epologetics

Scientist Creates Life In Testtube! Evolution Proven in Laboratory! Creationism Takes a Fatal Blow!

These are the sensationlist headlines we tend to see (falsly) describing the Miller-Urey experiment. The evolutionists eat it up and don't bother questioning it. It's brought up in most debates on origins as proof that life can come from non-life, and the scientific community as a whole refuses to admit the truth about the experiment and continues to indoctrinate people with deceptive propaganda in order to maintain the status-quo of evolutionary dogma.

The Setup

Urey believed that the early earth had a reducing atmosphere. He also believed that there were significant amounts of hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water vapor. Assuming these conditions, the experiment was set up so that water vapor and the other gases were combined in a looping tube. A spark was created to simulate lightning. The resulting mixture of gases and whatever may have formed with the energy from the spark then passed through a cooling/condensing area, and over a "trap" in the bottom of the apparatus. This trap would collect any particles created from the lightning spark and remove them from the harmful atmosphere of the ammonia, methane, hydrogen, and water vapor.

Discharge tubes like the one in the Miller-Urey experiment have successfully produced a number of different chemicals, including amino acids, which are "organic molecules". Thus, evolutionists say, we have created life from non-life! There are some problems with the experiment, however:

Bursting the Bubble

Faux Atmosphere

The methane and ammonia concentrations were not chosen to reflect any perceived concentrations in the early earth atmosphere. Rather, they were selected for the express purpose of trying to create organic molecules. If ammonia and methane were abundant, no amino acids would obtain.

Impossible Atmosphere

While I could address the atmospheric problems for evolutionists as a whole other article, suffice it to say that a methane-ammonia atmosphere would prevent life rather than create it. It would actually destroy any organic molecules the moment they formed, if it were even possible for them to form.

Abelson's Objections

"The hypothesis of an early methane-ammonia atmosphere is found to be without solid foundation and indeed is contradicted." Abelson, a geochemist, explains further that ultraviolet light would destroy ammonia more quickly than it could form. He also explains that older sedimentary rocks contain no evidence of a methane-ammonia atmosphere. Thirdly, he addresses the fact that the early earth atmosphere contained heavy xenon and krypton gases which escaped from the atmosphere. If that is the case, then the lighter ammonia and methane gases would have escaped as well. Speaking on the Miller-Urey experiment, he says, "What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on earth? The answer is that there is no evidence for it, but much against it." ("Some Aspects of Paleobiochemistry", P. Abelson)

Intelligently Designed

The discharge tube was designed by creators who knew, after hundreds of collective research hours on the subject, knew enough to design an apparatus with a very specific purpose in mind. One of the things intelligently placed into the system was a removal for the created molecules. If they had not been removed, the molecules would have been destroyed almost instantly, much more easily than they were formed.

Arrhenius, as mentioned in "Science News", "contends that if actual lightning struck rather than the fairly mild discharges used by Miller, any organics that happened to be present could not have survived."

In Miller and Urey's "Organic Compound Synthesis on the Primitive Earth," Miller admits, "Most of the photo-chemical reactions at these low wavelengths would have taken place inthe upper atmosphere. The compounds so formed would have absorbed at longer wavelengths and therefore might have been decomposed by this ultraviolet light before reaching the oceans."

Oparin, in his "Problem of the Origin of Life: Present State and Prospects," says, "The significant accumulation of organic substances, sometimes rather complicated ones, in such experiments is related to their removal from the sphere of action of the energy source which caused their formation.... For instance, in Miller's experiments, amino acids which have been formed in an electric discharge, have rapidly moved from the site of their formation and accumulated in an adjoining vessel."

But substances formed in the atmosphere could not so rapidly leave the realm of their formation because, as Hull states in his "Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Spontaneous Generation," it takes three years to move from the stratosphere to the surface. He concludes of the Miller-Urey experiment, "They have merely used the well-known principle of increasing the yield of a reaction by selectively removing the product from the reaction mixture. The mere fact that a chemist can carry out an organic synthesis in the laboratory does not prove that the same synthesis will occur in the atmosphere or open sea without the chemist."

The Products

The Miller-Urey experiment produced not life, but rather the building blocks of life. It did not create the highly-ordered, optically active, information-carrying molecules characteristic of life, or even anything suggesting it resembled a living entity.

Finally

There are so many problems with the Miller-Urey experiment that can be best understood with a deeper study into the problem of evolution. For example, though Miller admitted that perhaps the molecules in the early earth might not have reached the ocean in time to be preserved, science tells as that even if they had reached the ocean, they would have been destroyed there, as well! Evolutionists argue amongst themselves about the contents of the early earth atmosphere. The evidence against a conducive atmosphere is so strong that some evolutionists actually propose that there is no other possible explanation for how organisms originally got here than that they came here on a meteor from some other place where they could have initially formed. We could talk also about L-form amino acids and D-form sugars and how life consists almost completely of these, while outside of a living organism it is impossible to maintain 100% L-form amino acids or D-form sugars. The list goes on and on.

I don't expect this article to change anyone's mind on evolution or creation. I simply intend for it to show how what we are given by the scientific community is often misleading and, in reality, far from explaining anything about evolution or the origins of life. The Miller-Urey experiment did nothing whatsoever to affirm evolutionary thought.