Oxygen, essential for life

Oxygen, essential for life

Our present atmosphere consists of 78% nitrogen (N2), 21% molecular oxygen (O2), and 1% of other gases, such as carbon dioxide CO2), argon (Ar), and water vapor H2O). An atmosphere containing free oxygen would be fatal to all origin of life schemes. While oxygen is necessary for life, free oxygen would oxidize and thus destroy all organic molecules required for the origin of life. Thus, in spite of much evidence that the earth has always had a significant quantity of free oxygen in the atmosphere, many science papers persist in declaring that there was no oxygen in the earth's early atmosphere. However, this would also be fatal to a naturalistic origin of life. If there were no oxygen there would be no protective layer of ozone surrounding the earth. Ozone is produced by radiation from the sun on the oxygen in the atmosphere, converting the diatomic oxygen(O2) we breathe to triatomic oxygen O3), which is ozone. Thus if there were no oxygen there would be no ozone. The deadly destructive ultraviolet light from the sun would pour down on the surface of the earth unimpeded, destroying those organic molecules required for life, reducing them to simple gases, such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water.  Thus, following is an irresolvable dilemma: in the presence of oxygen, life could not evolve; without oxygen, thus no ozone, life could not evolve or exist. 1

1. http://www.icr.org/article/few-reasons-evolutionary-origin-life-impossible/

Erich Dimroth and Michael M. Kimberely, “Precambrian Atmospheric Oxygen: Evidence in the Sedimentary Distributions of Carbon, Sulfur, Uranium, and Iron,”

In general, we find no evidence in the sedimentary distribution of carbon, sulfur, uranium, or iron, that an oxygen-free atmosphere has existed at any time during the span of geological history recorded in well preserved sedimentary rocks.

Harry Clemmey and Nick Badham, “Oxygen in the Precambrian Atmosphere: An Evaluation of the Geological Evidence,” Geology, 10, no. 3, (March 1982): 141.

It is suggested that from the time of the earliest dated rocks at 3.7 (billion years) ago, Earth had an oxygenic atmosphere.


Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin (Dallas: Lewis and Stanley, 1992), 80.

The only trend in recent literature is the suggestion of far more oxygen in the early atmosphere than anyone imagined.


Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research finds that “Primordial Air May Have Been Breathable,” SpaceDaily, January 11, 2002 (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/early-earth-02a.html).


Primordial Air may have been “breathable.” The Earth may have had an oxygen-rich atmosphere as long ago as three billion years and possibly even earlier, three leading geologists claimed.