Without a Pathway to Life, Atheism is an Unlikely Faith
Many of the militant atheists I have encountered, and in particular the former Christians, cast themselves as rationalists. By this they mean they take no stock in faith, and place it all in reason and what can be reasoned. Most do this solely because they can then self-aggrandize; essentially placing themselves intellectually on pedestals above the “common theistic rubes” that populate the country.
This trend is not founded solely on the desire to feel a sense of superiority. Many atheists fervently believe the science shows they have the high ground, and a significant portion of them believe that science has proven God does not exist. People that understand what science is know that it could do no such thing; and most people that have a working knowledge of scientific progress over the last century understand that in terms of support for atheism, the results have not been favorable in nearly every field of scientific inquiry.
By far, the most disastrous results atheists have had to deal with are found within the study of the origin of life. Just in this field alone one can gather enough conclusions to see the self-aggrandizing is entirely unfounded. Not only is there currently no pathway for life to derive itself from inorganic matter, there are so many problems and paradoxes in the proposed processes that it is entirely reasonable to conclude life cannot arise without an intelligent force; and one far more intelligent than our best minds combined directing and controlling the process.
To add some color to the picture, here is a list of some of the problems and paradoxes that lie within the abiogenic pathway:
The homochirality problem (how did optically pure biochemistry arise from the spontaneous tendency towards racemic mixtures?)
The polymerization problem (how did nucleotides and amino acids join together to biologically significant lengths and stay together without spontaneously falling apart?)
The sequence specificity problem (how did a non-repetitive nucleotide/amino acid sequence order come to be associated with specific functions?)
The ‘protein-RNA-DNA connection’ problem (how did protein, RNA, and DNA come to be mutually dependent on each other for their continued high-fidelity existence?)
The coding problem (how did syntactical and semantic conventions arise in a non-repetitive nucleotide sequence order?)
The secondary protein structure problem (how do 3D structures like alpha-helices and beta-sheets arise in localized areas of a protein from a non-repetitive amino acid sequence?)
The tertiary protein structure problem (how does the general 3D topology of a protein form from the primary amino acid sequence and ad hoc secondary structures?)
The quaternary protein structure problem (how did proteins with an established 3D topology correctly join together in a multi-subunit protein complex?)
The protein-protein interaction problem (how did proteins (or protein complexes) come to interact in a coordinated manner?)
The timing problem (i.e. controlling the timing of molecular interactions)
The location problem (i.e. controlling the location of molecular interactions)
The information protection problem (DNA degrades quickly, and RNA even quicker, and even their building blocks are unstable, so how did these information storage molecules come to be separated from the environment to preserve the integrity of the instructions they preserve?)
The energy acquisition problem (how did molecules capable of self-replication acquire the needed energy and parts to sustain, maintain, and replicate themselves?)
The energy storage problem (how did the molecular interactions that lead to the storage of energy for appropriate usage in time and space arise?)
The energy transfer problem (how did the mechanisms for spatiotemporally ordered energy transfer needed to sustain, maintain, and replicate arise?)
The replication problem (how did a high-fidelity self-replication process arise for radically non-repetitive polymers like DNA and RNA?)
Many of these are show-stopping quandaries on their own, and this list is far from exhaustive, being mostly comprised of the origin of the major subsystems required for the first cell. The assembly of those subsystems is another monster itself. Researchers are starting to explicitly realize that the current explanations are completely inadequate, the latest admission coming from a paper presented in New Scientist. Geneticist Dr. Georgia Purdom critiqued it by saying this:
“The scientists correctly define what you need for life—something to contain it (membrane), ability to make/utilize energy (metabolism), and ability to reproduce. They’ve given up on bacteria being the first living organism because they know how complex even these “simplest” organisms are. Since none of their other ideas about which came first have panned out, they’ve decided that all three requirements for life must have evolved at once from ‘Goldilocks chemistry.’
So just the right molecules interacting under just the right conditions in just the right place led to a living organism. Just like Goldilocks is a fairytale, so is their idea for the origin of life! All of the research to develop this idea has depended on the scientists adding just the right chemicals (e.g., iron, sulfur) in just the right conditions (e.g., UV light), meaning intelligent design was needed, and they still didn’t end up with anything living! Life only comes from life (the law of biogenesis), and life only comes from the Creator God.”
In case anyone wants to claim Dr. Purdom’s faith makes her critique unobjective, here is the summary written by the authors of that very same paper:
“Of course, all this depends on the everything-first idea proving correct. Szostak’s protocells and the new biochemical insights have won over many researchers, but some pieces of the puzzle are still missing. Perhaps the most persuasive argument is that the simpler ideas don’t work. As is the case with many things in life, the beginning was probably more complicated than we had thought.” [Emphasis added]
It is important to note that the “simpler ideas” were considered independently because their complex requirements and problems lead to astronomical probabilities. Those complex requirements and problems are still there. What these researchers have essentially done is stack and intertwine a bunch of processes they admit do not work and claim through this dysfunction, a fully functional living microorganism capable of reproduction will result. It is strange, to say the least.
Deep down, some of these researches have realized that some form of agency acting towards the purpose of creating life is required for biogenesis. This realization emerges within some of the language they use to describe the process. Take for example another article by Branscomb and Russell. First, they dispel all theories relying on “chemical chaos” like the New Scientist paper:
“We claim in particular that it is untenable to hold that life-relevant biochemistry could have emerged in the chemical chaos produced by mass-action chemistry and chemically nonspecific “energy” inputs, and only later have evolved its dauntingly specific mechanisms (as a part of evolving all the rest of life’s features).”
That being done, they present their solution:
“Instead, we claim, it had to have been launched simple and “specific” and thereafter have been forced by the scythe of natural selection to maintain the necessary specificity standard at each evolutionary increment in complexity. More specifically, all the devices of life, metabolic and structural, must have been invented by it, “in situ,” step by step, and “while in flight,” starting from the simplest possible inputs (e.g., CO2, H2, CH4, NO, etc. see Figure 1) and “learning itself,” by trial and error, which small changes, themselves occurring by chance, were useful: each incremental step in this “evolution by creeps,” complexity-building process necessarily being vetted by the system both for “fitting in” and for “contributing” more utility than cost.”
Notice the agency? Their defined “natural selection” invents, builds, learns, and implements changes, all of which it does in pursuit of the goal to create life. Unfortunately for them, even if we assumed “natural selection” was a spiritual being that did all these things, it would not help much. They would have to unbind it from the duties of selection, make it super intelligent and give it an ability to manipulate molecules that far surpasses our own for it to be effective. Sounds quite a bit like God.
None of this bodes well for atheism. A naturalist pathway to life is not only non-existent, it looks like the problems and paradoxes point straight to a requirement for an intelligent creator. Without an even remotely plausible pathway to life, atheism will remain an unlikely faith.
Sources: Forget Slow and Gradual - Answers in Genesis; Origin of Life Research - Creation.com; Do Origin of Life Researchers Now Accept Intelligent Design? - Evolution News
