The Evolution of a
Creationist
3
HAS GOD
BEEN
TOPPLED?
One day my two creationist dental students asked
me to
give them a scientific explanation for how evolution occurs. In
other
words, they wanted me to defend my evolutionary beliefs by
telling them
the scientific evidence I could present as proof of how one
creature
evolves into another and whether that evidence conflicts with
the Bible.
Darwin seemed like the logical place to start searching for my
answer. I
believed the evidence was there somewhere, but I'd never been
asked to
prove it before. Did I ever get a shock! Darwin had
no idea how one species of animal could evolve into another. He
wrote to
a friend in 1863;:
"When we descend
to details
we can prove that no one species has changed (i.e., we cannot
prove that
a single species has changed): nor can we prove that the
supposed
changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory.
Nor can
we explain why some species have changed and others have not.
The latter
case seems to me hardly more difficult to understand precisely
and in
detail than the former case of supposed
change."
THE REALLY BIG QUESTION
Obviously, in 1863, four years after publishing
Origin
of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of
Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life, Darwin had no idea how one
species
might change into another. The only thing he thought he could
prove was
that "...no one species has changed." He could not even imagine
what a
"beneficial" change might look like. Scientists today remain as
baffled
as Darwin.
The world's leading evolutionary thinkers had a
convention
in Rome in 1981. They wanted to decide what makes one species
evolve
into another species, and how that change, from one animal or
plant into
another, might occur. Dr. Ernst Mayr,
professor
emeritus of Harvard, writes:
"We had an
international
conference in Rome in 1981 on the mechanisms of speciation. It
was
attended by many of the leading botanists, zoologists,
paleontologists,
geneticists, cytologists and biologists. The one thing on which
they all
agreed was that we still have absolutely no idea what happens
genetically during speciation. That's a damning statement, but
it's the
truth."
These scientists in Rome in 1981 arrived at
their
conclusion, "We have no idea how evolution occurs"! Neither did
Darwin
in 1863! This, then, is the really big question of evolution:
How does
it happen? God says He created each thing "after its kind"
(Genesis 1:11,
12, 21, 24, 25). Evolutionists say they do not know how "kinds"
come
into being. Which account do you believe? God's or the
evolutionist's?
My position is that God alone is worthy to be
praised!
Scientists do not know how one species might
change into
another. They do not even know how a simple chemical compound
might come
about. Author and friend of evolution, Jeff
Goldberg, records for us the thoughts of Hans Kosterlitz, one of
the
discoverers of the human body's natural pain killers, the
enkephalins:
"It is a
question almost of
God. Working on the enkephalins you get -- without being
religious -- a
commitment. You start to admire and wonder, how could that come
about --
that plants and animals share such structurally similar
chemicals? How,
even after a million years of evolution, could the earth, with
all its
plants and creatures, be so very simple and
unified?"
Kosterlitz looked at the enkephalins, and his
study of the
micro-universe made him think about God. But he quickly adds the
disclaimer "without being religious," as if thinking about God
is not
religious when studying only a small part of His creation.
Apparently
Kosterlitz believes God has nothing to do with science. Yet,
when
scientists look at the creation, God has intended for it to make
them
realize that there must be a Designer-God behind it all.
However, most
add their disclaimers and refuse to honor Him as God. God's Word
(i.e.
Romans 1:18-22) declares that their thinking is thereby reduced
to
foolish speculations (evolution over millions of years,
etc.).
Kosterlitz questioned how plants and animals
could
"...share such structurally similar chemicals". If we examine
this
sharing of chemicals from a creationist perspective, then God
created
life to fit in the common atmosphere of earth with a common food
chain
composed of certain basic chemicals. Similarities in creatures
do not
prove evolution, but more logically display the wisdom of God in
creating plants and animals which, in all their diversity, can
exist in
a common environment. God designed all life to exist while using
a few
common basic chemicals in an atmosphere made mostly of oxygen
and
nitrogen. What genius the God of the Bible displays!
HAS GOD BEEN
TOPPLED?
Jerry Adler, a science
writer,
reviews world class evolutionary thinker Stephen Jay Gould's
book,
Wonderful Life, with these words:
"Science, having
toppled God
the Creator and exalted Man, now wants to raise E. coli and the
rest of
the seething mass of terrestrial life up there alongside him.
This view
does not deny the uniqueness of Homo sapiens and its distinctive
contribution to life, human consciousness. It asserts, however,
that
there is nothing inherent in the laws of nature that directed
evolution
toward the production of human beings. There is nothing
predestined
about our current pre-eminence among large terrestrial fauna; we
are the
product of a whole series of contingent events in the history of
our
planet, any one of which could have been reversed to give rise
to a
different outcome.
We are, in
short, like every
other creature that ever walked or slithered across the earth,
an
accident....
The
survivors...were
lucky.
The story of
life is one of
periodic mass extinctions, which wiped out the majority of
species on
earth."
Gould and Adler evidently believe that God has
been
"toppled", that science and man are exalted, and all of this is
based on
the "lucky survivors" of mass extinctions. So, evolution appears
to be
based upon death. Because of the death of the "unfit", the
"fittest"
survive. How might a scientist describe "unfit" life? Do
evolutionists
believe there is "unfit" life among us today? Did Hitler believe
that?
Hitler was an evolutionist and apparently thought he was
speeding up the
process of survival of the fittest. Evolution is not amoral. It
is not
neutral thinking. It promotes a value system that permits each
individual to do what is right in his own eyes. Evolutionary
thought
encourages school curricular materials that force young minds to
choose
who is fit to survive, and who is unfit; who will be rescued in
the
lifeboat, and who will be left to die of exposure or drowning.
No one
but God is qualified to describe a certain life as fit or
"unfit".
Evolutionary thinking wrongly promotes man to the status of God.
It
forces people to make decisions (for instance about life and
death,
abortion, euthanasia, infanticide) that should remain with God
alone.
WE SEE DEATH AND EXTINCTION,
NOT
EVOLUTION
Scientists are correct when they observe and
publish the
fact that mass extinctions have occurred in the past. In the
present,
extinctions are occurring on a daily basis. What science can
prove with
facts is that life is disappearing. Life of a wide variety of
kinds of
plants and animals is becoming extinct. Does this prove that new
life
forms are now evolving or ever did evolve? Science has conclusively
proven that
life is dying and the universe is running down. The fossils are
a record
of death and extinction. The "Cambrian Explosion" is
not an explosion of early life. It is a fossil record of the
death of
millions of complex organisms that, for the most part, no longer
exist. So, therefore, when we look at nature, we do not see
emerging
new life forms but rather death and extinction ... entropy in
action.
The Creator-God of the Bible is the source of
life (John
5:26ff). Jesus said,
"Verily, verily, I say
unto you, He
that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into
condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is
coming and now
is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear
shall
live.
For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath
he given
to the Son to have life in himself;
And hath given him authority to execute judgment
also,
because he is the Son of man.
Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in
which all
that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
And shall come forth; they that have
done good,
unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil,
unto the
resurrection of damnation."
(John
5:24-29)
God created life. Death came when the first man,
Adam, and
his wife, Eve, rebelled against their Creator and sinned. Romans
5:12
states:
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the
world, and
death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all
have
sinned:"
I Corinthians 15:21 continues this
teaching:
"For since by man came death, by man came also
the
resurrection of the dead."
If death came as a result of the sin of Adam,
then sin,
decay and death were non-existent until the Fall. What is the
fossil
record? It is a testimony of death. Could we have millions of
years of
death and fossil "man" leading up to Adam when the Scriptures
plainly
teach "for by man (referring to Adam) came death?" Fossils are a
record
of death. Without death, there can be no fossils. Do we believe
the
Bible or do we believe the speculations of scientists?
Scientists
believe death began millions of years before man evolved onto
the scene.
The Bible records that death began with Adam.
THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION in
CONFLICT
As God's creatures, we do not subject the Bible
to
science, we subject science to the Bible. The challenge whether
to
believe God and His Word or to believe science is presented by
Scott Huse, a brilliant Christian thinker, in
his
excellent book, The Collapse of Evolution. The conflict
of
evolutionary theory against the Holy Scripture is impossible to
reconcile. Huse lists 24 contrasts between the Bible and
evolutionary
thinking:
| Bible |
Evolution |
| God is the creator of all
things. |
Natural chance processes can
account for
the existence of all things. |
| World created in six literal days
(Genesis 1).
|
World evolved over eons.
|
| Creation is completed (Genesis 2:3).
|
Creative processes
continuing.
|
| Ocean before land (Genesis 1:2).
|
Land before oceans.
|
| Atmosphere between two hydrospheres
(Genesis
1:7). |
Contiguous atmosphere and
hydrosphere. |
| First life on land (Genesis 1:11).
|
Life began in the oceans.
|
| First life was land plants (Genesis
1:11).
|
Marine organisms evolved
first.
|
| Earth before sun and stars (Genesis
1:14-19).
|
Sun and stars before earth.
|
| Fruit trees before fishes (Genesis 1:11).
|
Fishes before fruit trees
|
| All stars made on the fourth day (Genesis
1:16)
|
Stars evolved at various
times.
|
| Birds and fishes created on the fifth day
(Genesis
1:20, 21). |
Fishes evolved hundreds of
millions of
years before birds appeared. |
| Birds before insects (Genesis 1:20, 21).
|
Insects before birds.
|
| Whales before reptiles (Genesis
1:20-31).
|
Reptiles before whales.
|
| Birds before reptiles (Genesis
1:20-31).
|
Reptiles before birds.
|
| Man before rain (Genesis 2:5).
|
Rain before man.
|
| Man before woman (Genesis 2:21-22).
|
Woman before man (by
genetics).
|
| Light before the sun (Genesis
1:3-19).
|
Sun before any light.
|
| Plants before the sun (Genesis 1:11-19).
|
Sun before any plants.
|
| Abundance and variety of marine life all
at once
(Genesis 1:20, 21). |
Marine life gradually developed
from a
primitive organic blob.
|
| Man's body from the dust of the earth
(Genesis
2:7) |
Man evolved from monkeys.
|
| Man exercised dominion over all organisms
(Genesis
1:28). |
Most organisms extinct before
man
existed. |
| Man originally a vegetarian (Genesis
1:29).
|
Man originally a meat
eater.
|
| Fixed and distinct kinds (Genesis 1:11,
12, 21, 24,
25; I Corinthians 15:38-39).
|
Life forms in a continual state
of
flux. |
| Man's sin the cause of death (Romans
5:12).
|
Struggle and death existent long
before
the evolution of man. |
| Bible |
Evolution |
In addition to
these
specific direct contradictions, there are stark differences of
general
principle between atheistic evolution and Biblical Christianity.
Jesus
said:
"A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,
neither can a
corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." (Matthew 7:18
KJV)
"The fruit of
evolution has
been all sorts of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice.
It has
served as an intellectual basis for Hitler's nazism and Marx's
communism. It has prompted apostasy, atheism, secular humanism
and
libertinism, as well as establishing a basis for ethical
relativism,
which has spread through our society like a cancer. The mind and
general
welfare of mankind has suffered greatly as a result of this
naturalistic
philosophy.
According
to the Bible, man is a responsible creature. One day he will
give an
account for his life's actions and motives. But when man is
viewed as
the product of some vague purposeless evolutionary process, he
is
conveniently freed from all moral obligations and
responsibility. After
all, he is merely an accident of nature, an intelligent animal
at
best."
Evolution or creation: you
cannot have
both! Scott Huse's list is brutally clear. Look again at #14,
for
example. The Bible says in Genesis 1:20-31 that birds came on
the fifth
day and reptiles on the sixth day. That means birds came before
reptiles. Yet evolution teaches as fact that reptiles came
before birds.
The two views are mutually exclusive. You either believe the
Bible or
you believe the speculations of men. Will you bow to science, or
will
you bow to your Creator? There are certain things in life that
are black and white. We should have the integrity,
especially as
professing Christians, to choose God's Word and not the
speculations of
men.
You cannot be an evolutionist and believe the
Bible as it
is written. The plain word of Scripture is "God created".
Therefore,
evolution of molecules-to-man is a false speculation of man. Walter Brown reveals 57 irreconcilable
differences
between the Bible and "theistic" evolution in his book, In
the
Beginning, The Center for Scientific Creation, 5612 N. 20th
Place,
Phoenix, Arizona 85016, 1989, pp. 110-115.
MICRO VERSUS MACRO
EVOLUTION
When speaking of evolution as a false
speculation, we mean
macroevolution -- one cell to man. What scientists call
microevolution,
obviously occurs. Microevolution is basically genetic variety
within a
certain kind of organism. For example, people are all different
even
though we come from one set of parents. How can five billion
plus people
vary so widely in appearance and abilities if we all come from
the same
set of parents? This is microevolution or adaptation or,
preferably,
genetic variation, or perhaps, genetic drift. Even
microevolution is not
true evolution (something becoming something else due to changes
in the
genes). Different
kinds of
corn, dogs and mustard are still identified as corn, dogs and
mustard.
There is popcorn, sweet corn, and field corn; hounds, poodles
and
collies; many varieties of mustard. This does not prove
evolution to be
true. It only displays genetic differences within the families
of corn,
dogs, and mustard.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF
PEOPLE
How might a creationist explain all the
different races of
people? God's record of the Tower of Babel incident in Genesis
11
provides the answer:
"And the whole earth was of one language, and of
one
speech.
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the
east, that
they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt
there.
And they said one to another, "Come, let us make
brick,
and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and
slime had
they for mortar.
And they said, "Come, let us build us a city and
a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest
we be
scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
And the Lord came down to see the city and the
tower,
which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have
all one
language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be
restrained
from them, which they have imagined to do.
Come, let us go down, and there confound their
language,
that they may not understand one another's speech.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence
upon the
face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
Therefore is the name of it called
Babel;
because the Lord did there confound the language of all the
earth: and
from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of
all the
earth." (Genesis 11:1-9)
In
the
beginning, everyone spoke the same language. Therefore, they
were able
to pool their intellectual resources, since everyone could talk
to
everyone else. As a result, nothing was "impossible for them" or
"restrained from them" (Genesis 11:6). They chose to violate
God's
command to scatter across the earth (Genesis 9:1), a violation
which
resulted in God creating the different basic languages. Only
small
populations of people isolated from other people groups could
communicate with each other, and this would explain the "Cave
Man"
period as language restrictions and the chaos of the "scattering
period"
could certainly create some extremely isolated and primitive
pockets of
people. The language restrictions forced them to disperse across
the
earth and "in-breed" with relatives. Certain races of people
emerged
after several generations of this inbreeding. [(God eventually
proclaimed inbreeding to be sin in the law of Moses. Cain and
Seth took
wives from among their sisters but this was not sin until the
Law came.
See Leviticus 18 below.)
"Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my
judgments:
which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord.
None of you shall approach to any that is near
of kin to
him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the Lord.
The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of
thy
mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt
not
uncover her nakedness.
The nakedness of thy father's wife shalt thou
not uncover:
it is thy father's nakedness.
The nakedness of thy sister, the
daughter of thy
father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home,
or born
abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover..."
(Leviticus
18:5ff).]
Scientists tell us that all the races of mankind
came from
a single, female parent. On this point, Scripture does not
negate
"science". The races (variations within the human "kind") are
most
probably a result of the scattering of people around the globe
by God
after the Tower of Babel.
LANGUAGES DON'T BEGIN WITH
GRUNTS
The
study of language has developed into a complex field of
scholarship.
Linguists tell us that languages get more and more complex the
farther
back they trace them. The older ("more primitive") a language
is, the
more complex it appears to be. This is powerful evidence against
evolution.
If evolution is true and man gradually evolved
from more
primitive creatures, language should get more and more simple
the older
it is said to be. Prehistoric man should have communicated first
with
grunts; then with single syllables; then with multi-syllabic
words
(ba-na-na); then, with sentence fragments, developing into
sentences ("I
want banana"), etc. What is found is just the opposite. Early
languages
such as Sumerian are so complex that only a handful of the most
brilliant scholars can decipher them. The Tower of Babel
incident
explains the races and the problem of complex "primitive"
languages. God
created the languages instantly and fully mature. Evolution
offers no
good explanation for the complexity of the earliest known
languages!
Linguistic researchers from around the world
have
published their ideas concerning the geographic location of our
"primitive" mother tongue. Linguists call this language
Proto-Indo-European. Two Russian experts, Thomas
Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov, have offered evidence
"...that
Indo-European originated in an area known as Anatolia, which is
now part
of Turkey, and from there spread throughout Europe and the
sub-continent." (see U.S. News and World Report, Nov. 5,
1990,
page 62).
U.S. News and World Report was not the
first
publication to report that language can be traced back to
Turkey. The
Bible records for us that Noah and his family had their
post-flood
beginnings in Turkey:
"And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the
seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat."
(Genesis
8:4)
Scientists trace language back to a particular
place on
earth, the Bible would describe that place to be the mountains
of Ararat
in Turkey. The linguists agree!
BABEL
AND HI-TECH
SCIENCE
Since the creation of languages at the Tower of
Babel, the
endeavors of generations of mankind have been limited (not able
to do
the impossible) by the language barrier. But now, for the first
time
since the Tower of Babel, our generation has a common
international
language -- the language of hi-tech computers. With computers,
we can
again pool our international research and knowledge and do the
impossible (man on the moon, heart transplants, Concorde jet
travel,
etc.). God stepped into time to stop this situation in Genesis
11. What
might He do in our generation as the teachings of evolution
convince
more and more people that God is not necessary for any part of
our
existence? We are rapidly becoming a people who believe the
bottom line
of William Henley's Invictus: "I am
the master
of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." This was the attitude
of
Babylon, and the Creator was not pleased.
One other thought to consider in Genesis 11 --
could the
people of Babel have been building a water-proof tower? The
biblical
text states the use of specially fired bricks (hardened) and the
use of
water-proof tar (KJV "slime") for mortar. The flood judgment of
Noah's
day would have been fresh on the minds of these people. Could
they have
been shaking their fists at God (rebelling) with their pooled
intellectual resources as they built a water-proof tower, thus
making a
statement? "God, you can't get us again with a flood! We will
all come
together in our water-proof tower that reaches into the sky. We
will
save our own lives in spite of You. We will control our destiny.
We will
take charge of our lives." How much of this attitude is like
Lucifer --
"I will be like the
Most
High"? (Isaiah 14:13,14) The science of that day may have
convinced
the people that they could quite satisfactorily live apart from
their
Creator. Scientists today climb into their ivory towers and say
in their
hearts and in their papers: "There is no God. We can do quite
well
without Him. We are all gods and control our own
destiny."
EVOLUTION AND THE
SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Scientists often make proclamations and publish
papers
that elevate them to god-like status. Are we forced to believe
that
science and the scientific method have "toppled" God? From our
earliest
school days, we are taught that science is based on careful
experimentation and disciplined thought. Science gives us facts.
We can
trust it. We are further educated by television programs and
interviews
with Ph.D.'s like Carl Sagan stating that
"evolution
is no longer a theory, but a proven fact". This is not the
scientific
method! Evolutionist, Hy Ruchlis,
defines the
scientific method:
"The Scientific
Method is
the basic set of procedures that scientists use for obtaining
new
knowledge about the universe in which we
live."
Making a proclamation that evolution is no
longer a
theory, but a proven fact is just that -- a proclamation. It is
not
testable science. It does not fit within the definition of the
Scientific Method. Ruchlis continues:
"Unless the
teachings of the
authorities on a subject are based upon scientific method, error
can be
just as easily transmitted as fact...
The most
important point to
remember about the method of science is that it rests upon the
attitude
of open mind. In accordance with this attitude, one has
the right
to question any accepted fact. One who searches for truth
has to
learn to question deeply the things that are generally accepted
as being
"obviously true."
How does evolution as a "scientific" explanation
for
origins measure up under Ruchlis' explanation of scientific
method? It
receives a failing grade. Could evolution be "error...
transmitted as
fact"? It certainly could. Do evolutionists present an "open
mind"? Do
they permit their classroom students to question evolution as
perhaps
not being "...obviously true"? On the contrary, evolutionists
have amply
demonstrated they want only one view taught in the classrooms of
the
world.
When a credentialed scientist who is a
creationist
presents hard evidence to support the Creator and His creation,
he or
she is accused of teaching religion.
But evolution from one cell to man is not
based on the
scientific method and
is therefore a faith system. That means it is just as
"religious" as
belief in special creation. The question is not, "is evolution,
science
and creation a religion?" but "which system of belief --
creation or
evolution -- has the most factual science to back it
up?"