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Have Scientists Created Life?:Examining the Miller-Urey Experiment

by Bert Thompson,

Ph.D.Brad Harrub, Ph.D.

How did living cells emerge from nonliving chemicals? This simple question hasdogged evolutionists for centuries. Try as they might, they never have beenable to establish a rm foundation for how living things rst appeared!afoundation on which they then could build an evolutionary tree of life.

"n the past, the modus operandiwas to teach the long#ago#disproved conceptof spontaneous generation, hope that no one noticed the question of the actualorigin of life had never been answered, and then teach the theory of evolutionas if $somehow% the origin of life had been established as a fact. &s a result,almost every science te'tboo( printed within the last fty years contains thenow#famous )iller#*rey e'periment of +-. "n this e'periment, Harold *reyand his graduate student, /tanley )iller, tried to simulate what they thoughtrepresented the 0arth1s early atmospheric conditions, in order to determinewhat products they could generate by adding an electrical spar( 2i.e.simulating lightening3. These same te'tboo(s never fail to mention that )illerand *rey were successful at producing a few simple amino acids!$the basicbuilding bloc(s of life.% 4rom there, the te'tboo(s lead into a new chapter onevolution and the origin of life!allowing the student to draw the conclusionthat scientists have thus proven that life can be generated from 5ust a fewnonliving chemicals.

"t is a logical progression, and one that, admittedly, wor(s well in theclassroom. The only problem is that this notion is totally false. 6ot once havescientists succeeded in producing living material from nonliving material. &ndyet, year after year the public is led into believing that the very foundationupon which evolution stands has been resolved. 6obel laureate 7eorge 8ald ofHarvard admitted9

8e tell this story to beginning students of biology as though it represents a triumphof reason over mysticism. "n fact it is very nearly the opposite. The reasonable viewwas to believe in spontaneous generation: the only alternative, to believe in asingle, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. 4or thisreason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous

generation as a ;philosophical necessity.1 "t is a symptom of the philosophicalpoverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. )ost modernbiologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneousgeneration hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in specialcreation, are left with nothing. " thin( a scientist has no choice but to approach theorigin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous generation 2+-

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This wea(ness has not gone unnoticed. "n fact, the evolutionists1 modusoperandiis having to be revised as biologists scramble to nd new ways of$enlightening% freshman biology students on the origin of life. "t is because ofthis wea(ness that /tanley @. )iller himself refuses to let the idea of thespontaneous generation of life fade into oblivion. "n the /eptember +, AAissue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. )iller and his

colleagues described how they obtained bioorganic compounds utiliCing carbonmono'ide as a component in their model of the atmosphere 2see )iya(awa, etal., AA3. &s the old adage goes, $try, try again.% &nd, as evinced by thealmost - years that have passed since his initial e'periment, )iller appearsdetermined to squeeCe life from nonliving chemicals.

Try as he might, however, )iller is ghting a lost cause. obert >astrow pointedout over twenty#ve years ago9 $&ccording to this story, every tree, every bladeof grass, and every creature in the sea and on the land evolved out of oneparent strand of molecular matter drifting laCily in a warm pool. Whatconcrete evidence spports that remar!a"le theory of the origin oflife? #here is none% 2+EE, p. =, emp. added3. &nd this truth has notchanged. &s Flaus Dose so aptly pointed out9

)ore than years of e'perimentation on the origin of life in the elds of chemicaland molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of theproblem of the origin of life on 0arth rather than to its solution. &t present alldiscussions on principal theories and e'periments in the eld either end instalemate or in a confession of ignorance 2+, +G

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from sunlight is destructive to any developing life. 0volutionist obert /hapirostated regarding the products of the )iller#*rey e'periment9 $@et us sum up.The e'periment performed by )iller yielded tar as its most abundant product.There are about fty small organic compounds that are called ;building bloc(s.1Jnly two of these fty occurred among the preferential )iller#*rey products%2+=, p. +-3.

However, more recent discoveries once again have evolutionists clamoring thatlife has been $created.% "n the >une +=, A issue of Science, 7erard 8ong andcolleagues reported a mechanism by which chemicals were able tospontaneously self#assemble themselves into ribbon#li(e tubules that resemblebacterial cell walls 2A9A-3. This discovery has led some to suggest that$articial bacteria% were created!hen. in fact. they ere not/Theresearchers simply mi'ed actin 2a protein that provides the structuralframewor( for cells3 with special liposomes to ma(e actin#membranecapsules, hich is a gargantan step from 0creating life12The actinmolecule does not possess D6&, it does not actively metaboliCe, and it doesnot reproduce. "t is therefore a far cry from being $living.%/pontaneous organi3ationdoes not equal spontaneous generation. /o whilethis composite membrane is indeed similar to the plasma membrane thatsurrounds most cells!due to the fact that it can organiCe itself into threediMerent layers, including a middle lipid layer!it has none of the qualitiesscientists use to identify life.

"n a similar study, >eMrey Hartgerin( and colleagues reported that they hadmade self#assembling synthetic bone 2A+3. *sing pH#induced self#assembly,these scientists were able to form a composite that may one day be able toreplace diseased bone tissue. These synthetic molecules assemble into bersthat $coa'% minerals into growing on top of them!bringing us closer to betterprosthetic devices. 6ews services were quic( to describe this discovery as$manmade bone.% However, even if scientists were able to manufacture bone

tissue, that, in and of itself, is not $life.% & bone lying on a stainless steel tableis of little use in the quest to form living material from something nonliving.&rticial bone is not able to reproduce itself, and without a blood supply, itquic(ly dies. & close inspection of the report reveals that the bonds within thisbrous matri' can be reversed 2by reducing the disuldes bac( into thiols3.Does this sound li(e any living tissue with which you are familiar? 6oam @ahavpointed out9

*nder slightly reducing conditions, the )iller#*rey action does not produce aminoacids, nor does it produce the chemicals that may serve as the predecessors ofother important biopolymer building bloc(s. Thus, by challenging the assumption ofa reducing atmosphere, we challenge the very e'istence of the $prebiotic soup%,with its richness of biologically important organic compounds. )oreover, so far, no

geochemical evidence for the e'istence of a prebiotic soup has been published."ndeed, a number of scientists have challenged the prebiotic soup concept, notingthat even if it e'isted, the concentration of organic building bloc(s in it would havebeen too small to be meaningful for prebiotic evolution 2+, pp. +#+3.

The fact is, life alays comes from life!a fact that nails the lid shut on thecoNn in which the evolutionary theory rests.

(E$E(E,CES

Dose, Flaus 2+3, $The Jrigin of @ife9 )ore Ouestions than&nswers,% Interdisciplinary Science Reviews,+G

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Hartgerin(, >eMrey D., 0lia Beniash, and /amuel ". /tupp 2A+3, $/elf#&ssemblyand )ineraliCation of Peptide#&mphiphile 6anobers,% Science, Aastrow, obert 2+EE3, Until the Sun ies 26ew Kor(9 8.8. 6orton3.

@ahav, 6oam 2+3, !iogenesis" Theories of #ife$s %rigins2J'ford, 0ngland9J'ford *niversity Press3.

@evine, >. 2+3, $6ew "deas &bout the 0arly &tmosphere,% NASA SpecialReport, 6o. AA-, @angley esearch enter, &ugust ++.

)iya(awa, /hin, Hiroto Kamanashi, Fensei Fobayashi, H. >ames leaves, and/tanley @. )iller 2AA3, $Prebiotic /ynthesis from J &tmospheres9"mplications for the Jrigins of @ife,%Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences, 9+une +=.

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