In the Beginning

For life to begin to exist (an effect) it must be caused: either created supernaturally (by God) or arising spontaneously and randomly, by accident, out of non-living matter (i.e. random chemicals dissolved in water). By definition, these two explanations are our only reasonable choices to explain life on Earth.

For well over a century, scientists have desperately been trying to explain how life might have evolved on its own without a Creator; the entire evolutionary claim depends upon this.

Yet even the very simplest living things are so bewilderingly complex that the more we research the problem the farther away we find ourselves from discovering a naturalistic cause.

Every single-celled organism, as scientists imagine the first life forms to be, is like a tiny three-dimensional city, complete with streets, power plants, utilities, waste collection and removal services, factories, hospitals, food stores, repair shops, police, thousands of little robots automatically carrying out very specific functions all throughout the cell, and a governing center with little computers running it all, complete with extremely complex information encoded into unfathomably and irreducibly complex molecules capturing every detail and nuance of how the cell is constructed and operates.

It is not surprising that evolutionary scientists have a very difficult time admitting how vastly improbable it is for even one cell to ever come into being on its own; only Creation scientists appear willing to state the obvious.

For example, each cell contains all of these bewilderingly complex, interconnected and interdependent systems and components within a surrounding wall or membrane, keeping everything in place and protecting the inner workings of the cell from its external environment.

Just trying to explain a cell membrane, the little bubble surrounding the cell, is daunting all by itself. This membrane must keep the internal environment of the cell chemically stable while allowing nutrients to pass into the cell and waste to be expelled. It must keep all necessary cell components in their correct locations, so it must form around and enclose all of the internal, interdependent components only after they have all been co-located into positions which allow them all to interact seamlessly and consistently with one another.

This membrane, even in the simplest living organism, comprises over a million complex molecules, each having a distinct function and arranged very precisely such that each segment of the cell wall works together seamlessly with the rest of the cell to keep the cell alive.

The membrane comprises two distinct layers which maintain the stability of both the interior and exterior wall surfaces while allowing fluidity, or lateral movement of the structural molecules (phospholipids), within the wall itself, which is crucial for the wall to function properly.

Very complex protein molecules must be precisely configured and correctly positioned within the cell wall to facilitate movement of the correct types of molecules through special corridors both entering the cell (nutrients) and exiting the cell (waste and toxins).

Further, the cell membrane must permit external environmental factors to influence the internal components of the cell such that the cell can respond favorably to environmental stimuli, yet without allowing the environment to compromise the integrity and stability of the cell’s infrastructure.

And finally, this membrane must be designed to allow the cell to replicate without destroying the cell itself, to split apart and form two completely new cells with all of the necessary internal components in each new cell without destroying any of these internal components or the cell itself in the process.

No living cell can exist without a fully functioning cell membrane, so how did the first cell get a membrane? Did over a million very complex molecules accidently compose themselves out of a random environment of naturally occurring chemicals (most of which happen to be hazardous to the cell’s internal components) into a very precise design around a mass of other precisely designed components for no apparent reason, creating a safe and amazingly complex barrier precisely suitable to sustain life?

The likelihood of a single such membrane actually forming by chance, even if all of the required component atoms are floating around in perfect concentrations just waiting to be used up, is unspeakably small. It is more likely that we could randomly select a specially-marked atom from among all the atoms in the known universe in a single trial event, and then repeat this feat trillions of times in a row and never miss a beat. This is statistically impossible, for all practical purposes.

This doesn’t even begin to touch the problem of how all the rest of the extremely complex components within the membrane get there: the random formation of the genetic programs precisely configured to produce and repair the necessary proteins and enzymes needed to carry out basic life functions of the cell, such as metabolizing nutrients and converting them into usable energy, repairing damaged cell components, and replicating the cell itself. Each one of these processes is incredibly complex, all on its own.

For a living cell to function all of these systems must be precisely engineered and interconnected within the cell in precisely the correct locations and configurations at the same time for each of them to function properly. We call this irreducible complexity.

Finally, for such complexity to arise randomly in a primordial soup, the entire process must occur within a very short time span (a few hours); most of the components within the cell decay and break down rather quickly if not stabilized in a very special chemical environment which is not found outside the cell. Even if all of these internal components were to form somehow and come together on their own, without the cell membrane to shield them most of the components would only last a couple of hours before breaking down and decaying into useless molecules.

The more we discover about the complexity of the cell, the more improbable it is that life evolved. Those who refuse to admit this and incorporate it into their world view are not following the science; they are being irrational and dishonest – hoping for a veritably infinite sequence of statistical miracles while denying the very possibility of miracles.

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