Midnight Musings on Microbiology and Evolution
At the moment I am in the middle of taking a Microbiology short course. Throughout the short course I have already read and learned more about microorganisms than I knew existed. Throughout the information that I have consumed; several things have stuck out in my mind. They may seem random at first but they do all have a point at the end.
1) In almost all if not all science courses I have ever taken we have started with a scientific method somewhat similar to the following: observations, question, hypothesis, experiment, conclusions. In almost every course we are then told that something becomes a theory after being tested and shown to be correct every time by many seperate investigators.
2) In the early 1600's a doctrine arose called the "doctrine of spontaneous generation". This doctrine is an important part of the history of microbiology. The doctrine states that organisms could spontaneously generate from nothing. The reason this doctrine came about was the observations that maggots would generate on decomposing things (meat, wheat grains, etc), and that slime seemed to produce toads. Those who lived during this time period didn't know about organisms that are too small to see and so they assumed that they just automatically appeared from nothing.
In 1688 Francesco Redi performed the first biological experiment that is known to see if maggots would arise from rotting meat. He took two jars, and put exposed meat into both jars. One jar he left completely open, while the other jar he covered with gauze. The end result was that the open jar had maggots while the gauze covered jar did not. Redi showed that maggots came from flies and things do not spontaneously generate.
There was a big controversy that came about as a result of Redi's experiment until Louis Pasteur performed an experiment known as the Swan-Neck Experiment in 1859. This experiment answered the criticisms of previous experiments with open air access (through a swan-necked flask) to the broth contained in the test tube. This experiment is known as the experiment that showed that life does not spontaneously generate.
3) I have read in my microbiology textbook that the Earth came about and was a hot, volcanic lifeless ball of rock bombarded by material left over from the formation of the solar system, the earth then was cooled, water vapor condensed into oceans and seas, and provided conditions amenable for the origin of life. Then prokaryotes (think bacteria) appeared spontaneously until it evolved into eukaryotes, and so on and so forth till we get to humans.
Here is what I think is interesting (maybe you will to). Pasteur proved that life does not spontaneously generate. He proved this using the scientific method. His experiments are observable and repeatable, and microbiology is founded on many of Pasteur's principles. Several chapters later in the study of microbiology we go from microbiology emerging in science and leading to provable experimentation; to the textbook (and the scientific world as a whole) presenting evolution as a provable FACT! They present evolution occurring because of life spontaneously generating into prokaryotes that then evolve into the rest of the world. Evolution is presented as fact in the scientific world yet never has been proven by experimentation using the scientific method. Instead the exact oposite has been proven by Pasteur that life does not spontaneously generate here on this Earth!
Life does not spontaneously generate from nothing on Earth. Every house has a builder, and that builder and maker is God (cf Hebrews 11:10).
