Three Days Before the Sun

By Warren LeRoi Johns

Based on a comprehensive collection of pertinent and almost always authoritative quotations, the author convincingly demonstrates that there has to be a creator for the innumerable complexities science has discovered and that, thanks to a benevolent and forgiving God, there is light at the end of the tunnel of life.

The book covers the comprehensive approach necessary for the broad question it poses including a chapter discussing the uniqueness of trees and another radiometric dating. However, what is very captivating about this book is its colorful metaphorical explanatory style. The author, who is an experienced attorney of note, uses a critical approach as he addresses the too-often accepted ethos of nihilism and points out how it is so very wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warren LeRoi Johns
• Release date: May 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476022192

Warren LeRoi Johns

Johns practiced law as a career in California, Maryland, and the District of Columbia until partial retirement in the summer of 1992. Admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court in 1963, he has been a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His non-fiction Dateline Sunday, U.S.A., drew national attention as a legal history documenting blue law confrontation with the U.S. Constitution's first amendment. His 1999 Ride to Glory targeted some of evolution's more obvious shortfalls while a lawyer’s academic perspective documented evolution’s most obvious “flaws” and “holes” in his 2007 Beyond Forever. A 1958 graduate of the University of Southern California's Law Center, and holder of La Sierra University's 1994 "Alumnus of the Year" award, the author’s professional resume appears in Who's Who in American Law; Who’s Who in America; and Who's Who in the World. Warren L. Johns, Esq. (ret.) [e-mail]

Book preview

1

Disarming the Big Bang

Chemical Evolution

You may find it hard to believe God could make everything from nothing. But the alternative is that nothing turned itself into everything. ¹

Mark Cahill

BANG!

Make that a colossal, cosmic-wide BIG BANG!!!

Voila! At that ancient instant, our Universe allegedly created itself!

The explosive idea of the creative power of spontaneous celestial fireworks took root in the phrase "hypothesis of the primeval atom," coined in 1927 by Georges Lemaltre. The Belgian priest looked back in deep time to a day without yesterday.

Successor Big Bangers speculate that somewhere in the deep time past, within the amorphous haze of a subatomic world of quantum foam, ² a cataclysmic explosion of a hot, dense, miniscule dot, no bigger than a period at the end of a sentence, activated a chain of events that supposedly evolved every star and planet in our universe. As the theory goes, hydrogen and helium were dividends of the initial bang.

Tied to an interpretation of quantum mechanics, the idea portrays a magic moment having occurred spontaneously 13.82 billion years before the present. Side-stepping any attempt to picture conditions prior to the conjectured explosion, the ancient date is viewed as a kick-off point for the formation of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which launched an inflation which allegedly created all matter composing our universe.

Stephen Hawking expressed reservations.

The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications whenever you start to discuss the origins of the universe. ³

The blinding paradox is just how a particle dot of quantum foam could have given mass to giant chunks of matter, self-creating billions of bright, burning fireballs, parading perpetually in space in some good-luck sequence of universal order, each pre-loaded with fuel powering indefinite existence.

The unproven philosophical idea cites quantum laws although seeming to rely on unproven suppositions. Did quantum laws predate the universe? If not, did the Big Bang create quantum laws?

Or the ultimate issue: Did the Big Bang actually occur?

Assumptive answers under the science banner borders on the theological. Without chemical evolution being proven as absolute fact, any theory of self-creating biological evolution lacks any scintilla of substance.

Thanks to the predictable routes traveled by billions of sparkling sky diamonds, mathematical calculations can plot the time and place of cosmic orbits with uncanny precision, whether dipping multi-millenniums into the past or far into an uncharted future. Humans navigate directions and calculate time by looking to the sky where stars carve repetitive paths through dark oceans of universal space.

The concept of an explosive force creating order out of nothingness is a head-scratcher for earthlings. Explosions witnessed on Planet Earth rip matter apart, strewing shredded fragments of rubble, helter-skelter in disorganized trash heaps. Surviving witnesses of the horrific bang that split the atom above Hiroshima in 1945 would testify the explosion didn't improve the landscape of their city.

The atomic bomb's devastation changed world history. So the inevitable question, If the atom can be split by humans, can the sciences of physics and mathematics devise methodologies that could explain reversing the process so as to successfully create atoms from invisible particles?

Speculation led to the current theory that our universe might have created itself from some hot, dense, subatomic-sized dot going Bang, by evolving gradually over vast chasms of deep time.

Something called cosmic microwave background radiation was discovered in 1964. But what could have triggered the Big Bang? Science has sought to identify a theoretical Higgs Boson (Higgs particle) that might possibly deliver the magical power that would give mass to other particles.

Without such a particle, the desired formula would be as inadequate as attempting to create water without oxygen (atomic number 8), as in H2O.

News was made in 2012 when researches announced discovery of a powerful particle believed by some to be the mysterious Higgs Boson, critical to the Big Bang equation. If real, such a particle's brief existence has been estimated to last less than a septillionth of a second.

Still, skepticism exists.

Prior to the announced discovery of the illusive, short-lived particle, one observer commented: …something is missing, we simply don't quite know what that something might be.⁵

Whether or not real, theorists assigned the miniscule particle the task of giving mass to enough matter to eventually decorate our universe with today's stars and planets.

This is a tall order given the unknown limits of the cosmic dimension. "The visible universe" is estimated by some to measure 160 billion light years across—with no known boundaries and containing about 70,000 million-million-million stars,⁶ red-hot balls of fire hanging like untethered, decorative ornaments in vacant emptiness.

The number 7 followed by 22 zeroes surpasses what an ordinary mortal could count correctly in a lifetime. In the brief whiff of time allocated to brilliant human brains, such mind-numbing numbers challenge comprehension. Even the brightest minds lack the capacity to grasp dimensions of time without a beginning or a seemingly endless expanse of openness without boundaries.

Breathtaking conjecture characterizes the cosmic sweepstakes.

Something preceded the Big Bang, and that 'something' is unreachable to our science…We don't know what caused the Big Bang…going back to the Big Bang is outside the reach of any civilization. ⁷

Given the assumed pre-existence of space and a quantum foam containing the particle that allegedly fueled the conjectured explosive event, the theory makes no attempt to define the source of the exploding dot. Though the theory relies on extrapolating from science disciplines of physics and mathematics, it casts the beginning of all things as a cosmic accident.

But using the term beginning is an assumptive stretch!

The immensely complex configuration of the forces, masses, ratios, charges, and all other numerical specifications of the universe had to have been determined to such a staggeringly precise level that to assume it happened 'by chance' or through the anthropic principle seems futile. ⁸

The Milky Way Galaxy, decorated by an estimated 400 million stars, is calculated to stretch 93 million light years in diameter. The Solar System occupies a niche 27,000 light-years distant from the Milky Ways' Galactic Center. Within that miniscule blip of space, "a pale blue dot…a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam", ⁹supposedly took shape 4.5 billion years ago. A tall order to suggest a gigantic explosion transformed miniscule particles into the Blue Planet, hanging in space, spinning on a tilted axis, carving a predictable path around the sun.

Earth's place in space is micro-miniature compared to the Solar System's sun. A thousand Planet Earth's could fit readily inside the sun's dimensions. Comparatively, the sun doesn't hold a candle, size-wise, to the enormous Arcturus which takes a back seat when measured by the gigantic Antares.

Suspended in space, without cables or foundations, our Pale Blue Dot moves in three directions simultaneously—spinning clockwise on its axis, to the east; orbiting the sun; and floating in sync with the other components of the Solar System. Factor in earth's wobble of 1 degree every 72 years¹⁰ and the exactitude stuns thought. Thanks to the influence of a proportionally sized moon, earth's tilt on its axis prevents climate extremes that would prove devastating to life.

Incomprehensible power hangs the sun, moon, and stars in perpetually moving, cosmic trails. There is nothing random or chaotic about sister planets spinning within their own, uniquely-designed orbits. Theorists can't duplicate this cosmic balancing act in state-of-the-art science labs.

Keeping free-floating spheres in perpetual motion, floating in precise, repetitious orbits, without strings, defies present scientific know-how. That's only the beginning of flabbergasting cosmic realities.

The Solar System conducts a symphony of mathematical balance with every planet moving in its own orbit, at its own speed with varied axis tilt angles. Suspended in space, without cables or foundations, planets carve cosmic paths ranging from the round to the elliptical. Venus, Uranus and Pluto do their own thing, rotating clockwise, to the west. Venus pokes along, rotating only once every 243 earth-days. A Venus solar day runs 116.75 earth days. An earth day consists of 24 hours, with 365.256 days to a year.

The Big Bang offers a contemporary postulation of theoretical chemical evolution—a miraculous beginning without planned design or designer. Though cloaked in the jargon of high science, the scientific community is aware the Big Bang Theory bends the laws of physics. Stripped of colorful graphs and fancy phraseology, the idea suggests cosmic matter created itself from a tiny dot that self ignited, exploded and evolved over deep time so that everything created itself from nothing (actually from within a black space pre-loaded with energy)—a faith-based, scientific miracle.

For the cosmos to have created itself, the basic laws of physics, as now understood, would have to be suspended, modified or abandoned.

"When you squeeze the entire universe into an infinitesimally small, but stupendously dense package, at a certain point, our laws of physics simply break down. They just don't make sense anymore."¹¹

Astrophysicist Peter Coles from England's University of Nottingham throws cold water on the entire hypothesis.

There is little direct evidence that inflation actually took place…It is a beautiful idea that fits snugly with standard cosmology…but that doesn't necessarily make it true…We don't know for sure if inflation happened…In a way we are still as confused as ever about how the universe began.¹²

Scientific research explores and deciphers laws of nature by observation and experiment. The law of gravity exemplifies the certitude of science. It's an absolute scientific fact that temperature variations altar the state of water. Bending laws of science to validate interpretations of unknown, imagined events risks blurring the line between science and faith.

Objective depiction of events benefits from eyewitness accounts. The laws of science can help clarify knowledge of known, historic events but are woefully inadequate in attempting to synthesize an imagined or a never-was happening. Extrapolating clues from proven laws of science is subjective, with authenticity confined to the limits of the theorist's knowledge, biases and assumptions. Attempts by science disciplines to construct pre-history by theoretical extrapolation, runs the real risk of misinterpreting actual occurrences or even dreaming up the never-was.

No living human observed the origin of matter.

The proposed Big Bang event and its conjectured mechanism is the invention of finite minds. Theory proponents were not eyewitnesses and have no idea as to either the composition or the origin of the pre-existing "quantum foam." Given the limits of assumptive extrapolations, envisioning a possible event mega-millions of light years distant, becomes an insurmountable challenge to state-of-the-art science.

The Big Bang Theory leaves hanging unanswered questions!

When did light first penetrate black space?

What came first, the universe or the natural laws governing it?

Where did the natural laws of science come from?

Would nothing be possible if space, matter and energy didn't exist? What, if anything, would there be in order for nothing to exist—no space, no light, no energy no matter? Did something exist before the Big Bang?

How can something explode from nothing?

What caused nothing to explode into everything?

If nothing was all that existed, what could go bang?

Could there be absolutely nothing—no energy, no matter, no light, not even empty space, in a universe without boundaries?

Do the recognized laws of physics support the notion that every piece of matter, floating in a multi-billion light year observable universe, could have been compacted in a dot no bigger than the period closing a sentence?

What particle, energy or mass composed the dot of quantum foam? If energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, then when, where and how did the energy, particles or mass compressed within that miniscule dot of quantum foam originate before inflation from the Big Bang?

Can an explosion ignite spontaneously? Since the observed force of a nuclear explosion destroys matter, how can a cosmic explosion set in motion a process that self-creates structured matter?

Does space have boundaries? What would be on the other side of a space boundary—anything?

Can infinite space inflate or expand indefinitely?

Verifiable scientific answers ride waves of silence.

What we see around us is nothing less than a series of extremely unlikely events that could well be explained as a 'miracle'—the miracle of the universe, the world, life, intelligence, and human beings contemplating the riddle of creation. ¹³

Until science delivers something beyond abstract ideology, its unreasoned presumption to rule out arbitrarily the possible role of an Intelligent Power orchestrating cosmic events. More than that, its less than scientific to rule out all possibilities in a quest for authentic answers!

Human genius has proven legendary in harnessing and exploiting natural laws in order to destroy life, matter and order. Accessibility to a composite of the most sophisticated equations of physics, mathematics, and cosmology, is a gift that can be tragically abused.

Despite breathtaking discoveries, viable formulas for the self-creation of matter has yet to be authenticated. When objectivity is abandoned, science usurps the uneasy, unwarranted crown of universal wisdom. Its comparable to a futile attempt to create a plausible map of Planet Earth while confining the mapmaker to a dark basement within the city limits of New York.

…Some truths about infinity can never be known to us. The infinite is so profoundly complicated that, hard as we may try, there are things about it that will always remain beyond our reach. This statement is not a guess or a hypothesis—it was mathematically proved and is accepted as true by all mathematicians. ¹⁴

Time without beginning and space without end exist in a dimension above and beyond mankind's intellectual vocabulary. Any theory cloaked in scientific credentials that attempts to explain the beginning of the universe while ignoring any possible role of Supreme Intelligence, suffers from self-inflicted, intellectual astigmatism.

Infinity defies comprehension.

The Big Bang Theory is an arbitrary invention of finite minds incapable of defining the edge of space or the beginning of time. The central core of the idea is raw and cold, built on faith in an unseen, undocumented, pre-historic event—an unproven theoretical coincidence of nature.

Energy and matter were not self-created by means of an explosion in a dot of quantum foam. Nor did organic life subsequently create itself from non-living matter by means of some mathematically impossible accident.

Robert Jastrow, (1925-2008), astronomer, physicist, and cosmologist, as well as founder of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, addressed the dilemma.

At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. ¹⁵

2

Cosmic Convergence

A Life-friendly Ecosystem

We know that by some strange and mysterious mechanism all the constants of nature turned out to be exactly as they need to be for life to emerge… ¹

Amir D. Aczel

Imagine every human on earth being given a Rubik Cube with the challenge to simultaneously resolve the three-dimensional puzzle in sixty seconds or less. The likelihood of success ranks mathematically off the wall.

Suggesting the self-creation of all matter in the cosmos as a fall out-from theoretical cosmic inflation fired up by an ancient Big Bang explosion offers even less luck-of-the-draw odds.

© Concept W

Elements identified in the Periodic Table, were supposedly self-created during those alleged inflation years following the Bang.

Exposed at chemical evolution's starting gate is the fanciful idea that random processes self-created the environment and the proteins essential to produce a living cell—spontaneously from inert, inorganic chemicals.

Heavy doses of intellectual flimflam can't disguise reality!

It takes a giant leap of faith to suggest chemical evolution set in motion the cosmic convergence of conditions essential for life anywhere in the universe. It takes another blind leap to believe biological evolution took over and spontaneously generated life on earth without intelligent input

Strewn like a random dice throw across a black ocean of nothingness, There may be as many as 40 billion planets roughly the size of the earth. ² At last count, 1800 planets have been identified. Only Kepler-186f, ³ some 490 light years distant, is considered the most earth-like planet with the possibility of housing a habitable zone.

So why life on the tiny blue island in space but only inert matter on Mars, Venus, Saturn or the moon? Did the pale blue dot win some cosmic lottery? Or is there a deeper meaning as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe…The Impression of design is overwhelming…We are truly meant to be here.⁴

The mass, color, location, and luminosity of stars; an ideal sized moon to control Earth's axis tilt and the inclination of earth's orbit; and a terrestrial crust with moving tectonic plates—all combine to set the stage for life within the cross hairs of a miniscule terrestrial spot in an infinity of space.

Almost everything about the basic structure of the universe…the fundamental laws…of physics and the initial distribution of matter and energy…is balanced on a razor's edge for life to occur.⁵

Earth's privileged ecosystem thrives on balanced land/water ratios, all nestled within a thin atmospheric envelope with delicately matched ratios of oxygen, carbon dioxide, ozone, and nitrogen. Add a dash of carbon and a touch of sulfur. Finally, bolster the formula with some nitrogen and phosphorous. Sunshine, atmosphere, electromagnetism, gravity and a full range of elements listed on the periodic table, anchor the all-or-nothing list of absolutes. But that's only the beginning of a life-essential base.

Starting with a formulated mix of oxygen and hydrogen, water flows, a crucial ingredient for life's recipe. Life's origin and survival demands water.

It's axiomatic: no water, no carbon-based life as we know it.

Viewed from space, earth reflects a bright-blue hue. Supposedly 70% of the earth is covered with water. So much so that if the earth's land crust was flattened, water hundreds of feet deep might cover its surface. Scholars draw fascinating conclusions: 96.5% of earth's water consists of ocean marine water and 0.97% brackish water. That leaves 2.53% of our entire water supply as fresh water. This comparatively minuscule amount of fresh water is allocated: 69.6% to glaciers and permanent snow; 30.1% ground water; 0.29% lakes, marshes, and swamps; 0.05% soil moisture; 0.04% atmosphere; 0.006% rivers; and 0.003% living organisms. ⁶

Too much water drowns its victims. Without water, death follows in days. Air deprivation guarantees suffocation in short minutes. Starvation takes longer but is certain to come calling. Plants and animals coexist as co-dependent components of a mutually supportive ecological package.

While oxygen is critical to life, oxidation renders spontaneous generation of life impossible. Atoms and molecules tend to bond with oxygen atoms while free oxygen inclines to oxidize organic compounds, destroying life's critical chemical building blocks.

Oxygen was likely present in the early earth's atmosphere. ⁷ There is strong evidence that oxygen was present on the earth from the earliest ages… Significant levels of oxygen would have been necessary to produce ozone which would shield the earth from levels of ultraviolet radiation lethal to biological life.⁸

If the early atmosphere was oxygen-free…then there would have been no protective ozone layer. Any DNA and RNA bonds would be destroyed by UV radiation… Either way, oxygen is a major problem.⁹

This major problem undercuts spontaneous generation of first life.

All experiments simulating the atmosphere of the early earth have eliminated molecular oxygen…Oxygen acts as a poison preventing the chemical reactions that produce organic compounds…If any chemical compounds did form, they would be quickly destroyed by oxygen reacting with them… ¹⁰

Even if oxygen was not present in the early earth's atmosphere, the absence of oxygen would present obstacles to the formation of life. Oxygen is required for the ozone layer, which protects the surface of the earth from deadly ultraviolet radiation. Without oxygen this radiation would break down organic compounds as soon as they formed.¹¹

Microbiologist Michael Denton reasons "in an oxygen-free scenario, the ultraviolet flux reaching the earth's surface might be more than sufficient to break down organic compounds as quickly as they were produced…In the presence of oxygen, any organic compounds formed on the early Earth would be rapidly oxidized and degraded…

"The level of ultraviolet radiation penetrating a primeval oxygen-free atmosphere would quite likely have been lethal to any proto-organism possessing a genetic apparatus remotely resembling that of modern organisms.

What we have then is a 'Catch 22' situation…If we have oxygen, we have no organic compounds but if we don't have oxygen we have none either.¹²It's a classic lose/lose scenario—life could never evolve in an atmosphere with oxygen; but once formed, life could not survive without oxygen.

*****

A narrow habitable zone is assured by solar radiation neither too near nor to far from the zone designed for life. Consistent doses of sunlight, radiating beams of ultraviolet and infrared, sustain life. If the sun's relationship to the electromagnetic spectrum shifted imperceptibly, the chance of life could vanish.

Instead of blistering heat or deadly radiation, energy from the sun comes calibrated in a range maximizing a life-friendly environment. Sunlight also delivers a riot of kaleidoscopic colors embellishing environments as a psychological bonus, Restful sky-blues, backlighting forests of multi-hued greens define the landscape—a rainbow of accents, drenching the landscape with pastel shades of shimmering pinks, lavenders and crimson-golds. Shifting combinations of the sun's rays conspire to induce peace.

Temperatures too hot or too cold accelerate the death process. Too much, too little, too far, too near, too late, too soon—any factor out-of-kilter and life on earth could not exist. Move the sun 5% closer, and the earth would be scorched. Modify earth's orbit 20% farther from the sun and life would drift into deep freeze. Despite predictions the raging inferno at the heart of the Solar System is certain to destroy itself eventually in a blazing conflagration, the sun ignores dire predictions and keeps rollin' round heaven all day.

The moon's size and distance from earth impacts climate.

Gravity keeps feet planted securely on terra firma and magnetic fields combine suggesting if masses did not attract each other, there would be no planets or stars, and once again it seems that life would be impossible. ¹³ Reduce the pull of gravity significantly and feet would fly. Increase gravity's pull many times, and the irresistible force could crush metal objects.

*****

Molecular bonding, essential to life, requires the presence of no less than 40 different elements. Success is contingent upon electromagnetism functioning within a balanced electron-to-proton mass ratio. "…By some strange and mysterious mechanism all the constants of nature turned out to be exactly as they need to be for life to emerge." ¹⁴

All this convergence by chance in a split second of time, at a location no more than a micro-mini speck in space, complete with a convenient and readily available array of that exotic array of life-essential elements spells habitable zone.

So what's the probability of finding a free-floating space station offering an environment capable of generating and sustaining organic life by chance? Earth's composite of conditions friendly to life, all within the cross hairs of one small time and place in infinity, seems mathematically off-scale, suggesting recognition of something beyond the luck-of-the-draw.

There are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in…10⁴⁰,⁰⁰⁰, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup… If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court. ¹⁵

Bradley and Thaxton reason that …even assuming that all the carbon on earth existed in the form of amino acids and react at the greatest possible rate of 10¹²/s for one billion years…the mathematically impossible probability for the formation of one functional protein would be -10-65. ¹⁶

Sir Fred Hoyle calculated that the likelihood of even one very simple enzyme arising at the right time in the right place was only one chance in 10²⁰or 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000… that about 2,000 enzymes were needed with each one performing a specific task to form a single bacterium like E. coli.¹⁷

Hoyle, with his colleague Chandra Wickersham, estimated that "the probability of all of these different enzymes forming in one place at one time to produce a single bacterium, at 1 in 10⁴⁰,⁰⁰⁰.

This number is so vast that it amounts to total impossibility.¹⁷

The likelihood of natural forces delivering the ingredients essential to sustain life, simultaneously in one place, at one instant in time, and without intelligent input is as preposterous as the discredited notion of spontaneous generation.

Thomas A. Edison recognized "…this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us - everything that exists - proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision." ¹⁸

3

Against All Odds

First Life

The concept that all the parts of the first living thing preexisted and its formation was simply a matter of spontaneous generation…is mathematical absurdity, not probability. All present approaches to the problem of the origin of life are either irrelevant or lead to a blind alley." ¹

John Keosian

Chemical evolution as envisioned by Big Bang theorists has yet to earn the unanimous endorsement of the science community. A reasonable scientific explanation as to how earth happens to house a privileged habitable zone has yet to survive the drawing board of speculative ideas. Now comes biological evolution's unprecedented leap of faith—first life creating itself from non-living matter.

Chemical and biological evolution share at least two undistinguished credentials. Both represent unproven theories devised by human minds and both reject input from any intelligent source superior to the conjectured postulates of Homo sapiens.

So if nature can make something happen accidentally in deep time, by trial and error, and theorized by human minds, then why can't sophisticated humans replicate the process within a controlled, laboratory environment and create life in a lab from non-living, chemical compounds?

If life from unintelligent non-life could result theoretically from an accidental whim of nature, then why couldn't human intelligence be recruited to design and create a living cell by duplicating the secret of first life's launching pad?

The challenge beckoned audacious minds.

*****

Without the magnifying power of electronic microscopes, 19th century scientists dismissed living cells as structureless globules of protoplasm.

Those presumed, simple globules of protoplasm opened eyes to unimagined complexity. What leaped into view through the lens of the electron microscope was a throbbing piece of molecular machinery, complete with a nucleus packed with genetic information—a variety of proteins, all wrapped snugly in a membrane, surrounded by a cell wall.

The Mycoplasma, a single-cell microorganism, the simplest known self-reproducing life form,carries 482, life-directing genes.² The chance of spontaneous generation producing the complete formula of molecules, amino acids, and proteins essential for a cell only one-tenth the size of Mycoplasm hominis H. 39, is less than one in 10 ³⁴⁰,⁰⁰⁰,⁰⁰⁰. ³

So the stage was set for a scientific challenge pitting nature's random chance versus the design skills of mortal intelligence. Could something similar to Mycoplasma be reproduced in a lab under the auspices of sophisticated, scientific minds?

Stanley Miller and Harold Urey took up the challenge and stepped to the plate in 1952, intent on discovering the secrets of a living cell—only months before the DNA double helix string of information, housed in living cells, grabbed international headlines. This innovative duo shaped their experiment following a theoretical trail blazed by Russia's Alexander I. Oparin's and Britain's J.H.S. Haldane's attempt to rescue spontaneous generation ideology from history's dustbin of trashed ideas.

Adding intelligence to the formula, struck at the heart of an experiment devised to authenticate impossible accident. So even if successful, intervention of human thought sabotaged the credibility of a process intended to authenticate the non-intelligent origin of first life on earth.

Amino acids, the building blocks linking cell proteins, have been synthesized in laboratory environments. But the creation of a full complement of proteins essential to life, from laboratory-built amino acids, proved as futile as attempting to break the sonic barrier riding a broomstick.

There is more: Amino acids can't form in the presence of oxygen.

Bypassing this hurdle, the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis theorized earth's original atmosphere maybe consisted of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ammonia, methane, hydrogen and water vapor—but without oxygen.

Oparin-Haldane's scientific stretch supposed inorganic …chemicals combined to form organic compounds, such as amino acids, which in turn combined to form large, complex molecules, such as proteins, which aggregated to form an interconnecting network and a cell wall. ⁴

Applying this formula as a basis for manufacturing life in a laboratory, the Miller/Urey team attempted to create a reducing atmosphere by channeling a high-energy spark through methane, ammonia, and hydrogen gases and a circulating hot water vapor.

The process produced a small mass of black tar along with a condensed red liquid containing some amino acids. Still, the nagging problem persists: The experiment only works as long as oxygen is absent and certain critical ratios of hydrogen and carbon dioxide are maintained. ⁵

Subsequent experiments using ultraviolet radiation did successfully produce nineteen of the twenty biological amino acids and five nucleic acid bases of DNA and RNA. ⁶

Miller/Urey required an elaborate trail of happenstance, with each step having been unaccountably fostered in prebiotic soup. They counted on energy from lightning, earthquakes, volcanoes, and the sun's rays to trigger chemical reactions with atmospheric gases such as methane, ammonia, hydrogen, ethane and water vapors, converting them to amino acids, fatty acids and sugars.

Relying on this luck of the draw, they hoped these compounds could theoretically link up to form larger protein and DNA molecules, ultimately becoming the first true cell capable of metabolism, genetic coding, and the ability to reproduce when wrapped with a membrane. ⁷

One public school text, relying on could have and a series of may haves, misled students with a string of imaginative speculations.

"Primitive earth may have had an atmosphere largely of hydrogen which was later lost to space. A secondary atmosphere may have included ammonia, methane, water, and hydrogen sulfide…Ultraviolet light from the sun, electrical storms, and decay of radioactive elements may have provided the energy to combine these molecules as sugars and amino acids.

Amino acids could have combined to form proteins… ⁸

May have and could have don't disguise speculation.

Could lightning, heat from volcanoes and the sun's ultraviolet rays have …affected gases in the primitive earth's atmosphere and changed them into more complicated organic compounds… such as fatty acids, amino acids, sugars, and nucleotides? And subsequently accumulated in the ocean and then linked up with each other to form very complex molecules… such as lipids, peptides, carbohydrates, polynucleotides and eventually combined to form complex proteins? ⁹

The may haves and could haves avoided a phony assertion of fact.

Urey and Miller assumed that methane was plentiful in the early earth's conditions. If this is true, the sun's ultraviolet light would have caused hydrocarbons to form and absorb in the clay at the bottom of the ocean. The deposits from Precambrian periods should then contain significant hydrocarbons or remains of carbons, as well as some nitrogen containing compounds. None of these are present in these deposits. ¹⁰

The composition of the atmosphere posed an insoluble dilemma: Without a reducing atmosphere, the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis for first life had no chance. But without oxygen, life on Planet Earth could not exist.

…Oxygen is necessary to protect proteins and DNA from the sun…Living organisms [bacteria] and organic molecules [amino acids, proteins and DNA] need the protection from ultraviolet radiation provided by an ozone screen [which is derived from oxygen]. ¹¹

…If even trace amounts of molecular oxygen were present, organic molecules could not be formed at all. ¹²

Since living organisms [bacteria] and organic molecules [amino acids, proteins] need the protection from ultraviolet radiation provided by an ozone layer [which is derived from oxygen] yet the presence of oxygen, [in the atmosphere] prevents the development of such living systems and biological molecules [amino acids], this would constitute a catch-22 in the model. ¹³

Oxygen is the critical component of today's atmosphere. Oxides in the rocks suggest oxygen was present also in ancient atmospheres. Iron oxide minerals have been found in Greenland, dating to 3.9 billions years ago. The presence of oxides suggests that oxygen was present at the time. ¹⁴

Overeager celebrants initially interpreted the result of Miller/Urey's experiment as