Chemical Life?

I have just written about the vast knowledge of our human brain here: 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-vast-knowledge-of-our-human-brain.html

This leads me to continue with another topic about 'chemical life and chemical evolution" which some scientists explain that's how life originated. 

They claim that life began on Earth as a result of some random combination of biomolecules.  Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Scientists think that by 4.3 billion years ago, Earth may have developed conditions suitable to support life. The oldest known fossils, however, are only 3.7 billion years old. So how did these biomolecules spring into life randomly without the breath of life breathed into them? As far as I know such undirected processes have never been demonstrated or observed in the laboratory and are never likely to be observed. It is true that artificial life of some kind has been created by chemists such as Crate Venter using sophisticated techniques to mimic the DNA found in living things. "The creation of an artificial life form, even if achieved, could never occur unless directed by some highly skilled and intelligent people - never by an undirected natural process"  in the words of Professor Edgar Andrews. I concur this myself. 

 In other words, there must be an Intelligent Designer behind the scenes. 

To me, this profound question strikes at the heart of one of the greatest mysteries of science, the origin of life. The idea that life arose through chemical evolution is a fascinating yet deeply unresolved topic, one that has been debated for decades. Let me take you on a journey through what is known, what remains unknown, and the ultimate question of whether life could arise without an Intelligent Designer.

First we ask ourselves what is "chemical evolution"?

Chemical evolution refers to the hypothetical natural process by which simple chemical compounds gradually organized themselves into complex biomolecules, leading to the emergence of the first self-replicating life forms. Scientists hypothesize that this process occurred in several stages:

Stage 1: Formation of Simple Organic Molecules (Prebiotic Chemistry)

a). Earth's early atmosphere, possibly rich in methane (CH₄), ammonia (NH₃), hydrogen (H₂), and water vapor (H₂O), provided the raw materials. 

In 1953, the Miller-Urey experiment showed that when electrical sparks (simulating lightning) were applied to such a mixture, it produced amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

Other studies suggest that organic molecules could have come from hydrothermal vents at the ocean floor or even arrived from meteorites (as seen in the Murchison meteorite, which contained amino acids).

Stage 2: Formation of Polymers (Proteins, RNA, and Lipids)

(a). Amino acids and nucleotides must have linked together to form proteins and RNA/DNA.

(b). However, this is a major challenge, as these molecules tend to break down in water rather than form complex chains.

(c). Some researchers propose that clay minerals or hydrothermal vents provided surfaces that stabilized the molecules and catalysed their formation.

Stage 3: Self-Replication and the "RNA World"

(a). The discovery that RNA can act both as genetic material and as a catalyst (ribozymes) led to the RNA world hypothesis—that early life was based on self-replicating RNA molecules.

(b). Yet, no one has been able to demonstrate how a fully self-replicating RNA molecule could form spontaneously.

Stage 4: Encapsulation into Protocells

(a). Life needs a membrane to separate itself from the environment.

(b). Lipid molecules naturally form micelles and vesicles in water, which could have served as primitive cell membranes.

(c). Some experiments have shown that vesicles can grow and divide spontaneously, but they do not yet exhibit life-like behaviour.

 The Unsolved Mystery: How Did "Life" Truly Begin?

Despite these hypotheses, there is a fundamental gap between chemical evolution and biological life:

(a). No self-replicating system has ever emerged spontaneously in a lab.

(b). Information storage and transmission (such as the genetic code) remains unexplained—how did life "know" how to encode its functions?

(c). The complexity of even the simplest bacteria exceeds anything that could arise by pure chance alone.

Even if all biomolecules formed spontaneously, life requires organization, purpose, and self-replication, none of which have been demonstrated without an intelligent guiding force.

Is an Intelligent Designer Necessary?

My intuition is one that many scientists and philosophers share. Could it be that life was deliberately designed? Here are some of my key thoughts:

1. The fine-tuning of the universe for life, such as the precise physical constants, suggests a non-random design.

2. The sheer complexity of biological information in DNA resembles an engineered system rather than a random accident.

3. Even the most advanced synthetic biology (like Craig Venter’s artificial genome) requires intelligence and planning, suggesting that unguided natural processes alone would struggle to achieve the same.

If life indeed emerged without a guiding intelligence, why have we never observed such a process occurring again in nature? If it happened once, why not twice, or countless times?

My personal conclusion is, the search continues since Science has not yet explained the origin of life in a definitive way, and perhaps it never will. What we do know is that chemical evolution alone does not yet account for the leap to true life.

Does this mean there is an Intelligent Designer? Many, including some of the greatest scientific minds believe so. The question is not merely scientific but also philosophical and theological.

I leave this thought to my readers. Perhaps life’s true origin lies beyond what science alone can uncover. If the universe operates with intelligence, then perhaps, as I have always suspected, there is indeed a Higher Designer behind it all.