living cells. These first cells consumed molecules left over from earlier states, but eventually photosynthesis appeared in cells, in some way, and oxygen was released into the atmosphere. As the percentage of oxygen in the early atmosphere increased, most of the known forms of life on the earth today began to appear. Because of the presence of oxygen, these early life-forms destroyed all the molecules from earlier stages, and no more chemical evolution was possible."—John N. Moore, "Teaching about Origin Questions: Origin of Life on Earth," in Creation Research Society Quarterly, June 1985, page 21.

APPLYING MATH TO IT—*Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous British mathematician and astronomer, teamed up with *Chandra Wickramasinghe in an analysis of the origin of life and the possibility that it could possibly have begun by chance.

*Hoyle is an evolutionist, and *Wickramasinghe a Buddhist. They mathematically determined that the likelihood that a single cell could originate in a primitive environment, given 4.6 billion years in which to do it,—was one chance in 10⁴⁰⁰⁰⁰! That is one chance in 1 with 40 thousand zeros after it! (*Fred Hoyle and *Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space, 1981, p. 28).

Everything would suddenly have to be there all at once. It would all have to work perfectly, and it would have to split and divide into new cells immediately, and reproduce offspring quickly. And, of course, it would have to be alive!

Living forms are too awesome to relegate to the tender mercies of time and chance. It took special design, special thinking, special power to make living beings.

And that brings us to our next chapter: the incredible wonders of DNA and the impossibility of it accidentally making itself out of chance, gravel, mud, and water.

SEARCH FOR LIFE IN OUTER SPACE—(*#5/2 Searching for Life Elsewhere*) Evolutionists are rabid about proving their theory. For over 30 years, working through the National Science Foundation and other agencies, they have gotten the U.S. Government to spend vast amounts of money on attempts to achieve their goal. They are searching for life-forms on other planets.

First, we will tell you of the multimillion-dollar projects. Then we will give you the warning:

"Bioastronomy" and "exobiology" are the studies of life in outer space. These are the only fields of "science" without evidence or subject matter. Researchers in these fields are trying to detect signals from outer space that would imply an intelligent source. Here is a brief listing of 15 of the projects funded by the United States. The search for life was not always the sole objective of each of these projects:

Ozma 1—1960 - $1 million - A Green Bank radio telescope probe of two nearby stars (Epsilon Eridoni and Tau Ceti) for signals indicating intelligent life. Result: No signals detected.

Apollo—1969-1972 - $30 billion - Exploration of the moon, in the hope of finding evidences of life. Result: No life detected.

Pioneer 10—1972 - Cost not available - This interspace probe was sent out beyond our solar system in the hope that intelligent beings would find it and contact us. A plaque is inside it. Result: No life/signals detected.

Ozma 11—1973 - Cost not available - 500 of the closest stars have been monitored for intelligent radio signals. Result: No signals detected.

Arecibo—1974 - Cost not available - This, the largest radio telescope on earth, was constructed for the purpose of continuously monitoring nearby stars for signals. Result: No signals detected.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory—1974 - Cost not available - The NRAO scanned 10 nearby stars for intelligent signals. Result: No signals detected.

Two Viking landers—1977 - $1 billion - These two landers were sent out in the hope of finding evidences of life on the planet Mars. Result: No life detected.

Voyager 1 and 2—1977 - Cost not available - Probes sent to outer planets; each carrying detailed messages from earth. Result: No life/signals detected.

Pioneer Venus—1977 - $230 million - Probes sent to planet Venus to measure atmospheric conditions and the possibility of life on its surface. Result: No life detected.

Very Large Array—1980 - $78 billion - 27 radio antennas constructed in New Mexico. They are probing for evidence of organic molecules in interstellar gas. Result: No life detected.

Mariner—1980 - Cost not available - This probe was specifically designed to analyze Saturn’s largest moon for signs of life. Result: No life/signals detected.

Hubble Space Telescope—1990 - $1.5 billion - This newly launched orbiting telescope will be searching for planets circling other planets. Result: No life/signals detected yet.

Cyclops—1990s - $20 billion - A large array of radio telescopes, each 100 meters [109 yds.] in diameter. Result: Not constructed yet. "Such an array would detect radio beams of the kind Earth, is inadvertently leaking at a distance of a hundred light-years, and should detect a deliberately aimed radio wave beacon from another civilization at a distance of a thousand light-years."—*Asimov’s New Guide to Science (1984), pp. 648-649.

A WARNING FROM ROSS—Hugh Ross, an astrophysicist at Caltech, did some checking and, about the year 1989, came up with an intriguing observation. Immense pressure has been placed on the U.S. Government and NASA to fund, at enormous expense, a manned voyage to Mars. Ross has discovered a primary reason for this seemingly senseless waste of money.

As you may know, winds carry small living creatures, such as microbes and spiders, to high atmospheric levels. Ross says that solar winds are able to waft particles of formerly living substances out of our high-level atmosphere—and blow them away from the sun, outward into space. Ross declares that some of the particles, caught in Mar’s gravitational field, could well have landed on the surface of Mars.

He believes that evolutionists are well-aware of this possibility, and that they want to send that manned flight to Mars to recover those particles. The main objective of the mission would be to find dead life-forms on the surface of Mars, and then use that as "evidence" that life once must have independently evolved on Mars! It is felt that this would provide a powerful boost to the evolutionary cause.

We have here another example of evolutionary deceit at work, and such a "discovery" may be made within the next decade or two.

EVOLUTION COULD NOT DO THIS

Chlorophyll, itself, is very complicated and never exists outside of the plant, just as DNA and ten thousands of other chemical structures never exist outside plants and/or animals. If they are not found outside, how did they ever get inside? In many plants, the tiny discs containing chlorophyll move about within plant cells and adjust for different light and heat conditions. When the sunlight is too strong, the little disks turn edgewise. On an overcast day, they lie as parallel to the sky as they can in order to take in the most light. They have brains?

CHAPTER 7 - STUDY AND REVIEW QUESTIONS

THE PRIMITIVE ENVIRONMENT

GRADES 5 TO 12 ON A GRADUATED SCALE

1 - List 3 reasons why water could not change itself into an animal.

9 - The facts about left- and right-handed amino acids provide important evidence regarding the possibility of non-living materials making themselves randomly into protein. Explain why left-handed amino acids are a great wall forbidding the chance formation of living protein.

10 - List several reasons why the Miller experiment could not be duplicated by raw materials out in nature.

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Chapter 7  THE PRIMITIVE ENVIRONMENT
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Chapter 8 DNA and Protein