On the origin of Life...

Theory of Chemical Evolution

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This theory is also known as Materialistic Theory or Physico-chemical Theory. According this theory, Origin of life on earth is the result of a slow and gradual process of chemical evolution that probably occurred about 3.8 billion years ago. This theory was proposed independently by two scientists - A.I.Oparin, a Russian scientist in 1923 and J.B.S Haldane, an English scientist, in 1928.

According to this theory,

• Spontaneous generation of life, under the present environmental conditions is not possible.

• Earth's surface and atmosphere during the first billion years of existence, were radically different from that of today's conditions.

• The primitive earth's atmosphere was a reducing type of atmosphere and not oxidising type.

• The first life arose from a collection of chemical substances through a progressive series of chemical reactions.

• Solar radiation, heat radiated by earth and lighting must have been the chief energy source for these chemical reactions.

This theory still reigns within western secular scientific thought. Within it we immediately find ideological paradox. The first of the four 'rules' is a denial of an old Greek philosophy where life continually emenates from 'dead matter'.

Theory of Spontaneous Generation

This theory assumed that living organisms could arise suddenly and spontaneously from any kind of non-living matter. One of the firm believers in spontaneous generation was Aristotle, the Greek philosopher (384-322 BC).

He believed that dead leaves falling from a tree into a pond would transform into fishes and those falling on soil would transform into worms and insects. He also held that some insects develop from morning dew and rotting manure. Egyptians believed that mud of the Nile river could spontaneously give rise to many forms of life. The idea of spontaneous generation was popular almost till seventeenth century. Many scientists like Descartes, Galileo and Helmont supported this idea. In fact, Von Helmont went to the extent stating that he had prepared a 'soup' from which he could spontaneously generate rats! The 'soup' consisted of a dirty cloth soaked in water with a handful of wheat grains. Helmont stated that if human sweat is added as an 'active principle' to this, in just 17 days, it could generate rats!
The theory of Spontaneous Generation was disproved in the course of time due to the experiment conducted by Fransisco Redi, (1665), Spallanzani (1765) and later by Louis Pasteur (1864) in his famous Swan neck experiment. This theory was disapproved, as scientists gave definite proof that life comes from pre-existing life.

This denial makes sense when it is stated as I just did, as an attack on this old Greek assumption. But they did not state it like that, and the results reverbarate to this day. It resulted in what some like to call the paradox or religion within science; the concept of 'something from nothing'.

To pursue scientific truths we require proof, seeks to explain the events of nature in a reproducible way, and to use these findings to make useful predictions. These scientific predictions are based on 'something from something'. This excludes the notion of 'something from nothing' as real, thus falsifialble. The religious paradox the secular scientific atheist lives in is its own explanation of how our universe began. The Big Bang theory in itself is the ultimate story of creation arising from nothing.

So it is with the origin of life, todays secular scientific thought will dismiss Aristotles theory with contempt , just to replace it with exactely the same theory, only reduced to 'one single critical moment' and 'just the right conditions' for Life to 'spontaneously generate' out of non-living matter.