Does your faith need strengthening? Are you confused and wondering if Jesus Christ is really "The Way, the Truth, and the Life?" "Fight for Your Faith" is a blog filled with interesting and thought provoking articles to help you find the answers you are seeking. Jesus said, "Seek and ye shall find." In Jeremiah we read, "Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall seek for Me with all your heart." These articles and videos will help you in your search for the Truth.
November 1981 Presentation at the American Museum of Natural History
What would happen if you awoke one morning and suddenly realized that you no longer accepted the scientific theory on which, thus far, you had based your life's work? This is precisely the experience paleontologist Colin Patterson conveyed to the Systematics Discussion Group nearly twenty years ago in his now famous presentation.
On November 5, 1981, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Colin Patterson gave a presentation entitled "Evolutionism and Creationism" to the Systematics Discussion Group. The presentation was taped, and an unauthorized (bootleg) transcript was made. Now, 19 years later, Access Research Network has obtained the original audio tape of Patterson's historical presentation. After several months of careful work, in consultation with a witness to the 1981 presentation, ARN is releasing to the public the original audio tape, and an edited transcription of the tape. The transcript includes a large amount of previously unreleased material, notably the 40 minute question-and-answer period, where Patterson interacts with evolutionary biologists such as Niles Eldredge, Keith Stewart Thomson, Stanley Salthe, and James Farris. The transcript also includes an historical introduction by Paul Nelson, biographical footnotes and literature citations.
Here are a few of Patterson's famous comments that you can now listen to and read in their full context:
"But it's true that for the last eighteen months or so, I've been kicking around non-evolutionary or even anti-evolutionary ideas."
"Now, one of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let's call it non-evolutionary, was last year I had a sudden realization. For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. That was quite a shock, to learn that one can be so misled for so long."
"So either there is something wrong with me, or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally I know there's nothing wrong with me. So for the last few weeks, I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people. The question is this: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that you think is true?"
"Well, I'm not interested in the controversy over teaching in high school, and if any militant creationists have come here looking for political ammunition, I hope they'll be disappointed."
"I shall take the text of my sermon from this book, Gillespie's Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation....He takes it for granted that a rationalist view of nature has replaced an irrational one, and of course, I myself took that view, up until about eighteen months ago. And then I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."
"Well, we're back to the question I've been putting to people, 'Is there one thing you can tell me about evolution?' And the absence of an answer seems to suggest that it is true, evolution does not convey any knowledge, or if so, I haven't yet heard it."
"Now I think many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here."
"So that's my first theme. That evolution and creationism seem to be showing remarkable parallels. They are increasingly hard to tell apart. And the second theme is that evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge, apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics."
Charles Darwin expressed confidence that natural selection could explain the development of the eye,[1] but how does this confidence stand up to the light of reason? Today, we are in the curious intellectual situation of allowing only naturalistic explanations in public schools. This is done in spite of the fact that the alternative (creation or intelligent design) more adequately explains the observations. It would take a miraculous number of design changes to transform a light sensitive patch into an eyeball. Furthermore, each change would have to be coded onto the DNA of the “new” creature in order for the change to pass to the next generation. It has never been explained how this could have happened. Each new feature would need to be independently useful or natural selection would not have allowed the new creature to live.
· An eyeball with no retina would be a tumor, not an improvement to be passed on to the next generation.
· An eyeball without a focusing lens would be worthless except as a light detector.
· An eyeball without a functioning optic nerve to carry the signal to the brain would be worthless.
· An eyeball without the perfect balance of fluid pressure would explode or implode.
· An eyeball without a brain designed to interpret the signals would be sightless.
· There are over 100,000 different proteins in our body. The only one with a molecular structure to make it perfectly transparent to light is used to construct the lens of our eye.
It is beyond credibility that chance mutations could have produced any of these changes, let alone all of them at once. Any one of these changes would result in a worthless tumor. All are needed simultaneously for sight to result.
Yet, the chance development of this “hardware” for the eye pales in comparison to the impossibility of the “software” development. The brain must be wired to both accept and understand the signal coming to it from the eyeball. An analogy would be the multi-pixel image from a digital camera. Each part of the image is wired to a specific spot in the receptor screen of the camera to reproduce an image of what the camera is viewing. As the “first eye” was developing, how could the brain have known what the randomly wired image received from the pixels of the optic nerve represented? Before there was sight, the image would be wired like the white snowy image of an out of tune television screen. It can be statistically proven that randomly changing the location of a few of the millions of available pixels would never produce a clear image and sight could never develop in this way.[2]
In Darwin’s time, the complex design of the eyeball was forceful evidence in favor of creation. Our more advanced knowledge of the intricate design of the eye provides even stronger evidence for its creation.
The complexity of the eye still argues for the reality of its instantaneous formation by an incredibly intelligent designer. There is neither a fossil record showing that the eye evolved nor any testable observations to explain how it could possibly have happened. The fanciful story that a light receptive patch turned into the complex eyeball is nothing but the dogmatic faith of a religious belief system. Why do we allow textbook selection which leaves out both the problems with evolution and the evidence for intelligent design? This is indoctrination, not education.
1. Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, republished by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1971, p. 167.
2. Stoltzmann, David, The Specified Complexity of Retinal Imagery, Creation Research Society Quarterly, 6/06.
Have you ever squashed a mosquito? Interestingly, the squashing of a mosquito may help us understand what makes life possible and what makes the spontaneous generation of life impossible.
When a mosquito is slapped, what happens? Obviously it’s shape changes and it dies. But what makes it die? All of the thousands of sophisticated chemicals which make up its body are still there, relatively unaltered. At the moment of impact its cellular components are still intact including the all-important DNA. So why is it now dead?
Prior to being smashed, the mosquito was a highly organized system with much organized information. But when hit, it became disordered, causing critical information in the design of its body to become jumbled. There arose confusion in the finely tuned coordination of chemistry (including the chemicals involved in its overall structure) which culminated in an overall breakdown, resulting in death. And you thought you just slapped it!
For another example, let’s say you were to take 100 million bacteria and concentrate them in the bottom of a test tube. Now if you were to physically lyse (break open) the membrane of each of the cells, the insides would spill out, forming a concentrated mixture of incredibly complex “life-giving” chemicals. Yet, even though all of the right ‘stuff’ for life is there, not even one of the 100 million critters will come back to life, nor would any new creature arise.
For a third example lets consider the food industry. Each year over a billion containers of previously living chemical ingredients are placed into containers where light and/or heat can pass through (an open thermo-dynamic system.) Everything needed for life to form is present in each jar or can. Yet not once, in any can or jar, does new life form.
If the already complex chemistry of minuscule bacteria or canned food cannot reorganize itself back into a living cell, even when concentrated in the test tube environment under carefully controlled conditions, then how could life have evolved in the first place, from basically uncomplicated chemicals in conditions FAR less appropriate? It simply never could have happened!
As with the mosquito, in order for life to exist the chemistry must be specifically organized and controlled in time as well as space. For a cell to live, it must be surrounded by a sophisticated membrane that allows only certain chemicals in and out, according to when they are needed, not just at any time. Inside the cell, the amount of any chemical must be exactly correct, otherwise the whole system would be thrown off balance and the organism would die. Furthermore, the entire living organism must be controlled by the fantastically complex three dimensional genetic coded structure of DNA.
All this means that in order for the chemistry to have come together in the first place, the individual atoms must have been purposefully and simultaneously organized by a creator having the knowledge and power to do such a thing. It could not possibly have happened by the right chemicals just “coming together”.
It is Jesus, the Son of the Living God, who deserves our praise for the awesome things He has accomplished in this creation of His. There is no other plausible explanation for the complex life we find all around us. Yet, this plausible explanation is the only one not allowed to be discussed in our public schools!
Tom Wagner is a nature photographer and science teacher living in Iowa who writes on the evidence for creation. This article was first published in Creation magazine, www.AnswersInGenesis.org
Censorship is a word which evokes a strong response because it conflicts with our inherent sense of fairness. Each year, the humanist organization, Citizens for an American Way, publish a report of supposed “censorship” incidents in which “fundamentalists” attempt to keep books out of libraries. Yet, a far more dangerous type of censorship is largely ignored.
Censorship is the banning of ideas so that people do not even have the opportunity to hear them. The reason this is so dangerous is that the human mind tends to work by paradigms. A paradigm is a framework which all people develop concerning what is right or wrong, true or false. The human mind often finds it very difficult to even consider ideas outside an accepted paradigm. Increasing exposure to the truth improves the probability that it will be embraced. Exclusive exposure to a false belief, no matter how outrageous, insures its eventual acceptance. This is the essence of brainwashing.
In an extensive search of 2.2 million mainstream magazine and journal articles (scanned by SCISEARCH), only 18 items were found which dealt with creation. When another computer search was done to find articles written by well-known creationist authors, not one creation-related article was found. Subsequent interviews revealed that whenever these authors had submitted articles showing specific scientific evidence supporting creation, their work was rejected.1
The situation is no better in school, university, or public libraries where censorship leads to a scarcity of creation materials. Libraries typically purchase materials from a relatively small number of publishers. Creation publications are not selected, no matter how well their work has been researched and presented, because these publishers use reviewers who won’t accept any material critical of evolution. For example, Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity is a well documented high school biology book written by a dozen Ph.D. level creationists. Yet, not one of 15 different textbook publishers WOULD EVEN LOOK AT THE MANUSCRIPT! The textbook finally had to be published by Zondervan (a Christian publishing house) effectively eliminating it from consideration in any public school.
The authors of The Mystery of Life’s Origin also had difficulty getting their book published because it critically exposed the enormous problems with chemical evolution. This exclusively scientific treatment of the subject was rejected by 100 agencies before being published by Philosophic Press. Phillip Johnson, law professor at U.C. Berkeley, had similar problems publishing his book, Darwin on Trial, which deals with the fallacies of evolution. He finally settled on a Christian publishing house. Most creationist writers and researchers realize that this creation censorship exists so do not waste their time trying to publish their material with mainstream journals or publishers.
The late Dr. A.E. Wilde-Smith was an Oxford professor with 3 earned doctorates. Yet, an OCLC computer search of 1000 libraries showed that only 18 carried any of his classic works supporting creation while almost all of the libraries carried books critical of creation. Library journals publish book reviews and out of 100,000 book reviews, several hundred anti-creation books were favorably reviewed; yet, only one creation work was reviewed at all and the review was extremely negative.
There are hundreds of excellent books documenting the scientific evidence for creation, yet almost none can be found in any public, school, or university library. The Citizens for an American Way are correct - censorship is alive and well in America’s libraries.
1. All of these examples of censorship (and many more) are documented in an article called the Censorship of Information on Origins, Jerry Bergman, Creation ex Nilhilo Technical Journal, Vol. 10, no. 3, (1996). However, it is extremely unlikely you will find this well-written and peer reviewed research journal in libraries.
Vestigial features are those parts of an organism thought to be useless leftovers from its ancestor, as the creature has evolved to a new way of life. Our tailbone is commonly taught to be such a feature. The idea of vestigial features has been used as evidence for evolution since 1859 when Darwin first proposed that such features were evidence for the descent of one organism from a completely different one. The logical consequence of this alleged transformation is that the “new” creature would be left with some features which are no longer needed in its new environmental niche.
Belief in evolution demands that we believe that each type of animal on earth is a result of its descent from some previous life form. If this were the case; almost every creature should have many leftover features which are no longer needed. Yet, the more we learn about biology, the more we discover that every part of an organism serves some useful function. For example, the appendix is often said to be a useless leftover from our ape ancestry. We now know that the appendix serves as a type of lymphatic tissue in the first few months of life to fight disease. It is no more a useless feature than one of your lungs is useless just because you can survive with only one lung.
The acceptance of the idea that some parts of the human body are useless leftovers has led to many tragic consequences. Based on the misguided concept that the human colon was a vestige of the past, Sir William Land and dozens of other surgeons stripped the colons from thousands of patients in order to “cure” a variety of symptoms. [1] Many died. As late as the 1960’s many people routinely had their tonsils removed. This practice was again fueled by the mistaken belief that the tonsils were a useless leftover feature from our past. It is now known that they serve an important disease fighting function and should not normally be removed.
Some possible vestigial features exist such as the blind eyes of cave salamanders. Blind salamanders have non-functional eyes because they live their entire lives in total darkness. At some time in the past, salamanders may have found a niche in dark caves and apparently only those which mutated to blindness had a need to stay in the total darkness where they could compete for existence without blindness being a disadvantage. However, these salamanders are still salamanders, a mutation to blindness is hardly an upward improvement in complexity, and no new information has been added to the DNA of the salamander.
The human tailbone is frequently listed as a vestigial feature but anatomists tell us that the tailbone serves a very important function in human physiology. The coccyx (tailbone) is the point of insertion of several muscles and ligaments including the one which allows man to walk completely upright. Without a tailbone, people could not walk in a completely upright manner, dance a ballet, perform gymnastics, or stroll down the street with their arm around their spouse. Hardly a useless, leftover -- vestigial feature! The human body is designed for maximum versatility -- it is far more versatile than the body of any other creature. What other animal can perform the range of movement required for activities as diverse as ice skating, pearl diving, pole vaulting, snow boarding and gymnastics? This range of movement would be impossible without the tailbone!
In summary, evolution predicts that there should be leftover features as one organism slowly turned into another. Based on this theory, over 150 human features were at one time listed as useless. Creation predicts that although some life forms have degenerated and lost use of an original function; every part of an organism was designed to serve some useful purpose. As we learn more about the biology of living organisms, including ourselves, it is readily apparent which theory best fits the facts.
1. Robert Wiedersheim, The Structure of Man, p. 200, 1895.
Many questions are raised by believers in evolution when presented with the evidence for creation. This article addresses some of these common questions.
How did the marsupials get to Australia?
Noah was charged with building the vessel to safeguard certain animals during the first flood (a massive and complex worldwide disaster) not with distributing them afterwards. Once Noah released the animals on Mount Ararat, natural instincts and climatic conditions determined how the redistribution of the animal population took place. As subsequent generations of animals spread across the globe, territorial prowess or chance movements would send certain groups in certain directions.
Those animals least suited for or least able to defend a territory would either be forced further from the landing site or exterminated. A consequence of the worldwide flood was a brief but severe ice age which locked ocean water into vast ice fields. This lowered ocean levels and created a land bridge to Australia. A similar land bridge connected Asia to Alaska during this period of Earth history allowing for the free movement of man and animals between these continents. Land movements during the ice age or the subsequent melting of the ice cut off the connection between Australia and Asia effectively isolating the unique animal life to Australia.
How could worldwide coal deposits form rapidly?
The first effect of the worldwide flood would have been the ripping up of vegetation and erosion on an unimaginable scale. As the water receded from one area, vegetation would have been deposited only to be subsequently buried as the area sank and water brought in more sediment. Thus, layer upon layer of coal would have been formed. Furthermore, it has been shown in the laboratory that vegetation can be turned in to coal in as little as one hour with sufficient heat and pressure. A recent model of coal formation is provided by a study of the catastrophic explosion of Mount St. Helens in 1980. This explosion knocked down millions of trees which ended up floating on Spirit Lake. Underneath this floating vegetation mat is a thick layer of peat consisting of tree bark and organic matter. If that organic matter were buried by a subsequent eruption, the result would be a coal seam covered by sedimentary rock. Repeated cycles would rapidly produce a series of coal seams with sediment on top of each seam. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that an enormous global flood would have rapidly created the extensive coal seams we find today.
Is “Survival of the Fittest” part of the evolution ?
Modern evolutionists have tried to distance themselves from this concept due to the obvious negative consequences of applying the principle to the social realm. Denying that survival of the fittest is part of the evolutionary process is akin to denying that one type of animal will drive another to extinction given the right conditions. Contrary to the rosy picture of animal cooperation which evolutionists like to portray, one type of animal has no qualms wiping out another in its quest to propagate itself. Wild dogs introduced to Australia are endangering native species because they are more aggressive and have no natural enemies. Sounds like “survival of the fittest” doesn’t it? Survival of the fittest has always been an integral part of the evolutionary theory.
If we are also animals that have evolved according to this basic principle of evolution; why shouldn’t we extend this principle to the social realm? Why shouldn’t we eliminate weaker classes of humans that compete for what we feel we need? Evolution taken to its logical conclusion leads to a savage world akin to Hitler’s Nazi Germany when the strong determine what is right. It was no coincidence that Hitler was strongly influenced by the writings of Darwin.
It is a slap in God’s face and a distortion of Scripture to believe that evolution, with its driving mechanism of survival of the fittest, would be a loving God’s method for creating and preserving us.
Fossils. The very name brings to mind images of untold ages past...dinosaurs roaming ancient swamps...slow but steady progression as simple sea life was transformed into today’s complex variety. Is this an accurate reconstruction of the past or is a worldwide flood the correct explanation of the fossil record?
Fossils are the preserved evidence of past life. They are found in every part of the world, including the tops of the highest mountains. They may be as simple as a seashell which has left a permanent impression in sandstone or as grandiose as a giant plesiosaur whose bones have turned to rock after rapid burial. The fossils themselves tell us neither their age nor how they became encased in the rock layers. Rather, they must be interpreted within some view of earth history. Many people have been led to believe that the existence of fossils proves that millions of years have passed. In reality, fossils can form quite rapidly. Heat and pressure from rapid burial can accelerate the fossilization process. Geological conditions following a worldwide flood would have exceeded anything imaginable today and thus led to the rapid fossilization of the plants and animals on a massive scale.
Fossilization can happen rapidly under the right conditions, although it is a rare event today. Yet, there are mass burial sites throughout the world that are tightly packed with millions of fossils. Apparently, billions of organisms were washed together by the mass destruction of the worldwide flood, buried by massive amounts of sediment, and rapidly fossilized. These extensive fossil graveyards would be the predictable result of a worldwide flood, but would hardly fit the slow accumulation model which continues to be taught as the primary explanation of the fossil record. Something dramatically different must have happened in the past to have caused the wide spread fossilization which we find all over our planet. Noah’s flood would have been this event.
Geologists and paleontologists operating from a Christian world view acknowledge the possibility that a worldwide catastrophe buried unimaginable amounts of plants and animals. This was the disaster documented in the first book of the Bible. It lasted over a year and had reverberations lasting for centuries.
Although any order of burial in a flood would be possible, the general tendency would be for sea life to be buried in the lower rock layers and land animals to be buried in higher rock layers corresponding to their ecological niche. This tendency is generally found. Sea creatures would have been buried first because the salinity and temperature of the oceans would have changed during the catastrophe, wiping out massive numbers of these sea creatures. Ninety-five percent of all fossils found are sea creatures. Even after the flood, plant and animal extinction would have been common as many types of creatures failed to adapt to the dramatically changing conditions.
Creation geologists (and there are many of them) believe that the majority of the geological record is a result of geological activity during and subsequent to the year-long, worldwide flood. This flood would have been an incredibly complex event. It must have involved rapidly moving continental plates, changing climatic conditions, and massive volcanism for decades.
Geologists and paleontologists operating from an evolutionary world view acknowledge local catastrophes, but do not allow consideration of a worldwide flood. This would wipe out the “slow change over eons of time” interpretation of the fossils which is needed to continue believing in evolution.
Only one interpretation of the evidence can be correct and only one interpretation of the evidence agrees with what the Bible claims is the history of our planet.
Just beneath the lush vegetation and majestic scenery of our planet is a massive worldwide graveyard. Plants and animals are buried by the billions under countless tons of mud and sediment which have subsequently turned to rock. How did all those organisms get there? The answer to that question is THE KEY to understanding our origin.
Starting in the early 1800’s geologists have chosen to interpret fossils and sediments based on a presupposition of slow accumulation, or more recently, multiple local catastrophes over billions of years (uniformitarianism). Thousands of geologists have been indoctrinated in this belief and have spent the last 150 years working to fit the evidence into this interpretation of earth history. Yet, many facts remain unexplained by this interpretation. Most of these “mysteries” disappear, if the reality of a recent worldwide flood is acknowledged. A jury looking for the truth starts with eye witness accounts. In addition to the Bible, which clearly presents the global flood as a factual event, every major culture in the world has a flood story. From the Aztecs to the Chinese...Aborigines to the ancient Greeks...all cultures have an ancient account of a universal flood. Many of these stories include details of a righteous man being saved on a floating vessel and attribute the event to judgment from God. If this really happened; people would have spread across the globe after the catastrophe. As centuries passed, the account of the flood would have become distorted. This is exactly what we find.
More evidence comes from fossils. The very existence of fossils is evidence of rapid burial. Fossils do not form today unless animals are rapidly buried. Yet many fossil deposits contain billions of tightly packed and intricately preserved creatures indicating that they had been washed together and rapidly buried. The extent, frequency, and lack of decay found in most fossil beds testify to the worldwide extent of the catastrophe.
The nature of the rock record is also a testimony to a worldwide flood. At many locations around the world, often resting just above those rock layers containing very few indications of life, there is a conglomeration of rocks and boulders. The Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon is an example of this. The Great Unconformity represents a supposed 500 million years of missing earth history. But is there really any “missing” time? Along this interface great boulders of Shinumo Quartite are buried exactly as if they were transported into place by energetic flood waters.[1] The expected consequence of an extensive and energetic flood would be the rapid erosion of massive amounts of sediment and the redeposit of these sediments at other locations. Rocks and boulders would drop to the bottom of these flood waters and come to rest at the top of newly scoured surfaces. This is what we find between the Tapeats sandstone/Dox sandstone border in the Grand Canyon. Evolutionists assume there is a “missing” 500 million years at this border. Creationists see the evidence as a conformation of a worldwide flood with no “missing” time.
Creation geologists have only been working to explain the massive sedimentary rock layers of our planet by a worldwide flood for a few decades and there is still much to be explained. However, the creation model explains many problems which the uniformitarian model does not - despite 150 years of study from an evolutionary perspective.
The truth can only be found if all of the evidence is examined. Does our current scientific and education establishment allow for this freedom of investigation?
Footnote:
1. Austin, Steve, Grand Canyon Monument to Catastrophe - Field Study Guide Tour book, pp.44,
Only seven Tyrannosaurus Rex specimens have been found which are more than 50% complete. Because these fossils are assumed to be over 60 million years old, evolution believers have historically failed to look for non-fossilized material within the bones. Dinosaur bones are generally found in a fossilized condition with silica and other minerals having completely replaced the carbon structure of the original bones—although bones with the appearance of recent burial have been documented.[1] Fossilization is a well understood process that can take place very rapidly under proper conditions. There are many documented cases of the rapid fossilization of organic matter in silica rich water exposure.[2]
Yet, a recent T. Rex discovery sent shockwaves through the scientific community. Evolution believer, Mary H. Schweitzer, of North Carolina State University has discovered flexible blood vessels inside the fossilized bones of a “68-70 million year old” T. Rex from the Hell Creek formation in eastern Montana.[3] In fresh bones, any weak acid can be used to remove the calcium, leaving only organic material such as fibrous connective tissue, blood vessels and various cells. By comparison, if one were to use acid to demineralize a typical mineralized fossil, nothing would be left because everything has been turned to stone. Yet, this acid-treated T. Rex bone fragment left flexible and elastic structures very similar to what one would get from a fresh bone which appeared, “so flexible and resilient that when stretched would return to its original shape”[4]
Close examination of the broken thigh bone also revealed round microscopic structures that appear to be blood cells inside hollow vessels. Dr. Schweitzer stated, “I am quite aware that according to conventional wisdom and models of fossilization, these structures aren’t supposed to be there, but there they are. I was pretty shocked.”[5]
The entire evolutionary community should be far more than shocked. They should be rethinking their dogmatic faith system requiring millions of years of earth history. How could a fossilized bone, buried under enormous heat and pressure, and after millions of years exposure to the environment have intact organic structures? The soft tissue would have completely degraded, no matter how fortuitous the preservation process.
This is not the first soft tissue to be unearthed. Nucleic acid (DNA) with up to 800 base pairs has been taken from “fossil” magnolia leaves allegedly “17-20 million years old.”[6] Yet, DNA exposed to water and oxygen rapidly degrades. A “25-40 million year old” bee was also found encased in amber containing living bacteria spores.[7] Dr. Cano, the discoverer, took careful measures to avoid contamination and his analysis of the bacteria showed it to be very similar to the DNA found in modern “bee bacteria.”
These finds -- soft tissue, bacteria spores, and DNA in fossils and amber -- are not isolated examples, but part of a growing number of scientific discoveries which are rocking the evolutionary time frame to its core! However, don’t expect to hear about them in your child’s textbook, popular science magazines, or museums any time soon. Why? Because it is easier to deny, ignore, or explain away the implications of these finds rather than to admit that the pre-suppositional assumptions of the evolutionary belief system -- huge periods of time, no recent worldwide flood, and no interaction of God with creation -- could be wrong.
Footnotes:
1. Buddy Davis, Mike Liston, John Whitmore, The Great Alaskian Dinosaur Adventure, Master Books, 1998.
2. Carl Wieland, ‘The Earth: How Old Does it Look?’, Creation ex nihilo 23(1):8–13, December 2000.
3. Schweitzer, M. H., et al.,Science, 307, no. 5717, pp. 1952-1955, 25 March 2005.
4. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/, March 2005.
5. Boswell, E., Montana State University News Service, 24 March 2005.
6. Golenberg, E., et al., Nature 344:656-8.
7. Cano, S., Science, vol. 268, no. 5213, p. 977, Research News, 19 May 1995.
The following is the paraphrased essence of one of the most critical junctures in the most famous trial of the twentieth century. The scene is the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, and defense attorney Clarence Darrow had goaded prosecuting attorney Williams Jennings Bryan to take the stand in defense of the Bible.
Mr. Bryan, “Where did Cain find a wife?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could you repeat your answer Mr. Bryan? The entire nation is listening via radio broadcast and this is a pretty basic and simple question. Let me rephrase it. If, as the Bible claims, Adam and Eve were the first man and women, and no other people existed, who did their son Cain find to marry?”
“I don’t know.”
Darrow made Bryan appear foolish because he did not know scripture well enough to defend the most basic of questions. This trial marked a turning point in American education because, for the first time, the Bible was openly ridiculed. Bryan’s inability to answer simple and logical questions was one factor that allowed the American educational establishment to accept evolution hook, line, and sinker, while rejecting the historical creation account of the Bible.
Even today, most Christians do not know the answer to questions as basic as “Where did Cain find a wife?” The problem with not having reasonable answers to logical questions is that it brings all Christianity into question. Why should people believe in a God that they cannot see; if believers in God cannot answer life’s questions about our origin?
The reason that the answer to this question is not immediately apparent is that we have been trained to think like evolutionists. Evolution was founded on a principle of modern geology called ‘uniformitarianism.’ This is the belief that small changes over vast periods of time caused the massive geological changes (Darwin added biological changes.) In essence, we are trained to believe that every thing has always operated as we see it today. This is not what the Bible teaches. It teaches that mankind was created perfect, without flaws. It was only after man’s disobedience that imperfection entered God’s creation.
Thus mankind, as originally created, would not have had the myriad of genetic mistakes now present in our DNA. Mutations do not lead to better and improved humans. These mistakes cause hundreds of debilitating illnesses and birth defects. The reason all of us are not born with enormous numbers of medical problems is because our genes are a combination of the characteristics of both our parents. Only when both parents have the same DNA mistake, do their children manifest the resulting genetic problem.
Furthermore, these genetic mistakes accumulate and increase with time. In other words, the information in our DNA gets more garbled, it never increases in clarity. Since mistakes are accumulating in our DNA, it is logical to assume that as we go back in time, there would be fewer mistakes. The reason brothers and sisters cannot marry today is because they are likely to have similar DNA errors which only lead to children with birth defects. However, there were no moral laws against children intermarrying until after the time of Moses. This was approximately 4000 years ago and at least 2000 years after the creation of mankind. Before that time, sibling marriage was quite common.
The Bible states that Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters. Cain merely married his sister.
The reason we don’t realize this obvious answer is because we have been trained to believe things have always been the way they are today. The past and the present become far more understandable when we view it from a Biblical perspective. This viewpoint acknowledges that the past was very different from the present.
Very few people today realize that modern science is based on naturalistic assumptions. Modern science is based on the philosophy or belief system in naturalism. Naturalism is the belief or philosophy which states the following: First, only the natural exists. There is no metaphysical or supernatural. Second, everything can be explained as a result of random natural causes. These two axioms are the foundation stones upon which naturalism is built and of which the General Theory of Evolution is the outgrowth.
In the past science was defined as knowledge, or the search for knowledge, or the search for the truth of the how and the why of nature and the physical world around us. With this definition of science, scientist of the past did not separate their belief in God from their science. In fact, their science was an outgrowth of their belief in God. If there was a rational God who created a rational world then, scientists reasoned, they could search and find out the rationale that God used to uphold His creation. Like Kepler said, “We were merely thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”[1]
Because scientists believed in a rational creator they searched for the rationale behind the creation. Their belief in a Divine Creator did not deter their scientific investigation, but rather justified and enhanced their scientific inquiry. Indeed, their scientific inquiry was a result of their belief system and their belief system justified scientific inquiry and predicted the results: scientific discoveries of the laws of nature, physics, chemistry etc. In a purely naturalistic world, why should we expect that there be any laws of nature if everything is a result of random, uncaused processes? As C.S. Lewis expressed in the following quote:
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts - i.e., Materialism and Astronomy - are mere accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.[2]
In other words, naturalism does not make sense. Nevertheless, it appealed to man’s baser instincts and therefore it took hold in the hearts and minds of the men who wanted to be free from the moral constraints of formalized religion and a God of retribution.
So we see, as a reaction to the moral restrictions imposed by the religious element of society in the 18th and 19th century and earlier, learned men, wishing to free themselves from the shackles of religiosity, began to oppose Biblical interpretations of nature. As an outgrowth of the Age of Reason, as opposed to the age where men accepted things by faith, because that is what the Church taught; and as a result of the political and social upheavals of the 18th century with the French and American Revolutions, enlighten thinkers began to promote naturalism. By the late 1700’s and early 1800’s naturalism made headway in the scientific community.
Scotland’s James Hutton’s book The Theory of the Earth promoted uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is the belief that only natural processes happening in the present can be used to explain the world around us and its past history. Hutton’s mantra was “the present is the key to the past.”[3] Later, Charles Lyle’s Principles of Geology published in 1830 built on Hutton’s ideas and propagated his naturalistic interpretations as the correct way to do science and interpret the world around us. Lyle’s goal was to get Moses out of science,[4] and he greatly succeeded. Lyle was a great friend of Darwin and continually encouraged him in his writing of the Origins, so much so, that Darwin confessed that it seemed like his ideas came from the mind of Lyle.
It was not long before the idea that all of life and natural occurrences could be explained by unguided natural forces without soliciting supernatural explanations. Biblical interpretations of past events, or catastrophism seemed childish. By 1855, four years before Charles Darwin published the Origins of the Species, we see Charles Spurgeon, the famous British Baptist evangelist admitting his acceptance of naturalistic assumptions. He said,
Can any man tell me when the beginning was? Years ago we thought the beginning of the world was when Adam came upon it. But we have discovered that thousands of years before that God was preparing chaotic matter to make it a fit abode for man, putting races of creatures upon it, who might die and leave behind the marks of his handiwork and marvelous skill, before he tried his hand on man.[5]
Thomas Chalmers, the Scottish theologian and professor from the University of Edinburgh was the first to popularize the Gap theory early in the 19th century. He accepted the millions of years that both Hutton and Lyell propagated. Chalmers developed the theory mainly for the purpose of accommodating the great ages demanded by evolutionary geologists.[6] Natural theology became the popular theology of the day and was the idea that the science of nature was just as an important “revelation” as the scriptures themselves. The two could not contradict each other.
Rather than look for the weaknesses or faults in the scientific reasoning or assumptions, the 19th century man embraced naturalism as taught by Hutton and Lyle and abandoned the traditional Flood geology. Flood geology which had until then been the accepted method of explaining the geological features lost credibility and the atmosphere was ripe for Darwin’s ideas a few years later. Chalmers’ Bridgewater Treatise was published in two volumes in 1833 and went through 6 editions. His books were effectively an encyclopedia of pre-evolutionary natural history, commissioned and published whilst Charles Darwin was on board the Beagle.
The evolutionist Derek Ager in 1981 commenting on this period of history said the following:
My excuse for this lengthy and amateur digression into history is that I have been trying to show how I think geology got into the hands of the theoreticians (Hutton and Lyle) who were conditioned by social and political history of their day more than by observations in the field… In other words, we have allowed ourselves to be brain-washed into avoiding any interpretation of the past that involves extreme and what might be termed ‘catastrophic’ processes![7]
Evolutionist Stephen Jay Goule when writing about the Great Scablands debate said something similar.
The ‘establishment,’ as represented by the United States Geological Society (a modern day scientific organization), closed ranks in opposition (to a scientist’s interpretation of the geological features that supported catastrophic and therefore Biblical processes)…. Instead of testing Bretz’s flood on its own merits, they rejected it on general principles… Bretz stood against a firm, highly restrictive dogma (uniformitarianism) that never had made any sense: the emperor had been naked for a century. Charles Lyell, the godfather of geological gradualism (uniformitarianism), had pulled a fast one in establishing the doctrine of imperceptible change (uniformitarianism).[8]
Here we see that it was not scientific dating methods that gave us the millions of year, not scientific observations in the field, but theoreticians who had rejected the traditional Biblical analysis of the geological column. The acceptance of millions of years came before any modern day scientific dating methods. Such dating methods proofs were similar to Dr. Jan Baptista von Helmont’s experiment proving that Aristotle’s idea of spontaneous generation was true.[9] His experiment was merely verification. He placed dirty underwear and wheat in an open jar in a corner of the home and left it for two weeks. At the end of which he found adult mice in the jar and concluded that spontaneous generation was true. Today’s modern dating methods all too often fall under this outrageous category. They assume the millions of years and then seek a method that confirms that assumption and are oblivious to any evidence which contradicts or calls into question the conclusions or initial assumptions that were made.
By the middle of the 19th century Biblical interpretations began to be seen as infantile or at least unscientific. Naturalism became accepted as the philosophy of science and religion. Men rejected traditional Biblical interpretations, though few men admitted that it was because of the restrictive moral implications forced on society by the religious institutions. Nevertheless, from the time of the French Revolution there was a new awakening in man’s desire to be a free moral agent, an agent who followed his own dictates rather than those imposed upon him by ancient religious institutions. Men wanted to be free from the laws of touch not, taste not, think not, etc. Religion was seen by many as a hindrance to intellectual progress and, therefore, political and scientific progress. Naturalism was embraced because it eliminated God from scientific inquiry and at the same time freed man from the moral confines that religion demanded. If the world around us could be explained by purely naturalistic means, man would not need to invoke the help of the supernatural and could in a sense free himself from its moral restrictions. Man could be free to act and behave according to his own dictates and not to those of a book written thousands of years before to an entirely different culture and people. These underlining reasons helped lead to the rejection of Biblical interpretations.
Later in the 20th century, we see an interesting confession by Aldous Huxley, the grandson of Thomas Huxley, Darwin's closest friend and promoter. Grandfather Thomas Huxley had done much to help defend the evolutionary theory at its beginnings and is credited to winning the famous Evolution/Creation debate with abolitionist William Wilberforce. Thomas Huxley did more to defend evolution than Darwin himself and became known as Darwin’s Bulldog. However, he was not totally convinced of Darwin’s mechanism for evolution. Later in 1960, grandson Aldous spoke honestly about his own hidden agenda.
I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning, consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world (and this is what evolution ultimately teaches) is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do (moral freedom is the goal, to be free from religion’s restrictive confines). For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.[10]
So here we see Aldous Huxley, one of the most influential liberal writers of the 20th century, confessing that his rejection of a creator and his support of atheistic/naturalistic philosophy stemmed from his desire for sexual liberty. The apostle Peter in prophetic words had said the following:
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.’ (This is what uniformitarianism preaches that the present natural processes are the same as those that have been in the past.) For this they are willing ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.[2Peter 3:3-6]
In other words, they are willingly ignorant of the creation act by God and the historical global catastrophic flood of Noah.
What has happened down through the centuries is that the false hypocritical religious systems have driven men from God. As men rejected God, they became proud in mind and their foolish hearts were darkened.[Romans 1:21] Professing themselves to be wise, they in fact became fools believing in the illogical and contradictory.[Romans 1:22] Instead of man being made in God’s image, we became descendants of creeping things, birds and four-footed beats, the Theory of Evolution. Saint Paul prophetically predicts the very same in his letter to the Romans.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 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 uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.[Romans 1:21-23]
Most people today do not realize they have bought into naturalistic assumptions by accepting the Big Bang and the General Theory of Evolution. Naturalism is so strongly accepted into our society, we no longer reject its tenants conscientiously. We do not realize that the scientific models that we are taught as truths are those models that assume naturalistic assumptions and steer clear of Biblical ones. These models assume there is no metaphysical. They assume that past events can be explained by random natural forces happening today. By changing the definition of science to mean natural processes by which we can explain the world around us, modern day science has eliminated God from the discussion and conned mankind into accepting its naturalistic philosophy without mankind even realizing it.
Let´s take a look at the Big Bang Theory as an example. When formulating their model of the beginning of the universe evolutionists steer clear of anything which validates the Biblical framework. In the Biblical framework we would expect to find our galaxy near to the center of the universe. We would expect to find the universe expanding from that central region. Dr. Russell Humphreys has made such a model and has found some interesting discoveries concerning distant starlight, time and gravity.[15] His model postulates the possibility, because of gravities affect on time, of time passing slower on earth than at the end of the universe. He speculates that although billions of years could have passed at the far distant end of the universe, it could be possible that only six thousand years of earth time passed here on our planet. In choosing his model, Dr. Humphreys starts with a universe with a center and with our galaxy near that center. That would put our galaxy near the gravitational center of the universe. Since it is an established fact that gravity effects time and causes time to pass more slowly, time on earth would be expected to pass slower than time at the outer fringes of the universe where the universes gravitational well would have a much weaker affect. Dr. Humphreys’ universe also has an edge.
However, evolutionists when doing their model of the beginning of the universe avoid those two assumptions made by Dr. Humphreys: the universe has a center and our galaxy is near that center, and the universe has an edge. Internationally renowned astrophysicist George FR Ellis explains it in the following manner:
People need to be aware that there is a range of models that can explain the observations .... For instance, I can construct a spherically symmetric universe for you with Earth at its center, and you cannot prove otherwise based on observations, (that it is wrong) ....you can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide it.[16]
Ellis is admitting that evolutionists exclude a model like Dr. Humphreys’ because of philosophical reasons. They exclude it because it would give credence to the Biblical story, not because the evidence negates it. The fact is that the evidence supports Dr. Humphreys’ model over the traditional Big Bang model, but because of its Biblical ramifications, Dr. Humphreys’ model is ignored.
Evolutionist Professor of Genetics Richard Lewontin made a similar confession of evolutionist’s anti-Biblical bias. He said,
We take the side of evolutionary science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism, that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.[17]
Modern science is full of naturalistic assumptions which are contrary to reality. Because of modern man’s bias against God the naturalistic assumptions are assumed to be true without scientific evidence to back them up. It’s about time we re-evaluate the state of modern science’s condition. Ben Stein’s documentary, Expelled; No Intelligence Allowed, questions modern science’s bias and dictatorial control of modern thinking.[18] Dave Schoch in his book, The Assumptions Behind the Theory of Evolution, has said the following:
The truth can only be made up of facts, not assumptions. We should not be teaching assumptions as facts to our children, especially a theory that only stands upon one assumption after another.[19]
It is about time we take a closer look at our educational and scientific community and see exactly what’s going on. Future generations are dependent on us standing up for our convictions and exposing the false evolutionary doctrine for the mythological hocus-pocus that it is. Let’s get back to true scientific investigation without bias and prejudice whatever form it may take. The future of our children and the world depends upon it!
Charles Darwin was born on February 12th, 1809, the same day as Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was destined to become President of the United States during its darkest and deadliest hour when more than 500,000 American lives would be lost in the Civil War, and Lincoln himself assassinated in 1865 and die at the age of 56. Darwin would ultimately die in 1882 at the age of 73, but his theory of evolution would captured the minds of millions and lead them from faith in God to scientific fatalism and here’s the story.
Until the 19th century, in the western world, the idea that God created the world about 6,000 years ago was quite universally accepted. Archbishop James Usher´s The Annals of the World first published in 1658 dated creation to about 4004 BC. The age of the earth and geology traditionally had followed this Biblical world view. Society was largely structured on the values laid out in the Bible.
It was in 1788 that James Hutton first published The Theory of the Earth, his book on geology. Here he explained uniformitarianism, or the idea that the present was the key to the past. In other words, by measuring the rates of natural processes in the present, scientists could extrapolate backwards to determine how long it took for geological features to form in the past. Traditionally, the geological column had been judged as the result of Noah´s flood. Hutton suggested that geology must be judged by natural causes present today and not by supposed events of the past. He said, “The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now… No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principles.”[1]
For example, rather than seeing the Grand Canyon as the result of the catastrophic flood some 4,000 plus years ago, it was now seen as the result of slow natural processes over millions of years. He wrote, “But surely, general deluges (Noah´s Flood) form no part of the theory of the earth; for the purpose of this earth is evidently to maintain vegetable and animal life, and not to destroy them.”[2] The final line in his book stated, “The result, therefore, of our present inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,–no prospect of an end,"[3] confirming his idea that the creation and flood events were not valid.
Charles Lyell, a contemporary of Darwin, following on Hutton´s ideas, wrote his own tome, Principles of Geology, which was published in 1830. Lyell, like Hutton, was from Scotland. He had trained as a lawyer and used his lawyer´s power of persuasion to draw a brilliant defence in favour of uniformitarianism and millions of years rather than the hitherto idea of catastrophism. Catastrophism was based on the Biblical events of the creation and the worldwide flood of Noah and therefore needed only thousands of years of earth time.
Lyell himself confessed that his goal in life was to get “Moses out of science,” for until that time the creation -flood / catastrophism had dominated the geological interpretation of the geological column. Lyell saw himself as “the spiritual saviour of geology, freeing the science from the old dispensation of Moses.”[4] His Principles of Geology was the most influential geological work in the middle of the 19th century and helped consolidate the concept of millions of years. He said during a lecture that “….the physical past of geological inquiry ought to be conducted as if the scriptures were not in existence.”[5] Such a position is not unbiased but is recommending that science take an anti- Biblical stance.
When Darwin took his five year trip around the world, passing through the now famous Galapagos Islands off the western coast of South America, he took his Bible with him. He had graduated university with a Divinity Degree. However, the captain of the ship the Beagle offered Darwin a copy of Lyell´s Principles to read. Doing so, slowly changed Charles world view. He abandoned the creation/flood model and accepted uniformitarianism and millions of years.
Once Darwin had abandoned the Biblical model and accepted uniformitarianism with the millions of years, he was open to finding a new reason for the variety of life not based on Biblical assumptions. Hutton had already toyed with these ideas but had “rejected the idea of evolution originating species as a 'romantic fantasy'. Hutton thought that natural selection allowed species to form varieties better adapted to particular conditions and was therefore evidence of benevolent design in nature.”[6] Creation scientists agree with this completely.
People normally picture the scientist as an unbiased scholar searching for the truth of the how and the why of things or of nature. But the truth is quite different. Every scientist starts off his work with assumptions, or a belief system of how he interprets the world around him. The data or evidence does not speak for itself, but needs to be interpreted. The scientist´s world view will affect how he interprets the data or evidence that he discovers.
Let´s take a look at how the scientists on a famous TV program CSI or Bones do their science. The investigators are trying to find out how something happened. They cannot go back in time, so they make a theory and then check to see if the evidence fits their theory. If the evidence shows the theory false, they throw out the first theory and develop another or revise or adapt the first. By doing science in the present, they try to determine how the murder might have occurred in the past. However, since they were not there, they can never be sure if they are right.
Often in the program they first think it is one person and then another, until finally they come up with the right person. Ultimately, they try to get a confession, or an eye-witness testimony because all they have is circumstantial evidence and that might not hold up in court. Sometimes in a program a bad cop fudges the evidence to make it look like someone was guilty when they were not. Sadly many of today´s scientists are fudging the evidence in order to have the public believe that the evolution of “molecules to man” has really taken place.
The famous British biologist D. Watson clearly expressed this view way back in 1929 when he said, “Evolution is a theory universally accepted not because it can be proved to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.”[7]
When talking about evolution, we are talking about “molecules to man” evolution or common descent from the first living organism. The evolutionary tree of life demonstrates all life springing from one source. Biologists often claim that since a change does take place in a species, therefore “evolution” has occurred. This is an example of what some scientists call “micro-evolution.” Creationist scientists agree that some form of “speciation” does take place, but never does a new type of “kind” of animal develop. Creationists would call this variation within a species or “kind” of animal.
Dr Jason Lisle talks about the shift of one meaning of a word in an argument to another meaning in his book Discerning Truth: Exposing Errors in Evolutionary Arguments. He says, “Evolution can mean “change” in a general sense but it also refers to the idea that organisms share a common ancestor or “particles to people” evolution. Many evolutionists seem to think that by demonstrating evolution in the sense of change it some how proves evolution in the sense of “common descent” or “particles to people” evolution. You might hear someone say, `Creationists are wrong because we can see evolution happening all the time. Organism are constantly changing and adapting to their environment.´ But the fact that animals change does not demonstrate that they share a common ancestor. This is a very common fallacy used in evolutionary arguments.”[8]
The finches´ beaks may be different, but they are still finches. The dogs may be Great Dames or Chihuahuas, but they are still dogs. The moths may be black or white peppered, but they are still moths. The bacteria may be resistant or non-resistant to pesticide, but it is still bacteria. Natural selection and mutation may have occurred, but no new genetic information has been added to the DNA of the organism. New genetic information would be necessary for a new body part or body function to appear. The error of the Neo-Darwinians is that they teach that fundamentally information is created by mutations.
Scientists have even discovered that some bacteria possess a genetic capacity to resist certain antibiotics. Mutations are not involved. In other cases, structural defects are caused in the organism where the antibiotic would attach itself thus making the bacteria resistant. But rather than saying that the bacteria gained resistant, we could say that the antibiotic lost its ability to attach itself to the bacteria. The mutation in the bacteria caused a structural defect in the bacteria prohibiting the attachment of the antibiotic.
Normally what we see in nature is variation within a kind of animal or organism, not “molecules to man” evolution. The term “micro evolution” is used in these cases, but “micro-evolution” plus millions of years will not give us “macro-evolution” or “molecules to man” evolution. The problem remains; neither natural selection nor mutations can add new genetic information to the DNA.
Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous British mathematician and astronomer, questioned the very origins of the first cell through evolution. He said, “The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 zeros after it. It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole General Theory of Evolution. There was no primordial soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must, therefore, have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”[9] As a mathematician he strongly argued against the mathematical probability of evolution. Because the improbability was so high, he concluded that evolution was impossible.
“Molecules to man evolution” has no mechanism. There is no way for one type of animal to change into another, no matter how much time is involved. When Charles Darwin was writing his Origins of the Species, the scientific community knew nothing of Mendel´s genetic studies. Mendel published them at about the same time as the Origins, but in French. However, scientists did not become aware of Mendel´s studies until the beginning of the 1900´s. Evolutionists were hoping Mendel´s genetics would offer the mechanism for evolution. But they were sadly disappointed.
Genetics proved a dead end and clearly showed that a great variety within a species was possible to obtain, but to a limit. The gene pool was limited; therefore the genetic variation possible was also a limited. Genetics did not help, but just confirmed the idea that there existed a barrier between the different “kinds” of organisms and that barrier could not be crossed. In fact studies show that a good course in genetics, even if taught by an evolutionist, reduces the student´s belief in biological evolution.
Today scientists know that neither natural selection nor mutations can create new genetic information. New genetic information would be necessary, for example, to change a reptilian lung into an avian lung. Biologist Michael Denton does a good study on this topic which can be seen on YouTube on “From a Prince to a Frog,” [10]
In his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Denton wrote, “Neither of the two fundamental axioms of Darwin´s macro-evolutionary theory- the idea that all of life forms are linked together and ultimately lead back to a primordial cell and the belief that all the adaptive design of life has resulted from a random process – have been validated by one single empirical discovery or scientific advance since 1859.”[11]
Reiterating the point once again, neither natural selection nor mutations, which evolutionists claim are the mechanisms for evolutionary change, can form new genetic information.
Dr. Lee Spetner, who holds a PHD in physics from MIT said in his book called Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution: “In all the reading I have done in life-science literature, I have never found a mutation that added information. All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce genetic information, not increase it.”[12]
British scientist Michael Pitman has commented that “neither observation nor controlled experimentation has shown natural selection manipulating mutations so as to produce a new gene, hormone, enzyme or organ.”[13]
A final quote on the subject by Dr. Wilder- Smith a famous British geneticist: “The chemistry of mutations in the genetic code has an effect similar to that of water on a text. Mutations modify or destroy already existing genetic information, but they never create new information, they never create an entirely new biological organ. Herein lays the error of New Darwinism which teaches that fundamentally new information is created by mutations.”[14] Some fascinating lectures and debates by Dr. Wilder – Smith can be found on YouTube.
Today, many children are born with one of the thousands of genetic defects or diseases. These defects/diseases are a result of mutations in the parental genes. Evidence from science clearly shows that mutations are usually deadly or dangerous and not beneficial. The few that may be beneficial, like sickle cell anaemia, are still caused by the loss of or damage to the genetic information.
Why are students still being taught in their textbooks that natural selection together with mutations are mechanisms for evolutionary change? Evolutionists do not want to let the cat out of the bag. They do not have a better answer and do not want to admit that they have not found a mechanism for evolution. They hide the facts because they believe their paradigm so strongly and because the only viable alternative is divine creation.
Like one evolutionist Professor of Genetics Richard Lewontin said, “We take the side of evolutionary science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism, that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door,”[15] or repeating the Watson quote, “Evolution is a theory universally accepted not because it can be proved to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.”[16] Scott Todd from Kansas State University has said something similarly, “Even if all the data should point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.”[17]
The argument is not science verses religion as evolutionists like to present it. The argument is between two differing world views. Duane Gish said, “The battle is with the evolutionary philosophy and faith, not science. Evolution is a powerful religious concept, which if correctly understood, negates all of Christianity.”[18]
Evidence does not speak for itself. The fossils are not found with dates already attached. They do not talk. Science does not say anything. It is the scientists who make value judgments about their observations. But, if they are good scientists, they should make their judgments based on whether the evidence is in accordance with known laws of nature or physics, not according to their particular bias about origins. The evolutionist Bateson has confessed, “We cannot see how differences into species came about, variation of many kinds, often considerable, we daily witness, but no origins of species. Meanwhile, though our faith in evolution stands unshaken, we have no acceptable account of the origin of species.”[19]
Science can never prove what happened in the past. Scientists can speculate, and can formulate theories. But historical science can never be proved in a laboratory. Historical science deals with speculating about how events or processes took place in the past. Historical science is at best philosophical, because it deals with assumptions about past events. Neither creation nor evolution can be proven in the laboratory. They are historical scientific models or ways to view the evidence and interpret how events happened in the past. They are not scientific facts. However, the scientific facts should align with a scientific model that is accurate.
Science which we perform in the laboratory is called operational science and is done by following the scientific method: observation, hypothesis, experimentation, observation, conclusion, testing and verification. Operational science has given us the man on the moon, mobile phones, laptops, modern medicines and so on.
But “origins” or historical science is speculation about past events and as such does not come under the same category as operational science. We are not able to go back in time and observe what happened at the beginning of time. Scientists speculate about the past and make ideological judgments before doing the science or the mathematical equations. Like Stephen Hawking admits in his book The Brief History of Time. When talking about the big bang, he mentions that he must add “a mixture of ideology.”[20]
Internationally renowned astrophysicist George FR Ellis who worked closely with Hawking said when talking about the Big Bang that, "People need to be aware that there is a range of models that can explain the observations .... For instance, I can construct a spherically symmetric universe for you, with Earth at its center, and you cannot prove otherwise based on observations, (that it is wrong) ....you can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide it."[21]
The point he is trying to make, as an honest scientist, is that the idea of the Big Bang without a center and without an edge is an ideological decision. Scientists choose a model without a center and without an edge to keep away from the Biblical idea that the earth is special and has a special place in the universe. However, if you start with the earth´s galaxy near the center of the universe, which the observable evidence cannot disprove and seems to agree with, you come to totally different conclusions. See Russell Humphreys´ Starlight and Time on the YouTube.[22] Today´s leaders of scientific inquiry purposely choose a center-less and edge-less universe for philosophical reasons, because they “cannot allow a divine foot in the door.”[23]
Basically, there are two world views in the scientific community: the Biblical creationist world view and the naturalistic evolutionary world view. The naturalists believe that the world and everything in it can be explained only by what we find in the natural material world. They do not believe in the supernatural. Naturalism was popular world view in the 19th century and on into the early 20th century. You have many naturalist writers at that time such as Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Ernest Hemingway, to name a few, which ultimately led to the existentialism of Kafka, Sartre and Camus.
We need to understand that naturalism is the underlining philosophy of evolution. The evolutionary scientists have tried or are trying to change the original reason for science and meaning of science. Science originally was the search for the truth of the how and the why of the world around us. Today´s scientists like to define science as the search for naturalistic reasons to the how and the why of life and the world around us. Even if the evidence should point to the supernatural, evolutionists will not accept it. They claim that the supernatural is outside the realm of science. Evolutionary scientist Ernest Mayr said in 1988, “In scientific controversies, there is rarely any argument about facts. It is rather their interpretation that is controversial.”[24]
By buildings their theory on the false premise “there is no supernatural,” the evolutionists were bound to come to the wrong conclusion. A false premise will not lead to a correct, logical conclusion. The supernatural does exist. Thousands of people experience it every day. People experience healings. They hear voices that keep them from danger. They have dreams or visions that warn them about some evil or tell them of the death of a loved one. Scientist and doctors have written numerable books about people who have had life after death experiences. Just recently a book about a young child who had a Near Death Experience has been quite popular. People have supernatural experiences that change their lives. The supernatural is real.
Naturalism starts with the metaphysical conclusion that there is no supernatural. Therefore, naturalism is false. Therefore, evolution which is founded on naturalism is also false. Honest scientists should be more open to the problems within the theory of evolution and consider the creation model as a viable alternative. Dave Schoch in his book The Assumptions Behind the Theory of Evolution says, “The truth can only be made up of facts, not assumptions. We should not be teaching assumptions as facts to our children, especially a theory that only stands upon one assumption after another.”[25]
In the book In Six Days: why 50 scientists choose to believe in creation,[26] scientists with doctorates in various scientific fields give clear testimony and reasoning to their personal decisions to accept the Biblical creation model over the current more popular evolutionary model. These scientists not only reject the Darwinian evolutionary model as unscientific, but chose a literal six day creation event to be the most scientific of the choices.
For more information on the creation/evolution debate from the Biblical creationist viewpoint the following websites are available, although there are many others:
Also, on YouTube many creation documentaries can be found as well as interesting debates between creationists and evolutionists. Jesus said, “Seek and you shall find.”[Matthew 7:7] He also said, “You shall seek me and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart.”[Jeremiah 29:13] If you really hunger and thirst after “truth” you will find it. That´s a promise!
