A New Chemical 'Tree of The Origins of Life'

True - it’s possible that new life continues to arise in (say) the submarine vents at mid-oceanic ridges, but since we can’t see what’s happening there are the macroscopic level let alone the molecular scale, we’d never know.

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Why? Do you deny the possibility that God is powerful enough to create a universe where natural processes would produce such organisms from inanimate matter?

Indeed, many Bible-affirming Christians cite Genesis 1 in that regard as the earth is described as bringing forth both plant and animal life:

1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, . . .

1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind . . .

My point is not that their Hebrew exegesis is flawless and has no other interpretation. I’m simply pointing out that lots of Christians find Genesis 1 entirely compatible with natural processes producing organisms from inanimate matter. Why couldn’t this be God’s plan for his creation? (Is it more God-honoring to claim that God created living things species-by-species in a series of creative acts on a given day of Creation week? Does the Hebrew text require that interpretation?)

That was my thought as well, specifically Friedrich Wöhler proving wrong the many Christians who had claimed that only living things can produce organic compounds, that they are unique to living organisms, and that it is arrogant and presumptuous for mere man to think that he will ever defy the ways of God’s creation and synthesize the chemicals of life in a laboratory. Yet, that is exactly what Wöhler did in making urea from ammonium cyanate. @thoughtful, I do understand your argument because it is a very old one.

I’ve never understood the aversion of many of my fellow Christians to chance. God created chance and the Bible even says that God uses chance for his own purposes. Surely a God capable of creating a universe is fully capable of being sovereign over chance:

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD. – Proverbs 16:33 (NIV)

And for the most part those designed experiments tend to be much more fruitful than the undesigned experiments.

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What am I presupposing? Be specific.

So did I. If a basic cell-like thing appeared on earth right now through the process of abiogenesis it would be competing with highly adapted organisms that would quickly defeat it.

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I think I understand why @thoughtful refuses to believe living matter could arise from inanimate matter. Its because it would make God seem irrelevant and she is scared of that. We can point out the natural causes of many aspects of the natural world that were once thought to have supernatural causes and that has made supernatural explanations less reliable (if not totally ‘useless’) to science. So if the origin of life is taken away from the realm of conjecture and can be shown to explicable by natural mechanisms, that would strike a heavy blow to the claims of YECs like her.

That was my thought as well, specifically Friedrich Wöhler providing wrong the many Christians who had claimed, “Only living things can produce organic compounds. They are unique to living organisms and it is arrogant and presumptuous for mere man to think that he will ever defy the ways of God’s creation and synthesize the chemicals of life in a laboratory.”

Citation for the quote?

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I shouldn’t have posted during a Zoom meeting— because I put quotation marks on what should have been a paraphrase. (So I have amended it accordingly.)

I remember the ideas from graduate school readings. I’ll see if I can find something similar online (as most of my library is in storage at present.)


In a quick search on this topic, I found that more recent scholarship claims that Wohler-shattered-vitalism is a myth because Dalton and Berzelius had long before established that the same laws of chemistry applied to both organic and inorganic reactions. However, that leads me to wonder if what had long been clear to chemists might have taken Wohler and the passage of many years to convince most philosophers and theologians of that era. Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s we were certainly taught that Wohler’s synthesis of urea had a significant impact on the intellectual divide between regard for living things versus non-living things.

This is a good topic for our History of Science scholars on Peaceful Science. Perhaps @TedDavis can help.

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Oh, that I could, but I am not up to date on this scholarship. The information about Dalton & Berzelius sounds right, but I won’t put my stamp on it out of ignorance.

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This comment and sequence is important, I think.

Valerie, I don’t want to make claims about your stance, so I’m asking the question: is the point you’re making that you believe Earth was created with, and has had throughout the history of life, an atmosphere much like it has now, rich in oxygen?

And what you’re saying in ‘presupposes a narrative’ is ‘by talking about an earlier epoch in which Earth had a reducing atmosphere you are assuming a history of the world that I don’t accept’.

I won’t presume, so let me know if that’s wrong, but if it’s right, then the discussion really might be at a standstill. I don’t think anyone claims that abiogenesis could occur in an atmosphere like Earth has now. Allowing the possibility, certainly, but not seriously claiming that the origin of life occurred under this kind of atmosphere.

And one of the reasons for that is that life and the atmosphere are so intertwined. Why does the atmosphere have a lot of oxygen in it? Because photosynthesis in living things releases it into the atmosphere. If there was a time on Earth prior to any life existing, there would not be this balance…

…at least in a naturalistic world. As I’ve noted elsewhere, if miracles (supernatural activities) are included, all bets are off.

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33 posts were split to a new topic: R_speir and naturalism

I have never seen inanimate matter become a deadly Salmonella Enteritidis. Nevertheless, I do not insist that Salmonella Enteritidis bacteria cannot exist.

In any case, we don’t have to directly view an event to determine that it happened.

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Yeah that happens pretty much every time a cell divides. It takes in inanimate matter and converts it to a new living organism. That new living organism is still, essentially, made of inanimate matter btw.

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Not the examples you’re thinking of, but viruses are arguably inanimate matter until they engage with living cells, and my food - which is of plant and animal origin but mostly not living when I’m eating it - becomes living matter in my body.

You seem to hold to a form of vitalism that insists biology includes something supernatural in addition to the component chemical and physical substances and processes. And to consider that assertion is sufficient evidence for this unobserved (and arguably in-principle unobservable) insistence.

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No, I don’t believe that’s necessarily true. I haven’t studied the science.

No, I meant you are presupposing a narrative about processes we haven’t observed based on your unbelief in God. Until you can show that He does not exist, the narrative that God created life has equal plausibility.

You seem to hold to a form of vitalism that insists biology includes something supernatural in addition to the component chemical and physical substances and processes. And to consider that assertion is sufficient evidence for this unobserved (and arguably in-principle unobservable) insistence.

I guess Wohler’s urea synthesis failed to make an impression on them.

No, I meant you are presupposing a narrative about processes we haven’t observed based on your unbelief in God.

Nobody is presupposing a narrative here. Scientist work with models for Christ’s sake. In addition, the mere fact that there are Christian OoL researchers refutes your claim that unbelief in God drives OoL research.

Until you can show that He does not exist, the narrative that God created life has equal plausibility.

Sorry dear. The atheists or scientists don’t make the claim that God exists, its you and other Christians who do, so the burden of proof falls on Christians and for over 2000 years we are yet to see it.

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You do not possess any such thing. Because when those physical organisms die, life leaves and they are then dead, physical organisms. If you could resurrect one, however, you might have a point to be made. Otherwise, physics and chemistry are not to be conflated with life. And you are conflating them.

You need to take a course in basic biochemistry and receive some humility. Life is chemistry, it doesn’t go anywhere after an organism dies, it simply stops (the same way fire burns out after it runs out of oxygen).

Get a tissue slice, fix it on a slide and view under a microscope, you see a multitude of cells, each enclosed by a thin outer membrane. That membrane is double-layered consisting of lipids like phospholipids and cholesterol. There are are also proteins peripherally associated with the membrane or embedded within it.

To kill that cell, degrade the membrane and let’s its contents spill out, disrupting concentration gradients and stopping the network of metabolic pathways running the cell. If this happens to a large number of cells at once (say due to a bullet wound or a serious burn), organismal death may ensue. There is nothing mysterious or spooky here.

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That is only the case if one denies that physical and chemical processes occur.

Is that your position?

If not, then we are faced with two options: Life arose from things whose existence we all agree has been demonstrated (physical and chemical processes), or it arose thru something in which some people believe but whose existence has yet to be demonstrated (God).

Those are not equivalent propositions.

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Please show how I am presupposing this narrative.

You asked us why we don’t see new life emerging all of the time if abiogenesis is true. I explained why. I don’t see how that is presupposing anything. It is simply answering a hypothetical.

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No, of course not. God created the physical and chemical processes. The fact there are any is evidence of God’s existence, not evidence of his non-existence.

Please do not take my Savior’s name in vain.

Please state the evidence for this fact.

You’re not actually rebutting my argument. So the narrative that God created life still has equal plausability.

Yes, we don’t need to describe every process as a miracle. We can see and uncover how things work. We expect them to work because God created them to be orderly and for laws of nature and theories in science to be coherent.