Abiogenesis (The Origin of Life)

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

Antony Flew: (Atheist Philosopher)

The philosophical question that has not been answered in origin-of-life studies is this: How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and “coded chemistry”? Here we are not dealing with biology, but an entirely different category of problem.

(Antony Flew, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, [New York: HarperOne, 2007], p. 124.)

Josh D. McDowell, Sean McDowell:

One of the most perplexing scientific problems today is the origin of life. The scientific community is unanimous that this is an unsolved mystery. Harvard chemist George Whitesides once remarked that the question of life’s origin is one of the big scientific questions that has yet to be solved. Even Sam Harris admits that the origin of life is still a mystery.

     The problem of the origin of life is fundamentally a problem of information.

     With the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, scientists first understood that the organization and development of living creatures is orchestrated by genetic information. This is why, in a widely cited speech, Nobel laureate David Baltimore referred to modern biology as “a science of information.”

     How much information is found in living things? According to Richard Dawkins, the information in the cell nucleus of a tiny amoeba is greater than an entire set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Human DNA contains vastly more. Yet DNA does more than just store information. In combination with other cellular systems, it also processes information much like a computer. Hence Bill Gates likens DNA to a computer program, though far more advanced than any software humans have invented. 

     Atheists willingly confess that they have no clue how life first emerged. Dawkins recognizes the staggering improbability of the origin of life, but then concludes with an incredible solution: luck. Yes, luck. Is this really the most reasonable explanation? Can information emerge from an unguided, irrational, material process?

     The informational content of DNA was one of the primary reasons former atheist Antony Flew changed his mind about God. He concluded: “The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such ‘end-directed, self-replicating’ life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind.” If a message with the complexity of the Encyclopaedia Britannica were to arrive from outer space, it would undoubtedly be accepted as proof of extraterrestrial intelligence. The most reasonable explanation for human DNA which contains immensely more information than the Encyclopaedia Britannica—is a Divine Mind.

(Josh D. McDowell, Sean McDowell, More Than a Carpenter, [Crownhill: Authentic, 2011], pp. 53-55.)

Note: See further: Fine-Tuning.

William Paley:

     In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. …there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. …Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.

(William Paley, Natural Theology: Or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, [Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1860], pp. 5, 6, 13.)

Gregory of Nazianzus, Archbishop of Constantinople (c. 329-390):

How could this universe have had foundation or constitution, unless God gave all things being and sustains them? No one seeing a beautifully elaborated lyre with its harmonious, orderly arrangement, and hearing the lyre’s music will fail to form a notion of its craftsman-player, to recur to him in thought though ignorant of him by sight.

(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28.6; trans. St Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, Popular Patristics Series, Number 23, trans. Lionel Wickham, [Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002], p. 41. Cf. NPNF2, 7:290.) See also: ccel.org.

Aristotle:

     A puzzle now arises: why not suppose that nature acts not for something or because it is better, but of necessity? …rain does not fall in order to make the grain grow, but of necessity. For it is necessary that what has been drawn up is cooled, and that what has been cooled and become water comes down, and it is coincidental that this makes the grain grow. …Why not suppose, then, that the same is true of the parts of natural organisms? On this view, it is of necessity that, for example, the front teeth grow sharp and well adapted for biting, and the back ones broad and useful for chewing food; this [useful] result was coincidental, not what they were for. The same will be true of all the other parts that seem to be for something. On this view, then, whenever all the parts came about coincidentally as though they were for something, these animals survived, since their constitution, though coming about by chance, made them suitable [for survival]. Other animals, however, were differently constituted and so were destroyed; indeed they are still being destroyed, as Empedocles says… This argument, then, and others like it, might puzzle someone. In fact, however, it is impossible for things to be like this. For these [teeth and other parts] and all natural things come to be as they do either always or usually, whereas no result of luck or chance comes to be either always or usually. (For we do not regard frequent winter rain or a summer heat wave, but only summer rain or a winter heat wave, as a result of luck or coincidence.) If, then, these seem either to be coincidental results or to be for something, and they cannot be coincidental or chance results, they are for something. Now surely all such things are natural, as even those making these claims [about necessity] would agree. We find, then, among things that come to be and are by nature, things that are for something.

(Aristotle, Physics, 2.8[198b-199a]; trans. Classics of Western Philosophy: Seventh Edition, ed. Steven M. Cahn, [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2006], trans. Terence Irwin, Gail Fine, pp. 207-208.)

Richard Dawkins: (Atheist, Evolutionary Biologist and Zoologist)

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

(Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, [London: Penguin Books, 1988], p. 1.)

Cf. William of Ockham:

…pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate… [...plurality must not be asserted without necessity…]

(William of Ockham, Quodlibeta, V. Q. i; trans. The Nelson Philosophical Texts: Ockham: Philosophical Writings, trans. & ed., Philotheus Boehner, [Edinburg: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., 1959], p. 97.)

Note: The well known philosophical axiom is often reformulated thus: “the simplest solution, all other things being equal, is usually preferred.”

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria