Why isn't new life still being generated today?

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Claim

Abiogenesis assumes life was created by processes still operating today, so new life should still be appearing today.

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Responses

  1. "It may be generated today, and we don't know what to look for." Currently, we don't know what would be created in an abiogenesis event. So how could we tell whether or not such events occur today? For all we know, abiogenesis could be happening everywhere, but we simply don't recognize it as such!
  2. "It may be generated today, but gets eaten." It is far from clear what sort of lifespan the product of a present-day abiogenesis event would have. The contemporary environment is full of living things, from unicellular on up, which are likely to regard any newly-generated life form as food. For all we know, abiogenesis does occur nowadays, but its products don't stick around long enough for us to notice. Before abiogenesis organic molecules could accumulate through chemical processes since there would be no consumption, but as life is now widespread any primordial soup/ooze would be a rich nutrient source for existing life and thus rapidly consumed. So even if in some limited environment original abiogenesis conditions could exist today (say, mid-ocean vents or land basic thermal springs) these environments contain life that would pre-empt the emergence of new life.
  3. "Maybe because the environment is more hostile." Abiogenesis does not assume life was created by processes still operating today. The claim is not fallacious so much as it is simply false. Specifically, the present-day environment is very different from the conditions which were in place back when the original abiogenesis event was supposed to have taken place. We know that Earth's pre-life atmosphere couldn't have had more than a fraction of a percent of oxygen; now, the atmosphere is 20% oxygen, and complex organic complex now run the risk of being oxidized. Back then, ultraviolet light direct from the Sun bathed everything unhindered; now, we have an ozone layer that absorbs most of that same UV radiation. Given these two differences alone, is it unreasonable to think that current conditions simply aren't conducive to abiogenesis?
  4. By that logic, since, as one example, oil companies did appear from nothing a hundred years ago, we should be seeing new oil companies appearing today. We do not because the economic environment is very different, in particular, the oil-exploitation niche is filled, and the costs of extracting oil have risen considerably, due to the easiest oil sources having long since been used up. In the same way, the biological environment today is different than billions of years ago, and free-floating organic compounds are far rarer, requiring complex mechanisms to synthesize from simpler substances

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Related claims

See Also

Why is Creationism not a Scientific Theory?

Acknowledgments

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