from happening. The scientists say that ”the formation of biopolymers (viz. Oligonucleotides, proteins, polysaccharides) necessary to create and sustain living systems requires condensation (i.e., water loss) reactions between monomers, which chemical equilibrium makes decidedly unfavorable in water.” They propose that ”The observed generation of peptides from free amino acids at the air–water interface of pure water droplets, the simplest of all prebiotic systems, suggests that settings such as atmospheric aerosols or sea spray may have provided a unique and ubiquitous environment to overcome the energetic hurdles associated with condensation and polymerization of biomolecules in water. They ”propose that the interface of aqueous microdroplets serves as a drying surface that shifts the equilibrium between free amino acids in favor of dehydration via stabilization of the dipeptide isomers. These findings offer a possible solution to the water paradox of biopolymer synthesis in prebiotic chemistry. (Holden et al 2022)

The RNA World Hypothesis is the idea that RNA could have jumpstarted Earth’s biology without DNA or protein. Vaidya et al. demonstrated that a cooperative cycle made up of three self-replicating RNAs could outcompete those same RNAs acting as individual replicators. They ”show that mixtures of RNA fragments that self-assemble into self-replicating ribozymes spontaneously form cooperative catalytic cycles and networks. We find that a specific,three-membered network has highly cooperative growth dynamics. When such cooperative networks are competed directly against selfish autocatalytic cycles, the former grow faster, indicating an intrinsic ability of RNA populations to evolve greater complexity through cooperation. We can observe the evolvability of networks through in vitro selection. Our experiments highlight the advantages of cooperative behaviour even at the molecular stages of nascent life.” (Vaidya et al 2012)

Nucleic acid molecules, such as DNA and RNA, likely evolved due to their unique ability to self-structure into liquid crystal (LC) phases. This facilitated processes like chemical ligation, self-replication, and information storage. The biochemists ”argue that the present nucleic acid molecules emerged as those most capable of self-structuring by a cascade of pairing and stacking into LC structures, enabling chemical ligation, self-replication and hence information storage. In conclusion, we have described recent findings on the surprising self-assembly properties of ultrashort fragments of DNA and RNA. Their LC phases share most properties with those of longer DNA strands, but some intriguing features, as demixing of helices from single strands and the much shorter cholesteric pitch, wait for detailed analysis and full understanding. These results, in addition to confirming DNA as a versatile building block for soft matter research, suggest that the very emergence of nucleotides as information carrying polymers and the string-like structure of nucleic acids could have arisen from the strongly intertwined tendencies of selective pairing, stacking and LC ordering. (Zanchetta 2009)

Another ”study shows that various mafic rock glasses almost certainly present on the surface of the Hadean Earth catalyze the formation of polyribonucleic acid in water starting from nucleoside triphosphates. Both gel electrophoresis and ultrafiltration show that this polyribonucleic acid is, on average, 90–150 nucleotides in length. RNA molecules of this length are sufficiently long to participate in various laboratory processes that are reminiscent of RNA-based Darwinism. Kinetic data suggest that a small impact region on the Hadean surface containing just a few metric tons of fractured and water-permeated glass could have had the ability to produce close to a gram of RNA per day, limited (of course) by the supply of triphosphates. (Jerome et al 2022)

A group of researchers ”showed that NAAs (N-acyl amino acids) could readily assemble into vesicles on their own under acidic pH conditions, and maintain the vesicular form at relatively high temperatures of 60 #C.” . ”Given its amphiphilic nature, the most logical advantage that one might envisage is that of NAA acting as a membrane compartment of early protocells. Recent studies show that NAAs could get incorporated into preformed oleic acid and POPC vesicles thereby enabling membrane growth. This indicates the possibility of using NAAs as amphiphilic systems with a “tunable pH”. Interestingly, this also widens the possible environmental regimes where protocellular membranes could have formed on the early Earth.” (Joshi et al 2021)

Other scientists looked into coacervates as a possible starting point for life. A coacervate is a phase-separated droplet-like structure that forms when certain types of molecules, particularly amphiphilic molecules such as proteins or lipids, come together in an aqueous solution. They ”were able to demonstrate how a proliferating droplet protocell could be formed by the oligomerisation of amino acid thioesters and functionalised by oligonucleotides. Such a protocell could have served as a link between “chemistry” and “biology” during the origins of life. This study may serve to explain the emergence of the first living organisms on primordial Earth.” The describe the process by saying that ”Oligopeptides generated from the monomers spontaneously formed droplets through liquid–liquid phase separation in water. The droplets underwent a steady growth–division cycle by periodic addition of monomers through autocatalytic self-reproduction. Heterogeneous enrichment of RNA and lipids within droplets enabled RNA to protect the droplet from dissolution by lipids.” (Matsuo&Kurihara 2021) .

The early Earth appears to have had the right properties to produce the ingredients for life. A group of biochemists ”experimentally showed that meteoritic and volcanic iron-rich particles are efficient catalysts for converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons, methanol, ethanol, formaldehyde, and acetaldehyde, which are important precursors for lipids, nucleosides, sugars, and amino acids. These particles exhibit catalytic activity in the presence of naturally occurring minerals and atmospheric CO2, H2 or H2O at temperatures and pressures representative of the early Earth. Since the early Earth’s atmosphere has likely been evolving toward a more oxidizing state, the oxygen-containing organic compounds would have been produced more efficiently with time, promoting further synthesis of more complex prebiotic compounds. Thus, the early Earth and similar young rocky exoplanets could be regarded as a giant catalytic reactor converting feedstock atmospheric gases into complex prebiotic organic matter.” (Peters et al 2023)

One group of researchers has found that large amounts of phoshorus could have been created by lightning strikes, facilitating the emergence of life.

”Phosphorus is one of the key elements for life, involved in biomolecules such as DNA, RNA, phospholipids, and ATP. We propose that under the conditions on early Earth, phosphorus reduction via lightning strikes is a more significant process than previously appreciated, providing a widespread, quiescent source of reduced phosphorus.” The researchers ”propose an alternative source for widespread phosphorus reduction, arguing that lightning strikes on early Earth potentially formed 10–1000 kg of phosphide and 100–10,000 kg of phosphite and hypophosphite annually. Therefore, lightning could have been a significant source of prebiotic, reactive phosphorus which would have been concentrated on landmasses in tropical regions. Lightning strikes could likewise provide a continual source of prebiotic reactive phosphorus independent of meteorite flux on other Earth-like planets, potentially facilitating the emergence of terrestrial life indefinitely. (Hess et al 2021)

Biochemists also study a phenomenon called ”cosmic chemistry”. Laboratories can simulate deep space conditions and study existing asteroids and meteorites to see what kind of molecules they carry on them. Molecules needed for life were likely carried to Earth during the late heavy bombardment. As Kwok put it, ”Complex organics are now commonly found in meteorites, comets, asteroids, planetary satellites, and interplanetary dust particles.” (Kwok 2019)

A study found that carbonaceous chondites (stony meteorites) could have delivered life’s building blocks on Earth. Again, from the abstract: ”The origin of life might be sparked by the polymerization of the first RNA molecules in Darwinian ponds during wet-dry cycles. The key life-building block ribose was found in carbonaceous chondrites. Its exogenous delivery onto the Hadean Earth could be a crucial step toward the emergence of the RNA world.” The researchers ”found that life-building blocks of the RNA world could be synthesized inside parent bodies and later delivered onto the early Earth." (Paschek 2022)

Another study found the following: ”Sugars and their derivatives are essential to all terrestrial life. Their presence in meteorites, together with amino acids, nucleobases, amphiphiles, and other compounds of biological importance, may have contributed to the inventory of organics that played a role in the emergence of life on Earth. Sugars, including ribose (the sugar of RNA), and other sugar derivatives have been identified in laboratory experiments simulating photoprocessing of ices under astrophysical conditions. In this work, we report the detection of 2-deoxyribose (the sugar of DNA) and several deoxysugar derivatives in residues produced from the ultraviolet irradiation of ice mixtures consisting of H2O and CH3OH. The detection of deoxysugar derivatives adds to the inventory of compounds of biological interest that can form under astrophysical conditions and puts constraints on their abiotic formation pathway. Finally, we report that some of the deoxysugar derivatives found in our residues are also newly identified in carbonaceous meteorites. (Nuevo et al 2018)

One group of scientists studied nucleobase synthesis in interstellar ices. The scientists ”report the simultaneous detection of all three pyrimidine (cytosine, uracil and thymine) and three purine nucleobases (adenine, xanthine and hypoxanthine) in interstellar ice analogues composed of simple molecules including H2O, CO, NH3 and CH3OH after exposure to ultraviolet photons followed by thermal processes, that is, in conditions that simulate the chemical processes accompanying star formation from molecular clouds. Photolysis of primitive gas molecules at 10 K might be one of the key steps in the production of nucleobases. The present results strongly suggest that the evolution from molecular clouds to stars and planets provides a suitable environment for nucleobase synthesis in space. (Oba et al 2019)

Writing already in 2013, Pross and Pascal say that ”However, the general view, now strongly supported by recent studies in systems chemistry, is that the process of abiogenesis was governed by underlying physico-chemical principles, and the central goal of OOL studies should therefore be to delineate those principles. Pross&Pascal 2013 Pross & Pascal think that ”life on the Earth appears to have emerged through the spontaneous emergence of a simple (unidentified) replicating system, initially fragile, which complexified and evolved towards complex replicating systems exhibiting greater DKS (dynamic kinetic stability)” (Pross&Pascal 2013)

processes that the universe spontaneously produces. This would mean that someone could eventually discover these processes and recreate them in a laboratory (which would be impossible if life was made artificially – see point about provability below).

This approach of seeking to refute the possibility of abiogenesis makes it seem as if every discovery about the origin of life reduces design. The possible role assigned to the Intelligent Designer in the universe shrinks: it becomes an ”ever-shrinking pocket of scientific ignorance”.

"Anybody who thinks they know the solution to this problem (of the origins of life) is deluded; but anybody who thinks this is an insoluble problem is also deluded." Leslie Orgel

2) Mystery, Therefore Magic. The "Mystery, Therefore Magic" fallacy occurs when someone asserts that because something is currently unexplained or mysterious, it must be the result of magic or supernatural forces. We have no knowledge of a God who interacts with the world, nor can we observe him directly. Opponents of evolution and abiogenesis often argue that a mind was needed to insert information into life. Yet all this supposedly happened eons ago. No one has any direct observations of the Intelligent Designer’s activities in the world. No scientist has ever observed God creating new animals, plants, organs, or chemical systems. God never moved the planets in their tracks or created new stars in the sky. We have no scientific observations of supernatural beings manipulating matter, energy, time, and space. The explanation ”God did it” has never been proven true in the history of science.Religious believers often consider their religions to be divine revelations. However, there is no tangible evidence for this, either.

It is often claimed that the Designer explanation applies the Occam’s razor. It is said that the supernatural Designer explanation is a scientifically parsimonious inference. In reality, it is the opposite of parsimony. An explanation is invented - an entirely new kind of being, a supernatural Intelligent Designer who can manipulate time and space at will.

Much of the ID literature focuses on chemical structures whose construction could not have been possible in step-by-step naturalistic processes - at least from their point of view. Entire books are spent proving that the naturalistic explanations for a particular chemical system or the origin of life are inadequate. Then the conclusion is drawn that God created life. It may be possible to prove that life could not have arisen naturally and spontaneously, according to current knowledge. Discoveries are being made, but the complete picture of how life originated has not yet been drawn. But how can we prove that there are no unknown naturalistic mechanisms, pathways or processes that gave rise to life? What makes the year 2024 so important that, if something has not yet been discovered by then, we must conclude that it will never be discovered? Why should everything be known by now?

At the same time, it does not seem to worry creationists at all that modern physicists do not know what makes up 95% of the universe. Scientific discoveries have shown that our visible universe makes up only 5% of the entire universe, 25 is dark matter, and the remaining 70% is dark energy. The mystery of ”what makes up 95% of the universe” has not yet been solved by cosmologists. However, no one has claimed that God is driving the universe and pulling it back down in other places.

One can argue that, according to current knowledge, a living cell cannot form through naturalistic processes. But you cannot prove that this is not possible under any circumstances. We are not omniscient gods and do not have complete knowledge of what the universe can or cannot produce. We cannot rule out what we do not yet know.

"The supernatural is the natural not yet understood." - Elbert Hubbard

Fans of Erich von Däniksen might say that it was aliens who artificially jumpstarted life and modified evolution to bring it to completion. Even ”aliens did it” is more plausible than ”God did it” considering how long it took for life to emerge and how meandering the processes of life seems to have been. There are billions of fossils to prove it.

3) Unprovability. It is difficult to prove how life originated, even if it was through a series of naturalistic processes. The experiments on abiogenesis cannot be carried out over hundreds of millions of years. It is unclear whether experimenters will be able to duplicate exactly the conditions on early Earth because our knowledge is limited. Pross and Pascal say as follows;

”it seems probably that we will never know the precise historic path by which life on the Earth emerged, but, very much in the Darwinian tradition, it seems we can now specify the essence of the ahistoric principles by which that process came about.” (Pross&Pascal 2013)

If scientists demonstrate a plausible path from simple chemicals to self-organisation to a living cell, can they be sure it was the correct one? It could be that we cannot absolute certainty about how life originated - at least not until a time machine is invented, perhaps. But if life on Earth was indeed artificially created by God/ID, as the creationists would have us believe, then it is certain that it will always remain a mystery to us. There is no limit to what an omnipotent Intelligent Designer could have done to create life. He could have altered the existing molecules at will. He could have caused completely new molecules to pop into existence. He could have changed the environment, the pH, the temperature, the salinity of the water, the air pressure, and the intensity of radiation. He could have increased the lightning activity or even changed the planet from its normal orbit around the Sun to decrease or increase gravity, if necessary. The Designer was not limited to Earth either. Perhaps he worked somewhere else entirely and simply planted the cells he made on Earth.

Only the imagination can set limits to what an omnipotent god-designer could do. The Designer’s activities could consist of a complicated series of things that he causes to tumble into existence or that he manipulates in imaginative ways. Of course, it could also mean that he poofed the finished cell once and for all.

One will never be able to prove beyond doubt the origin of life, even if it was created in a ”stepwise series of synthesis and assembly processes” (Wong&Bartlett 2023). If the anti-abiogenesis alternative is true and an Intelligent Designer intervened to create life, it is guaranteed that the scientific solution will never be found. There is no way to reproduce a divine intervention - let alone a series of them - in a laboratory.

They have never given any details about the personality of the Designer or his way of working in the universe. They have not described the Designer's ”operational sequences” in creating life’s structures.

It's amusing how creationists and ID enthusiasts make fun of evolutionary science for using ”just so” explanations. This term comes from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories for Little Children. They are considered non-falsifiable ad-hoc stories based on little empirical evidence. The term generally refers to narratives provided for things that are common in religion - assertions without evidence. The only explanation ID theorists have for anything, however, is the word "design." Here is an explanation for what the Intelligent Designer supposedly did:

"The evidence of ID is seen in "irreducible complexity of molecular machines and circuits in the cell, the pattern of appearance of the major groups of organisms in the fossil record, the fine-tuning of the laws and constants of physics, the fine-tuning of our terrestrial environment, the information processing of system of the cell and even in the phenomenon known as "homology"." Stephen Meyer In Signature in the Cell, page 320.

In other words, in their view, God/ID tuned the physics of the universe for life and then artificially set life in motion. He later cranked up biological evolution at various stages and manually engineered many of its features. This ”manual evolutionary work” is now supposedly presented to us as ”irreducible complexity”. However, the explanations never go deeper than this. What exactly happened at the beginning of life, if not naturalistic chemical processes?

As said, it does not seem that the Designer had to create the first cell from scratch. Many of the molecules were already present in nature. So what exactly did he do? How did the Intelligent Designer augment the naturally occurring processes? And what happened during the Cambrian explosion about 540 million years ago if it was not evolutionary processes? What is macroevolution if it is not the accumulation of microscopic changes - what causes it, how does it come about? What does the Intelligent Designer do, how does he work, what mechanisms does he use? The answer is always the same - it is simply "design", ”intelligence” or the combination of the two.

This was pointed out in 2005 in the ruling of a famous Kitzmiller v. Dover Area case.

"For human artifacts, we know the Designer's identity, human, and the mechanism of design, as we have experience based upon empirical evidence that humans can make such things, as well as many other attributes including the Designer's abilities, needs, and desires. With ID, proponents assert that they refuse to propose hypotheses on the identity, do not propose a mechanism, and the Designer, he/she/it/they, has never been seen. Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, page 81.

The argument often put forward is as follows: DNA is a code for making proteins. Codes have codemakers who have foresight and skill. Therefore, an Intelligent Designer must ultimately be responsible for life. However, this Designer must have been there already to cause the Big Bang. He must have set everything in motion at the beginning. In the Big Bang, he could have had the intelligence, foresight and skill to create a universe in which life emerges naturally. The question is: why not create a universe in which life arises without artificial intervention?

Creationists would say that God began the universe with the Big Bang, allowed it to unfold for billion years, creating matter and eventually amino acids, lipids, and nucleic acids. Could it then be that the first cell formed from these biomolecules…? Well, that would be impossible for them. Instead, at this point God/ID noticed the flawed design of his universe, went back to assemble the molecules, and personally corrected his design. If the emergence of life required intervention, then this is not evidence of foresight but of a lack of it. The truly intelligent way a deity could create life would, of course, be to endow the universe with such properties that it would naturally give rise to life, so that no separate intervention(s) would be required. In that way, the formation of the universe would resemble the growth of an organism. In ancient philosophies, the world was often compared to a tree. We will come back to this.

Furthermore, the argument to prove the impossibility of abiogenesis is not compatible with the scale of the universe.We now know that the Earth is by no means the only planet in the universe. It is estimated that there are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. These galaxies each contain around one hundred billion stars. In our own galaxy alone, there are at least 100 billion stars, which is a typical number for a large galaxy. It is besides humongous but also homogeneous. This term refers to the idea that the universe is uniform and consistent in its properties. Stars and galaxies in our part of the universe behave in the same way as stars and galaxies in distant corners of the universe. The universe is made up of the same fundamental particles everywhere; it consists of the same hydrogen and helium that formed shortly after the Big Bang. It is basically the same ”stuff” everywhere: protons, neutrons, and electrons that formed in the nucleosynthesis of the Big Bang.

If the creationists’ argument about the impossibility of abiogenesis is correct, God fine-tuned the universe to life, but not quite so precisely that it actually produces life. Then it would be logical to think that the universe is incapable of producing life anywhere. As mentioned earlier, according to modern estimates, the universe contains about 200 billion trillion star systems. All these star systems must have been created by the same deity or Designer; they are part of the same universe. Most star systems appear to contain planets, too – astronomers have already found thousands of them. So the question arises: if life cannot arise through naturalistic processes, is a divine intervention required every time a cell is to form and life is to emerge? Does this mean that God is flying around the universe artificially inseminating the 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 star systems he created?

We also know that stars and planets are still forming in the universe. According to one estimate, around 4800 stars are formed in our universe every second. Star formation will continue far into the future. So, is God’s direct activity needed to manually implant life into these worlds over aeons on end?

The physical parameters of the universe could not exist in this form if an intelligent agent had not created them. The fine-tuning argument states that the universe produces its contents naturally and without artificial control. It does not require intervention because it was set up with such fine-tuned properties. The fine-tuning involves a variety of parameters that are often presented in the literature on intelligent design and creationism.

If the gravitational force were not much smaller than the electric force, then the universe would have collapsed before stars could form. The strength of the gravitational force in relation to the electromagnetic force could not be significantly altered. If gravity were a little stronger or electromagnetism a little weaker, all stars would be blue giants. If gravity were a little weaker or electromagnetism a little stronger, all stars would be red dwarfs. These stars do not go supernova, which is necessary for the proliferation of chemical elements.

The most massive stars fuse elements down to iron, boiling the gas in their cores to produce small amounts of many different atoms, including sulfur and calcium. When these stars go supernova, some of these atoms are dispersed back into the interstellar medium. From there, they can eventually be incorporated into new stars and planets. A change in the strong force would also affect nuclear fusion and supernova explosions.

In the early universe, matter exhibited inhomogeneities, unevenness, or ”ripples” the size of one part in a hundred thousand. If the inhomogeneity had been less than one tenth of today's value, no galaxies would have formed. If it were more than ten times its current value, the matter would be too clumpy, and only black holes would have formed.

The fine structure constant describes the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between charged particles. If this parameter were slightly larger, the stars would not be hot enough to heat planets to a temperature sufficient to sustain life. If it were smaller, the stars would burn out too quickly to allow the development of life.

The cosmological constant represents the energy associated with empty space itself and is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. An unfavourable cosmological constant leads to a universe that expands so quickly that the particles do not interact with each other, or to a universe that collapses in on itself just moments after the Big Bang.

This fine-tuning also applies to many chemical elements, such as water. Water has numerous properties that favour life. The solid form of water has a lower density than its liquid form. Ice floats. Without this property, water would freeze from the bottom up instead of forming a layer of ice that forms a thin, insulating surface layer on oceans and lakes. An ice age, as has occurred countless times in the past, could freeze the oceans into a solid mass and destroy all aquatic life. Water is also liquid over a wide temperature range and protects organisms from freezing or boiling. Water can dissolve more solids than any other substance, a property that is crucial for biochemical reactions and the transport of nutrients and waste products in living organisms. Pure water has a neutral pH of 7, which is close to the pH of many biological fluids. This property provides a stable environment in which biochemical reactions can take place in living organisms.

At this point, it should be mentioned that the solar system also has a natural origin, in the form of accretion processes, gravity, and centrifugal forces. Astronomers have understood the basic features of the formation of the solar system for almost 300 years. In general, the formation of star systems is not cited as an example of ”fine-tuning” in the universe. Nevertheless, it is part of the self-organization of the universe. And the universe must be fine-tuned for protostellar disks to form, from which star systems can condense. Protostellar disks have been observed at various stages of their formation in space. See the article on protostellar disks on this website.

The fine-tuning argument is a "must" for all theists. Anyone familiarizing themselves with arguments for God and design is bound to come across the fine-tuning argument. It is perhaps the best and most common argument for God and design there is. A related concept is the anthropic principle. This principle proposes that God created a perfectly tuned universe so that humanity (anthropos) could evolve. The universe could only have maintained the ”human-shaped” set of physical constants fine-tuned for life by design; God must have set up the universe at the Big Bang.

A common objection to the fine-tuning argument is that the parameters need not be exactly as they are. There is a parameter space in which it is possible to create a functioning universe and life. The parameters of the universe are like knobs on a radio: if you turned the knobs too much, the clear signal would turn into noise. Nevertheless, the parameters are in the right range. If there is a God, he must have set the parameters of the universe. But as the creationists suggest, the Designer could/should not have set up the universe to naturally produce life. If this were the case, this would disprove design for the creationists. Why else would they argue against the idea? So, if the universe creates the right conditions for life, according to ID supporters, this proves design: the emergence of life was predetermined by God/ID. God endowed the universe with the right physics to produce star systems and biomolecules. When they argue that the universe cannot possibly give rise to life, this also proves design: it took divine intervention to create life. The emergence of life is both inevitable and impossible. These are two contradictory arguments in favour of God and design. There is no reasonable way to reconcile them; they pull in opposite directions. This creates a paradox.

5b) Paradoxicality. The argumentation for design is inherently contradictory. This leads to a paradoxical situation. God is said to have fine-tuned the universe for life. But if it is discovered that the universe was able to produce life, i.e., that abiogenesis took place, that would be evidence against God and design. Suppose you find a clock that tells you the time in the form of seconds, minutes, and hours. This obviously means that the clock was designed for its task. If it is then established that it can also display the date, does this argue against the assumption that the clock was designed?

Within these galaxies, vast quantities of stars and planets formed. In this analogy, the star systems are the branches on which the leaves, the life, can grow.

If you compare the universe to a tree’s growth, then the ID theorists accept that the tree naturally forms roots, a trunk, and branches. But in their view, it is impossible for it to start leaving. It's like looking at a tree and saying

"Yes, this tree can obviously grow a trunk and branches. The tree can’t exist without them. But these leaves... They are far too complicated to have come from the tree itself. There must be a supernatural gardener who attached them to the tree by hand, one by one".

They rejoice at the sight of the tree growing a trunk and branching out, but vehemently deny its ability to produce leaves. This is incongruous but it brings us to the last point.

7) The debates about abiogenesis revolve around a false dilemma. The options are not limited to "atheistic abiogenesis" or "divine intervention". In other words, either life originated by God's direct action or it was produced by "chance". This rules out a viable answer. The third possibility is that abiogenesis occurred as part of design; God created a universe that naturally produced life. Many argue that God tuned the physics of the universe for life - so why shouldn't it be able to produce life as a result of its own processes? This solution says that the universe is capable of creating the ingredients for life, the biomolecules, and the suitable environment(s) in which these molecules can develop into life itself. This option is also consistent with the fine-tuning argument.

One could also argue that aliens kick-started life on our planet. But this solution just kicks the can down the road. The aliens themselves must have come from somewhere.

One could describe the universe as a ”self-organizing system”. In it, higher-level patterns emerge from the interactions of many simple components without the influence of a conscious orcestrator. The universe generates life and other organization in its patterns of self-assembly, self-structuring, self-reproduction or self-replication, self-sustenance, self-direction, self-organization, and autocatalytic (ie.”self-catalytic”) processes that are frequently mentioned in articles discussing abiogenesis. Molecules interact to form complex structures such as proteins, membranes, and cellular organelles. They arrange themselves into organized structures and maintain their structure and function over time. Molecules make copies of themselves. The products of a reaction facilitate or catalyze the same reaction, and the process accelerates. Eventually, molecules come to control their own development and respond to internal and external stimuli. Order and structure emerge in a system even without an external controller.

”All contemporary living cells are a collection of self-assembled molecular elements that by themselves are non-living but through the creation of a network exhibit the emergent properties of self-maintenance, self-reproduction, and evolution.” (Wieczorek et al 2014)

The more new data is collected, the more parts of the universe fall into the ”not designed" category.

Intelligent design involves a scientific hypothesis about a life-constructing, supernatural creator of life. But this entity has never been observed – there are no proven cases of God interacting with the world. So how can you explain anything with his work?

In normal scientific research, discoveries make headlines. ID proponents, on the other hand, spend much of their argument denying the evidence for biological evolution and abiogenesis. In the contrarian ideology, the remaining problems associated with abiogenesis and evolution are the mainstay of news articles and books. These articles imply that the problems are so significant that they require an Intelligent Designer as an explanation - a disembodied mind must have intervened in the processes of. In his book "Signature in the Cell" (2009), Stephen Meyer needs 300 pages to state the obvious scientific reality: The problem of abiogenesis has not been solved. How does he intend to prove that there are no unknown naturalistic mechanisms to create life? Nor does he describe the activities of the Designer in the origin of life.

It is not possible to prove that there is no unknown natural solution to abiogenesis. The reason why so many people believe that abiogenesis research is in deep trouble is because of a phenomenon called ”magnified minority”. Social media has magnified the importance of a handful of dissenting scientists who challenge the scientific consensus. There are about 34,800 people employed as biochemists and biophysicists and 55,300 as bioscientists in the US. Compare that number to the number of vocal creationists speaking out on social media. The numbers add up to perhaps a few per 10,000 scientists. What percentage of biochemists who deal with abiogenesis on a daily basis would say that their field of research is ultimately unsolvable?

There is no alternative explanation to explain the diversity of life. This poses a dilemma if ID is to be understood as a ”scientific alternative”, as its adherents would have us believe. On the one hand, to be scientific, they should have some substance in their explanations. The proponents of ID should describe the operations and mechanisms of the Intelligent Designer. What does he do specifically, and how does he work? Secondly, these actions are not limited by anything. They could consist of bringing everything into existence at once. Since the Designer is an omnipotent being, there could be no sequence of operations. The Designer could have imagined a living cell, snapped his fingers - and lo and behold, there was life. Would that not be the ”simplest” explanation?

These supposed artificial interventions also make the universe of creationism incomprehensible. The interventions would manifest themselves as inexplicable and unsolvable leaps to the biochemists researching the origin of life. Pleasant things are not necessarily true, of course. But if God (or even aliens) artificially jump-started life on our planet, it very likely means that its origin will never be understood.

One other problem with the argument against abiogenesis is that it paints an awkward picture of design. Antiabiogenesists believe that the universe contains a bad design that needs to be constantly repaired. It may seem obvious that the truly intelligent way in which a deity could design or create life would be to endow the universe with such properties that it naturally produces life, so that no separate intervention is required for life to come into being. In this way, the universe would resemble an organism.

Aside from demonstrating a ”bad design” of the universe, the anti-evolutionary, anti-abiogenetic ideology also paints a weird picture of God. Creationists often rebuke belief in Darwinian gradualism. However, since there have been billions of years of life in the past, they must logically accept the belief in “Designer gradualism”. According to this model, the Designer has guided evolution over billions of years and filled the planet with countless life forms that no one will ever see. They cannot believe in evolution because it is too ”random”. But they have no problem believing in a Designer god who randomly creates all kinds of life forms that soon disappear again. It's as if there are two gods here – a Great Architect who elegantly adjusts the physics of life and initiates everything at the Big Bang. In addition to the Architect, there is another god, a demiurge, who artificially creates life and later guides it providentially. This god guides evolution through several mass extinctions and fills the planet with billions of species most of which come to nothing. Read my book, Shoehorning God, for more details, or read the article ID as Creation Story on this website, which further illustrates this point.

The discussions revolve around a false dilemma. As with creationism in general, the effort is to show one facet of the scientific worldview wrong, and then the implication is that God must be responsible. The fact that we do not currently know how the first cell came into being does not prove that it was artificially created. If and when we learn to understand that process, it would not disprove that there is a God or that there is design in the universe. The only scientific discovery that could disprove God or design once and for all would be if it was found that the Big Bang was due to a ”random” event, like a quantum flux.

Although we cannot speak of an artificial design implemented into the world after the fact, a natural design is within the realm of possibility. Over billions of years, the universe has produced a planet at the right distance from the sun and with the right conditions for life to develop. Life has an endless chain going back to the first cell. This means that favorable conditions have prevailed on Earth for billions of years, allowing evolution to continue. Since the universe is homogeneous, it can be predicted that similar processes are ongoing elsewhere. Star systems are condensing from hydrogen and helium wherever there are molecular clouds. One could argue that life originates where planets are at the right distance from stars. And the evolution of life forms could be predicted to occur wherever life has originated.

The universe appears to naturally generate the various chemical components of life. For example, phospholipids spontaneously organize themselves into bubbles that form a convenient cell membrane. The lipid bubbles could then have accumulated all the organic molecules that are soluble in their membranes. They also break apart and form daughter ”cells”. Astronomers have found their precursors in space, as well as ribose, a precursor for RNA, as well as amino acids and even whole proteins. Many components of the cell appear to have formed in interstellar space and arrived at our planet on asteroids. They all consist of the most abundant molecules CHNOPS, which are formed in the slower nuclear processes inside stars. One could argue that all this is too convenient to be mere coincidence - and that design is built into the workings of the universe. If that were the case, one could learn to understand life’s origins.

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