The Hardiness of Life Testifies to God’s Wisdom
ANIMAL life has been on the earth for many thousands of years, even before man’s appearance. During that time countless generations have lived and died. Some kinds or varieties have become extinct. But a great number survive to this day, probably nearly all of those kinds of animals that have lived since the great Flood.
In this long space of time, cataclysms have affected wide areas and diseases have swept through plant life and animal and human populations. Yet life persists. Moreover, fossils that have been discovered are practically identical with forms living today. Only a minor variation appears here and there, much as there are slight variations in particular animal and plant kinds now in existence contemporaneously.
How is this amazing ability to survive possible, since life seems so fragile and since the mechanism of reproduction depends on microscopic cells and is so exceedingly complex? Even though intricate almost beyond belief, the reproductive process is actually so stable that the majority of living creatures possess all their faculties and functions. For example, most babies are able to live after being born and nearly all have normal eyes, arms, legs, internal organs, mentality and good use of all these endowments.
All this testifies to the wisdom and glory of the Creator. The hardiness and persistence of life through all the centuries of time and circumstance also point to his purpose to have the earth continually teeming with life to time indefinite.
Resistance to Poisons Developed?
It is known among informed persons that insects and microorganisms in time seem to develop a resistance to poisons used to combat them. Insects against which DDT was at first very effective apparently become immune to it, some resisting such deadly chemicals as hydrocyanic acid. Similarly, even the so-called “miracle drugs” lose their effectiveness against what have become disease microbes in their effect on man. Certain infections, syphilis and other diseases, require ever more massive doses and yet resist. Some bacteria are reported to have increased 16,000-fold in ability to resist penicillin.
Evolutionists conclude that this is a proof of evolution. But is it? Does this current immunity of the insects and microorganisms mean that they have developed an immunity to the poisons? No. For the poison either killed those on which it was used, or was ineffective. Those it killed could not develop a resistance, or have offspring that were immune, for they were dead. The survival of some among the population means that there were some that were immune at the start. This immunity was a genetic factor placed in the kind at creation, one that could appear in some of the offspring and not in others. This is true also in human genetics.
A comparison can be made with respect to talent in a family line. The father and mother may not display any musical talent, but their child may be a genius in this field. In tracing back through the child’s ancestry, the parents may discover that the great-great-grandfather had unusual musical talent. It did not show up again in the family line until it was uncovered in this man’s great-great-grandson. Some may choose to call this a “mutation,” but actually the trait was already there in the hereditary factors.
The principle was proved some years ago by experiments conducted by geneticist Milislav Demerec, at Carnegie Institution in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. He used for his experiment colon bacteria, which can be cultured on a nutritive broth or nutritive agar. Under a temperature of about 98 degrees Fahrenheit these bacterial cells divide about every twenty minutes. One cell may yield thousands of millions of progeny in a day.
Streptomycin, an antibiotic drug, was used to stop the growth of these bacteria. However, it was discovered that out of several thousand million a few cells survived. Evolutionists claim that a mutation (a sudden departure from the parent type) occurred, and that this is an evolutionary step. But this idea is refuted by the actual findings in these tests. These showed that no change in heredity was brought about by the streptomycin treatment. It merely killed the nonimmune bacteria and spared those against which it was ineffective.
Demerec found that in any large culture a few resistant bacteria appeared, even when the culture had not been previously exposed to streptomycin. About one cell in every thousand million was naturally resistant in every generation. Therefore, streptomycin had not produced the so-called “mutations.”
Then the reverse side of the situation was investigated. In the streptomycin-treated solution the nonresistant strain died out, but the resistant cells lived and brought forth progeny and “took over” the population growth. Nevertheless, among this progeny about thirty-seven cells out of every thousand million produced were of the basic type, sensitive to streptomycin. Next, the surviving population was removed from the streptomycin-treated nutritive agent and placed in untreated broth. What happened? Now the nonresistant strain began to flourish and “took over” the population. The resistant strain did not fare so well, yet continued to appear as at the start, about once in a thousand million times.
Earth Always to Be Filled with Living Things
All this reveals the hardiness and persistence of life. It explains why disease epidemics can wipe out most of a population, yet leave some untouched due to their having a natural resistance to the particular disease germs involved. Furthermore, as to mankind, we see that, despite the ravages of nearly 6,000 years of sin, well-formed, handsome men and women, with brilliant minds, are still being produced.
Now, however, we behold man ruining his own environment. Health hazards of all kinds are brought about by food additives, by pollution of food, water and air, and the threat of death from crime or war increases daily. Man is literally ruining the earth, and likely, if allowed sufficient time, would make the earth uninhabitable.
But the Creator purposed earth to be a place perpetually inhabited by men and women, as well as by animals. God says he will step in at this time when earth-wide desolation threatens and will “ruin those ruining the earth.”—Rev. 11:18.
So, just as life has always existed, in that Jehovah the Source of life has always lived, he purposes that life will always exist on this planet.—Ps. 90:2; 36:9.