Deep Sea Origins: Yet More Dispute

If eight-million-year-old microbes and trees weren’t enough, though, what about 1.43-billion-year-old fossilized habitats of deep-sea microbes? LiveScience’s Dave Mosher reports this week on supposedly ancient black smoker chimneys—naturally occurring, microbial-housing chimneys that are, interestingly enough, nearly identical to the “archaea- and bacteria-harboring structures found today on sea beds.”

For no apparent reason other than their supposed age, Timothy Kusky, a Saint Louis University geologist, believes these chimneys “offer ‘tantalizing suggestions’ that life developed near deep-sea hydrothermal vents and not in shallow seas, as other evidence hints.”

Of course, there seem to be several problems with Kusky’s hypothesis. First and foremost, of course, is the old-earth dogma used to date the chimneys; the proverbial rug would be pulled out from under Kusky’s feet if the chimneys were “only” half their supposed age, let alone as young as the Bible indicates.

Jumping to conclusions about the life in such chimneys would seem to be driven more by presuppositions than by actual science.

Secondly, the article seems to clumsily conflate the existence of these chimneys with the existence of life to inhabit them. For example, the article explains:

Black smoker chimneys develop at submerged openings in the Earth’s crust that spew out mineral-rich water as hot as 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius). Bacteria that don’t depend on sunlight or oxygen move into the fragile chimneys that grow around the vents and feed on the dissolved minerals.

Yet the article gives no indication that fossils of the actual microbes themselves are left; merely of these chimneys: “‘These are remnants of the oldest living types of life forms on the planet,’ said Timothy Kusky[.]” Jumping to conclusions about the life in such chimneys would seem to be driven more by presuppositions than by actual science.

Finally, and as the article points out, this discovery goes against other evolutionary ideas for the origin of life—that it developed in shallow waters, in dome-shaped clumps of bacteria called stromatolites.

Thankfully, geologist and American Museum of Natural History (New York) curator Ed Mathez unrealizingly sums up the vacancy of evolutionists’ ideas for the natural origin of life on earth:

“They tell us life existed that long ago, but as to where it originated remains an open question,” Mathez said.

Mathez pointed out that black smoker fossils are just as inconclusive about the origin of life, but added that the new finding significantly pushes back the known reign of deep-sea microbes.

It seems evolutionists continue to say something to the effect of, “We don’t know exactly how it happened, nor exactly when, nor exactly where, except that it was without God’s help, it was a very long time ago, and it wasn’t in any Garden of Eden”!

Be sure to read up on the question of life’s origin in our Get Answers section devoted to the topic.

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