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Check Your Assumptions

by Justin Wishart  
5/13/2010 / Christian Apologetics

I am going to take you on a journey backwards in time to make the point I would like you to think about. So, strap yourself into my time machine and lets journey back to our first destination, the year 1862.

A man by the name of Louis Pasture had just finished a set of experiments that proved that micro organisms lived in the air. This was a finding that everyone was waiting for. The reason was there had been a scientific fight between two theories. One was called spontaneous generation and the other theory dictated that life comes from life. The spontaneous generation camp would quickly point out that maggots appeared from meat, that mosquitoes came from a pond or the mice would appear from warm moist soil. How could a maggot appear where there were no other maggots present? How could mold appear on bread where no mold was present? They concluded that matter contained the vital material and energy that would cause life to spontaneously generate if combined with other chemicals or conditions that were right. Step into my time machine and lets make a very quick stop in ancient Greece. We find that this idea was present during Aristotle's time, so this is a very old thought. So, when was this way of thinking first challenged?

We ride through time back to the year 1668 and meet up with a man named Francesco Redi. He had just finished experiments that showed that if meat was properly covered, that maggots would not spontaneously generate. This experiment was repeated over and over until Redi concluded that meat provided a "nest" for maggots to grow, not that meat turned into maggots. However, since spontaneous generation was so strongly entrenched in the scientific community, Redi's findings did not receive general acceptance. Such was the strength of their pre-existing view of spontaneous generation in their minds.

As we take a slow paced ride through out the following years we see that when Anton Van Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria, because of the scientists assumptions on spontaneous regeneration, this discovery further proved that scientists assumption was correct. They would see living bacteria where there would not be any before. This even though Leeuwenhoeck and others questioned the belief of spontaneous generation. We then see tests that Louis Joblot conducted that proved that bacteria did not spontaneously generate yet, in the minds of the scientific community, the evidence was so overwhelming in their assumed belief that they were not deterred.

Speed up our time machine to the 1800s and we find that spontaneous generation is starting to loose it's strangle hold on the scientific community and arguments erupted between camps with different views on origins of life. As the fight intensified we stop in the year 1859 where F. Pouchet published a book defending the "vitalist" view and spontaneous generation. This book appeared to settle the matter, to the point where the French Academy of Science offered a reward to anyone who could prove Pouchet's theories wrong. Now in 1862 we see that Louis Pasture indeed published the proofs that bacteria is in the air and that is were the "new life" comes from and effectively demolished the theory of spontaneous generation once and for all. In fact, the Law of Biogenesis, that life only comes from life, was formed in part thanks to Pasture's work. We call curing milk pasteurization in honor of Louis's work in bacteria. Pasture had once and for all killed the silly notion that life can come from matter or did he?

We are not finished in our time travel through history. Travel back a few years to 1859 and we will find a book published called The Origin of Species by a scientist named Charles Darwin. During the writing of his book, spontaneous generation was the accepted truth. As such, Darwin had little mental difficulty in accepting and promoting the idea that life comes from dead material, which contained the vital energy required to produce life. This was accepted by the scientific elite of the day, so Darwin coming up with a theory that has this element as a central pillar would not have been any problem to his intellect. What caused the ruffles in society back then, as it does now, is that it provides a naturalistic explanation that a god is not required.

I think that many scientists of all persuasions have missed a critical issue when discussing the validity of evolution. And that is evolution has a pillar, that is a support beam to the theory as a whole, which is based on an assumption that has been disproved centuries ago. This fact is repeatable, demonstrative, and very predicable. In fact, the assumption that life only comes from life, and not inorganic matter, is given the highest level that any assumption is given in science and that is the level of a Law. If there is anything that science knows to be true it is Laws. Laws trump theory. If you take out the idea of spontaneous generation from evolution, I cannot see how the house of evolution can stand. If indeed spontaneous generation is that critical to evolution, then the Law of Bio Genesis trumps the theory of evolution.

Now that we have parked our time machine to the present day, one might be mystified to see many great scientists still peddling the evolution myth which is based on a retired old idea. Not only that, we are forcing teachers to teach our kids this myth. One side says that life comes from life and this is observed 100% of the time with not one observable inconsistency, the other side says life comes from inorganic matter at some time in the past, which has never been observed or duplicated in labs once ever! I am not sure about you as you will have to make up your own mind, but I think I would place my bets on something that is right 100% of the time and not rely on something that is right 0% of the time.

So why do scientists claim to posses so much evidence of evolution, to the point that the establishment agrees with them? Well, I have presented a good example of how educated people can find convincing facts for erroneous theories. These old scientists had an assumption where they then went out to find the proofs to support the assumption. However, if your foundational assumption is wrong, the house of evidence you build on that foundation becomes very suspect. The idea that life can erupt from nonliving matter has been soundly dismissed by the strongest demonstrative methods known to science and as such, the evidence that support that assumption become very suspect. It does not matter how eloquently and skilfully the evidence is built, if the foundation is falling apart the building must be condemned.

I would like to thank Josh McDowell and Don Stewart in their book Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity for providing that dates and history provided in this article.

Justin Wishart (Wishwon) is a Christian.

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