Before moving forward, we need to define our terms. The term abiogenesis specifically refers to the concept that life came naturally from nonliving chemicals. Some people will try to make the case for abiogenesis by defining it to include the creation of life by God. However, here we are going to specifically use the term abiogenesis to refer to a totally naturalistic idea for the origin of life. That is, it excludes, by definition, the involvement of any intelligent agency, whether it is God or aliens. Our use of the term is going to refer exclusively to a totally naturalistic origin of life.
Best argument for abiogenesis
The best argument in support of abiogenesis is the fact that we are here. However, this requires one of two things. The first is defining abiogenesis to include any origin of life, including divine creation. The second is to exclude divine creation as a possibility summarily and to conclude that naturalistic abiogenesis must have occurred. In either of these cases, they are setting up a situation intended to preclude another possibility. By specifically defining abiogenesis as a naturalistic process, we eliminate this problem along with the argument because of the possibility of intelligent design and divine creation.
Statistical problems.
The statistical problem with abiogenesis is based on the simple fact that calculations indicate that the odds of being able to get just the proteins and DNA for the simplest possible living cell, let alone assembling that cell, exceed the number of possible events that could have occurred in the entire history of the Big Bang universe by 10s of thousands of orders of magnitude. When talking in terms of probability, this makes it statistically impossible. In fact, it turns out that to get the probability of getting that first cell, on just a single planet, to a reasonable level, you have to reduce it to only 8 proteins, averaging only 8 amino acids in length. By the way, even this unreasonably oversimplified cell doesn't include the probability of putting the cell together.
Reference: What are the Probabilities of Abiogenesis Occurring?
Thermodynamic problems.
A common misunderstanding is that abiogenesis has a Problem with entropy due to the second law of thermodynamics. However, there is another principle in thermodynamics that is more fundamental than the second law because it explains how the second law of thermodynamics works. According to this principle, when energy is applied to a system, the entropy of that system is driven towards the entropy of the applied energy. Consequently, if energy is applied to a system that has a higher entropy than the system, the energy tends to increase the system's entropy. If the energy has a lower entropy than the system, it decreases the entropy of the system. A good comparison is that this principle represents the difference between construction work and a bomb.
When this principle is applied to abiogenesis, the problem is that there are no prebiotic sources of energy with an entropy level anywhere near as low as that of even the simplest of living cells. As a result, any system that comes close to becoming a living cell without actually achieving it will be driven away from it by the available sources of energy. This results in a thermodynamic problem of producing life from non-living substances.
Reference: Abiogenesis, a Thermodynamic Impossibility
Chemical problems.
Even though chemistry is where most of the actual scientific work on abiogenesis is done, there are still a lot of problems associated with chemistry, including the results of the very research that is being done. Now, it is true that many fundamental building blocks of life have been produced in labs, but there are four major problems with these results.
The first is that these basic components of life, while chemically produced outside of a living organism, are being produced under highly controlled laboratory conditions. This is in strict contrast to them being produced under natural conditions. In fact, there is a lot of intelligent design going on to produce what byproducts are created.
The second of these problems is the fact that the chemicals that form the building blocks of life make up only a small fraction of the results of the reactions being conducted. The rest of these products are junk that not only hinders further reactions but also has a tendency to destroy the building blocks that were actually produced. What is necessary to take the process further is to either conduct a lot of filtering, once again applying intelligent design, or by buying a fresh supply of those products that are themselves produced by living things.
The third is the fact that all of the amino acids and their associated Proteins come in right and left-handed varieties. However, not only does life use only left-handed varieties, but these varieties cannot work together. However, the chemical reactions that produce them, apart from life, produce both types, but when present, they hinder further progress unless they can be separated somehow.
The fourth is that nothing that has actually been produced is even remotely close to an actual living cell. The best that has actually been produced are lipid spheres containing some of the chemical building blocks of living things, sometimes including proteins. However, the gap between these and even the simplest of actual living cells is enormous. To make that jump would require setting up a DNA storage and processing system, as well as all of the necessary cellular machinery for a functioning cell. None of which these lipid spheres are even close to doing.
Information theory problems.
Abiogenesis also has a huge problem with regard to information. The simple fact of the matter is that DNA is known to store gigabytes of coded, complex, specific digital information. However, such information is known to ultimately only result from an intelligent mind. There is no known process whereby the laws of nature by themselves are capable of producing complex specific information. There are two main ways that evolutionists try to deal with this problem.
The first is that they deny that DNA contains any actual information. They will simply claim that it's nothing but a bunch of chemical processes going on and that it doesn't actually qualify as information. This is a ridiculous argument, because it does not matter how the information is stored, transmitted, and processed as to whether or not it qualifies as complex specific information. The qualification is does the sequence encodes for something specific, and in the case of DNA, it does. DNA has been known for decades to encode for the manufacturing of proteins within the cell. In more recent years, it has been discovered that much of this DNA carries out other functions, including regulatory information.
The second is that they will try to confuse complex specific information with statistical information. While these two types of information are related, they are not the same. Statistical information is a way of dealing with the transmission and storage of information without regard to content. Statistical information does not matter whether or not the information has any meaning. With complex specific information, on the other hand, meaning is the key to defining this type of information.
The most frequent way of dealing with these problems.
The most frequent way that evolutionists respond to these problems is complete dismissal. In other words, when presented with these problems, they deny that they are even problems. In other words, they will proceed as if none of these problems exist, and that there is nothing to hinder abiogenesis from happening.
Their primary response to the problem of statistics is to, without actually ever demonstrating that the calculations are wrong, simply denounce them as being based on false assumptions and or erroneous calculations. They will never actually go through the calculations and demonstrate why any particular set of calculations is wrong.
Their primary response to arguments about thermodynamics is to stick to the second law as the argument. They then throw out the fact that the earth is an open system, and therefore entropy can decrease; they completely ignore the principle that actually explained what would happen in a prebiotic open system. They will sometimes go on to argue that life is inevitable because it is an efficient way of dissipating entropy by way of heat. They literally act as if adding energy to a system magically reduces its entropy. They tend to completely ignore the fact that bombs add a lot of energy to what they are blowing up, while greatly increasing its entropy.
The primary response to arguments about chemistry is to deny that any of the problems actually exist. They've even gone as far as insisting that the junk byproducts actually help future reactions. Some of their responses also include insulting one of the primary sources of this information, Dr. James Tour.
They also tried to claim that the lipid spheres that have been produced are actually living things. This is a case where, if you cannot reach the goal you are trying to achieve, you dumb down the definition to what you have achieved, so you can claim success. Regardless of how you tried to twist definitions, the simple fact of the matter remains that these lipid spheres are nowhere near anything generally accepted as a living cell.
No proposed model deals with any of these problems.
One of the things that all of the proposed models for abiogenesis have in common is that none of them even try to deal with these problems. They just seem to simply think that they will work somehow, and that the problems don't even exist.
For example, it would be interesting to see evolutionists actually take one of their models in run a statistical calculation that demonstrates a realistic probability of life occurring at least once in the history of the universe.
I can see four possible explanations for this.
The first and least likely is it they have actually run such calculations and cannot make them work. This is not to say that they've made the calculations and have gotten them to work. After all, evolutionists would be beating creationists over the head with the results. Rather, it is a case of they can't get it to work and therefore have abandoned any effort to even try.
The second is that the notion of abiogenesis is so ingrained in the naturalistic thinking of those doing the research that they are so convinced that it happened that they see it as a waste of time to even answer such objections.
The third is that they don't even know that such objections exist, or if they do, they have such a gross misunderstanding of them that they don't believe that they are even worth answering in their models.
The fourth and most likely reason is a combination of the second and third. That is, naturalistic thinking is so ingrained that any objections that they hear about are summarily dismissed and even distorted if necessary.
Would the creation of life in the lab prove abiogenesis?
Not even close. Now it would be claimed as proving abiogenesis but think of the reality. If scientists ever managed to produce a bacterial cell in their laboratories, what would it take to do so? It would take some very intelligent men, using some highly intelligently designed equipment resulting from many years of research, to accomplish it. It would only end up supporting intelligent design in reality.
Conclusion
The problems listed here with abiogenesis are just part of the picture. When you really look into it, the effort is not really driven by science, but by a 100% atheistic desire to remove God from the picture. There are all sorts of reasons to see why abiogenic research is a waste of time and money. In fact, there is only one reason for not concluding based on what we already know that abiogenesis is impossible. That reason is that it is an absolute demand of atheistic thinking. There are people in this world who desperately want to remove God from the picture. They desperately want to explain how we got here apart from God. This effort started more than 200 years ago, but reality keeps insisting God exists and he is the creator. However, these people will not only reject all evidence for God and his identity as the creator, but they will waste uncountable amounts of time and money in the effort to try regardless of the evidence.
