Chemical Evolution didn't happen. Here's why: Cell membranes.

Charles Darwin and some modern scientists think that life started all on its own, it sort of just...happened, spontaneously. It’s called chemical evolution (aka Abiogenesis). They say it started with chemicals forming building blocks, and then combining into polymers like DNA and RNA.

The next step toward life would be CELL MEMBRANES. All living things are made of cells that are surrounded by a cell membrane, life simply cannot exist without membranes.

Origin-of-life researchers claim that cell membranes are easy to make and that they have demonstrated this in the lab. They point toward experiments where these molecules called “phospholipids” (or more generally “amphiphilic molecules”) are placed in water and they form into a spherical shell–kind of like a cell membrane–all on their own. Wow!

But is it really the case that cell membranes are so easy to form? Let’s take a look more closely….

#originoflife

[strangequark]

Another classic case of "emergent complexity doesn't exist." The earliest precursors to life would have obviously been simpler than life as we know it today. You don't need any organelles for a proto-cell, just self-replicating nucleic acids (easy to form) and a phospholipid bilayer. Specific channels wouldn't be needed when there was literally no other life on Earth to attack the proto-cell.

[thewetcoast]

There's a lot of desperation in the comments. Their lack of specificity in addressing the points raised in the video are noteworthy, as well as their appeal to non observed ideas.

[Call_Me_Emo]

6:50
This argument could have been left out.

Removing parts/genes from an organism that has undergone 3.5+ billion years of Evolution and specialization is a horrible way to test what the first lifeforms needed to survive. Because you're not just talking about an organism with reduced genes, you're talking about an organism with a completely different set of genes and biochemistry than what is found in organisms today.

It's like trying to remove the lungs from a lunged organism and then argue that because they can't survive without lungs then therefore said organism could not be simplified/reduced beyond its lunged condition.... whilst completely ignoring that the ancestors to organisms with lungs used a totally different system (gills) to absorb oxygen.

Just because the removal of some part or genes from an extant and specialized organism is detrimental, it doesn't mean that their ancestors needed it.

[kenthartig]

Interesting that a lot of these comments boil this down to creationism versus evolution. Discrediting the current model of evolution in no way creates proof for creationism, and it is entirely possible there is some other explanation we haven't dreamed of yet. Confirmation bias is an issue on everyone's part, so what's important is that we remember discussions like these are not targeted attacks and should under no circumstances be taken on a personal level (or given on one).

[ethanpatel]

I think it would be more effective to cite your sources in the description

[mandelabrein]

I like how, according to the comments, if you point out the flaws in scientific papers and/or their experiments, you're automatically a religious zealot

[Rohan_AnKri]

The opening title card speaking about this being produced with collaboration of 5 PhD scientists needs to be clarified. This same title card is shown in one other video in this channel (I've seen it in only one of the three videos I've watched, perhaps the other videos have it as well)

Who are these 5 people in question and what are their qualifications?
While appreciated that the sources are listed in the description, it'll also be nice to know who the channel creator is working with with regards to content arrangement and validation for what is subsequently uploaded onto the channel.

[geoffreymartin]

Unimaginative, tbh. One could imagine a million different reasons why these arguments are weak. The first life could've been a random set of molecules that did nothing but self replicate, spread as wide as possible, and happened to be in a tide pool that stays homoeostatic via other reasons. Half of what you ask of membranes isn't needed for early life as there aren't predators, there's no life-made toxins, and the area can be as large as needed, so something that might kill them doesn't necessarily effect all of the proto life. For all we know, a proto-golgi body was the only life for millions of years, kept safe by chance and statistics, creating basic building blocks that sometimes formed more of themselves, before one happened upon the right mix to become a proto-cell. Life happened, and arguments against abiogenesis are arguing for the existence of magic.

[davidknipe]

7:57: "It required a precise cocktail of nutrients, basically life support, or else it would die. However, most of these life-support nutrients couldn't have existed on a prebiotic earth." Why not? Today, free-floating organic molecules are rare, presumably because scavengers would soon pick them up. But this wasn't the case 4.2 billion years ago.

[blockhead]

I noticed a lot of people saying in the comments that the first life doesn’t have to be complex could you do a video on why there wrong?

[FaceDwnDagon]

...Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any creationist assertions in this video.

There are plenty of places in science where "we don't know why X, but based on A and B, it had to be some kind of Y" is a fine answer. I'm reminded of dark matter.

You could make an argument that dark matter couldn't possibly be, for example, the result of spontaneously forming matter-antimatter particle pairs. (Whether this is actually true, let's ignore that for now.)

That argument does not imply any of the following, necessarily:
1) That dark matter has no scientific explanation
2) That divine intervention is required for dark matter to exist
3) That dark matter itself is a conspiracy theory to deceive the public

I don't really see how declaring a simple phospholipid (bi)layer insufficient for the emergence of life as we know it is any different.

If the complaint is that the video is too dismissive of unknown mechanisms...sure, I guess? But even in that case, the challenges here aren't easily resolved. Going from "a bubble with some stuff inside of it that is distinct from the stuff outside it" to "the first instance of something that counts as a metabolism" is pretty monumental. The only real possibility seems to be building blocks flowing in to fuel a self-sustaining reaction that joins small molecules into larger molecules that can't pass through the membrane, and either creates no waste or small, membrane-permeable waste. And at that point, you also have the problem of why this reaction isn't occuring in the surrounding environment, and how the system as a whole is getting its energy and is not inert.

There's been this nasty habit ever since creationism was a cultural phenomenon in the early 2000s, that any concerns about how we even get to LUCA in the first place are anti-science. But it's an intensely interesting and difficult thing to answer, and I wish we could talk about it critically without devolving into "believe this or you hate science, " which is itself ironically unscientific.

[thylacoleonkennedy]

Evolution is a theory of biodiversity. It explains how life changes over time to create that diversity. It says nothing about how life started. Also Charles Darwin published over a hundred and fifty years ago. We've learned an awful lot since then. If you're going to attack something please make sure you understand it first.

[timesee]

I often wondered, considering how complex our bodies are, how any single cells came to link up to produce such vast lifeforms...because everytime I delve into it, science itself proves its impossible.

[capitalb]

The inclusion of "five PhDs" that apparently collaborated sounds like a case of "lying for Jesus". What are their names and what are they researching? And how did they collaborate?

[kennethrawson]

Talking about the origin of life as starting with cell membranes is like trying to describe taking a trip overseas that begins with getting off the plane, then denying that planes exist. There's about 2 billion years of evolution that happened before the first cellular membrane appeared. This is just a fancier version of the Watchmaker's Fallacy. Try reading a book that wasn't written by shepherds 2000 years ago.

[BrDud]

6:49
I don’t this rebuttal really works. The cell that had genes removed was still having to support the other complex structures that the remaining genes created without the necessary structures that the removed genes produced. For an analogy, the first “proto-cell” wouldn’t have had a heart to keep clean with a detoxing liver.

On top of that, we are drawing the line at what we think is “alive.” Which I’m simply going to assume means, “can dispose of waste, can consume nutrients, and can reproduce” since it is very simple and encompasses, pretty much, everything. Everything except autocatalytic reactions. Chemical processes that prime further chemical processes. Which the first “proto-cell” would’ve likely been a product of.

While I do agree with the objections to chemical evolution posed by this video, I simply wonder what is the alternative? Chemical Evolution is widely accepted because it, while not perfect, still stands better than most other theories and hypothesis.

[Cognizent]

When trying to indoctrinate a group of creationists that slept through ALL of school (not just biology), its best to use cartoons and humor to keep their attention.

[chillyperson]

I find the notion of 'It would have had to be complex from the beginning' to be a naive assumption. This is not true in the development of any of our technology, and is surely not the case in the evolution of life either. We see the complexity of today's biology with all its contingency plans and metabolic pathways just like kids from the 90's onward work with computers using GUI's and high level programming languages. Few outside of specialized fields of research have to deal with assembly code or circuit logic or stuff like that because it was abstracted out of normal user experience decades ago. It used to be the case that one would have to manually do what we call programming today, and if they made a mistake, they ran the risk of literally burning out or otherwise destroying their hardware. I believe in a similar process for chemical/biological evolution, especially given the amount of time there has been for it to happen. There's plenty of evidence of the process unfolding in the past and currently, even if we don't know nearly enough to see the fine details of it right now, nor could we ever see the actual path life took to get to where it is today. For instance, there's evidence of global ecological collapse as a result of life doing its thing in the past. There are also many examples of life actively shaping its external environment to it's needs.

[weo]

Ok, I am curious how do you believe life was started exactly?

[sunnythegreat]

What you're not considering or are practically trying to ignore is the fact that life exists everywhere today. There are extremeophiles surviving in areas where we die. This is important because even those extreme environments on earth are in the goldilocks zone. Back during the origin of life, the goldilocks zone was most likely way smaller than what it is today. Life probably evolved in a very specific environment that was very forgiving which allowed for basic life to evolve. As life evolved, the goldilocks spread to cover more of the earth.