Let Us Reason

The Soup’s Not On

By Hubert P. Yockey

Adapted from "Comments on 'Let There Be Life: Thermodynamic Reflections on Biogenesis and Evolution' by Avshalom C. Elitzer", Journal of Theoretical Biology, 176 (1995), pp. 349-355.

The "warm little pond" albatross is often hung around Darwin’s neck. But he does not deserve to wear it. Because of his stature as a saint of biology, propagandists for the "primeval soup" origins scenario like to associate the notion with Darwin. They’re hoping for legitimacy by association.

In reality, Charles Darwin’s published opinion on the nature and origin of life anticipated the position Niels Bohr expressed in his famous Light and Life lecture: Life must be accepted as an axiom rather than as a "property of matter."1,2 According to Bohr, life resembles the quantum of action in physics, an action that appears, from the viewpoint of classical mechanics, as an irrational element.

The standard materialist (Marxist) model of life’s origin requires a primeval soup in the early ocean. Life-essential biochemicals must arise, of course, through non-biological processes. According to Stanley Miller’s so-called "historic and seminal experiments," amino acids and other "prebiotic building blocks" of life presumably formed in Earth’s early "reducing" atmosphere--a combination of ammonia, hydrogen, methane, and water vapor--by the action of ultraviolet light, lightning strokes, and other electric spark discharges.

Recent findings suggest, however, that Earth’s atmosphere at the time of life’s origin was not reducing but neutral, composed mainly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor.3 Miller, himself, was among the first to show that the yield of "prebiotic chemical compounds" from electric charges and ultraviolet light in neutral (rather than reducing) atmospheres is very small or nonexistent.4 When research pointed to something other than a reducing atmosphere, researchers groped for new explanations. Some proposed comets and meteorites as transport vehicles, carrying life-essential compounds to Earth from outer space.5

Nevertheless, Elitzur and countless others remain true believers in their life-spawning soup scenario. Ironically, they continue to ignore an even more glaring problem: the lack of any evidence for a primordial soup or slime. According to the Space Studies Board, ". . . Speculations on chemical evolution, multiple origins of life, and models of early environmental conditions in the atmosphere and oceans can only be substantiated by the geological record."6 And what does that record tell us? As we examine all sedimentary rocks dated as far back as 3.9 billion years, we see carbon-13 abundances in the kerogen (tar) that would result from, rather than contribute to, the existence of microorganisms.7-9 While experiments show that "prebiotic" soups would produce large quantities of kerogen, that kerogen would manifest a different carbon-13 profile. As we examine the continuous record of kerogen in rocks dating all the way back to 3.9 billion years, we see none of this "prebiotic" or abiotic kerogen, only the kerogen with carbon-13 abundances reflecting already existent life.

Without the hypothesized atmosphere and medium for life’s self-assembly, materialist assumptions stand without any basis in reality. We can find no evidence to support, only evidence to contradict, a gradual sequence of primeval events and conditions leading to the spontaneous generation of life and an exponentially growing number of copies. The case in biology seems to fit Bohr’s comparison with physics, only life’s origin represents a quantum action far more dramatic than any physical phenomenon we can observe.

References:

  1. C. Darwin, The Origin of the Species (New York: A Mentor Book), 1872.
  2. N. Bohr, "Light and Life," Nature, 131 (1933), pp. 421-423, 457-459.
  3. Space Science Studies Board, The Search for Life’s Origins (Wash. D.C.: National Academy Press) 1990, p. 80.
  4. G. Schlesinger and S. Miller, "Prebiotic Synthesis in Atmospheres Containing CH4, CO, and CO2," Journal of Molecular Evolution, 19 (1983), pp. 376-382. See also S. L. Miller, "The Prebiotic Synthesis of Organic Compounds as a Step Toward the Origin of Life," in Major Events in the History of Life, ed. by J. Schopf (London: Jones and Bartlett), 1992.
  5. C. F. Chyba, P. J. Thomas, L. Brookshaw, and C. Sagan, "Cometary Delivery of Organic Molecules to Early Earth," Science, 249 (1990), pp. 366-373. See also C. Chyba and Carl Sagan, "Endogenous Production, Exogenous Delivery and Impact-Shock Synthesis of Organic Molecules: An Inventory for the Origins of Life," Nature, 355 (1992), pp. 125-132.
  6. Space Science Studies Board, p. 80.
  7. M. Schlidowski, "A 3,800-million-year Isotopic Record of Life from Carbon in Sedimentary Rocks," Nature, 333 (1988), pp. 313-318.
  8. H. P. Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press), 1992.
  9. C. De Duve, Vital Dust (New York: Basic Books), 1995. See also C. De Duve, Blueprint for a Cell. The Nature and Origin of Life (Burlington, N.C.: Neil Patterson Publishers), 1991.

Note: A new hypothesis for life’s origin proposes that life formed on a mineral surface rather than in a primordial soup*. However, whether life formed in a soup or mineral surface, kerogen would still be a byproduct. The noticeable absence of kerogen with the right carbon-13 abundance and from the relevant geologic column suggests that no inorganic medium, whether soup or mineral or whatever, gave rise to life through spontaneous, naturalistic means.--H.R.

*James P. Ferris, et al., "Synthesis of Long Prebiotic Oliogomers on Mineral Surfaces," Nature, vol. 381 (1966) pp. 59-61.

Hubert P. Yockey has been a leading contributor to information theory in molecular biology for nearly three decades. His book Information Theory in Molecular Biology (cited above) explains how information theory applies to molecular biology and provides molecular biology with a well developed mathematical foundation. (See "Resources in Review" to order.)

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