The Law of Biogenesis
Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently it is called the law of biogenesis. The theory of evolution conflicts with this scientific law when claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes (a).
Evolutionary scientists reluctantly accept the law of biogenesis (b). However, some say that future studies may show how life could come from lifeless matter, despite the virtually impossible odds. Others say that their theory of evolution doesn’t begin until the first life somehow arose. Still others say the first life was created, then evolution occurred. All evolutionists recognize that, based on scientific observations, life comes only from life.
a. And yet, leading evolutionists are forced to accept some form of spontaneous generation. For example, a former Harvard University professor and Nobel Prize winner in physiology and medicine acknowledged the dilemma.
“The reasonable view [during the two centuries before Louis Pasteur] was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position.” George Wald, “The Origin of Life,” Scientific American, Vol. 190, August 1954, p. 46.
Wald rejects creation, despite the impossible odds of spontaneous generation.
“One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are—as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.” Ibid.
Later, Wald appeals to huge amounts of time to accomplish what seemed to be the impossibility of spontaneous generation.
“Time is in fact the hero of the plot. ... Given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.” Ibid., p. 48.
What Wald did not appreciate in 1954 (before, as just one example, the genetic code was discovered) was how the complexity in life is vastly greater than anyone at that time could have imagined. [See pages 13-21]
So, today, the impossibility of spontaneous generation is even more firmly established, regardless of the time available. But unfortunately, several generations of professors and textbooks with Wald’s perspective have so impacted our universities that it is difficult for evolutionists to change direction.
Evolutionists also do not recognize:
that with increasing time (their “miracle maker”) comes increasing degradation of the fragile environment on which life depends, and
that creationists have much better explanations (such as the flood) for the scientific observations that evolutionists thought showed increasing time.
Readers will later see this.
b. “The beginning of the evolutionary process raises a question which is as yet unanswerable. What was the origin of life on this planet? Until fairly recent times there was a pretty general belief in the occurrence of ‘spontaneous generation.’ It was supposed that lowly forms of life developed spontaneously from, for example, putrefying meat. But careful experiments, notably those of Pasteur, showed that this conclusion was due to imperfect observation, and it became an accepted doctrine [the law of biogenesis] that life never arises except from life. So far as actual evidence goes, this is still the only possible conclusion. But since it is a conclusion that seems to lead back to some supernatural creative act, it is a conclusion that scientific men find very difficult of acceptance. It carries with it what are felt to be, in the present mental climate, undesirable philosophic implications, and it is opposed to the scientific desire for continuity. It introduces an unaccountable break in the chain of causation, and therefore cannot be admitted as part of science unless it is quite impossible to reject it. For that reason most scientific men prefer to believe that life arose, in some way not yet understood, from inorganic matter in accordance with the laws of physics and chemistry.” J. W. N. Sullivan, The Limitations of Science (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1933), p. 94.
[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]
