The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [18]
“In other words,” I said, “if you want to create life, on top of the challenge of somehow generating the cellular components out of nonliving chemicals, you would have an even bigger problem in trying to put the ingredients together in the right way.”
“Exactly! In my illustration, the cell is dead, and you can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. So even if you could accomplish the thousands of steps between the amino acids in the Miller tar—which probably didn’t exist in the real world anyway—and the components you need for a living cell—all the enzymes, the DNA, and so forth—you’re still immeasurably far from life.”
“But,” I protested, “the first cell was probably a lot more primitive than even the simplest single-cell organism today.”
“Granted,” he said. “But my point remains the same—the problem of assembling the right parts in the right way at the right time and at the right place, while keeping out the wrong material, is simply insurmountable. Frankly, the idea that we’re on the verge of explaining the origin of life naturalistically is just silly to me.”
“There’s no theory, then, that can account for how life could have naturally come together by itself without any direction or guidance?”
Wells stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. “The word ‘theory’ is very slippery,” he replied. “I can make up a story, but it would be unsupported at every crucial step by any experimental evidence worth counting. I’m an experimentalist at heart. I’d want to see some evidence—and it’s just not there.
“For instance, one popular theory was that RNA, a close relative of DNA, could have been a molecular cradle from which early cells developed. This ‘RNA world’ hypothesis was heralded as a great possibility for a while. But nobody could demonstrate how RNA could have formed before living cells were around to make it, or how it could have survived under the conditions on the early earth.
“Gerald Joyce, a biochemist at the Scripps Research Institute, ruled out the RNA-first theory very colorfully by saying, ‘You have to build straw man upon straw man to get to the point where RNA is a viable first biomolecule.’ 15
“In short,” declared Wells, “it was a dead end—as all other theories have been.”
“ . . . AND HENCE A MIRACLE”
In hindsight, my materialistic philosophy had been built on a foundation that history has subsequently dismantled piece by piece. Miller’s experiment, once a great ally to my atheism, has been reduced to a mere scientific curiosity.
“What is the significance of his experiment today?” I asked Wells.
“To me, it has virtually no scientific significance,” he replied. “It’s historically interesting, because it convinced a lot of people through the years—yourself included—that life could have arisen spontaneously, a point which I believe is false. Does it have a place in a science textbook? Maybe as a footnote.”
“But it’s more than a footnote in most texts, right?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “It’s prominently featured in current textbooks, often with pictures. The most generous thing I can say is that it’s misleading. It’s wrong to even give the impression that science has empirically shown how life could have originated. Now, they may have a disclaimer buried in the text, saying the earth’s atmosphere may not have been what Miller thought it was. But then they say that if a realistic environment is used, you still get organic molecules. To me, that’s just as misleading.”
I thought about a student who encounters the Miller experiment today. Would he gloss over in his mind the complexities of creating life? Would he understand the nuances of the Miller story, or would he hear the term “organic molecules” and conclude that scientists are on the verge of resolving the problem of how nonliving chemicals somehow became living cells? Would a young person looking for an excuse to escape the accountability of God cling to the false conclusion that the origin-of-life problem is only a minor obstacle in the relentless march of evolutionary theory?
“Why do you think the Miller experiment is still published in textbooks?