This post is about creation. A bit of etymology for our postmodern times is need before beginning this post. The English word creation comes from the Latin cretus with the derivatives creare “to make, produce” but it is related to crescere which is “to rise, grow.” There are basically two views of how everything got here. One view is that everything is created via guided creation or the theory of biogenesis. This may be from some external being(s) that began creation or some unknown agent(s) that started/created all life and this creation came from presumably intelligent life. The other view is that life and the universe just happened by chance and this view is the bases for unguided creation or the theory of abiogenesis.

I have at least three major problem with unguided creation known in modern science as abiogenesis. The first is a two part natural problem followed by philosophical and theological/spiritual problems.

1. Natural Problem
Nature seems to indicate that all living things come from some other living thing and that non living things can not produce living things. “How can living things come from non-living things without outward intervention?” This view of living coming from non-living was originally held in the West, promoted by thinkers such as Aristotle. Louis Pasteur disproved Aristotelian abiogenesis when he showed that fruit flies could not simply come from fruit but had to come from larva in planted by passing flies. Though this theory of living coming from non-living is amusing it really should be left to whatever crappy hollywood mummy/zombie movie is around the corner.

My second major question and problem is “If complex beings can come from non living things through unguided means then how do complex organisms develop inter-related parts that require each other to function and live especially in light of the second law of thermodynamics and entropy figured in?” This is the question of irreducible complexity promoted by Michael Behe on the idea that certain organisms are irreducible complex and could not have come into existence at different periods of time. The law of thermodynamics by Ludwig Boltzmann also seems to indicate that the natural order of life goes away from order to disorder which makes the idea of natural selection especially on the micro-biological level hard to believe. This is seen readily in aging as the body tends to break down.

2. Philosophical
“If we are nothing more than random chance and all things are ultimately random, doesn’t this make Neitzche right and whoever is the toughest ultimately right? Second, isn’t all human morality ultimately pointless?”

3. Religious and Spiritual
“If any theory of abiogenesis is correct isn’t all authoritative religions (including all three major monotheistic religions on this planet) wrong in their first assertion that God is the Creator?” If this is the case then the philosophical question of nihilism really is the ultimate truth of the universe. Existence becomes ultimately pointless.

I will write more later but I end this post with C.S. Lewis making some comments on materialistic thoughts.

‘If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e. of materialism and astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.’

C.S. Lewis (1898–1963), The Business of Heaven, Fount Paperbacks, U.K., p. 97, 1984.