Letters From Grandpa #455

• LETTERS FROM GRANDPA
• 455

Dearest grandchild,

Today’s letter will be about the “spontaneous generation of life.” The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, was one of the first to propose this theory. One example to prove this theory was the fact that maggots “spontaneously” appeared in meat. Italian physician Francesco Redi, however, performed an experiment in 1668 that disproved this theory. He proved that preventing flies from having contact with the meat also prevented the appearance of maggots. No one has ever proved the “theory” of the spontaneous generation of life. Life can only come from life!

When Darwin wrote the Origin of Species he purposely avoided the origin of life. It was “assumed” that the “simple cell” was so simple that the “spontaneous generation of life” was not a problem. Michael Denton, in his book entitled Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, explains the complexity of a “simple cell” with this example: “To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity... (a complexity) beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man...”

Abiogenesis is the word used to describe the origin of life. (“a” = not, “bios” = life “genesis” = origin) Those who do not believe in God believe that life spontaneously occurred without an intelligent mind directing the process. In 1952 the Miller -Urey experiment sought to prove the chemical origin of life without God. They tried to simulate the prebiotic conditions on the earth billions of years ago. Their experiment used water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H2), and an electric arc (the latter simulating hypothesized lightning). Dr. James Tour concludes that their experiment in no way produced life. He wrote: The truth is, scientists actually have no idea how life was created. They are literally clueless and it has nothing to do with the creation of amino acids in a pond, vent or other planet. It’s about what happens next, once those amino acids are present. In all the decades following the Miller Urey experiment, scientists have made nearly zero progress in this area. You may see articles from time to time published by reputable sources touting major advances in explaining the origin of life but the reality is none of them come even close. If you happen to watch other videos or read other material on this topic, watch for the hand waving and lack of facts and evidence for how inanimate chemicals and compounds make the jump to anything that resembles real life. In the real world, scientists don’t know how life was created from inanimate chemicals and molecules but they also don’t want to publicly admit that. There are all sorts of reasons that we’ll get into elsewhere but, for now, suffice to say that we will recall the premise of this website and follow the scientific facts and evidence where ever it leads – eventually arriving at scientific proof God created the universe and life itself.

Tour charges that if he took a cell that had just died a moment before and asked top origin-of- life researchers to engineer it back to life, they couldn’t do it. They’re not even close to being able to do it. And yet all the ingredients, all the building blocks of life are right there, all in one place, in the right proportions. And not only can scientists not engineer those ingredients back to life, they still can’t synthesize even a fraction of the building blocks essential to cellular life, despite decades and millions

of dollars poured into the problem. And yet they assume that purely blind material processes turned prebiotic chemicals into all the key building blocks, and then mindlessly engineered those into the first self-reproducing cell on the early Earth. There are no models that would make such a scenario plausible. And the more we learn about cellular complexity, the harder the problem gets. Indeed, as Tour puts it, origin-of-life research is like moving down a football field in nanometer increments while the goalposts are racing away. What’s left is only the dogmatic assumption among origin-of-life researchers that the first life must have appeared on Earth purely through blind material forces. Tour has made it his mission to show the broader scientific community and the public that the emperor has no clothes. Not surprisingly, the origin-of-life community has not responded with heartfelt gratitude.

Sadly, many still blindly reject our Creator God and put their hope in science. Our word “cryonics” comes from the Greek word κρύος which means “cold”. Cryonics is the process of deep- freezing dead human remains in the hope that this person can be resuscitated in the future. People who do not believe in God pay to have their bodies frozen with the “hope” that science will find a cure for what killed them. Their “hope” is that when the cure is discovered their bodies will be thawed out and brought back to life. Cryonics Institute charges $28,000 for a body to be stored indefinitely, while their competitor Alcor reportedly charges $200,000. In 1967, cancer patient James Bedford was the first person to be cryogenically frozen. Bedford was frozen in a capsule designed by American cryogenics pioneer Edward Hope, and his body remains cryogenically frozen to this day.

Our hope, by contrast, is not in science, but in the Lord. We do not hope to come back to life in an aged worn out body, but in a resurrected body that is healthy and new! The Psalmist said it like this: “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.” (Ps. 33:20-22)

James Bedford is still dead, but Jesus is very much alive. Peter wrote of our hope with these words: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Yes! “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Is. 40:30-31)

Let’s hope in the Lord and soar like an eagle!

I love you,

Grandpa Boyce