Life can evolve without a creator

HAVING read two recent letters in the Belfast Telegraph on the topic of the origin of life, I would make the following comments.

Darwinian selection can, indeed, only work on pre-existing life-forms, but this does not prove the need for a supernatural creator.

The Miller-Urey experiment (1952) demonstrated that complex organic molecules found in all living things could be formed from very simple molecules, like ammonia, methane and water, under the conditions found on primaeval earth.

Some of these molecules can interact to form lipid bi-layers (the basis of cell membranes) and nucleic acids, including RNA molecules. Some of these molecules are self-replicating, but certainly not living.

The first living cells could have arisen from fatty globules (called lipid micelles), which contained complex mixtures of complex chemicals capable of forming early metabolic chains of reactions.

Again, they are not living cells, but once this level of complexity is reached, a form of natural selection can work to make these protocells become more adapted to their environments and so influence evolutionary history.

A little online research will show there are many possibilities for the evolution of life without the necessity of an ultimate creator.

Of course, one can never prove that such a super being does not exist, and you can believe whatever you want, but only science can put ideas to the test to give us a truer picture of how the universe works.

DAVID FULLERTON Belfast