Christian fundamentalists are really talking about creation whenever they talk about evolution. For them, evolution is a rival to the creation described in Genesis. Yet evolution itself is about how the forms of organisms change, not about how life began. Of course, by extrapolating, life gets simpler the earlier we find it in the true record of the earth’s history as opposed to the myths of the bible, but eventually life just disappears in the rocks. Then is it too simple, too tiny, too soft, too impermanent to be fossilized and so there remains no sign of it that we can discern at present. The logic is that life continues to get simpler until it was just molecules replicating, and the origin of life was when some molecule first started to do it.

Molecules can indeed replicate and have been shown doing it in experiments, but they are replicating molecules either made synthetically by humans or extracted from living tissue. Either way, the replicating molecules had a human hand as the hand of God in these experiments matching the Christian scheme of things, so it was no model of origins. It merely made the point that you did not need an organism for replication. A molecule would do. Science is still faced with working out how life actually began. The sneers of Christians that science cannot create life are an unintended complement. God had eternity to think about it, but Christians think science should have done it in only 300 years.

Christians, and indeed most of us, think about “life” as meaning something alive—human beings, cats, snakes, frogs, insects, worms, and even microscopic bacteria—but the notion of origins means that at the boundary of the living and the not-living must be something that is doubtful. Is it alive or merely there? At the boundary, something must be alive but be capable of looking like a crystal or a speck of dirt. Viruses might be these half-living and half not-living things. They can be treated like a substance, purified and crystallized like any salt, but once they were in the right environment, they could reproduce themselves. Moreover, viruses could be crystallized in pure form, then broken up by chemical action into some of their sub-constituent parts, and then they were no longer able to reproduce themselves even in an appropriate environment, and finally reconstituted from the parts so well that they could again reproduce themselves. The virus had been killed and resurrected, a genuine miracle, although one that no Christian will assign to science.

At one time, scientists thought viruses could not be in the mainstream development of life because they need something living to be able to reproduce themselves. They must have evolved while there already was something living that saved them the bother of having to reproduce themselves. They seemed a type of parasite, and so degenerate life rather than advancing life. It is a changing view. First viruses were found to be ubiquitous, and of immense numbers and varieties. Scientists realized that they were the most abundant form of life. Moreover 80 per cent of viral genes are novel, they have never been found anywhere else, but what they do is not known.

Now, scientists have returned to the idea that viruses must have preceded bacterial life, and only some of them adopted a parasitic lifestyle, the ones that we noticed first because they affect us directly. But these bacteriophages were found with odd assortments of genes, an apparent collection of ones they found within the cell from infections of similar viruses. They seemed to collect spare bits of genetic material and leave some bits behind to be collected elsewhere. This means viruses mix genes in new combinations all the time. Then it was discovered that all viruses that infected bacteria were not phages, they did not have to kill the cell, but used it by having it copy its own DNA when the cell itself reproduced. In effect viral DNA became part of the bacterial DNA. These prophages were up to 20% of bacterial genes, and elsewhere it has been found that around 10% of genetic material is odd and of unknown origin, called ORFans. Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) also incorporate themselves into higher DNA. Genes that look like bits of viruses constitute around 90% of human DNA. It all shows that viruses have a huge effect on evolution. It is a new branch of evolutionary science, and looks as though it might have a great deal of influence by making genetic change much more common than anyone had realized.

Viruses do not look much like the life we recognize, yet their use of the mechanisms of other living things to reproduce themselves shows that they are essentially the same. Must it be so? No Christian doubts the ancient books they think are full of God’s wisdom, though modern books are not. In God’s account, life began as it is now. Herbs were herbs, fish were fish, creeping things crept about, animals were animals, Adam was always himself, and Eve was an afterthought made of a chopbone. God is almighty, but refused to plant a germ and invent evolution, so that Christians had something simpler to believe in. But Nature is not confined only to ancient books or to what a man can dream up, however imaginative he might be. She is not confined to whatever the cleverest Christian might think. The truth is that the earliest life, whether God’s handiwork or spontaneously emergent from non-living matter, does not have to be how we imagine it ought to be. It does not even have to be at all like a virus.

Half a century ago, some evolutionary theorists rejected the primeval soup in favour of life beginning on surfaces, probably of clay minerals. Surfaces bring reactants into proximity with less violence and next to an energy sink to remove excess energy to stop immediate break up, are two dimensional not three and so are simpler with fewer possible side-reactions, and have catalytic properties that could serve in the absence of the enzymes that later life depended on. A surface had to be on a solid also, and so offered shelter from some of the direct sunlight that could disrupt delicate molecules. In the 80s, A G Cairns-Smith (Seven Clues to the Origin of Life) thought that clay played an even more significant role. It was not just the nanny of life, it was the daddy of it. His point was that life did not begin as we know it at all, but was a type of clay life—a proto-life.

Wet clay is what we all call mud, pretty unprepossessing stuff, but it is remarkable for all that. Clays are silicates of extraordinarily fine crystrals, often with layered structures, but with defects, cavities, folds and inclusions, like any crystal able to grow out of a saturated solution, and with saturation levels in water that are low in concentration without being negligible. Water flowing over silicate rocks inevitably dissolves out silicates and soon saturates, so the potential existed, when the earth’s water cycle began, for the growth of silicate rocks from rainwater saturated in dissolved silicates. Silicate rocks tens of miles deep shows it happened.

Now what is life other than a constant but perpetually changing system! Life is a non-equilibrium system. It depends on a constant supply of energy, but as soon as there is a supply of energy, vortices start to spin in any fluid. A vortex like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter is like that, and so too are the earth’s solar driven cycles like the weather with its water cycle, nitrogen cycle, and so on. Vortices can even split off babies, but the point here is the emphasis on energy and cycles for life. Life at its most basic is an energy cycle, and at the center of it is the necessity of life, water. The continuous supply of water into the seas and oceans saturated with silicates set up the basis of clay life—effectively a constant supply of food. The clay itself can crystallize out in a variety of forms depending on environment, so there is a selective pressure on the most suitable form according to the circumstances.

Moreover, the crystals do not have to be like the typical rocksalt crystal, by any means. The structure of clays like kaolinite are complicated and crystal defects can give any crystal a structure by misalignment of microcrystallites (twinning) that is manifest on the surface by flutes and columns as the crystal grows. Remember, these are microscopic crystals anyway. If any of these surface features helps the crystal in growing, or in reproducing itself, by leaving, for example, a periodic fracture zone, where the crystal can snap off and be washed elsewhere by the flow, then the whole pattern is selected and spreads. If they clogged up, say, the pore structure of the sandstone or crack they were forming in, saturated water would cese to penetrate, and they could starve themselves out of reproductive existence. That variant dies. Particular crystalline forms that are successful with their own twinning structure, defect structure, layer structure and composition could begin to dominate particular regions of clay formation, and ultimately to differences in sedimentary rocks. This is an inorganic life process built on silicates, silicon and oxygen, rather than the carbon that came later. Billions of tons of the stuff were quickly washing around the earth, forming new rocks ultimately, but many the residues of ancient silicate proto-life, just as coal deposits are a residue of ancient plant life.

What has it to do with our concept of life, or the Christian’s notions of Genesis, even allowing that it happened or still happens? No doubt clays, however subtle they are, are not comparable with the infinite subtleties of the organic life that was to emerge. The clay proto-life is possibly extensive but strictly limited. The question is how limited it it.

The crystal responds to selective pressure by adapting its form of crystallization to suit best its environment, but the factors involved are considerable still. The compositional structure of the layers of clays like kaolinite have regular gaps in them as well as ions placed, as anyone would expect, where they should be on the lattice, but gaps in crystal lattices can accommodate small molecules or ions, and ions on lattices can be wrong, the wrong element, or the wrong valence, and so on. And some of the possibly wrong metal ions have interesting properties. Iron ions can photosynthesize by using sunlight to fix CO₂ as formic acid, and then the step to sugars follow. Oxalic acid can also be fixed, and titanium dioxide can fix nitrogen as ammonia from which amino acids could appear. The molecules of DNA have phosphatic stuctures that bind successfully with clays, and otherwise are made of a sugar support for the four nucleotides.

Clay able to copy tricks approaching these in its crystal structure would have yet more scope. This is evolution! Oxalic acid and the amines would initially be chelating agents, perhaps, but would keep transition metal ions dissolved for the time being rather than settling where they should not be. The acids would help in the same role, slightly changing the acidity of the water. Any sugars would change the local viscosity. Tiny, unimportant tricks but in billions of tons of mud formation every year some would be selected, and their success introduced organic molecules to the habit of life. On this idea, organic life began as props used by the widespread but limited proto-life of the clay beds. Once the organic molecules were together, albeit by accident, they would find themselves effectively being catalyzed by the clays that brought them close. Now, a whole host of new possibilities could emerge.

Creationists are fond of the notion of “irreducible complexity” whereby a biomolecular mechanism was too complicated to have ever functioned in any simpler form, and therefore could never have evolved. It requires no genius to work out that it might not be a question of further simplifying the structure because that is what selection had done, but complicating it because something was present once that no longer is, or perhaps something has changed its function. The essence of evolution is that it almost invariably takes the easy route not the direct one. Workmen building a brick arch over a fireplace can build a wooden former to take the weight while the mortar sets. Then the former can be removed, and lo! the Christian gapes at the “irreducible complexity” of the arch because he cannot do it. Evolution is not a planning process, but it is always trying—adapting. Some accidental feature might be selected and be adapted into the organism’s behaviour, but later is discarded when its use ceases. Yet in the meantime, it has acted as a former for the introduction of another subtlety which became “irreducibly complex” once the feature that had supported it disappeared. Useless features atrophy away like the human appendix, and even at a biomolecular level.

Cairns-Smith shows how the whole of organic life might be irreducibly complex, because it formed on the back of a simpler form of half life or proto-life—clay life—without which it might have been impossible. Christians can feel satisfied that, if so, the bible is right—God made life out of mud—and if this notion is shown to be right, they will then be again bragging about how precise their holy bibble is.
Michael J Russell & Allan J Hall of the Origin of Life research project at Glasgow university explain how chemical reactions can have evolved into life. The cooling by seawater of rocks under the floor of the ocean, played an important role in the origin of life. Genetically primitive micro-organisms are to be found living at warm springs on the ocean floor. Could a relatively simple living organism similar to a single bacterial cell form, function and reproduce in such places?

A living cell assimilates nutrients, uses energy and generates waste. It is mainly made of carbon-based (ie organic) molecules, but they also contain hydrogen and other elements. They need a mainly waterproof container, the cell membrane. Inside is a watery solution with a high concentration of organic molecules and some inorganic salts. A present day living cell need not have a nucleus of concentrated genetic material, DNA, but it does need DNA present. DNA consists of two molecular chains, long sequences of simpler molecules, that can detach from each other like an unzipping action, each chain then becoming a template for the assembly of a new chain, so that it can reproduce itself. The molecular sequence of DNA controls the systematic construction of all the organic components of the cell most of which are renewable, ie they degrade and the molecular building blocks are recycled. A living cell recycles organic molecules as well as producing and accumulating them. It is rejuvenating, a remarkable property that gives single cells longevity. Cells can grow in size and reproduce by splitting in half, each daughter cell carrying a copy of the original cell’s DNA.

Present day life depends to a large extent on solar energy that drives the chemical systems of green vegetation. Plants use water and carbon dioxide from the air to produce organic molecules with oxygen as a waste. The first living cells formed on the floor of an ocean on the earth thousands of millions of years ago. Life emerged at the sites of warm submarine springs where chemical energy was focused and the mixing of spring water with seawater could lead to the precipitation of chemicals. It can lead to metal-rich mineral deposits, often containing iron sulfides but with variable chemistries. How could the first cell have assembled itself in such a setting on the early Earth or on any similar stony, wet and sunny planet?

The seawater was acidic from a high concentration of carbon dioxide. The springwater contained hydrogen and key organic molecules produced at depth by reaction of water, carbon-containing gases such as carbon monoxide, and iron-rich minerals—ferrous iron mainly from hot springs, and ferric iron from oxidation of ferrous iron by sunlight. Mixing of solutions can precipitate insoluble chemicals to form a barrier preventing further mixing and precipitation. Among them was iron sulfide. At the warm spring, a precipitate formed a boundary inhibiting mixing, provided a template for the assembly of chains of organic molecules, and acted as a catalyst for electrochemical reactions. Complexes like this, not at all unusual, brought together the first necessities of life.

The initial membranous precipitate consisted mainly of small groups of iron and sulfur atoms. Iron-sulfur groups still play an essential electrochemical catalytic role in all living cells. As a boundary, the precipitate concentrated chemicals that could participate in chemical reactions inclusing organic molecules such as amino acids. These formed at depth below the spring where water and its dissolved chemicals reacted with rocks containing iron and iron-rich minerals.

The boundary then evolved by a process of organic take-over into a cell membrane consisting of organic molecules. The small crystals, only a hundred atoms or so thick, of iron sulfide precipitate of could act as a template and bond chemically to, and assemble a sequence of, the molecular components of RNA, a chain molecule similar to DNA which supports genetic evolution. Its formation catalysed by the iron sulfide, the RNA could itself start to assemble amino acids into proteins, the assembly of further chains of RNA, and the assembly of DNA. Then, these new large organic molecules could reproduce themselves through the interaction of DNA, RNA and proteins without the requirement of an iron sulfide template. As a catalyst, the groups of iron (and nickel) sulfides could activate molecular hydrogen, and probably methane which consists of carbon and hydrogen, which also formed at depth in the spring. The hydrogen is essential for the synthesis of organic molecules. Electrons produced as a by-product, and representing the dissipation of energy, were transferred to ferric iron, dissolved in the seawater making ferrous iron.

The first living cells could function and grow using carbon from carbon monoxide, methane or carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater. They gained chemical energy from linking molecular hydrogen, being emitted by the warm spring, and ferric iron dissolved in the seawater. Other nutrients such as phosphate, nitrogen in the form of ammonia, and trace elements were available in the same environment. Genetic evolution eventually permitted life to escape from a dependence on ocean floor chemical energy and a later major step was the use of solar energy, a process known as photosynthesis.