Science and the Bible
“If evolution is a fact,
then why does my pop go flat?”
by David Churchill

     “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)  The Bible teaches that life on this planet was designed and created by a powerful, intelligent, eternal, pluralistic being described simply as God (Genesis chapters 1-2).  Those who refuse or struggle understanding this explanation ask us to accept their hypothetical explanation called “evolution.”
     The hypothesis of evolution, simply put, is that with the help of millions and billions of years life suddenly sprang into existence during a chance meeting of chemicals and has been progressively improving by random chance in organization and complexity ever since.  In short, add enough time and anything, especially the unlikely, will happen and get better than the previous.  However, can time in and of itself really be a mechanism for positive change?
     If I place in a box all the components and pieces necessary to build a computer, how long must I shake the box before I have a fully operational computer that is turned on and ready to use?  One day?  One year?  One century?  One million or one billion years, perhaps?
     Some of you at this point are ready to say, “Don’t be so silly!  Even if a couple pieces did line up correctly, they would come apart before any screws or bolts in the box could fit in the holes to tighten them in place.  Besides, the delicate components would break and crumble very quickly before they had any opportunity to fit together properly!”
     Very true, indeed!  We all have experienced different situations that prove how silly my hypothetical example is.  Clearly our experience shows us that opportunity and feasibility, instead of time, are the key factors.  Yet, according to what the supporters of evolution ask us to believe, the pieces should somehow hold together long enough to produce a better computer than the parts were originally capable of producing, if only enough time is allowed for shaking the box.

     The evolutionists have similar problems explaining exactly how random mixings of chemicals and compounds could organize enough to create life as we know.  And even if this level of organization could occur over enough time, i.e. millions & billions of years, these people have to deal with an even bigger obstacle:  the chemicals and compounds involved are very delicate and tend to “break and crumble very quickly.”
     In case that statement sounded both overconfident and confusing, let’s go over some general facts about all chemical reactions before we continue.
     1. All chemical reactions involve reactants (the chemicals or compounds being used up) and products (the new chemicals or compounds being formed).
     2. All chemical reactions have a kinetic equilibrium constant or K (determined by energy changes involved in the reaction) that establishes which direction the reaction “prefers” to go.  A forward direction is when the reactants form the products and a backward direction is when the products revert back to the reactants.  Most organic compounds associated with life contain the elements of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen.  Several forward reactions are needed to go from these basic elements to complex organic compounds and then several more to form even a simple one-celled organism.  Without life to manage the energy and direction for these construction processes, most of these reactions have low equilibrium constants in the hundredths and thousandths of a percent and some are as low as millionths of a percent.

large K > 1.0	prefers forward direction: reactants forming products	forming products releases energy reverting back to reactants requires energy
K = 1.0	no preference
small K < 1.0	prefers backward direction: products reverting back to reactants	forming products requires energy; reverting back to reactants releases energy

     3. The duration of a reaction depends largely on its environment and the available supply of reactants & products & energy.  In a stable closed environment where no reactants, products, or energy are removed or added, the reaction reaches a balanced equilibrium, at which point the original reactants are being formed by the backward reaction as fast as they are being taken up to form products by the forward reaction.  The reaction can go on indefinitely since nothing escapes away from the reaction and nothing is used up or consumed by the reaction.  In an unstable open enviroment where reactants, products, and/or energy can escape away from the reaction, the reaction cannot reach a balanced equilibrium.  The reaction will proceed mostly in the direction established by the kinetic equilibrium constant and will continue until at least one portion (reactants, products, or energy) is either totally consumed by the reaction and/or else escapes away from the reaction.

     To better understand the impact of a chemical reaction with a small equilibrium constant (K < 1.0), let’s look at the fizzy bubbles in soda pop.
     To give us these fizzy bubbles, the soda-pop makers add “carbonic acid,” a non-toxic, but unstable chemical with a small K of about 0.03 or 3%.    Carbonic acid (a liquid product) is formed by combining carbon dioxide (a gas reactant) and water (a liquid reactant) under pressure (energy) and then stored in a sealed bottle (a closed environment) with our soda pop.  While the bottle stays sealed and keeps the liquid under pressure, the reaction’s equilibrium is balanced.  In other words, while some carbonic acid in our sealed bottle is breaking down into carbon dioxide and water, some other carbon dioxide and water in the bottle is combining to form carbonic acid.
     When we unseal the bottle and pour the soda pop into a glass, we’re changing its environment from closed to open.  The liquid loses pressure (energy) causing the carbonic acid (liquid product) to rapidly break down into water (liquid reactant) and carbon dioxide (gas reactant).  The carbon dioxide then collects into our fizzy bubbles which float up releasing the gas into the atmosphere and the pop has gone “flat” when the bubbles stop forming.
     In this open enviroment, thanks to its small K of 0.03, the product (carbonic acid) prefers reverting back to its reactants.  For every 3 times the reaction moves forward making carbonic acid, the reaction moves backward 100 times releasing water and carbon dioxide… in other words, three steps forward and 100 steps backward.  Because the reaction tends to release more carbon dioxide going backwards than it uses going forwards and because the carbon dioxide and energy escape before the reaction can reach a balanced equilibrium, the pop always goes flat in our glass.
     What about the several series of hundreds & thousands of chemical reactions required to create all the highly complex organic compounds that life needs and produces for itself?  Reactions, that without life to supervise the direction and the energy involved, have much, much, much smaller equilibrium constants in the hundredths and thousandths of a percent and some even as low as millionths of a percent?  Can adding huge amounts of time help the evolutionist successfully prevent them from “going flat” in his glass?

     We can create a thought experiment visualizing ourselves making the evolutionist's compound that will create life on its own.
     As we do this, let’s be excessively generous for a moment to ourselves & the evolutionist and pretend that a series of only ten forward reactions is necessary to create a single compound capable of forming life in an open environment like the Earth's atmosphere (rather than the hundreds & thousands of reactions and multiple compounds managed by life every day to maintain itself).  And while we're being so generous in our supposition, let's also pretend that each of these ten reactions has a very gentle equilibrium constant of one tenth of a percent (very, very lenient compared to reality).  Now, in our supposing things, let's also pretend to give ourselves a handy supply of all the correct basic ingredients the evolutionist needs for the first reaction to begin (as opposed to making him and us wait for the right starter ingredients to spontaneously come into existence).  Finally, since the low Ks warn us to expect each of the ten reactions will prefer to go backwards, let's pretend to allow enough time for enough starts to guarantee for certain there will be at least once these ingredients go forward through all ten reactions in the correct order producing more complicated products at each stage until at last the tenth reaction produces a life-forming compound (once should be enough, right?).  By multiplying together the Ks of the ten reaction, we can estimate the K for the entire series of reaction (0.001 x 0.001 x 0.001 x 0.001 x 0.001 x 0.001 x 0.001 x 0.001 x 0.001 x 0.001).  Our little chain of ten reactions, as a whole, would move backwards towards the initial basic ingredients 1x10^30 times easier than forwards to the life-forming compound.  Therefore, we would need to start this process 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times if we want to guarantee the evolutionist we will produce his life-forming compound at least once.
     Exactly how much time are we talking about in our generously lenient, but admittedly ficticious, scenario for life to evolve from the basic elements of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen?  Well, assuming our short series of forward reactions were able to start a million times each and every second, then the time needed to guarantee creating life in this manner would take over 2,000,000 times the supposed 15 billion-year age of our universe.
     Unfortunately for the evolutionist, the real odds are not even close to being this good.  Also, scientists are in conflict about what natural conditions, if any, could allow all the necessary chemical reactions to happen without the influence of living organisms.

     The real issue here is not about time.  It’s about the missing feasibility and opportunity that the evolutionists overlook in their explanation of the beginning of life on our planet.  It’s about our evidences and experiences crying out for a different explanation — an explanation that fits the facts of reality — the explanation God gives us in the Bible.
     So… the next time you hear people confidently insist the “fact” of life evolving out of the “primordial soup,” just ask them why your pop still goes flat.