Diamonds Are the Latest Evidence For Evolution

Calling the beginning of life “[o]ne of the greatest mysteries in science,” LiveScience managing editor Robert Roy Britt looks at diamonds, which some scientists believe may hold the answer to that great mystery.

First, Britt candidly admits, “[N]obody knows how . . . simple amino acids, known to be the building blocks of life, were assembled into complex polymers needed as a platform for genesis.”

This is where diamonds come in. Basing their experimentation on research from more than 30 years ago, German researchers at the University of Ulm treated natural diamonds with hydrogen. As a result, the diamonds formed “crystalline layers of water” on the surface, as well as electrical conductivity.

Britt explains the researchers conclusion:

When primitive molecules landed a few billion years ago on the surface of these hydrogenated diamonds in the atmosphere of early Earth, the resulting reaction may have been sufficient enough to generate more complex organic molecules that eventually gave rise to life, the researchers say.

The diamonds formed “crystalline layers of water” on the surface, as well as electrical conductivity.

“The new research does not conclusively determine how life began,” Britt understates, while the researchers claim “[h]ydrogenated diamond advances to the best of all possible origin-of-life platforms,” which reveals the current “strength” of evolutionary origin-of-life models.

Most of the secular news on how life may have begun on Earth should reinforce three ideas in the Christian’s mind.

First, secular models for the origin of life are still woefully underdeveloped, resting on “may have” and “could have” and often pushing the origin of biotic compounds or even life itself into space. Even attempts to exactly replicate scenarios for the start of life have produced nothing even close to the simplest organism (which is by no means simple!).

Second, both ideas of the origin of life—that it was authored by God or that it was authored by chance—are untestable, unprovable historical events that rest on faith. For all the science evolutionists attempt to put behind it, the godless origin of life remains a by-faith proposition.

Third, even if scientists could come up with a perfectly lucid, successfully tested model for how life could originate naturally, such an idea could never be more rational or valid than the Genesis 1 account of creation, since creating life is entirely possible for an omnipotent God! Besides, there is never anything illogical with or unscientific about trusting the authoritative Word of the One who was there.