Page 82 - The Little Man in the Tower

The Little Man in the Tower

For a long time, advocates of the theory of evolution resisted these
findings. However, as the development of science unraveled the complex
structure of the cell of a living being, the idea that life could come into being
coincidentally faced an even greater impasse.

Inconclusive Efforts of 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 coincidence. 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. 5
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 the gases he alleged to have
existed in the primordial Earth's atmosphere in an experiment 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. 6
After a long silence, Miller confessed that the atmosphere medium he
used was unrealistic. 7

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