How Simple Can Life Be?

In Darwin’s day, many people swallowed the theory of spontaneous generation-that life arose from non-living matter. It was somewhat easier to believe because the cell’s structure was almost unknown. Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s popularizer in Germany, claimed that a cell was a “simple lump of albuminous combination of carbon.”1 (Haeckel was also a notorious fraud-he forged embryonic diagrams to bolster the erroneous idea that the embryo’s development recapitulated (re-traced) its alleged evolutionary ancestry)2

But modern science has discovered vast quantities of complex, specific information in even the simplest self-reproducing organism.

But modern science has discovered vast quantities of complex, specific information in even the simplest self-reproducing organism. Mycoplasma genitalium has the smallest known genome of any free-living organism, containing 482 genes comprising 580,000 bases.3 Of course, these genes are only functional with pre-existing translational and replicating machinery, a cell membrane, etc. But Mycoplasma can only survive by parasitizing more complex organisms, which provide many of the nutrients it cannot manufacture for itself. So evolutionists must posit a more complex first living organism with even more genes.

More recently, Eugene Koonin and others tried to calculate the bare minimum required for a living cell, and came up with a result of 256 genes. But they were doubtful whether such a hypothetical bug could survive, because such an organism could barely repair DNA damage, could no longer fine-tune the ability of its remaining genes, would lack the ability to digest complex compounds, and would need a comprehensive supply of organic nutrients in its environment.4

Yet even this “simple” organism has far too much information to be expected from time and chance, without natural selection. The information theorist Hubert Yockey calculated that given a pool of pure, activated biological amino acids, the total amount of information which could be produced, even allowing 10⁹ years as evolutionists posit, would be only a single small polypeptide 49 amino acid residues long.5 This is about 1/8 the size (therefore information content) of a typical protein, yet the hypothetical simple cell above needs at least 256 proteins. And Yockey’s estimate generously presupposes that the many chemical hurdles can be overcome, which is a huge assumption, as shown by many creationist writers.6

NB: natural selection cannot help, as this requires self-replicating entities-therefore it cannot explain their origin.