Darwin’s grandpa Erasmus had suggested that humans were all descended from a common microscopic ancestor. The Naturalistic Alfred Russel Wallace agreed with his grandson Charles that natural selection was the mechanism of evolution.
But the battle between evolution and creationism really began with the Greeks, according to Eugenia Shanklin, Science Digest, April 1982. Herodotus, who lived in the 5th Century B.C. believed that differences among creatures must have been caused by environmental factors. He saw gradual changes as the means by which evolution might have brought this about.
Aristotle was a creationist; he believed that all things arose in the state desired by the creator and that while species might deviate from the original design; they did not and could not change their essential form through time.
The Church adopted Aristotle’s position, and for more than 1,000 years, speculation about evolution was forbidden.
Thank God Darwin and Wallace came long. They have shown us that life had a simple beginning without a creative hand involved. Of course acknowledging this fact by the major religions would cause a disconnect from the “caring, loving God in Heaven” concept, who has allegedly made us special. But the conflict lies in the fact we can’t believe them both. So what’s the truth – show me evidence for either and I’ll “believe.”
It appears that life first began when some free-floating molecules formed a coordinated system by chance, and was able to replicate itself. Michael Crichton, Time, September 25, 1995 explains, “in complexity theory, that groups of randomly operating independent units such as amino acids floating in primordial seas, humans acting in their own interests, populations of animals – can spontaneously and without outside direction organize themselves into complex systems-self reproducing DNA molecules, functioning economies, social groups.”
Hannah Bloch and Sylvester Monroe reported in Time, February 5, 1996 that life on this planet emerged surprisingly quickly – as early as a few hundred million years after the earth formed. At the time, the planet was intensely volcanic, with the occasional leftover asteroid screaming in every few million years – yet primitive life forms persisted and flourished.
Until a few years ago, biologists were at a loss to understand how life could have arisen under such conditions. But laboratory experiments have convinced them that self-replicating molecules are relatively easy to assemble. Another discovery of hot-water volcanic vents deep in the ocean, surrounded by rich ecosystems of exotic life, implies that a hot, young, volcanic planet might in fact be an ideal incubator.
So life began quite by accident in some primordial sea with simple organisms (Ediacarans) sliding by one another harmlessly sucking mud. Here was God’s peace on earth, plenty of room, food, and opportunity. No conflict, no war, just peace loving creatures living side by side in relative harmony. Everything God wanted.
So why didn’t God quit there? Why wasn’t he satisfied? For millions of years these little fellers just sucked their daily mud and didn’t bother one another. God changed it all because it was just too boring! To liven up life a little, he turned loose the world’s first predators.
The Editor Science Digest, January 1982 says that “Trilobites were among the world’s first predators; but scientists aren’t sure what the first predatory organism was. The first entity to consume another entity for nourishment was probably a replicator molecule”, according to Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. In competing for building block molecules, some replicators, writes Dawkins, “may have ‘discovered’ how to break up molecules of rival varieties chemically, and to use the building blocks so released for making their own copies. These Proto-carnivores simultaneously obtained food and removed competing rivals.” Sinister isn’t it! God has to take it to the next level to avoid boredom.
The Trilobites had powerful jaws and sharp fearsome teeth, April Lawton reports in Science Digest, October 1981. They ranged in size from a few inches to two feet, and God must have enjoyed observing them for over 200 million years hunt down and devour for sustenance, his first simple and defenseless creations. So began the great food chain.
Isn’t there something terribly wrong with this plan for life? If you’re an all-powerful God and lovingly concerned for your creations as “our Father who Art in Heaven” should be, why not send down some manna for every species? Why has God got them killing one another? There is of course, the possibility that they may have gravely sinned by eating some forbidden sea weed and God threw the first ones out of the Mud Garden!
Sara Webb reports in 2006 Discover magazine’s Recap of 100 Scientific Events For That Year, that astronomers working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Green Bank Telescope have identified eight new molecules that are some of the largest and most complex compounds discovered in space. The finds suggest that elaborate organic chemistry-chemistry that might have helped seed life on earth – may be widespread throughout our galaxy and beyond.
So the chemical ingredients of life can be found in Interstellar clouds of gas located in deep space. This means that life really is no big deal and it implies that given the right conditions and enough time, life will form everywhere in the universe that it can. As it seems to on earth.
Microbiologist Richard Kravse in Discover August 1994 says “During the first 2 or so billion years of life, microbes were alone on earth and they worked out every trick in the genetic book. By developing and exchanging useful new genes, they quickly adapted to every niche they could find; from boiling hot springs to frozen steppes.” So it appears that lots of time and random chance are the “guiding hands.”
But what about animal life? Douglas Fox in Discover’s recap of scientific events for the year 2009, reports about two new discoveries that push the fossil record of animals back another 300 million years. Looks like we started out as a sponge!
“Researchers reported finding a steroid compound in a 675-million-year old stone cores, drilled from former sea beds up to three miles beneath the deserts of Oman. Sponges are the only organisms known to produce appreciable amounts of this steroid, and geochemist Gordon Love of the Univ. of California Riverside, interprets the chemical signature as evidence that sponge like animals had evolved by then.”
“Another team reported in Geology in May that they had found mesh like patterns suggestive of sponges in 850-million-year-old rocks. They turned up in an ancient reef built by cyan bacteria, says Fritz Neuweiler of Laval Univ. in Quebec. The earth’s early oceans initially contained little oxygen, but cyan bacteria produce it as a by-product of photosynthesis. “Here we have a local oxygenated environment;” Neuweiler says, “and this would have supported these early animals.”
We have had plenty of evidence of animal life back 550 million years but these discoveries show we’ve been hanging on longer than we originally thought. The fossil record plainly shows that God would “create” an animal, test it awhile, see where he made his mistake, make a few changes and then run it again. Over and over. Boy God was Busy!
The system he used to “judge” these creatures was “survival of the fittest.” This is where the glorious victors return their genes though their descendants, the losers are returned to dust. There’s nothing wrong with evolution as long as you are a winner! But, does God have any concern or sympathy for the losers? Does Lady Chance? She’s in this up to her Lucky Charms.
God, after creating the first animal, altered his original design, time and time again for 475 million years roughly, in the sea. He then decided everything was harder to observe under water, so he made “Tiktaalik”, a walking fish, to get things up on dry land.
Charles Q. Choi in the June, 2006 Scientific American explains that, “‘Tiktaalik’ is a “missing link” in the evolution of animals from water onto land. Though nearly complete specimens of a flattened, alligator like fish species dubbed ‘Tiktaalik