Origin of Life

PREBIOTIC SOUP NON-EXISTENT IN FOSSIL RECORD

Geochemists have determined that physical evidence for the so-called prebiotic soup, if it actually happened, would be detectable within the Precambrian fossil layer. However, research has shown that no such evidence exists which raises more doubts about the supposed chemical emergence of life.

The Miller Urey Experiment is still praised as providing evidence that amino acids could have randomly formed on early earth. One of the primary assumptions made within the experiment was that the early earth’s atmosphere contained no free oxygen. But modern scientists have theorized that based on geologic and geochemical evidence most of the presumptions made by the experiment were incorrect.1

In the years following Miller’s experiment, new geochemical evidence showed that the assumptions Miller had made about the early atmosphere were incorrect…evidence strongly suggests neutral gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor; not methane, ammonia, and hydrogen. This…evidence implies that prebiotic atmospheric conditions were hostile, not friendly, to the production of amino acids and other essential building blocks of life…producing extremely low yields of biological building blocks…(and atmospheric oxygen) causes biochemicals to degrade rapidly.”

Meyer, Stephen C “Signature in the Cell” p.225

James Brooks and Gordon Shaw, two leading geochemists, argue that if an ocean rich in amino and nucleic acids had existed in the past history of earth, there would be large deposits of nitrogen-rich minerals (nitrogenous cokes) in metamorphosed Precambrian sedimentary rock layers. However, no such evidence exists. The Precambrian organic matter is a mere .015% or just a more than 1/100th of 1%.2

Considering the quantities of prebiotic materials that would have been required for the chemical emergence of life based on the needs of even the simplest cell, there would have been massive evidence chemically detectable within the Precambrian layers of the fossil record– but there is no such evidence. Therefore, this illustrates the extreme fragility (and delusional belief) that naturalism via a chemical prebiotic “soup” somehow caused the emergence of life.

Other related blogs: Deep Divergence in Precambrian layers, Cambrian Layers missing Transitionary Forms or Missing Links, Darwin’s Missing Fossil Evidence, Punctuated Equilibrium Offered to Explain Missing Links in Fossil Record, Cambrian Explosion limited to only 5 million years?

1 Meyer, Stephen C. “The Signature of the Cell” 2009 p. 225

2 Brooks, James “The Origins of Life” p. 118