Assumptions About Early Atmosphere

First needed, an atmosphere on early earth that, when bombarded with lightning or ultraviolet rays or other energy sources, would produce simple molecules necessary for life. In 1953 Stanley Miller reported on just such an experiment. He selected a hydrogen-rich atmosphere for early earth, passed an electric spark through it, and produced 2 simpler amino acids of the 20 required to make proteins.⁠¹ No one knows, however, what the early earth atmosphere was like.⁠² Why did Miller choose this one? He admitted prejudice in favor of it because it was the only one wherein “the synthesis of compounds of biological interest takes place.”⁠³

Miller used a spark to break up the simple chemicals in his atmosphere to allow amino acids to form. But this spark would even more quickly have shattered the amino acids! So again Miller rigged his experiment: He built a trap in his apparatus to store the acids as soon as they formed, to save them from the spark. Scientists claim, however, that in the early earth the amino acids would have escaped the lightning or ultraviolet rays by plunging into the ocean. Thus evolutionists seek to save the soup.

But for several reasons, to no avail. Amino acids are not stable in water and in the ancient ocean would exist in only negligible quantities. If the organic soup had ever existed, some of its compounds would have been trapped in sedimentary rocks, but in spite of 20 years of searching, “the earliest rocks have failed to yield any evidence of a prebiotic soup.” Yet “the existence of a prebiotic soup is crucial.” So “it comes as . . . a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence.”⁠⁶

The Chances of a Protein Forming

Allow the soup that nature disallows. Millions of amino acids in the soup, hundreds of different kinds, roughly half of them in a left-handed form and half right-handed. Would the amino acids now connect up in long chains to make proteins? Would only the 20 kinds needed be selected by chance out of the hundreds of kinds in the soup? And from these 20 kinds, would chance select only the left-handed forms found in living organisms? And then line them up in the right order for each distinctive protein and in the exact shape required for each one?⁠⁷ Only by a miracle.

A typical protein has about one hundred amino acids and contains many thousands of atoms. In its life processes a living cell uses some 200,000 proteins. Two thousand of them are enzymes, special proteins without which the cell cannot survive. What are the chances of these enzymes forming at random in the soup​—if you had the soup? One chance in 10^40,000. This is 1 followed by 40,000 zeros. Written out in full, it would fill 14 pages of this magazine. Or, stated differently, the chance is the same as rolling dice and getting 50,000 sixes in a row. And that is for only 2,000 of the 200,000 needed for a living cell.⁠⁸ So to get them all, roll 5,000,000 more sixes in a row!