BarryDesborough, 8th Jan '26
Evolution deniers like to talk about the origin of life and say that "secularists", "atheists" or "evolutionists" etc., take your pick, cannot explain it. They crow that this means that any "worldview" other than their own fails.
They neglect to examine their own "worldview". All they do is to say that GodDidIt is an explanation. This is a shade of meaning of the word "explain" that I am unfamiliar with.
Looking up the definition and etymology of "explanation", I came across a pretty good explanation, (see what I did there? ;)); "a statement about how or why something is the way it is".
Literal interpreters of Genesis 1 generally tend to fail to notice that their interpretation claims that God created the world, but created life indirectly, via the natural world itself, the earth and the waters "bringing it forth". They do not give God credit for creating a natural world that could bring forth life. I am baffled by their reluctance to learn about nature, given that they think their God created it.
Most people, believers or not, agree that it looks like life did emerge from the natural world, however the world came about. But nobody has, as yet, produced a detailed plausible account of how this happened. Critics of ideas about the natural origin of life often claim that the ideas are claimed to be a theory, meaning a scientific theory - something backed by evidence and thoroughly tested. This is untrue. It is a criticism of a straw-man position, and if knowingly made, it is an intellectually dishonest one. It is not a theory but a hypothesis.
Such a dishonest argument is made by people misguidedly motivated to try and damage the theory of evolution, despite the fact that evolution, unless qualified, usually means the evolution of life and the origin of species from existing species, not the origin of life itself. Biological evolution only starts when you have - biology.
They also run the risk that this sort of "God of the gaps" argument may have the rug pulled out from under it upon the discovery of a full natural explanation, as has happened with many other natural phenomena before.
The notion of biogenesis, or spontaneous generation, is often conflated with the origin of life. Biogenesis was a folk 'theory' that, since Pasteur, is agreed upon by everyone as being incorrect in saying that "living [complex, developed] creatures could arise from non-living matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular" - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation
Vitalism. This was the idea that "living organisms are differentiated from the non-living by the presence of forces, properties or powers including those which may not be physical or chemical." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism. The idea of an «élan vital» or vital force was thought to be a 'vital' aspect of living as opposed to non-living things. This was famously lampooned as a serious idea by the supposed «élan locomotif», offered as an 'explanation', tongue firmly in cheek, by Julian Huxley, grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, close friend and supporter of Charles Darwin, as to how and why railway locomotives work. No such «élans», either vital or locomotive have ever been identified, and, of course, they are no substitutes for explanations.
Organic and inorganic chemistry. Related to vitalism was the idea that organic compounds could only be produced by living things. There was some - special something - in organic compounds as opposed to inorganic ones. Organic compounds, supposedly, could not be produced by inorganic chemicals and non-living processes. This idea was disproved by the first synthesis of an organic compound, urea, by Friedrich Wöhler - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_W%C3%B6hler. Since then, a virtually unlimited number of organic compounds have been synthesized from inorganic compounds using non-living processes. We could say that Wöhler had peed on the idea!
Thus it was shown that there is no special 'substance' or quality to living things that distinguishes them from non-living things - except for the particular arrangement of matter that - er - vitalizes them. If anyone is looking for a rôle for an unnatural entity, it would have to be in the arrangement of ordinary matter. The same goes with the origin of life. There is no special, mysterious ingredient that marks the acquisition by a material thing of the status of 'living'.
One example of creationist dishonesty is the presentation of experiments such as those of Miller and Urey as "failed attempts to create the origin of life". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment. They never were such attempts. Nevertheless, they were interesting and thought provoking experiments to see if the conditions at the time of the early earth, as they were thought to be at the time, could produce interesting organic molecules. They did. Many more experiments and observations have since indicated a range of conditions under which organic molecules of interest to the question of the origins of life have been found.
The origin of life is a fascinating, and as yet unresolved question for science.
https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-origin-and-nature-of-life.html
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