Problems for "Accidental" Origin of Life

As the building blocks of protein, amino acids are fundamental to life—and for that reason, evolutionists continue trying to figure out how amino acids could have arisen through chance processes. But even if evolutionists account for the “accidental” appearance of the amino acids and other organic molecules, they face another hurdle: what about chirality?

When the two forms interact directly, the result is toxic to life.

Amino acids that are otherwise identical come in two distinct structural forms, known as “left-handed” and “right-handed” (a situation called chirality). In life-forms, essentially all amino acid biomolecules are of the left-handed form while sugars are right-handed. What’s the big deal? The problem is that all conceived ways of producing amino acids “accidentally” (i.e., as was thought to have happened on the primordial earth) yield both left- and right-handed amino acids simultaneously. Not only does this not explain the exclusivity of left-handed amino acids in life, but also, when the two forms interact directly, the result is toxic to life. Thus, any process producing the amino acids required by life would seemingly have doomed life as well.

Scientists publishing in Crystal Growth & Design claim to have an answer, however. A press release from the publisher states vaguely, “The scientists used mixtures of both left- and right-handed aspartic acid . . . in laboratory experiments . . . . They found that under conditions that could have existed on primitive Earth, left-handed aspartic acid crystals could have formed easily and on a large scale.” But the issue is not merely production of left-handed amino acids; it is how left-handed amino acids could be produced without right-handed amino acids being produced as well. (Of course, even if evolutionists solve that problem, they still have no clue how such basic organic molecules “self-arranged” into a reproducing life-form.)

Furthermore, don’t forget that even if evolutionists have a minimally plausible scenario for, e.g., the origin of left-handed amino acids, the scenario usually puts very specific constraints over primordial earth’s environment, for example. If, someday, evolutionists have a reasonable answer for overcoming all the many hurdles of an accidental origin for life (something certainly not the case now), they still must demonstrate requirements that were conducive and present on the early earth. Of course, even then, the evolutionary scenario would remain no more plausible (and far less, we would say) than the true history given in the book of Genesis.

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