In the last blog I discussed the beginning of the universe and how the discovery of the Big Bang has caused many to reconsider the possibility that God acted to create the universe. Let’s take a look now at the beginning of life itself and how scientists are stumped to explain it from a strictly materialistic viewpoint.

One hundred years ago there was great optimism that life was easy to get started. A famous experiment (Miller-Urey) took gases that were thought to be part of the early Earth’s atmosphere, zapped them with an electrode, and collected a tarry substance, which turned out to be amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Scientists were elated, but their joy was short-lived. Since then the complexity of even the simplest organisms has proved a huge challenge to those who think life started without the input of information from a creator. The Cambrian explosion has revealed a short time period in which complex organisms popped into existence from very simple pre-existing ones. The SETI project, in which radio telescopes have attempted to listen in for signals from outer space, has proved a failure. Scientists regularly hold meetings to come up with materialistic explanations for the beginning of life, but they have proved to be dead ends.

Then there is the difficulty of the Darwinian explanation for the apparent evolution of life on earth. For the Darwinian hypothesis to be treated with respect, four things are necessary – belief in the honesty of the scientists themselves, spontaneous generation to get life started, the usefulness of mutation and natural selection to change and add complexity to a species, and transitions to show the changes over time. But each of these has proved to have huge problems. Scientists present their findings as facts when in many cases they have a pre-determined philosophy called scientism which colors their findings. I mean that before they have looked for any evidence, many of these individuals have excluded the possibility of any divine interaction with this world, thus making only material causes possible. I’ve already mentioned the problem with spontaneous generation to get life started – no one can figure out how it is possible that random processes  could come together to create something as intricate as even one-celled life. Mutation has a problem as well – it cannot produce new information which will enhance a species. Finally, transitions have failed to show up as Darwin was hoping they would.

Plenty more to come as far as scientific discoveries go. In the next blog post I would like to look at design in the universe, which to me is probably the key element that points to the possibility of a God.