A Rational Cosmology: The Possibility of Life's Origins from Non-Life

The unique nature of processes categorized as "life," their intricate complexity, their capacity for self-sustenance and self-generation, often cause many thinkers to interpret their origins as something distinct from the origins of inanimate matter, which can be said to act "deterministically," in accordance with clearly identifiable and predictable Laws of Physics.

In many qualities, these immense differences between life and non-life hold, especially with regard to life of the highest echelon, i.e., the life of entities of volitional consciousness. However, does the origin of life itself necessitate a similar distinction?

A position is put forth by such thinkers as Mr. Reginald Firehammer that, due to the evident distinctions between life and non-life, the latter could not have ever been in a state of complete monopoly over the sphere of existence or given rise to the former; the quality of life, along with the qualities of volition and consciousness, would need to have existed, according to Mr. Firehammer, for all time eternities back. Given that both I and Mr. Firehammer do not hold time per se to have had a chronological origin (such as, for example, a Big Bang), this would mean that the existent, "life" is an infinity old.

Whether or not Mr. Firehammer's proposition is valid hinges on a crucial question: "Can life in fact originate from non-life?" To answer this question, it would be enlightening to examine a field properly known as the "study of life" (biology) and then apply the results to the study of existence (metaphysics).

For the majority of the 19th and early 20th century it was held that life and non-life were mutually exclusive spheres, and no amount of chemical interaction could transform non-life into life; this belief was termed vitalism and was adhered to by the predominant scientific minds of the day.

Yet the foundations of vitalism crumbled in 1953, when Stanley Miller of the University of Chicago recreated, in a simple experiment, the atmospheric conditions which would have prevailed on the early Earth. The early atmosphere, made primarily of hydrogen gas, ammonia, methane, and water vapor, was conducive to the spontaneous formation of all twenty known amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and contributors to DNA and RNA genetic codes.

Amino acids are organic compounds that were once thought by the vitalists to be impossible to obtain by reaction of non-organic chemicals. According to post-Miller evolution theorists, natural selection acted on these molecules before life itself came to be. These findings suggest that it is indeed possible for life to arise from non-life.

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