The (Not-So) Simple Life (Reasonable Belief part 4)

It has been proposed, by those who demand a purely materialistic explanation, that life on earth arose "by accident", due to simple chemical processes reacting in a favorable environment. The terms "warm puddle of mud" and "pre-biotic soup" are frequently invoked to describe the kind of place where this process may have taken place. This process could be described as abiogenesis (life arising from nonliving matter).

Before we attempt to ascertain whether or not abiogenesis ever actually happened, let's first look at what the blind chemical process would have had to accomplish in order to produce a free-living organism. There are many varying definitions of "life" and the hallmarks of life vary from scientist to scientist. However, there are certain "minimum standards" that most scientists would stipulate to.

1. Life is separated and protected from its immediate environment via a barrier. For a "simple" cell, this means a cell membrane. This barrier must be designed in a way to let nutrients pass through from the environment into the organism, and to allow waste to be removed from the organism and ejected into the environment, without the structural integrity of the organism being compromised. 
2. Life has the ability to write, store, and pass along to progeny encoded and specific information. This information is used to organize internal systems, metabolic functions, reproductive functions and etc.
3. Life has the ability to read these instructions and perform functions according to these instructions.
4. Life has the ability to capture, metabolize, store and recall energy for utilization (work). It has the ability to change the energy from its original form into a form usable by itself, and to rid itself of waste byproducts that accumulate in the process of metabolization. 
5. Life has the ability to self-replicate/reproduce itself by passing encoded and specific information for the formation of the next generation of progeny.
6. Life has the ability to self diagnose and repair its constantly deteriorating physical matrix  of encoded and specific information, and the components used in the transmission of that information, and to repair the architecture of its internal systems.
7. Life has the ability to develop and grow from immature form to mature (able to reproduce) via the encoded and specific information provided by its parent(s).
8. Life has the ability to react to its environment in such a way that it maximizes its ability to survive, continue to develop and grow, and reproduce.
9. The encoded and specified information used for replication must be stable enough so that progeny are "copied" accurately enough to survive, but also have a sufficient degree of mutability to allow for adaptation, if necessary.

All free-living forms of life known to man, from the "simplest" single celled organism to the most complex mammal, has each of the nine characteristics listed above. All of these characteristic functions are carried out at the cellular level by extremely complex molecular machinery. If any of these characteristics were missing, there is no life, just a puddle of "mud".

In our previous article, we discussed the necessary pre-conditions necessary for life, and above we have listed the necessary qualities or characteristics of all free living organisms. In our next article we will explore whether or not blind chemical processes are sufficient to account for the origin of life. 

Thank you for taking the time to read my article. For more information on how I keep my worldview informed please go to http://crossroadspbc.org/