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This article was originally authored by Dr. Hugh Ross and is republished here with permission from Reasons to Believe, a ministry dedicated to integrating science and faith. All rights reserved by the original publisher. To explore more resources, visit their website Reasons to Believe.
Understanding the Origin of Life Debate
How did life on Earth begin? Does an experimenter’s intervention reveal the “hand” that made life?
Fuz Rana and I attended the 2002 International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) Conference held June 30–July 5 in Oaxaca, Mexico...
Reproducibility and Experimenter Intervention
One such intervention that inevitably occurs arises from the experimenters’ desires that their results be reproducible by other biochemists...
Furthermore, to be relevant to any conceivable natural origin-of-life scenario the experiment must not involve any human intervention after the start of a reaction...
Even when these strictures are rigorously obeyed not-so-subtle human interferences can and do occur...
The Miller-Urey Experiment and Its Limitations
In the famous Miller-Urey experiment where researchers claimed to synthesize amino acids...
The Miller-Urey experiment is a classic example of multiple human interventions where the experimenters thought there were none...
Intervention Required for Amino Acid Joining
For more complex reactions than the Miller-Urey experiment, such as the joining together of bioactive amino acids...
In the case of joining together amino acids, the amino acids must all be homochiral...
In living cells, biochemical synthesis usually occurs through catalyzed reactions by different enzymes...
Toward the end of his article Richert takes to task the now popular experiments of unending cycles of hydration and dehydration...
The Hand of God Dilemma
In his article, Richert coined a phrase for the experimenter intervention. He called it “the Hand of God dilemma.”...
Richert, nevertheless, makes a strong appeal to his fellow origin-of-life researchers...
Having been to several origin-of-life conferences and having read hundreds of origin-of-life research papers...
Endnotes
- Clemens Richert, “Prebiotic Chemistry and Human Intervention,” Nature Communications 9 (December 12, 2018): id. 5177, doi:10.1038/241467-018-07219-5.
- Richert, “Prebiotic Chemistry,” 1.
- Stanley L. Miller, “A Production of Amino Acids Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions,” Science 117, no. 3046 (May 15, 1953): 528–29, doi:10.1126/science.117.3046.528.
- Richert, 2.
Go Deeper
Dr. Hugh Ross
Hugh Ross is the founder and senior scholar of Reasons to Believe, an organization dedicated to communicating the compatibility of science and the Christian faith. While in college, Hugh committed his life to Jesus Christ after his study of cosmology convinced him of the existence of a Creator, specifically the God of the Bible. Hugh holds a degree in physics from the University of British Columbia and a PhD in astronomy from the University of Toronto. After five years on the Caltech faculty, he transitioned to full-time ministry and still serves on the pastoral team at Christ Church Sierra Madre. His writings include journal and magazine articles, hundreds of blogs, and numerous books-Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, Improbable Planet, Designed to the Core, and Rescuing Inerrancy, among others. He has spoken on hundreds of university campuses as well as at conferences and churches around the world and participates in the weekly Stars, Cells, and God podcast.
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