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Atheism

Can Life Arise by Chance? Debunking Abiogenesis Through Logic and Cell Biology

12 min read 2478 words

Debunking the Myth That Life Originated by Chance Through Serendipitous Chemical Reactions

Table of Contents

Argument 1 — The Logical Proof: Knowledge vs. Ignorance

Suppose we have a scientist who is professional in manufacturing spacecraft, and on the other hand we have an ignorant, uneducated person — who can build a spacecraft?

The Four Possibilities

We have 4 possibilities:

  1. The scientist is capable and the ignorant is incapable.
  2. Both are capable.
  3. The ignorant is capable and the scientist is incapable.
  4. Both are incapable.
Possibility 1 — Agreement with Reason The scientist is capable and the ignorant is incapable. We would be in agreement with reason, because making is linked to knowledge, and its negation is proven by ignorance.
Possibility 2 — Contradiction Both are capable. Then we would fall into a contradiction, because then we would prove making by proving ignorance, and at the same time making is linked to knowledge.
Possibility 3 — Contradictory
Possibility 4 — Contradictory
The Logical Conclusion
  • Knowledge → gives knowledge
  • Ignorance → does not give knowledge

When you prove that nature has the ability to make, you have proven Possibility 2, because ignorance is proven for nature — which is a contradictory possibility, and the combination of opposites is rationally impossible.

Can You Have a Thinking Mind Without Design?

You may say: “Who told you that there is making and design?!”

We have two possibilities:

Possibility 1 The existence of the mind that thinks is evidence of design.
Possibility 2 A thinking mind is not evidence of design = You wouldn’t trust a random mind = Put your words in the trash.
I mentioned that nature is ignorant for the sake of clarification, as blind nature doesn’t even amount to being ignorant.

Objection — The Infinite Dice Throw

Objection “Okay, what if the atheist objects and says: If you throw a dice infinitely, you might get the desired result from the sequence of your phone numbers, for example?”

Answer — Randomness Cannot Produce Order

This Statement Is Contradictory
  • The randomness that produces order is not even observed.
  • Rather, he made a false comparison with the example we gave.
Clarification
  • The randomness that produces a complex order is logically impossible.
  • The phrase “randomness produced order over time” is in itself a contradiction, because randomness implies the absence of order.

❓ How can something lacking order produce order?

It’s as if you’re saying that ignorance over time produces knowledge.

❌ “Does ignorance produce knowledge?” — No, because it lacks knowledge.

Similarly, randomness doesn’t produce order because it lacks order.

Counter-Response — “An Ignorant Person Acquires Knowledge Over Time”

Possible Counter-Response “He might say: ‘An ignorant person acquires knowledge over time.’ Is this possible?”
Refutation Of course, this is ridiculous. We’re talking about the quality of ignorance, but an ignorant person doesn’t have knowledge over time unless he possesses the mechanisms for thinking and learning.

If these mechanisms are lost, he won’t have knowledge.

Conclusion on the Comparison Therefore, the comparison might be relatively valid if we were talking about a madman who knows nothing and lacks the mechanisms for acquiring knowledge.

Of course, I don’t need to explain the absurdity of those who claim that a madman could produce a system.

The Scientific Response — Is the Living Cell Evidence of Creation or Evolution?

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Introduction

Evolutionists assume that life began with a simple bacterial cell. But let’s examine one of the most fundamental components of any cell: protein.

Proteins are essential building blocks — in some bacterial cells, they may make up as much as 50% of the cell’s mass.

To understand this, imagine explaining the structure of bricks before even touching the design of a house.

What Is Protein Made Of?

Proteins are composed of amino acids.

There are approximately 500 types of amino acids in nature, but only 20 specific ones are used in proteins.

The 20 Amino Acids Used in Proteins

  1. Alanine
  2. Arginine
  3. Asparagine
  4. Aspartic acid
  5. Cysteine
  6. Glutamine
  7. Glutamic acid
  8. Glycine
  9. Histidine
  10. Isoleucine
  11. Leucine
  12. Lysine
  13. Methionine
  14. Phenylalanine
  15. Proline
  16. Serine
  17. Threonine
  18. Tryptophan
  19. Tyrosine
  20. Valine

Conditions for Protein Formation

For a chain of amino acids to qualify as a protein, several strict conditions must be met simultaneously:

The Strict Conditions ✅ Length — Must contain more than 50 amino acid sequences. ✅ Specificity — Only the 20 specified amino acids can be used. ✅ Structure — The NH₂ group must be attached to the α-carbon atom (not β or γ). ✅ Chirality — All amino acids must be of the L-type (left-handed). → Even one D-amino acid (right-handed) breaks the sequence.
Critical Problem Bacteria naturally contain both L and D-amino acids, which raises a critical question:

❓ How did each type become specialized to perform a specific function? Why does one go to build the wall, while another performs internal functions?

The Enzyme Paradox

The answer lies in enzymes — which are themselves proteins.

The Paradox
  • Proteins are built by enzymes.
  • Enzymes are made of proteins.
  • So where did the first enzyme come from?
Amino acids don’t form spontaneously. They require complex lab procedures to synthesize. Even when you attempt to create a specific amino acid sequence in the lab, you must protect certain groups (like COOH or NH₂), then deprotect them later — a highly controlled process that cannot occur randomly.

debunking the myth that life originated by chance through serendipitous chemical reactions and res
debunking the myth that life originated by chance through serendipitous chemical reactions and res

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debunking the myth that life originated by chance through serendipitous chemical reactions and res 1

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Irreducible Complexity — Definition

Definition 🔧 Reducible Complexity — Imagine a car: You can remove some parts and it still runs.

🐭 Irreducible Complexity — Imagine a mousetrap: Remove any single part, and it stops working entirely.

Now apply this to a bacterial cell — considered the simplest form of life.

❓ Can any part of it be removed without breaking its functionality?

The Bacterial Cell — Component by Component

1 — The Capsule

A protective layer made mostly of complex sugars.

Functions include:

  • Preventing dehydration
  • Resisting phagocytosis (being eaten by immune cells)
  • Shielding from toxins
  • Enhancing pathogenicity (e.g., E. coli)
Without the capsule, bacteria lose protection and disease-causing ability. So, is the capsule optional? No. It plays an essential role — making it irreducibly complex.

2 — Cell Wall

A rigid wall composed of proteins and sugars. This wall performs the following functions:

  • Gives the bacterial cell its specific shape.
  • Protects the bacteria from bursting if there is a difference in osmotic pressure between the internal contents of the cell and the surrounding environment.
  • Helps stabilize the flagella and pili of the bacteria, which arise from the cytoplasmic membrane.

3 — Cytoplasmic Membrane

This layer is formed from phospholipids and a group of proteins.

  • Responsible for the flow of materials into and out of the cell.
  • Allows bacteria to adapt to the external environment and the various conditions surrounding them.

4 — Flagella

A hair-like structural structure that emerges from the cytoplasmic membrane.

  • Provides a means of transport and movement for bacteria towards food or away from harmful substances.
Objection “There are bacteria that do not have flagella.”
Response Bacteria that do not have flagella have other mechanisms of movement. We mentioned flagella as an example of movement mechanisms, but it is not exhaustive.

5 — Pili

Small projections spread across the outer surface of the capsule.

  • Help bacteria adhere to the walls of other objects.
  • An important factor in making bacteria pathogenic because they allow them to adhere to the cell walls of the intestine, teeth, and other cells.

6 — Cytoplasm

A gelatinous tissue composed of water, nutrients, enzymes, waste products, and gases produced by bacteria.

  • Provides a suitable location for the rest of the cell’s organelles and components.

7 — Nucleoid

The region of the cytoplasm that contains the specific DNA of bacteria.

  • In most species, it is a single circular chromosomal thread responsible for the reproduction process.
  • In some species, there are small circular strands of DNA called plasmids.

8 — Ribosomes

The parts responsible for translating the genetic code in DNA into the code for manufacturing amino acids to build proteins, which are important in many bacterial functions.

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What Happens If You Remove Any Part?

Of course, the cell will die, and this species will become extinct.
We haven’t even touched on explaining the complexity of each part we’ve mentioned yet. We’ve merely explained the function, and haven’t delved into the complex, even amazing, workings of each part.

The Problem of Chemical Attraction

❓ Have you ever seen or heard that chemical compounds attract each other?

Absolutely not.

Here, I don’t mean the attraction of charges, but rather the attraction between objects — a strong attraction. You see the attraction of massive masses in physics, but in biology, this property does not exist.

❓ Have you ever seen two chemical compounds attract each other when you place them next to each other? Absolutely not.

The Unanswered Questions
  • 🪫 So how do the compounds attract each other to interact and form amino acids?
  • Or how do they attract each other, then form amino acids, then coordinate and assemble into specific clusters to form proteins, and then the proteins combine with each other to form the rest of the cell’s components?

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The Minimum Number of Genes — Destroying the Evolutionary Myth

The myth of evolution is based on the idea that life began with zero genes and then evolved into a single gene randomly over time — regardless of:

  • The rest of the structures of the simplest cell
  • The function of each organelle in the first cell
  • The conditions for protein formation
  • Carbohydrates in the cell
  • The conditions for gene formation
  • The entire system for error repair
  • Enzymes
  • Complex transcription and translation processes
  • Types of RNA
  • The method of protein and carbohydrate synthesis
  • etc…
What Studies Actually Say
  • One study says the minimum number of genes is 250 genes.
  • Another study says 265–350 genes.
  • Another study says the minimum is 473 genes for the cell to function.

🪫 Where is evolution in all this?!

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debunking the myth that life originated by chance through serendipitous chemical reactions and res 10

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debunking the myth that life originated by chance through serendipitous chemical reactions and res 11

Viruses — What Happens Below the Minimum

❓ Do you know what would happen if the cell contained fewer than the minimum number of genes?

It would not be called a living cell at all — but it would be like viruses.

Viruses are organisms that need a living organism in order to become alive.

  • They have both living and non-living characteristics.
  • They are non-living without an organism to feed on, and alive inside an organism.
  • They are chemically inert without anything to feed on.

Without a living organism, they will not become alive — like the virus T4-Bacteriophage, which feeds on bacteria.

The Circular Problem If the first cell had a smaller number of genes than the minimum, it would need a living organism to feed on — but there was no living organism yet.

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The Craig Venter Claim — Debunked

What Craig Venter did: He brought mycoplasma with its own membrane, cell enzymes, cell organelles, and a complete set of genes inside the cell nucleus, and then inserted a set of synthetic bases into the cell. The mycoplasma cell replicated these bases — it made more than one copy of these bases.

What He Actually Did Craig Venter was working inside a living cell — not creating a cell from scratch, as they claim. The cell already had: a cell membrane, cell enzymes, and a complete set of genes inside the cell nucleus.

Here are Craig Venter’s two scientific papers:

pubmed meta image v2 416c9771195046dc
pubmed meta image v2 416c9771195046dc

Nobel Prize Winner in Biology — Paul Nurse “Venter’s work is a great achievement, but he did not create artificial life.”
Jim Collins — Professor of Biological Engineering, Boston University “What bothers me is that some people imagine that we were able to create life. This does not represent the creation of life.”
In fact, the funny thing is that Craig Venter himself admitted that he did not create life from scratch.

Do you know what is even funnier? Craig Venter’s research was about the minimum number of genes to produce a living organism.

The Bottom Line For a cell to function, there must be a surprisingly large package of genes, otherwise the cell will not function. This is not as the myth of evolution states — that genetic information evolved from zero, then one gene, to entire organisms.

The article is subject to expansion and amendment if they make new tweaks.

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debunking the myth that life originated by chance through serendipitous chemical reactions and res 14

Final Warning to the Reader

Important Tactical Note for Dawah 🛑 Never ask an atheist, “How did life begin?” because he will refer the matter to scientific discovery in the future.

Instead, ask him: “Can life arise by chance?!”

If he answers yes, or avoids the word “chance” by meaning it leads to coincidence, then the discussion will end — because there is no discussion with monkeys.

This talk is for specialists, and I warn non-specialists against discussing with them.