The Argument

• Living things came into existence.
• Living things cannot come from nonliving things.
• Therefore a supernatural being created living things.

Criticism

• Abiogenesis, the theory that life evolved from nonliving matter, is plausible.
• If a theory is plausible, no competing theory is reasonable to believe.
• Therefore, it’s not reasonable to believe that a supernatural being created living things

Sketch of Origin of life

• evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/origsoflife_04
  • Simple organic molecules were formed, e.g. sugars, nucleic acids, amino acids.
  • Replicating molecules evolved and began to undergo natural selection.
  • Replicating molecules became enclosed within a cell membrane.
  • Some cells began to evolve modern metabolic processes and out-competed those with older forms of metabolism.
  • Multicellular organisms evolved.
• In the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment amino acids were produced from a mixture of water vapor, methane, ammonia, and molecular hydrogen, zapped by electricity.