Spontaneous Generation: Can Non-Life Create Life?

by Tom Kando

I was listening to Science Friday, the excellent NPR program hosted by Ira Flatow. He was interviewing the historian James Strick about the debunked theory of spontaneous generation.

You may recall that this theory was destroyed by Louis Pasteur in the 19th century. It is the idea that living organisms can spring into existence from non-living matter. This had been the general belief ever since Aristotle. Only in the 17th century did the Church begin to oppose this theory. At that point, scientific materialism was on the rise, and the theory of spontaneous generation seemed to suggest that natural chemistry was sufficient to produce life (combined with solar radiation and what have you), thereby cutting God out of creation.

In the middle of the 19th century, the debate about spontaneous generation - essentially, whether life can spring from non-life or not - was raging. French biologists Felix Fouchet and Louis Pasteur were at loggerheads over the question. In 1859, Pasteur conducted a famous experiment which settled the issue, proving that life CANNOT arise spontaneously from inanimate matter. The French academy of science declared Pasteur the winner of the controversy, and his position has been the generally accepted standard in all biology textbooks since.

Coincidentally, another giant scientific milestone occurred in 1859 - the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Darwin, of course, was facing an overwhelmingly Christian world at the time. Asserting that species change and evolve over time, and that humans descend from more primitive non-human forms was an uphill battle to begin with. To many, Darwin was guilty of trying to get the supernatural (God) out of the equation. So when it came to the spontaneous generation controversy, Darwin tried to dodge the question. Only once, late in his book, does he address it briefly, stating that “...all the organic beings..on this earth have descended from some one primordial form into which life was first breathed,” thereby sounding quite biblical. Darwin certainly did not need the added aggravation of being called an atheist. His evolutionary theory was hard enough of a pill for public opinion to swallow.

For many generations ever since, Pasteur’s demonstration that life cannot emerge from non-life, has been more or less accepted as dogma (or “axiom” if you prefer) by scientists.

However, current Origin-of-Life researchers seem to make this once again into a QUESTION, as if the matter were not settled. They speak of a “primordial soup,” whatever that is. Remember Darwin’s suggestion, that somehow shortly after the dawn of the earth’s existence, the breath of life was blown into the world, activating the evolution of life on our planet.

Abiogenesis describes the natural process whereby life arises from non-living matter such as organic compound. It does not include any force which would “breathe” life into matter. Assuming the existence of such an agent would be tantamount to positing a creator - God.

The problem with this is that it puts us into an infinite regress: Who or what created God? This is the dilemma which all questions about “first cause” bump into. It is best to assume that if there is a first cause, science will never discover it.

Whenever someone raises the ideas of “first cause” and “God,” Two stupefying questions come to my mind: Are space and time finite or infinite? I say “stupefying,” because I am unable to grasp what is currently the general view among cosmologists, namely that space and time are FINITE.

1. Over the past century or so (since Einstein), many cosmologists have come to agree that there is a limit to the universe, i.e. that its size is finite (although it is probably expanding). Some scientists estimate it to be slightly less than 100 billion light-years in diameter (see my post How Big is the Universe)

2. The universe’s age is also finite. It began with a “singularity” and a Big Bang about 13 billion years ago. That is when time began. But how can a universe be created out of nothing?

These two assertions boggle the mind, as they immediately raise the following questions:

1. What lies outside the 100 billion light-years-wide enclosure?

2. What was going on in space before the beginning of the universe, i.e. before the beginning of time?

I have often been told that these cosmological questions are addressed by Einstein’s relativity theory and by Quantum Mechanics. As to the origin of life question, it is being researched by a host of different scientific disciplines, including molecular biology, biophysics and biochemistry.

But let me end on a note of levity: An anthropologist doing field work in a pre-scientific culture was interviewing a native tribe member. That man explained to the anthropologist that according to his people’s beliefs, the world was held up in space by a giant. The anthropologist asked who was holding up the giant. Well, the giant is standing on a giant turtle, his respondent replied. Okay, said the anthropologist, and what was holding up the giant turtle? Well, the man replied, from there on it’s giant turtles all the way down.

© Tom Kando 2019;All Rights Reserved

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