Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off

From Publishers Weekly Convinced that "creation is a testable idea that can fall within the domain of science," biochemist Rana and astrophysicist Ross do not shrink from scientific findings about the long and tumultuous history of the earth. Conceding that "the beginning of life (relative to cosmic history) under hellacious conditions poses initial problems for creationists and evolutionists alike," the authors argue that the origin and survival of life on earth over the past 3.8 billion yearsâ€"now seen by most researchers as an awesomely improbable set of eventsâ€"parallels biblical models of God "hover[ing] over early earth like a mother eagle brooding over her young." Although Rana and Ross are Christian apologists with the "Reasons to Believe" organization, their forays into theology are generally modest and brief. Their primary focus is compiling results from biology, chemistry and geology that illustrate how deeply puzzling the origin of life has become. Discussions of the "primordial soup" of prebiotic chemistry, the enigmatic origin of cell membranes and homochirality (the unexplained preponderance of left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars essential to life) all take readers further than is typical in the creation/evolution literature. Whether or not Rana and Ross quite prove a creation modelâ€"proof being in the eye of the beholderâ€"they certainly tell a compelling story of the early history of life that inspires curiosity and a sense of wonder at what is still, for all we know, a unique habitable and inhabited world. Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross's critique of materialistic theories for the origin of life is so thorough and balanced that one wonders if materialists might be holding on to their Swiss-cheese hypotheses for reasons other than scientific ones. --Michael J Behe, professor of biological science, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross have provided a thorough and devastating analysis of all naturalistic attempts to explain the origin of life. --Phillip E. Johnson, author, Darwin on Trial -