Charisma Magazine

As the world marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his book, The Origin of Species, we show how science has since offered compelling proof of the existence of God.

Feb. 12, 2009 --A sage once said, "It's not what you know you don't know that's the problem; it's what you don't know that you don't know."

When Charles Darwin advanced his theory of biological evolution, there was a lot of biology he didn't know. Some of it he recognized. But there was much he never even thought about.

During the 150 years since then, scientific advance has yielded important understanding about life's origin, history and characteristics. These accomplishments provide the framework for modern biology. Even more, they are causing scientists to question his theory. Learning what scientists know will equip Christians with a response to the Darwin anniversaries and his theory of biological evolution that can change minds and lives.

Darwin didn't address life's start in his seminal work, The Origin of Species. However, in 1871, while writing to a friend, Darwin speculated that the first spark of life may have taken place in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes."

Still, it took until the 1920s before Russian biochemist Alexander I. Oparin and British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane independently provided a comprehensive scientific hypothesis for abiogenesis (life coming from nonlife) based, in part, on Darwin's musings. Providing detailed pathways from inorganic systems on primordial Earth to the first living entities, the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis postulated an atmosphere without oxygen. Instead, reducing gases-hydrogen, ammonia, methane and water vapor-supposedly dominated. Energy discharges formed simple organic (prebiotic) molecules that accumulated in Earth's oceans to brew the primordial soup. There, presumably, chemical reactions led stepwise to life's first forms.

In the 1950s Stanley Miller provided what many considered the first experimental verification of this hypothesis. By passing an electrical discharge through a reducing gas mix, Miller produced amino acids and other organics. His success launched the origin-of-life research program and became standard textbook fare.

These now-famous experiments inaugurated a series of experiments by others that seemingly provided ongoing support for Oparin's and Haldane's ideas. Giddy with Miller's accomplishment, many scientists predicted the origin-of-life problem would soon be solved. But several recent discoveries have diminished that confidence.

Miller's Experiment Didn't Matter

Few textbooks acknowledge that today most origin-of-life researchers consider Miller's experiment irrelevant. Strong evidence revealing a primordial atmosphere composed of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water has changed the scientific consensus. This gas mixture does not yield organic compounds in laboratory prebiotic simulation experiments-a devastating blow for the evolutionary scenario.

In the May 2, 2003, issue of Science, Jeffrey Bada and Antonio Lazcano, Miller's long-time collaborators, commemorated the 50th anniversary of his experiment. While explaining its

historical interest, they acknowledged that "contemporary geoscientists tend to doubt that the primitive atmosphere had the highly reducing composition used by Miller in 1953."

Equally problematic is the lack of any evidence for a prebiotic soup. If life arose from a chemical stew, then Earth's oldest rocks should bear that soup's chemical residue. Yet, according to origin-of-life researcher Noam Lahav in Biogenesis, so far, no geochemical evidence for the existence of a prebiotic soup has been published. Life could not arise from a primordial soup that never existed. (Read more about the debate between Atheists and Creationists)