Defending the Indefensible: How Evolutionists Address the Improbability of Abiogenesis

Evolutionists are rather cavalier in their attitude toward abiogenesis. The supposed first ancestor of everything was not observed. Neither can it be repeated or tested. It's outside of the scope of scientific inquiry yet evolutionists, because of the religious-like tenets of methodological naturalism, dismiss any possibility of divine intervention in the origin of life. It's not a scientific conclusion; it's a faith based one.

Outside the revelation of the Creator, we could not possibly know about the true origin of life. How it did happen can never be known scientifically because it was a unique event in history and we weren't there to see it. However, scientists are also in the dark about how it even could happen. In spite of years of trying, scientists have not been able to create life from non-living chemicals. They've not even devised a plausible scenario. The best they have are fanciful, “just so” stories that are no more scientific than Dr. Seuss.

Seeing that scientists have not been able to create life via their own intelligence, it's rather far fetched to believe that life could randomly begin without the aid of any intelligent design whatsoever. Many creationists have ridiculed the idea of abiogenesis using a purely statistical perspective. That is, given the length of even the simplest protein, the odds of that many amino acids lining up in just the right order to create life seems impossible. Talk Origins summed up the creationists' argument this way (source):

So the calculation goes that the probability of forming a given 300 amino acid long protein (say an enzyme like carboxypeptidase) randomly is (1/20)300 or 1 chance in 2.04 x 10390, which is astoundingly, mind-beggaringly improbable. This is then cranked up by adding on the probabilities of generating 400 or so similar enzymes until a figure is reached that is so huge that merely contemplating it causes your brain to dribble out your ears. This gives the impression that the formation of even the smallest organism seems totally impossible.

That's not a bad summary of the creationists' position and I think the improbable odds is a serious objection to abiogenesis. Now, don't get me wrong. By citing them, I'm not saying TO is not a bunch of closet creationists nor do they cringe when hearing the probability argument. It just that evolutionists aren't daunted by the mind-numbingly small chance of abiogenesis. In a textbook example of circular reasoning, they know that abiogenesis has happened because we're here!

When considering abiogenesis, evolutionists usually dismiss the matter with the tired argument, “that's not part of the theory.” That's rather odd because they always seem to include something about the “primordial soup” or the Miller-Urey experiments in biology text books. So even though they like to claim it's not part of their theory, they spend a lot of their own time talking about it. I'll come back to that point in a moment.

On some occasions, evolutionists have even attempted to address the improbability of abiogenesis. Some rebuttals are more intriguing than others but I've not heard any that are very convincing. Of course, my bias toward creationism casts doubt on my objectivity. Yet there are a couple of things that I've spotted in the evolutionists' argument that betrays their entire point. See if you can spot them in this quote:

“If [a 300-molecule-long protein forming by total random chance] were the theory of abiogeneisis [sic], and if it relied entirely on random chance, then yes, it would be impossible for life to form in this way. However, this is not the case.

Abiogenesis was a long process with many small incremental steps, all governed by the non-random forces of Natural Selection and chemistry. The very first stages of abiogenesis were no more than simple self-replicating molecules, which might hardly have been called alive at all.” (italics in original)

I think the weaknesses in this argument are rather glaring. First, this argument claims a certainty of the pathway from non-living chemicals to a living creature. That's rather presumptuous of them, don't you think? I mean, scientists don't really have any idea how life began so how can they credibly say, “The very first stages of abiogenesis were no more than simple self-replicating molecules”? Could someone please show me these alleged, “self-replicating molecules”? Please show me how they became living molecules. I want scientific evidence please – not more of your Dr. Seuss theories.

The other weakness is a little more subtle. Do you remember how evolutionists usually respond to questions about abiogenesis? They usually say that it's not part of their theory, right? However, in this quote, they actually seem to invoke their theory! They are essentially saying that self-replicating molecules “evolved” from simple to complex via Natural Selection. Yep, that's evolution, all right. How about that? They say that abiogenesis isn't part of their theory yet they use their theory to explain abiogenesis. That's just goofy.

There are a few other things I have to say about their attempts at rebuttals but I'll save those for another post. I think these few points are damning enough for the moment. Let me conclude by saying this: abiogenesis is a fatal flaw in the evolutionary theory. Not “the” fatal flaw, mind you, because there are others, but it alone dooms the whole theory as incredible. If the supposed, first ancestor of all living things could not have arisen without divine intervention, then the entire rest of the theory is academic. Evolutionists dismiss the subject with little more than a wave of their hand. They're simply whistling past the graveyard.