Page 46 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism

Once Upon a Time
There Was Darwinism

topic. His only
explanation for the
origin of life was that
the first cell could have

come into being in a
"warm little pond."
In a letter to
Joseph Hooker in 1871,
Darwin wrote:
It is often said that
all the conditions
for the first produc-
tion of a living or- Darwin's book, The Origin of Species
ganism are now
present, which could ever have been present. But if we could con-
ceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phos-
phoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a protein
compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more
complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly
devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before
living creatures were formed. 7
In short, Darwin maintained that if a small, warm pond con-
tained the chemical raw materials for life, they could form proteins

which could then multiply, and combine to form a cell. Moreover,
he asserted that such a formation was impossible under present
world conditions, but could have occurred in an earlier period.
Both of Darwin's claims are pure speculation, without
scientific foundation.
But they would inspire those evolutionists who
came after him and launch them on a fruitless

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