Open That all life shares one ancestor is settled. How chemistry first became a living, evolving cell is one of science’s great open questions.
NASA announced in January 2025 what it had found in dust brought back from the asteroid Bennu. The sample, scooped up by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and delivered to Earth in 2023, contained fourteen of the twenty amino acids that living things use to build proteins, and all five of the bases that spell out the genetic code. No life. Just the parts list, sitting in a rock older than the Earth.
So the ingredients of life are everywhere. The great unsolved puzzle is the recipe: how lifeless chemistry became something that could copy itself, use energy and evolve. Some people see that gap as the place where God is needed. Many believers, and most scientists, think that is the wrong place to look.
“Say (O Muhammad): Travel in the land and see how He originated creation, then Allah bringeth forth the later growth. Lo! Allah is Able to do all things.”
Qur'an 29:20 · Pickthall (1930)
This verse, from the chapter al-Ankabut (The Spider), tells people to go out and look at how creation began. Many Muslim scientists read it as an invitation to research. Genesis has its own striking line: “Let the earth bring forth the living creature” (Genesis 1:24, JPS 1917). In both, life comes through the earth itself, by God’s command.
What science shows
Life is old. In 2024 a team led by the University of Bristol, studying genes shared by all living things, estimated that LUCA, the last universal common ancestor of every organism alive today, lived about 4.2 billion years ago, only a few hundred million years after the Earth formed. LUCA was already a complex cell, so life itself must be older still.
In 1953 Stanley Miller, a student at the University of Chicago, passed electric sparks through a flask of gases meant to copy the early atmosphere. Within days it held amino acids. In 2008 scientists reanalysed his saved samples and found even more variety than he had reported. Miller made building blocks, not life, but he showed that the blocks form easily.
Since then the gaps have narrowed. In 2015 John Sutherland’s team at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge showed that one network of simple reactions, starting from hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulfide in ultraviolet light, can make the precursors of RNA, proteins and fats. RNA matters because it can both carry information and speed up reactions, so many researchers think an ‘RNA world’ came before DNA.
Where did it happen? Nick Lane at University College London argues for deep-sea hydrothermal vents, where natural energy gradients across rock look strikingly like the ones every cell uses today. Jack Szostak, a Nobel laureate, and others favour shallow pools on land that dried and refilled. The debate is live.
What is not known is a complete, step-by-step path from chemistry to a self-copying, evolving cell. No laboratory has made life from scratch. Most researchers expect the path to be found; some critics think the obstacles are deeper than that. Either way, it is an open question in 2026.
The arguments, fairly
The gap is real. Even the simplest cell holds a vast amount of coded information. Some writers, including those in the intelligent design movement such as Stephen Meyer, argue that information of this kind is, in our experience, always the product of a mind.
A universe that makes life. A gentler argument does not rely on any gap. Simon Conway Morris, a Cambridge palaeontologist and a Christian, argues in Life’s Solution (2003) that evolution keeps arriving at similar solutions, so intelligent life looks close to built into nature. For him, that a universe can produce life at all is remarkable, however it happened.
Chemistry with a direction. Many theists see the steady discovery that life’s chemistry is natural and widespread as evidence of a world made to bring forth life, as Genesis and the Qur’an both describe.
God of the gaps. Every decade has filled in steps once said to be impossible. Placing God in the remaining gap risks a God who shrinks as science grows. The phrase ‘God of the gaps’ was popularised by Christian writers, including the physicist Charles Coulson, who rejected the idea.
Not science. In 2005, in Kitzmiller v. Dover, a US federal judge ruled that intelligent design was a form of creationism and could not be taught as science in state schools. Mainstream scientists reject it because it makes no testable predictions.
No need for a designer. Sceptics such as Richard Dawkins argue that natural selection explains how complexity builds up, and that chemistry under the right conditions is enough to start it. Not knowing every step yet is not evidence that a step needs a mind.
Where it stands
Open. The common ancestry of life is settled, and plausible routes to many of life’s building blocks are known. A complete pathway is not. Most believers in each of the three faiths accept evolution, and many see the search for life’s origins as exploring how creation unfolds, not as a threat to it.
The deeper question, whether a world able to produce life needs a Maker, is a question of philosophy that science alone does not settle.
What each faith says
Judaism
“And God said: ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind.’ And it was so.”
Genesis 1:24 · JPS 1917
Genesis describes life arising in stages, and through the earth and waters: “Let the earth bring forth the living creature” (Genesis 1:24). Many Jewish commentators have noticed that God commands the earth to produce life, rather than making each creature directly. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, wrote in the early twentieth century that the idea of evolution, of creation rising towards perfection, fitted Jewish mystical thought.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argued in The Great Partnership (2011) that “science takes things apart to see how they work”, and religion puts them together to see what they mean. For many Jews, how life began is a question for science, and what life is for is a question for Torah.
Christianity
“All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made.”
John 1:3 · WEB
Augustine of Hippo, around 400, suggested that God planted ‘seed-like principles’ in creation that unfolded over time. Many Christians today see evolution and the origin of life in similar terms. Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project, founded the BioLogos Foundation in 2007 to show that faith and evolution fit together. The Faraday Institute in Cambridge, led for years by the biologist Denis Alexander, does similar work in Britain.
In 2014 Pope Francis told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that God is not a magician with a magic wand, and that evolution is not inconsistent with creation. Some Christians, especially in the United States, reject evolution or support intelligent design; most British churches and Christian scientists accept mainstream science.
Christian worship gives thanks for living things in practical ways. Many Anglican and Catholic churches hold a blessing of animals around the feast of St Francis of Assisi, 4 October, and sing his Canticle of the Creatures.
Islam
“Say (O Muhammad): Travel in the land and see how He originated creation, then Allah bringeth forth the later growth. Lo! Allah is Able to do all things.”
Qur'an 29:20 · Pickthall (1930)
The Qur’an says that God made “Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe?” (21:30, Pickthall) and created every creature from water (24:45), and it tells people to travel and see how creation began (29:20). Muslims read these verses with wonder, though scholars warn against treating them as statements of modern biology.
Muslim scientists hold a range of views. Rana Dajani, a molecular biologist at the Hashemite University in Jordan, teaches evolution to her students and wrote in Nature in 2015 about helping them think freely. The philosopher Shoaib Ahmad Malik, in Islam and Evolution (2021), argues that evolution can largely fit classical Islamic theology, while many scholars hold that Adam (peace be upon him) was a special creation. The tradition values honest enquiry: the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) is reported to have said that seeking knowledge is a duty on every Muslim (Ibn Majah 224; this chain is graded weak, though many scholars accept the saying itself through its other routes).
Without religion
“There is grandeur in this view of life”
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859), closing paragraph · original English
Charles Darwin, who came to call himself an agnostic, ended On the Origin of Species with the words “There is grandeur in this view of life”. Many non-religious people feel the same about life’s beginnings: wonder, without a Maker. The geneticist Adam Rutherford, a vice-president of Humanists UK, tells the story of how life began, and how scientists now try to build it, in Creation (2013).
Non-religious scientists are as honest as anyone that the first steps are not yet known. Their usual reply to the ‘God of the gaps’ is not ‘science has solved it’ but ‘we don’t know yet, and that is a reason to keep looking’. For many humanists, being one branch of a four-billion-year family tree, cousin to the oak and the octopus, is a source of belonging, not loss.
Same and different
Judaism, Christianity and Islam each teach that life is God’s gift and that the earth and waters bring it forth at God’s command. In all three, many believers accept evolution and see science as tracing how creation unfolds; in all three, some reject it. They differ most on human origins: many Muslims and some Christians and Jews hold that Adam was specially created, while others read Genesis and the Qur’an as compatible with common descent. Non-religious people share the curiosity, and many share the wonder; they see no need for a Maker to explain it.
A moment to reflect
- If scientists made life from simple chemicals in a laboratory, would that answer the question of God, or not touch it?
- When you don’t know how something works, do you prefer to wait for an answer or fill the gap with a guess?
- Is a universe whose chemistry tends towards life more surprising, or less, than one where life needed a special act?
- What would it take for you to change your mind on this question?
We end on a question
If we one day learn exactly how chemistry became life, will that have answered the question of why there is life at all?
Watch
A five-minute animated guide to the main theories of how life began.
PBS Eons on LUCA, the last universal common ancestor of everything alive.
Nick Lane at the Royal Institution on energy, cells and the origin of life.
John Sutherland on the chemistry that may have led to life’s first molecules.
Biologist Denis Alexander asks whether we have to choose between creation and evolution.
Do it together
At low tide, explore a rock pool or a pond with a magnifying glass. Count how many kinds of life you can find. Talk about what all of them need: water, energy and a way to copy themselves.
Visit the Natural History Museum in London, or a local museum with fossils, and find the oldest life on display. Ask each person to write one scientific question and one ‘why’ question it raised.
Read Genesis 1:20–25 and Qur’an 29:19–20 together, then read a short summary of the Miller-Urey experiment. Discuss: does the science change how you read the verses, or not?
Tu BiShvat, the Jewish ‘new year of the trees’ in late winter, is marked with fruit, blessings and tree-planting. Plant a seed or a sapling together and keep a growth diary: what does it need to come alive?
Look out for a church holding a blessing of animals near St Francis’s day, 4 October. Bring a pet, a photo, or simply come to watch, and read Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures afterwards.
Go deeper
- NASA’s asteroid Bennu sample reveals mix of life’s ingredients (NASA) · article
- Insight into one of life’s earliest ancestors (University of Bristol) · article
- Intelligent design trial: Kitzmiller v. Dover (NCSE) · article
- Islam and Evolution, Shoaib Ahmad Malik (open access, OAPEN) · paper
- Why I teach evolution to Muslim students, Rana Dajani (Nature) · article
- Qur'an 29:19–20 (Quran.com) · scripture
- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership (rabbisacks.org) · book
- Genesis 1 (Bible Gateway, WEB) · scripture
- Understanding Humanism: resources for schools (Humanists UK) · article
Check yourself
Three quick questions. No score, nothing saved.
1. What did NASA find in the dust from asteroid Bennu?
2. About how long ago did the common ancestor of all life live?
3. Whether a life-making world needs a Maker is, the page says, a question for…
Sources (9)
- Bennu sample: 14 of 20 amino acids and all five nucleobases: NASA, 29 Jan 2025
- LUCA lived about 4.2 billion years ago: University of Bristol, Jul 2024 (Moody et al., Nature Ecology and Evolution)
- Miller's volcanic spark experiment reanalysed, 2008: Johnson et al., Science 322:404, 2008 (PubMed)
- Cyanosulfidic network gives precursors of RNA, proteins and lipids: Patel et al., Nature Chemistry 7:301, 2015
- Hydrothermal vents and natural proton gradients like those cells use: Lane, Allen and Martin, How did LUCA make a living? Chemiosmosis in the origin of life, BioEssays 32, 2010
- Kitzmiller v. Dover, 20 Dec 2005: NCSE
- Dajani on teaching evolution to Muslim students: Nature, 22 Apr 2015
- Malik, Islam and Evolution, 2021: Routledge, open access via OAPEN
- Pope Francis: God not a magician with a magic wand, 27 Oct 2014: Vatican News / Pontifical Academy of Sciences
