ORIGINS @ LIFE FAZALE RANA & HUGH ROSS ORIGINS @) LIFE BIBLICAL AND EVOLUTIONARY MODELS FACE OFF NAVPR[SSO® BRINGING TRUTH TO LIFE () OUR GUARANTEE TO YOU We believe so strongly in the message of our books that we are making this quality guarantee to you. If for any reason you are disappointed with the content of this book, return the title page to us with your name and address and we will refund to you the list price of the book. To help us serve you better, pleasebriefly describe why you were disappointed. Mail your refund request to: NavPress, P.O. Box 35002, Colorado Springs, CO 80935. The Navigators is an international Christian organization. Our mission is to reach, disciple, and equip people to know Christ and to make Him known through successive generations. We envision multitudes of diverse people in the United States and every other nation who have a passionate love for Christ, live a lifestyle of sharing Christ's love, and multiply spiritual laborers among those without Christ. NavPress is the publishing ministry of The Navigators. NavPress publications help believers learn biblical truth and apply what they learn to their lives and ministries. Our mission is to stimulate spiritual forma­ tion among our readers. © 2004 by Reasons To Believe All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from NavPress, PO. Box 35001, Colorado Springs, CO 80935. www.navpress.com NAVPRESS, BRINGING TRUTH TO LIFE, and the NAVPRESS logo are registered trademarks of NavPress. Absence of ® in connection with marks of NavPress or other parties does not indicate an absence of regis­ tration of those marks. ISBN 1-57683-344-5 Cover design by jonathan Price, Reasons To Believe Cover illustration by Aaron Garcia Creative Team: Nanci McAlister, Rachelle Gardner, Kathy Mosier, Pat Miller Some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permission of the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, and any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental. Unless otherwise identified, all Scripture quotations in this publication are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW IN TERNATIONAL VERSION® (Ntv®). Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Rana, Fazale, 1963- 0rigins of life : biblical and evolutionary models face off I Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross. p. em. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN I-57683-344-5 l. Life--Origin. 2. Creationism. I. Ross, Hugh (Hugh Norman), 1945- II. Title. QH325.R36 2004 576.8'3--dc22 20030I7389 Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard St., Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. Printed in the United States of America 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I 08 07 06 05 04 FOR A FREE CATALOG OF NAVPRESS BOOKS &: BIBLE STUDIES, CALL 1-800-366-7788 (USA) OR 1-416-499-4615 (CANADA) For Amanda, Whitney, Mackenzie, jose, and O�a Rana and joel and David Ross CONTENTS Authors' Note 9 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction: In Pursuit of My Passion 13 PART I: THE MYSTERY UNFOLDS l. Questions, Questions-Always Questions 21 2. Are There Any Answers? 29 3. Putting Creation to the Te st 35 4. The Naturalistic Approach 47 PART II: THE FACTS OF LIFE 5. An Early or Late Appearance? 63 6. A Slow or Sudden Arrival? 81 7. Where's the Soup? 93 PART III: FROM THE BOTTGJ'vf UP AND ToP DOWN 8. The Search for Chemical Pathways 109 9. Look! Only One Hand 123 10. The Codes of Life 135 11. Beneficial Boundaries 143 12. Life's Minimum Complexity 159 PART IV: LOOKING FOR LOOPHOLES 13. Extreme Life 171 14. Life on Mars? 183 15. Europa and Beyond 197 16. Life, Seeded on Purpose 205 PART V: A MODEL FOR LiFE 17. Solving the Mystery 211 Epilogue 223 Appendix A: Biblical Creation References 227 Appendix B: Carbon-12 Enrichment in Photosynthesis 229 Notes 231 Glossary of Terms 269 Index 277 About the Authors 297 About Reasons To Believe 299 FIGURES AND TABLES Figures 5.1 Stromatolites in Shark Bay, Australia 65 6.1 Cratering Intensity for the Inner Solar System 83 6.2 Before, During , and After the Collision Event Between Earth and a Mars-Sized Planet 88 9.1 Chiral Molecules 123 10.1 The Different Levels of Protein Structure 137 11.1 Transmission Electron Micrograph of Biological Membranes 144 11.2 The Molecular Structure of a Typical Phospholipid with a Schematic Representation of Its Structure Superimposed upon It 145 11.3 Tail-to-Tail Assembly of Phospholipid Molecules to Form a Bilayer 146 11.4 The Different Ways Proteins Interact with Phospholipid Bilayers 14 7 11.5 Structures of Different Phospholipid Aggregates 153 11.6 Different Bilayer Structures Formed by Phospholipids 155 14.1 Martian Meteorite ALH84001 184 14.2 Tiny Martians? 188 14.3 Outflow Channels and Valley Networks on Mars' Surface 192 15.1 Galileo Spacecraft Image of Europa's Surface 198 Tables 4.1 "Textbook" Description of Life's Origin 48 4.2 Origin-of-Life Scenarios 50 12.1 Organisms with the Smallest Genomes 161 12.2 Probabilities That Proteins Could Come into Existence Simultaneously 164 12.3 Bacterial Components Displaying Organization 167 AUTHORS' NOTE e would like to welcome you to this book. Whether you accept Wcreation or evolution or just don't know what to think about the origins of life, we invite you to join us on a fascinating investigation of the scientific evidence. We are Christians. But we are also scientists who know what it's like to seek after truth, painstakingly follow wherever the evidence leads, and arrive at a conclusion based on what seems most reasonable. The clues provide a challenging trail, but following them will take us to an amazing destination- the origins of life. Fazale Rana & Hugh Ross ACKNOWLEDGMENTS his book represents the sacrifice and hard work of many people, T not just the authors. We want to thank our wives, Amy Rana and Kathy Ross, and our children, for their love and encouragement and for understanding when this book project took "priority" over family matters. We want to acknowledge all who are part of the Reasons To Believe team (staff and volunteers) who tirelessly dedicated themselves to this book as if it was their own labor of love. Thank you Kathy Ross, Patti Townley-Covert, Tani Trost, and joe Aguirre for expert editorial guidance (and more). Thank you jonathan Price and Phillip Chien for designing the tables and many of the figures to enhance the book's clarity. Thank you Sandra Dimas, jody Donaldson, Marj Harman, and Colleen Wingenbach for preparing the manuscript and taking care of all the little chores that must be done during a book. We want to thank scholars Kenneth Samples, David Rogstad, Timothy Boyle, Walter Bradley, Russell Carlson, and Guillermo Gonzalez for criti­ cal peer review. Your input was invaluable. We assume responsibility for any errors found herein. Thanks also to our friends at NavPress for their commitment to this project and for their belief in our work at Reasons To Believe. Thank you Eric Stanford, Rachelle Gardner, Kathy Mosier, and Terry Behimer. Finally, we want to thank Lee Hough at Alive Communications for his encouragement, friendship, and practical advice. INTRODUCTION: IN PURSUIT OF MY PASSION he mystery of life's origin intrigues many people, including me. T Graduate courses helped me develop a strong appreciation for life's chemistry when I was in the doctoral program at Ohio University during the mid-1980s. Like a hungry man with a stack of pancakes set in front of him, I devoured books and journal articles that weren't even required reading. I wanted to know how life originated. How could the chemical systems that carry out life's fundamental processes come into existence? How did biochemistry begin? Though not part of my formal course work, these questions motivated me to look for answers at every opportunity. Origin-of-life researchers explained that complex chemical mixtures on early Earth organized themselves into the first living entities in a grad­ ual stepwise fashion. But to me, this process of chemical evolution seemed unconvincing and inadequate to produce the cell's vastly complex, highly sophisticated, and tightly orchestrated molecular systems. Based on my training, I knew that chemical systems could self-organize, but the organ­ ization displayed by biochemical systems differs qualitatively from the regular and repetitive order possessed by crystals and other types of molecular aggregates that form spontaneously. The best scientists typically experience difficulty getting a few chem­ icals in a flask to do what they want, even when they expend enormous effort and rely on the past work of others. Whenever I worked through the evolutionary pathways suggested by origin-of-life researchers, I always came back to the same question: How could random physical and chem­ ical events yield the amazingly elegant, highly integrated biochemical sys­ tems found inside living cells? I could envision realistic chemical pathways that on occasion, by chance, could yield molecules with useful properties for living systems. But isolated chemicals don't constitute life. Numerous complex molecules- q Origins of Life each carrying out a specific but limited function-work in concert to form biochemical systems. In turn, numerous biochemical systems interact in an orchestrated fashion to support the activities of even the simplest cells. A molecule's function contributes to life processes only in the con­ text of the entire ensemble of systems. In other words, for life to emerge, its biochemical systems must come into existence all at once, not step by step.