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Creation Science Book Review:
Scientific Creationism, by Henry Morris
Review by Greg Neyman
© 2006, Old Earth Ministries
Review Published June 2006
Old Earth Ministries Science website
Chapter 3, Part 2: The Origin of Life
This section deals with the problem known as spontaneous generation. How could life form from non-life? It has little impact to old earth creationism.
Morris states that if life arose by natural processes, then these natural processes are still ongoing today. If that is the case, we should see life still forming today. He claims that this has not been observed. As others have pointed out, the conditions today are vastly different than they were billions of years ago. Since we have such an abundance of life today, any new life that formed would be competing with life that has been around for millions of years, and thus it would not stand a chance of surviving. You must detect this new life before it is eliminated by competing life forms. Also, the size of this primitive life form would be small, and hard to detect. If you were not looking in the right place, at the right time, you would miss it.
Chapter 3 - Uphill or Downhill?
Part 1 - The Laws of Thermodynamics
Part 2 - The Origin of Life
Part 3 - Variation and Selection
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Chapter 1 - Evolution or Creation?
Chapter 2 - Chaos or Cosmos? (4 Topics)
Chapter 4 - Accident or Plan? (4 Topics)
Chapter 5 - Uniformitarianism or Catastrophism (4 Topics)
Chapter 6 - Old or Young? (4 Topics)
Chapter 7 - Apes or Men? (4 Topics)
Chapter 8 - Creation According to Scripture (14 Topics)
By far the most frequent argument used by young earth creationists is that life is too complex to have arisen by chance. Morris addresses this on pages 47-48. If you look at life today, that is probably true. However, we are considering the first life forms...not life today. The simplest forms of life would be extinct now, so we have no method of comparing the first simple lifeforms to life today. Also, research has shown that self-replicating forms can be incredibly simple, and pose no problems from the standpoint of prebiotic chemistry. All the elements for their formation would have been present billions of years ago.
Another claim by Morris is that DNA needs certain proteins to replicate...however proteins need DNA to form. They could not have formed naturally unless the other was already present. This ignores the replication of DNA from RNA, which can be replicated without any protein enzymes.
Finally, most old earth creationists agree with Morris that God started life. For theistic evolutionists, this problem of the first lifeform is irrelevant, since God would have created it. For progressive creationists, who believe God created each life form unique, just as Morris believes, this is a non-issue. The issue of spontaneous generation of life only applies to atheistic evolution.
For More Reading
If you are not a Christian, and you have been holding out on making a decision for Christ because the Church always preached a message that was contrary to what you saw in the scientific world, then rest assured that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, and you can believe in Christ and receive salvation, while still believing in an old earth. Click here for more.
Are you a Christian who believes in young earth creationism? Now that we have shown the many difficulties of the young earth creation science model in this and many other articles, how does this impact your Christian life? If you are a young earth creationism believer, click here.