What Was the Origin of the First Life on Earth?

That question has been around for hundreds of years.

Origin of life is the hardest question in science. No one knows how the first cell came about. But there's a simpler, more fundamental question: Where did the information come from? An answer will trigger a quantum leap in Artificial Intelligence. This may be as big as the transistor or the discovery of DNA itself. (3)​

One ancient view of the origin of life, from Aristotle until the 19th century, is of spontaneous generation. This theory held that "lower" animals were generated by decaying organic substances and that life arose by chance. (1)

​Francesco Redi 5 was the first person (in 1665) to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies and not from decaying meat.

​Louis Pasteur’s (4) 1859 experiment is widely seen as having settled the question of spontaneous generation. Pasteur made a flask with a swan neck to see if particles would form when the opening pointed downward. The flask with the neck broken off yielded contaminated particles while the intact swan neck did not have contaminants. Therefore, this shows that spontaneous generation does not occur.

While Pasteur and Redi disproved spontaneous generation, those who believe in abiogenesis would necessitate a belief that chemicals spontaneously interacted to form a living cell. There would have been no functional system but simply molecules interacting through chemistry and physics.

​From Redi and Pasteur it is concluded that life cannot come from nonliving things. What did create original life? Charles Darwin (2) in 1859 believed that life could have emerged from a "warm little pond". Some scientists, and lay people, today still believe that the origin of first life was in a warm water environment. We will see that a water environment is detrimental to the development of proteins. If life did not come from a water environment, where did it originate?

​This website will focus on the age-old question of the origin of first life. It will emphasize discussion on abiogenesis, life from nonlife. The website will look at the sciences, the hard sciences, biology, chemistry, physics and biochemistry. Do not panic. Read through the science. Some of it you may not understand, but the purpose in using the hard sciences is to show the immense complexity of the creation of the first cell and the colossal improbability of it occurring naturally.

Evolution & Insights from Complexity of First Life

Evolution will be discussed briefly from the standpoint that evolution teaches that simple living organisms evolve into more complex living organisms. Abiogenesis is prebiotic and pre-evolutionary. The “theory of evolution” has been around for about 160 years. Charles Darwin first put forth the idea in 1859, and it is still a widely accepted theory. But it does have many opponents, including those attending scientific meetings that discuss alternative mechanisms for one species changing into another species. How prevalent is this belief in evolution? Two-thirds of Americans believe scientists have made living cells in the lab, and one-third believe scientists have made living organisms such as frogs.

Greek ideas about evolution were quite different from modern scientific understanding. In ancient Greece, philosophers such as Anaximander and Empedocles proposed ideas that could be seen as precursors to the concept of evolution.

 Anaximander, suggested that life originated in the sea and gradually evolved into more complex forms. He believed that humans evolved from fish-like creatures and that different species arose from a common ancestor. Empedocles, proposed the idea of natural selection. He believed that organisms that were better adapted to their environment were more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on their favorable traits to future generations.

 However, it is important to note that these ideas were not based on scientific evidence or observation in the way that modern evolutionary theory is. They were philosophical speculations and did not have the same level of empirical support. So, while the ancient Greeks may have had some early ideas that touched on the concept of evolution, it was not until much later that the scientific understanding of evolution as we know it today was developed.

No one has ever made a living cell out of nonliving matter (chemicals). Dr. James Tour (6)

Some scientists have made minor changes in a currently living cell, but no one has made a living cell. Dr. James Tour is a synthetic organic chemist with over 700 (yes, 700) peer-reviewed scientific papers and over 120 patents. He is a nanoscientist who can make molecular race cars. He is emphatic that no one has a clue on how to make a living cell. In most of Dr. Tour's YouTube presentations, he explains with science how abiogenesis never existed and does not exist today. In his presentations, he talks about why chemistry does not support abiogenesis. For Dr. Tour's video, click here.

​"Science doesn't say anything, scientist's do."

Dr Frank Turek (7)

It will be shown that the known laws of physics, chemistry and biology do not explain the origin of first life.​

I guarantee that the information in this article will change your life. How your life is changed is up to you. Will you see the immense complexity of life as a fascinating event that just happened?

Note: How to read Origin of First Life.

First, read the introduction.

Second, read each sections Key Highlights.

Third, read each section.

References

1. Abiogenesis - Wikipedia 

2. Darwin, Charles. On The Origin of Species, 1859

3. Evolution 2.0 

4. Pasteur, Louis. Wikipedia 

5. Redi, Francesco. Wikipedia 

6. Tour, James. - YouTube 

7. Turek, Frank. Science Doesn't Say Anything- Scientists Do - Cross Examined

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