“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” Proverb 18:17 (ESV)

The mere suggestion of a primordial soup made the idea of a naturalistic origin of life (OOL) easily imagined and readily accepted by both scientists and the public. The Miller-Urey experiment seemed to provide proof-of-principle for a mechanistic event that was both plausible and fairly simple; however, the assumed chemicals and conditions were simply irrelevant to those present on the early Earth.¹ Although a more neutral (rather than strongly reducing) nacent atmosphere has since been accepted by the scientific establishment, laypeople still retain the textbook image of Miller’s experimental contraption in their memory. They confuse the production of a few amino acids with the creation of a living organism. They believe first-life was simple and therefore simple to make.  Meanwhile, scientists have come to realize that life’s origin is actually quite elusive, its location mysterious and mechanisms uncertain. The soup is not just murky – it’s missing.^2,3

New OOL solutions have been sought in the neutral atmosphere of the early Earth to no avail. Either the necessary hydrogen tends to slip away due to an inadequate gravitational grasp⁴ or the chemically promising, but sparse, products yielded by carbon monoxide do not endure.⁵ The Earth’s crust and volcanic emissions have been found to be as oxidizing today as 3.6 billion years ago,^6,7 and the oxygen-ultraviolet paradox continues to plague OOL conjecture.⁸ Perhaps most significantly, high-energy impactors are thought to have blasted away Earth’s initial atmosphere and vaporized its waters until the end of the late heavy bombardment around 3.8 billion years ago. Isotopic signatures of complex photosynthetic life appear in the oldest of remaining rocks around this time.⁹ Life shows up early and rapidly, with no warning and no soup.¹⁰

The possibility of OOL at hydrothermal vents is also severely constrained by time limitations since the early ocean is thought to have cycled through such vents at least once every 10 million years.¹¹ As in many proposed OOL scenarios, the potential organic products of such hypothetical reactions are destroyed faster than they can be produced.¹²  Ever-promising and multi-functional RNA molecules are quite delicate under any extracellular conditions, and they would need to be incorporated into a living system quickly before degradation could occur.¹³ In addition, if nucleic acids become long enough to code for anything meaningful, it is also likely that they will be too long to be replicated accurately without a complete array of enzymes already in place.¹⁴

The extraterrestrial delivery of organic compounds via comets, meteorites, and interplanetary dust has been shown to have been insufficient to seed Earth’s abundant early life, even if the desired molecules were not incinerated upon entry into the atmosphere. ¹⁵ Perhaps only a combination of molecular sources can offer an adequate concentration of prebiotic compounds.^16,17 Yet, all the varied chemical mechanisms make their own peculiar demands, many of which are antagonistic to others.¹⁸  How might they all come together at the same place and time?¹⁹

I have not even mentioned the origin of biological information or the homochirality of biomolecules yet.²⁰ Simply put, for those seeking naturalistic OOL solutions, life is hard.

”So far, no geochemical evidence for the existence of a prebiotic soup has been published. Indeed, a number of scientists have challenged the prebiotic soup concept, noting that even if it existed, the concentration of organic building blocks in it would have been too small to be meaningful for prebiotic evolution.“ — Noam Lahav, Biogenesis: Theories of Life’s Origin

¹ Fazale Rana, Creating Life in the Lab (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), Chapter 9.*
² Ibid.
³ Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search of the Origin and Meaning of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000), 91.
⁴ Ibid, 90.
⁵ Fazale Rana, Creating Life in the Lab (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), Chapter 9.*
⁶ Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off (Covina, CA: Reasons to Believe, 2014), 104.
⁷ Fazale Rana, Creating Life in the Lab (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), Chapter 9.*
⁸ Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off (Covina, CA: Reasons to Believe, 2014), 103.
⁹ Ibid, 106.
¹⁰ Fazale Rana, Creating Life in the Lab (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), Chapter 9.*
¹¹ Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off (Covina, CA: Reasons to Believe, 2014), 105.
¹² William J. Schopf, ed., Life’s Origin: The Beginnings of Biological Evolution (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 101-2.
¹³ Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off (Covina, CA: Reasons to Believe, 2014), 90-91.
¹⁴ Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search of the Origin and Meaning of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000), 62.
¹⁵ Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off (Covina, CA: Reasons to Believe, 2014), 103-4.
¹⁶ William J. Schopf, ed., Life’s Origin: The Beginnings of Biological Evolution (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 107-8.
¹⁷ Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off (Covina, CA: Reasons to Believe, 2014), 95-6.
¹⁸ Fazale Rana, Lecture #12: “The Fossil Evidence,” Reasons Institute “Origin of Life” online course, 2017.
¹⁹ Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search of the Origin and Meaning of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000), 91.
²⁰ Ibid, 49-121.
*Page numbers not available in Kindle version.