It has long been recognized that life could not have arisen by natural processes under conditions existing at the present day. In particular, an atmosphere containing free oxygen would rapidly oxidize any randomly assembled organic molecules that might otherwise serve as stepping stones to biological activity.
In his 1936 book, The Origin of Life, Soviet
biochemist A. I. Oparin proposed that Earth's early atmosphere contained
ammonia, methane, and hydrogen, with no free oxygen. The idea was driven by the
clear impossibility that spontaneous generation could occur in an oxygen environment.
(Unless otherwise noted, quotations below are from the book by Henry Morris, That Their Words May Be Used Against Them, available from the Institute for Creation Research. Links are to articles and papers on the World Wide Web. As you visit the links below, please take time to tour the websites that host them and become familiar with the resources they offer. )
"Geological and geophysical evidence is insufficient to allow us to state with precision what conditions were like on the surface of the primitive earth. Arguments concerning the composition of the primitive atmosphere are particularly controversial. It is important, therefore, to state our own prejudice clearly. We believe that there must have been a period when the earth's early atmosphere was reducing, because the synthesis of compounds of biological interest takes place only under reducing conditions."
- Miller and Orgel in the Origins of Life on Earth
(quoted from http://www.theory-of-evolution.org/Main/chap8/earth_atmosphere-0.htm)
Did the Early Earth Have a Reducing Atmosphere? by Steven A. Austin
According to evolutionary theory, a chemically reducing atmosphere was necessary during the early development of compounds leading to life on earth, but recent data calls into question the plausibility of such an atmosphere.
First published in: Creation Ex Nihilo 3(3):23-27, August 1980
Berry, Adrian, "Oldest Plants Breathe Chaos into Life Theory," London Daily Telegraph (June 2, 1990).
"The oldest plant life ever found has been discovered in the Western Australian outback. Resembling seaweed, it grew about 1,100 million years ago, compared with an age of 540 million years for the previously oldest-known plant.
"This discovery has thrown into confusion the history of how the earth’s atmosphere evolved. Until the Cambrian Age began around 550 million years ago, the atmosphere was believed to have been without oxygen, a state in which only the most primitive single-celled creatures could exist.
"Dr. Chris Hill of the Natural History Museum in London, said yesterday: ‘It appears from this new evidence that the build-up of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere was a far longer process than we had previously thought.
"For such plants to have existed so long before the Cambrian Age, oxygen must have taken hundreds of millions of years to cover the planet."
Clemmey, Harry, and Nick Badham, "Oxygen in the Precambrian Atmosphere: An Evaluation of the Geological Evidence," Geology, vol. 10 (March 1982), pp. 141-146.
p. 141
"Abstract. Geologic evidence often presented in favor of an early anoxic atmosphere is both contentious and ambiguous…. Recent biological and interplanetary studies seem to favor an early oxidized atmosphere rich in CO2 and possibly containing free molecular oxygen. The existence of early red beds, sea and groundwater sulphate, oxidized terrestrial and sea-floor weathering crusts, and the distribution of ferric iron in sedimentary rocks are geological observations and inferences compatible with the biological and planetary predictions. It is suggested that from the time of the earliest dated rocks at 3.7 b.y. ago, Earth had an oxygenic atmosphere."
p. 145
"For the past fifty years or more, speculation and experimentation have fueled the notion of an early Earth with an anoxic and possibly reducing atmosphere and coupled this to arguments concerning the origin of life…. General acceptance of this model has raised it to the level of dogma, and it permeates much of earth science thinking. However recent advances in many fields and new ideas on the origin of life have thrown serious doubts on the anoxic model and may have removed the need for it."
Anonymous, "New Evidence on Evolution of Early Atmosphere and Life," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 63 (November 1982), pp. 1328-1330.
p. 1328
"Recent photochemical calculations by atmospheric researchers at Langley were presented at an international scientific conference last fall. They state that, at the time complex organic molecules (the precursors of living systems) were first formed from atmospheric gases the earth’s atmosphere was not composed primarily of methane, ammonia and hydrogen as was previously supposed. Instead it was composed of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor, all resulting from volcanic activity."
p. 1329
"Ultraviolet radiation on the earth from the young sun may have been up to 100,000 times greater than today."
p. 1329
"In the case of our calculated oxygen levels, one bit of evidence from the early geological record supports our conclusion. It was puzzling, but the geologists know from their analyses of the oldest known rocks that the oxygen level of the early atmosphere had to be much higher than previously calculated. Analyses of these rocks, estimated to be more than 3.5 billion years old, found oxidized iron in amounts that called for atmospheric oxygen levels to be at least 110 times greater and perhaps up to one billion times greater than otherwise accepted."
p. 1329
"How could life have formed and evolved in such a hostile environment? According to our calculations, there was virtually no ozone in the early atmosphere to protect against ultraviolet radiation levels that were much greater than they are today. It clearly should have affected the evolution of life on earth."
Anonymous, "Smaller Planets Began with Oxidized Atmosphere," New Scientist (July 10, 1980), p. 112.
"Although biologists concerned with the origin of life often quote an early atmosphere consisting of reduced gases, this stems as much from ignorance of recent advances as from active opposition to them. This important conclusion is reached by Ann Henderson-Sellers, of Liverpool University, and A. Benlow and Jack Meadows of Leicester University, after a study of how the composition of the atmosphere of the Earth and other planets may have influenced surface temperatures since the planets formed.
"… The more we have learnt about Venus and Mars the harder it is to explain how all three planets—two of them apparently lifeless—could have converted primeval reducing atmospheres into the oxidized atmospheres seen today."
p. 112
"The time has come, it seems, to accept as the new orthodoxy the idea of early oxidized atmospheres on all three terrestrial planets, and the biological primers which still tell of life on Earth starting out from a methane/ammonia atmosphere energized by electric storms and solar ultraviolet need to be rewritten."
Gribbin, John, "Carbon Dioxide, Ammonia—And Life," New Scientist, vol. 94 (May 13, 1982), pp. 413-416.
p. 413
"Pick up an encyclopedia and look up the section on the Earth’s atmosphere. It will probably tell you that the primeval atmosphere of our planet was dominated by methane, and that this hydrogen-rich gas was necessary for the formation of the first complex organic molecules, the precursors of life. But an increasing number of geophysicists, biologists and climatologists would take issue with the encyclopedias on both these claims. These scientists would base their objections on modern evidence provided by other planets, by the effects of volcanic eruptions and other strands from a broad spectrum of scientific research."
p. 413
"This picture captured the popular imagination, and the story of life emerging in the seas or pools of a planet swathed in an atmosphere of methane and ammonia soon became part of the scientific folklore that ‘every school child knows.’"
p. 416
"All we have to do now is rewrite all those textbooks and ensure that ‘every school child knows’ what the best theory of the evolution of the Earth’s atmosphere and the origins of life is today: that life developed in the pools on the surface of a planet with carbon-dioxide atmosphere bearing only a trace of ammonia, perhaps itself the product of chemical reactions in the desert sands."
Thaxton, Charles B., Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, Philosophical Library, New York, 1984, (Available from the Foundation of Thought and Ethics, PO Box 830721, Richardson, TX 75083-0721 or Master Books (800) 999-3777. This book should especially be on the reading list of those who confidently think life arose by random processes over millions of years. It is well written, and the layman could also learn from it.)
pp. 43-44.
"Concentrations of some of the most important early atmosphere
components would have been diminished by short wavelength, i.e., <2000 Å,
ultraviolet photodissociation. Atmospheric methane would have polymerized
and fallen into the ocean as more complicated hydrocarbons, perhaps forming
an oil slick 1-10m deep over the surface of the earth. If this occurred,
very small concentrations of methane would predictably have remained in the
atmosphere. About 99% of the atmospheric formaldehyde would have been
quickly degraded to carbon monoxide and hydrogen by photolysis [destruction
by light energy]. Carbon monoxide concentrations in the atmosphere would
have been small, however. Carbon monoxide would have been quickly and
irreversibly converted to formate in an alkaline ocean. Ammonia photolysis
to nitrogen and hydrogen would have occurred very quickly, reducing its
atmospheric concentration to so small a value that it could have played no
important role in chemical evolution. If all the nitrogen in the
contemporary atmosphere had existed in the form of ammonia in the early
atmosphere it would have been degraded by ultraviolet light in 30,000 years
[later revised by J.P. Ferris and D.E. Nicodem to 105-106 years].
If the ammonia surface mixing ratio were on the order of 10-5 as
Sagan has estimated, then the atmospheric lifetime of ammonia would have
been a mere 10 years. It would also have been difficult to maintain
substantial levels of hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere. Hydrogen sulfide
would have been photolyzed to free sulfur and hydrogen in no more than
10,000 years. The concentration of hydrogen sulfide in the ocean would have
been further attenuated by the formation of metal sulfides with their
notoriously low solubilities. The same photodissociation process would have
applied to water to yield hydrogen and oxygen. Some recent studies suggest
that, through ultraviolet photolysis of water vapor, atmospheric oxygen did
reach an appreciable fraction of today's concentration in early earth
times."
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