The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [17]
I asked, “What’s the current thinking of scientists concerning the gas content of the early earth?”
“The best hypothesis now is that there was very little hydrogen in the atmosphere because it would have escaped into space. Instead, the atmosphere probably consisted of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor,” Wells said. “So my gripe is that textbooks still present the Miller experiment as though it reflected the earth’s early environment, when most geochemists since the 1960s would say it was totally unlike Miller’s.”
I asked the next logical question: “What happens if you replay the experiment using an accurate atmosphere?”
“I’ll tell you this: you do not get amino acids, that’s for sure,” he replied. “Some textbooks fudge by saying, well, even if you use a realistic atmosphere, you still get organic molecules, as if that solves the problem.”
Actually, that sounded promising. “Organic molecules?” I said. “I’m not a biochemist, but couldn’t those be precursors to life?”
Wells recoiled. “That’s what they sound like, but do you know what they are? Formaldehyde! Cyanide!” he declared, his voice rising for emphasis. “They may be organic molecules, but in my lab at Berkeley you couldn’t even have a capped bottle of formaldehyde in the room, because the stuff is so toxic. You open the bottle and it fries proteins all over the place, just from the fumes. It kills embryos. The idea that using a realistic atmosphere gets you the first step in the origin of life is just laughable.
“Now, it’s true that a good organic chemist can turn formaldehyde and cyanide into biological molecules. But to suggest that formaldehyde and cyanide give you the right substrate for the origin of life,” he said, breaking into a chuckle, “Well, it’s just a joke.”
He let the point sink in before delivering the clincher. “Do you know what you get?” he asked. “Embalming fluid!”
PUTTING HUMPTY-DUMPTY TOGETHER
The march of science has clearly left Miller’s experiment in the dust, even if some textbooks haven’t yet noticed. But I wanted to press on and test other scenarios.
“Let’s say that a scientist someday actually manages to produce amino acids from a realistic atmosphere of the early earth,” I began. I could see Wells was ready to interrupt, so I preempted him: “Look, I understand it’s not chemically possible, but let’s say it was. Or let’s say amino acids came to earth in a comet or some other way. My question is this: how far would that be from creating a living cell?”
“Oh,” he said as he pounced on the question, “Very far. Incredibly far. That would be the first step in an extremely complicated process. You would have to get the right number of the right kinds of amino acids to link up to create a protein molecule—and that would still be a long way from a living cell. Then you’d need dozens of protein molecules, again in the right sequence, to create a living cell. The odds against this are astonishing. The gap between nonliving chemicals and even the most primitive living organism is absolutely tremendous.”
I needed a visual picture to help me understand this. “Can you give me an illustration?” I asked.
“Let me describe it this way,” he said. “Put a sterile, balanced salt solution in a test tube. Then put in a single living cell and poke a hole in it so that its contents leak into the solution. Now the test tube has all the molecules you would need to create a living cell, right? You would already have accomplished far more than what the Miller experiment ever could—you’ve got all the components you need for life.”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“The problem is you can’t make a living cell,” he said. “There’s not even any point in trying. It would be like a physicist doing an experiment to see if he can get a rock to fall upwards all the way to the moon. No biologist in his right mind would think you can take a test tube with those molecules and turn them into a living cell.