Water, water everywhere.

Many scientists are rejoicing today, after hearing news that the Phoenix spacecraft has succesfully located water on Mars. According to the report, "...the robot confirmed the presence of frozen water lurking below the Martian permafrost." The existence of H2O on another planet has for a long time been thought of as a key ingredient in locating the "organic-based compounds essential for simple life forms to emerge."

Aside from the question of significance regarding water being present outside our own planet, the key assertion here is that enough the presence of the right "compounds" could cause life to "emerge". The background for this is, of course, the evolutionist's assumption that living things, with all their incredible complexity from the cellular level to all the functions of vitality and reproduction, have simply "emerged" from the presence of "compounds".

I wonder if I might one day go out to my kitchen and find that various "compounds" like flour, sugar, milk, baking powder, sugar and eggs have somehow caused a cake to "emerge". Maybe after several billion years? Whew! I wouldn't want to taste it, since I've seen what happens to milk after just a few weeks. I know such an analogy is ridiculous, and confuses one process (evolutionary theory) with another (food preparation), but the absurdity of emerging cake batter is a small matter compared to the absurdity of imagining the processes of life as the end result of "emergence".

I know scientists take their method of hypothesizing answers to a given question very seriously. But what trial and experimentation has successfully demonstrated that throwing enough "compounds" into a bowl could cause life to "emerge" from the mix? Chemical reactions are not life. And theorizing it might happen if left alone for a billion years or so doesn't establish anything credible, since this can't be observed by either past or present analysis.

The real question, I believe, is: Why are evolutionary scientists so eager to prove the "emergence" of life, even with so many difficulties in proving such a theory, but so reluctant to accept the "creation" of life, for which there is not only a well-supported body of divine revelation on the subject but also an abundance of supporting evidence in the complexity of life?

Could it be that they don't really want to believe in a Creator? If they are willing to believe in God (and indeed, some scientists do believe God is responsible for the machinery of evolution), then why the talk of "emerging" life? But to refuse to attribute a world like ours, one that shows so much evidence of order and design, to a Great Designer, is certainly, as Paul put it, to "suppress the truth in unrighteousness." (Romans 1:18)