ISSUE PAPER
BIOL 1010-002
Christopher Prisbrey
Introduction
The topic that I have chosen to write about is the origin of life. I chose this because it is something that
interests me, as someone who is fascinated by science and also has religious views. The basic question
is where did life come from? Lets say for example that the first living thing on the earth was the
simplest of unicellular life, the question is where did it come from?
For this paper I will address the two main competing theories, abiogenesis and creationism.
What is Abiogenesis?
Abiogenesis is the scientific view that inanimate compounds became animate. The idea is that at some
point in earths history there was just the right mix of chemical compounds and that something jumpstarted these compounds into a more complex entity that began to be automatous.
In regards to the automation there are two main views, that of whether it was Replication First or
Metabolism First. There is some division regarding this, whether it was one or the other, the journal
that I read stated that it did not need to be mutually exclusive, and the key thing was accepting that
autonomous functionality was essential, whether expressed through replication or metabolism. The
problem that is stated in the journal I read was that there is no way we will ever know what compounds
and what triggers were there when life began. Our history is unknowable, and thus we are left
stumbling in the dark to figure out exactly what could have occurred back then. The only hope is to
somehow recreate the principles that occurred, which is inanimate to animate. If that can be done
successfully with understanding, then working our way back might give us some insight.
What is Creationism?
ISSUE PAPER
BIOL 1010-002
Creationism is the idea that a higher power, higher intelligence, or God, created and placed life here on
Earth. Now I will not attempt to go into individual religion and discuss whether it was a Christian God,
or a Hindu God that first created life, but sufficeth to say that creationism is the idea that a god
created life.
Some debate can be made concerning what is a god. If a god is an immortal being with advanced
knowledge and the technology to cultivate life, then the idea of creationism seems to appeal to more
people. But if god is placed in the realm of mysticism and sorcery and is seen as a supernatural being,
then skepticism seems to take hold more easily.
Students Opinion
In my opinion I do not believe that life just came into being. I see the view of abiogenesis much the
same as past ideas that bees came from flowers or that frogs came from mud. If I were to take the
standard idea of creationism and just change the terms slightly it becomes much more reasonable to
believe in the idea of creationism. For example, if I were to tell you that a race of hyper-intelligent
beings terraformed a planet and seeded life, it would not be so far-fetched. The Hollywood movie
Prometheus used that exact same story for its major plot. I find it also funny that some arguments for
abiogenesis state that life could have come from in form of comets or meteorites crashing into earth
with life already on them. This argument merely pushes the origin of life question to another region of
space. The question still remains whether here or there.
Lastly I think that the Fermi Paradox can really give us some light onto our origin. In the words of Fermi
where are they, or where is all the life that should be here? If life can be formed in primordial earth,
and the universe is billions of years old, and there are statistically billions of earth like planets, then
where is the life? Are we the first? Or are we the last? Or are we merely unique in the Universe.
ISSUE PAPER
BIOL 1010-002
Sources
Abiogenesis
Pross, Addy, and Pascal, Robert. The origin of life: what we know, what we can know and what we will
never know The Royal Society Publishing Published 6 March [Link]: 10.1098/rsob.120190
[Link]
Fermi-Paradox
[Link]
Creationism
[Link]
Smith, Joseph Fielding. Man, His Origin and Destiny
[Link]
