This time, Dr. Humphreys and Ron Hughes discuss the improbability of Chemical Evolution, which is a major problem for the theory of Biological Evolution.
Ron Hughes: People think of Biological Evolution, starting with single celled aquatic creatures and ending with man, but what most people don’t think is Chemical Evolution. I mean, all the building blocks of life had to have come from somewhere and be present before life could start to evolve according to the theory of Biological Evolution. How do evolutionists explain this?
Dr. Humphreys: Let me tell you a little story, if I can, as an analogy.
I have a little yellow ball, that the listeners can’t see, but I want to tell you about this little ball; about it’s origin. Because I want you to understand the kind of fantasy land that Chemical Evolution is.
You see, one day I was walking along the beach and saw something yellow in the sand and it’s this little solid yellow ball that bounces so well. Now you ask me how it got there and you might think that maybe a child was playing on the beach and left it there; just lost it.
But I want to give you a different explanation. You see, hundreds of years ago on a tropical island, there was growing side by side a coconut palm and a rubber tree. Now one day a coconut fell from the palm and it struck a stone and it chipped off a piece of the shell. Of course, it wasn’t long before some insects found the hole in the coconut and they began to nibble away and eventually the shell became completely hollow inside.
Now about that time, it so happened that a second nut fell from the palm tree. As it fell it struck one of the branches of the rubber tree and it broke off a piece of the bark. Now of course, the milky rubber latex began to drip from the damaged branch to the ground. And it so happened, – you notice I keep saying that, Ron, but – it so happened that the empty coconut shell lay directly below the damaged limb. And so, with the small hole facing upwards it happened, by a wonderful coincidence, that the rubber latex began to drip into the hole until quite a little pool of latex collected in the shell.
Now of course, a wind sprang up and some of the dust from the island went into the hole and this dust contained sulphur and lots of other things and eventually settled in the latex. And then finally, the wind blew a leaf along and the leaf sort of settled on the hole and with the latex still dripping down, it sealed it. And there we were with a coconut that was eventually swept out to sea.
And of course, as it bobbed on the waves the rubber latex mixed with the sulphur and the sand and it rolled itself into a little ball. And you know, it turns out when sulphur is heated with rubber (this is the Goodyear tire process) in the hot sun it vulcanizes. And the latex rolled around inside coconut shell while it vulcanized and so it took on that round shape.
And then eventually of course, the coconut was dashed against some rocks and it broke and it released the ball and it just floated on the beach and then finally I found it.
Now that is really an analogy for Chemical Evolution. I can’t give you all the chemical steps today, but the fact is you string a series of coincidences, each perfectly possible but unlikely and join them together to explain how the ball got on the beach.
And in Chemical Evolution they take 13 steps. All of which could maybe conceivably happen. You could imagine that maybe one of them might have occurred, but, you know, when you’ve strung them together you have a very unlikely story. In fact, much tougher on my faith than believing what Genesis two has taught; that God made us and made us deliberately.
So really, Chemical Evolution is about as likely as the yellow ball story – not very likely at all.
