... on the other hand subjects like linguistics, social anthropology, comparative law and religion began to be studied from an evolutionary angle until today we are enabled to see evolution as a universal and all pervading process.Scripture in conjunction with science makes the creationist case in a powerful way. It is taking the Word of the God who wrote scripture and comparing it against the creation by the same God through scientific methods. Anything less would indicate a God that said one thing and did another thing. I recognize there are Christians that believe that perhaps God used evolution as His method of creation and this may be the saddest position of all. Henry Morris writes:
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The belief that God used evolution to make man is properly called theistic evolution, not creation. Evolution purports to explain the origin of things by natural processes, creation by supernatural processes; and it is semantic confusion to try to equate the two. Theistic evolution says there is a God behind the natural processes which cause evolution; atheistic evolution says there is not. Both forms of evolution assume the same framework of evolutionary history and the same evolutionary mechanisms, so there is no scientific way to discriminate between the two, as there is between creationism and evolutionism. Theistic evolution must be judged on the basis of theological criteria, not scientific. The creation and evolution models. on the other hand, can be compared and evaluated on strictly scientific criteria, as is done, for example, in the book, What is Creation Science? Creationists maintain that evolution is a poor scientific model of origins, strictly on the basis of scientific criteria.
The restriction of "no disproving evolution to prove creation" seems again to try and handicap the other side. If something is the truth then one cannot disprove it. At best they can only try to confuse and mislead. I welcome evolutionist to try and disprove the creation story. And many try, as one small example through trying to discredit the flood of Noah. While evolution has in recent years enjoyed the position of stating myths and most people accepting them as facts. Yet, both evolutionist and creationist alike agree that there are only two possible known choices. So to disprove one is to indirectly prove the other. It is only nature that both sides would spend time showing issues with the other.
I will not rely on the "complexity and awesome beauty" argument, but unlike in 1995, I will use it so some degree.
One may ask if "Creation Science" is based on the Book of Genesis. The answer is no. Scientific creationism deals with arguments on genetics, paleontology, geology, thermodynamics, and other sciences with theology or religion. The scientific case for creation is based on our knowledge of DNA, mutations, fossils, and other scientific terms and concepts which do not even appear in the Bible. Furthermore, creationist scientists many who were formerly evolutionists made a thorough study of the scientific evidences related to origins and are firmly convinced (not by religious faith but by the scientific evidences) that the scientific data explicitly support the Creation Model and contradict the Evolution Model.
Now you may ask isn't this all simply a backdoor method of getting Biblical creationism introduced? Sure, if you want. But one could just as easily ask whether teaching evolution is a backdoor method of introducing atheism. Scientific creationism and Biblical creationism can, in fact, be taught quite independently of each other.
So let’s get to the discussion...
I have paired down the issues to observation and study of basic laws of nature, examining the fossil record, and the age of the earth, variation among genes, scientific observation of evolution, and evidence of the human soul.
I also point out some of the unsolved problems of evolution,
not to prove creation but rather, to establish the standard for a theory to be considered in the origins of the universe.
At the end, I provide some Biblical perspective on the discussion.
A simple summary of the creation story is to that origins of the universe is a completed work by a supernatural external power and the net present decrease in complexity. Under this model we can predict that:
Below are the other points. These points will be explored later.
The law of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of motion, and all other truly basic laws appear to always function in the way they do now. The "Law of Mass Conservation" and the "Law of Energy Conservation" shows conservation and stability which is consistent with the creation model.
A little more philosophical consideration is the law of "cause-and-effect" only the creation model provides an adequate answer (The universe could not be its own cause). The theory of relativity teaches that all frames of reference as to size, position, time and motion in the world are relative, not absolute (universe can not be an absolute in itself).
Consider that there are far more harmful mutations than beneficial. It would then be more probable that a population would slip backward rather than move forward. All observed instances of natural selection involve conservative adaptations to the environment (ie. peppered moth) not generation or preservation of mutants of higher order. Mutations are harmful, not helpful, and natural selection acts to try to prevent their getting established in the population as a whole.
We all have seen seeds turn into trees, water freeze, and no one believes the earth is a closed system. Before going much farther let's look at what a couple of evolutions have said.
"No matter how carefully we examine the energetics of living systems we find no evidence of defeat of thermodynamic principles, but we do encounter a degree of complexity not witnessed in the non-living world."
Isaac Asimov:
"Another way of stating the second law then is 'The universe is constantly getting more disorderly'. Viewed that way we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself, it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order, how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out -- all by itself -- and that is what the second law is all about"
Richard Dawkins trying to ignore this issue altogether by stating evolution does not violate the second law anymore than the growth of a baby. Well that is precisely the whole debate. How did that growth of babies come to be. It is evidence of design by a greater intelligence. The growth of babies DOES violate the second law and must be explained by something. And evolution is powerless to give any proposed method since it would go directly against the main premise of the theory. See "Information and Mechanism to Convert Energy" below.
How are fossils formed in the first place? To become fossilized a plant/animal usually needs to have hard parts (bones, shell, wood, etc), quickly buried, and undisturbed throughout the long process.
The creation model would expect the fossil record to show a wide variety of organisms much like today. The model would expect fossil assemblages to represent ecological communities. The model would expect animals living at the lowest elevations to be buried at the lowest elevations. There would be few in any terrestrial sediments or land plants or animals in the lower strata of the geologic columns. Larger more diversified animals would be higher in the column since they could escape burial for longer periods of time. Man would escape burial (not necessarily death) for the most part and few human fossils would be present. This is a general guide and given the nature of a cataclysmic model, some exceptions are expected to the general guide. They should be just that - an exception.
There is no place on earth that contains the whole geological column. That only exists in text books. The geological column is out of order all over the globe. There are newer fossils below older fossils, in some cases by millimeters and in other cases by many meters. So uniformitatianism must not be true, and there have been local castrophies everywhere to explain the geological column within the framework of evolution.
And if you don't assume evolution, how does one know that the different rock formations happen millions or billions of years apart?
The evolution theory claims the geologic columns have gradually built-up over millions (if not billions) of years. This would mean that meteorites would have been incorporated into the geologic columns. Meteorites are recognizable by their high nickel content and thus we should find be able to detect these meteorites. No meteorites have been found in the geologic columns except in recent "geological time" near meteor craters as in Arizona for example.
The Poynting-Robertson effect teaches us that debris will eventually be pulled in by the sun's gravitational force. Given the small mass of the cosmic dust, it should not take long to clear the dust. Furthermore, the Poynting-Robertson effect would have a sorting effect on meteor streams. However observed meteor showers by Fred Whipple and his research team found no dispersion in the meteor stream.
The average life span of short-period comets are on the order of 1,500 to 10,000 years. Today, we still have an abundance of them. So how are these short-period comets being produced? There has been proposed that the "oort cloud" is the source of the comets. This is not based on observational evidence but rather was proposed as a possible way to explain.
R.V. Gentry and others indicated that coal believed to be approximately 100 million years old, is in reality only a few thousand years old. They conducted the same survey on coalified wood found in the Devonian Chatanooga shale. This shale commonly is believed to be around 350 million years old, Gentry showed could not possible be that old. The survey is done by radioactive dating of uranium where double halos are found where the first halo is oval followed by a circular one. The assumption is that the oval halo was first a circle that was later compressed. Since the second halo is circular it is concluded that the uranium must have been in the wood prior to the wood turning into coal.
Radio-active dating assumes uniformitarianism but the explanation of the geological columns states just the opposite. All the dating systems that I have understood (and there are many that I admit that I have not studied enough to understand yet) assume no daughter substance and that is something that no one can know since no one was there. This invalidates those clocks.
The earth's magnetic field has been observed for at least 135 years. There is no observed indication that it is a sine curve. Instead it's been the typical exponential curve that any half life function would have. The current half life of the magnetic field is 1400 years. This would have made the earth a magnetic star within 10 thousand years.
Now I am not claiming this is true, but would not an objection go against the uniformitarianism claim of slow gradual build up of the earth's crust?
Now if we take evolution then there would not be wide range of gene combinations in the early stages. The new forms of gene's would need to come from mutations. And as natural selection took hold then certain gene information would be lost forever when that combination proved to be weakest and would not survive. We would need to see more that variation back and forth without a net gain to show evidence of evolution. I am not aware of any such observation. The pepper moths went from predominately light with dark spots to dark with light spots and then back again. There is not net gain or moving to the species to another species. Certainly there appeared to be some adaptation that seems to be related to air pollution and not by the change in the color of tree bark.
Evolution in the extended sense can be defined as a directional and essentially irreversible process occurring in time, which in its course gives rise to an increase of variety and an increasingly high level of organization in its products. Our present knowledge indeed forces us to view that the whole of reality is evolution... a single process of self-transformation.Basically, Huxley is saying that evolution is happening now and without any God (self-transformation). So we should be able to witness evolution today, right? Creation, admittedly, cannot be viewed today since it is no longer going on. No one has ever witness or documented evolution happening. Variation with a kind has but that is all within a species and is not evidence of evolution. Both sides recognize adaptation and variation. Okay so evolution is too slow to observe in one lifetime. Then we should be able to view it in the fossil record since that record is billions and billions of years. So why is it that we have one celled organisms that then jump to multi-celled invertibrae with no transitional fossils. No two cell organisms, no three cell organisms, on four cell organisms, etc. Creationists are told by evolutionist that it happened too fast to be recorded in the fossils record. Not to be funny but then the conclusion is that we cannot see evolution in the present because it happens too slow, we cannot see evolution in the past because it happened too fast. Now creationists get charged with their blind faith to scripture but it seems to this author that it is the evolutionists that walk by faith and not sight.
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It is said that we lose at least one species a year. That would mean thousands of extinct species just in the time of civilization. This suggests that we are declining in variation not increasing and is consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
New studies have indicated that the mind continues after the brain dies.
Together, they suggest there is something more than the physical body. If true, how did that evolve and connect up with the physical body unless created?
So I conjectured that our Universe had its physical origin as a quantum fluctuation for some pre-existing state of nothingnessThis is a serious statement that as I understand it is using mathematics with something like if 1 and -1 equal 0 (zero) or nothing then 0 (zero) or nothing can be made into something and negative something. The problem is that in evolution there is nothing to make this nothingness turn into something and negative something. Creation you have a being, God, which did this.
p. 15
"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree ... The belief that an organ as perfect as the eye could have formed by natural selection is more than enough to stagger anyone."
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
"If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection."
"We have seen in the last chapter that whole groups of species sometimes falsely appear to have abruptly developed; and I have attempted to give an explanation of this fact, which if true would be fatal to my views."
Paraphrasing David Guzik, we must understand the Bible literally according to its literary context. For example, when King David says in Psalm 6:6 All night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with my tears, he is speaking in a poetic literary form. We understand that he doesn't literally mean that he cried so much that he flooded his room to the point that his bed is floating in it. But, when the Bible speaks in a historical narrative, we understand it as literal history - not make-believe fables and myths meant only to tell a spiritual story.
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Gen 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Gen 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Gen 1:4 And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Gen 1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Gen 1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so.
Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
Gen 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so.
Gen 1:10 And God called the dry [land] Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that [it was] good.
Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Gen 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
Gen 1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Gen 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Gen 1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also.
Gen 1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
Gen 1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that [it was] good.
Gen 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Gen 1:20 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.
Gen 1:21 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.
Gen 1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
Gen 1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Gen 1:24 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.
Gen 1:25 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.
Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Gen 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Gen 1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Gen 1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, [I have given] every green herb for meat: and it was so.
Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Now if you take the "a day could be a thousand years (or for evolution a million or billion years)" then the plants created in the third day would have to somehow survive without the sun for thousands, millions, or billions of years. Adam would have been walking over top of the great fossil record and that would go contrary to what Paul stated in Romans 5:12 and 8:20-22 where man's sin brought about death, even to animals.
Chapter two of Genesis is an appendix to the history of the creation told in chapter one. More particularly explaining and enlarging upon that part of the history which relates immediately to man.
Gen 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
Gen 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
Gen 2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
Gen 2:4 These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
Gen 2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and [there was] not a man to till the ground.
Gen 2:6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Gen 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
Gen 2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Gen 2:10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
Gen 2:11 The name of the first [is] Pison: that [is] it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where [there is] gold;
Gen 2:12 And the gold of that land [is] good: there [is] bdellium and the onyx stone.
Gen 2:13 And the name of the second river [is] Gihon: the same [is] it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
Gen 2:14 And the name of the third river [is] Hiddekel: that [is] it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river [is] Euphrates.
Gen 2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
Gen 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Gen 2:18 And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
Gen 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought [them] unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that [was] the name thereof.
Gen 2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
Gen 2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
Gen 2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Gen 2:23 And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Gen 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Henry Morris stated:
True knowledge and true wisdom, which, is to say, science and true philosophy, must come from God alone, and therefore must conform to His framework of revealed Truth. The wise man said: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge," and he also said: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 1:7; 9:10). The Apostle Paul, in a tremendous doxology, shouted: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen" (Romans 11:33-36).And he also emphasized that in Jesus Christ, the Living Word of God, "are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). Not only religious knowledge, but all knowledge; all the treasures of science and true philosophy are hid in Jesus Christ, who is the Creator and Sustainer of the physical universe!
Ray Stedman stated:
Now to these questions, Genesis supplies answers, the only answers that fit. It reveals to us that the key to human life, including the material universe and the mystery of our own nature---plus that invisible realm of spirit life we know little about---is spiritual, not physical or material. That is why we can never know ourselves or the universe or God by studying nature. We'll never understand it that way. Ultimately we run up against a closed door. It becomes so complex we cannot grasp it. Why? Because the Bible tells us the key is in the spiritual realm. When we take this book and open it up, we discover that we are moving past all the discoveries of science today into a realm to which science has not yet come where we have answers to these questions.It was no less a person than Albert Einstein who put his finger squarely upon the inadequacies of science when he said, "Science is like reading a mystery novel." You go down to the drug store and buy a dime novel (of course they cost more now) and take it home and you go to bed at night. Everybody else has left the house and it is dark. You get into bed, snap on the light, prop yourself up with pillows and start reading. In the first chapter there are two or three murders, with several bodies lying around. The whole of the story begins to focus on "who done it. " Clues appear as you read on. In about the third chapter you've decided that the butler did it. Continuing on, the finger of guilt points more and more to the butler. But then you reach the last chapter in which suddenly all the previous evidence is upset and it wasn't the butler after all. It was the little old lady in tennis shoes who lives on the third floor. She did it. Now Einstein says science is like that. It is always struggling from hypothesis to synthesis from a few clues here and there, but it never gets the answer. And then suddenly some new light comes along that throws the first estimate all off, and all the previous answers seem of little value.
David Guzik provides a commentary on Genesis Chapter 1. He points out much, here is the first point:
1. We come to the Bible knowing there is a God"So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (Genesis 1:27,28).a. Though the Bible nowhere argues extensively for the existence of God, it does tell us how we can know He exists
b. Most pointedly, the Bible tells us that we can know God exists because of what we see in creation
i. The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language Where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. (Psalms 19:1-4)
c. Though many seek to deny the effectiveness of the teleological argument for the existence of God (the understanding that there must be a purposeful intelligence that has created this world), it still remains unanswered by the atheist or agnostic
ii. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:20)
"But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body. All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds" (I Corinthians 15:38,39).
"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four footed beasts, and creeping things . . . even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge" (Romans 1:21-23;28).
"Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear" (Isaiah 59:1, 2).
"Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Romans 8:7,8).
"For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (II Peter 1:21).
"But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:11,12).
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (Matthew 5:17,18).
For more see The Bible Is a Textbook of Science by Henry Morris.