Is life the result of evolution or creation? This dilemma has troubled the minds of more than one generation of scientists. Endless disputes on this score give rise to more and more curious theories.
Order versus chaos
The second law of thermodynamics (entropy) states that all elements of the cosmos move from order to chaos. This is what NASA scientist Robert Destrow draws attention to, who claims that "the universe stops like a clock." Creationists rely on the law of entropy to prove the inconsistency of the evolutionist point of view, which assumes the spontaneous development and complication of all elements of the surrounding world.
The 19th century theologian William Peli drew the following analogy. We know that pocket watches did not arise by themselves, but were made by man: from this it follows that such a complex structure as the human body is also the result of creation.
Charles Darwin opposed this point of view with his theory of the force of natural selection, which, relying on hereditary variability in the process of long evolution, is capable of forming the most complex organic structures.
"But organic life could not have emerged from inanimate matter," the creationists pointed out to the vulnerability of Darwin's theory.
It is only relatively recently that research by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey has provided arguments for the theory of evolution.
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The experiment of American scientists confirmed the hypothesis that conditions existed on the primitive Earth that facilitated the emergence of biological molecules from inorganic substances. According to their conclusions, the molecules were formed in the atmosphere as a result of ordinary chemical reactions, and then, falling into the ocean with rain, led to the birth of the first cell.
How old is the Earth?
In 2010, the American biochemist Douglas Theobald tried to prove that all life on Earth has a common ancestor. He mathematically analyzed the sequences of the most common proteins and found that the selected molecules are present in humans, flies, plants and bacteria. According to the scientist's calculations, the probability of a common ancestor was 102860.
According to the theory of evolution, the process of transition from the simplest organisms to the highest takes billions of years. But creationists claim that this is impossible, since the age of the Earth does not exceed several tens of thousands of years.
All species of animals and plants, in their opinion, appeared almost simultaneously and independently of each other - in the form in which we can observe them now.
Modern science, relying on the data of radioisotope analysis of terrestrial samples and meteorite matter, determines the age of the Earth as 4.54 billion years. However, as some experiments have shown, this dating method can have very serious errors.
In 1968, the American Journal of Geographical Research published data from radioisotope analysis of volcanic rocks that formed in Hawaii as a result of a volcanic eruption that occurred in 1800. The age of the rocks has been determined to range from 22 million to 2 billion years.
Radiocarbon analysis, which is used to date biological remains, also leaves many questions. This method sets the age limit for samples to 60,000 years with 10 carbon-14 half-lives. But how do you explain that carbon-14 is found in Jurassic wood samples? "Only by the fact that the age of the Earth was unreasonably old," - insist the creationists.
Paleontologist Harold Coffin notes that the formation of sedimentary rocks was uneven and it is difficult to find out the true age of our planet from them. For example, fossils of fossil trees near Joggins (Canada), vertically penetrating the layer of earth for 3 or more meters, indicate that the plants were buried under the rock in a very short period of time as a result of catastrophic events.
Rapid evolution
Assuming that the Earth is not so ancient, is it possible for evolution to "fit" into a shorter time frame? In 1988, a team of American biologists led by Richard Lensky decided to conduct a long-term experiment simulating the evolutionary process in the laboratory using the example of E. coli bacteria.
12 colonies of bacteria were placed in an identical environment, where only glucose was present as a food source, as well as citrate, which, in the presence of oxygen, could not be absorbed by bacteria.
Scientists have been observing E. coli for 20 years, during which time more than 44 thousand generations of bacteria have changed. In addition to changes in the size of bacteria typical for all colonies, scientists discovered an interesting feature inherent in only one colony: in it, bacteria somewhere between the 31st and 32nd thousand generations showed the ability to absorb citrate.
In 1971, Italian scientists brought 5 specimens of wall lizards to Pod Markaru Island in the Adriatic Sea. Unlike the former habitat, the island had few insects that lizards fed, but a lot of grass. Scientists checked the results of their experiment only in 2004. What did they see?
Lizards have adapted to an unusual environment: their population has reached 5,000 individuals, but most importantly, the appearance and structure of internal organs have changed in reptiles. In particular, the head and bite force increased to cope with large leaves, and a new section in the digestive tract appeared - a fermentation chamber, which allowed the intestines of the lizards to digest tough cellulose. So, in just 33 years, wall lizards turned from predators into herbivores!
Weak link
If science is able to confirm intraspecific changes experimentally, then the possibility of the appearance of a new species in the course of evolution remains exclusively in theory. Proponents of creationism not only point out to evolutionists the absence of intermediate forms of living organisms, but also try to scientifically confirm the inconsistency of the evolutionary theory of the origin of species.
Spanish geneticist Svante Paabo was able to extract DNA from a fragment of a Neanderthal vertebra, supposedly living about 50,000 years ago. A comparative analysis of the DNA of modern humans and the Neanderthal man showed that the latter is not our ancestor.
US geneticist Alan Wilson, using the mitochondrial DNA method, was able to presumably tell when "Eve" appeared on Earth. His research gave an age of 150-200 thousand years. Japanese scientist Satoshi Horai gives similar data. In his opinion, modern man appeared in Africa about 200 thousand years ago, and from there he moved to Eurasia, where he quickly displaced the Neanderthal.
Based on the data of the fossil record, biologist Jonathan Wells notes: "It is quite clear that at the level of kingdoms, types and classes, descent from common ancestors through modification cannot be considered an immutable fact."
Points of contact
Evolutionist and creationist views of the origin of life are not always fundamentally divided. Thus, many creationist scientists are supporters of the ancient age of the Earth, and among theologians there are many critics of literalist creationism.
For example, Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev writes the following: “In Orthodoxy, there is no textual or doctrinal basis for rejecting evolutionism … in Orthodoxy, unlike paganism, which demonizes matter, and Protestantism, which deprives the created world of the right to co-creation, there is no reason to deny the thesis, according to which the Creator created matter capable of good development”.
The Russian mathematician and philosopher Julius Schroeder notes that we do not know how to measure the duration of the six days during which God created the world on a scale known to us, because time itself was created during those days. “The order of creation is consistent with the concepts of modern cosmology,” the scientist notes.
Doctor of Biological Sciences Yuri Simakov considers humans to be a product of genetic engineering. He suggests that the experiment was carried out at the junction of two species - Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. According to the biologist, there is "a complex and deliberate intervention of the mind, which should be an order of magnitude superior to ours."
The staff of the Evolution Hall at the St. Louis Zoo decided to jokingly reconcile the two theories. At the entrance, they hung up a notice saying: "It does not at all claim that the living world could not have been created at once - it just looks as if it appeared as a result of a long evolution."
Taras Repin