Lesson 2
SPONTANEOUS GENERATION
Let's start at the beginning, so to speak. A big divide between Christians and non-believers, and even within Christianity, is the debate between creation and evolution. This debate has been going on since the time of Aristotle, who was the first to suggest an alternative to creation: spontaneous generation. This idea was widely held by the aristocracy until finally dispelled by Louis Pasteur in 1859. The idea goes something like this:
According to the 17th century physician, Dr. Jan Baptista Von Helmont, “If you press a piece of underwear soiled with sweat, together with some wheat in an open-mouthed jar, after about 21 days the odor changes and the ferment coming out of the underwear and penetrating through the husks of wheat, changes the wheat into mice...but what is even more remarkable is that the mice which come out of the wheat and underwear are not small mice, not even miniature adults or aborted mice, but adult mice emerge!”1
In a similar experiment, they put some meat in a dish. Then waited 2 weeks. Suddenly, maggots appeared! More proof for spontaneous generation!2
*What might be wrong with these experiments?
The second experiment was proven wrong by Dr. Francesco Reddi in 1668 when he altered the experiment by covering the meat with cheesecloth.3
There were many such “proofs” for spontaneous generation, until the whole idea was disproven definitively by Louis Pasteur, a French chemist in 1859. In his well-known experiment, he took a flask of broth and boiled it. He then heated the neck of the flask and formed it into an “s” curve. He heated the neck again to kill any organisms that may have been resting in the bends of the glass. Then any bacteria entering the mouth of the flask would settle in the low part of the neck and not reach the broth. Months later, there was still no fermentation in the broth.
Then, he went a step further. He tilted the flask to allow liquid into the “s” curve, where the bacteria had settled, and it became cloudy, showing fermentation. This finally showed the scientific community that life comes from pre-existing life and disproved spontaneous generation.4
What is really amazing is that virtually all biology classes use this example to explain how bacteria was discovered. Then, in the same class, they go on to teach that life spontaneously generated millions of years ago (or longer) when rain fell on hot rocks, combining amino acids in the “primordial ooze” and life emerged! Spontaneous generation all over again!
Discuss two world views. (The Biblical worldview that the Bible is true, and everything we see around us supports the teachings found in the Bible. Naturalistic worldview that everything we see around us is a result of natural processes and they way things are now are consistent with how things have always been...constant and consistent).
The scientific community continues to support spontaneous generation, even though it was scientifically disproven. Furthermore, they have never been able to spontaneously generate any life to support their position.
In medicine, we do a lot to try to preserve life, but even with our best efforts, once someone is dead, they are dead. We can sometimes perform CPR under the right conditions and revive someone within minutes of his heart stopping, but if we try the same technique after the heart has been stopped for more than 10 minutes, there is no chance of success. If spontaneous generation were possible, this would be the best chance to make it happen. We already have all of the chemicals, all of the processes in the right combination, in the right order, but we can't create life.
*If we can't reanimate previously living organisms, how likely does it seem to you that life could have generated spontaneously from a pool of amino acids?
*What if we waited a really, really long time?
What does the Bible teach?
Psalm 148:5
Isaiah 40:26
2 Peter 3:5
Romans 1:19-20
Hebrews 11:3: "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."
To believe in existence of life without a creator takes more faith than to simply believe that God created life exactly as the Bible claims he did.
Either: No one created something from nothing
or: Someone created something from nothing.
*What ideas have you heard to explain the presence of life on planet earth?
*Why are they believable, not believable?
We will go more in detail in our next lesson to describe the complexity of even “simple life”.
Citations:
1Strickberger, M. (1996). Evolution (2nd Edition). Jones and Bartlett publishers. p. 13.
2Werner, C. (2007). Evolution: the Grand Experiment. New Leaf Press. p. 15. 3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Redi
4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur
SPONTANEOUS GENERATION
Let's start at the beginning, so to speak. A big divide between Christians and non-believers, and even within Christianity, is the debate between creation and evolution. This debate has been going on since the time of Aristotle, who was the first to suggest an alternative to creation: spontaneous generation. This idea was widely held by the aristocracy until finally dispelled by Louis Pasteur in 1859. The idea goes something like this:
According to the 17th century physician, Dr. Jan Baptista Von Helmont, “If you press a piece of underwear soiled with sweat, together with some wheat in an open-mouthed jar, after about 21 days the odor changes and the ferment coming out of the underwear and penetrating through the husks of wheat, changes the wheat into mice...but what is even more remarkable is that the mice which come out of the wheat and underwear are not small mice, not even miniature adults or aborted mice, but adult mice emerge!”1
In a similar experiment, they put some meat in a dish. Then waited 2 weeks. Suddenly, maggots appeared! More proof for spontaneous generation!2
*What might be wrong with these experiments?
The second experiment was proven wrong by Dr. Francesco Reddi in 1668 when he altered the experiment by covering the meat with cheesecloth.3
There were many such “proofs” for spontaneous generation, until the whole idea was disproven definitively by Louis Pasteur, a French chemist in 1859. In his well-known experiment, he took a flask of broth and boiled it. He then heated the neck of the flask and formed it into an “s” curve. He heated the neck again to kill any organisms that may have been resting in the bends of the glass. Then any bacteria entering the mouth of the flask would settle in the low part of the neck and not reach the broth. Months later, there was still no fermentation in the broth.
Then, he went a step further. He tilted the flask to allow liquid into the “s” curve, where the bacteria had settled, and it became cloudy, showing fermentation. This finally showed the scientific community that life comes from pre-existing life and disproved spontaneous generation.4
What is really amazing is that virtually all biology classes use this example to explain how bacteria was discovered. Then, in the same class, they go on to teach that life spontaneously generated millions of years ago (or longer) when rain fell on hot rocks, combining amino acids in the “primordial ooze” and life emerged! Spontaneous generation all over again!
Discuss two world views. (The Biblical worldview that the Bible is true, and everything we see around us supports the teachings found in the Bible. Naturalistic worldview that everything we see around us is a result of natural processes and they way things are now are consistent with how things have always been...constant and consistent).
The scientific community continues to support spontaneous generation, even though it was scientifically disproven. Furthermore, they have never been able to spontaneously generate any life to support their position.
In medicine, we do a lot to try to preserve life, but even with our best efforts, once someone is dead, they are dead. We can sometimes perform CPR under the right conditions and revive someone within minutes of his heart stopping, but if we try the same technique after the heart has been stopped for more than 10 minutes, there is no chance of success. If spontaneous generation were possible, this would be the best chance to make it happen. We already have all of the chemicals, all of the processes in the right combination, in the right order, but we can't create life.
*If we can't reanimate previously living organisms, how likely does it seem to you that life could have generated spontaneously from a pool of amino acids?
*What if we waited a really, really long time?
What does the Bible teach?
Psalm 148:5
Isaiah 40:26
2 Peter 3:5
Romans 1:19-20
Hebrews 11:3: "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."
To believe in existence of life without a creator takes more faith than to simply believe that God created life exactly as the Bible claims he did.
Either: No one created something from nothing
or: Someone created something from nothing.
*What ideas have you heard to explain the presence of life on planet earth?
*Why are they believable, not believable?
We will go more in detail in our next lesson to describe the complexity of even “simple life”.
Citations:
1Strickberger, M. (1996). Evolution (2nd Edition). Jones and Bartlett publishers. p. 13.
2Werner, C. (2007). Evolution: the Grand Experiment. New Leaf Press. p. 15. 3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Redi
4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur
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