Creation, Evolution and the Atomic Theory.

I'm meant to be revising, so attempt to reduce my distraction I'm playing the first episode of David Attenborough's First Life: Arrival. As I'm now blogging you can see it has been a wonderful revision aid.....But, it's got me thinking again about the Origin's of Life. If you've read my previous blog, God, Dinosaurs and Kangaroos don't worry I'm aiming this one to be slightly different (and more geeky). 

Creation and Evolution. 

They're both theories. And I'm a chemist and we study A LOT of theories. But, what exactly is a theory? According to google it is:

A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something. esp. one based on general principles independent of the thing to be....."Darwin's theory of evolution.

Which strikes me at being a bit useless as a theory. I see a theory of being a plausible explanation of an unknown thing. In Chemistry, we get told theories a lot, and then get told pretty soon after that they're wrong. I'm going to use this idea to explain how I think creation and evolution are two theories that help to explain one another.

Anyone who did GSCE Science will have probably studied the 'Plum Pudding Model.' The idea is that the atomic is spherical, is mainly composed of positive charge, but also has areas of negative charge.

You then get told that is a lie, leading to the Rutherford Atomic model (another lie) and then to the Bohr Atomic Model. Here the atomic is still spherical, but now the positive charge is grouped together in the centre, and the electrons (negative charge) go around in nice spherical rings (called shells) surrounding the nucleus. There is also rules to how many atoms are in each of these shells.

If anyone made it to A-Level, you promptly discover that shells aren't as nice as you initially thought and you learn a new term orbital. Which leads to diagrams like this.

Which not surprising get more complex when you reach Uni, but I won't bore you with that (code for I don't understand it!)

But the point I'm making is, that all three diagrams look different. Why? They're trying to understand what they've learnt through experiments  But, they all have similarities (spherical, areas of positive and negative charge.) And Creationism and Evolution also have similarities:

- they go from 'nothing' to life today (obvious point Jess)

- time phase (yes this leads to many arguments but the point I'm making is that neither say it was instantaneous. Even if you go very conservative Christian it still takes 6 days. 

- the development of the sun, then land and sea, then life.

And they also have differences. If you look at the later two atomic theories, you may ask why not teach the second model straight off. Why? Because it's too complex. In the same why, now we have science we can understand the more complex beginnings of life - the how. But before then did we need to know the 'how'? Or was the 'why' more important? I think both creation and evolution explain how life came into being but by answering two different questions. Creationism answers the why , whilst evolution the how. Which may explain why we have two very different answers. 

Why did Earth becoming into being? Because, according to the creation theory God could. If you read the creation story, it's about the power of God's word. He spoke and it came into being.

But How Earth developed? We have theories, like Evolution but I can not tell you the actually how, mainly because Scientists are still bickering. But, what we can be sure is that time played an important process and that life developed gradually from a small life species in the Sea (according to Attenborough's Arrival episode)