What the Cell Tells Us
FOR evolution to have happened, lifeless chemicals had to come together to form a living cell. Scientist Isaac Asimov, in The Wellsprings of Life, says it took place in this way:
“Once upon a time, very long ago, perhaps two and a half billion years ago, under a deadly sun, in an ammoniated ocean topped by a poisonous atmosphere, in the midst of a soup of organic molecules, a nucleic acid molecule came accidentally into being that could somehow bring about the existence of another like itself—and from that all else would follow!”
But has such a thing ever been observed to happen “accidentally”? Indeed, has it ever been made to happen by the most competent scientists?
What the Evidence Shows
The book Introduction to Geology states: “No case of spontaneous generation has ever actually been observed.” That is the simple fact. Never in history has anyone observed a living cell “accidentally” forming out of inanimate chemicals.
Scientists cannot even make this happen in their most sophisticated laboratories. True, they have produced some carbon-containing compounds, but these are far, far removed from a living cell that can reproduce itself. The publication The Cell admits that such experiments “do not explain how life actually arose from inanimate matter.”
In view of these facts, chemical engineer M. S. Keringthan writes the following to the Toronto Globe & Mail:
“My estimate is that an amoeba [a one-celled animal] consists of about 100-quadrillion atoms, principally carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, with trace amounts of others such as phosphorus, calcium and sulphur. All of these would be in compounds not easily decomposed.
“The evolutionist says, in effect, that this number of atoms, in the correct ratio, accidentally met together, split from the existing compounds, and reassembled themselves into a living amoeba. . . .
“Do we find amoebas forming in this way? Can we put the chemicals into a test tube and make an amoeba? The answer is no, so it is wrong to say it happened in the past. . . . The hypothesis of evolution collapses on the origin of life; some other explanation for the creation of life is needed.”
Also, it has amazed scientists to find out just how complicated a living cell is. Evolutionist F. Salisbury of Utah State University says: “Now we know that the cell itself is far more complex than we had imagined.” He estimates that the nucleus of one cell in the human body “contains about 109 bits of genetic information. Written in normal-sized type, this would fill about 1,000 normal-sized, bound volumes.”
Further knowledge of the cell has revealed that all the many parts it contains are involved in complex, interrelated functions. Without all these functions taking place at the same time, it would be impossible for the cell to keep living. That is why Salisbury says: “It’s as though everything must happen at once: the entire system must come into being as one unit, or it is worthless.” Since it is obvious that such a thing does not happen by accident nor is brought about by man, he laments: “There may well be ways out of this dilemma, but I don’t see them at the moment.”
Naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch made this interesting observation about the matter:
“A great deal of ink has been spilled over the ‘missing link’ between the [apes] and [man]. But it is as nothing by comparison with all the links which are missing—if they ever existed—between amoeba and that first particle of barely living matter . . .
“The difference between the animate and the inanimate, the discontinuity of the living and the nonliving, remains absolute.”
The book The Cell also says: “In many ways, the appearance of biological cells in a barren and hostile world is more improbable than the subsequent development of primitive cells into dinosaurs and primates. . . . the essential scientific question of how life began remains unsolved.”
So lifeless chemicals do not “accidentally” produce living, reproducing cells. They cannot even be made to do so by intelligent humans. One-celled animals such as the amoeba come into existence today only from an already-existing amoeba—yes, “according to its kind.” No exception to this has ever been observed.
Hence, in the matter of the appearance of living cells, when we put the “guesswork” aside, which do you think the evidence actually supports—the Bible or evolution?
Up the Ladder
Evolutionists say that the next step was for the ‘simple’ single-celled organisms such as the amoeba to develop into many-celled organisms. But is there any evidence of a gradual increase in complexity among such forms of life? The book Earth’s Most Challenging Mysteries says:
“There are no 2-celled or 3-celled transitional forms from protozoa [one-celled animals] to metazoa [many-celled animals]. Yet the whole framework of evolution collapses if this vital link cannot be bridged.”
It has not been bridged. There is no record that one-celled animals change into two-celled or three-celled animals. There is, instead, a huge jump between the one-celled protozoa to the lowest of the many-celled metazoa. And there is no evidence whatever that protozoa turn into metazoa.
Of interest, too, is the fact that today such forms of life stay exactly as they are. None of these ‘simple’ forms of life demonstrate any desire to ‘improve’ themselves. Never do they struggle upward to become more complex forms. What justification is there, then, for saying that it happened that way in the past?
The respected publication Science, commenting on a book that propounded a theory of early evolution from one-celled forms to many-celled forms, said that the book’s explanation belonged to “science fiction.” To quote: “How many-celled animals originated and whether this step occurred one or more times and in one or more ways remain difficult and ever-debated questions that are perhaps, as John Corliss has said, ‘in the last analysis, quite unanswerable.’”
“Quite unanswerable” and “science fiction” from the viewpoint of evolution, true. But what if we examine the evidence as it is, aside from the “guesswork”? The facts fit exactly what we would expect from the Bible account. They show that the single-celled forms of life, and the many-celled forms of life, were created separately and then multiplied “according to their kinds.”
Increasing Complexity Should Show
Furthermore, such an increase in complexity, according to evolution, should show in another way, in the cell structure itself. We should expect to find some pattern reflecting this as cells advanced ‘up the ladder.’
The nucleus of living cells contains the bodies that carry inheritance traits. These bodies are called chromosomes. If evolution is true, then it would be logical to expect an orderly increase in chromosomes as life becomes more complex.
Concerning this matter, Professor Moore of Michigan State University relates:
“As a classroom professor teaching evolutionary concepts to bright, independently working students, I have been shown, often, different lists of chromosome numbers from a variety of textbook authors. . . .
“My independently thinking students formulated the question or problem: If animals changed from so-called single forms to complex multicellular forms (and they raised the same thought regarding plants), then is there any pattern of increase of chromosome number?”
Is there? Well, humans have 46 chromosomes in their body cells. Then surely, less complex plants and animals should have less. But we find that, among others, the deer mouse has 48, the striped skunk 50, the cebus monkey 54, the cow 60 and the donkey 62! Even the lowly potato has 48, and cotton 52! And the one-celled protozoa called aulacantha has 1,600 chromosomes!
So there is no pattern of increasing chromosome numbers such as one would expect if evolution were true. Instead, what we find is that each group of living things has its own special chromosome structure, and it stays that way. That is what we would expect to find if each kind was created separately, with its own characteristics, and was unrelated to other kinds.
[Picture on page 10]
An amoeba may consist of about 100 quadrillion atoms. Could this number of atoms, in the correct ratio, accidentally meet together and assemble themselves into a living amoeba?