Evolution verses Creationism - What Are The Facts?

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Evolution verses Creationism - What Are The Facts?

    Published in the Christian Chronicle - By S. E. Ray - 08/20/06

    Aristotle believed that decaying material could be transformed by the “spontaneous action of Nature” into living animals. His hypothesis was ultimately rejected, however Aristotle’s hypothesis has been replaced by another spontaneous generation hypothesis, one that requires billions of years to go from the molecules of the universe to cells, and then, via random mutation/natural selection, from cells to the variety of organisms living today. This version, which postulates chance happenings less a deity eventually leading to the phenomenon of life, is called the Theory of Evolution.

    The subject of creation is vast and consumes volumes. The mere intermediate understanding is daunting to even begin to perceive. Much like medicine, there are so many areas of specialty; one would have to concentrate on one given area to hope to gain some understanding. However, despite our lack of knowledge, we know the God of creation already knows the answers and must pity mankind’s pathetic attempt to try and quantify his ordered precision.

    Let's first review 3 of the main positions, whereas many exist including the newest creationist term "Intelligent Design."
    • New Earth Creationists: These are fundamentalists who hold that the earth, its life forms, and the rest of the universe were created by God during a literal six day, 144 hour, interval, fewer than 10,000 years ago. It is accepted that minor changes have occurred within various species amidst the time line, however no new species have evolved or been created. This belief system is upheld by Christians who believe that God inspired the authors of the Bible to write inerrant text.
    • Old Earth creationists: This group is also Christian, but believes that geology and radiometric dating has proved that the world is billions of years old. They believe that God created the Earth itself, the earth's life forms, and the rest of the universe during a long passage of time. They believe the literal interpretation of an inerrant Bible subscribes the six "day" creation event outside of linear time, whereas 1 day might equal 1,000 years.
    • Evolutionist (Neo-Darwinist): This group is categorized by secular humanists who insist the origin of the universe occurred around 15 billion years ago. The earth coalesced around 4.5 billion years ago. Life subsequently began, as bacteria deep in rocks or tiny protozoan [a one-celled animal] in water, and has been evolving ever since into complex forms. These various processes have been driven by purely natural forces, without assistance from any God like deity.


    Evolutionists originally created the Geologic Column in order to illustrate the purported progression of "primitive" life forms to "more complex" systems we have today. Yet as author John Woodmorappe stated, "Since only a small percentage of the earth's surface obeys even a portion of the geologic column, the claim of their having taken place to form a continuum of rock/life/time over the earth is therefore a fantastic and imaginative contrivance. To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation support by a Creator."

    [See Geologic Column chart below.]

    To favor those who trust in knowledge over faith in their understanding of life, we will look at science and its discoveries verses biblical references. Scientific evidence for creation abounds in areas of objective observation. Scholars in various scientific disciplines have written about the incredible complexity in living systems and the structure of the universe. This complexity is beyond the possibility of natural development, or the concept of sustained evolution.

    Dr. Thomas Barnes, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at El Paso, states in combined research that "Scientific observations since 1829 have shown that the earth's magnetic field has been measurably decaying at an exponential rate, demonstrating its half-life to be approximately 1,400 years. In practical application its strength 20,000 years ago would approximate that of a magnetic star. Under those conditions many of the atoms necessary for life processes could not form." This data demonstrate that earth's entire history is young, within a few thousand years.

    Michael Denton in his book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" wrote "A living cell is so incredibly complex that its interdependent components stagger the imagination and defy evolutionary explanations. A single cell contains over 60,000 proteins of 100 different configurations." Joseph Mastropaolo in his work "Evolution Is Biologically Impossible" stated that "The chance of this assemblage occurring by mere chance is 1 in 104,478,296."

    The Theory of Evolution requires extensive random change, from simple to complex. Geneticist Barney Maddox reported from a study in 1992 that science has now quantitated that a genetic mutation of as little as 1 billionth (0.0000001%) of an animal’s genome is relentlessly fatal. The genetic difference between human and his nearest relative, the chimpanzee, is at least 1.6% Calculated out that is a gap of at least 48 million nucleotide differences that must be bridged by random changes. Any random change of only 3 nucleotides is fatal to an animal. It is now held that random change in a complex, specific, functioning system destroys that system.

    The strongest argument supporting the evolutionist is carbon dating and the fossil record. Radiocarbon dating, especially using the carbon-14 method, takes advantage of the radioactive decay of the isotope, which is seen as a constant. Although this technique looks good at first, carbon-14 dating rests on two simple assumptions. They are, assuming the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere has always been the same, and its rate of decay has always been constant. Neither of these assumptions is provable or reasonable. In blind studies, this scientific method has been found to be flawed and is not reliable as a basis for defining age.
    [See photo of jaw bone below. Dr. Sileshi Semaw, a paleontologist based at Indiana University and a team of scientists announced on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 that remains discovered from the Gona Study Area in northern Ethiopia are a critical link in deciphering the evidence for human bipedalism, or upright walking. The fossil remains -- Ardipithecus ramidus -- are said tobe dated to a 4.3 to 4.5 million years old.]

    Carbon-14 is produced in the upper atmosphere by radiation from the sun. The method doesn't work on things which didn't get their carbon from the air which leaves out aquatic creatures. After about ten half-lives, there's very little or no C14 left for analysis. Fossils fail to retain carbon and their analysis is considered inaccurate. C14 Carbon dating does work for younger items, within our measured history. For example the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Minoan ruins, and acacia wood from the tomb of the pharaoh Zoser all are proven accurate coupled with Thorium-230 test. Carbon dating is calibrated against the rings of California bristlecone pines, Irish bog oaks and annual layers of silt. The calibration method has proven faulty whereas in one adjustment, the Stonehenge suddenly became older than the Pyramids, instead of younger. One minor adjustment can change the age by many thousands of years. Anything dated pre-1970's is known to be faulty and due to air pollution, anything in the last 150 years is wholly unreliable.

    Humans were not around 65 million years ago as explained by secular science, much less people who could work metal. How then does science explain semi-ovoid metallic tubes dug out of 65-million-year-old Cretaceous chalk in France? In 1885, a block of coal was broken open to find a metal cube obviously worked by intelligent hands. In 1912, employees at an electric plant broke apart a large chunk of coal out of which fell an iron pot. A iron nail was found embedded in a sandstone block from the Mesozoic Era. And there are many, many more such anomalies (Click Here). What are we to make of these finds? Obviously our dating methods are completely inaccurate, and that stone, coal and fossils form much more rapidly than science estimates using faulty techniques to measure time. These examples should prompt any curious and open-minded scientist to reexamine and rethink the true history of life on earth.

    What about accelerated matter that would provide false readings using radiocarbon dating? We humans exist in a definitive linear time framework that is governed by laws and effects contained. The spiritual realm which eclipses our physical reality is infinite and not subject to time as we know it. If a person holds to the monotheistic God and accepts that incomprehensible power created all matter, then it is the same that can control all matter. The power that created all surely can alter all, without time constraints that our shallow minds try to limit. In simple terms, God could easily slipstream over to our physical realm and accelerate matter by time bursts as some biblical accounts seem to imply. 2 Peter 3:8 says “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” This is not meant as a literal equation, but rather God is outside of time and what is 10,000 years to us is a split second to him. Science can accurately define cause and effect based on controlled criteria. However if the Creator decided to alter any aspect of our physical dimension, man’s scientific laws would not be able to compensate.

    People always ask, what about the dinosaurs? If dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years, how could a writer of the Bible have accurately described the appearance, food, and habitat of this creature? (Job 40:15-24) Isaiah 30:6 describes a flying reptile like the pteranodon or Rhamphorhynchus. About 200 years ago, the Fremont Indians drew perfect pictographs of a pterodactyl in Utah. Dr. Javier Cabrera found over 1100 Inca Ceremonial Burial stones from the Nasca culture with detailed carvings of dinosaurs like triceratops, stegosaurs, and pterosaurs. What about the ancient duck-billed dinosaur paintings found in the Grand Canyon? Or the Kuku Yalanji aboriginal people have ancient paintings which exactly depict the plesiosaurs? The vast majority of books on dinosaurs are written from the evolutionary perspective. There is ample evidence to support the Biblical record and much concrete proof to dismay the evolutionist.

    A discovery reported in the January 13, 2005, issue of Nature challenged everything evolutionists have ever maintained regarding dinosaurs and mammals. The Associated Press reported: “Villagers digging in China’s rich fossil beds have uncovered the preserved remains of a tiny dinosaur in the belly of a mammal, a startling discovery for scientists who have long believed early mammals couldn’t possibly attack and eat a dinosaur” (Verrengia, 2005). Not only do we now have additional proof of mammals coexisting with dinosaurs, but we also have scientific evidence of a large mammal eating a dinosaur! The authors discovered the fossil remains of two different mammals. One was 50% larger than previous mammal fossils that were considered to be living with the dinosaurs, and was named Repenomamus giganticus. The other, Repenomamus robustus was fully intact—and had a dinosaur in its stomach.

    Secular science teaches that 200 million years ago the Earth's continents were joined together to form one gigantic supercontinent, called Pangaea. As the rock plates that the continents sit on moved, the supercontinent broke up and began to move apart resulting in the "continental drift" based on plate tectonics movement. Ironically, it was a creationist, Antonio Snider, who in 1859 first proposed horizontal movement of continents catastrophically during the Genesis flood. Dr. John Baumgardner, working at the Los Alamos National Laboratories (New Mexico, USA), has used supercomputers to model processes in the earth’s mantle to show that tectonic plate movement could have occurred very rapidly, and ‘spontaneously' in keeping with the young earth theory. His catastrophic plate tectonics global flood model for earth history is able to explain more geological data than the conventional plate tectonics model with its many millions of years. Aspects of Baumgardner’s mantle modeling have been independently duplicated and thus verified by others and accounts for widespread evidences of massive flooding and catastrophic geological processes on the continents occurring less than 10,000 years ago.

    Evolutionists who specialize in the transitionary life process are involved in the study of Abiogenesis. This means "The study of the origin of life in its most primitive form: the transition from non-living matter to living matter." Abiogenesis is the theory that life can arise spontaneously from non-life molecules under proper conditions. For the naturalistic molecules-to-human-life evolution to be plausible, multibillions of links are required to bridge modern humans with the chemicals that once existed in the hypothetical “primitive soup”.

    The major links in the molecules-to-man theory that must be bridged include (a) evolution of simple molecules into complex molecules, (b) evolution of complex molecules into simple organic molecules, (c) evolution of simple organic molecules into complex organic molecules, (d) eventual evolution of complex organic molecules into DNA or similar information storage molecules, and (e) eventually evolution into the first cells. This process requires multimillions of links, all which either are missing or controversial. Scientists have not been unable to find a single undisputed link that clearly connects two of the hundreds of major family groups, plus they have not been able to produce a plausible starting point for their hypothetical evolutionary chain. The first hundreds of thousands or more links that are required to produce life are still missing.

    The first step in evolution was the development of simple self-copying molecules consisting of carbon dioxide, water and other inorganic compounds. No one has proven that a simple self-copying molecule can self-generate a compound such as DNA. Nor has anyone been able to create one in a laboratory or even on paper. A major drawback of the “warm pond” origin-of-life theory developed by Darwin is its inability to produce sufficient concentrations of the many complex compounds required to construct the first living organisms. These compounds must be sufficiently stable to insure that the balance between synthesis and degradation favors synthesis. However, the usable lifespan of many critically important compounds needed are too short to allow for the adequate accumulation of these compounds.
    [See photo of Charles Darwin below.]

    Darwin evidentially recognized how serious the Abiogenesis problem was for his theory, and once even conceded that all existing terrestrial life must have descended from some primitive life form that was called into life “by the Creator” (Origin of species, 1900, p. 316). But to admit, as Darwin did, the possibility of one or a few creations is to open the door to the possibility of many or even thousands! If God made one animal type, He also could have made two or many thousands of different types. No contemporary hypothesis today has provided a viable explanation as to how the Abiogenesis origin of life could occur by naturalistic means. The problems are so serious that the majority of evolutionists today tend to shun its own founding theory of Abiogenesis as its potential defeat.

    Numerous of Evolutionist researchers have lamented the fact that molecular biology during the past half-a-century has not been very kind to any naturalistic origin-of-life theory. Perhaps this explains why researchers now are speculating that other events such as Panspermia which is the hypothesis that the seeds of life are ubiquitous in the Universe or an undiscovered “life law” such as creationism are more probable than all existing terrestrial Abiogenesis theories. Possibly another theory can better deal with the many seemingly insurmountable failures of evolutionary science called Abiogenesis.

    I find the most profound factor that challenges the evolution theory is the intrinsic Third Element. All living creatures consist of a dichotomy, namely body and soul. However the human consists of three parts, or a trichotomy, namely the material body or "soma" (hylic) which is the self-evident, the soul or "psyche" which is the will and emotions, and the spirit or "pneuma" which is what is reborn upon regeneration. The apostle Paul described mankind as a threefold substance as referenced in 1 Thess. 5:23, and this has been generally recognized since the early church fathers. When God created man in his own image, he made us distinct from the beast of the field by grafting into us the "Third Element" or "pneuma" that would allow perfect communion with Him and create us after His image. Our ancestors bungled the initial test and mankind has since been born into this physical plane with a severed spiritual cord. Christ is the soul repairman and through him we have a means to reconnect the severed connection to the Creator. Apes nor any other animal have a spirit nor any persuasion to seek God. However, humans ache incessantly for the divine connection and seek fulfillment in every way on the physical plain. We are all spiritually blind to this need less the grace of God's Spirit revealing the answer.

    CBS News conducted a poll in November 18-21, 2004. They reported that 55% of Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the 27% say that even if they evolved, God guided the process. Just 13% were evolutionists who say that God was not involved. Support for evolution is more heavily concentrated among those with a secular college education and among those who attend religious services rarely or not at all. Overall, about two-thirds of Americans want creationism taught along with evolution. Only 37 percent want evolutionism replaced outright.

    Dr. Hugh Ross PhD. provides the outstanding lectures on "Creation as Science." He understands why naturalists cling to their evolutionary models despite serious weaknesses--models that ultimately thwart scientific progress and leave humanity without hope or purpose. His videos are necessary to gain a scientific grasp of why Creationism is the only answer: Google Video Search

    Romans 1:20 states: "For the invisible things of him from the creation are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead: so that they are without excuse." God's creation was called "very good". The Bible says that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made". The scripture and the teachings of Jesus denote the existence of a divine Creator who has exercised His creative abilities, creating this world and the life-forms we see. Life is the product of intelligent contrivance. Thus, apparent design in biology would constitute evidence for a Designer. It is a self-evident and universally recognized truth: concept and design require an intelligent designer. To simply dismiss the concept of a Creator as being unscientific is to "violate the very objectivity of science.
    Attached Files

  • #2
    One argument in favor of evolution can be surmised in the follow popular debate:

    It has been estimated that the probability of an RNA molecule being formed out of the chemical reactions present in the primordial Earth's atmosphere, which contained all the chemicals necessary to make an RNA molecule, is roughly equivalent to the probability of throwing a deck of cards in the air and having all the cards land in four piles in distinct suits, in numerical order - billions to one against. However, if you were to perform this experiment thousands of times a second for three billion years, you would find that the probability was that at some point, it would happen - it's almost inescapable. And so it was with RNA: over that length of time, with such reactions happening thousands of times a second, all around the planet, sure enough an RNA molecule formed. Do the math. You'll come up with an almost 1:1 probability of abiogenesis succeeding. And it did. Occam's Razor indicates that no other causative factor for the genesis of life is required.

    Therefore, the probability that an RNA molecule can come into being spontaneously over 3 billion years in the right atmosphere, which is about a 99.9999% probability, also proves the nonexistence of, or at the very least, the lack of any requirement for any creator to a certainty of about 4 sigma: a 99.9999% probability that no creator exists.

    In response to the argument, the following eradicates the possibility of the above premise:

    Let's suppose we have 10 small blank discs. We number them from 1 – 10 and as we do we throw each into a bucket. So in this example, the question is: How many attempts would it take to randomly draw out the discs in order from 1 to 10? Only one disc is randomly selected from the bucket at a time, noted, and tossed back in the bucket. What is the probability of selecting all ten discs in order?

    Since each disc has only one number on it, there is one chance in ten (1/10) of selecting it. The probability of selecting the first one followed by the second one is 1/10 x 1/10 or 1 in 100. To select all 10 in the right order the probability is 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 or 1x1010. This means that the discs would be selected in the right order only once in 10 billion attempts.

    Put another way, ‘chance’ requires 10 billion attempts, on the average, to count from 1 to 10.

    Let's take that example one step further and say there is a bucket with 27 wooden squares inside. Each square has one letter of the alphabet on it and one square is blank. How many attempts would it take to randomly pull letters out one at a time in order to spell the phrase ‘the theory of evolution?’ Each letter of the alphabet plus one space has 1 chance in 27 of being selected. There are 20 letters plus 3 spaces in the phrase ‘the theory of evolution’. Therefore chance will, on the average, spell the given phrase correctly only once in 2723 outcomes.

    This computes to only one success in a mind-boggling 8.3 hundred quadrillion, quadrillion attempts (8.3 x 1032).

    Suppose ‘chance’ uses a machine which removes, records and replaces all the letters randomly at the fantastic speed of one billion per microsecond (one quadrillion per second)! On average the phrase would happen once in 25 billion years. If, as evolutionists would have us believe, the earth has been in existence for approximately 5 billion years, then nature could not even have created even this simple sentence, much less any protein, even at this phenomenal rate of experimentation.

    The information on the discs and squares in the examples above represent the genetic information in DNA. DNA is the storehouse of genetics that establishes each organism's physical characteristics. It wasn't until 2001 that the Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics jointly presented the true nature and complexity of the digital code inherent in DNA. We now know that the DNA molecule is comprised of chemical bases arranged in approximately 3 billion precise sequences. Even the DNA molecule for the single-celled bacterium, E. coli, contains enough information to fill an entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica.

    It would take nature 25 billion years to create the correct sequence of 27 letters. Clearly, it could not have correctly sequenced 3 billion chemicals to make even the simplest life form. So if nature couldn’t create life, Who did?

    Regarding the probabilities calculated by Morowitz, Robert Shapiro wrote: "The improbability involved in generating even one bacterium is so large that it reduces all considerations of time and space to nothingness. Given such odds, the time until the black holes evaporate and the space to the ends of the universe would make no difference at all. If we were to wait, we would truly be waiting for a miracle."

    Comment


    • #3
      Charles Darwin began his journey, according to his testimony, as a Christian. In fact, there was the possibility of him going into ministry before his ride on the Beagle. In his book "Saving Darwin," Karl Giberson tells about how Darwin evangelized the sailors on the Beagle when he first arrived. He even used apologetics that were the same method that devout Christians would use. However, there were some things that changed his mind. No, it was not his “discovery” of evolution that changed him. In fact, it was something else that pushed him into this evolutionary paradigm: meaningless suffering as he saw it. A type of Nihilism which is the philosophy that believes all of existence is without purpose. In his book, Karl Giberson gives three primary observations in nature that contributed to Darwin’s eventual rejection of God.

      The first was a species of rhea. They are ratites or flightless birds with unkeeled sterna. “Why would God create a bird with so much unused aerodynamic paraphernalia?” pondered Darwin. A bird with wings that could not fly, according to Darwin, made the wings meaningless and sad (p. 33). The second was a goose that, though it had webbed feet, never went into the water. “If this was the handiwork of God, it was a cruel joke” thought Darwin, to make him try to walk on meaninglessly webbed feet (ibid). Finally, there was the Ichneumonidae wasp. The mother wasp introduces a paralyzing chemical into a caterpillar and then lays its eggs inside. The hatched wasps have instincts that cause them to eat the host caterpillar in such a way that keeps the caterpillar alive as long as possible. From Darwin’s perspective, a loving God could not be responsible for such a horrific and painful creation.

      Darwin had a fallacious understanding regarding God’s dominion over the things mentioned. Yes, God made all creatures, which beget after their own kind. However, Genesis also tells us that when sin entered the world, things began to wear out and die, mutant, distress and reel. God created a world that once violated would produce the pain and aberrations we witness in life. We have learned that God, rather than destroying creation immediately, chose to come in human form and offer redemption to the souls dwelling upon it; where the whole of creation will one day be redeemed in Christ. Darwin failed to comprehend this, which is a tragedy of lost opportunity, and not because of God’s apparent indifference to suffering and pain.

      There were two other pains that Darwin could not reconcile with his Christian worldview. One was the doctrine of hell. Concerning the idea of eternal punishment, Darwin wrote near the end of his life, “I can hardly imagine anyone who would wish Christianity to be true... The plain language of the text seems to show that men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother, and almost all my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine” (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters, p. 87). Then there was the death of his daughter, Annie, at the age of 11. This came towards the end of his faith, when he still struggled to believe in a good God. His prayers for his daughter’s survival went unanswered. The remainder of his faith died with her.

      Darwin’s problem was that he put God on trial. He required God to give an immediate answer for the oddities in life and for the pain. He placed himself above God and became God’s judge, jury, and executioner. When God did not respond with the answers he wanted, he departed from the faith. We can read in Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

      Learning to trust God and His intentions in spite of the difficulties and pains of life is something every person struggles with. And learning to treat others graciously in the midst of their own confusions, pains, misunderstandings, questions, etc. is part of that process. I’ve always been impressed with Job’s response to the most unimaginably bad day for a mortal man… after losing everything he WORSHIPED GOD.

      Do notice, that Jobs correct response in the beginning didn’t prevent him from literally questioning God later, which is not necessarily wrong, where God expects he children to ask questions, even doubt at times. At the very least his story is recorded for us as acknowledgement of the struggle with the apparent senselessness of suffering, but also as an example of a proper humble trust of our Lord. We can read further in 2 Corinthians 4:17 to be encouraged by the words of the Apostle Paul: "For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."

      Comment

      What's Going On

      Collapse

      There are currently 208 users online. 0 members and 208 guests.

      Most users ever online was 15,619 at 09:34 PM on 04-25-2024.

      Discerning the Truth Forum Statistics

      Collapse

      Topics: 298   Posts: 985   Members: 221   Active Members: 0
      Welcome to our newest member, Markus Wagner.
      Working...
      X