Part One: Life
Genesis 1:20-23 AV
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
The Hebrew word for “life” in verse 20 is nephesh, which is soul or breath life. We read that each of the moving creatures that had soul life were to bring forth abundantly after their kind or genus.
These verses teach that all life comes from life, and secondly, that like kinds always produce like kinds.
Scientists have never found a violation of this law. In fact, scientist Louis Pasteur, credited with the discovery of the Law of Biogenesis, proved that life only comes from life. His experiments invalidated the idea of the spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter (abiogenesis).
Every living thing produces after its kind or genus. To this day, we do not find birdy pigs or fishy men (at least not in this sense). Birds produce birds, reptiles produce reptiles, animals produce animals, etc. All life came from God.
Genesis 1:24 and 25 AV
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Every living creature – winged foul, sea creature, cattle, creeping thing and beast – was to bring forth after its kind or genus. This truth is repeated three times in verses 11-13 and six times in verses 20-25.
Mendel’s laws explain variations we find in species due to different genetic combinations that occur in breeding. Scientists have identified the extinction of certain species but they have never observed a new species forming in nature.
Variations in species also occur due to "natural selection". Nature is not capable of independent thought or making its own decisions; it does not have a will of its own. Variation within species is the result of complex genetic combinations.
The true wonder of natural selection involves the Genius that planned and provided the ability within a given species to adapt to a changing environment so that it could survive.
Both plants and animals generate progeny that may differ from the parents in some way. Genetics, chance, circumstances and the environment are involved in this process. Thus, some of the progeny may reproduce more than others reproduce and thus survive.
This is the only way that nature can "select" genetic characteristics well matched to a certain environment. This process also eliminates undesirable characteristics that threaten the survival of the species. We must understand that the natural selection process is not capable of producing new genes.
How are the different genera preserved? All living things have vast amounts of information stored in their cells. The information is stored in DNA. DNA is an information code. DNA passes the information on to RNA. RNA then reads the information, decodes it and then utilizes it to make proteins.