CREATION OF LIFE
AND BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION ( Page 4) |
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| Seeing the futility of getting a rational explanation
to the origin of life on earth as a result of chemical reactions,
some have suggested that life did come to the earth from outer space
on some of the meteors or comets. This seems even more improbable
because the heat of the impact should have destroyed any form of life.
Even if life came from outer space how did it originate there? Certainly
not by mere chance. God should have created it somewhere out there.
Whichever way we look at it, life is too complex to have just come
into being by mere chance. Even though we assume that evolution is
guided and directed by God, creation of life stands out as a separate
act even as the creation of the cosmos or the creation of the human
soul. |
| It is not as if we bring in the idea of creation and
of God when everything else fails. The various attempts by scientists
were mentioned to show that mere chance does not cause a storm or
a lightning to assemble a luxury car or a jumbo jet or a DNA molecule.
When we say God created life we do not mean that God came down with
a test tube and reagents and made the first form of life. Nor did
he stop his ‘activities’ once life was created. He definitely
directs and controls the progress of life from organic molecules to
single cell to complex organisms and to the human being, the process
we call biological evolution. |
| Before a proper unicellular living organism was created
the chemicals necessary for these were created. These include amino
acids necessary for the formation of protein as well as sugars and
bases needed for the complex nucleic acids. This could be considered
part of the chemical evolution – from quarks to ions to atoms
to simple molecules to organic molecules. But the transition from
the chemical to the biological, from non-living matter to a living
entity - the appearance of “life”- was not just another
reaction. To the system of molecules so assembled, God gave a special
something, the power to reproduce and multiply, the life force, that
something which distinguished life forms from inanimate matter and
made it “alive”. This is Creation of Life. |
| Evolution Of Life |
| The creation of life is supposed to have taken place
some 4 billion years ago when the earth was still in the infant phase,
which is to say, only about 600 million years old. According to some
scientists the first living entity could have been just an RNA molecule
along with some proteins and a membrane to enclose these. DNA could
have come later. The unicellular organisms that we know today, the
amoeba, bacteria, diatoms, and planktons, all are much more sophisticated
compared to those early forms. They were more like viruses, which
have only DNA or RNA and have no nucleus. The first cells, with both
RNA and DNA and cell membrane still had no nucleus. |
| The first great revolution in the story of evolution
was the ability of some of the cells to perform the great miracle
of life, what we call photosynthesis, wherein the cells manufactured
their own food and started producing oxygen. These were still anaerobic,
not needing oxygen for energy. These were probably like the cyanobacteria.
The cells still lacked nucleus. Even after this, the pace of evolution
was very slow. The oxygen produced by these cells never came out of
water to enter the atmosphere. The iron present in the water used
up all the oxygen produced to form iron oxide. It took nearly one
billion years to convert all the iron of the ocean to its oxide, and
to have sufficient oxygen dissolved in the water to support the next
generation of aquatic life forms, those that use oxygen to produce
energy. After this only did oxygen enter the atmosphere. |
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