Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
The chemical evolution of life, as you will see in the next few pages, is ridiculously improbable. What could improve the odds? One should begin with an Earth having high concentrations of the key elements comprising life, such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen.a However, the more closely one examines these elements, the more unlikely evolution appears.
Carbon. Rocks that supposedly preceded life have very little carbon.b One must imagine a toxic, carbon-rich atmosphere to supply the needed carbon if life evolved. For comparison, today’s atmosphere holds only 1/80,000 of the carbon that has been on Earth’s surface since the first fossils formed. [See Table 8 on page 263.]
Oxygen. No evolutionary theory has been able to explain why Earth’s atmosphere has so much oxygen. Too many substances on an evolving Earth would have oxidized (absorbed oxygen) over billions of years.c If the early had oxygen in its atmosphere, compounds (called amino acids), which are absolutely necessary for life, would have been destroyed by oxidation.d But if there had been no oxygen, there would have been no ozone (O3—a form of oxygen) in the upper atmosphere. Without ozone to shield Earth, the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation would quickly destroy life.e The only known way for both ozone and life to be here is for both to come into existence almost simultaneously—in other words, by creation.
Nitrogen. Clays and various rocks absorb nitrogen. Had millions of years passed before life evolved, the sediments that preceded life should be filled with nitrogen. Searches have never found such sediments.f
While 78% of Earth’s atmosphere is nitrogen, the means by which plants, animals and bacteria evolved ways to use it in their bodies, is a recognized evolutionary mystery.g
Basic chemistry does not support the evolution of life.h