On the Origin of Species by Means of Special Creation

One of the basic fundamentals of biological study is that all life comes from pre-existing life. Nonetheless, even up to the end of the 19th century, life was still believed to "spontaneously generate" from non-life (see the link to right to read more that I have written about s.g.). Ancient Egyptians believed mice arose from the mud of the Nile. In 1600, Flemish chemist Jan (or, Johannes) Baptist van Helmont reported "proof" that if wheat, cheese, and soiled linen are placed in a jar, mice will eventually appear. The notion was finally laid to rest by the great scientist (and creationist!) Louis Pasteur in 1864, although he spent many years after that defending his claims. When presenting his results to the French Academy, he said, "never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation arise from this mortal blow". Pasteur never thought the ideas of his contemporary, Charles Darwin, would cause spontaneous generation to once again become accepted in the scientific community. Evolutionist Cyril Ponnamperuma even notes in his book, The Origins of Life:

"It is, perhaps, ironic that we tell beginning students in biology about Pasteur's experiments as the triumph of reason over mysticism, yet we are coming back to spontaneous generation, albeit in a more refined and scientific sense, namely to chemical evolution."

Most evolutionist scientists feel certain that life evolved by chance from non-living chemicals through "chemical evolution". Although many Darwinian followers spoke of the chance formation of life from chemicals in some "warm little pond", there is no evidence that anything like this has happened, or could happen. The evidence of "chemical evolution" is so lacking, some evolutionists claim that the origin of life is not a part of evolutionary theory, but rather that it is a creationist plot to discredit evolution.

Evolutionists' best guess is that life devoloped from just hydrogen over a series of stages. Stage one was about 15 billion years ago with the big bang producing an expanding cloud of hydrogen gas -- everything else was void. With time and energy, hydrogen formed into all the other chemical elements. Then, about 4 billion years ago, Earth's atmosphere contained methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water -- from which, life would evolve.

In stage two, it is believed the simple chemicals from stage one formed the small organic molecules essential for life -- sugars, amino acids, nucleotides. In 1953, scientists claimed to have "simulated" the formation of these organic molecules from methane and ammonia, albeit using an apparatus and conditions that were specifically designed to achieve the desired result.

In stage three, they postulate that the small organic molecules strung together into long, chain-like molecules called polymers. Polymers of sugars are starches, polymers of amino acids are proteins, and polymers of nucleotides are DNA. In another "simulation" experiment, scientists formed protein-like molecules by heating pure-dry amino acids to very high temperatures. When allowed to cool in water, it created small globules they called "microspheres". Although these "microspheres" are as dead as a rock, evolutionists call them "protocells", the implication being that they are an early stage of living cells. The only true scientific similarity between living cells and "microspheres" is that they are, as the name implies, small and round.

The final stage now involves the chance transformation of organic molecules and polymers into the indescribably complex machinery known as a living cell. Here, the speculation truly falls so short of plausibility, it is shocking that it is given any scientific consideration. Biochemist Dr. David E. Green even said in his book, Molecular Insights into the Living Process:

"The macromolecule-to-cell transition is a jump of fantastic dimensions, which lies beyond the range of testable hypothesis. In this area, all is conjecture. The available facts do not provide a basis for postulating that cells arose on this planet."

Evolutionists try to avoid this problem by saying over enough time, virtually anything is possible. Sure, anything but special creation, that is.

Even some evolutionists are waking up to the fact that time and chance can't hold the answer. Nobel laureate Dr. Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA), an atheist, in his book Life Itself, even says:

"What is so frustrating for our present purpose is that it seems almost impossible to give any numerical value to the probability of what seems a rather unlikely sequence of events ... An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle..."

Eventually, Crick speculates that the first living organisms on Earth may have been "seeded" in our oceans by intelligent beings from another planet! This reasoning would only transfer the question of origin to another planet, however. If chemical evolution is impossible here, why then, is it more feasible anywhere else, as the laws of physics and chemistry hold true for the whole universe. Or, perhaps, aliens were created, and then "seeded" life on Earth to randomly generate.

The late SIr Fred Hoyle, the English astronomer who coined the term "big bang" (in ridicule), also concluded the idea of the origin of life by chance is absurd. Although no "creationist", Hoyle long rebuked the idea of chemical evolution and big bang theory. Hoyle presented his own theory in his book Evolution from Space, saying life started out and evolved in space, and spread through the universe by way of comets and other heavenly bodies, further speculating that evolution on Earth is driven by a steady stream of viruses arriving via comets. Even Hoyle saw, however, that this did not explain where life came from in the first place. When presenting his book for the Royal Institution's Omni Lecture, Hoyle was left to draw but one conclusion:

"If one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of..."

In his book, Hoyle also says:

"Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate ... . It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect ... higher intelligences ... even to the limit of God ... such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident.

In Evolution from Space, Hoyle also calculated the chance of randomly obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell was 1 in 10^40,000 (a 1 with 40,000 zeros after it). He argued that even an entire universe full of "primordial soup" would give little chance to the evolutionary process. In an address at Cal Tech, Hoyle stated that no amount of time currently being considered by evolutionists is even remotely adequate for the formation of higher life forms by chance. Such an occurance, he said, would be equivalent to the chance that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from materials therein." He also once compared the chance of assembling a single functioning protein by chance combinations of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's cube simultaneously (the Fred Hoyle Family website, http://www.hoyle.org.uk).

Evolutionists leave themselves no choice but to believe in random events so improbable that they comprimise the very statisical foundation on which science rests. Yet still, evolutionists like Robert Shapiro abandon all skepticism. In his book, Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to Creation of Life on Earth, he writes:

"One escape hatch yet exists for spontaneous generation. Why need the event have been probable? We can just stare at the odds, shrug, and note with thanks how lucky we were. ... After all, improbable events occur all the time."

In the Bible, Jesus says, "Amen, amen, I tell you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there', and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20). In case you weren't aware, mustard seeds are really small -- about 1 mm in diameter. If only, I, as a Christian, had Shapiro's unquestioning faith, but in God. A mountain would be no match for me. Evolutionists may claim that Christians want special creation to be true simply because they believe it to be. It would seem the same could be said for evolutionists. I believe that humans were specially and specifically created by God, not because I want it to be true, but because I believe the Bible is true, and nothing has ever been shown to me to discredit it. Yes, the Bible talks about miracles. But if God exists, miracles are a piece of cake from there. The question really lies in one's willingness to believe in the supernatural. Yes, if you are going to start with the assumption that the supernatural does not exist, then the Bible becomes equivalent to so much toilet paper at the point. But, it seems no matter how they try, evolutionists cannot show the origins of life while leaving out supernatural possibilities.

I realize the arguments here leave two questions still unanswered:

Q1) Couldn't God have just used evolution to create us?

A) Yes and no. Yes, a god, or intelligent designer, could have, but the God of Christianity did not. The Bible clearly presents the creation account in Genesis. Even if you say, "well, I just believe in the New Testament", just so you know, Jesus [kind of the central figure of the N.T.] vouched for the Old Testament -- the whole thing. So, denying the validity of the O.T. means calling Jesus a liar. That's something I'm going to try to stay far away from, personally. I'll post a whole other hub on this issue, and when I do, I put a link here.

Q2) Wait, but couldn't evolutionary theory fit into the Bible? Don't a lot of Christians believe this?

A) No and yes. There is a belief among Christians that evolution can fit into the Bible, in between verses 1:1 and 1:2 of Genesis; this is commonly known as the "gap" theory. There is also the day-age theory, that says the six days of creation in the Bible are not literal "days", among others. There are reasons why these are bad theology, and would make the Bible inconsistent, so many so that I'll do a whole different hub on it. Possibly one on each. When I do, I'll post the link(s) here.