Soup or Sandwich
A Famous Experiment Meets the Genesis Account
Have you ever stopped to ponder the deeper things in life? I'm not talking about the tough decisions, like having soup for lunch or a sandwich. Why not both? I'm not here to chase that rabbit, however. I'm talking about the meaty, deep things, like what really happened in that primordial soup many origins of life scientists say cooked up the first self-replicating life on earth? That split from stories of supernatural creation was born in the nursery of the first natural philosophers, such as the Greeks, Anaximander in the 6th century BC, and later Aristotle, in the 4th century BC. They proposed advanced ideas for that period in history, such as the possibility of life being seeded from elsewhere in the universe, and abiogenesis: life from inanimate matter. This post will briefly treat the Miller-Urey experiment of the early 1950s as it measures up against the Genesis account of creation found in the Holy Bible.
In 1953, Harold Urey, an American chemist and Nobel laureate, teamed up with Stanley Miller, a graduate student at the University of Chicago.[1] It had previously been postulated that the atmosphere of ancient Earth, billions of years ago, lacked oxygen. To simulate Earth's atmosphere, the team decided on a mixture of methane, hydrogen, and ammonia, mixed with water to simulate Earth's atmosphere. The mixture was sealed in a glass flask, and they ran an electric current through it to simulate sunlight. They watched that mixture for a week turn from clear to a reddish-brown "primordial soup."[2]
They then analyzed this liquid and found that it contained several amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Since then, however, geologists "no longer think that the early atmosphere resembled the gas mixture in Miller's flask. The earth probably had several different atmospheres during its first billion years, but methane and ammonia were unlikely ever to a been present in abundance."[3]
This is how science is supposed to work, though. Observations are made (self-replicating life exists), a question is asked (how did the first life begin?), A hypothesis is proposed (life was cooked up in a primordial soup), an experiment is devised to test the hypothesis (the Miller-Urey experiment), data is analyzed (amino acids were found), and a conclusion is drawn. And here's where things get a little sticky. No real conclusion was drawn from the Miller-Urey experiment other than that amino acids may have been present 3 to 4 billion years ago.
Scientific knowledge is based on the best possible evidence, that is, until new evidence is discovered or reveals itself, making previous knowledge either obsolete or needing revision. An example is Sir Isaac Newton's conception of gravity and how it held true for over two centuries until Albert Einstein and general relativity. Science evolves as mysteries of the universe and life on this planet reveal themselves. This is by design.
The Holy Bible presents a different story for how life began. Most know the gist of the account of God's greatest miracle, the creation of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1 NASB). A few verses later, "Then God said, "Let there sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit according to their kind with seed in them"; and it was so," (1:11). God did not create life immediately. He first created the earth, the oceans, the light of day, and the darkness of night. In subsequent posts, I will discuss why God's hand in creating life cannot be easily dismissed. Why, as Paul Davies expressed it, "Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled."[4]
[1] Davies, Paul. The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000, 31.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid, 7
