Biology vs. Creationism, Thesis Paper Example

In recent years, scientific discovery has become more and more advanced. As scientists are learning more about how the world works however, some scientific ideas and theories have come under attack by creationists, who believed that God is responsible for creating and maintaining all life of the planet. One of the major theories that falls under this category is the discussion of the theory of evolution. Evolution states that humans have derived from non-human ancestors through a slow period of change and modification. A major problem with this theory for creationists is that it contrasts many Judeo-Christian principles including the concepts that God made man in his image, that Adam and Eve were the first people on Earth, and that man is superior to other beasts due to intellectual ability. However, as science continues to advance, evidence that supports the theory of evolution is becoming more readily available, which is persuading many people to abandon the idea that God created man in favor of the concept that man evolved from simpler organisms. Ultimately, biotechnology has advanced confirmation of the theory of the evolution to the point that a majority of people consider evolution to be a fact rather than a theory due to the amount of overwhelming evidence in favor of it and lack of evidence to support the certain existence of deities that are able to control life. As a consequence, people believe that it may one day be possible for humans to play the role of God with the amount of biotechnology available to us by altering human genetics, curing disease, prolonging life, and even creating new life on our own.

In order to truly understand the technological advances that will one day allow us to play the role of God, it is essential to first explain what the theory of evolution is and why it is superior to creationism. Although the basic unit of life is the cell, it is necessary to go further back than this to understand the true origin of life. Before the Earth was created, space was said to have contained many light elements, such as Hydrogen, that are included in the composition of many of the living and non-living things on our planet. While these light elements are useful to us, we require a far larger quantity of different types of elements to provide the building blocks necessary for live. Physicists theorize that this variety of elements was developed in a well-known phenomenon called the Big Bang Theory (Kragh, 1996). According to this theory, parts of space were very hot and dense, which resulted in a series of explosions of the light elements. As these elements cooled, they began taking on different properties, which included taking on different amounts of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Although this period took a long time, it eventually formed the elements that we find on our planet today. At the same time that the explosions caused by the Big Bang occurred, accretions of matter formed compounds which were believed to have eventually formed the Earth. Continued chemical reactions fueled by heat from the sun combined with the gravitational force generated by the new planet allowed for development of methane on the surface of the Earth.

Many creationists argue that there is no scientific way to prove this because we cannot possibly observe this phenomenon occurring. While this is a valid point, there are two flaws to this argument. Firstly, by this logic they cannot prove the existence of God and therefore cannot validate their creationist principles. Second, scientists are actually able to take advantage of laboratory experiments to recreate some characteristics that scientists believe to have been a part of early Earth. According to these researchers, early Earth was far from recognizable compared to the modern planet. It likely contained little and rather than having an oxygen environment, it contained a methane atmosphere, which is a simpler gas. As a consequence, scientists believe that the first organisms were able to live in methane environments. While this seems impossible, there are actually several strains of bacteria that are collectively referred to as methanogens who can live in anoxic environments and extreme temperatures.

The experiment that ultimately demonstrated that organic compounds can derive from inorganic compounds is the Miller-Urey experiment. These researchers were able to show that early compounds that were believed to have existed in early Earth, such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur dioxide could be converted to organic precursors of amino acids. The two researchers considered that if they mimic early Earth’s environment in tests tubes, which includes the induction of heat to promote water evaporation and sparks to act as lightening, they may be able to determine the chemical compounds that were created naturally after Earth’s creation. The experiment continued for two weeks straight to allow the full formation of any product. A good portion of the carbon from the carbon dioxide was found to have been incorporated into organic molecules. In addition, a smaller amount of these molecules went on to actually form amino acids, which make up the proteins in our bodies.

The Miller-Urey experiment demonstrates that people have the amazing power to mimic the environment of the Earth before humans existed (Miller et al., 1959). In addition, this experiment contradicts the ideas of creationism because it shows that proteins can be created from inorganic compounds using light and heat. While this occurred fairly quickly in the test tube due to the proximity of molecules and the small amount of chemicals being observed, it is important to note that this type of reaction would take far longer to occur for the planet as a whole. As a consequence, the formation of life units as basic as the building blocks of proteins could take thousands of years. Since creationists argue that God made the Earth in 7 days, the information that this experiment provides is clearly contradictory (Blank, n.d.). In fact, scientists predict that it took thousands of more years for proteins to become encapsulated in a cell, contributing to the first form of life. Clearly, development of life is slow and occurred over hundreds of thousands of years. Although it is difficult to provide more evidence using this specific kind of experiment, scientists have developed many other methods that contribute to the understanding of life and which ultimately contradict many Judeo-Christian religious concepts.

Two major modalities that have contributed to the idea that humans can one day take over the role of God in addition to disproving certain aspects of religious texts includes genetic transformation and transgenic crops. Genetic transformation involves the alteration of human, animal, plant, or bacteria DNA for some purpose (Lederberg, 1994). Practical applications of this method involve the transformation of bacterial cells with certain human proteins that provide clinical benefit such as insulin for simple mass production of the drug, the nutritional enhancement of plants and animals for food purposes, or the alteration of human DNA as a form of gene therapy (Walsh, 2005). In addition to these practical applications, scientists have used these techniques to learn more and more about the organisms that live on this planet, ranging from bacterial antibiotic properties to the understanding of gene translocations in diseases like cancer.

Many people who follow Judeo-Christian religions are opposed to technologies like those mentioned above due to ethical considerations. However, scientists have provided many important counterarguments in favor of their continued use. For example, people who believe that God should have ultimate control over life and death have a difficult time in understanding why we have the right to insert new genes into his creatures. However, it is important to note that these practices are highly regulated. Firstly, human research is unethical in general and is only used in situations in which methods have been deemed safe and the person receiving the treatment has been provided with informed consent. Second, all the research that is done with genetic transformation and transformation of crops is for a greater good of humanity. Although one can argue that mistakes may be made along the way and people and animals may die in the name of research, it is done so that the people living after them for generations to come could lead better lives. Since people who follow Judeo-Christian religions are generally in support of charitable causes, it is essential to make them understand how much this biotechnology can help people. For example, genetically modified crops can lead to increased plant yield and nutrition which can help feed the hungry and animals that have undergone genetic transformation will allow scientists to understand the mechanisms of certain human diseases.

Just as the Miller-Urey experiment showed that the theory of evolution has more evidence to support it compared to creationism, the fact that humans are able to take advantage of genetic transformation and transgenic crops promotes this idea as well. In fact, genetic transformation can be viewed as evolution in action in a sense. Evolution results from a series of mutations or changes in DNA that have occurred over a long period of time while genetic transformation is a process that is able to occur more rapidly. We are able to create genetic transformations that confer either survival advantages or survival disadvantages in the organisms we use in a quick period of time. These advantages and disadvantages model how evolution works; traits that are advantageous will continue to remain in the gene pool because of the increased ability for the organism that has it to reproduce while genes that provide the organism with some kind of disadvantages will be less likely to survive and reproduce will be removed from the gene pool. To study this concept more thoroughly, scientists have grown a culture of bacteria over a period of several years and tracked the mutations; since certain bacteria like E. coli replicate every 20 minutes, a lot of mutations were able to be accrued during the duration of the experiment. This study showed evolution in action; constant mutations to the bacteria determined which genes would continue to be present in the population and which ones would die out. Since we have many biotechnological techniques with which we can actually view evolution occurring, it is difficult to disprove it as a theory.

As biotechnology has continued to develop over the years, so has the possibilities of what we can do. Many researchers aim to push the limit on a daily basis and use biotechnology to do things that we have previously conceived as impossible. One of these “impossible” concepts is the idea of cloning. For a long period of time, humans have toyed with the idea of cloning cells, animals, and humans. While the cloning of animals and humans is occasionally deemed unethical, it is nonetheless possible. One of the first animals to have been successfully cloned was Dolly the sheep, who gained popularity because the cloned sheep lived longer than expected. Even though not a lot of research on cloning has been conducted due to laws of ethics in the United States, the overall purpose is simple: essentially, an egg cell is retrieved from a donor and half of the DNA that should be in the cloned animal will be in it, while a sperm cell will be engineered to have the other half. The zygote will then be inserted into a surrogate mother, and the fetus that develops will be a clone of whatever animal’s DNA was used to engineer the egg and the sperm. It should be noted that this technology could also be used to help couples who are unable to have a child on their own.

This technology is a good example of how humans can replace the role of God because in this situation, scientists are actually creating life from scratch. This could not possibly happen naturally. Furthermore, it contradicts the concept of creationism because it demonstrates how easily life can be created; if God was the sole creator of life, it is likely that most of the embryos generated using this technique would not survive. Although it took scientists some time to get to this point, technology in Europe has improved so that cloning is a simple task. In fact, it is likely that scientists would be able to clone a human if there weren’t so many ethical considerations preventing the support for this type of experiment.

The treatment of certain illnesses also demonstrates how humans can act as the hand of God. Recently, there have been many advancements in both HIV treatment and in certain types of cancers. A large topic in both of these fields is the use of gene therapy in order to kill infected HIV and cancer cells. In gene therapy, scientists modify infectious viruses to become non-infectious and encode specific functions (Sheridan, 2011). Lentiviruses, a group of viruses which HIV is considered a part of, and adenoviruses are typically used for this purpose (Desport, 2010). First, scientists delete the genes in HIV that are characteristic of the disease and extremely infectious. They break the proteins that the virus requires to enter the cell in separate compartments and attach these genes to therapeutic genes with the expectation that these will recombine in the cell and selectively target and replace genes that are causing the disease.

The above example demonstrates how humans can work as the hand of God in several ways. Firstly, we are able to alter the genomes of harmful viruses and reconstruct them into infectious molecules that actually have therapeutic benefit. Second, we are able to treat many of the illnesses that seem naturally occurring. If God truly had the ability to take life away, these kinds of interventions shouldn’t matter. The concept that certain things happen for a reason and according to God’s will, such as these deadly chronic diseases, now have a weakened claim because if these things really happened for a reason we shouldn’t be able to develop methods to prevent them from occurring or worsening.

While viruses are excellent in the use of gene therapy, they are also a good example of a proof of evolution. Since viruses are the smallest form of coding material, they are believed to be among the oldest units containing DNA or RNA on the planet. Since they must infect people to be able to survive, they typically integrate into the genomes of humans, plants, and animals, and then reincapsulate to infect a greater population. While these viruses are integrated into our genome, they typically pick up some of our own DNA which becomes integrated in their genome, which they pass on to other people. Since viruses usually leave some of their own DNA behind in their hosts as well, they are an important mechanism of gene transfer and therefore an essential component of the evolutionary process. As a consequence, the genes that are beneficial to us will be passed to the greatest amount of people because they confer survival traits. In the case of a virus, the virus may be actually passing traits to the host that allows it to become resistant to the virus. Scientific evidence for this is that there are thousands of different kinds of viruses that we are exposed to regularly, but most are non-infectious because our bodies have evolved to either recognize them and prevent them from entry or kill them upon infection.

In conclusion, advances in biotechnology have been extremely useful to the human existence. Before the advent of many technologies such as gene transfer and genetically modified plants, humans were unable to handle many of the health problems that faced them. Now however, we have been granted the power to understand our biology and the biology of the organisms around us and to use this knowledge to provide benefit to mankind. As a consequence, we have taken on a very God like role that allows us to do a variety of things from creating zygotes in a petri dish, cloning animals, and inserting new genes into organisms to increase our understanding of them in addition to increasing their benefit for human use. While these techniques make man God of a sort, it is essential to point out that this technology contradicts the ideas set forth in the Judeo-Christian religions. These people believe that many aspects of this work is unethical, that life should be controlled by God, and that creationism rather than evolution was the process by which humanity came to exist. However, it is necessary to emphasize that evolution has been shown to be fact rather than theory through a series of documented experimental evidence over many years. Although creationists are entitled to their own opinions about the creation of the planet, they should be made to understand the inarguable evidence that stands before them.

References

Blank, B. (n.d.). The Seven Days of Creation. Retrieved from http://www.keyway.ca/htm2002/sevncrea.htm

Desport, M. (2010). Lentiviruses and Macrophages: Molecular and Cellular Interactions. Caister Academic Press

Kragh, H. (1996). Cosmology and Controversy. Princeton University Press.

Lederberg, Joshua. (1994). The Transformation of Genetics by DNA: An Anniversary Celebration of AVERY, MACLEOD and MCCARTY(1944) in Anecdotal, Historical and Critical Commentaries on Genetics. The Rockfeller University, New York, New York 10021-6399

Miller, Stanley L.; Harold C. Urey. (1959). Organic Compound Synthesis on the Primitive Earth. Science.130 (3370): 245–51.

Sheridan, C. (2011). Gene therapy finds its niche. Nature Biotechnology. 29 (2): 121–128.

Walsh, Gary. (2005). Therapeutic insulins and their large-scale manufacture. Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 67 (2): 151–159.