Daily Devotional – December 21

Microbiology

Stanley Miller’s famous experiment in 1953 attempted to show that life began when lightning passed through a particular atmosphere and made chemicals called amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, and proteins are required by all living cells. Miller did show that some amino acids could be made in this way, but it’s quite another thing to get them to build a living cell! Just as a few concrete blocks in a parking lot will never turn themselves into a complex building, the existence of a few amino acids can never explain the origin of a living cell.

These amino acids supposedly linked together to form proteins (like beads on a necklace). These proteins then somehow would have to form the first DNA that went on to form the first living cell. Generations of schoolchildren have been taught this fairytale as if it were a fact of history. Now even many atheists are bailing out and admitting life could not have possibly formed in this way. Why?

1. Amino acids in water do not concentrate themselves; they disperse.
2. Amino acids need to be in the pure form in order to make proteins. Contaminants in ocean water would have stopped protein formation.
3. Under natural conditions, pure amino acids will not form proteins.
4. Living things use only left-handed amino acids, yet Miller-type experiments always result in a useless 50:50 mixture of right and left-hand amino acids.

What Miller’s experiment actually showed was that life could not possibly have formed in this way. The complex organization of life requires an intelligent Creator! It is by observing creation that God makes His awesome power and creativity apparent to everyone.

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

~ Romans 1:19

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett