Topics discussed in this module included: Spontaneous generation The idea that life can arise from non-living material without any outside manipulation or intervention. Pasteur's experiment demonstrated that spontaneous generation does not occur. Probability Sir Fred Hoyle's mathematical calculations, which demonstrated that the probability is too small for life to have arisen by chance. We examined several examples, each of which was improbable by itself. Yet they all needed to occur many times for life to have arisen by chance. One example was the 1 in 20100 odds of a protein forming spontaneously with a specific sequence of 100 amino acids. The atmosphere of the early earth The presence of oxygen is a problem for the naturalistic origin of life. Organic molecules would have been oxidized preventing the formation of biological polymers. We examined some of the evidences that the early atmosphere did, in fact, have oxygen present, examples such as: Fossilized photosynthetic cells have been found in "ancient" strata. Uranium oxides in rock dated as 2.5 billion years old. The presence of reduced forms of metals that seem to have been exposed to the atmosphere can be explained by the effects of glaciers, which would have slowed oxidation. The presence of very little ammonia in the atmosphere is due to the effects of ultra violet light. Chemical Evolution We learned that by definition, chemical evolution is not really different from abiogenesis. That the information of the DNA molecule is contained in three dimensions, not just in two. And that molecular homology is based on amino acid sequence, the amino acid sequence of a protein determines its function. We saw that evolutionists need a theory like the RNA World to explain the origin of nucleic acids and to explain the origin of proteins. But that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does apply to the polymerization of nucleic acids and proteins. We studied some of the problems for spontaneous DNA polymerization (without enzymes): Isomeric forms of the molecules Bond formation at improper sites Base binding to ribose Other problems for chemical evolution included: The reaction pathway for the synthesis of ribose would have prevented the accumulation of beta-D-ribonucleotides. ATP is necessary for ribonucleotide polymerization, and probably did not exist in the pre-biotic soup. Chiral isomers of amino acids can bind together in nonliving matter. Objections to some of the proposed theories included the objection to Oparin's Coacervate theory due to the very unstable nature of Coacervates. And a critique of the experiment by Sidney Fox is that his experiment demonstrated that some, but not all, amino acids can withstand high heat and form bonds.