Our Origins and Our Ultimate Questions: Part Two

The Origin of Life on Earth (or Elsewhere): Did God Create Life?

The upshot is that those biologists and biochemists who study the origin of life, whether an origin indigenous to our planet, or one arriving from the depths of outer space via a panspermia scenario, have not required resorting to supernatural explanations for the creation of life. You won’t find the phrase ‘and then a miracle occurred’ in the textbooks between discussions that link pre-biology with biology.

Life, even microbial life, is still very, very complex (try making a microbe from scratch if you doubt it). The fact that life arose from scratch on Earth within a very, very short span of geological time after the planet formed is a bit suspect IMHO. But what if Earth were seeded by microbial life forms already in existence from space (or deliberately seeded by extraterrestrials as the Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick has proposed)? Now I realize that just puts off the origin of life question to another time(s) and place(s). However, given the vastness of the cosmos is far greater than that of our finite globe, and given that the cosmos existed for vastly longer periods of time before our sun, solar system and home planet came into existence, such additional time and space easily turns the improbable into a near certainty. And once established somewhere, life could spread throughout that time and space, until it reached us.

Earth arose billions of years after our Universe and our galaxy had evolved, ample time for life to have arisen elsewhere, and seed the early Earth. This is the concept of panspermia. We know that comets, meteors, and the cosmic dust within outer space are chock-o-block full of complex organic molecules. We know that simple terrestrial life can survive the outer space environment if suitably shielded – and it doesn’t take much to do the shielding. We know that surface bits from planets and their moons can be ejected into space, carry a cargo of microbes, and land on another planet, even eons later with the microbes still viable. Of course 99.999% of all such microbial life will be doomed to forever wander in space or crash onto a cold, surface of a planet with no atmosphere or water, or plunge into a star, etc. But, sheer numbers, like terrestrial plant seeds, will insure that now and again some microbes will land on a hospitable abode and be fruitful and multiple and evolve. The interesting bit is that if then, then now. And thus panspermia will be happening today. Certainly some meteorites which have impacted Earth have inside them ‘organized elements’ suggestive of microbial structures – the Murchison Meteorite from Australia is one such stone. The problem is terrestrial contamination as there are often lengthy time periods between their fall and their discovery. As an aside, if Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe are correct (and I believe they are), microbes (bacteria and viruses) impacting Earth today are largely responsible for some select and various disease epidemics or pandemics, past, present, and no doubt future.

The Origin of Humans: Did God Create Man (and Woman)?

To religious fundamentalists, it’s a no-brainer that God created man – in His image. Now if there were no fossils of manlike hominoid beings; if there were not any current living beings that shared our basic body plan (such as many of the primates do – apes, monkeys, chimpanzees, etc.); if humans were so unique that they stood out like a lone red sports car in a field of black & white model-T’s, or like a lone pineapple in a basketful of tomatoes, then ascribing a very unique origin to humankind would be a plausible hypothesis, of which God or gods might have appealing logic (albeit not proven).

Alas, that’s not the case whether in terms of the fossil evidence or of body plans and fundamental biochemistry similarities between us and the other primates. We’re just another model-T or tomato (and some would argue rotten tomato at that).

Creation myths trying to explain human origins are, across the board, pretty wild and absurd in light of modern understandings that deal with life, our Universe, and everything. The fictional origin of Frankenstein’s monster (Frankenstein was the name of the scientist, not the name of the creation) makes more sense than breathing some sort of vital essence into dust (and does your basic pile of dust contain all the necessary chemical ingredients to make up and sustain a living human? If so, put some dust on your menu). And that bit about Adam’s rib – well, let me say that the Loch Ness Monster has way more credibility.

Darwin and those following him, those evolutionary biologists and physical anthropologists, have easily accounted for the broad-brush origin and rise of our modern human species.