On the origin of life on earth

Abstract

The creation of the universe out of nothing (ex nihilo) is attributable to the eternal God. Would a direct divine intervention be needed for other singular events, such as the origin of life? Taking apart the human being, created to image and resemblance of God, we argue that current scientific knowledge allows us to rationally admit a continuity between the origins of the universe and the emergence of life on Earth. Although the irruption of living beings from inert matter is a leap or discontinuity in creation, a direct intervention of God would not be indispensable. The initial impulse of creation, with matter and energy in a space-time imbalance, could have triggered reactions between the different elements and a self-organization of metabolites, in accordance with natural physical-chemistry laws. This paradoxical increase of complexity ended with a transition from chemistry to biology. It happened when independence, metabolism, heritability, and life cycle took place in a protocellular unit. In this way, the emergence of life on earth could be part of an evolutionary dynamic of the timeless God's creative act.

Keywords: Complexity; Contingency; Creation; Evolutionism; Origin of life; Panspermia; Prebioticsoup; RNA world; Science and faith; Self-organization; Synthetic biology; Virus.