LUBBOCK – According to an evolutionary paleontologist, the earliest life formed when meteorites brought space molecules to earth four billion years ago.

Sankar Chatterjee is a paleontologist at Texas Tech University  who studies the origin of life on earth. In a video released last week by Texas Tech University, Chatterjee explains some of his recent findings on life’s origin and evolution.

“The origin of life—this must be one of the oldest quests for scientists and philosophers,” Chatterjee states in the video.

Chatterjee then explains that amino acids, sugar molecules, and phosphate are all basic building blocks of life, and that these molecules’ origins on earth have long puzzled scientists. However, he suggests, ancient meteorites may hold the key to the genesis of these important molecules.

“Study any meteorite,” Chatterjee says. “When you study, when you analyze, you actually see these [molecules]. These building blocks came from space!”

How then did these molecules join together to form life? According to Chatterjee, they were “cooked” by “Mother Earth” in hydrothermal crater basins.

“These building blocks came from space, but they need a place—an ideal place—where they can be joined together, just like little blocks,” he suggests. “And our Mother Earth, no doubt, she is probably the greatest chef, okay? She cooked it!”

According to a recent article published by Texas Tech University, Chatterjee believes the ingredients brought to earth by meteorites included fatty membranes.

“At some point in this process during the course of millions of years, this fatty membrane could have encapsulated simple RNA and proteins together like a soap bubble,” Chatterjee stated. “The RNA and protein molecules begin interacting and communicating. Eventually RNA gave way to DNA—a much more stable compound—and with the development of the genetic code, the first cells divided.”

Chatterjee claims his findings on the origin of life, which were presented during a recent meeting of the Geological Society of America, are truly revolutionary.

“This is bigger than finding any dinosaur,” he stated. “This is what we’ve all searched for—the Holy Grail of science.”

Despite Chatterjee’s enthusiasm, scientists who believe in biblical creation maintain that life cannot spontaneously arise from non-life. Dr. Don Batten, a Ph.D. plant physiologist with Creation Ministries International, says the origin of life “is a vexing problem for those who insist that life arose through purely natural processes.”

“The coded DNA information storage system … cannot arise from chemistry, but demands an intelligent cause,” Batten wrote in an article late last year. “If we think of other coding systems, such as the Morse code or a written alphabetical language, where symbols were invented to represent the sounds of speech, such coded systems only arise from intelligence. … Likewise, there is just no conceivable possibility of explaining the DNA coding system from the laws of physics and chemistry because there is no physical or chemical relationship between the code and what is coded.”

“Life did not arise by physics and chemistry without intelligence,” Batten added. “The intelligence needed to create life, even the simplest life, is far greater than that of humans; we are still scratching around trying to understand fully how the simplest life forms work. There is much yet to be learned of even the simplest bacterium. Indeed, as we learn more the ‘problem’ of the origin of life gets more difficult; a solution does not get nearer, it gets further away.”

“But the real problem is this: the origin of life screams at us that there is a super-intelligent Creator of life and that is just not acceptable to the secular mind of today,” Batten concluded. “The origin of life is about as good as it gets in terms of scientific ‘proof’ for the existence of God.”

Photo: YouTube

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