Because of the problems in relying simply on chance for the origin of life, as already outlined, many scientists have rejected this mechanistic viewpoint in favor of a materialistic viewpoint. The mechanistic outlook relies on pure chance to explain the origin of life, while the materialistic position believes that evolution is inevitable whenever the conditions are right. This is because the materialist believes there are certain laws, natural laws or properties associated with matter which overcome the problems inherent with chance.

A.I. Oparin, talking about the problems of chance, states, 'All these difficulties, however, disappear, if we discard once and for all the above mechanistic conception and take the standpoint that the simplest living organisms originated gradually by a long evolutionary process of organic substance and that they represent merely definite mileposts along the general historic road of evolution of matter"¹

He further states, "It is absolutely unthinkable that such complex structures like organisms could have been ever generated spontaneously, directly from carbon dioxide, water, oxygen, nitrogen and mineral salts. The generation of living things must have been inevitably preceded by a primary development on the Earth's surface of those organic substances of which organisms are constructed"² (our emphasis).

Oparin's view, as well as that of others, is that life will arise from non-life whenever or wherever conditions are right. It is inevitable that this would occur because there are, in this view, laws of matter which would cause life to evolve. The earliest chemicals on the road to life are governed by the laws of atoms. As more complex chemicals are formed and are united into a larger structure, different laws (applicable to the larger structure) take over. Just as an atom is the basic building block of a molecule, and a molecule is the basic unit f or the cell, the cell is the basic unit for the organism.

According to the materialistic viewpoint, as opposed to the mechanistic viewpoint, these different levels of organization are subject to different laws. These different laws inevitably lead matter from the non-living to the living whenever conditions are correct.

This viewpoint can be seen in what Oparin says:

"This brief survey purports to show the gradual evolution of organic substances and the manner by which ever newer properties, subject to laws of a higher order, were superimposed step-by-step upon the erstwhile simple and elementary properties of matter. At first, there were the simple solutions of organic substances, whose behavior was governed by the properties of their component atoms and the arrangement of those atoms in the molecular structure. But gradually as a result of growth and increased complexity of the molecules, new properties have come into being and a new colloid-chemical order was imposed upon the more simple organic chemical relations. These newer properties were determined by the spatial arrangement and mutual relationship of the molecules. Even this configuration of organic matter was still insufficient to give rise to primary living things. For this, the colloidal systems in the process of their evolution had to acquire properties of a still higher order, which would permit the attainment of the next and more advanced phase in the organization of matter. In this process, biological orderliness already comes into prominence. Competitive speed of growth, struggle for existence and, finally, natural selection determined such a form of material organization which is characteristic of living things of the present time."'³

This materialistic viewpoint always is expressed analogously not analytically. Even H.F. Blum's somewhat mathematical treat-ment⁴ is still little more than math by analogy. The analogy is made between atoms, molecules, cells, organisms and culture with each different level exhibiting different properties than the previous stage. But the exact form of these "laws" never is outlined. The lack of an analytic form for these laws, which are supposed to govern the evolution of matter from atoms to man, makes experimental verification or refutation impossible.

If you are told that energy is equal to the mass times the square of the speed of light (E = MC²), you can go into a laboratory and either prove or refute that statement. On the other hand, if you are told that there are material laws which lead to the evolution of man (or something similar) how are you to verify it? You can't. Therefore, the materialistic position is merely a philosophical point, not a scientific one. The materialist is postulating certain properties matter which can't be observed and therefore must be accepted or rejected by faith, not on the basis of evidence or logic

Figure 1: Ox vasopressin

NOTES
1. A. I. Oparin, The Origin Of Life, translated by Sergius Morgulis, New York: Dover Publications, 1965;p. 60.
2. Ibid., p. 62.
3. Ibid., p. 250, 251.
4. See H.F. Blum, Time's Arrow and Evolution, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, p. 200-219.