The Origin of Life? All in a Day's Work

But Hazen has a broader agenda, which is to make science accessible to ordinary people. And perhaps, he seems to be saying, making it more human will help that cause. He doesn't flinch, unlike many scientists, from engaging in verbal battle with the proponents of intelligent design. He doesn't apologize for putting out a book with a title that, except for the fact that it's lowercase, is the same as a much more famous book by a much more revered Author.

"The word 'genesis' has a more generic content. It's everybody's word," Hazen says. "We have just as much ownership over the genesis story as they do, and wanted our story to be heard."

He believes that the universe is hard-wired for the emergence of life. "Emergence" is his buzzword, much more than "evolution." What he sees is inevitable progress from the simplest elements to more complex chemistry, then to life, then to consciousness, and finally to creatures who can comprehend the cosmos. "And if that isn't meaning and purpose, I don't know what is."

Is there a God who hears the prayers of human beings? "Science cannot say yea or nay to that," he says. "Science can't answer questions about faith and the nature of God."

But can religious people accept the scientific take on the cosmos?

"If you wanted to know if the universe has meaning and purpose, wouldn't you be better off studying the universe?"

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Hazen is, at first glance, a prime candidate to represent the scientific view of life's origins. He's good-looking, articulate, passionate, and has collaborated in OOL experiments. He puts interesting samples into contraptions called hydrothermal bombs, and squeezes them at 4,000 atmospheres of pressure at 1,000 degrees Celsius.

But he's also a relative newcomer to a highly contentious field. Some of the old guard, the Millerites, have not welcomed Hazen any more than they've embraced the deep-sea-vent idea.

As Hazen writes, "Miller and his scientific cohort had staked their claim to a surface origin of life, and they seemed determined to systematically head off dissenting opinions."

The Millerites, Hazen reports, relentlessly attacked the theory that life could have begun at ocean vents, saying high temperatures would have destroyed amino acids. Miller called the vent hypothesis "a real loser."

To this day, the Miller camp won't budge.