﻿ First Life - Excerpt from How Life Began

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"How Life Began" extract - Main Page

#1 - Did life start when
amino acids made proteins?

by Thomas F. Heinze

School textbooks said "yes," and many of us believed it. Creationists for many years stood alone in opposing the idea that amino acids in "organic broth" formed the proteins of the first living cell." Recently an earthquake in evolutionary thinking on how life began has so shaken things up that now even a schoolbook honesty admits:


The reason for this astonishing admission is that many evolutionists no longer believe that the first life came from proteins.

Was life started by RNA?

The proteins-to-life idea is being replaced by the RNA-to-life idea. It is called "the RNA world," and the claim is now that the first living cell, from which we supposedly evolved, was started by RNA instead of protein. Nucleotides, we are told, linked together to form chains of RNA which brought about the first life. The schoolbooks I have checked fail to mention the fact that RNA, like protein, does not form anywhere in nature except in already living cells. Neither do the nucleotides from which RNA is made. Here it is from a philosopher of science:

"Though a few organic substances-for instance, certain simple amino acids-can form relatively easily under prebiotic conditions, other biochemical building blocks, such as nucleotides and lipids, require for their synthesis a 'real factory.'"2 Since nucleotides which are the building blocks of RNA and DNA do not form spontaneously, neither do RNA and DNA. In fact, RNA and DNA can't even be made in the laboratory 3

Perhaps life came from space

Since it seems to be scientifically impossible, for the first life to have spontaneously formed on earth, a number of atheists and evolutionists are now convinced that it did not.

Does this mean they now admit the existence of the Creator? In many cases no. Rather they are convinced that life must have come to earth from some other planet where it had its beginning. True, it would be hard to survive the long ride through the cold vacuum of space and the heat and shock of reentry, but they are already spending billions in tax dollars in search of life in space. They are hoping to find another planet, perhaps in another galaxy, with just the right conditions for life. The perfect planet must have liquid water, the right amount of gravity, the right atmosphere, elements, temperature, and many other attributes.4 Just what kind of a planet are they looking for? The answer will blow your mind! They are looking for a planet just like Earth!

1 George B. Johnson, Peter H. Raven, Biology, Principles & Explorations, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1996 p. 235.}

2 Iris Fry, The Emergence of Life on Earth, 2000, p. 126. See also p.143-144, 176-177, 245. See also: Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, p. 62, 63, 65.

3 "The abiotic synthesis of RNA remains the most enigmatic step in the evolution of the first life, for no one has yet succeeded in creating RNA." Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, p. 65, see also p. xix, 63-64, 60. ("Abiotic synthesis of RNA," means making RNA outside of a living cell).

4 Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, 2000, p. 16, 33.}

Adapted from information in the book Answers to my Evolutionist Friends, How Life Began, by Thomas F. Heinze, published in 2002 by Chick Publications, 160 pages, $8.50. or read it free at:


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