Where did we come from?
That is one of the best and most important questions of all time. And the answer has a profound impact on you. If you were created by a God who has provided you expectations on how to live your life, and the possibility of an afterlife, one would think you would attempt to live your life in such a way as to obtain that eternal reward. But if you are a merely a cosmic accident, then truly life has no meaning or eternal reward.
The Truth About the Miller Experiment
We are typically taught in school, and reminded through various forms of media, that we are indeed the result of a string of accidents. We’re told that these accidents are proven fact, when in fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
That first accident, the beginning of life on earth, is often portrayed as having been proven possible by something known as the Miller experiment. Images like this appear in many textbooks:
Stanley Miller conducted experiments in the 1952 to try to show that amino acids, the building blocks of life (not life itself) could have risen completely by chance, with no outside influence involved. He created a model of what he believed an early atmosphere would have been like, and ran it through a spark chamber (to imitate lightning strikes in that atmosphere) in order to see what chemical reactions may occur and what they might produce.
Because this experiment actually produced amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins, which in turn are the building blocks of living cells, this experiment is often touted as proof that life could have started on its own.
I was a big fan of famed radio personality Paul Harvey, with his news of the day. And as he used to say, “Now you’re going to hear the rest of the story.”
In 1995, Science magazine said that experts now dismiss the experiment because the early atmosphere looked vastly different than it did in Miller’s spark chamber.
Also, the amino acids he produced was a mixture of left-handed (by shape) and right-handed, which represents death. You see, every living thing only has left-handed amino acids, until they die, when half of their amino acids become right-handed.
Lastly, the mixture he produced was 85% tar, 13% carboxylic acid (both toxic to life) and only 2% amino acids.
Summing Up the Problems With the Miller Experiment
To sum up:
- The modeled atmosphere was incorrect
- The amino acids represented death, not life
- The mixture was toxic to life
And this was an experiment guided by intelligence, intended to model complete randomness!
But most importantly, LIFE was NOT created.
No cells, nor the building blocks of cells – proteins, were produced. And yet, over 60 years and many follow up experiments later, the textbooks still try to convince us that life could have started on its own using this faulty experiment.
Stay tuned for more as we dig deeper into other reasons to put no stock in life starting on its own, and why we can have confidence that life was designed.