Today’s New Reason To Believe

by Hugh Ross

The oxygen-antioxidant paradox seriously challenges all naturalistic models attempting to explain the history of life on Earth. Consequently, confirming its validity would do much to establish a biblical creation model. The results of a recent test have provided that validity.

Advanced life requires the efficient processing of energy to perform work. Only the oxidation of carbohydrates, starches, and fats can deliver the necessary efficiency. However, the presence of oxygen within cells forms free radicals (atoms or groups of atoms with odd numbers of electrons). Once formed, these free radicals can launch chain reactions that quickly damage DNA, membranes, and proteins, resulting in either severely damaging or killing the cells.

In order to prevent free radical damage, the cells of advanced life must possess a system of antioxidants. Antioxidants are molecules that safely interact with free radicals inside the cell to stop the chain reactions before any significant damage can occur.

This results in the oxygen-antioxidant paradox. Unless the capacity to oxidize carbs, starches, and fats and a comprehensive system of antioxidant defenses develop at the same time and place in a symbiotically integrated manner advanced life is impossible. In other words, a fully functional antioxidant defense system must be in place before the launch of any oxidative metabolic life.

The challenge for naturalists is to explain, without the agency of a supernatural, super-intelligent Creator, why a complex, comprehensive antioxidant defense system would spontaneously evolve before any need for such a system existed. Naturalists must also explain why oxidative metabolic life would spontaneously evolve before an intact and fully operational antioxidant defense system exists, or more challenging yet, why both would simultaneously and instantly evolve at the same location.

Underscoring the dilemma for naturalists is an experiment performed by a team of ten scientists at Lyon College.¹ The team compared the growth rate of a wild strain of the cyanobacterium, Synechococcus, against two different mutant strains in two different environments: the first in a zero-oxygen environment and the second in an oxygen-rich environment. Each mutant strain manifested a different crippling of the antioxidant defense systems. The mutant strains had lower growth rates than the wild strain under both oxygen-rich and zero-oxygen conditions. Such a result confirmed that the antioxidant defense systems must have been fully present and operational before the appearance of oxygenic photosynthesis. Thus, the experimental outcome confirms the severe challenge that the origin of oxygenic photosynthesis presents to any naturalistic model for life.

1. David Thomas et al., “A Test of the Oxygen Paradox Using Antioxidant-Deficient Cyanobacteria,” Astrobiology 8 (April 2008): 471.

by Hugh Ross

Recent studies conducted on Venus and Mars illustrate just how carefully fine-tuned a planet’s abundance of sulfur must be for life to be possible. Sulfur plays a crucial role in life chemistry. This fact became personal for me a year ago when I was diagnosed as sulfur deficient. Many protein functions crucially depend on sulfur. Fortunately, most agricultural soils contain plenty of sulfur that vegetables, like onions and garlic, readily absorb. So, now that my sulfur deficiency has been resolved, my family has requested that I back off on the garlic.

Too much sulfur, however, can lead to consequences far more devastating than bad breath. Acid rain results from industrial activity pumping too much sulfur compounds into the atmosphere. Many life-essential metabolic reactions are adversely affected by the acidic conditions brought about by sulfur pollution.

One reason life thrives on Earth is because of its low sulfur-water ratio. For Earth to have both such a low ratio and a relatively thin atmosphere is nothing short of miraculous. Earth’s sister rocky planets, Venus and Mars, help highlight Earth’s amazingly benign conditions for life. Venus, like Earth, is sulfur poor, but it has no water and, despite being less massive than Earth, its atmosphere is ninety times more massive than Earth’s. Mars has a thin atmosphere but the Mars Exploration Rover Missions, Spirit and Opportunity, have confirmed and greatly extended the evidence for the dominant role of sulfur in Mars’ geochemical processes.¹ Astrobiologists now acknowledge that the high sulfur-water ratio on Mars is toxic, which rules out any naturalistic origin-of-life scenario.

Astrobiologists now also understand how Mars attained its high sulfur-water ratio. For any rocky planet, its crustal sulfur-water ratio is dictated by three factors: planetary accretion resources, the degree of core formation, and igneous evolution. Earth accreted less sulfur than Mars and most of the sulfur it did accrete—because of some extraordinary mass collision events—got incorporated into the planet’s interior.² Those same extraordinary mass collision events also explain how Earth, as massive as it is, ended up with such a thin atmosphere.³

The lander missions on Mars and Venus illuminate a Christian apologetics principle. They demonstrate that the more we learn about the physics and chemistry of other planets, the more evidence we accumulate for the supernatural, super-intelligent design of Earth for the benefit of all life, both simple and complex.

1. Benton Clark, “Death by Sulfur: Consequences of Ubiquitous S Before and After the Biotic Transition, for Mars and Other S-Rich Planets,” Astrobiology 8, no. 2 (April 2008): 433.
2. Hugh Ross, Creation As Science (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2006), 111 – 17.
3. Ibid.

After the first appearance of life on Earth, the Great Oxygenation Event marked the biggest chemical transformation of the planet. This event occurred approximately 2.4 billion years ago. The oxygen content of Earth’s atmosphere rose from just one thousandth of a percent (10^-5) of its present level (about 21 percent of the total volume of the atmosphere) to several percent of its present level.

Before the Great Oxygenation Event only unicellular life was possible. After the event, more complex life could be introduced. Also, the extra oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere meant that the great oxygen sinks on and in Earth (the crust and the mantle) could be filled up. This ample supply paved the way for the Second Great Oxygenation Event and the possibility for large, active animals. Unless the First Great Oxygenation Event had occurred as early as it did in Earth’s history, human life would never have been possible on Earth.

Recently, a team of British environmental scientists discovered how Earth transitioned from a low atmospheric oxygen state to a high one and how it did so as early and as quickly as it did. The team determined that a certain minimum level of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere will trigger the development of effective ultraviolet shielding in the troposphere through the formation of ozone. That shielding not only permits more efficient photosynthesis to occur, but it also gives oxygen molecules in the troposphere a longer lifetime. These effects result in a large and rapid boost in the oxygen content of the atmosphere.

The development of these conclusions is where the research of the British team stops. What they overlooked is that the trigger will not be “pulled” unless considerable supernatural intervention occurs. For the trigger to be pulled early enough and effectively enough that human life becomes an eventual possibility, photosynthetic life must be introduced on Earth at the earliest possible moment; that is, immediately after the late heavy bombardment event ends (date = 3.8 billion years ago). This early photosynthetic life must be both abundant and ubiquitous throughout the Earth. For the abundance and ubiquity to be possible, there must be many diverse species of photosynthetic life. Furthermore, photosynthetic life must remain abundant, ubiquitous, and diverse continuously for many hundreds of millions of years. Such life, therefore, either must be hardy enough to survive the many life-disturbing events occurring during Earth’s early history and/or the Creator must be aggressively re-creating life during this era (see Psalm 104:27-30).

Thanks to the many supernatural interventions on the part of the Creator, all these conditions were met and the Great Oxygenation Event did indeed occur.