When examining the archaeological record, it reveals that tools used by the first humans weren’t just practical innovations. They were expressions of something deeper, something that sets us apart from every other creature on Earth.

While the phrase “evolution of tools” often gets used to support evolutionary theory, we’d like to offer you a different perspective. The story of prehistoric tools actually points to evidence of God’s special creation of humanity, revealing our spiritual nature as beings made in his image.

The journey from simple stone tools to modern technology isn’t just about increasing complexity. It’s about the emergence of symbolic thinking, creative expression, and spiritual awareness that appeared suddenly and dramatically with true humans.

This perspective aligns perfectly with the biblical account of Adam and Eve, showing how science and Scripture work together to tell the same remarkable story.

We All Use Tools

The use of all tools shows the ability to plan ahead and solve problems. This remarkable trait appears in both animals and humans, though in very different ways. God created both animals and humans with this ability, but humans were given a far greater capacity to create, innovate, and express purpose through tools.

Animals create and use tools at a basic level.

The use of tools is actually widespread in the animal kingdom:

• Sea otters use flat rocks to crack open clams and shellfish, turning over on their backs in the water to use their bellies as anvils.
• Dolphins use sea sponges to protect their snouts during foraging, carefully selecting the right size and shape for their needs.
• Crows craft hooks from twigs to fish out insects, showing remarkable problem-solving abilities.
• Octopuses carry coconut shells as armor, demonstrating forward planning.
• Herons use various items as bait to catch fish, showing they understand cause and effect.
• Elephants use branches to swat flies away, modifying natural materials for their needs.
• Capuchin monkeys select specific stones to crack open nuts, choosing the right tool for the job.

This use of tools among animals drives home an important point. Tool use isn’t a defining feature of God’s image. In fact, the tool used by chimpanzees is comparable to the tool use of some hominins like Homo habilis and Homo erectus.

Humans create and use tools at a complex level. We’ve developed spears, hammers, crossbows, tractors, telescopes, computers, and countless other innovations. But what truly sets human tools apart isn’t just their complexity.

While some animals show cleverness, only humans show advancement. We refine and innovate tools generation after generation. The same stagnation we observe in animal tool use also appears in the hominin record. Neanderthals were on Earth longer than modern humans have been, but their technology remained essentially unchanged.

Our technology has exploded from primitive to sophisticated in a remarkably short time. There must be something to explain this difference. We believe it’s the image of God reflected in our symbolic capacity.

When Did Humans Start Using Tools?

Before we answer this question, we need to define our terms carefully. In scientific circles, the word “human” can mean different things depending on what you believe about our origins.

In this article, the word “human” is used with precision. We don’t use it to describe every primate creature with upright posture or a large brain. Instead, “human” is reserved for the descendants of Adam and Eve. These are beings who aren’t just biologically advanced but also spiritual image-bearers of God.

Some scientists refer to extinct hominins like Homo habilis or Neanderthals as “early humans,” but we see those beings as merely animal primates. They were biologically impressive animals, but not truly human in a theological or spiritual sense.

Humans are us, the descendants of the first two humans, Adam and Eve. We’re spiritual beings uniquely created in the image of God and distinct from all other creatures. Though biologically classified as Homo sapiens, humans aren’t the result of evolutionary processes, and we’re much more than our biology.

We’re a distinct creation, specially made with inherent dignity, value, and purpose. Some refer to us as “modern humans” to suggest we evolved from earlier species, but humans didn’t evolve from animals. We were created with spiritual capacity and moral responsibility from the beginning. Our unique identity shows up clearly in the archaeological record.

Hominins are a group of extinct primate species like australopithecines, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and others that appear in the fossil record. They share some physical similarities with humans, but hominins are nonhuman creatures.

They were biologically advanced animals created by God but were not spiritual beings made in his image. While they may have used crude tools or displayed limited intelligence, they’re not considered part of the human lineage in a theological or spiritual sense.

Neanderthals represent a specific type of hominin, created by God with impressive cognitive and physical capabilities, but still not fully human. Neanderthals were intelligent creatures capable of tool use, limited culture, and maybe even some crude symbolic behaviors. But they ultimately lacked the image of God.

They were still alive when Adam and Eve were created but went extinct shortly afterward. Neanderthals weren’t our ancestors, though some interbreeding with humans may have occurred on a biological level.

Now we can answer the question properly. From the time of their creation around 130,000 years ago, humans (Homo sapiens) have used tools. But unlike the simple tools of earlier hominins, human tools show creativity and symbolic purpose.

The archaeological record shows an explosion of innovation when the first true humans appear. Sophisticated hunting weapons, finely crafted blades, sewing needles, musical instruments, and even tools used to create art all appear suddenly. This sudden cultural advancement reflects far more than survival. It reveals a spiritual capacity for beauty, planning, and symbolic thought.

Human tool innovation appears abruptly and fully formed, consistent with the view that humans were specially created with intelligence, purpose, and the image of God. Before the appearance of humans, hominins created only crude tools. Even though they lived on Earth four times longer than humans have so far, their tool use remained unchanged and stagnant, showing no signs of advancement or innovation over time.

The hominin tool timeline tells this story clearly. Hominins began using tools perhaps as early as 3.4 million years ago. No stone tools have been discovered with australopithecines, but animal bones show signs of butchery. The australopithecines most likely used tools made from sticks, similar to what chimpanzees use today.

The habilines, such as Homo habilis, are traditionally considered the first makers of stone tools. These tools appear in the archaeological record about 2.6 million years ago and are known as Oldowan technology. (In archeology, “technology” simply means how tools were made and used—not to be confused with modern machines or electronics.)

These were flakes produced from a rock (called the core stone) that was hit with another rock (called the hammerstone). There’s some evidence that Homo habilis also used bones to make tools, in addition to stones.

Oldowan technology remained unchanged for nearly 800,000 years before it was replaced by a new technology associated with Homo erectus, called Acheulean technology. Acheulean tool making appeared around 1.76 million years ago and lasted until about 300,000 years ago when the erectines disappeared from the fossil record.

The tools of this era tend to be more symmetric and standardized. These hominins produced a range of different tool types including hand axes (teardrop-shaped tools), cleavers (large tools with broad, straight cutting edges), picks (used for digging or processing tough materials), and flakes (produced as byproducts that were deliberately used as smaller tools).

Mousterian technology is associated with Neanderthals. It appeared around 300,000 years ago until about 28,000 years ago. Mousterian technology was more sophisticated than Acheulean technology. Mousterian tools were prepared using a distinct method called the Levallois technique, which could be used to prepare a variety of tools from chipped flakes.

Crude Tools: What They Are and Why They Matter

Understanding crude or simple tools helps us see the dramatic difference between hominin and human capabilities. Crude tools represent basic functionality without refinement or symbolic meaning.

• Flakes and cores were small, sharp stone flakes chipped off a larger rock (core) and used for cutting meat or plants. These weren’t shaped or refined, just the result of a few strikes with another rock. 
• Choppers were rounded stones with one sharpened edge, used for smashing bones, cracking nuts, or chopping vegetation.
• Hand Axes were teardrop-shaped rocks with minimal symmetry, used for cutting or scraping. While slightly more advanced than flakes, early versions still lacked fine craftsmanship.
• Hammerstones were basic stones used to strike other materials, usually to create flakes or crack open bones. No handles or shaping were involved. 
• Digging sticks used by some hominins were simple wooden sticks used for foraging roots or insects. They weren’t carved or crafted, just selected and used.

What makes these tools “crude”?

What makes these tools “crude” is the lack of complex planning or standardization. They show minimal shaping, just a few strikes to get a rough edge. There are no handles or composite materials, no symbolic decoration or specialized functions.

We can tell the difference between genuine early human tools and Neanderthal tools in several ways. As previously mentioned, Neanderthals produced a distinct set of tools called Mousterian technology. Neanderthal tools were larger and more robust, formed using the Levallois technique.

Modern humans produced tools using a technique that involved chipping away smaller flakes with much greater precision. Modern human tools showed much greater variety than Neanderthal tools and were much more standardized.

One big difference relates to technological advancement. The tools made by Neanderthals were static. They didn’t change over the entire duration that Neanderthals were on Earth. The tools made by modern humans showed technological advancements, from primitive tools of the Upper Paleolithic to the sophisticated high-tech tools we use today. We also see clear, undisputed evidence of symbolism associated with modern human artifacts.

How Did Humans Drive the Evolution of Tools?

After Adam and Eve were created 130,000 years ago, we begin to see a sudden “explosion” of human culture. Art, language, music, and religious expression all appear together. Each of these points to a unique human ability to think symbolically, express deep meaning, and reflect spiritual awareness. No other creature possesses this ability, only humans.

This ability to use symbolism as creative and spiritual beings also sparked an unprecedented leap in tool innovation. It transformed the way humans designed and used tools.

What are some examples of symbolic behavior?

• Cave art provides powerful examples of symbolic behavior. Prehistoric tools were essential for creating these masterpieces. Stone scrapers prepared surfaces, hollow bones served as tubes for blowing pigment, and mineral-based tools created paints. Prehistoric tools made the artistic expression possible, but the art itself reveals symbolic thinking that goes far beyond survival needs.
• Burial practices show another dimension of symbolic tool use. Early human tools found in graves were often finely crafted and placed with personal ornaments or red ochre. These items were positioned with care, not just for utility, but to signify honor or belief in an afterlife. This behavior isn’t seen in animals. These tools demonstrate both symbolic intent and a leap in design complexity.
• Jewelry required specialized tools used by early humans for shaping, drilling, and threading. Shell beads and engraved pendants show a shift from basic tool use to refined craftsmanship with symbolic meaning tied to identity or status. The precision required reveals advanced planning and abstract thinking.
• Musical instruments provide perhaps the clearest evidence of symbolic capacity. Ancient flutes made from bird bones and ivory were carved with precision tools, showing a high degree of planning, creativity, and abstract thinking. The tools used by early humans to make instruments were as carefully designed as the instruments themselves. This provides further evidence of symbolic and spiritual expression.

The presence of symbolism in the archaeological record aligns perfectly with the sudden appearance of humans. This symbolic capacity isn’t found in earlier hominins or animals. Evolutionary biologists still can’t explain the origin of language, which represents the pinnacle of our symbolic capacity.

What Makes Human Tools Unique?

Several key characteristics distinguish human tools from those made by animals or hominins, revealing our special nature as image-bearers of God.

• Humans build on what came before. Unlike animals, humans don’t just make tools, we improve them over time. We’ve gone from sharp rocks to robots and rockets by learning from past generations. This cumulative improvement shows up nowhere else in the natural world.
• Humans plan ahead in remarkable ways. Human tools aren’t just made in the moment. We design them with specific purposes in mind, whether for farming, building, making music, or solving problems we anticipate in the future. This forward-thinking capacity reflects our ability to mentally travel through time.
• Humans use tools in the stone age and beyond for more than survival. Animals use tools mostly to get food. Humans do that too, often in much more complex ways, but we also use tools for art, worship, communication, and exploring the world. These uses show deeper meaning and imagination that transcends basic survival needs.
• Humans teach each other in sophisticated ways. Toolmaking isn’t instinctual or just copied through observation. It’s actively taught. Parents and teachers pass down knowledge so others can learn and improve upon it. This means our knowledge grows as a community, creating an ever-expanding base of technological capability.
• Some tools have deep meaning beyond their practical function. We use tools to express who we are or what we believe. Musical instruments and religious objects aren’t just helpful, they’re meaningful. A handmade cross, a paintbrush, or even a flag can carry deep symbolic value. These tools connect us to beauty, purpose, and something bigger than ourselves.
• This transformation started suddenly, according to the archaeological record. The leap in toolmaking didn’t happen slowly or gradually. When humans showed up, advanced tools appeared rapidly alongside art, music, and religious expression. It all points to something more than intelligence. It reveals our spiritual nature and the image of God.

This pattern continues today. While animal tool use remains essentially unchanged, human technology continues advancing at an accelerating pace. From prehistoric tools to smartphones and space shuttles, we see continuous innovation driven by our unique capacity for symbolic thought, creativity, and spiritual awareness.

The use of tools by early humans established patterns we still follow today. We create tools not just for survival, but for beauty, meaning, and connection with the divine. This reflects our fundamental nature as beings created in God’s image, designed for relationship with our Creator and dominion over the natural world.

Conclusion

The story of the evolution of tools reveals something remarkable about human nature. While Neanderthals may have made markings on cave walls and buried their dead, intentional activity doesn’t automatically carry meaning.

A dog may intentionally bury a bone, but it’s not creating a memorial or making a symbolic statement. It’s simply acting on instinct. The act is deliberate, but it doesn’t carry deeper meaning.

Human tools tell a different story entirely. They’re not just more advanced than animal tools, they’re meaningful. They show we’re more than clever animals. We’re creative, intentional, and spiritual beings designed to reflect the image of our Creator.

The archaeological record supports this view beautifully. Stone tools made by hominins remained essentially unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years. But when humans appeared, tool technology exploded with innovation, artistry, and symbolic meaning. This wasn’t gradual evolution, it was a sudden emergence of capabilities that reflect our spiritual nature.

From prehistoric tools to modern technology, we see consistent patterns of innovation, meaning, and spiritual expression that set humans apart from all other creatures. This supports the biblical account of special creation rather than gradual evolution from animal ancestors.

The post The Evolution of Tools: A Sign of Human <em class="algolia-search-highlight">Origin</em>s appeared first on Reasons to Believe.

In regard to the nature of human beings, the Bible does a good job of explaining the broken human condition. For example, Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge states:

Original sin is the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of the deep, universal and early manifested sinfulness of men in all ages, of every class, and in every part of the world.²

The term “original sin” is not used in the Bible and is attributed to St. Augustine (354–430).³ A sober look at human beings reveals that the doctrine of original sin has been confirmed throughout history and all around us on a daily basis. Yet, one aspect of the doctrine is disputed within Christendom. Here’s the definition of the doctrine:

The sinfulness, guilt, and susceptibility to death [was] inherited by all human beings (Christ excepted) from Adam.⁴

The part about human beings inheriting the guilt from Adam’s sin rubs many people the wrong way, including many Christians. To introduce the issue, let’s look at a thoughtful objection that I received about my article concerning original sin and its element of inherited guilt (see “Responding to Objections to Original Sin”) on my blog. The objection is slightly paraphrased and my response to it follows

Objection from an Evangelical Christian
Isn’t Ezekiel 18:20 in conflict with the doctrine of original sin?

The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.

The only persons who could be condemned for Adam’s sin are Adam himself, and Jesus Christ who died on his behalf. While there’s no doubt that we have all inherited a sinful nature from Adam, I do not believe that we have inherited his guilt. I believe it would be unjust to punish you for my sin, or me for Adam’s sin. I am not morally culpable for the actions of others, but for my own, and that is plenty. Ezekiel 18 seems like a strong argument for this view. God said that the one who sins is the one that shall die and that the son will not die for his father’s sin.

I am guilty, to be sure—but not because someone else sinned, or because I have a sinful nature. Adam was guilty because he disobeyed God, and I am guilty for the same reason. All have sinned, so all deserve judgment and punishment.

What am I missing?

My Response
Thanks for reading my article and considering my case for original sin.

As you know, the doctrine of original sin is controversial and at least one entire branch of Christendom (Eastern Orthodoxy) rejects it—at least the part that all humans bear Adam’s guilt.⁵ Nevertheless, I think a careful case can be made for original sin (which includes our death, our moral corruption, and our guilt in Adam) from Scripture. That we suffer death, moral corruption, and guilt as a result of Adam’s sin is explicitly taught in Romans 5:12–21. 

The author of Romans, the apostle Paul, makes the following remarks:⁶

“Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin” (v. 12, emphasis mine).
“Many died by the trespass of the one man” (v. 15, emphasis mine).
“One trespass resulted in condemnation [guilt] for all people” (v. 18, emphasis mine).
“Through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners [moral corruption]” (v. 19, emphasis mine)

I also explain in my article that salvation is grounded on our federal relationship to Adam. If it’s wrong for God to blame us for what Adam did, then it’s also wrong for God to blame and punish Christ for what we did. In Scripture, Christ is called the second Adam who repairs the break in fellowship caused by the first Adam. In other words, in his atonement Jesus became collectively responsible for humankind’s sinful actions (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Your recognition of the fact that we have inherited a sin nature from Adam shows our collective relationship to him.

Concerning the Ezekiel passage, the context is not original sin but rather the typical excuse that humans use for their sins. As theologian R. C. Sproul notes about the context of Ezekiel 18:

They try to blame someone else for their own misdeeds. That human activity has gone on since the Fall, but that is about all this passage has to do with the Fall. In the Fall Eve blamed the serpent, and Adam blamed both God and Eve for his own sin.⁷

Finally, if one insists that the Ezekiel passage is a universal principle or law that states that no one can justly suffer for the sins of another, then it directly violates the gospel message that Jesus Christ suffered on the cross for the sins of human beings. And most Christians affirm that Jesus suffered in the place of others.

I hope my comments are helpful to you. Peace be with you, my friend.

Takeaway
The doctrine of original sin is, in some respects, a perplexing teaching. But it has a biblical basis and it is confirmed universally by human behavior.

Reflections: Your Turn 
How does the Bible’s explanation of human nature compare with other worldviews?

Resources
• Does Original Sin Explain the Human Condition?    
• Responding to Objections to Original Sin 
• Responding to More Objections to Original Sin

Endnotes

1. For more about the explanatory power and scope of historic Christianity, see Kenneth Richard Samples, A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007), 26–27, 34, 270–271.
2. Charles Hodge, Hodge’s Systematic Theology, Volume II—Anthropology Revised (Devoted Publishing: Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada, 2019), 175, bit.ly/363SfSS.
3. See Wikipedia, s.v., “Original Sin,” last edited August 23, 2023.
4. John Jefferson Davis, Handbook of Basic Bible Texts: Every Key Passage for the Study of Doctrine and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), 56.
5. Fr. John S. Romanides, “Original Sin According to St. Paul,” Orthodox Christian Information Center, accessed August 24, 2023, orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/frjr_sin.aspx.
6. See R. C. Sproul, Adam’s Fall and Mine, The Highway, accessed August 24, 2023.
7. Sproul, Adam’s Fall and Mine. 

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My Answer: All living cells contain proteins, DNA, and RNA. Without proteins, DNA, and RNA physical life is not possible. Proteins are long chains of amino acids and DNA and RNA molecules are long chains of nucleobases. Ribose sugars are required to link together the nucleobases.

Proteins cannot be assembled unless all the amino acids are either 100% left-handed or 100% right-handed. Similarly, RNA and DNA molecules cannot be assembled unless all the ribose sugars are either 100% left-handed or 100% right-handed. Homochirality is where all the chiral molecules in a sample manifest a single-handed configuration.   

At the 2017 ISSOL (International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life) conference at the University of California San Diego, which both Fazale Rana and I attended, it was acknowledged by all speakers who addressed homochirality that it was a huge problem for the origin of life. Under highly controlled laboratory conditions, as opposed to real-life naturalistic conditions, biochemists are able to preferentially destroy right-handed amino acids at a faster rate than left-handed amino acids. By this means, in a few of the many experiments conducted, samples that were 80% left-handed were achieved. However, when the biochemists extrapolated their results, they discovered that 100% of the amino acid samples would be destroyed long before homochirality would ever be achieved.

• For more on the homochirality problem see the book by Fazale Rana and me, Origins of Life

• Also, see these free online articles: “Homochirality: A Big Challenge for the Naturalistic Origin of Life,” and “Natural Source of Life’s Homochiral Molecules?”

The post Is Homochirality a Problem for the <em class="algolia-search-highlight">Origin</em> of Life? appeared first on Reasons to Believe.

Unfortunately, the toy designs turned out to be much more elaborate and complex than we imagined when we purchased them. And the assembly directions weren’t helpful. The instructions gave the impression that the assembly process involved a handful of easy steps. Oh, how misleading. 

Discovering LUCA’s Complexity
In the same way we struggled to assemble Christmas toys, evolutionary biologists have struggled to piece together a clear picture of life in one of its earliest forms—LUCA (life’s universal common ancestor). It now appears that LUCA was far more elaborate and complex than most evolutionary biologists had imagined. This conclusion comes from a team of collaborators from the US and the UK.¹

Estimating LUCA’s complexity is no easy task. Previous studies that relied on DNA—life’s instruction manual—were misleading and underestimated LUCA’s intricacy. Using a completely different approach to characterize LUCA—one that focused on its physiological features instead of the gene set encoded in its DNA—the international research team discovered that LUCA was perhaps more complex than contemporary bacteria and archaea. 

In the abstract of their paper, the researchers write: 

“Our results depict LUCA as likely to be a far more complex cell than has previously been proposed, challenging the evolutionary model of increased complexity through time in prokaryotes. Given current estimates for the emergence of LUCA we suggest that early life very rapidly evolved considerable cellular complexity.”² 

This insight has far-reaching scientific implications and challenges the mainstream perspective about the mode and tempo for the origin and early evolution of life. It also has implications for the design argument. And it confirms key predictions of RTB’s model for life’s origin. 

Before I describe this study and elaborate on its implications for various origin-of-life models, a brief bit of background might be helpful for readers unfamiliar with LUCA.  

The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)
The concept of LUCA is endemic to the evolutionary paradigm. In this framework, LUCA would have been a population of single cells at the root of the evolutionary tree of life.

Evolutionary biologists don’t regard LUCA as the first organism on Earth. They believe that cells existed prior to LUCA. They refer to these cells as progenotes. LUCA, however, represents the organism that evolutionary biologists think was the common ancestor that gave rise to all existing life-forms. Accordingly, LUCA produced the two major divisions of the evolutionary tree, Bacteria and Archaea. 

Figure 1: LUCA and the Tree of Life 
Credit: Wikipedia

At one time, evolutionary biologists entertained the possibility that LUCA was a collection of different organisms interconnected through horizontal gene transfer. More recently, life scientists have adopted the view that LUCA consisted of a single cell type.³ Yet, evolutionary biologists think that LUCA coexisted with a collection of other distinct cell types. LUCA was simply the cell type “lucky” enough to give rise to evolutionary lineages that persisted throughout life’s history. 

Determining LUCA’s Features
One of the abiding interests of evolutionary biologists is to identify LUCA’s characteristic features. This project has been shaped by two points of conviction. The first is that LUCA was a relatively simple, primitive cell. The second is the notion that cellular complexity would accrue gradually over a long time. Both convictions are influenced by evolutionary gradualism, where life progresses in a stepwise manner from simple life-forms to more complex. 

Support for this view seemingly comes from comparative genomics studies in which evolutionary biologists seek to identify LUCA’s gene set from the genes that are common to all bacterial and archaeal organisms. If LUCA gave rise to the evolutionary lineages that produced bacteria and archaea, then the common set of genes shared by these two groups of microorganisms must have contributed to LUCA’s genome. Estimates from these types of studies place the gene set for LUCA somewhere between about 350 to 1000 genes, depending on the study design. 

Other studies use model organisms to pursue the LUCA gene set. Operating with the presumption that LUCA must have been a simple, primitive cell, the model organisms selected are microorganisms with near-minimal genomes, such as parasites, endosymbionts, and microbes with streamlined genomes. 

These two approaches have technical limitations. (I don’t have the space to discuss them here.) They also don’t provide an adequate picture of LUCA’s morphology (shape, form) and molecular physiology. Part of the challenge arises from our limited understanding of how genotype (DNA) translates into phenotype (physical and behavioral traits)—even at the cellular level. 

New Insights into LUCA’s Complexity
To address these concerns (and others), the research team adopted a different approach by which they attempted to reconstruct LUCA’s cellular traits from evolutionary trees built using 28 traits distributed among 3,128 bacterial and archaeal species. 

From this analysis, they recovered 22 physiological and morphological features for LUCA. According to their findings, LUCA:

• Was actively motile (capable of movement)
• Had a single-cell wall
• Possessed a single-cell membrane 
• Contained a mixture of bacterial and archaeal lipids in the cell membrane 
• Was tolerant to salt water with less salinity than modern-day seawater
• Lived in high-temperature environments with temperatures above 70° C 
• Lived in waters with neutral pH values
• Lived in an environment devoid of oxygen
• Used inorganic materials as an oxidation source
• Was ovoid in shape

In technical terms, LUCA was a halotolerant, hyperthermophilic, chemolithoautotrophic, anaerobe. In lay terms, LUCA appears to have been surprisingly complex. 

Using morphological and physiological features to estimate LUCA’s features reveals complexity that wasn’t evident from the instructions found in the reconstructed gene sets. In fact, the genetic complexity required to support LUCA’s morphological and physiological complexity far outpaces the estimated complexity from reconstructing LUCA based on comparative gene studies. In fact, the research team discovered that LUCA possessed a genome that was about 2.49 million base pairs in size (similar in size and complexity to a typical bacterial genome). 

When Did LUCA Live?
One way to address this question about the timing of LUCA’s appearance is by studying the geological, geochemical, and fossil data. A preponderance of evidence indicates that cellular life unequivocally appears on Earth as early as 3.8 billion years ago. There is some evidence, though controversial, that life may have first appeared on Earth between 4.2 and 4.4 billion years ago. 

The fossil and geochemical evidence doesn’t tell researchers much about the characteristics of these early cells beyond size, overall shape, and some insight into their metabolic lifestyle. The evidence doesn’t pinpoint when LUCA existed. 

A research team from the University of Bristol (UK) sought to clarify this ambiguity by using a molecular clock analysis to locate key events in life’s early history.⁴ They conclude that eukaryotic cells first appeared around 1.8 billion years ago, bacteria and archaea appeared around 3.4 billion years ago, and LUCA showed up around 3.9 billion years ago. 

These findings cause consternation for gradualistic evolutionary models when Earth’s early planetary history is considered. Earth forms at 4.5 billion years ago. For the first few hundred million years, Earth must have been a molten planet. At the time, no crust would have existed on Earth and the water on the planet’s surface would have been steam in the atmosphere. 

Evidence indicates that by about 4.2 billion years ago, Earth cooled sufficiently for the formation of the crust and oceans to occur. Around 3.8 billion years ago, however, Earth’s relative calm was interrupted by the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), during which comets and asteroids pummeled the inner solar system planets. Controversy exists about the magnitude of the LHB. Some models have Earth returning to a magma world with oceans completely volatilized, once again becoming steam. In this scenario, any life on Earth would have been exterminated. 

Other models view the LHB as less catastrophic and suggest that only life on Earth’s surface was lost. Microbes deep in Earth’s crust likely survived. Still other models indicate that the severity of the LHB was limited. In these models, surface and subsurface life persisted through the LHB. 

It is remarkable to think that LUCA originated near the time of the LHB. At one extreme, if the LHB was severe, and LUCA either appeared before the LHB (and was subsequently exterminated) or right after the LHB, it leaves little time for chemical evolution to produce progenotes that, in turn, evolved the remarkable complexity displayed by LUCA. At the other extreme, if LUCA originated before the LHB and survived the series of impactors striking Earth, it still leaves little time for life to originate and evolve the complexity that characterizes LUCA. In the former scheme, the origin and evolution of life occurred over tens of millions of years. In the latter scenario, the most likely window of time for life’s origin and the evolution of LUCA is around 200 million years. Neither timescale fits mainstream thinking among evolutionary biologists. 

As the research team writes:

“Our results have the potential to push cellular complexity back to the very beginning of life. Barring the unlikelihood of panspermia, these results imply that complex phenotypic traits arose far earlier in the history of life than previously thought. . . . early life may have very quickly evolved considerable cellular complexity. We thus reveal LUCA as a potentially complex cell possessing a genetic code perhaps more intricate than many modern bacteria and archaea.”⁵

As I pointed out, these possibilities leave little time for a gradualistic evolution of the earliest cellular life. They also raise questions about how life could have evolved that level of cellular complexity so rapidly. 

The RTB Creation Model for Life’s Origin
While the latest insight into the complexity of LUCA fits uncomfortably within an evolutionary framework, it finds a place in our creation model. In Origins of Life, Hugh Ross and I present a biblically based scientific model for life’s origin.

Our model finds inspiration in the creation accounts found in the biblical text. It also adopts the perspective that a Creator played a direct role in the origin and history of life. 

One key feature of our model, if it’s valid, is that it makes predictions about what science should discover. (Details of our model and the ensuing predictions can be found in Origins of Life.)

Some of the germane predictions of our model regarding the complexity of the first life-forms include:

1. Life should appear early in Earth’s history. 
2. Life should originate under hostile conditions.
3. Life should originate rapidly.
4. First life should be complex.

The latest scientific findings about LUCA comport nicely with the RTB model for life’s origin. They also satisfy these predictions. In doing so, these advances give scientific credibility to the creation passages that pertain to early Earth and the origin of life. 

In short, the sudden, rapid, and early appearance of complex life is precisely the signature we would expect of a Creator and is indeed a response for the origin and early history of life. 

What could be simpler than that?

Resources 

• Origins of Life by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross (book)

• The Cell’s Design by Fazale Rana (book)

RTB’s Creation Model for the Origin of Life

• “Origin-of-Life Predictions Face Off: Evolution vs. Biblical Creation” by Fazale Rana (article)

The Timing of First Life on Earth

• “When Did Life First Appear on Earth?” by Fazale Rana (article)

• “Now Hear This! New Evidence for Ancient Life!” by Fazale Rana (article)

• “Science News Flash: 3.7-Billion-Year-Old Fossils Perplex Origin-of-Life Researchers” by Fazale Rana (article)

• “What Does the Discovery of Earth’s Oldest Fossils Mean for Evolutionary Models?” by Fazale Rana (article)

The Late Heavy Bombardment

• “Insight into the Late Heavy Bombardment and RTB’s Creation Model” by Fazale Rana (article)

Life’s Minimum Complexity

• “Biochemists Ask, ‘How Low Can Life Go?’” by Fazale Rana (article)

• “Downsized by Design: Life’s Minimum Complexity Supports ID” by Fazale Rana (article)

• “More Complex than Imagined, Part 1” by Fazale Rana (article)

• “More Complex than Imagined, Part 2” by Fazale Rana (article)

Endnotes

1. Fouad El Baidouri et al., “Phenotypic Reconstruction of the Last Universal Common Ancestor Reveals a Complex Cell,” bioRxiv (October 10, 2021), doi:10.1101/2020.08.20.260398.
2. Baidouri et al., “Phenotypic Reconstruction.”
3. Douglas L. Theobald, “A Formal Test of the Theory of Universal Common Ancestry,” Nature 465 (May 13, 2010): 219–222, doi:10.1038/nature09014. 
4. Holly C. Betts et al., “Integrated Genomic and Fossil Evidence Illuminates Life’s Early Evolution and Eukaryote Origin,” Nature Ecology and Evolution 2 (October 2018): 1556–1562, doi:10.1038/s41559-018-0644-x. 
5. Baidouri et al., “Phenotypic Reconstruction.”

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It seems all human beings have a congenital moral condition that stands beyond complete cure in this life. Personally, I sincerely desire to fulfill what Jesus called the two great commandments: To love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength and my neighbor as myself (Mark 12:29–31). But while I’ve seen what I think is genuine spiritual growth in my life in terms of love and devotion to God and striving to be altruistic toward others, my attempts at doing so over my entire adult Christian life have been, at best, limited and painfully inconsistent. So the truth is I haven’t fulfilled God’s commandments and thus need a Savior from my sin.

So what explains this universal flaw within human beings?

The Bible’s depiction of the defective human condition explains the moral failure by revealing that all human beings are captive to the debilitating force of original sin. Theologian John Jefferson Davis in Handbook of Basic Bible Texts defines “original sin” as “the sinfulness, guilt, and susceptibility to death inherited by all human beings [Christ excepted] from Adam.”¹

I’ve explained the doctrine here: Does Original Sin Explain the Human Condition? and defended it here: Responding to Objections to Original Sin. Yet some people continue to question it for various reasons. Let’s look at a reader’s recent thoughtful objections that I received recently on social media (paraphrased) and my response to them.

Objection from an Evangelical Christian
Please allow me to play devil’s advocate here and say that in regard to the doctrine of original sin, it is, in effect, a moot point:

Consider two respectful challenges:

First, children become morally culpable through committing their own sin as soon as they are able to do so! Although often adduced as an argument for the logical plausibility of original sin, this fact also seems to be an argument against the practical value of such a doctrine, because at the instant of their first “atomic” acts of sin, children become sinners by volition, regardless of whether they were sinners by nature before then. Do toddlers sin because they are sinners, or do they become sinners because they sin? If Adam himself proved anything, it’s that one does not have to be a sinner by nature in order to disobey the first time one faces a real test.

Second, even among those (Western) Christian teachers who claim to believe in original sin, most will posit the idea of an age of accountability. Realizing that the thought of any baby ending up in hell offends the sensibilities of most reasonable people, they thus make a de facto nullification of original sin by suggesting an exception to the usual necessary means of salvation (direct, consciously exercised faith in Christ) for those who die as infants or small children. I don’t know. But shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right?

My Response
Greetings in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thank you for your respectful and thoughtful comments. Let me offer a few points in response:

First, the devil doesn’t need an advocate. 

Second, as my article Responding to Objections to Original Sin indicates, not all of theologically conservative Christendom affirms original sin. Eastern Orthodoxy affirms a universal proclivity to sin but rejects a universal guilt in Adam.² Also, some of the modern-day representatives of the radical reformation (Anabaptists) reject the teaching that all people are guilty in Adam.

Third, the most important question for evangelical Protestants is does the Bible teach original sin? See my article where I reference Scripture that children are conceived in sin and people are sinners by nature, not just by choice (Psalm 51:5; 58:3; Proverbs 20:9; Romans 5:10–12).

Fourth, the gospel message itself seems to trade on the idea of original sin. That is, the apostle Paul seems to say that people inherit Adam’s sin similarly to how believers inherit Christ’s righteousness (Romans 5). So human beings can be judged fairly for Adam’s sin similarly to how Christ is judged for the collective sin of humanity.

Fifth, your description of sin seems too restrained (Augustinians may call it Pelagian-like) compared to Scripture. A mere volitional choice or proclivity to sin doesn’t seem to square with Scripture’s definition of sin as “disobedience,” “evil,” “inequity,” “lawlessness,” “transgression,” “trespass,” “ungodliness,” “unholiness,” “unrighteousness,” and “wickedness.”³

Sixth, Adam did sin without a sinful nature but if all children have free choice, then why is sin universal among humanity? Why haven’t some freely chosen not to sin? It seems most of Western Christendom thinks original sin is a better explanation for the human condition (the universality of sin).

Seventh, affirming an age of accountability doesn’t biblically invalidate original sin. Saying something is “moot” doesn’t exegetically explain the clear teaching of Scripture. An age of accountability can simply mean that a person has reached an age where they are more cognizant of their sin, but that doesn’t remove one’s possible corporate sin as part of the human species.

Eighth, Western Christendom (both Catholic and Protestant) by and large does affirm original sin and this is especially true of magisterial Protestants. The practice of infant baptism is usually connected to the perceived state of sin in the child.

As I said in Responding to Objections to Original Sin: “I think original sin is a clear biblical doctrine and a coherent idea that carries great explanatory power and scope when it comes to the human condition.”

Peace be with you, brother.

Takeaway
The doctrine of original sin is, in some respects, a perplexing teaching. But it has a biblical basis and it is confirmed universally among human beings.

Reflections: Your Turn
Do you see original sin manifested in your life? Visit Reflections to comment. 

Resources

• For more about original sin and God’s cure in the gospel of Jesus Christ, see my book, 7 Truths That Changed the World: Discovering Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012), chapters 9 and 10.
• See my article “Blaise Pascal on the Human Condition.”

Endnotes

1. John Jefferson Davis, Handbook of Basic Bible Text: Every Key Passage for the Study of Doctrine and Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 56.
2. Fr. John S. Romanides, “Original Sin According to St. Paul,” Orthodox Christian Information Center, accessed September 19, 2022, http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/frjr_sin.aspx.
3. Kenneth Richard Samples, 7 Truths That Changed the World: Discovering Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012), chapters 9 and 10.

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Cometary (Cosmic) Biology
Much of the team’s 21-page paper is an update on the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) panspermia model. Astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) was the founder of the modern theory of panspermia. Mathematician and astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe joined Hoyle in the 1970s and produced spectra demonstrating that interstellar dust is richly endowed with carbonaceous molecules.

The thesis of the H-W panspermia model holds that life was seeded on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth permitted life to survive. The model further states that comets have—both continuously and in sporadic bursts—delivered genes, viruses, bacteria, eukaryotic cells, and even fertilized ova and seeds to Earth throughout the past four billion years. Therefore, according to the model, such continuous delivery explains the evolution of life on Earth, including the emergence of human beings, pandemics, epidemics, and new diseases.

A core feature of the H-W model is that the entire Milky Way Galaxy, and perhaps the entire Local Group of galaxies, constitutes a single interconnected biosphere. The 33 researchers assert as a “modern fact” that “hundreds of billions of habitable planets exist in the galaxy alone.”¹ Consequently, they conclude that “exchanges of biotic material between adjacent planets and therefore a single connected biosphere appears inevitable.”² To get the time needed for abiogenesis (the naturalistic origin of life from nonliving matter), the 33 appeal to the Hoyle-Burbidge-Narlikar quasi-steady state model for the universe.³ With this cosmic model, the 33 avow, “infinite time provides all the time needed for abiogenesis by trial-and-error elimination in trillions of warm-little ponds throughout the Cosmos.”⁴ In this view, biology becomes timeless.

In support of their cometary (cosmic) biology, the team cited research showing that the infrared spectra of dust in the interstellar molecular cloud, GC-IRS7, located near the center of our galaxy, yields a similar match to the laboratory spectra of a mixture of semi-bituminous coals and desiccated E. coli bacteria.⁵ This “match,” the team concluded, stands as evidence that life is ubiquitous throughout our galaxy and likely other galaxies as well.

Avalon and Cambrian Explosions
The team noted that the Cambrian explosion was “a sudden emergence of essentially all the genes that subsequently came to be rearranged into an exceedingly wide range of multi-celled life forms.”⁶ They argued that copying errors (mutations) of existing genes cannot produce new genes with functional utility in the same manner that errors generated in copying a computer code will not lead to new software capabilities but rather to serious degradation in the computer code.⁷

They conclude, therefore, that the new genes that appeared in the Cambrian explosion “must logically be supplied by the ingress of extraterrestrial virions [viruses] and other microorganisms.”⁸ Specifically, the researchers claim that at the time of the Cambrian explosion, comets brought an intense rain of retroviruses upon Earth’s surface. These retroviruses, in combination with horizontal gene transfer, they aver, were responsible for the sudden, simultaneous appearance of new phyla and classes of life that mark the Cambrian explosion.

According to the 33, comets have been raining retroviruses on Earth throughout its history. Not until the time of the Cambrian explosion, however, were conditions on Earth’s surface conducive to the survival of complex multi-celled life-forms that retroviruses and horizontal gene transfer would have generated.

Case against Panspermia
The panspermia hypothesis is founded on the assumption that life exists throughout our galaxy and likely throughout the entire universe. The assertion as “modern fact” by the researchers that “hundreds of billions of habitable planets exist in the galaxy alone” is based on two assumptions: (1) the only requirement for habitability is that a planet could conceivably possess liquid water on part of its surface for part of its history, and (2) all red dwarf stars, which comprise at least 75% of the stars in our galaxy, are candidates to host habitable planets.

I have written several articles explaining why red dwarf stars cannot possibly host habitable planets,⁹ and I provide a more thorough demonstration in my next book, Designed to the Core.¹⁰ Furthermore, the 33 researchers are incorrect in assuming that temporal liquid water on a planet is the only habitability requirement. For a planet or moon to be truly habitable it must simultaneously reside in all 13 known planetary habitable zones.¹¹ The planet or moon also must simultaneously reside in the known galactic and supergalactic habitable zones.¹² For just the habitable zones discovered so far, the probability of a planet or moon residing in all of them, without invoking miraculous divine intervention, is indistinguishable from zero. Furthermore, habitability requires a planet-moon system nearly identical to the Earth-Moon system, both in its origin and its physical characteristics.¹³

The researchers assume that viruses, genes, microbes, ova, and seeds can survive long—in both distance and duration—traverses of interstellar space. In the book Origins of Life, which I coauthored with Fazale Rana, I described astronomical observations and studies that definitively ruled out the possible naturalistic transport of intact proteins, DNA, and RNA across interstellar space, let alone the transport of intact viruses, genes, and microbes.¹⁴

The appeal to the quasi-steady state universe model to obtain the time needed for a naturalistic origin of life fails for several reasons. One, the model fundamentally depends on accreting supermassive black holes as not being the explanation for quasars and active galactic nuclei. Today, the astronomical evidence for accreting supermassive black holes explaining the energy output and characteristic features of quasars and active galactic nuclei is overwhelming.¹⁵

Two, the model fundamentally depends on rejecting the cosmological nature of the redshifts of galaxies and quasars—that these redshifts are explained by the expansion of the universe. Direct distance measurements, based on Newton’s laws of motion and plane geometry theorems, out to galaxies as distant as 470 million light-years affirm that cosmic expansion explains the totality of the measured redshifts.¹⁶

And three, the model rejects the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) as evidence for a big bang creation event only 13.8 billion years ago. The rejection is based on attributing the CMBR to large, ubiquitous quantities of intergalactic dust. However, measurements place intergalactic dust quantity at only about a hundredth the minimum amount needed by the quasi-steady state cosmic model.¹⁷ For a review of other failures of the quasi-steady state cosmic model see my book The Creator and the Cosmos.¹⁸

As proof for their cometary (cosmic) biology model, the researchers claim that spectra of interstellar dust match the spectra of a mixture of semi-bituminous coals and desiccated E. coli bacteria. This “match,” the team concluded, stands as evidence that life is ubiquitous throughout our galaxy and likely other galaxies as well. But the team failed to acknowledge that astronomers are unable to distinguish the spectra of dozens of simple carbonaceous molecules found in many interstellar molecular clouds from the laboratory spectra of desiccated bacteria or a mixture of coals and bacteria. Spectra of interstellar molecular clouds only show that about 135 different carbonaceous molecules are present in these clouds at low abundance levels (a few parts per million per molecule or less). Even at abundance levels below 1 part per billion, astronomers have yet to detect any amino acids, nucleobases, or 5- or 6-carbon sugars. That is, not even the “building blocks of the building blocks” of life molecules are present in interstellar space at anything close to the needed abundance levels.¹⁹

What’s Left?
The most important scientific contribution the researchers made was to show—beyond any reasonable doubt—the impossibility of a naturalistic origin of life on Earth. They also demonstrated that a naturalistic, Earth-based progression of life from bacteria to large-bodied animals to humans is not possible. They correctly discern that the only naturalistic alternative to the origin and development of life on Earth is their panspermia model of cometary (cosmic) biology. However, their naturalistic model is no more viable than the naturalistic models they proved intractable.

The 33 researchers and the origin of life and evolutionary biologists they critiqued both seemed to ignore the one model for life’s origin and history that is compatible with all the astronomical, geological, biochemical, paleontological, and genetic data. That model is the biblical model for the creation and history of Earth’s life. In this model, the Causal Agent who created the universe of matter, energy, space, and time—as affirmed by the space-time theorems²⁰—in a similar matter supernaturally created Earth’s first life. And on many occasions thereafter, he supernaturally intervened to introduce new life-forms to gradually prepare Earth and its life for God’s ultimate terrestrial creation: human beings.

In the biblical creation model, to achieve his ultimate purposes, God complements the natural processes he established with perfectly timed and placed supernatural interventions. The scientific enterprise flourishes best when it is not close-minded. What the 33 researchers unknowingly demonstrated is that just as a strictly supernatural perspective on the universe, Earth, and Earth’s life can stultify scientific advance, likewise, a strictly natural perspective on the universe, Earth, and Earth’s life stultifies the advance of scientific knowledge and understanding.

Reading the 21-page paper reminded me of what I witnessed toward the end of the last day of the 1999 International Conference on the Origin of Life/International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life Conference. A scientist came to the Q&A/comment microphone to tell the assembled origin-of-life researchers that during the conference various speakers had ruled out Earth, Mars, the other solar system bodies, and panspermia as possible explanations for the origin of life. The only possible explanation that remained, the scientist asserted, was directed panspermia—aliens must have come in spaceships and deposited life on Earth. This scientist’s conclusion was met with dead silence.

As researchers were leaving the conference, I had the opportunity, though, to say to a few of them that the scientist’s conclusion was close to the right answer. Life was brought to Earth by an “alien.” This alien is a Being beyond space and time who has made himself known to humans and who desires to deliver willing humans from their sin and to bring them into an eternal, loving relationship with him.

Endnotes

1. Edward J. Steele et al., “Cause of Cambrian Explosion—Terrestrial or Cosmic?” Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 136 (August 2018): 18, doi:10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2018.03.004.
2. Steele et al., “Cause of Cambrian Explosion,” 18.
3. Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge, and Jayant V. Narlikar, A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a Static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
4. Steele et al., “Cause of Cambrian Explosion,” 18.
5. S. G. Coulson and N. C. Wickramasinghe, “IR Spectrometry of Coals,” in Frontiers of Life, Proceedings of the XIIth Recontres de Blois, edited by L. M. Ceinikier and J. Tran Thanh Van (2000): 233–236.
6. Steele et al., “Cause of Cambrian Explosion,” 15.
7. Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism (London: J. M. Dent, 1981); Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Why Neo-Darwinism Does Not Work (Cardiff, UK: University College Cardiff Press, 1982).
8. Steele et al., “Cause of Cambrian Explosion,” 15.
9. Hugh Ross, “Red Sky Paradox Points to Rarity of Earth’s Life,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, August 23, 2021; Ross, “Inhabitability of Planets Orbiting Red Dwarfs,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, July 30, 2017; Ross, “Flares Challenge Habitability of Bodies beyond Earth,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, November 13, 2017; Ross, “Tiny Habitable Zones for Complex Life,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, March 4, 2019; Ross, “Grip of Tidal Locking Challenges ‘Habitable’ Planets,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, August 27, 2017; Ross, “‘Electric Wind’ Becomes 9th Habitable Zone,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, July 4, 2016; Hugh Ross, Designed to the Core (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2022).
10. Ross, Designed to the Core.
11. Hugh Ross, “Earth-Moon Coupled Magnetosphere Paved the Way for Life,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, September 20, 2021; Ross, “Moon’s Early Magnetic Field Made Human Existence Possible,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, November 16, 2020; Ross, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside: Global Cooling and Planet Habitability,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, December 9, 2019; Ross, “Long-Term Habitability Requires a Sun-Earth Twin,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, August 8, 2016; Ross, “Tiny Habitable Zones”; Ross, “Complex Life’s Narrow Requirements for Atmospheric Gases,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, July 1, 2019.
12. Hugh Ross, “Does Science Say We’re Alone in the Universe?” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, May 9, 2022; Ross, “Life Requires Galactic and Supergalactic Habitable Zones,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, April 8, 2019.
13. James Green et al., “When the Moon Had a Magnetosphere,” Science Advances 6, no. 42 (October 14, 2020): id. eabc0865, doi:10.1126/sciadv.abc0865; Ross, “Moon’s Early Magnetic Field,” Ross, “Earth-Moon Coupled Magnetosphere.”
14. Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2014), 206–209.
15. Hugh Ross, “Black Holes As Evidence of God’s Care,” Religions 12, no. 3 (March 18, 2021): id. 201, doi:10.3390/rel12030201; Hugh Ross, “No Nearby Nasty Supermassive Black Holes,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, May 13, 2019; Ross, “A Supermassive Black Hole Like No Other, But Optimal for Life,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, May 20, 2019; Ross, “Black Hole Discovery Yields More Evidence of Cosmic Design,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, August 30, 2021.
16. C. Y. Kuo et al., “The Megamaser Cosmology Project. V. An Angular-Diameter Distance to NGC 6264 at 140 Mpc,” Astrophysical Journal 767, no. 2 (April 20, 2013): id. 155, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/767/2/155; J. A. Braatz et al., “The Megamaser Cosmology Project. II. The Angular-Diameter Distance to UGC 3789,” Astrophysical Journal 718, no. 2 (August 1, 2010): 657–665, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/718/2/657; J. R. Herrnstein et al., “A Geometric Distance to the Galaxy NGC4258 from Orbital Motions in a Nuclear Gas Disk,” Nature 400 (August 5, 1999): 539–541, doi:10.1038/22972; A. L. Argon et al., “Toward a New Geometric Distance to the Active Galaxy NGC 4258. I. VLBI Monitoring of Water Maser Emission,” Astrophysical Journal 659, no. 2 (April 20, 2007): 1040–1062, doi:10.1086/512718.
17. Cameron Thacker et al., “H-ATLAS: The Cosmic Abundance of Dust from the Far-Infrared Background Power Spectrum,” Astrophysical Journal 768, no. 1 (April 15, 2013): id. 58, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/768/1/58.
18. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries Reveal God, 4th ed. (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2018), 90–95.
19. Anthony J. Remijan et al., “A Survey of Large Molecules toward the Proto-Planetary Nebula CRL 618,” Astrophysical Journal 626, no. 1 (June 10, 2005): 233–244, doi:10.1086/429750; L. E. Synder et al., “A Rigorous Attempt to Verify Interstellar Glycine,” Astrophysical Journal 619, no. 2 (February 1, 2005): 914–930, doi:10.1086/426677; Yi-Jehng Kuan et al., “A Search for Interstellar Pyrimidine,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 345, no. 2 (October 21, 2003): 650–656, doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2003.06975.x; Hugh Ross, “No Prebiotics in Proto-Planetary Nebulae,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, August 7, 2005.
20. Arvind Borde, Alan H. Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, “Inflationary Spacetimes Are Incomplete in Past Directions,” Physical Review Letters 90 (April 15, 2003): id. 151301, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.151031; Ross, Creator and the Cosmos, 111–122.

The post Did Life <em class="algolia-search-highlight">Origin</em>ate on Earth or in the Cosmos? Part 2 appeared first on Reasons to Believe.

This proposal is generally known as panspermia. It is a Greek term meaning “seeds everywhere.” Panspermia posits that physical life exists throughout the universe and is distributed by space dust, comets, asteroids, and meteoroids. It was first proposed in writing in the fifth century BC by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras.³ Three of the 33 researchers published a subsequent paper in which they claim that infrared spectra of several solar system comets “points to cometary biology and interstellar panspermia as being inevitable.”⁴

In this article, I will describe the case the researchers made against a naturalistic origin and history of life that is Earth-based. In a sequel to this article, I will make a case against the alternate model proposed by the team and briefly describe a remaining viable model, one that is consistent with the biblical model for the origin and history of Earth’s life.

Case against Life’s Origin on Earth
The researchers base their 21-page paper on the central dogma of origin-of-life research—abiogenesis (the origin of life from nonliving matter). Abiogenesis asserts that sometime in the past, favorable natural conditions for the formation of complex organic molecules—namely amino acids, nucleobases, and ribose sugars—occurred that, in turn, gave rise to the self-organization of these molecules into proteins, DNA, RNA, and lipid membranes. Abiogenesis goes on to propose a naturalistic pathway where the proteins, DNA, RNA, and lipid membranes self-assemble into primitive living cells. The researchers also assume the central dogma of biological evolution that all life has evolved naturalistically from the first primitive living cells.

Although the 33 researchers champion abiogenesis and the central dogma of biological evolution, that does not mean they are all atheists. Many are deists. They all agree, however, that if God exists, God does not intervene beyond allowing the natural processes he established to bring about everything that exists in the universe.

The scientists begin their paper with the claim that the origin of life could not possibly have occurred on the early Earth. They point out that there simply isn’t adequate time for a naturalistic origin of life on Earth. The earliest evidence for permanently existing life on Earth dates back to 3.825 ± 0.006 billion years ago.⁵ This date is only a few million years or less after the moment in Earth’s history when permanent rocks and liquid water first appeared.

The team cites isotope evidence for an even earlier, fleetingly temporal existence of life on Earth. Ancient zircons discovered in Western Australia⁶ and northern Canada⁷ reveal episodes about 4.1 billion years ago when liquid water, solid rocks, and isotope signatures of life briefly existed. This evidence for the sudden appearance of life on Earth caused evolutionary biologist Niles Eldredge to write, “One of the most arresting facts that I have learned is that life goes back as far in Earth history as we can possibly trace it. . . . in the very oldest rocks that stand a chance of showing signs of life, we find those signs.”⁸

The researchers’ conclusion is similar to what Carl Sagan taught in a course I attended in 1970 at the University of Toronto. He explained that Charles Darwin’s warm little pond was a grossly inadequate explanation for life’s origin. He avowed that abiogenesis was impossible in anything less than a billion years in a concentrated soup of prebiotic molecules any smaller than all Earth’s oceans. The researchers explain that based on what we know about the chemistry needed for a naturalistic origin of life, Sagan’s estimates on the minimum time and the minimum prebiotic soup size are many orders of magnitude too small.

Alternate Naturalistic Model
The 33 researchers point out that additional time problems exist for the Cambrian explosion and for other mass speciation events in Earth’s history. They explain why it is not possible for pre-Cambrian Earth-based life to evolve, without any measurable history, into so many phyla simultaneously at the beginning of the Cambrian period. To get around Earth’s space and time limitations for a naturalistic origin and history of life, the researchers propose a cosmic biology model. I will describe and critique their model and propose an alternate model next week, but for now, we may conclude that the progress of science does not affirm Earth-based naturalistic evolution.

Endnotes

1. Hugh Ross, “Cambrian Explosion Becomes More Explosive,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, January 17, 2022, /creation/evolution/cambrian-explosion-becomes-more-explosive; Ross, “Where Did the Cambrian Oxygen Come From?” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, January 24, 2022, /creation/earth/where-did-the-cambrian-oxygen-come-from; Ross, “Cambrian Creatures’ Diverse Complex Eyes Reinforce Creation Narrative,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, January 25, 2021, /creation/life/cambrian-creatures-diverse-complex-eyes-reinforce-creation-narrative.
2. Edward J. Steele et al., “Cause of Cambrian Explosion—Terrestrial or Cosmic?” Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 136 (August 2018): 3–23, doi:10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2018.03.004.
3. Margaret R. O’Leary, Anaxagoras and the Origin of Panspermia Theory (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2008).
4. N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Dayal T. Wickramasinghe, and Edward J. Steele, “Chapter Two: Cometary Panspermia and Origin of Life?” Advances in Genetics 106 (July 7, 2020): 5, doi:10.1016/bs.adgen.2020.03.003.
5. Craig E. Manning, Stephen J. Mojzsis, and T. Mark Harrison, “Geology, Age and Origin of Supracrustal Rocks at Akilia, West Greenland,” American Journal of Science 306, no. 5 (May 2006): 303–366, doi:10.2475/05.2006.02.
6. Elizabeth A. Bell et al., “Potentially Biogenic Carbon Preserved in a 4.1 Billion-Year-Old Zircon,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 112, no. 47 (October 19, 2015): 14518–14521, doi:10.1073/pnas.1517557112.
7. Matthew S. Dodd et al., “Evidence for Early Life in Earth’s Oldest Hydrothermal Vent Precipitates,” Nature 543 (March 2, 2017): 60–64, doi:10.1038/nature21377.
8. Niles Eldredge, The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism (New York: W. H. Freeman, 2000), 35–36.

The post Did Life <em class="algolia-search-highlight">Origin</em>ate on Earth or in the Cosmos? Part 1 appeared first on Reasons to Believe.

In the past five years alone, I have written eight articles on the miraculous design features of the Moon that make our existence possible.² And for my upcoming book, I wrote a lengthy chapter on the Moon’s latest discovered designs.³ Now, a team of five planetary astronomers and geophysicists led by René Heller have described yet another of the Moon’s amazing design characteristics.⁴

Sun’s Luminosity History
Before the Sun’s nuclear furnace ignited the fusion of hydrogen into helium, the Sun experienced complex variations in its luminosity. A team of astrophysicists led by Isabelle Baraffe calculated these variations based on a detailed solar evolution model they developed.⁵

The ignition of nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium causes the Sun to become progressively brighter. Helium is denser than hydrogen. Hence, the density of the Sun’s core has continuously increased since the beginning of nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. This increasing core density causes the Sun’s nuclear fusion furnace to become more and more efficient. This progressively enhanced efficiency results in the Sun becoming continuously brighter in a highly predictable way.

Figure 1 shows the Sun’s luminosity history during the first 300 million years after its initial formation.⁶ About 69 million years after the birth of the Sun and the Sun’s planets (4.498 billion years ago), the merger of two rocky planets—the proto-Earth and Theia—occurred.⁷ This merger increased Earth’s mass and formed the Moon. From the time of this event until 250 million years thereafter (4.248 billion years ago), the Sun’s luminosity was only 68–71% of what it is today.

Figure 2 shows the Sun’s luminosity from 300 million years after its birth until (what it’s expected to be) 200 million years after the present. At the time of life’s origin, the Sun’s luminosity was 73% of what it is today. But with such a faint young Sun, how could early Earth support life?

Tidal Heating from the Moon
In chapter 12 of my book Improbable Planet, I explained how the paradox of the faint young Sun could be resolved.⁸ The resolution requires the combination of at least a dozen out of 16 compensating factors operating simultaneously to prevent the global mean temperature on Earth’s surface at that time from dropping below that needed for the survival of life. Heller’s team has discovered an additional factor, one that may be important when the Sun is most dim: geothermal heating induced by tidal deformation of Earth by the newly formed Moon. A present-day example of such heating can be seen in the volcanic activity induced on Jupiter’s moon Io as a consequence of Jupiter’s tidal forces.

Presently, the tidal heating of Earth’s surface by the Moon is trivial, owing to the fact that the Moon orbits Earth at too great a distance, 60.3 Earth radii. However, the best models show that the Moon probably orbited Earth as close as 3.8 Earth radii following the Moon formation event.⁹ At this distance, the tidal heating of Earth’s surface becomes significant. As the Moon spirals away from Earth, this heating effect lessens dramatically.

Astronomers had previously estimated that by the time the Moon was 10 million years old, the tidal heating of Earth’s surface fell below 100 watts/meter² and by the time the Moon was 100 million years old this tidal heating dropped below 0.1 watt/meter².¹⁰ For comparison, the Sun’s heat presently warms Earth’s surface by an average of 240 watts/meter².¹¹ At the time the Moon formed, the Sun’s heat warmed Earth’s surface by an estimated average of about 160 watts/meter².

Heller’s team performed a set of updated calculations on tidal heating from the Moon during the first billion years of Earth’s history. They noted that tidal heat dissipation is greater for viscous objects and that a partly molten early Earth would be considerably more viscous than it is today. They also demonstrated that tidal heating from the Moon would be much greater for a faster-rotating early Earth. They then cited the work of planetary astronomer Robin Canup, who showed that the post-impact Earth likely had a rotation rate as rapid as 2.2 hours.¹² Taking into account this new understanding of the early Earth’s characteristics, Heller’s team produced three models for the tidal heating of Earth’s surface based on three different choices for Earth’s initial rotation rate and a reasonable range of possible values for the viscosity of the early Earth (see figure 3).

Philosophical Implications of the Tidal Heating
All three models show that at the best established date for the origin of life on Earth, 3.825 ± 0.006 billion years ago,¹³ the contribution of tidal heating from the Moon on Earth’s surface temperature had declined to a trivial amount. However, for two of the models tidal heating was not trivial at the earliest possible date—4.4 billion years ago—for which geochemists have evidence for the existence of episodic liquid water on some regions of Earth’s surface.¹⁴

In their paper, Heller and his colleagues discuss that while lunar tidal heat would not have been the dominant heat source on Earth’s surface 4.4 billion years ago, it probably was a crucial source that made the existence of liquid water at that time possible. What they do not discuss is that the presence of liquid water that early in Earth’s history likely was a critical step in establishing chemical conditions that 0.6 billion years later would allow newly created life to exist and thrive, paving the way for the eventual emergence of advanced life on Earth. For example, the presence of episodic liquid water 4.4–3.9 billion years ago produced phosphates and nitrates, both of which are essential nutrients for living organisms. The Heller team’s discoveries yield yet more evidence that we owe our existence to the many amazingly designed features of the Earth-Moon system.

Endnotes

1. “42 Bible Verses about Moon,” Knowing Jesus, accessed September 15, 2021.
2. Hugh Ross, “Earth-Moon Coupled Magnetosphere Paved the Way for Life,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), September 20, 2021; Hugh Ross, “Moon’s Early Magnetic Field Made Human Existence Possible,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), November 16, 2020; Hugh Ross, “More Treasures in Earth’s Attic,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), September 21, 2020; Hugh Ross, “Update on Our Miraculous Moon,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), August 31, 2020; Hugh Ross, “Solar and Lunar Tides Designed for Complex Life,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), March 25, 2019; Hugh Ross, “Lunar Designs Optimize Life for Both Predators and Prey,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), November 20, 2017; Hugh Ross, “Rare Moon Just Got Rarer,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), June 5, 2017; Hugh Ross, “Yet More Reasons to Thank God for the Moon,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), November 22, 2016.
3. Hugh Ross, Designed to the Core (Covina, CA: RTB Press, forthcoming), chapter 13.
4. René Heller et al., “Habitability of the Early Earth: Liquid Water under a Faint Young Sun Facilitated by Strong Tidal Heating Due to a Nearby Moon,” (July 9, 2020), preprint, arXiv:2007.03423v2.
5. Isabelle Baraffe et al., “New Evolutionary Models for Pre-Main Sequence and Main Sequence Low-Mass Stars Down to the Hydrogen-Burning Limit,” Astronomy & Astrophysics 577 (May 2015): id. A42, doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201425481.
6. Baraffe et al., “New Evolutionary Models.”
7. Alessandro Maltese and Klaus Mezger, “The Pb Isotope Evolution of Bulk Silicate Earth: Constraints from Its Accretion and Early Differentiation History,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 271 (February 15, 2020): 179–193, doi:10.1016/j.gca.2019.12.021.
8. Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2016), 143–159.
9. Robin M. Canup, “Simulations of a Late Lunar-Forming Impact,” Icarus 168, no. 2 (April 2004): 433–456, doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2003.09.028.
10. Kevin Zahnle et al., “Emergence of a Habitable Planet,” Space Science Reviews 129, nos. 1–3 (March 2007): 35–78, doi:10.1007/s11214-007-9225-z.
11. Graeme L. Stephens et al., “An Update on Earth’s Energy Balance in Light of the Latest Global Observations,” Nature Geoscience 5 (October 2012): 691–696, doi:10.1038/ngeo1580.
12. Robin M. Canup, “Forming a Moon with an Earth-Like Composition via a Giant Impact,” Science 338, no. 6110 (November 23, 2012): 1052–1055, doi:10.1126/science.1226073.
13. Craig E. Manning, Stephen J. Mojzsis, and T. Mark Harrison, “Geology, Age and Origin of Supracrustal Rocks at Akilia, West Greenland,” American Journal of Science 306, no. 5 (May 2006): 303–366, doi:10.2475/05.2006.02.
14. Simon A. Wilde et al, “Evidence from Detrital Zircons for the Existence of Continental Crust and Oceans on the Earth 4.4 Gyr Ago,” Nature 409, no. 6817 (January 11, 2001): 175–178, doi:10.1038/35051550; Stephen J. Mojzsis, T. Mark Harrison, and Robert T. Pidgeon, “Oxygen-Isotope Evidence from Ancient Zircons for Liquid Water at the Earth’s Surface 4,300 Myr Ago,” Nature 409, no. 6817 (January 11, 2001): 178–181, doi:10.1038/35051557; John W. Valley et al., “Hadean Age for a Post-Magma-Ocean Zircon Confirmed by Atom-Probe Tomography,” Nature Geoscience 7, no. 3 (March 2014): 219–223, doi:10.1038/ngeo2075.

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Some life scientists think that understanding the design and origin of the Krebs cycle (one of life’s most important and central metabolic pathways) just might be key to understanding the origin of life. Collaborators from Furman University and the Scripps Research Institute recently highlighted features of the Krebs cycle that seem to support a chemical evolutionary origin of intermediary metabolism and, hence, the origin of life.¹ But careful consideration of the team’s findings suggests that life’s origin more likely stems from the work of a Creator.

But before we discuss their work and its implications, a bit of background information might be helpful. (For readers familiar with intermediary metabolism and the Krebs cycle, skip ahead to “The Krebs Cycle and the Origin of Life.”)

Intermediary Metabolism
Metabolism refers to the myriad life-sustaining chemical reactions that occur in the cell (and extracellular space in multicellular organisms) that are necessary to sustain life. Metabolic activity makes it possible for life-forms to extract energy from the environment and construct life’s components. These processes allow organisms to grow, reproduce, maintain biological structures, and respond to changes in the environment. Metabolic reactions include the production and breakdown of proteins and RNA molecules, DNA replication, and the assembly of cell membranes and cell walls.

Metabolism also involves reactions of small molecules within the cell’s interior. A significant number of metabolic reactions produce small molecules used by the cell’s machinery as building blocks to assemble proteins, DNA, RNA, and cell membrane bilayers. On the other hand, some metabolic activities break down compounds like glucose and lipid molecules into smaller molecules to provide energy for the cell’s operations. Some metabolic activities prepare materials the cell no longer needs (cellular waste) for elimination. Other reactions detoxify materials that are harmful to the cell.

Within the cell’s interior, metabolic processes are often organized like city streets into routes or pathways comprised of a series of chemical reactions. These reactions transform a starting compound into a final product via a series of small, stepwise chemical changes. Each step in a metabolic route is mediated by a protein (called an enzyme) that assists in the chemical transformation. The pathways can be linear, branched, or, circular, which is the case for the Krebs cycle.

The chemical components that form part of one metabolic sequence sometimes take part in other pathways. These shared compounds cause metabolic pathways to be interconnected and networked together. The sum total of metabolic processes represents a complex, reticulated web of chemical reactions, each one catalyzed by an enzyme.

Credit: Shutterstock

The Krebs Cycle
The Krebs cycle (sometimes called the tricarboxylic acid cycle or the citric acid cycle) oxidizes the pyruvate generated from the glycolytic pathway into carbon dioxide and water. This combustion process liberates a significant amount of energy which, in turn, is captured and used to drive the formation of NADH and FADH₂. Once formed, the two molecules feed high-energy electrons into the electron transport chain, which uses the electrons to form a proton gradient across the mitochondrial inner membrane. The proton gradient drives the formation of ATP molecules through a process called oxidative phosphorylation. This process requires molecular oxygen and generates over 90% of the ATP used by aerobic organisms.

The Krebs cycle is also part of central carbon metabolism—with many of its intermediates serving as the precursors used to generate building block compounds such as glucose, fatty acids, amino acids, nucleobases, and the porphyrin ring (which is used, for example, as the cofactor for the hemoglobin molecule). In fact, the Krebs cycle functions as the central hub for intermediary metabolism, integrating many of the individual metabolic routes in the cell.

The Krebs Cycle and the Origin of Life
The Krebs cycle assumes a central role in intermediary metabolism and it occurs nearly universally throughout the living realm. For these reasons, many origin-of-life researchers think that this metabolic route may have been one of the first metabolic pathways to arise, predating the emergence of LUCA (the last universal common ancestor).

Interestingly, some bacteria run the Krebs cycle in reverse. (This pathway is called the reverse Krebs cycle.) Instead of converting pyruvate into carbon dioxide, water, and high-energy electrons (associated with NADH and FADH2), this pathway converts carbon dioxide and high-energy electrons harvested from minerals in the environment to generate organic materials. In fact, some origin-of-life researchers think that the reverse Krebs cycle predated the origin of primitive genetic material and primitive cell boundaries. As such, the reverse Krebs cycle operated as an autocatalytic cycle, kickstarting the process of abiogenesis. For some origin-of-life researchers, understanding the evolutionary pathway that led to the reverse Krebs cycle provides them with a vital clue as they seek to make sense of the mystery of life’s origin.

Pioneering Studies of Harold Morowitz
In 2000, Harold Morowitz and a team of collaborators sought to identify the types of prebiotic compounds that might emerge under the conditions of early Earth. They hoped that this list of compounds would help them determine if, in principle, the Krebs cycle could emerge spontaneously on early Earth.² Morowitz and his team screened 3.5 million entries in Beilstein’s compendium of organic compounds, applying a set of rules that reflected a realistic set of physical and chemical constraints relevant to the prebiotic conditions of early Earth. Specifically, they focused on relatively low molecular weight compounds consisting of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen that are water–soluble and possess either aldehyde or ketone functional groups. They excluded compounds with high heats of combustion, compounds that were chemically unstable, and compounds that contained functional groups that would be challenging to generate under plausible prebiotic conditions. Applying this filter, they winnowed the 3.5 million Beilstein entries to 153 compounds, which included all the Krebs cycle intermediates. For Morowitz and his team, this result meant that the compounds that form the Krebs cycle are emergent features on early Earth that flow naturally out of the properties of carbon chemistry and Earth’s early conditions. In fact, they argue that the Krebs cycle intermediates may well constitute a unique set of molecules.

Prebiotic Production of Krebs Cycle Compounds
Building on the work of Morowitz and his colleagues, a team of researchers from France reported in 2019 that they could generate nine of the eleven compounds that constitute Krebs cycle intermediates by incubating either pyruvate or glyoxylate in water under an inert atmosphere at 70°C in the presence of ferrous iron.³ This set of conditions models mild hydrothermal vent conditions on early Earth. Conceivably, pyruvate and glyoxylate could have been generated in such an environment.

In 2020, a team of investigators from Furman University and the Scripps Institute demonstrated that all the ingredients for a precursor of the Krebs cycle could be generated from glyoxylate and pyruvate in a single reaction vessel under mild temperatures and pH conditions without the need for metal catalysts.⁴ They discovered that the transformations proceeded in the same sequence as the sequence of intermediates in the reverse Krebs Cycle. The team also discovered that the components of the sequence could be converted into amino acids via a transamination reaction.

On the surface, this work provides validation for chemical evolution in general and, for a metabolism-first approach to the origin of life specifically. Greg Springsteen, a member of the research team notes, “Comparatively, the chemistry we discovered here was a dream to run: All you really needed to get the pathway started was [to] drop two stable reactants into buffered water and stick it on a warm hotplate. The chemistry was extremely robust.”⁵

Still, some measure of caution is in order. Neither of the experiments carried out by the Furman and Scripps scientists or the work of the French researchers successfully generated an autocatalytic cycle. Instead, these two experiments generated a mixture of molecules. A mechanism for transforming the mixture into a bona fide chemical cycle has yet to be discovered.

An additional damper on the success of these studies comes from previous work that has identified seemingly intractable problems with metabolism-first scenarios in general and, specifically, for the emergence of the reverse Krebs cycle under the conditions of early Earth.

Failure of Metabolism-First Models
One of the most significant critiques of metabolism-first scenarios came from the late origin-of-life researcher Leslie Orgel. (For other critiques see Challenges for Metabolism-First Scenarios in the resources section.)

Using the reverse Krebs cycle as a case study, Orgel identified several problems confronting metabolism-first scenarios that all center around their geochemical plausibility.6 For example, Orgel pointed out that one of the chief problems facing metabolism-first models is the need for highly specific mineral catalysts. As a case in point, the reverse citric acid cycle consists of eleven reaction steps, each one requiring a specific mineral catalyst on the early Earth. Inside cells, this metabolic process employs complex enzyme catalysts possessing high specificities and capacities for molecular-level discrimination among the components of the cycle. But enzymes would not have been available on early Earth. Orgel argues that it’s not likely that the right types of minerals needed to carry out these reactions would coexist at a particular locale on the early Earth in such a way to support the reverse citric acid cycle.

Adding to this problem is the observation that the transition metal catalysts (associated with the mineral surfaces) not only facilitate chemical transformations but also prompt the decomposition of the proto-metabolic intermediates. As biochemist Juli Pereto states, “Metals and harsh conditions can be good [at] accelerating the reactions yet also [promote] the destruction of the products. This situation makes rather implausible or unrealistic some of the proposed schemes.”⁷

In some respects, the Furman and Scripps researchers‘ work may address these two concerns. They were able to generate the Krebs cycle intermediates under mild conditions without the use of metal catalysts.

Still, other concerns remain. Orgel also pointed out that the autocatalytic chemical cycles that would be necessary to support metabolism-first scenarios would be highly susceptible to chemical disruption on early Earth. Earth’s chemical environment would have been a chemically complex setting, to say the least. The intermediates of the reverse Krebs cycle would not only react with one another, but also with other materials present. These side reactions would disrupt the proto-metabolic cycle. In other instances, the side reactions would stultify the autocatalytic cycle by siphoning off its intermediates.

So, even though the scientists from Furman University and the Scripps Research Institute have demonstrated, in principle, a chemical process that could contribute to the emergence of the Krebs cycle (and, hence, the origin of life), they have a long way to go to demonstrate geochemical relevance of their work.

In the face of these (and other) significant challenges to metabolism-first scenarios—that, at the end of the day, may well be intractable—it is important not to overlook something rather provocative that arises out of studies designed to understand the evolutionary origin of the Krebs cycle. For, even if we concede that life did, indeed, have an evolutionary origin, it is impossible to escape the necessary role a Creator must have played in the appearance of first life on Earth.

Anthropic Coincidences and the Evolutionary Origin of the Krebs Cycle
Based on the research discussed here, it doesn’t appear as if the Krebs cycle is the outworking of a historically contingent evolutionary process. Instead, if the Krebs cycle evolved, it appears as if this pathway arose out of the dictates of carbon chemistry and the geochemical conditions of early Earth. As origin-of-life researchers Eric Smith and Harold Morowitz argue:

“The chart of intermediary metabolism has a universal anabolic core, which should not be understood as merely a result of common ancestry but rather as a solution imposed on early life within the energetically structured environment of the early earth by details of carbon chemistry and carbon transportation functions performed only by biomass.”⁸

As I discuss in detail in my upcoming book Fit for a Purpose (to be released in the fall of 2021), the design of the Krebs cycle and the physicochemical properties of its intermediates are just right. They make it possible for this metabolic pathway to serve its dual roles in harvesting energy to power the cell’s operation and operating as the hub in central carbon metabolism. In other words, the Krebs cycle’s constitution and design appear to be ideally suited for life.

It is equally remarkable to think that both pyruvate and glyoxylate, which could have conceivably formed at hydrothermal vents, have the just-right set of chemical and physical properties that allow these two compounds to generate Krebs cycle intermediates. For example, both are stable in water and have a propensity to form carbon-carbon bonds. Additionally, the Furman and Scripps team discovered that glyoxylate not only functions as a reactant, but also as a reducing agent that facilitates the production of the Krebs cycle constituents. To put it another way, glyoxylate has a just-right set of properties that make this prebiotic reaction sequence possible.

In other words, there appear to be constraints on prebiotic chemistry that inevitably lead to the production of key biotic molecules with the just-right properties that make them unusually stable and ideally suited to give rise to one of the most important metabolic pathways in living systems.

It is a bit eerie to think that (1) the constraints that arise out of the geochemical and geophysical settings of the early Earth, (2) the physicochemical constraints that arise out of carbon chemistry, and (3) the interplay between organic compounds and water all conspire to spontaneously generate the compounds which serve as metabolic intermediates for the Krebs cycle.

This remarkable set of coincidences is highly fortuitous, suggesting a fitness for purpose to the nature of prebiotic chemistry. There is an apparent teleology to prebiotic chemistry. The laws of physics and chemistry may well have been rigged at the onset to ensure that life’s building blocks emerge naturally under early Earth’s conditions.

Could it be that these coincidences reflect the fact that a Creator is behind it all?

Resources

Origins of Life by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross (book)

Creating Life in the Lab by Fazale Rana (book)

Questioning the Geochemical Relevance of Prebiotic Chemistry

“Prebiotic Chemistry and the Hand of God” by Fazale Rana (article)

Challenges for Metabolism-First Scenarios

“A Fork in the Road, Part 2” by Fazale Rana (article)

“Grave Concerns about Metabolism-First Origin-of-Life Scenarios” by Fazale Rana (article)

“Metabolism-First Models Can’t Evolve” by Fazale Rana (article)

Prebiotic Chemistry and the Anthropic Principle

“Have Researchers Developed a Computer Algorithm that Explains the Origin of Life?” by Fazale Rana (article)

The Biochemical Anthropic Principle

“A New Mechanism for Movement of Biochemical Cargo Orders the Case for a Creator” by Fazale Rana (article)

“Molecular Logic of the Electron Transport Chain Supports Creation” by Fazale Rana (article)

“The Logic of DNA Replication Makes a Case for Intelligent Design” by Fazale Rana (article)

“A Periodic Table for Protein Structures Reveals Biochemical Design” by Fazale Rana (article)

“Biochemical Grammar Communicates the Case for Creation” by Fazale Rana (article)

“Is the Optimal Set of Protein Amino Acids Purposed by a Mind?” by Fazale Rana (article)

“Fatty Acids Are Beautiful” by Fazale Rana (article)

Endnotes

1. Trent R. Stubbs et al., “A Plausible Metal-Free Ancestral Analogue of the Krebs Cycle Composed Entirely of alpha-Ketoacids” Nature Chemistry 12 (October 12, 2020): 1016–1022, doi: 10.1038/s41557-020-00560-7.
2. Harold J. Morowitz et al., “The Origin of Intermediary Metabolism,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 97, no. 14 (July 5, 2000): 7704–7708, doi: 10.1073/pnas.110153997.
3. Kamila B. Muchowska, Sreejith J. Varma and Joseph Moran, “Synthesis and Breakdown of Universal Metabolic Precursors Promoted by Iron” Nature 569 (2019): 104–107; doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1151-1; Robert Pascal, “A Possible Non-Biological Reaction Framework for Metabolic Processes on Early Earth,” Nature 569 (2019): 47–49, doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-01322-3
4. Stubbs et al., “Plausible Metal-Free Ancestral Analogue,” 1016–1022.
5. Glen Harvey, “New Clues to the Chemical Origin of Metabolism at the Dawn of Life,” Quanta Magazine (October 12, 2020), quantamagazine.org/new-clues-to-chemical-origins-of-metabolism-at-dawn-of-life-20201012/.
6. Leslie Orgel, “The Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on Prebiotic Earth,” PLoS Biology 6 (January 22, 2008): e18; doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060018.
7. Harvey, “New Clues,” quantamagazine.org/new-clues-to-chemical-origins-of-metabolism-at-dawn-of-life-20201012/.
8. Eric Smith and Harold J. Morowitz, “Universality in Intermediary Metabolism,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 101, no. 36 (September 7, 2004): 13168–13173; doi: 10.1073/pnas.0404922101.

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Figure 1: James Legge. Missionary, sinologist, and Oxford professor. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Shang Di: The Monotheistic God of Ancient China

Legge was convinced that Shang Di, the God of the ancient Chinese, was synonymous with the God of the Hebrew Bible. In support of this conclusion, he writes:

Do the Chinese know the true God? . . . I answer unhesitatingly in the affirmative. The evidence supplied by Chinese literature and history appears to me so strong, that I find it difficult to conceive how any one, who has studied it, can come to the opposite conclusion.²

Legge reached this conclusion by substituting God in every Chinese classics location where Shang Di is referenced. Legge found that the use of God in these contexts was entirely appropriate, given what is known about the Hebrew God. He concludes, “The Chinese know Him who is the Creator, the Preserver, and the Governor of the Universe.”³ According to Legge, Shang Di is self-existent, he existed before the creation of the universe, and his years are without end. Moreover, in their 4000 years of history, the Chinese have never fashioned an image of Shang Di.⁴

While some disagreed, Legge was not alone in his conclusion that Shang Di is the Hebrew God. William Henry Medhurst, a scholar and missionary who produced Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionaries, concurred with Legge. According to Medhurst, Shang Di is the supreme ruler described in the Chinese classics, but whose name was later corrupted and applied to other lesser deities, “but these are . . . different from him whom the ancients worshipped under the title of Supreme Ruler . . .”⁵

If Shang Di is an essential part of Chinese history, why is this fact not evident to modern Chinese? Author Chan Kei Thong elucidates the matter, saying:

Many of the modern translations of these ancient Chinese texts have excised the passages that mention Shang Di. This is one reason why so many Chinese themselves, even scholars of these texts, are ignorant of the truth of the prevalence and the dominance of the belief in Shang Di in ancient times.⁶

The Nature of Shang Di

Thong has undertaken to discern God’s attributes as communicated in the Chinese classics using Legge’s complete and unaltered translation. In his book, Faith of Our Fathers, Thong provides evidence from the Chinese classics that Shang Di is sovereign, eternal, immutable, powerful, all-knowing, ever-present, and infinite. Similarly, Thong shows that the moral attributes of Shang Di include love, holiness, grace, faithfulness, goodness, mercy, compassion, and justice.⁷ Thong concludes that Shang Di is the one true Creator God of the Hebrews revealed in the Bible, known from the earliest times of Chinese civilization.⁸ In this matter, Thong, Legge, and Medhurst concur.

Figure 2: Temple of Heaven Complex. Imperial sacrificial altar complex in Beijing, China. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Emperor’s Sacrifice and Submission to Shang Di

The Book of Documents (Chinese Classic of History)—generally attributed to Confucius (551–479 BC)—includes references to sacrifice to Shang Di. In the Canon of Shun, Emperor Shun (c. 2294–2184 BC) is said to have sacrificed to Shang Di.⁹ The last king of the Shang dynasty (c. 1765–1122 BC), King Zhou, is said to have become morally corrupt and to have neglected Shang Di and sacrifices in the temple of his ancestors.¹⁰ Because of these transgressions, heaven ordered the destruction of the Shang dynasty.¹¹

Furthermore, the Chinese historian Sima Qian (145–86 BC), in his Historical Records, records the sacrifice of the first emperor of Qin (259–210 BC), who “sacrificed to the Supreme God at Yong.”¹² Elsewhere, Sima Qian indicates that in ancient times, emperors of the Xia dynasty (2070–1600 BC) personally sacrificed to Shang Di at the border.¹³

How exactly was sacrifice to God conducted by the ancient Chinese? Some emperors introduced innovations and corrupted sacrifices to Shang Di by including the worship of other gods, while others neglected these ancient rituals. According to Legge, at the inception of the Ming dynasty (AD 1368–1644), worship of Shang Di was restored under the advice of two committees. Sacrifices were limited to the two great border sacrifices performed earlier during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties.¹⁴ The most recent location where the border sacrifice was performed is the Temple of Heaven (literally Altar of Heaven) complex in Beijing. Until 1911, records indicate that at the Altar of Heaven in Beijing, 654 sacrifices were carried out over approximately 500 years by 22 emperors.¹⁵ The one who performed the sacrifice held the Mandate of Heaven. Thus, it was only performed by the emperor. Preparation for the border sacrifice involved selecting sacrificial animals (usually calves), a proclamation by the emperor six days before the sacrifice at the altar mound, and an inspection of the sacrificial animals five days before the ceremony. The emperor fasted for three days in advance of the sacrifice. Two days in advance of the ceremony, the prayers and offerings were inspected by the emperor.¹⁶

While some critics have argued that Shang Di is not the God of the Bible, the striking similarity seems hard to ignore and is just as expected if all nations of the Earth traced their heritage back to Noah. Just as Noah had sacrificed to God upon exiting the ark, the kings and emperors of China sacrificed to Shang Di. Winfried Corduan (perhaps the foremost living expert on original monotheism) concludes, “the memory of original monotheism is alive and well in China. Efforts by Thong and others to revive this part of their ancient heritage are spreading.”¹⁷

Endnotes

1. Ralph R. Covell, “Legge, James,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 392–393.
2. James Legge, The Notions of the Chinese Concerning God and Spirits (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Register Office, 1852), 7.
3. Legge, Notions of the Chinese, 7–9.
4. Legge, 32.
5. W. H. Medhurst, A Dissertation on the Theology of the Chinese: With a View to the Elucidation of the Most Appropriate Term for Expressing the Deity in the Chinese Language (Shanghai: Mission Press, 1847), 273.
6. Chan Kei Thong, Faith of Our Fathers: Finding God in Ancient China (Singapore: Cru Asia Limited, 2018), Kindle,102.
7. Thong, Faith of Our Fathers, 101–117.
8. Thong, 118.
9. Confucius, Book of Documents, trans. James Leege (Greensburg, PA: Lionshare Media, 2015), Kindle, 223.
10. Confucius, Book of Documents, 1896.
11. Confucius, 1914.
12. Sima Qian, The First Emperor: Selections From the Historical Records, trans. Raymond Dawson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Kindle, 2086.
13. Thong, 129.
14. Legge, 44.
15. Thong, 125–128.
16. Thong, 124–165.
17. Winfried Corduan, In the Beginning God: A Fresh Look at the Case for Original Monotheism (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2013), 335.

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