How did life begin on Earth ?

The Bible teaches that God created

all life on earth.
But evolution teaches that life
started by a purely natural process.
What does the scientific evidence tell
us ?

Achievements of Science
Physics
Law of Gravity (Newton)
Law of Electromagnetism (Maxwell)
Structure of the atom (Bohr, and others)

Chemistry
Periodic table chemical properties
Organic chemistry

Molecular-biology
DNA structure
Cell chemistry

How does science discover these truths ???

How science discovers the truth

Science tries to find explanations
for things we can observe
Scientific method:
Observe and gather information
Propose a theory (a good guess)
Devise experiments to test the theory
See if results of experiments check
out with the theory
5. If not, change theory and try again
6. If so, theory becomes a law
1.
2.
3.
4.

Example:

So is Evolution a proven
theory
???
A recent PBS TV series on Evolution
claims that:

All known scientific evidence support

evolution
Virtually every reputable scientist in the
world support evolution

School text books on evolution all

proclaim that Evolution is a proven fact
Many people who once believed that God
created the world turned away from God
after they learned about the Theory of
Evolution... (anyone here ?)

What are living things made of ?

Cell

0.01 mm

Structure of a living cell

We now know the cell is extremely complex:

In Darwin days, they thought the cell was

simply a blob, like dough (bad
microscopes)

What is a cell made of ?

Cell

Amino-acid molecule

Millions of
protein
molecules

Chain of 100s of amino-acid molecules

Amino-acids: building blocks of

life

20 different amino-acid molecules in cells:

Each protein molecule is made of different

combinations of amino-acids:
Example protein molecule:
Another example:

Q: How many different protein molecules ?

Protein molecules used in cells

There can be infinitely many different
protein molecules
Analogy:
10 digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Each number is made of different
combination of 10 digits (123, 27632, 67,
)
We can make up infinite many different
numbers

Living cells use over thousands of

different kinds of protein molecules

What do you need to do to make

Lots and lots and lots of different
life ?
1 Cell

kinds of amino-acid molecules

Millions of
protein
molecules

Lots and lots of diff kinds of protein molecules

What do you need to do to make

life ?
Make billions of amino-acid
molecules (of different kinds)

Amino-acid molecules come in 2 flavors: left handed

and right-handed. Life only use left-handed molecules

What do you need to do to make

life ?

Pick the right kinds of amino-acid

molecules in the right order to make
millions of protein molecules

Put in the right order !

Pick only left-handed ones !

Some protein molecules have over 1000 amino-acids !

What do you need to do to make

life
? the right kinds of protein
Pick
molecules and put them together in
the right way to build ONE SINGLE cell
Tens of thousands different kinds of proteins

Millions of
protein molecules
Cell: your worst 3D Chinese Jigsaw puzzle nightmare...

So can we make a living cell ?

With all our current
advanced knowledge
and technologies, we
cannot make a living cell
from scratch...
Suppose we would break
apart a living cell, we
could not put the cell
back together again...

Now we can talk about Evolution

What I describe next is the theory or
guess that science has proposed to
explain how life began on earth
I will describe the theory in its entirety
first
As for all science, a theory (guess)
must be supported by evidence I will
present the scientific evidence after
presenting the Theory of Evolution
(and explain whats wrong with the
theory)

Evolution: How did life begin (1)

Early earths atmosphere
contains Hydrogen,
Methane, Ammonia,
Nitrogen gases
Lightning provided energy to
fuse the gases into different
Amino-acid molecules
Amino-acid molecules collide
with one another to for
protein molecules
Protein molecules collide
with one another to form a
living cell

Evolution: How did life begin (2)

At first, life was very
simple and consist of
self replicating
molecules
Later, life learn to store
genetic information in
DNA molecules: single
cell organisms (bacteria)
And later, single cell
organisms developed into
simple multi-cell orgasms
(Example: coral polyp)

Billions of years

Evolution: How did life diversify ?

Life changes
slowly over
long time

Evolution: how did life diversify ?

When more and more
living organisms are on
earth, they compete for
their food
The stronger (faster,
smarter, etc) animals
will have a better
chance to survive and
reproduce
This process of
adaptation is called
natural selection

Science: always check the

evidence

A scientific theory is only a guess

it can be wrong !
The principle in science is to always
check the theory against the
evidence
The evidence is never wrong
So do we have strong evidence for
the Theory of Evolution ?

Making amino-acid according to

Evolution
Put Hydrogen,
Methane, Ammonia,
Nitrogen together
Use lightning (electric
sparks) to fuse the
gases into different
Amino-acid molecules
Any evidence that this
can be done ?

Making Amino-acids: Millers

experiment
Miller put water, nitrogen,
methane, ammonia,
hydrogen and carbon
dioxide in a flask
The mixture was zapped
for a week by high
voltage sparks
Miller was able to make a
number of different types
of amino-acid molecules
Some scientists saw this
as proof that life began
on earth through
evolution

Evolution: life have common

ancestor
All life started from a
common ancestor

Is there any
evidence for this fact
???

Evidence 1 for common descend:

embryos

Haeckle showed embryos

at different stages of
their development (1874)
Haeckles drawing shows
that embryos from
different species look
alike at the start of their
development
Many biology text books
claim that this shows that
all living things had a
common ancestor

Evidence 2 for common descend:

structure

The skeleton of vertebrates have a

common design: looks like coming
from one common ancestor

Fossil record in reality

Bacteria (procaryotic cells)

3,500 millions years ago
Complex (eucaryotic cells)
2,000 millions years ago
Multicellular animals (jelly fish) 670 millions years ago
Shell-bearing animals (insects) 540 millions years ago
Vertebrates (simple fishes)
490 millions years ago
Amphibians (frogs)
350 millions years ago
Reptiles (lizards)
310 millions years ago
Mammals
200 millions years ago
Nonhuman primates
60 millions years ago
Earliest apes
25 millions years ago
Modern humans
0.15 millions years ago

Over 100,000 species of insects appeared suddenly