I’ve written on biogenesis before (and before that). It’s even one of the subjects in philosophy in which I’ve had peer reviewed research published. And I have a whole section on it in Sense and Goodness without God, my survey of naturalism as a worldview (III.8, “How Did We Get Here?”). It’s one of the most embarrassing domains of scientific illiteracy (and frequent dishonesty) among god-apologists. For example, you’ll find the most typical kinds of rhetoric about this among harebrained Christian liars and loonies in my face-palming exposé in PragerU to The Internet: Science Proves God, You Pinko Commies! At some point, believers need to wake up and realize how dishonest and ignorant their “intellectual leaders” are; because that is the surest proof that their religion is false. True beliefs require no lies in their defense, and follow from actual facts, not fake ones.

I’ve recently been asked by a patron to look at another example that’s “doing the rounds” of late (even though it’s decades old): “Why Abiogenesis Is Impossible” by Jerry Bergman, “Ph.D.,” written in 1999 for the Creation Research Society, a cabal of crazy Young Earth Creationists (on which, see Rational Wiki). It was “published” in their crank journal Creation Research Society Quarterly (36.4, March 2000). Needless to say (surprise!) his only pertinent Ph.D. is fake. It’s also on the wrong subject. “Human biology” is on exactly the opposite side of history—and ontology—from biogenesis; more applicable fields of study would be, e.g., protobiology, microbiology, or biochemistry. His other (real) Ph.D., in “research,” with a minor in psychology, is even further afield. So we aren’t hearing from an actual expert here, yet he is posing as one. That puts him back in my playing field: the most he can honestly claim is to be a philosopher, who is enough qualified to research and evaluate arguments. Like me. So let’s evaluate his “arguments” and “research.”

Of course, unlike Bergman, I actually am published on this subject in a legitimate peer reviewed journal, not fake creationist propaganda rags. But let’s set that aside. I publish well-considered arguments without bothering with peer review all the time, so maybe he, too, came up with some solid arguments that can stump us and really challenge an entire, actual scientific field. I doubt it. But let’s take a look.

Molecular Evolution

I won’t bother with Bergman’s attempts to “debunk” evolution theory. Every single one of those claims you can find refuted by actual scientists, citing actual evidence, at the TalkOrigins Archive. And evolution is not biogenesis. Biogenesis is the account of how the first self-replicating molecules arose. Evolution is the account of what happened after that. Bergman does attempt to conflate biogenesis with evolution through assertions regarding molecular evolution, however, and that begins the relevant material. In this regard he asserts:

The major links in the molecules-to-man theory that must be bridged include (a) evolution of simple molecules into complex molecules, (b) evolution of complex molecules into simple organic molecules, (c) evolution of simple organic molecules into complex organic molecules, (d) eventual evolution of complex organic molecules into DNA or similar information storage molecules, and (e) eventually evolution into the first cells.  This process requires multimillions of links, all which either are missing or controversial.

Not a single part of this corresponds to any actual science of protobiology. Bergman thus immediately demonstrates he literally does not know what he is talking about. Even in general, most of the steps he refers to do not require “multimillions” of stages; and the rest will have undergone multi-trillions of replication events naturally, so it is quite ignorant of him to balk at needing “millions.” Nature meets that standard countless times over, without any intelligent help. There are not just millions, but millions of millions of millions of millions of molecules on the surface of the Earth alone; and in any given month (even just a month!) not just millions, but millions of millions of millions of millions of natural chemical reactions occur there. And that’s just Earth. There are millions of Earths across the known universe. “Millions” is peanuts for nature. Physics is that cool. But creationists don’t know that; because they don’t study physics.

Bergman’s particular claims are also scientifically illiterate. DNA is not believed to have arisen before the first cells; and life did not start with DNA: that is a highly evolved feature of life. The first “information storage molecules” are believed to have been RNA, or (even more likely) PNA which evolved into RNA. And before developing self-replication, the first replicating molecules “evolved” by autocatalysis (the universe is full of naturally self-sustaining chemical systems that experience a simple process of natural selection requiring minimal preservation of information to “evolve”). And there was no “evolution” of “simple organic molecules.” Those literally arise everywhere in the universe, automatically, and abundantly. Finally, I have no idea what Bergman thinks the “complex molecules” are that he says must have “evolved” into “simple organic molecules.” An “organic molecule” is literally any molecule containing at least one carbon and one hydrogen atom. Carbons and hydrogens don’t “evolve.” Nor are they, as such, molecules. They are atoms; molecules are assemblies of atoms (and most of which are extremely simple, not complex). And as atoms, they arise automatically, no “evolution” required. Hydrogen naturally condenses from any sufficiently heated state. Though the last time anything we know was hot enough to dissolve hydrogen was shortly after the Big Bang, when the universe soon cooled, hydrogen then naturally and inevitably arose, becoming the simplest and most abundant atom in the cosmos. Meanwhile, carbons are routinely churned out by stars (in fact, they are, ultimately, made out of hydrogen: as the protons composing hydrogens are fused together into other, more complex elements, and eventually into carbon). And carbons and hydrogens bond directly and readily. This is in fact why they have become the backbone of life; not the other way around. Had, say, helium and neon been the atoms that could bond readily into many stable forms, then those would have formed the backbone of life and we’d be calling them organic molecules.

Bergman does not seem to understand any of this.

If Bergman had actually studied actual science, he would know that, given the laws of physics:

• The probability that hydrogen would condense in mass quantities from the superheated state of the early universe is 100%. And that the universe was in that state we can directly observe in the cosmic background radiation, which is literally the glow of the universe from fourteen billion years or so ago, having traveled fourteen billion lightyears to us since, just like the light we see from the furthest stars, telling us directly how hot the universe then was. The rest is physics and math. No other explanation needed.
• The probability that billions of years of stars condensing together under gravity would convert mass quantities of that hydrogen into mass quantities of carbon is 100%. No other explanation needed.
• The probability that mass quantities of carbons and hydrogens would bond, thus forming “organic molecules,” is 100%. Such bonds arise naturally and readily on known physics; and such molecules are naturally abundant throughout the universe. No other explanation needed.
• The probability that hydrocarbons will naturally form PNA molecules has been demonstrated in the lab to be 100% under the right conditions; and all of those conditions can be found in nature. No other explanation needed.
• The probability of a self-replicating form of PNA arising by chance accident from just those kinds of mechanisms is now known to be at least 1 in 10^41; and even the creationist mathematician William Dembski has admitted chance accidents to a probability as low as 1 in 10^150 are inevitable in a universe as large and old as ours; which means the total probability of such a chance accident in this universe even within a fraction of its billions of years of history is as close to 100% as makes all odds (in fact, we can now estimate this must have happened countless times throughout the actual universe by now). No other explanation needed.
• The probability of a self-replicating form of PNA evolving into an RNA world is substantially higher than that, because evolution by natural selection is then operating, and reproduction in those worlds is extraordinarily fast. A single replication per day (i.e. one copy making just one copy in the course of one day) results in a million copies in just 27 days; another 27 days, and you are at 10^12 copies; even before you get to a full year you’re already at 10^81. An event that only occurs once every 10^41 times it is attempted will have occurred not just once, but a whopping 10^40 times by then. And that’s not even one year. Now think of hundreds of thousands of years of this. That’s how powerful evolution by natural selection is. (See my old examples of how quickly evolution sieves probabilities in The Odds of Life Evolving by Chance.)
• The probability of such an evolved RNA world evolving into a DNA world is pretty much the same. Because it’s the same process: rapid reproduction combined with mutation and natural selection is an extraordinary probability sieve, building complexity year after year, to tremendous heights after millions of such years, and it literally requires no intelligent design or even monitoring. It works naturally; inevitably.
• And in between those two events, cells will have arisen already, because the probability that organisms in an RNA world would stumble upon and begin thriving inside naturally-occurring lipid bubbles, and that over time they would evolve more and more capacity to shape and control those bubbles (becoming the first controlled environments in history) is as near to 100% as makes all odds. Because the spontaneous probability is quite high (lipid spheres form naturally and readily, nearly anywhere organic molecules accumulate), and living inside them is so extraordinarily advantageous that its natural selection is assured—because RNA living inside lipid spheres will far out-compete naked RNA. No other explanation needed.

And that’s that. Nowhere in here do we find any event required that is too improbable to have occurred naturally in a universe as large and old and filled with junk as we observe ours to be. In fact, these events are so naturally probable, we can be certain this has happened countless times already across the universe. Without any intelligent help. That once having happened, it would naturally continue long enough to evolve into advanced civilizations capable of in turn surviving long enough to have produced signals long and strong enough that we would see them today, is a great deal less likely; but the universe is actually far larger than we can see. That that has happened several times in the whole universe is calculably quite likely. Bergman has no evidence to present otherwise. Sure, the likes of Bergman could then “move the goal posts” and start complaining instead about the universe being “fine tuned” in such a way as to make all of this so naturally inevitable, but that’s again not biogenesis he’d be talking about anymore; and of course, even if he gave up on his claims about biogenesis, and retreated to cosmogenesis instead, he’d be in a completely different pickle. And here we’re just interested in his claims about biogenesis. Which we’ve already seen, right out of the gate, are profoundly ignorant of the actual science.

From Ignorance to Lies

Most creationists are liars. They get caught all the time lying; lying about what sources they quote actually said, lying about what the science actually says, lying about what evidence does or does not exist. Many are just gullible dupes with no critical thinking skills who are being conned by the liars they quote and rely on, because they fact-check nothing and never study the actual science they intend to “debunk.” But often enough you can tell this excuse does not fly; in those cases, deliberately lying is the only remaining plausible explanation for what they say. Sometimes this is provably obvious—such as when they deceptively quote sources you can tell they actually read and thus full well know they are being dishonest about. Other times it’s an unavoidable inference. As here. Bergman is claiming to have investigated the science and makes positive assertions about it that are easily proved false—which means he is either lying about the science, or he is lying about knowing anything about the science.

Case in point: after surveying his ignorant, factually incorrect list of “stages” in molecular evolution to the first life, which we just caught out, Bergman says “scientists even lack plausible just-so stories for most” of what he just listed. This is a lie. There are in fact plausible stories (indeed, even beyond “just so,” but actual peer-reviewed scientific theories backed by some evidence and experimentation) for every single step on his list (once we correct his list to the actual steps molecules went through on their way to the first prokaryote). And this was definitely known even when Bergman wrote (RNA and PNA protobiology had been published since the late eighties and early nineties; they have since experienced tremendous increases in experimental and observational support). Which means Bergman is lying to his audience when he claims to have checked and thus know what the state of the science is. He simply didn’t. So he did not “know” any of the things he asserts as fact. And he well knew he didn’t know it—it’s not like he “forgot” that he didn’t check any current science. And that’s lying.

All the links I’ve provided up to now cover all the science that Bergman is lying about when he says it doesn’t exist. Instead of referencing anything like that, Bergman quotes in his support fellow creationist loony Michael Denton, making a claim Denton has never gotten past peer review because it is a bald-faced lie (and Denton has a Ph.D. in biochemistry and thus knows what he is saying is a lie):

In the entire realm of science no class of molecule is currently known which can remotely compete with proteins. It seems increasingly unlikely that the abilities of proteins could be realized to the same degree in any other material form.  … [So in this] we have an example in which the only feasible candidate for a particular biological role gives every impression of being supremely fit for that role.

This was known to be false by every biochemist of even the late 80s, much less late 90s when Denton wrote this. RNA functions without proteins. PNA functions without proteins. Even DNA generates and employs, but itself still contains no proteins. Countless things accomplished by proteins, can be accomplished with other molecules. We have much more knowledge of this today than we did at the end of the 1990s, but even then we were well aware of many examples. We now know fluorocarbons can perform as well as (or even better than) hydrocarbons; likewise, organosilicoids. Wikipedia now has a whole page on alternative biochemistries. But even when Denton wrote it was well known hydrocarbon proteins were not the only molecule that could form the kinds of long polymer chains with the uniqueness of structures and properties proteins make possible. Even the RNA-World hypothesis was well established by then, demonstrating that an entire biosphere could exist without even a single protein. Proteins were an easy path from there to more complex assemblies, which is the obvious reason why all advanced life on Earth evolved to employ them. But historical accident could have gone another way—and on other planets, may well have.

And even if it couldn’t—even if Denton wasn’t lying, and it really was true (though it isn’t) that the laws of physics forbade any other molecule forming the structures and doing the things proteins do—that would only establish this observed outcome was inevitable. It therefore required no intelligent design. Had the universe originated differently, the most effective molecule natural selection would eventually hit upon to build long, intricate polymers (thus doing all the same things proteins do) may have been, let’s say, silicon-based. Denton would then be lying to you about how remarkably “convenient” silicoproteins are. If complex life can only exist if some such molecules exist, then all godless universes that produce observers will have those molecules—since no other universes can produce observes to notice. This can therefore never be evidence of intelligent design. To the contrary, only a god has no need of this chemical oddity; so that our universe requires it is actually evidence there was no god involved. Unless you want to maintain that God deliberately created the universe to look exactly like all universes without a god would have to look—which is an extremely strange motive to attribute to God. And as such a motive is unlikely, so is such an explanation; we have no need of that epicycle. Ockham’s Razor: we don’t need a God to make a universe that looks like a universe with no God in it—the more likely way to end up with one of those, is to simply have no God in the first place.

But the real con Denton (and thus Bergman) are running on their readers is the hand-waving trick of even talking about proteins at all. No scientific theory of biogenesis in the last fifty years has imagined proteins having anything to do with it. So why are we talking about proteins? Because Denton and Bergman know their targeted readers are fools, too uneducated to even know how to check if what they are being told is true, and thus these hustlers know their marks will never realize biogenesis does not involve proteins. But they want you to think it does, so they can then marvel at how complex protein molecules are, and wow your gullibility into thinking they’ve shown you how complex biogenic molecules must have been. It’s a scam. And as such, it’s morally repugnant. These are not people you should ever trust or be listening to.

Contrary to Bergman’s false claims, in actual fact, the science of biogenesis shows the most likely path to modern life was: (1) hydrogen –> (2) carbon –> (3) hydrocarbons (i.e. “simple organic molecules”) –> (4) hydrocarbon polymers (i.e. “complex organic molecules) –> (5) a self-replicating hydrocarbon polymer (probably PNA) –> (6) the first biome (a self-replicating and thus naturally evolving PNA World of pre-cellular, pre-RNA molecules) –> (7) an autocatalytic RNA molecule –> (8) the second biome (a self-replicating and thus naturally evolving RNA World of pre-cellular, pre-DNA molecules) –> (9) the first cells (as RNA self-replicators that floated into ubiquitously available, naturally-occurring lipid membranes began outperforming all other RNA self-replicators), producing the third biome –> (10) the first proteins (as RNA replicators evolve the ability to assemble and use ever more complex hydrocarbon polymers). Notice proteins are the last thing that comes out of this process, not the first, and they are not spontaneously hit upon at random, but gradually built and evolved over hundreds of millions of years. Life, meanwhile, predated proteins all that time; it even likely went through multiple stages of fundamental evolution before then (e.g. from autocatalytic polycarbons to the PNA biome to the RNA biome).

Only after all that does DNA arise, first as one of the things RNA replicators evolved the ability to manufacture; and only after that do cells become the more complex organs we now know, as RNA at first uses DNA to store information for modifying and building cell membranes, and then all that apparatus eventually gets slipped into the DNA itself and RNA is thereafter used only as the messenger tool—and these new robust DNA organisms eat into extinction all remaining PNA and RNA competitors. Thus began the prokaryotic world: the fourth biome. Only millions of years later did cells then evolve to employ ever more complex machinery like mitochondria and a nucleus, producing eukaryotic life: the fifth biome. And it was billions of years before such cells evolved the capacity to act in concert as colonies, forming the first multicellular organisms (e.g. algae); and a billion more years or so before those colonies evolved the ability to differentiate functions enough to form coherent systems of tissues (and thus multicellular organs), originating the lineages of all animals and plants. Which brought us to the sixth (and current) biome, the “Life on Earth” that’s familiar to us now.

This does not look like the work of a god. It looks like a long, drawn-out process of blind chance and trial-and-error. Just think about it. God was tinkering around with living organisms for three billion years and still couldn’t figure out animals and plants? He couldn’t even come up with the eukaryotic cell they are based on for a billion or more years of noodling around with prokaryotes? What was he doing that whole time? Twiddling his non-existent thumbs? Only blind natural evolution requires such outrageous lengths of time to develop and refine organs as complex as modern cells. That the Earth was ruled by single celled organisms six times longer than any multicellular life has even lived, that this went on for literally billions of years before animals and plants appeared, is pretty well proof God had nothing to do with it. Natural biogenesis can only proceed from single molecules to single cells before ever arriving at animals and plants, and only after epically vast stretches of trial and error; and it can only proceed by building those animals and plants out of those cells, which is why we are (strangely) just sophisticated colonies of single cells. God has no need of any of this. But it is exactly predicted by any theory of natural biogenesis. And in all of this, proteins are a late, evolved mechanism, not the “originators of life.”

Once you understand this—the actual science—you can see how irrelevant all Bergman’s blathering on about “proteins” is. It’s a handwave. A con. A magician’s trick intended to distract and fool you. Don’t be his dupe.

Total Babbling Nonsense

Bergman then starts his first argument-section with the bewildering sentence, “The first step in evolution was the development of simple self-copying molecules consisting of carbon dioxide, water and other inorganic compounds.” Um. Huh? This is literally babbling nonsense, connected to no intelligible science. No “self-copying molecules,” actual or hypothesized, were ever made of “carbon dioxide,” which in all relevant conditions is a gas, not a solid. I think Bergman has somehow heard a rumor that the first life breathed and metabolized carbon dioxide, and in his astonishing scientific ignorance mistook that as meaning organisms are made of carbon dioxide. A mistake not even a ten year old would make. This is the level of intellectual genius we are dealing with here. And notice what this means: ICR as an organization publishes and endorses this nonsense—which means not just Bergman, but the entire Institute of Creation Research is dumber than a fifth grader. Likewise, “water and other inorganic compounds” are also resources used, and sometimes produced, by living organisms. They are not the molecular structure of them.

Let’s rewrite Bergman’s opening sentence so that it contains actual science: “The first step in evolution was the development of a simple self-copying molecule, perhaps consisting of peptide nucleic acids, a molecule incorporating carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen” (which is in biological conditions a solid, not a gas or a liquid, and is itself an organic compound, not an “inorganic” one), “which would then have evolved later into a self-copying molecule consisting of ribonucleic acids, which reinforce the nitrogen-based backbone of PNA with naturally occurring sugars and phosphates, and then, later, evolving the incorporation of sulfur.” Cells and DNA wouldn’t evolve for countless millions more years after that, so they no longer matter to the “biogenesis” question. So once again, when Bergman’s second sentence complains that “no one has proven that a simple self-copying molecule can self-generate a compound such as DNA,” you know he’s a fool who knows nothing at all about the pertinent science—or a liar who doesn’t want you to. Because no one—literally no one—in the actual field of protobiology claims or thinks DNA was “self-generated.” It is (and was when Bergman wrote) universally agreed that DNA is a highly evolved organ, one that arose hundreds of millions of years after the first life, even after (indeed probably long after) cells evolved; and even cells were a much later environment that early life only gradually adapted to and eventually took over. They were not the original housing of life. Any actual expert will tell you this.

Instead, Bergman goes on to tell his readers the outrageous lie that “it now is acknowledged that the first living organism could not have arisen directly from inorganic matter…even as a result of some extraordinary event.” Since Bergman cites and claims to have read several books from real scientists on this point, all of which refute this statement, we can be certain at this point that he is a liar, an outright defiler of his own God’s Commandment not to bear false witness. He claims “it now is acknowledged” that “the first living organism” can’t have “arisen directly from inorganic matter,” when in fact all actual scientists with peer-reviewed publications in this field (including all the ones he lists in his bibliography) declare exactly the opposite: that this is obviously what happened, and abundant evidence confirms it is what happened, by any of numerous physically possible, indeed even probable, sequences of events. The con Bergman runs here is by falsely claiming any of his scientific sources told him that “the first living organism” consisted of DNA. When we correct that first lie, his second lie is also exposed for the total fraud that it is: the first life actually consisted of either PNA or RNA, not DNA, and there are well-known examples of self-replicating PNA and RNA molecules (and this has been known since 1996; and many more examples have been discovered since, both in RNA and PNA), which means any random polymer-forming chemical systems appearing in nature can produce them—it is simply a question of time as to when. And as I noted already, all available calculations tell us that the simplest of these will have been arrived at by random mixing countless times in the known universe by now.

Failing at the Logic of Explanation

Throughout his entire crank rant, Bergman repeatedly shows that he does not understand (or dishonestly hopes you do not understand) a single crucial logical point: that having more than one evidence-based theory of how something came to be increases the probability that it came to be by one of those methods; it does not decrease that probability. Bergman irrationally thinks that because scientists see, let’s say, “twenty” different ways life could have originated on Earth—every single one of which contradicted by no evidence and supported by an abundance of it—and just can’t agree which one actually took place, is an argument against any of those theories being correct, and “therefore” evidence some “other” theory is correct—a theory that, unlike them, contradicts a vast quantity of evidence and is supported by literally no evidence whatever. This is so irrational it can only be credited to a crippling delusion. The opposite is the case: the more natural-cause theories we have that have been shown to be plausible on a basis of evidence, the more likely it is that a natural cause is responsible. Always and forever. By contrast, in any competition between a theory supported by evidence and precedent and a theory supported by none, the former is always more likely. And these two principles are not arbitrary assertions, but mathematical certitudes.

Take the first principle: for any effect, adding a natural-cause theory competing against another natural-cause theory (or even several already-competing natural-cause theories) always increases the probability that a natural cause is responsible. Suppose we start with one natural-cause theory for the occurrence of some event x, and suppose that theorized cause has a base rate chance of happening on Earth of 1 in 100, for a 1% chance it happened here (that it would then happen on one of hundreds of Earth-like planets approaches 100%, by the inexorable laws of probability, but we’ll set that aside for now). Suppose we then come up with a competing natural-cause theory for x, and it has a base rate chance of happening on Earth of 1 in 1000, for a 0.1% chance it happened here. Given the Laws of Probability it follows that the probability that a natural cause of x occurred here is then 1.1%, which is more than the 1% we started with. Add any other such theory, increasing the disagreement and the number of competing explanations on the table, and no matter what the probability is of any theorized cause occurring, it will always add to the overall probability that some natural cause produced x. The more such theories we have, therefore, the more likely it is that x was naturally caused. Not the other way around.

Take the second principle: a theory supported by some and consistent with all evidence is always more probably true than a theory supported by none and inconsistent with some evidence. This follows from basic Bayesian logic (which follows necessarily from the Law of Total Probability): by definition, the probability of a theory (the probability that it is true) when it is supported by some evidence is always higher than its probability would otherwise be if it were not supported by any evidence (this is the only reason evidence “argues for” a theory: it increases its probability); the probability of a theory when it is inconsistent with some evidence is always lower than its probability would be if it were instead consistent with all evidence; therefore, a theory that is consistent with all and supported by some evidence is always more probable than a theory that is inconsistent with some and supported by no evidence. Therefore, if science has twenty competing natural-cause explanations of biogenesis, and all of them are consistent with all the evidence and are supported by some of that evidence, while Bergman has one competing supernatural explanation that is widely contradicted and not at all supported by any evidence, it is logically, mathematically, necessarily the case that “biogenesis has a natural cause” is more likely than “biogenesis has a supernatural cause.”

Accordingly, “But scientists disagree with each other” is not a logical argument in this debate. That actually increases the probability of a natural cause—because all of the causes these scientists are advocating are natural. So the fact that we can think of, and support with evidence, and prove consistent with all remaining evidence, several ways life could arise naturally is an argument for it having arisen naturally, not the other way around. Likewise, “But none of those theories has been proved to be more likely than any other” is not a logical argument in this debate either. Because Bergman’s theory also hasn’t been proved to be more likely than any other. So it has no epistemic advantage here. In fact, it only has an enormous epistemic disadvantage: for as all the competing natural theories of biogenesis have passed peer review in legitimate, reliable science journals, Bergman’s theory never has. It therefore has no scientific merit. Whereas all those other theories do. This is how science, and logic, work. Bergman has neither. He’s just a crank spewing irrational rhetoric. And that is why creationism has no scientific respectability and is universally rejected by everyone who isn’t a religious fanatic.

Similar dumbery comes up when in Bergman’s next section he develops the strangely stupid argument that because 19th century scientists, who were vastly more ignorant than we are now, “disproved” spontaneous generation, yet 20th century scientists, who know vastly more than they did, now all agree they were wrong, that therefore the modern scientists—the ones who have vastly more information and evidence—are the ones who are wrong, and we should go back and agree with all those massively ignorant 19th century guys. This is exactly the reverse of how science—and indeed even common sense—works. Old findings are overthrown by newer findings; scientists increase in their understanding of the world, not the other way around. Modern scientists also aren’t so bone-cold stupid as to think like Bergman, who is so sure “maggots don’t spontaneously generate” proves single peptide molecules can’t spontaneously generate. Perhaps I can exploit that same damn-fool-thinking to convince him that because I can prove “you can’t buy anything with a penny,” therefore he should give me all his money, because it all reduces to pennies really, and therefore he surely can have no use for it. Right?

And Then More Lies

Bergmen then claims “life at the cellular level generally does not reveal a gradual increase in complexity as it ascends the evolutionary ladder from protozoa to humans.” That’s a lie. Twice over in fact. It’s a lie even as stated (there are many examples of improvements in cellular machinery on the evolutionary timeline after “protozoa”). But let’s set that aside. Because protozoa are nowhere near (nowhere near) “the first life,” and thus have nothing whatever to do with biogenesis. The more pertinent point is that there is vast evidence of enormous increases in the complexity of cells on the “evolutionary ladder” from the earliest known life to humans: quite famously, prokaryokes are far simpler than eukaryotes, and all multicellular life (from protozoa to humans) is eukaryotic; and prokaryotes are only the earliest cell-form with ancestors still living—and fossils of internal cellular machinery are impossible, so we have no way to “observe” the ancestors of prokaryotes. Yet there is abundant circumstantial evidence for far simpler cells than prokaryotes, and it is widely deemed likely that even the simplest cells (mere naturally-arising lipid envelopes) were already a late development in the history of life. Odds are, life did not originate with a cell, but evolved into a cell over time. So “cells” are largely irrelevant to the biogenesis question; only if you want to specifically ask where cells came from does that become relevant again, and the answer most likely follows from theories of evolution, not biogenesis.

But the central point here is that by only mentioning “protozoa,” which only evolved after literally a billion years of life on Earth, in an argument against biogenesis, Bergman is lying. Again. And not just lying, but expecting his readers to not check and find out. Which shows how much contempt he has for you. If you fell for it, you’re a rube. And he knows it. An honest person would tell you that there is abundant published scientific evidence of a gradual evolution of cellular organs and structures and chemistry, and abundant published scientific evidence of the likelihood and plausibility of even earlier and simpler stages of cellular evolution. And all of this took place over an enormous amount of time: concrete evidence establishes the first life originated sometime between 4 and 3.5 billion years ago (from both fossil evidence as well as observing its effects on the environment in the geologic record); and since noncellular life won’t leave much of a fossil record, it may have grown and developed for a few millions or possibly hundreds of millions of years before the first cells arose. Life then remained prokaryotic for one to two billion years. That’s two to four times as long as multicellular life has even existed on Earth. Eukaryotes then appeared, about 2.5 billion years ago. And they remained mostly single-celled, or only formed rudimentary multicellular life forms like algae, for another two billion years. That’s how long it took them to evolve the machinery and sophistication needed to differentiate into systems of cooperating cells forming tissues and organs, which development led to the Cambrian Explosion about half a billion years ago, which itself spanned almost a hundred million years, leading thereafter to all present life.

That Bergman tells you the exact opposite of this, despite clearly having read works in science telling him exactly the opposite of it, and doesn’t tell you that, is how we know he is a damned dirty liar. And as if you weren’t sure, in that same section he goes on to tell these god-damned lies as well:

• “The method used in constructing [protobiology’s] hypothetical replicators is not stated, nor has it ever been demonstrated to exist either in the laboratory or on paper.”
• “No contemporary hypothesis today has provided a viable explanation as to how the abiogenesis origin of life could occur by naturalistic means.”
• “The problems are so serious that the majority of evolutionists today tend to shun the whole subject of abiogenesis.”

Every single one of those sentences is 100% false. The literature is full of proposed methods of nature’s construction of hypothetical replicators, and full of viable explanations that are fully naturalistic, and that literature is vast, exhibiting the work of hundreds of scientists (if not thousands)—exactly the opposite of “shunning the whole subject.” And there is literally no way Bergman can not know this. He is therefore, indisputably, a liar.

The Long Con

Bergman then goes on to misrepresent the history of protobiology and repeats many of the usual lies that were long refuted even before he wrote, and more so since. No, protein homochirality is not a problem. PNA does not require it; it can evolve even in a heterochiral environment; and we have evidence of natural sources of homochirality in outer space. Yes, the complexity of the first self-replicating molecule prohibits randomly discovering it in a lab; but no, that does not mean it can’t randomly arise in the universe: unlike scientists in labs, “the universe” has millions of years to run its experiments on countless trillions of molecules. This is why it’s just a matter of time. As I showed in my 2004 paper for Biology & Philosophy, the simplest self-replicator we have discovered so far (the Lee peptide) has a probability of random assembly of 1 in 10^41. And as I’ll show shortly, the universe (vastly larger than any human lab) could easily achieve that in a few billion years (vastly more time than any human scientist has to run an experiment).

Thus when Bergman dishonestly claims “it still must be explained as to how these many diverse elements became aggregated in the same area and then properly assembled themselves,” he is lying to you. That is actually the one thing that doesn’t have to be explained anymore. We fully know the answer: the only “diverse elements” that need be aggregated for PNA are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen: all were vastly common in the solar system, and we can fully explain why tons of them “aggregated” onto the surface of the Earth. Likewise the sugars, phosphates, and sulfurs PNA would then evolve to employ in its evolution into RNA and thence DNA. Explaining where all that came from and how it got here in abundance is actually one of the best-proven results in this science. It’s astrophysics 101. And “how” those elements “properly assembled themselves” is likewise: we have fully established, in physical calculations and in labs, “how” simple self-replicating PNA and RNA molecules can form from pools of raw chemicals: we can accelerate the process with human engineering (for proof of concept), but the same processes are widely proved to exist all over the Earth—even today, the more so when life arose. All that’s needed to add is time.

Scientists have abundantly shown how natural chemical systems can spew out randomly assembled, even autocatalyzed polymers, and with great rapidity; the rest is just math: how many times must the dice be rolled to get a self-replicator like the Lee peptide? The answer is, with a chemistry set the size of Earth, across trillions of Earths: for a few billion years, exactly the amount of time the universe took. If just one random molecule assembly is attempted every year, on any given acre, across any planet or moon (on which occur trillions upon trillions of chemical reactions every second) of at least a hundred billion acres in size (the Earth is larger), on each of the over forty-billion planets and moons estimated from current data to be suitable per galaxy, across over two hundred billion known galaxies (and there are far more galaxies than that), for just a billion years, that’s eight times 10^41 tries (because 10^9 years x 10^11 acres x 4 x 10^10 planets x 2 x 10^11 galaxies = 8 x 10^41); the Lee peptide requires only 10^41, and it’s not the only simple self-replicator target that could be randomly hit upon in that time. We don’t have that much time or material in any lab. But Earth had oodles of it, and Earth is but one planet among trillions with comparable chemistry sets running. So there is nothing left to explain.

Bergman might be worried you’ll discover he is lying about all that. So he tries to groom you with another lie: that even if scientists have figured all that out (and they have), “they” are lying to you when they claim their solutions are scientifically viable. But it is Bergman who is lying about that. He thus has a whole section on how “heat” renders those scientific theories nonviable—and in the process flat out lies to you by never mentioning those same scientists have already disproved this. Actual scientists have debunked Bergman’s lies on this point already. But to give you an extra peek at how dishonest he is here, I’ll point out one more way he is lying than even they note: when Bergman says the theory that life arose “in submarine vents whose temperatures approach 350° C,” in order to imply life cannot arise in temperatures so high, his “lie” rests in the simple omission of the one fact every scientist he could be learning this from mentions: that such vents have many regions with far lower temperatures in them, and it is there that they propose life arose. No scientist says life arose in the boiling depths of those vents, but closer to the surface of them, at the sweet spot where the resources remain ample and the heat-level just right. So Bergman outright lied to you about what the theory even is he claims to be telling you about, and used that lie to con you into thinking he made a valid point about it. Such dishonesty should disgust you.

Even Bergman’s assertions that aren’t lies have since been disproved empirically. For example, it is no longer a speculation, but an actual proven fact, that amino acids (the basic building blocks of RNA, not even needed for PNA) naturally occur abundantly in outer space, indeed right here in Earth’s backyard, being found in the very comets that once bombarded it. Bergman won’t have known that in 1999. But now we do. Bergman stands refuted. It is with these since-refuted assertions, and an even longer litany of shameless lies, that Bergman builds his case. The rest of his article from there on is just a repetition of all these same lies, ignorances, and errors, complete with dishonest misquotes and a reliance on other dishonest propagandists, like James Coppedge. My 2004 paper for Biology & Philosophy already debunks much of it, which I summarize in The Latest Proposal for a Probability of Abiogenesis (the ignorant and dishonest work of Coppedge featured prominently in my 2004 exposé). There is nothing in Bergman’s article that validly arrives at any challenge to the actual field of protobiology today—or that even reflects a correct understanding of it.

Conclusion

My closing message to anyone who actually thinks citing Bergman is a good idea, who was actually taken in by his con: Guys like Bergman disgust me. They are shameless liars and conmen who dupe the gullible in aid of their false religion, and by that device annoy the hell out of people like me who have to waste their time exposing them. Once you catch them conning you like this, once you catch them displaying monumental ignorance of the very facts they purport to be educating you on, once you discover how much abject contempt they have for you by their brazen assumption that you won’t fact-or-logic-check any of their claims, you then well know not a single thing they write is worth your time or attention. Turn your attention to real, truthful expert sources instead, of which plenty are to be had, and just as easily reached. Trust me. Life is much better when you do that. For all of us.