Jason, I’m not an atheists (although I do sometime play one on the internet), but I thought I would chime in. One could be a deist and believe that there may have been a creator, but he/she/it is no longer involved in the world, therefore being a practical atheist.

I won’t pretend to be any good at science so I’m not going to expand on this thought enough to get myself into trouble.
I’ll just say that the shortest scientific answer to your question is: “I don’t know. Good question. Let’s try really hard to figure it out.”
And I strongly suspect that any longer answer will begin with the rejection of your premise, “random chance.”

A mere agnostic here but if we look at “life” all we see is chemistry. The processes that make living things “living” are dependent on well-understood chemical reactions between atoms and molecules. The “difference” between life any any high-school chemistry experiment is that “living things” are self-sustaining (for a while) chemical reactions. But we also know of “inanimate” self-sustaining chemical reactions (look up “chemical clocks” fo an example).
The mere fact that we don’t know how to start life from scratch — now — is not evidence that any god started it, any more than the fact that we didn’t know what caused disease until relatively recently in human history meant that gods vere visiting punishment on us every time we got a cold.
There is, at least, a reasonable prospect that we will discover a way that life could have started on its own, based on what we know about life as it is now. One thing is sure, however, if we stop trying to find out, we’ll never know.
By the way, neither chemistry nor evolution are “random” as both operate by rather strict natural “laws” (i.e. regularities). They can be described as “highly contingent” or (seemingly) “unintentional” but not “random” in any true sense of the word.

I am an atheist and I find it amazing to believe that so many Christians have no problem believing that the world was brought into existence by an invisible, all-powerful sky daddy muttering a few words, but when someone suggests that the world might have come into existence through a natural process they act like the very idea is utterly preposterous. And Jason, what keeps you in the “God Exists camp” is wishful thinking and an unwillingness to apply logic and reason to the world around you. Religion is mythology, nothing more.

***One of the big things that keeps me entrenched in the God Exists camp rather than the naturalistic/atheist camp is that first spark of life. The Big Bang. The moment when something came from nothing, when life — primordial ooze, proteins, DNA, whatever — came into being.***
You are describing abiogenesis, not the Big Bang. The Big Bang is an explanation of how our universe is expanding from a hot, dense singularity. We don’t know how it got there. It could have come from another universe (if we are indeed in a multiverse). We probably will never know as there’s no way to observe what happened before the Big Bang because time didn’t exist.
And both abiogenesis and the Big Bang do not say that “something came from nothing”. It’s quite the opposite. It explains what elements were present in the early stages of the Big Bang and how these elements when heated at extreme temperatures to create other elements in addition to basic physical laws, spurring a process that’s been going on for 13.7 billion years. Abiogenesis tries to explain all the elements that start the chain-reaction of creating life. There may be several different methods in how life can start, and many may not even be reflective of how life began on Earth. Again, we’ll probably never know the “exact” combination for how life began on Earth, but it certainly is a more humble and honest answer than the arrogant and lazy assumption that “God did it.”

First of all, I’m not an atheist. In fact, I’m a pretty devout theist and freely admit that it colors my thoughts on the matter. That said, I have a few comments:
1) John, you’re right, the fact that we don’t know how life started is not evidence that God caused it. There is no evidence that He did, that’s why we call it “faith” (and, yes, Megan, I know that just caused to roll your eyes and think “Here we go again”). For me, the idea that life happened on its own requires to great a reliance on chance than I’m comfortable with. But, that’s my hang-up and I don’t foist it on others.
2) Megan, I find it amazing that atheists have no problem railing against the intolerance of Christians while demonstrating a level of tolerance comparable to that of a fundamentalist Southern Baptist.
3)J, my question for you is where did that singularity come from? I agree with the science of the Big Bang and evolution. And, while I don’t think we should stop looking, I just think that God started the ball rolling.

***my question for you is where did that singularity come from?***
Did you read my post? I said it possibly could come from a potential multiverse (if indeed multiverses exist). But the bottom line is we DO NOT KNOW and we may NEVER KNOW. What’s important is that we know the process happened and is happening, and that we shouldn’t just insert any possibility into the “how” and “why” without some evidence to actually point us in that direction. Unless…you you have this objective evidence?
***I just think that God started the ball rolling***
I believe the Chocolately Monster of Goodness started the ball rolling. It’s just as “valid” as your claim.

This is sort of misreporting (on the part of science). They didn’t really make a synthetic cell – they were just recombining existant DNA to make a new cell. It’s a new technology but far far from the creation of life(which they haven’t been able to come close to).

J, first of all, I never claimed any validity, evidence or anything else for my belief (not claim). And, it truly is MY belief. I’m not saying anyone else has to agree with it. As for the “multiverse” idea, I’m not opposed to it. But, where did this multiverse come from? I’m truly asking this, not questioning your thoughts or beliefs. Although, I can see why you might think that due the snarkiness of my response to Megan. For which I heartily apologize, but stuff like that brings out my jerky side.

A couple of points.
1. I’m fascinated by the idea of multiverses, and definitely it could be a way to explain how life happened in this universe. But Joel has a point: where did the other universe(s) come from?
2. J and Daniel have a good point, too. Humility is key, because when it comes to big stuff like this, our knowledge is limited. We may never know with absolute certainty. An intellectually honest nonbeliever can admit that about the origins of life, and an intellectually honest believer can admit that about the existence of God (at least, this side of death).
3. Let’s try to keep it civilized. I’m a big fan of building conversations between believers and non-believers, but those conversations don’t go anywhere when jerky behavior is present on either side. I don’t mind being accused of “an unwillingness to apply logic or reason to the world” around me, as Megan said (though I’m more often accused, by Christians, of applying TOO much logic and too little faith). But if you’re going to speak ill of someone, do it to me. It’s my blog, so I make the rules. And the rule is: Be respectful.

Joel,
Of course you can believe whatever you possibly want to. I’m not suggesting that one can’t or shouldn’t. But I am suggesting that your belief that there needs to be a creator or where the materials to start the Big Bang came from (or even “why” it started) or what started multiverses (again, if they exist), or in your case…what created the creator, these are ALL hypotheses that have little or nothing to support them (other than subjectivity) at this current time. There can be an infinite amount of explanations but only one can be correct, and we may never even know it. That is why an “I don’t know” is being honest with yourself and others compared to jumping to conclusions that have a high probability of being false. Obviously, not all answers can be correct.
I honestly didn’t pay attention to what you said to Megan. People being an ass is not limited to beliefs in the first place, so of course there are douche atheists as well as douche theists. We’re all people.

I’m not trying to debate here. I simply wanted to correct Jason’s misuse of the “Big Bang” when it was really abiogenesis he was talking about as well as to correct the notion that science believes “something came from nothing”. Again, “I don’t know” is a healthy response and honest response. That’s all I really wanted to say. Thanks.

I’m pretty sure that if we give our scientists the same amount of time to create life from non-life as the universe had, they’ll come up with something. Quite possibly a lot sooner. A billion years vs. 10 years isn’t really a fair comparison.
While I find abiogenesis a somewhat interesting topic, my lack of faith isn’t founded on needing to know absolute truths about it.
Much like a religious person leaves it largely at “God made it”, I can leave it at “Universe/nature/chemistry/whatever made it” and live my life happily ever after. Not many would try to claim that unless you know the exact processes that God used to create life on cellular level you can’t justify your religion. It would be equally silly to demand that from a non-religious viewpoint.
In the end, “God made it” is in no way better argument than something vague like “nature made it”. For the most parts, science has some quite fascinating theories on the more intricate details of origins of Life, Universe and Everything. Lack of absolute certainty in those theories and lack of theories in some parts of it is not an argument that religion, with no answers at all whatsoever, is somehow more plausible.

I’m an atheist, and I’m not a regular reader, but I can still answer your questions speaking from a typical atheist point of view.
Most atheists will admit that in spite of all the pieces to the puzzle that we do have, we still do not know exactly how life came to be. But we do not throw our hands in the air and say “I don’t know everything, therefore it must be God, and God exists”. I might as well make up anything… “I don’t know everything, therefore Bigfoot made life out of an omnipotent pair of rollerblades!” Ignorance doesn’t necessitate God.
(Most atheists consider this kind of convenient-explanation-for-things-we-do-not-understand to be one of the major reasons the phenomena of religion persists among humans.)
Both sides of this issue are making an argument for HOW life started. So, both sides of this issue have a burden of evidence for their particular views. As I see it, here’s the score:
Abiogenesis: Compelling bits and pieces, but no perfect answer yet.
Creation: Nothing, as usual.

***but no perfect answer yet.***
Technically speaking, scientific laws aren’t “perfect answers” either. They serve simply as tools of prediction mainly through the use of mathematics.
Like I said before, it’s probably impossible to know the “true” answer for how life started here on Earth, but abigonesis is a science that helps bring to light all the possible models for how life could come from innanimate matter. I agree with Kristian. It doesn’t matter if we never know this “true” answer. I think it’s fascinating enough learning about all the possibilities of our universe and existance through objective evidence. Science is still young, and we still have quite a lot more details to learn. But 500 years of science so far…pretty impressive results compared to any time previous in human history!

Jason said:
“Most atheists I know don’t admit to having doubts”
An atheist’s doubt (I’m not going to get into atheist/agnostic/etc. semantics – “someone who doesn’t believe in god(s)” for the sake of this post) is quite different kind of animal than believer’s doubt.
Lack of belief is the natural state; we’re all born atheists. To maintain that state takes no effort. You don’t have to have answers to questions about LU&E. You don’t have to have any interest in origins of life. You don’t have to believe anything any scientist has ever said. There’s no “faith” to maintain.
Belief seems to work differently. It requires active effort to maintain, and it requires the existence of faith to survive.
In a way, it takes some effort for an atheist to doubt. So many of us just can’t be bothered with such things.

As a Christian, I get so tired of my fellow Christians making god-of-the-gaps type arguments. I don’t think you intended this Jason, but it comes across that way at poitns. On the other hand, I get so tired of atheists putting up strawmen (anytime “sky daddy” is used) and acting like we are idiots for believing in them…ummm…yeah.
(Atheists, allow me a little space to discuss theology with my fellow Christians)
Before the 17th century Deist controversy, it was more than acceptable for Christians to believe that whatever science found was God-ordained, guided, upheld and whatever else (the Galileo controversy besides as most historians know it had little to do with science and his defenders included as many in the church as outside the church).
Whenever Deistic theology began portraying the universe as a large mechanism where a god need only set it in motion and then go do something else, Christian in response adopted this methodology but said, “you can’t explain ‘x.’” The ‘x’ items became “supernatural” and everything else became “natural.” Before this time, there was never a natural/supernatural dichotomy. The previous generation would have seen all scientific endeavors as a pursuit to gain knowledge into God’s world. The latter Christian generations saw science as a pursuit to find knowledge of the “natural” world and gaps as “supernatural” events that must come from God. As these gaps closed, previous generations of Christians would have rejoiced because we had more knowledge about God’s Creation. The latter generations of Christians cringed, because now we had less “evidence” of the “supernatural.”
This brings us to this day, where the children of the deists became William Paley and the modern ID movement. Typical arguments are to the effect of “you can’t explain x, x and x, therefore God.” Of course, Christian theology should be fighting against such reasoning. Studying possible multiverses, RNA worlds and everything else should be seen by Christians as a fascinating exploration into the mind of God. Therefore, Christians should stand alongside their atheist, Hindu, whatever else brothers and sisters in humanity and search for all of these answers in Creation.
Our God works consistently through His Creation, so as Christians we should not expect situations to arise where God’s Creation needed some special, divine nudge to keep “the mechanism” going. We reject the whole concept of mechanism since revelation teaches that every moment of existence is held in his hand and therefore we should expect what non-Christians would call “natural” explanations for the beginning of life.
Evolution, multiverses, abiogenesis, etc. may be issues for Christians who have embraced the natural/supernatural dichotomy of the 17th century deistic world, but for those of us more interested in Augustinian/Thomistic/Calvinistic branches of Christianity, we should expect such elegant and beautiful origins to life, our universe and everything else, because we serve an elegant God.
If I might suggest a few books to help understand what it looks like for a Christian (even a conservative one like myself) to understand the expected integration of faith and science:
1. For biblical studies, I’d suggest Bruce Waltke’s excellent Old Testament Theology
2. For science, I’d suggest Denis Alexander’s Creation or Evolution: Why Do We Have to Choose?
3. For a comprehensive way of understanding how science/faith work together, I’d suggest Alister McGrath’s A Scientific Theology.
I’d also suggest spending some time at the Biologos website and even better at the Faraday Institute website, which is full of lecture audio, video, etc. and has recently put out a great DVD called Test of Faith. You can check it out here: http://www.testoffaith.com

Oh! Another great book for understanding the philosophical concepts at work in evolution would be Etienne Gilson’s excellent From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again. He is not anti-Darwin or evolution in the least, but shows many of the underlying philosophical issues that go ignored. It’s excellent reading.

Hi Jason,
As other commenters have pointed out, you’re basically using God of the Gaps logic (“God had to nudge life\universe along to the creation of >>>US

This “experiment” is yet another proof of the Law of Biogenesis. Life can only come from life. Therefore, ALL life comes from a greater source of life: that is, God Himself.

“ALL life comes from a greater source of life: that is, God Himself”
If God is defined as being life then by your own logic and this supposed “law of biogenesis,” God himself would have had to come from another life. So your argument fails.
This synthetic life breakthrough has little to do with abiogenesis. That was never the goal in their research.

And “God Himself” was created by what? This line of arguing explains nothing, proofs nothing and helps nothing.

The idea that life could not have started by itself outside because it is so “difficult in a lab” is a bad argument. We have to remember that nature is running these kinds of chemistry experiments by the trillions constantly. Nature only needs to succeed once.

The whole “Law of Biogenesis” business is a crock:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/spontaneous-generation.html

Nailing my colours to the mast – I’m an physics nerd and probable atheist…just so you know.
Firstly, nice to see a faith based blog that can happily make rational arguments, recognising both science and faith for what they are, both incomplete systems to try and make sense of the unknown. All to often religious types don’t understand that science is an intentionally limiting system of thought, simply designed to take as much of the (highly fallible) human opinion, bias, prejudice and misguided intuition out of a search for what is most likely to be true. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not accusing the religious types of these things specifically, they’re inherent faults of all humans, regardless of belief.
So science asks for proof. Einstein’s theory of relativity wasn’t proper science originally, just some mathematical jiggery-pokery. But then the theory started making predictions about, for example, the orbit of Mercury and the appearance of stars during a solar eclipse, so it became a little more like a firm theory. Evidence, that’s what’s needed for something to be science.
So, biogenesis…
No, there’s no evidence for the spontaneous emergence of life. Neither is there any evidence for the existence of a god of any description. Unless you count the simple existence of life as evidence, in which case you can apply it to either theory equally. Physicists call it the anthropic principle, and it’s the cause of much highly heated argument at the highest levels.
What science does know is this:
1: Once a self replicating molecule exists, and if it can withstand minor errors in reproduction (and still reproduce again), then it is subject to the standard theory of evolution. That’s all you need, one single, solitary molecule and some “food” for it, then you’re potentially on your way to bacteria and worms and badgers and Craig Venter.
2: The building blocks of self replicating molecules like DNA and RNA have been spotted all over the planet, and also in very thin clouds of gas in space. One of these compounds is the one that gives raspberries their smell by the way…yes, outer space is raspberry scented
3: Experiments in the 70′s showed that if you take a jug of these compounds, add some heat and maybe a bit of lightning, then they form more complex molecules that are *closer* to DNA. Not DNA, it’s never spontaneously formed in a lab. Geological time scales are very long though, millions of years is a click of the fingers.
So the upshot is that spontaneous biogenesis, by sheer fluke, is possible. And if you give something that’s “possible” long enough then it can become “probable”. It’s still an issue that’s very much up in the air though, quite literally. If life *can* spontaneously develop then where is the rest of it? It’s called the Fermi Paradox, look it up, there’s some fun ideas.
Again, thanks for an interesting post, I love a *good* science/religion argument, but they all so often degenerate into angry recriminations from two sides who don’t understand the other.

******
Kuba – If God is defined as being life then by your own logic and this supposed “law of biogenesis,” God himself would have had to come from another life. So your argument fails.
******
I am a christian and i have always wondered about this as well, and i think i am crazy for thinking that God just always was there – something that my human brain can not understand at all.

The “Big Bang” has nothing to do with biology. In 1927, Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Roman Catholic priest who was also a physicist, developed his “hypothesis of the primeval atom,” later dubbed “The Big Bang Theory” by Fred Hoyle. It has solely to do with the density of matter as we project backward from the present, known expanding universe.
The conditions present at the hypothized “Big Bang” — if indeed it did occur — would not support any known form of life.

Jmax: “i think i am crazy for thinking that God just always was there”
If we conclude that god wasn’t created by another life form then we can’t say that all life must be created by another life. If life doesn’t need to be created by another life, then there’s no need for god as an explanation.

In defense of Jason, saying that the origin of life and the big bang are reasons you believe in God, is much, much different than saying “God did it”. As a long time reader of Jason’s I know he would be the last one to use a “God of the gaps” argument. I’m also going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he lumped the big bang and the origin of life together as a sort of list of scientifically significant events as opposed to confusing them as the same thing.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that these events give reason to believe in God. What bothers me is when people (believers and nonbelievers) take this to be some sort of a scientific proof. What’s great about having this discussion on a blog like this is that it’s not just a science discussion. Life is more than science. Science is great and important, but it’s not the only thing that informs my decisions about what I believe.
No matter how you slice it, life is improbable. The spontaneous generation of a single protein in a universe of amino acids is not likely even given the entire time since the universe began; and it takes hundreds of proteins to have a working cell. Throw in the extremely complex specified information in DNA and you’re looking at life being astronomically less likely to happen than to happen. Even the most die-hard neo-Darwinist atheists express wonder at the existence of life against such incredible odds. For someone who is already a believer, that wonder translates to the glory of God.
I’ll be the first to say that none of that proves the existence of God, but for me it points in the right direction. I think that’s perfectly reasonable and I’m fine with it if you don’t think it’s scientific.
One more thing… I don’t see how it’s possible to verify multiple universes. It seems like this is the scientific version of the “invisible sky daddy” or “chocolate monster of goodness”. Sure it’s possible, but is there ay reason to believe other universes exist? Doesn’t this raise just as many questions as it answers?

One more post to respond to a few things people have said…
@Fastthumbs: Science and religion are not in competition. They are not mutually exclusive. I don’t know if you’re trying to make a point that they are, but thats how it comes across in your post. You can’t treat religion like science and expect it to hold up. It wont, it’s not supposed to, and that’s ok.
Also, I’m pretty sure most scientists will tell you they’re 100% convinced of evolution from common decent. Richard Dawkins says he’s as confident in it as he is that the world is round. From my experience, I’d say he’s more confident in evolution than most pastors I know are confident in their interpretations of scripture.
@Kristian, we’ve had this conversation before, albeit in different terms, but I don’t think it’s a logical fallacy to say that “life must be created by another life” and to say that God wasn’t created. The reason is because when we say “life must have been created” we’re talking about life as we know it, the life that we observe here in our experience. God is not a part of that. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to apply “rules” to observable phenomena that do not apply to God.

Well, if you start adding exceptions and footnotes to the catchy phrase, it becomes a bit less catchy. I think it either creates a logical fallacy or renders the whole point entirely pointless.
Whether life is improbable or probable depends on how we count its probability. Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart argue in “Figments of Reality” that life was not only probable, but so likely it probably happened many times independent of each other.
Many intentional and unintentional distortions of the probability exist.
The fact remains, whether it was unavoidable or somewhat improbable, it still happened.

Jason- you sure do know how to get interesting convos started!!! I thought of a lil different take on your question here to stir up more dialogue between believers and nonbelievers. Kristian actually inspired my thought here as over on his blog he stated that God as revealed in the Bible is the most evil Being imaginable, or words close to that effect. I would be very interested to hear why nonbelievers take this view of God, IF He existed and what evidences or logical reasoning they have to declare Him as such. More a *what kind of God is He* as opposed to *is He there or not* Just a suggestion.

if you look into jack szostak’s work on the first proto cells that incorporate monomers that polymerize and become trap in the cell wall. you will see that incorpoating new information as they call it. isnt nearly as hard as they make it out to be.its a simple process really. there is also a lab in europe that has proved that creating rna from chemicals ,under the the same conditions that were prevalent in the prebiotic earth is not only possible but probable. its really where chemistry becomes biology. if you take all the chemical reactions that happen everyday on earth and multiply that time 3.5 billion years its statistically probable event for life to arise from simple chemical reactions. i kinda stradle the fence between deism and atheism but i find it hard to believe people want genesis taught along side evolution.

Disclaimer: I’m both a molecular biologist and a believer (LDS)
Jason, the question you’re asking has to do with a concept in biology and physics known as emergence. Emergence may be loosely defined as an event or condition which arises *ad hoc*, meaning it happens due to local factors and with results not directly predictable from underlying forces.
Intelligent designers, etc. would say that emergence (or irreducible complexity as they say) proves the existence of a divine architect, which is a logical fallacy (post hoc ergo propter hoc). Emergence is the result of collective actions at one level that produce another, ie. the molecular producing the cellular. The math and data behind this are real, but there is still little predictive power in it – we cannot yet reliably predict with current knowledge and technology the conditions necessary for the emergence of life de novo (from scratch). This is a difficult concept for most Christians whose understanding of the universe is largely filtered through the lens of Aristotelian and Platonic logic that all things are driven by strictly causal interactions – the ultimate one being the unmoved mover (God).
One of the big reasons many people, especially Christians and Westerners, struggle with the concept of abiogenesis fundamentally comes down to our attaching causality to events which are actually not directly causal (A does not necessarily cause B). Most of the complexity of the universe derives from events which are *mutually* causal (they happen simultaneously and reinforce each other). Randomness is a weak description for the path that Nature took to arrive at our present location. Chaos, or at least the mathematical principle of chaos, is a closer approximation of reality – everything follows constrained randomness. The constant interaction between components and the rest of universe produces the emergent events and properties we see.
Certainly science has yet to fully discover all that exists; however it is at least consistent and working toward that goal in a systematic and logical fashion. Those who criticize its findings do so at the risk of their own ignorance. Perhaps one of the reasons people have such a hard time swallowing science is that it requires setting aside preconceived notions in order to learn what is actually out there. To paraphrase CS Lewis, we try to convince ourselves of God the way we choose to see Him rather than allowing Him to be revealed as we seek Him. I for one believe that seeking must happen within the Creation as well as within the Gospel.

Protocell Schmotocell
A. “Life from scratch”
Relaunching biology from the beginning
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/60345/title/Life_from_scratch
B. “Genes’ Expression Modification”
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/200/122.page#3649
Life’s is the ubiquitous cosmic evolution mode. The mode of a gene’s response to the organism culture’s feedback signal, i.e. “replicate without change” or “replicate with change” in case of proven augmented energy constrainment by the offspring, is the mode of Life’s normal evolution, which is the mode of evolution universally, the mode of cosmic evolution.
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
03.2010 Updated Life Manifest
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/54.page#5065
Cosmic Evolution Simplified
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/240/122.page#4427
“Gravity Is The Monotheism Of The Cosmos”
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/260/122.page#4887