The Astonishing Complexity of Spontaneous Generation - FAS2621

SPEAKER A Did you know that scientists once believed you could create mice just by stuffing a dirty shirt into a bucket of wheat? Sounds funny now, but today many textbooks teach something similar—that life just popped into existence from chemicals. We're going to look at the easy recipe for life and ask the question: if spontaneous generation was disproved in the 1600s, Why is it still the foundation of evolutionary theory? Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program once again, Dr. John. Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER B Dr. SPEAKER A John has written a book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today's program, we're going to be looking at insights from this book, particularly from chapter 7, which was contributed by George Jaber. And in that chapter, it mentions that Bruce Jakosky's recipes for life is just chemicals, energy, and mild temperatures. So, Dr. Ashton, why do you think modern science portrays the origin of life as easy despite the complexity involved? SPEAKER B Yes, well, of course, Jakosky was a astronomer, and he, you know, he's very interested in, you know, planetary study and this sort of thing. And he certainly subscribed to the view that, you know, the Earth formed as a result of the condensation of dust and so forth in space under gravity, and life arose thereafter. And so that's his view. Yes, you have some chemicals, You know, you have some water and a bit of oxygen and bingo, life starts. SPEAKER A Out it comes. SPEAKER B Yeah, so it's a very simplistic view, but it's one, of course, that continues to be propagated in the media, in schools, and so forth, so forth. And I think the problem is that the scientists just don't get it that in actual fact, It's absolutely impossible for non-living molecules to form a living organism by themselves. In fact, we can't even do it. We, we can't even put together molecules and make a living reproducing organism. And there, there are reasons, you know, for, for that that we understand now. And this is something that is very hard for many people to grasp. For example, as we were discussing just a few moments ago, in a recent headline in one of the major newspapers here in Australia, there was an article on how scientists now think they understand how life first began. Okay. And it's interesting in that these scientists are still clinging to the possibility that we, we have to somehow explain how life began. Despite the fact that we now know scientifically, and we can explain this in this program, why it's actually scientifically impossible for non-living chemicals to form a living organism. And what it means is that these people are so enamored with the view that life must have formed naturally that they just can't comprehend the evidence that we now have from biochemistry that it's absolutely impossible. It just seems that their brain can't, you know, jump across to accept that. They have to keep looking for a possibility. SPEAKER A So I guess it means that they are holding onto their former idea instead of letting the evidence inform what it should, what should be believed, as in like, as theories get evidence against them, you need to adjust and go with the evidence. Normally that's how we approach things in science. But obviously this is more holding onto that initial idea. SPEAKER B Yeah, yeah, sure. So it's interesting that, you know, Baptiste von Helmut that, you know, proposed this, you know, if you shove a smelly old shirt into a vessel where you're storing some wheat. Yes. You know, after a few weeks, the wheat will convert into mice. And I think, as you pointed out at one stage too, you know, the Bible clearly says that kinds reproduce after their kinds. How can wheat become, you know, mice? But that was accepted. And, you know, even William Harvey, the famous scientist, wrote that, organisms come from seed or from prep, but also are sometimes spontaneously generated. And so, you know, this was a view that was held for a long time. And really, essentially, we laugh at that now because of the evidence we know so much about that. That doesn't happen. It's just that the smelly shirt attracts some mice and they find the wheat. So, But it's the same thing really today. These scientists are expecting the same thing, just as we know it's ridiculous for wheat to become mice. For those who understand the biochemistry of living organisms, so even the simplest organism, it's for that simple reproducing organism to arise from non-living chemicals is just as impossible as wheat to become mice. But because it's dressed up in more scientific terms today, and people have been trying to do these experiments and, you know, synthesize some of the nucleic acids and all this sort of thing, they're holding onto this hope. But there's a couple, quite a few steps that have to be overcome to change, even if you had all the molecules, into a living organism. SPEAKER A Yeah, interesting to think about what it actually takes to do that change. Now in the chapter, George Jayva lists scientists like Redi and Pasteur. Obviously these are famous ones. And they basically proved in their work that life cannot come from non-life, which is why we know the mouse-wheat transition is not really a thing, as well as you know, bacteria coming spontaneously out of a non-living substance, basically, is what Pasteur was looking at. So why is this historical scientific fact actually ignored when it comes to the idea of primordial Earth theories of spontaneous generation of life? SPEAKER B Yeah, so I think, again, this comes back to the fact that the biblical account is an origin by a supernatural creator. And they just don't wanna go there. Now Pasteur's work, you know, was quite famous and very, very important actually. Helps us to understand sterilization, for example, today, which is the basis of, you know, food processing, the fact that you can open your can of fish that's 2 years old and it's not crawling with little organisms sort of thing. You know, we know this, that once things have been sterilized properly, you know, in other words, yeah, everything has been killed, that you don't have a problem. And this is why, again, in, for example, food manufacture, there's a lot of pre-testing done to, you know, people that drink, for example, plant-based food beverages and UHT milk. These are all processes which have gone through a process to sterilize. And companies go to great extent testing their process to make sure that it works. But it only fails, for example, if there's a tiny little hole, if a, if a seal in the packet when it was closed didn't seal properly and some preexisting living organism got in there. Yes. And that will send everything off. Otherwise, yep, it just stays dead. Everything stays dead. The organisms that were in there, they stay dead and all the chemicals that are in there you know, don't form any new living organism. And so we know this, you know, experimentally. But I think people don't want to have to accept that there was a creator, that there's something beyond us. They want to explain everything in terms of our known universe. And that's a major problem because we've got a lot of scientific evidence now. We've studied living systems. We understand heaps about biochemistry now in terms of general terms, but there's a lot of the molecular machines that we still don't understand. We don't understand how photosystem II works in, you know, cells, you know, that are splitting in plant cells that, you know, are splitting water into hydrogen, oxygen, and combining the hydrogen with carbon dioxide and these sort of things, the catalytic processes that are involved there. So We know now from our biochemistry that these living systems can't arise by chance, but they don't want to go there to the biblical case of there was a creator who created things initially and allowed them to reproduce after their kind. And if, you know, it's a totally different picture, but they don't want to go there because of the other implications of another creator, that there's somebody maybe we have to be responsible to, that we owe our life to. SPEAKER A Yeah, so the personal implications of that belief is something they don't wanna confront, that of a creator. So yeah, it really does, depending on which way you go, it changes a lot in terms of your overall worldview and perspective. And in the chapter, it also, kind of talked about the fact that giving up on creation, like if you believe that what we see around us has been intentionally created, dropping that perspective actually can give up— means giving up on the meaning of life, of who we really are. And so how does viewing ourselves as a product of, say, chance versus design, how does that change how we value ourselves or value other human life or other life that exists? Yeah, sure. SPEAKER B Well, I think it's interesting when you look at the Christian perspective, there was Christians that founded hospitals, that Christians of course are very much into caring. A lot of the NGOs that care for people around the world are either Christian organizations or Christian-based or based on some a religious view that there is a creator God. This might be, you know, Muslim organizations or Jewish organizations, these sort of things. But essentially most of them are based on this as opposed to pure atheist organizations. And therefore we have, you know, survival of the fittest. And we know that this worldview in the past has been responsible for eugenics sort of thing, choosing who should live and who shouldn't live. A lot of the World War II atrocities that occurred that carried on that view, these can be traced back to arising from that view that we aren't special to God, that all life is valued, all human life in particular is valued by God. And we're all humanly equal in that regard. And we need to preserve and save that. That life as opposed to, you know, a survival of the fittest mentality. And also probably there's no case for morality. So the Bible outlines not only were we created, but there are moral values that actually preserve happiness. And again, once we throw those views out and we have some random, you know, view, there's really, I can't see that there can be a very strong basis for morality. And it's interesting And people like the mathematician and philosopher John Lennox at the University of Oxford, you know, point out that if we are the result of these random processes that the evolutionists train, how can we trust our thoughts? How do we know that our brain thoughts aren't random? And I think this is actually demonstrated by a lot of the opponents now of the Bible, a lot of these people, that are clinging to the view that somehow life can be explained. It seems that maybe their brains can't now comprehend the actual evidence. And so really, you know, how can they trust their thoughts? But if we have been created with a purpose of knowing God, of having fellowship with this and a relationship with this Creator God who gave us our minds so that we can comprehend, His creation, that is far more meaningful and far more consistent with the evidence that we have around us, in my view. SPEAKER A Very fascinating points. And certainly it seems like the implications of the two different worldviews are really quite a dramatic contrast to each other. SPEAKER B Yeah, they're diametrically opposed. SPEAKER A Yeah, and what that means even for individuals, how they live their life, how they treat others, can be quite significant. SPEAKER B And we have seen what's happened in atheistic societies. You know, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, these sort of things have led to really terrible consequences for multitudes of people trying to implement and get rid of God out of the picture completely. SPEAKER A Thank you for sharing your perspectives on those questions. And yeah, look forward to our next conversation. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence, or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers.