© 1986 Ken Glasziou
© 1986 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
¶ The Origins Of Life
The URANTIA Book tells us that the first life implantations were made on this earth 550 million years ago, and that all subsequent living forms have evolved from these original implantations.
More and more one reads or hears on the television that life has existed on earth for as much as 3 billion years, which could set URANTIA Book readers wondering.
The fossil record shows us that life forms existed in the order of 500 to 600 million years ago, and that these forms were relatively advanced at least in respect to their biochemical cellular organization. The intricacy of their skeletal remains implies that they must have possessed the same highly complex system of information storage and the equally complex system for its translation into a living organism that we know about today. This system consists of the nucleic acids, RNA and DNA plus the enzymes, ribosomes etc.
The enormous complexity of this biochemical system that exists at the sub-microscopic level in every living cell is such that it is recognized, that for it to have evolved by some extraordinary set of spontaneous random events would probably take much longer than the subsequent evolution of the single cell organism to a full human being.
There are of course, many scientists who are unable to conceive that this complex system could have arisen by chance at all.
There are also those scientists who feel that the only scientific way of investigating such problems as the origin of life is to reject the idea of a creator or of life coming from somewhere in space. The thinking goes thus — since life is present on earth, it must be possible for life to put itself together spontaneously, therefore it did.
The evidence put forward by this group consists of laboratory experiments in which some of the complex organic chemicals found in living cells are shown to be formed through the agency of electric discharge (artificial lightning), etc., on simple organic chemicals or even carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Also the fossil record is interpreted to indicate the existence of life forms up to about 3 billion years ago.
One form of such fossil evidence is the finding of layered limestone structures called stromatolites in very ancient sedimentary rocks. Today stromatolites are still being formed and always in association with a microbial mat dominated by the photosynthetic cyanobacteria. Then very thin sections of ancient stromatolites are examined in transmitted light, structures can sometimes be observed that are interpreted to be fossilised sheaths of cyanobacteria that exhibit close morphological resemblance to living cyanobacteria. Photographs of these fossils are presented in the February 1984 issue of Scientific American, plus photos of acritarchs which will be discussed later.
To me it is a remarkable jump of the imagination to positively identify the rings and chains of rings shown in the se photos as the remains of cyanobacteria. However if they truly are photosynthetic cyanobacteria, we are faced with another dilemma. These organisms have the highly complex DNA-RNA-protein synthesis system to ensure not only their orderly operation but the passage of information between generations. How could such a remarkable system evolve spontaneously during the chaotic first billion years of this planet’s existence?
Passing on to the acritarchs, these are obtained by exposing ancient sedimentary rocks to treatment with strong acid and screening the remains for acid resistant organic structures. Photos are shown in the reference article and consist of spheres, and groups of spheres or hexagons that are interpreted as fossils of cells and cell colonies.
The jump of the imagination to equate these to current living organisms is quite large, and the statement that they are actual fossils of eukaryotes (organisms with an organized nucleus) is certainly not justified by the evidence presented. That they may resemble such organisms is not disputed, and I also accept that they are organic remains, though no analytical data are presented (i.e. what kind of biochemicals can be detected in these remnants. If DNA and protein could be detected, we would have a problem with interpreting The URANTIA Book statements).
An interesting article appeared in the June 1985 issue of Scientific American that strongly disputes the more or less standard explanations presented for the origins of life by the followers of the organic soup theory ascribed to Oparin and Haldane. The author follows the line of reasoning that since life is on earth, it must have occurred spontaneously, then proceeds to develop the idea that the first primitive units of heredity, the genes, may have had their origin in crystalline clay minerals.
To me the idea has more merit than the organic soup hypothesis, but still falls far short of giving a reasonable basis to the idea that a living cell could develop by spontaneous processes. The article shows a very interesting thing though, the occurrence of hollow tubes and spheroids in materials that are entirely composed of clay minerals. In the single photo presented, single spheroids, pairs of spheroids, chains of at least three spheroids and groups of many spheroids are clearly visible. Although their size is much smaller than for the acritarchs, it demonstrates that the mere occurrence of such structures does not necessarily signify life. Similarly leathery looking sheets with folds etc., which are shown in photos of the clay mineral called hallosite, resemble the folded surface of acritarchs shown in the first article.
Without much wore definitive evidence, I cannot accept that the structures formed in stromatolites and acritarchs unequivically represent DNA based living cells. But it does seem probable that they represent structural forms that are dominantly organic.
There is no doubt the complex organic chemicals can be formed from simple organic molecules by processes other then those carried out by living cells. Many of these molecules are quite stable under the conditions of the surface of our planet and in the absence of living cells.
The organic soup theory assumes that such molecules accumulated in the oceans and seas of the primitive earth over long period of time, and this seems to be a reasonable hypothesis. That spheroids, hollow tubes, and chains and groups of spheroids can occur spontaneously in organic clay minerals has been demonstrated. There is no reason to doubt that similar, and even more complex structures could form spontaneously from complex organic molecules, without the intervention of living cells. Boil milk, cool it and a skin will form without the intervention of life. We should not be surprised if skins (membranes) were formed in our primitive oceans, if spheres could form from such skins, and if these spheres could preferentially concentrate certain types of molecules. Reproduction of such spheres through budding is perfectly feasible.
Protein is an essential component of living cells. Simple, small proteins can form spontaneously from their building blocks, the amino acids, and can then form into spheres which resemble a living cell. In the laboratory of Sidney Fox, University of Miami, these proteinoid spheres have been artificially fossilised and then appear strikingly similar in size and structure to the fossils found in stromatolites. It is claimed that these proteinoid spheres emit an electrical response when exposed to light. Perhaps spheres of this type were the real catalysts that formed the ancient stromatolites, and not the cyanobacteria as currently propounded.
It is difficult for the non-scientist to appreciate the difference between Fox’s proteins and microspheres and what exists in a real live cell. If we took the component parts of a very large bridge girder and welded them together at random, the resultant mess would have about as much resemblance to the real girder as Fox’s proteins have to the proteins of living cells. If we repeated the process many thousands of times, heaped up the lot with bulldozers, and welded the pile together with bolts of lightning, the resulting structure would resemble the Sydney Harbour Bridge about as closely as Fox’s proteinoid spheres resemble a living cell.
What then is life, and what was it that the Life Carriers brought to Urantia 550 million years ago?
The URANTIA Book includes bacteria and simple plant cells in what it calls life. Also it states that the first primitive life forms introduced into our seas carried all the information necessary for the eventual evolution of all subsequent life forms, including man without any further interference from the Life Carriers.
On UB 65:5.2 of The URANTIA Book it states that certain primitive plant life forms reverted to the prechlorophyll types of parasitic bacteria. This tells us that parasitic bacteria preceded the blossoming of plant life which in turn provided the primary food source for subsequent animal life. On what then were these parasitic bacteria parasitic? Certainly not plant or animal forms, for they preceded them. If parasitic bacteria were the first life forms released by the Life Carriers, there must have been a vast source of organic foodstuff which they could parasitise and which could sustain them until photosynthetic plant life evolved.
Perhaps the fossil forms found in acritarchs and stromatolites were part of the organic soup on which the parasitic bacteria fad, and these forms were not “living” in the sense of the word used in The URANTIA Book. Intuitively I conclude that such forms did not contain the self regulating, self replicating system based on DNA and protein synthesis found in all present day living cells, hence were neither prokaryotic nor eukaryotic life forms. However, if by some infinitely remote chance, DNA based, life forms did exist prior to 550 million years ago, we would have to ask what it was that the Life Carriers really did. Perhaps it could have been to re-arrange DNA and cellular organization and to confer upon such cells the necessary physical means, and the life force, to give them the potential to evolve eventually to the self-conscious, will-endowed creature we call man. If 30, then perhaps the rearrangement of the DNA of eukaryotic cells into the system of exons and introns that know exists, was the work of the Life Carriers.
Ken Glasziou, Clifton, Qld.