For 70 years the mainstream science literature has presented enormously misleading coverage about origin-of-life research. There has been a huge amount of bunk and baloney in the press coverage of origin-of-life research, and the statements made on this topic by scientists themselves have very often been wildly inaccurate. Many examples of such misstatements can be found here and here and here and here and here and here and here.
Never has so much boasting and hype been written by so many when the results were so minimal and meager. It is not merely that no experiments have ever produced life from non-life. The reality is that no experiments realistically simulating the early Earth have ever produced any of the main building components of single-celled life, and that no experiments realistically simulating the early Earth have ever produced any of the building components of the building components of single-celled life.
The research output: "peanuts" (i.e. "chickenfeed")
The main building components of one-celled life are functional protein molecules, which have never been produced in any experiment realistically simulating the early Earth. The building components of such building components are amino acids, which have never been produced in any experiment realistically simulating the early Earth. The widely-discussed Miller-Urey experiment (which did produce some amino acids) was not anything like a realistic simulation of early Earth conditions, requiring a very specially constructed glass gizmo unlike anything that would have existed on the early Earth, and requiring a degree of electricity exposure unlike any part of the early Earth would have experienced.
The most recent example of press baloney and BS on this topic is an article entitled "How Life Solved Its 'Impossible' Problem: Leading Chemist Explains Life Doesn’t Need a Miracle to Appear." The subtitle is sheer denialism: "Life may have emerged from a surprisingly simple network of chemical reactions long before cells or genes existed." No, you need genes and a cell for life to get started. Mortified by how high is the requirement threshold for even the simplest living thing (the required number of well-arranged parts), materialists are prone to engage in such misspeaking, by incorrectly describing some-sort-of-little-chemistry as "life."
The article has an interview with chemist John D. Sutherland. The article makes this incorrect claim: "That question led to a breakthrough in 2009, when Sutherland and his colleagues showed that key building blocks of RNA could form without enzymes, under conditions that might have existed on early Earth." No such breakthrough occurred. The sentence above includes a link to a 2009 paper by Sutherland that does not describe any experiment simulating early Earth conditions. The paper merely describes work done by scientists purposefully trying to move things forward in a chemistry lab. Their output was mere ribonucleotides, which are not any of the building blocks of protein molecules. The paper (like so many in this field) has a misleading title, as it refers to "prebiotically plausible conditions," but does not describe any experimental attempt to realistically recreate early Earth conditions, with the paper's described outputs all requiring purposeful work by chemists enjoying the convenience of a modern laboratory.
The article then refers us to an equally unimpressive 2015 paper co-authored by Sutherland, one claiming to have achieved not amino acids (the building components of proteins) but mere "precursors" of amino acids. Again, the paper has a misleading title, as the title refers to protein precursors, when it should have merely referred to something much simpler and much less impressive (mere amino acid precursors). Again, we fail to have a description of any experiment simulating early Earth conditions. All that is described is manual, intentional manipulations by chemists within a chemistry lab.
Very badly misspeaking about this unimpressive result, the ZME Science article writer states, "In other words, the same basic geochemical environment could generate all three major classes of biomolecules required for life." No, nothing of the sort was shown. No DNA or RNA was produced; no gene was produced; no protein molecule was produced; and not even one of the building components of a protein molecule was produced.
We then have an interview with Sutherland. He starts out speaking candidly about the dismal lack of progress of origin-of-life scientists such as himself, stating this:
"When I started, as a young man, I confidently expected that we’d understand how the building blocks were made within a couple of years. I’m now approaching the last quarter of my life, and we’ve almost finished making the building blocks. It’s taken much longer than we expected."
The reality is that no experiments realistically simulating the early Earth have ever produced any of the lowest building blocks of life, components such as amino acids and nucleotides. Sutherland has boasted about creating nucleotides (low-level building components of RNA), but this was through manual purposeful exertions in a chemistry lab, not through any experiments realistically simulating the early Earth. So that "hardly got anything done" statement of "I’m now approaching the last quarter of my life, and we’ve almost finished making the building blocks" should actually be something like "I spent 50 years and still haven't got the lowest building blocks through any realistic experiments."
After making a very lame excuse of a lack of funding (very misleading because there has been tons of funding for such efforts), Sutherland changes his tune dramatically and goes into delusional-sounding fantasy mode, making a prediction that makes not the slightest speck of sense, given the very meager results of origin-of-life researchers such as himself. Sutherland states this:
"I would say we’re getting remarkably close to the point where someone will do an experiment where you start in a laboratory with a mixture of chemicals that is obviously not alive, and within a couple of weeks you end up with simple cells showing all the hallmarks of life.
That will be an extraordinary experiment. It will finally remove the last vestiges of vitalism—the idea that there’s something special about biology that means it can’t be recreated from chemistry. Wöhler’s synthesis of urea destroyed most of vitalism, but some elements still persist.
If we can demonstrate by experiment that we can kick-start biology just by mixing the appropriate chemicals in the right sequence in a way that simulates what happened on early Earth, that will dispel vitalism completely. Then we’ll have a rational explanation for how it all started and why we’re here."
Hogwash. Baloney. BS. Stating the most laughable of fantasies, Sutherland here speaks like a physicist who has struggled all his life to invent a time machine, without getting anywhere, and who then consoles himself by saying, "I think I'm remarkably close to creating a machine that will transport me back to the Stone Age, and I should be able to make that in two weeks."
The dismal failure of origin-of-life researchers provides not the slightest warrant for the grandiose predictions Sutherland has made, which sound like a delusional fantasy. Everything we know about the very high organization level and very high information richness of even the simplest life screams to us in the loudest voice that Sutherland's prediction is nonsense, an idea as false as claiming that someone throwing ink at a wall would produce a long technical manual by accidental ink splashes.
As for the claim that the synthesis of urea did something to discredit vitalism, that is a groundless false claim long made by materialists. The inability of scientists such as Sutherland to make any of the major components of life from experiments realistically simulating the early Earth leaves vitalism intact as something that materialists have not discredited. And the utter failure of scientists to explain the progression from a speck-sized zygote to the vast hierarchical organization of a human body (without resorting to childish lies about DNA body blueprints that do not actually exist) also leaves the credibility of vitalist ideas intact.
When we hear Sutherland fantasizing about this type of eagerly-hoped-for miracle-like future event, we are reminded of how materialism is really a kind of religion-in-all-but-name. Imagining life suddenly popping out magically from lifeless chemicals, Sutherland sounds like a fundamentalist Christian eagerly predicting the Rapture in which the Elect are all suddenly levitated up into heaven. In both cases there's an element of "on that day my ideological enemies will be vanquished!"
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