I’m a firm believer in the Law of Biogenesis. Life only comes from life. It never arises from nonliving matter. Nonetheless, there are scientists who believe life arose from nonliving matter, and they go to great lengths to prove it.

Here’s an article from Phys.Org reporting on a study published by astrobiologist Manasvi Lingam where he outlines the probability for the origin of life, and he does this by “exploring chance.”

I find this interesting because scientists- such as Fred Hoyle and Eric Heden– have been criticized for exploring chance. Well, more specifically, they were criticized for their conclusions, which were unfavorable to the idea that life could arise naturally from nonliving material.

In this case the goal of Lingam was to analyze the probability of life originating according to sites favorable to abiogenesis. In other words, they weren’t interested in exploring the chances of life arising from nonlife as much as concluding that abiogenesis is possible, and then drawing inferences from that premise. The odds of abiogenesis occurring isn’t so important as stacking the deck.

Since they already assumed life could emerge from nonlife, the analysis concentrated on models that would validate their hypothesis that certain sites on earth are more conducive to abiogenesis than others. They wanted to find out which sites had the best likelihood of abiogenesis occurring.

Of course, if the Law of Biogenesis is adhered to, then there’s no point in doing this experiment. But this fact is moot to their agenda. It’s kind of like ignoring the fact that no human could jump across the ocean, but then trying to determine the probabilities of which ocean an Olympic long jumper would be more successful jumping across- the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian or Arctic. Assuming this hypothetical long jumper could do it, which ocean would give them the best chance of doing it?

The author of this article actually admits this. He writes, “For the sake of this model, the researchers focused on the possibility of life originating on Earth itself. So, since it’s established that there is life on Earth, this model assumes that life originated on Earth at least once.”

Exactly. Abiogenesis is assumed. And the evidence is our existence. Therefore, once they’ve concluded that life could arise from nonlife, they can proceed with their model.

Next they combed through the literature and collected sites potentially favorable to abiogenesis, like soap bubbles and underwater volcanoes. They wanted to know what sites, theoretically, could produce life, and the probability of life arising from any one of those sites.

Shockingly, the results weren’t what Lingam expected. In fact the author refers to the results as “counterintuitive.” And that’s because, she says, “comparing the larger number of sites to the smaller number, the probability of life per pool was almost inversely related to the number of pools.” Thus they concluded that “the smaller sample of sites, which revealed a higher probability of life at a given site, likely contained more conducive environments.” So we have a failed scientific prediction.

In the end, Lingam has no answers. He can’t give us the odds of life originating on earth. But he did make an important realization: “We can’t peer back in time. Sometimes you can arrive at answers just through very clever use of limited data… but there is a part that you’ll never know.”

That’s right… we can’t go back in time and observe the universe and earth unfolding through history. Therefore, we arrive at our conclusions through the various worldviews we adhere to. Lingam holds to an evolutionary worldview, but I maintain a Christian worldview where God created the heavens and earth in six days, and I’d suggest that the evidence bears this out. While we can’t observe time, we can trust God’s word, which describes his creation of life, including plants and vegetation, birds, fish, land animals and mankind. And this worldview is consistent with the Law of Biogenesis.

While Lingam’s work violates this law, the Bible affirms it. Therefore, when God decided to create life on earth, the likelihood of life originating on earth became 100 percent!