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SCIE NCE & THE B IB LE by Bolton Davidheiser, Ph.D., Chairman of the Science Division, Biola College
On the Air...' •omTimes Square!
The Origin of Life
A symposium on the Origin of Life on Earth was held in Moscow last year and the USSR has published a book of nearly 400 pages contain ing papers read there. A preliminary report of the discussion has appeared and a full report is in press. Seven teen countries outside the USSR participated and of these the United States had the largest representation. The general chairman of the con ference was the Russian scientist, A. I. Oparin, who has recently published the third edition of his book on the origin of life. Among the American delegates was Stanley L. Miller, who five years ago performed an experi ment at the University of Chicago to test Oparin’s theory. Electric dis charges were passed through a mix ture of hydrogen, a mm o n i a a nd methane circulating with steam through an apparatus from which the ah had been removed. This was in tended to simulate lightning flashes in the atmosphere of the earth at a certain time in its history before life appeared. Within a week several amino acids were formed and this w a s c o n s i d e r e d favorable to the theory. At the Moscow meeting Dr. Miller reported that ultraviolet radia tions may be substituted for the elec tric discharges and carbon dioxide may be used instead of methane. Another American delegate stressed the position of viruses as a transition al form between molecules and living organisms. However scientists in gen eral do not consider the viruses to represent the link between the first living creatures and non-living or ganic compounds assumed to have come about by chance, for with the best of human skill viruses have not
yet been induced to live on any or ganic medium. They live only as parasites on higher forms of life. It thus does not seem reasonable that they could represent the first form ,of life, which had to maintain itself and evolve to something higher. If the Russians should succeed in synthesizing something which could in turn produce a protein they would undoubtedly hail themselves as the creators of life. But even if they did do this it would not prove that sub stances came together in this way by chance to form simple life, for if this were finally accomplished after so much intensive work by so great a human effort it would represent any thing but chance. A rather similar situation arose about 130 years ago when Hennel synthesized ethyl alco hol and Wohler made urea in the laboratory. Previously organic com pounds had been known to originate only from the metabolic processes of living creatures and it was thought that something unique about life might prevent its substances and pro ducts being duplicated outside the living organism. Oparin, as chairman, closed the meetings with a statement to the effect that differences of opinion as to the manner of the origin of life cannot be settled by vote or debate. This is indeed true. A ll of this in its present setting turns our minds to the second Psalm and we wonder how long the Lord w ill put up w ith it, for surely the time w ill come when “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore dis pleasure.”
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