| Futile Efforts in the Twentieth Century
The first evolutionist who took up the subject of the origin of life in the twentieth century was the renowned Russian biologist Alexander Oparin. With various theses he advanced in the 1930s, he tried to prove that a living cell could originate by chance. These studies, however, were doomed to failure, and Oparin had to make the following confession:
Unfortunately, however, the problem of the origin of the cell is perhaps the most obscure point in the whole study of the evolution of organisms. (Alexander I. Oparin, Origin of Life, Dover Publications, New York, 1936, 1953 and 2003 (reprint), p. 196)
Evolutionist followers of Oparin tried to carry out experiments to solve this problem. The best-known experiment was carried out by the American chemist Stanley Miller in 1953. Combining those gases he alleged to have existed in the primordial Earth's atmosphere in an experimental set-up, and adding energy to the mixture, Miller synthesized several organic molecules (amino acids) present in the structure of proteins.
Barely a few years had passed before it was revealed that this experiment, which was then presented as an important step in the name of evolution, was invalid, for the atmosphere used in the experiment was very different from the real Earth conditions. ("New Evidence on Evolution of Early Atmosphere and Life," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 63, November 1982, 1328-1330)
After a long silence, Miller, himself confessed that the atmosphere medium he used was unrealistic. (Stanley Miller, Molecular Evolution of Life: Current Status of the Prebiotic Synthesis of Small Molecules, 1986, p. 7)
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