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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...