Dr. Greg Bahnsen made a memorable analogy.
He compared the atheist’s view of human origins to a cake-mix. Atheists speculate that some mixture of various elements, such as matter, energy, and time combined with an element of inexplicable who-knows-what and, against all biological principles, produced life. This magical event, according to atheists, only happened once and has never happened again.
Of course, Dr. Bahnsen emphasized the irrefutable fact that non-life cannot produce life. You can listen to his informative talk about the atheist’s view of the origin of life at approx. 1:13:00 here.
His analogy of the cake-mix runs like this:
“Where did life come from? (7:16) The idea that there was some prebiotic phase of evolution where chemicals just somehow came together accidentaly and life originated is a preposterous scientific theory…It makes no difference how much you tinker with a cake mix, you’re not ever going to get a political constitution out of a cake mix…you all have some general idea of how cakes are made and you have some idea of the charater of political constitutions– They have no relationship to each other! They don’t share attributes. And so, for somebody to say, “I think political constitutions arise from cake mixes,” you’d say, “Well, that’s preposterous! And some will say, “Give us time, we’re working on it.”
That’s essentially what the atheist is saying when he asserts human life arose from non-life. Atheistic dogma claims that the cake-mix of chemicals mixed together over eons of time, and not only did life magically arise, but human freedom, morality, intelligence arose right along with it. It’s an incredible leap of faith.
Concerning the origin of life, atheists demand an exception to all known scientific knowledge. Bahnsen goes on to say, “Inorganic chemicals do not, by mechanical reconfiguration, give rise to the organic. So we see the absurdity of the atheistic materialist worldview and that they have qualities coming from their opposites: life coming from non-life, the moral coming from the non-moral, the intelligent coming from the unintelligent. That’s not good science or good philosophy.”
I created this visual aid to teach these concepts to younger students. While children may not be able to grasp the full measure (no pun intended) of these philosophical considerations, being introduced to them helps prepare for advanced studies. Strong visual images provide mental “pegs” on which to hang the concepts for future retrieval. I even included a tiny, rolled-up constitution in the cake mix to reinforce the analogy.
Atheists often charge Christians with believing in fairy tales and magic. They assert that the belief in God is no different than belief in mermaids, gnomes, and pixie dust.
But it’s atheists who actually believe in magic: The idea that life arose from non-life requires a magical element added into the mix. Science cannot explain it. Atheists will deny that magic is part of their view, but if we study the comments made by some of the world’s most notable atheists, we find that a magical mix is part of their explanation for life.
If we press atheists to give an account of how the first living thing came from non-living matter, their responses reveal an undeniable belief in the magic of evolution.
Here are a few statements from prominent atheists, beginning with Charles Darwin:
- (1871) Charles Darwin explained the origin of life as if it were a magical cauldron of primordial stew that mixed itself: ““It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present.— But if (& oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia & phosphoric salts,—light, heat, electricity &c present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes…”[1]
- Richard Dawkins actually uses the word “magic” to describe the possibilities of deep time: “…however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here…Scientists invoke the magic of large numbers…”[2]
- Peter Atkins attributes the origin of life to an event that resembles : “Nothing rolled over into something.”[3]
- Daniel Dennett invokes the fairy tale of primitive myths, but instead of turtles all the way down, it’s robots: “We’re robots made of robots made of robots…”[4]
- Stephen Hawking suggested life began just as if the flies really had come from the raw meat (even though that’s been disproven for years): “The early appearance of life on Earth suggests that there’s a good chance of the spontaneous generation of life, in suitable conditions.”[5]
The claim that life arose from non-life has been repeated for so long, it has taken on the status of proven fact, but it has never been proven and never will be. Life does not come from non-life but from the living God who created the world and everything in it: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” (Genesis 1:1)
[1] Letter from Charles Darwin to Joseph Hooker (1871) https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7471.xml
[2] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 165.
[3] Hugh Ross vs Peter Atkins Debating Origins, Unbelievable with Justin Brierly, YouTube at approx. 20:30
[4] How Did Life Evolve? Daniel Dennett, Nick Lane, and Sarah Walker, The Institute of Art and Ideas, YouTube, approx. 6:20
[5] Stephen Hawking, Life in the Universe, 1996 https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/life-in-the-universe