Observations,  Religion,  Science

Abiogenesis or Creation?

 Creation of Man, Michelangelo, detail, Sistine Chapel -PD-US, .

Creation of Man, Michelangelo, detail, Sistine Chapel. PD-US.

 


 Abiogenesis - production of amino acids from inorganic precursors in simulated early earth environment. -PD-USGOV, NASA Astrobiology Institute.

Abiogenesis - production of amino acids from inorganic precursors in simulated early earth environment.. Attrib: NASA Astrobiology Institute, PD-USGOV.

 

Abiogenesis currently amounts to little more than scientific parlor talk, which leaves us free to choose an explanation of the origin of life that is most personally satisifying. 

I think that life was more likely created by God than having arisen spontaneously on earth. I have read a number of scientific arguments regarding the origin of life. They differ markedly in some aspects, but they are consistent in arguing that life on earth is massively complex and a massive amount of time would be necessary for life to arise from non-life (formation of the first self-replicating cell, then the evolution of life to its current forms). Many of abiogenesis proponents suggest that the current estimate of the earth’s age, 4.5 billion years, is not sufficient time for life to have arisen spontaneously! At any rate . . .

Scientific origin of life hypotheses blur the edge of science, as they are built more on untestable assertions than facts, and amount to little more than scientific parlor talk, to evoke a pre-telecommunications age. And in all of these arguments, there is room for the argument that God created life, and then it evolved according to His rules; there is nothing I have seen in science that precludes or refutes this.

Note that this in and of itself is no demonstration of the existence of God; while there are no compelling models or evidence to support for the current scientific effort to explain the origin of life out of non-life, abiogenesis, neither is there scientific evidence for the existence of God and His purported role as the Creator.  We are therefore free to choose what we find more interesting or personally satisfying as an explanation for the origin of life.

It may be that science will some day find some more compelling evidence of a physical explanation of abiogenesis; even this exceedingly remote possibility is tempered by the possibility that God was the biological Primum Mobile – He could have set up the conditions for life to be created out of non-life and allowed it to unfold via physical laws and the required initial conditions.

Note also the distinction between abiogenesis and evolution: Evolution is a mechanism for explaining the development of life after its origins and up to its present state.  The Evolution vs. Creationism arguments trod related but separate ground.

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