Asteroid Bennu deals major blow to creationism

Asteroid Bennu (Source: here) 

Where life comes from is a question which has occupied thinkers since the origin of scientific inquiry. We still do not know the whole answer, but published findings from the analysis of samples taken from an asteroid, which still flies around in space as I type these words provide the strongest evidence yet that life on Earth originated from elsewhere in the universe.

Earlier this year, there was a major scientific breakthrough with the publication of analysis of samples brought back to Earth from an asteroid still in orbit. Bennu, as the asteroid is called, is a rock with a diameter of 500 meters. It was first discovered in September 1999. In September 2016, a spacecraft was sent towards Bennu, reaching the asteroid in 2018. In October 2020, the spacecraft touched down on the asteroid surface and proceeded to send a capsule with a sample back to Earth. The sample arrived in September 2023.

In January of this year, following a couple of years of analysis of the Bennu samples, several journal articles revealed what was found on the asteroid (see here and here). The results were nothing short of startling. As far as theories about the origin of life are concerned the three most important findings were:

First, Bennu's rock and dust contained molecules that are key to life. Bennu had an exceptionally high abundance of ammonia, which, when reacting with formaldehyde, which was also was detected on Bennu, can form complex molecules, such as amino acids.

Second, amino acids themselves were found on Bennu as well as all five nucleobases that make up DNA and RNA. DNA and RNA are large macro-molecule chains, which store and transmit genetic instructions.

Third, the Bennu samples revealed traces of 11 minerals, which only emerge following a complete water evaporation process, that is, when water containing dissolved salts has evaporated over very long periods of time.

The presence of both life-molecules and water on Bennu shows that the asteroid's parent body must have had an environment with the same basic components as existed in the primordial soup in which life on Earth is first thought to have begun.

While the findings from Bennu do not prove whether life on Earth began here or came from elsewhere, they show that the conditions necessary for life are widespread throughout the cosmos. In turn, this indicates that life on Earth is very likely to have originated in outer space and, indeed, that there is a high probability that life exists elsewhere in the universe too.

The Bennu findings, by demonstrating that life on Earth is neither unique nor evenfront-and-centre in the story of life in the universe, ought to raise eyebrows in religious circles, where unanswered questions about the origin of life still fuel for creationist ideas.

Proponents of the three big religions - Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism - have never been shy to put forward their own home-cooked explanations for how life on Earth began. While the specifics vary significantly from one religion to the next, all religious creation stories have one thing in common, namely they claim life began with divine action.

Specifically, creationist Christians believe a divine entity they call God made Earth about 10,000 years ago. According the Bible's most basic formulation of the Christian origin story, which is contained in the Book of Genesis God created literally everything in six days, then made the human prototypes Adam and Eve before orchestrating a flood, and finally populating Earth with the survivors from Noah’s Ark, who just happened to be fully formed beings conveniently arranged in heterosexual couples to encourage procreation.

Islam’s religious text, the Quran, does not contain a Book of Genesis and muslims have never shown much interest in how life began. Nevertheless, they still reject out of hand the central premise in evolutionary theory that human beings evolved from other species.

Finally, Hindus, always the whackiest, believe human beings are material forms of pure consciousness (!), which first came into existence fully formed an unspecified billions of years ago.

None of these explanations for the origin of life can lay claim to any scientific basis. In fact, the sheer absurdity of their competing narratives owe everything to zany human imagination and nothing whatsoever to observation of the real world and genuine evidence-based inquiry.

Yet, today, nearly 6 billion people on Earth claim to believe in these religions and billions more believe in the lesser religions. Presumably, all share to some degree their religions' explanations for how life began. Polls consistently show that in the United States, for example, around 40% of the population believe life was created through divine action.

What I find fascinating, ridiculous, and frighting in equal measure is how the inability of science, so far at least, to prove unequivocally how life began leads so many people to latch onto completely unfounded creationist explanations.

The other truly astonishing aspect of the religious explanations for the origin of life is their human-centricity. Everything revolves around our little planet, our little species. Yet, there are at least 8.7 million life forms on Earth, while the observable universe contains trillions of galaxies, each with billions of stars and probably septillions of planets. The universe beyond what we observe is probably larger still. Given this context, the obsession with ourselves is arrogant to the point of insanity.

Clearly, science still has a formidable job on its hands to educate our species. The latest discoveries from the Bennu samples are important to this end. Until now, all the evidence that life originated in outer space was based on analysis of asteroids that had crash-landed on Earth. These studies suffered from the problem of possible contamination from life-molecules and water on Earth. With Bennu’s samples obtained while the asteroid was still in orbit, this source of error is now definitively eliminated, dealing a further blow the madcap religious explanations for the origin of life.  

The End