A recent popular science article begins with the words, “A new study published in July 2025 tackles one of science’s most profound mysteries – how did life first emerge from non-living matter on early Earth?”¹ As is so typical in such articles, the author simply assumes that life did naturally arise from nonliving chemicals. It is almost as if he is attempting to frame the debate by excluding from the outset even the possibility of supernatural creation. Instead of asking how life naturally arose, scientists (and thinking people everywhere) would do well to ask the question: Did life naturally arise, or was it created?

As described in both popular and technical papers, systems biology professor Robert G. Endres attempted to estimate the requirements for the spontaneous generation of a hypothetical protocell from a primordial soup on early Earth.^1,2 He concluded that such a protocell, with an information content of about a billion bits, could, in principle, spontaneously arise from primordial soup in 500 million years—but only if a small fraction of the interactions leading to the protocell are consistently preserved over “vast stretches of time.”² Endres acknowledged the “formidable entropic and informational barriers” to the formation of such a protocell.² In spite of these barriers, Endres stated that “abiotic evolution, however slow and strange, remains a viable (if mind-bending) explanation.”² But if abiotic (or chemical) evolution really is viable, why is it “strange” and “mind-bending”?

Apparently, Endres is not terribly confident in life’s ability to naturally arise from nonliving chemicals, because he throws out “directed panspermia” as a fallback option.^1,2 Directed panspermia, the idea that intelligent extraterrestrials in the distant past “seeded” Earth with life, is nothing new; it was suggested by molecular biologist Francis Crick, chemist Leslie Orgel, and astronomers Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovskii in the mid-1960s and early 1970s.^3,4

A little thought, however, quickly reveals that directed panspermia doesn’t really explain life’s origin. If life on Earth were seeded here by intelligent extraterrestrials from outer space, how did the extraterrestrials themselves come to be? Claiming that they, too, are the result of abiogenesis on their planet only pushes the problem further back in time, as does claiming that they are the result of another directed panspermia experiment performed by an even older civilization.

Calculations showing the unreasonableness of a naturalistic origin of life are nothing new. Long before the advent of the intelligent design movement, biblical creationists like ICR founders Dr. Henry M. Morris and Dr. Duane Gish were using probability calculations to demonstrate the unreasonableness of chemical evolution.⁵ Evolutionists had no answer to them then, and they still have no answer. Wealthy evolutionists are offering a ten million dollar prize to anyone who can provide a plausible naturalistic explanation for life’s origin, but this prize remains unclaimed to this day.⁶ In 2020, renowned Rice University chemist and outspoken Christian Dr. James Tour drew criticism from evolutionists for claiming that origin-of-life researchers are “clueless” about how life began.⁷ But in 2011, Scientific American, despite its strong pro-evolution bias, had already conceded this point, acknowledging that scientists “don’t have a clue how life began.”⁸ In 2023, Tour stated he would publicly withdraw all his public criticisms of origin-of-life research if researchers could convincingly solve just one of five key challenges to chemical abiogenesis.^9,10 Today, in 2025, origin-of-life researchers still have no response. The bottom line is that evolutionists have no good explanation for how life could arise from nonliving chemicals.

A supernatural creator is the only rational explanation for our existence. That Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ, is also the Savior of the world and its coming King: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”¹¹

References

1. Thompson, M. What Were the Chances of Abiogenesis? Universe Today. Posted on universetoday.com July 31, 2025, accessed August 1, 2025.
2. Endres, R. G. 2025. The Unreasonable Likelihood of Being: Origin of Life, Terraforming, and AI. arXiv preprint. Posted on arxiv.org July 24, 2025.
3. Shklovskii, I. S. and C. Sagan. 1966. Intelligent Life in the Universe. New York: Dell Publishing.
4. Crick, F. H. C. and L. E. Orgel. 1973. Directed Panspermia. Icarus. 19: 341–346.
5. Morris, H. M. 1970. Scientific Creationism. New Leaf Publishing Group. Green Forest, AR.
6. Evolution 2.0 Prize. Evolution 2.0. Posted on evo2.org, accessed August 1, 2025.
7. Tour, J. Scientists Are Clueless on the Origin of Life. YouTube. Posted on youtube.com September 11, 2020, accessed August 1, 2025.
8. Horgan, J. Pssst! Don’t Tell the Creationists, but Scientists Don’t Have a Clue How Life Began. Scientific American. Posted on scientificamerican.com February 28, 2011, accessed August 1, 2025.
9. Hebert, J. Renowned Chemist on Origin-of-Life: Put Up or Shut Up. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org December 4, 2023, accessed August 1, 2025.
10. Coppedge, D. F. Christian Chemist Trounces 10 Leading OoL Researchers. Creation Evolution Headlines. Posted on crev.info November 8, 2023, accessed August 1, 2025.
11. John 1:4.

* Dr. Jake Hebert is a research scientist at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.