The Enigma at the Origin of Life: An utterly unsolvable problem for atheism
Abiogenesis, the word for dead matter first forming into living things, is taken as a staple in the atheist world. Its just something that “naturally happens”
But how natural is it, really?
The more you dig into the question, the
more you realize atheism runs into an ironic problem: the very act of
abiogenesis necessitates God
Let me explain.
There are a few leading theories on the
origin of life, with the ‘RNA World’ as the most widely accepted. In this
hypothesis, it’s stated that strands of RNA were able to self assemble in
prebiotic conditions, via random chemical reactions paired with heat, UV beams,
lightning, and other physical processes. And that eventually, a strand who’s
folded configuration was able to reproduce itself began the first step of life.
There are too many issues to list with this, but they arent the focus of this
thread
So, I’ll briefly list out what we’re going
to ignore and give to the atheist, just to bolster their argument before
exposing the underlying problem in it.
We’re going to ignore that:
RNA bonds are thermodynamically unstable in water
RNA has never been shown to form
spontaneously
the sugars to even construct its backbone
don’t link to bases without enzymes
even human engineered ribozymes
have never been able to self-replicate no one knows where the energy needed for
these reactions came from
we haven’t even been able to form (in
laboratories) the 4 nucleotide bases in RNA that supposedly formed on their own
lab synthesized molecules always form
racemic mixtures while life is selectively chiral
And many, many more fatal issues
that cant all be listed. We’re going to ignore them and pretend like they don’t
exist
Even with that, there is a crucial,
unsolvable problem: the information stored in the RNA code
Before getting into what I mean, it must
be understood that RNA (and DNA) function as a digital code in species. The
sequence of the 4 bases along the strand are crucial to the folding and
function of the RNA. This sequence is the information in the strand, and it’s
not determined by chemical processes. In fact the reason why RNA is so good at
storing information is that it doesn’t care which bases come next in the
strand. So AAA is just as probable as AGC, and as AUU, GCU, UUU, etc (with
minor exceptions)
What this means is the information stored
is NOT based in chemistry or biology. The sequence isn’t tugged by physical
forces to arrange a certain way; its arrangement is based purely on information
So the big question is this: what’re the odds that an RNA strand will randomly form a sequence that allows it to self-replicate and begin life?
Considering we’ve never found a
self-replicating RNA, well have to make yet again another exception for the
atheist and pretend we have
The best man-made ribozyme
(tC19Z) has been shown to add 27 bases to an existing template. It cant produce
itself, but we’ll pretend it can. We’ll use it as an example, though a real one
would be much more complex, as it would need to somehow read and replicate its entire
length. If its even 1 base short of its full sequence, it couldn’t make an
exact copy and would lose its function. But to move forward, we’ll pretend the
current one works tC19Z is 198 bases long, and since its sequence is purely
information, there is no chemical/physical law to guide it. It must come about
randomly in the primordial earth
So what’re the odds that out of the 4
options for bases, they arrange naturally to form this theoretical
self-replicating RNA?
The odds are 1 out of 4^198, or 1 out of
1.6x10^119 options
For reference, there are 10^78 atoms in
the entire universe, and this number is more than a trecedilion (40 zeros)
times bigger than that. Its unimaginably large, and the chance of the sequence
arranging randomly is essentially 0
But surely the academics and researchers
have a solution to this, right? Nope, they’re still busy trying to prove
ribozymes can self-replicate, no one has even attempted to
address the information problem
What if we had enough time, couldnt it
form? Nope, not only is the universe far too young to do this, but time is
actually the enemy in this case
James Tour, a world renown synthetic
organic chemist, with over 93000 citations and awarded scientist of the year
(2013) discusses the time issue
So what does all this mean? It means the
true foundation of life is information—it is part and parcel what allows life
to exist?
There isn’t a single example of
information forming itself, it’s ALWAYS the product of intelligence, a mind,
and not blind processes
For example computer code, written text,
sheet music, etc. All of these are products of a mind
So if the first self-replicating
molecule requires an immensely sophisticated code, how can we assume it arises
via evolution when there’s nothing to even evolve yet?
Im not saying the origin of life came down
from the heavens on a golden platter. I’m saying that the very act of
abiogenesis, if it happened, NECESSITATES an intelligence to provide the
information in the code
Otherwise, and even while ignoring the
issues mentioned above, life would not have existed. The information in the
genetic code must come before biology, not after it
This is also why the Fermi Paradox isn’t
really a paradox at all. It’s a calculation that states there’s more than
enough time and earth-like planets in the universe for it to be teeming with
life right now. Yet there’s nothing but silence. This is because the current
literature assumes that life occurs naturally, that it doesn’t
depend on an intelligent designer. When we understand this in light of the
information problem, it makes sense there is no other observable life. It’s not
a natural occurrence
It’s only been made to seem that way by
misleading articles, science popularizers, and biased text books.
All in all, the general public has been lied
to about the origin of life. We’re no where near even assuming it arose via
natural, blind processes, and we never will be
The best thing to do, then, is to make an
‘inference to the best explanation,’ a widely used reasoning in the sciences
-There must be information in even the
simplest self-replicating molecules
-information is a product of intelligence
-therefore, the best explanation is that
intelligence is the cause of information in self-replicating molecules
Whether you want to call it God or aliens
(which would just push the problem back a step without solving it), it must be
admitted that there is a mindful and intelligent cause to life



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