Take a walk this Spring in a park near your home. As you walk take a look around at what you see and hear. You will likely see trees, flowers, grass, leaves, squirrels, lovely birds, dogs, fish in a pond, and lots of other people. You will hear people talking, birds singing, bees buzzing, frogs croaking, crickets chirping, leaves rustling in the wind, and so much more. As you absorb all the activity you perceive in the park, think a moment about how all those creatures and plants came to be. They are all part of the vast system of life on earth. But there are big questions that baffle the minds of even the world’s greatest biologists. How did life begin and why is there so much diversity of it? An even bigger question is: How did human beings come to have brains so complex and amazing?
Oh, there are numerous theories that have been put forth over the years. For about two centuries, naturalist biologists have maintained that life began when, at some point millions of years ago on a barren earth, certain molecules collected in a warm pool of water. Then, they say, somehow the molecules combined to form the first living proto-cell. This occurred, they argue, when the molecules and climatic conditions were exactly right – purely by chance. This idea, called the “primal soup” theory, was stubbornly held by biologists and was the way most high school and college students were taught that it had to happen for generations (and probably still are in most cases).
The problem with that theory is that it has never been demonstrated to be true. Now, obviously, no one was there when it supposedly happened, so its defenders said it can only be deduced to be true since no other reasonable explanation exists for life’s spontaneous generation from non-life. However, like all scientific hypothesis, that one can be tested in laboratories if the conditions of the pre-biological earth can be determined and simulated.
One such experiment was done in 1953 by two scientists, Stanley Urey and Harold Miller at the University of Chicago. They put several chemicals thought to have been present on the primitive earth into a series of flasks. The chemicals were methane, water, ammonia, and hydrogen. They were then hit with an electrical charge that was suppose to simulate lightning that might have occurred on the barren earth. The experiment produced two molecular substances similar to some very simple organic compounds. The biological world was thrilled by what the scientists had done and for years used it in biological textbooks as evidence that life could indeed have generated spontaneously if the right ingredients were present when struck by lightning.
In the decades since that experiment, however, the expectation that further research and tests would uncover even greater evidence for life chemicals being formed naturally failed to develop. In any case, the Urey-Miller experiment has been discredited because it has since been determined that that the primitive earth did not have the necessary chemicals present as they believed in 1953. It also lacked credibility because the scientists had to carefully set up the system to work, so it was not a purely chance experiment.
So scientists have not determined how life began on earth. In fact, as time has progressed, and biologists have learned more about the incredible complexity of living things, the question of origins has become even far more difficult to fathom. It is one of those questions which naturalists find extremely frustrating. Furthermore, scientists have never been able to synthesize even the simplest forms of life. Life only comes from life, not test tubes.
Another question related to the issue of origins is why life on earth is so diverse with millions of different kinds and species of plants and animals in the past and now living. Of course, the naturalist dogmatic answer, based on the 19th century theories of Charles Darwin, is that they all evolved from less to more complex types. The heart of Darwin’s theory was the process of natural selection over millions of years eventually produced all the various life forms, with human beings at the highest level of the tree of life. Darwin admitted he did not know how the changes took place. Modern Neo-Darwinist evolutionists claim that minute molecular changes in the DNA of living cells caused by random positive mutations powers the evolutionary process.
Natural selection, however, has many problems that a growing number of scientists say throw serious doubt on the whole Darwinist and Neo-Darwinist theories of evolution. For one thing, many skeptics maintain that the time length needed for the system to work by random chance is too long to have actually happened on earth. The odds against it are way too high for it to have happened randomly. Other questioning scientists now assert that mutations of DNA are almost always negative and destructive to life forms and only result in devolution, never higher evolution.
Another issue, that even Darwin confessed was a problem, is that the geological fossil records of life in the rock strata do not support the idea of gradual changes in life forms as would have to have transpired if gradual natural selection occurred. Large gaps in the record from simple to more complex life forms and sudden changes are found in the strata (actually even simple life forms are not simple).
So, if scientists cannot explain how life began (or even how the whole universe began), or how natural selection and Darwinism can explain how life developed and diversified by shear chance, then what is the answer to those questions? Well, there is an answer. It is obvious. The answer is found all around us. We see it everyday. We hear it everywhere we go. Its in the books you read. It’s on the radio. You see it on TV. It’s on billboards. You ride around in it. It’s in the clothes you wear. You wear it on your wrist. We find it even in our own thoughts. But it is an answer that naturalists simply cannot, or will not, brook as possibly true.
Then what is that so obvious answer? INTELLIGENCE! Yes, the only reasonable answer to those unexplainable questions about life’s origin and its diversity is that they are the product of an intelligent mind. The more scientists learn about the complexity and the amazing engineering found in cells, the more it makes random chance virtually impossible as an explanation for its design. The human body (or any other animal’s or plant’s body for that matter) is an incredible system (or systems) made up of billions of cells. The blueprints for all those systems is, incredibly, stored in the DNA of a single microscopic fertilized zygote cell.
Most notably, the human brain is the most complex system of chemicals and cells (about 85 billion neurons) known to exist in the universe. It is the earthly housing of our minds and souls. While scientists know, to some extent, how it works, generally it is beyond comprehension. To believe it could have been designed and function the way it does as a result of blind chance is beyond reason.
So what does this have to do with worldview issues? Everything. Those people with a naturalistic worldview are committed to the doctrine that all that exists is the material universe of time, space, matter, and energy. That perspective inevitably leads to a dead end when dealing with issues like the beginning of the universe and the genesis of life. At some point they can only throw up their hands and admit they don’t have all the answers.
On the contrary, however, the Theistic worldview provides reasonable answers to all those problems. Christians and other Theists assert that the Mind that designed the universe and everything in it, including all life, is none other than God, the Grand Designer and Creator. It is a sad fact that most scientists and biologists reject any notion of a divine personal being. Nonetheless, as I mentioned before, a growing number of scientists in the life sciences and astronomy are coming to the conclusion that only God can answer the big questions.
So enjoy your walk through the park and, as you go, thank and worship the Lord who designed and made all the beauty and life we see around us.
But just ask the animals, and have them teach you;
And the birds of the sky, and have them tell you.
Or speak to the earth, and have it teach you;
And have the fish of the sea tell you. Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
In whose hand is the life of every living thing,
And the breath of all mankind? (Job 12:7-10 NASB)
© 2023 Tal Davis