You can blame it on the devil. He started this whole mess by posing an evil question: Yea, hath God said? There’s a good reason why Solomon said there is no new thing under the sun. The devil’s bad ideas keep getting recirculated again and again. The wording may change to adopt current trends, but at its core his corrosive old message hasn’t changed. Solomon got it right.
Where did the theory of abiogenesis —living things out of nonliving material— come from? It turns out the 6th century BC Greek philosophers sought to root life’s sources in natural elements, not the gods. When a cart passed by a dead animal, they observed maggots arising from the dead carcass, and surmised that the flies spontaneously generated. They had similar explanations whereby fleas came from dust, clams from the muck, and mice came from old socks. Aristotle (384-322 BC) culminated these views into a theory of spontaneous generation, proposing that life arose from nonliving material if the material contained pneuma (“vital heat”). These views were widely held as factual far into the 19th century (over 2 millennia!); so, when Darwin used the theory to propose that life miraculously grew out of a warm little pond, it was uncritically accepted.
Enter Louis Pasteur, a French microbiologist and believer in biblical creation. In the early 1860’s, he repeated experiments with organic material and air-controlled beakers. His cleverly designed glass flasks with long twisted necks allowed for air exchange inside but trapped airborne microorganisms at a low bend (see diagram). When boiled meat broth was not exposed directly to air, nothing grew. His simple experiment confirmed the law of biogenesis, irrefutably crushing the Greek’s philosophies. Pasteur himself said “life is a germ and a germ is life. Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment.” Pasteur along with physician Robert Koch are known as the “father of germ theory and bacteriology” which posits that germs cause disease. He continued his studies to develop the processes of sterilization and pasteurization, greatly improving medicine and food preparation. He also developed vaccines against rabies and anthrax, still in use today.
One would think Pasteur’s good science should have obliterated evolution’s “Goo to Zoo to You” re-heating of Aristotle’s cold ideas. In fact, most science websites refer to spontaneous generation as an archaic or superseded scientific theory, yet evolution (which fundamentally rests on this exact same principle) lives on. Why? God through the prophet Isaiah gives us critical insight into their thinking. “He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” The devil’s lies have a blinding affect so that they cannot connect the dots. Praise God for His Word which reveals the Creator’s truths of our very existence, as well as why we face disease and death.
Sources: Aristotlean view, Pasteur’s quote, and experiment illustration, from https://www.coursehero.com/study-guides/microbiology/spontaneous-generation/; Pasteur’s accomplishments, https://www.icr.org/content/taf43
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