Once upon a time, people believed in a thing called spontaneous generation. It’s the idea that life could spring up from non-living matter. They believed, for example, that maggots would spontaneously form in rotting meat. Over time, however, with much experimentation and observation, it was discovered that every suspected example of spontaneous generation could be attributed to observable causes. In the case of maggots, they determined the cause was flies laying eggs on the meat.
Eventually, the spontaneous generation of “complex” animals was disproved. However, the belief that it could still happen in “simple” creatures like single-celled organisms. If you put a jar of clean water in the sun, for example, after a while, the water would begin to cloud. If you examined the water under the primitive microscopes available at that time, they could see the water was teeming with bacteria. They believed these cells were merely gelatinous blobs formed spontaneously by a fortunate arrangement of chemicals already present in the water.
Louis Pasteur was a chemist, biologist, and contemporary of Charles Darwin. He didn’t believe life could arise purely by chance so he devised an experiment to test what was happening. He discovered that in sterilized, sealed flasks, bacteria would not grow. If the flasks were left open, bacteria would begin to grow. So he proved the bacteria was entering the flask from outside and not forming spontaneously in the water. This was the discovery that led to the process we now call pasteurization and was the final blow to spontaneous generation. It was replaced by the law of biogenesis - life only comes from life.
This poses a problem for evolutionists. If life only comes from life, where did the supposed first living cell come from? They have to believe - somehow and somewhere - that it rose from non-living matter. In other words, they still believe in spontaneous generation! I’ve often teased them by saying they’re asking people to believe in a theory that was discarded about the same time as blood-letting!! [joke copyrighted by RKBentley © if you want use it, send me a quarter]
Of course, they claim to not believe in spontaneous generation; instead, they call it abiogenesis. So what is the difference? That’s a good question. I asked Chat GPT to define ‘spontaneous generation.’ Here’s what it said:
Spontaneous generation is an old scientific idea that living organisms could arise from nonliving matter without any parent organisms.
It went on to talk about the meat/maggots example, the Pasteur experiments, and the Law of Biogenesis. It concluded its response with these words:
In short
Spontaneous generation = life comes from nonliving matter
Modern science = life comes from preexisting life
OK, that seems straight forward. It’s pretty much the same thing I’d already understood. Then I asked it to define ‘abiogenesis’ and here’s what it said:
Abiogenesis is the scientific concept that life arose naturally from non-living matter on early Earth - without any pre-existing life.
Do you see what I see? These definitions are essentially the same thing - life arose from non-life, except spontaneous generation says it doesn’t happen and abiogenesis says it does!
Because Chat GPT’s responses seemed contradictory, I asked a less direct question. I asked, “What do you call the process by which life rises from non-living matter?” Here’s the response:
The process you’re referring to is called Abiogenesis.
What it means
Abiogenesis is the scientific idea that life arose from nonliving chemical substances - likely on earth Earth billions of years ago.
Key distinction
It’s important not to confuse this with spontaneous generation:
Abiogenesis -> A gradual, natural process over long periods involving chemistry (accepted area of scientific research)
Spontaneous generation -> life appearing suddenly and regularly from nonliving matter (now disproven)
Ah, I get it. Abiogenesis has the magic ingredient: time!! I mean, life can’t just spring up like maggots from rotting meat, that’s crazy. But if you wait billions of years, a rock can become alive. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Plus, abiogenesis involves chemistry, you see, and that’s scientific - so there you go. //RKBentley rolls his eyes//
To be fair, Chat GPT did conclude with this final distinction:
Simple way to think about it
Abiogenesis = how the first life ever began
Biogenesis = how life continues today (life comes from life)
Yet even this doesn’t hold any water. First, if abiogenesis was a singular event, then it is disqualified from scientific investigation. It would be like trying to scientifically observe the reign of Julias Caesar - it’s something that happened in the past and we weren’t there to see it. If it never happens again, how could we ever observe how it happened? And even if we somehow create life in a lab, there’s no way to say that is how it happened in the past!
But there’s an even deeper problem with this idea, namely, who’s to say that it doesn’t happen any more? They’re saying only the first life formed by abiogenesis, because if it happened again, that would be spontaneous generation. It’s kind of like the exotic theories atheists invoke to explain the origin of everything from nothing. How can anyone say that some “miraculous” thing happened naturally in the past but it doesn’t happen any more? If life arose from chemicals once, why necessarily doesn’t it keep happening? If the universe poofed out of nothing, why can’t matter/energy poof into existence now? It sounds like a clever way to say, “An incredible thing happened, it wasn’t a miracle, we don’t have to prove anything, and it’s still scientific.”
In conclusion I’ll say, my opinion hasn’t changed. Abiogenesis is Spontaneous Generation 2.0. It’s a god-of-the-gaps argument being used by unbelievers to plug a big hole in their worldview. We’ve known for more than a century that life doesn’t rise naturally from chemicals but they still cling with faith-like determination to the idea that it must have happened.
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