By Jim Lee
I am grateful to Mr. Jim Lee from Nashville, TN, a friend and former public school science teacher, for the articles that will be printed in each edition of our Newsletter, The Illuminator. These articles are reprinted here for your convenience. Mr. Lee holds creation seminars in private school settings, churches and any other place where he is invited, on the topic of Creation versus Evolution (either Biblical Creation or Scientific Creation). He has given Light of Life Ministry permission to print his articles in book form. This will be done in the future as we will have 90 articles in a daily reading format titled, From Evolution to Creation in 90 Days! By the time we get the book printed, I hope you will be hooked on these enlightening articles!
Article One
The God of Creation
As a student and teacher of science, I have been drawn to praise God for His magnificently beautiful and yet vastly complex world, designed especially as a dwelling place for man. There is so much overwhelming evidence written into the creation, not only of the existence of God, but also His very nature, that God also wrote it into His Word in Romans 1:20. To paraphrase, the evidence is so clear and obvious that anyone who doesn’t worship God as the awesome Creator that He is, is “without excuse.” God has made it easy for us to believe and what He has told us in His Word, he has confirmed in His World.
It will be the purpose of “Creation Corner” to look at the inexhaustible and exciting evidences which cause us to worship the all-powerful and loving Creator God of the Bible. Then we, along with the Psalmist, will be compelled to say, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork.” So, how did God create the universe? The Bible says “from nothing” (ex nihilo). He spoke and it was (“by the word of His power”). There was no preexisting matter, as in the supposed “big bang.” This makes God the one true God because anything less than ex nihilo would have necessitated God Himself being created. The only God I can worship must be self-existent, eternal, all knowing, and He must love me and demonstrate that love. If God made me, I belong to Him; He sets the rules. If He loves me, then the rules are for my own good and well being, and I will want to keep them.
Article Two
The God We Create!
In Genesis 1:26, God created man in His own image. Today there are many false religions which have “created” god in their own image, after the imagination of the heart. Even some Christians are guilty of this. We recognize the qualities of God that we are comfortable with, and then worship that god that we have created rather than the God of the Bible. We do this many times because of misconceptions we have about truth stemming from “science” or “science falsely so-called” (I Timothy 6:20). Even our understanding of science reflects the sin nature of man. Paul told Timothy that in the last days man will be “ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). Today, one of the results of this “ever learning without truth” is the theory of evolution.
The question is often asked, “Could God have used evolution to bring His creation slowly into existence?” This belief is call “theistic evolution” and is accepted by some believers. However, this group of believers is the most uninformed of all people. They either do not understand the supposed mechanisms of evolution or have a false concept of the nature of God. In the case of most proclaimed Christians, I suspect the first to be true. It is a sad fact that so many people are either uninformed or misinformed about science relating to origins. It is even sadder that many of these people are Christian leaders and pastors who feel they must distort the clear teaching of God’s Word to accommodate a philosophy of science which is not only unsupported by evidence after 150 years of searching, but which also defies the sure laws and principles of science.
Article Three
Dare We Accuse God of Evolution?
Did God invent evolution and then use such a process to create? How is evolution supposed to work? Most people have no idea but are absolutely certain that it happens. In a nutshell, radiation (sun, cosmic) causes mutations (mistakes in genetic copying) in germ cells, which are then passed on in reproduction of that organism. If it’s a “good” mistake, it makes the creature better equipped to dominate and survive in its environment. The organisms to which the “good” mistakes didn’t happen will not be as “fit” for the environment as the mutants who will then dominate the food supply (including the weaker of the other species). They dominate in reproduction also and pass the “good” mistake on to future generations only to eventually be joined by more “good” mistakes which, over millions of years produce new and improved species. And so ever onward and upward to man! (Note by J. Jones: these “good mistakes” are often referred to as “positive mutations.” Of course, science seldom if ever witnesses a truly positive mutation in spite of all the controlled efforts to do so!)
In other words, time and chance coupled with a constant struggle for survival produces “survival of the fittest.” Therefore, hundreds of millions of years of struggle and suffering and pain and death are the supposed mechanisms of evolution. Does this sound like God’s plan for man? Can the God of love be the God of evolution? Does Scripture allow for evolution? Even though evolution is a mindless, meandering, painful and inefficient “process” that shows no intelligence or purpose, many Christians still choose to believe God created this way. Scripture absolutely does not allow for it and we will briefly look at what God has said in His Word over the next few times together, followed by a look at the evidence from science for a created universe.
Article Four
Does Scripture Allow for Evolution?
In Exodus 20:11 we read, “For in six days God created the heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is…” This air-tight statement by God is a portion of the Ten Commandments. There are no time gaps here to allow for matter to slowly change by natural processes into living cells over millions of years. The days referred to here are literal 24 hour days, just as God so cleverly disclosed in Genesis chapter one. He delineated morning and evening for each day so as not to allow the imagination of man to pour in vast time periods of evolution, replacing God as the Creator.
Also in Genesis we read that when God created life He got it right the first time. After each type of animal life, and then after man, He pronounced it “good.” Then at the end of the sixth day creating period God said it was “very good.” In other words the earth, man’s environment, was at its best – a perfect place to live from the beginning. Man was at his highest level of mental and physical capability, far superior to anyone on earth today. However, it didn’t remain that way long. When Adam chose to sin, death and decay entered the environment for the first time. Since then it’s all been slowly going downhill. The curse, followed by the flood of Noah’s day, made life very difficult for all. For man it meant hard work, suffering and pain. The earth began suffering severe weather, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Today, we can add pollution and the destruction of natural resources to the list. The process has gone from a high level of energy, order and fitness, toward a weaker environment, less energy and greater deterioration in man’s mental and physical status. Today the earth isn’t nearly the place it used to be, and neither is man. This is what the Bible teaches and the fossil evidence, which is a reminder of the flood and God’s judgment, agrees with this overwhelmingly.
On the other hand, the evolution scenario teaches just the opposite from the Bible and from the evidence. Supposedly, things started chaotically with low order and energy. Slowly, over billions of years, the universe somehow organized itself by accident into the complex structures of star systems, galaxies, and galactic systems charged with energy and operating in perfect order. Then simple life immerged, followed by more and more complex life with greater levels of energy and information until today we are at the highest level since time began. This not only is exactly opposite of what God’s Word teaches but also contradicts the most proven laws of science, the first and second law of physics. Since evolution contradicts both science and the Scripture, why does man try so hard to believe it?
Article Five
Was There Death Before Sin?
What does evolutionary teaching say about death? From what we have discussed in previous articles, death is the central mechanism of evolution – the machinery that makes evolution “work.” Without death there would be no natural selection of “positive” mutations. So ever since life “evolved,” death has stepped in to somehow make it evolve better by weeding out the weaker and less fortunate. Therefore, for hundreds of millions of years, death was ever present (including pain and suffering) constantly guiding the evolutionary process onward and upward to man. Man has appeared only recently on the evolutionary time scale, being preceded by millions of years of struggle, suffering, and death.
Does this belief contradict Scripture? Yes, in every conceivable way! From Genesis we learn that death came upon all living things as a result of Adam’s sin. This was part of the curse God placed on the earth, and before sin death had not occurred, neither animal nor human. Probably the best New Testament explanation is found in Romans 5:12: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men…” No, it wasn’t millions of years of suffering and death that produced man; just the opposite. It was man who brought on suffering and death! If death was common on earth before Adam, then it was not a result of man’s sin. God’s declaration on the sixth day of creation that it was all “very good” was incorrect, and the writers of both the Old and New Testaments are in error.
Article Six
Does Scripture Deny Evolution?
We have previously mentioned that evolution is not really science for lack of any direct physical evidence. It is really a philosophy bordering on cultic and very religious in nature. To be brief, it believes man to be the highest developed form of life in intelligence and power. Since he evolved by random chance processes without a Creator, this makes him “Captain of his soul and master of his fate.” Therefore, there being no greater entity in the knowable universe, only man himself is worthy of worship. This belief is the very basis of humanist philosophy. Life is an accident; there is no real purpose, therefore no absolutes. Ethics and morality are human constructs and can be changed or done away with by popular opinion. This is called situation ethics or moral relativism. Man makes his own rules to suit himself and since he is an evolved creature, steeped in “struggle for survival” and “might makes right,” you can be sure his rules will be self-serving (to accelerate his own evolution).
Now, how about a little reality from the scriptures? The Creator made man for a purpose and with quite a destiny in mind. Therefore God’s morals and rules for man are for the purpose of working toward that great destiny and procuring the best possible life for man now. This is why we worship God and not man as humanism, based on evolution, calls for. The Bible addresses this prevalent philosophy of the last days in the first chapter of Romans.
21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…
This is hardcore humanism pure and simple, and it justifies itself by evolutionary philosophy. Once again evolution and the Bible are in absolute opposition. Christian historians today who have sold out to this false philosophy feel a need to re-interpret Scripture to align it to their beliefs much like some court judges today who are re-interpreting the Constitution in order to rid our schools of any taste of Christianity. For years now it has been taught in many seminaries that the book of Genesis, and especially the creation account, was never intended to be taken as real history but merely as poetry, parables and conceptual metaphors. There is no question that the Bible contains these writing styles as well as prophecy, letters, biography, auto-biography and historical narrative. Most likely Genesis was written by Adam, Noah, Shem and others as a record of events in their own lifetimes. Then Moses, guided by the Holy Spirit, selected, compiled, edited and added his own comments to produce the first book of the Bible we know as Genesis today. So we need to take a close look at the internal evidence of Genesis to determine its literary style.
Article Seven
Is Genesis Real History?
It doesn’t take a Hebrew scholar to realize that the writer(s) of Genesis were recording real history. The literary style is unquestionably historical narrative. The early church fathers, the Jewish scribes, and Christian scholars down through the centuries have made this assessment. Only in recent years have some scholars tried to make the creation account a myth by using strained interpretations because of the influence of evolutionary thinking including non-existent vast geological ages which are scientifically unverifiable.
Professor James Barr, a renowned professor of Hebrew at Oxford University stated, “Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament any world class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis ch. 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) Creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience, (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to the later stages in the biblical story, (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguished all human and animal life except for those in the ark.”
To conclude, I will simply summarize seven reasons Genesis can only be an historic account (one through five in this article with reasons six and seven in the next article).
1) The Jewish people have always regarded it as a record of their own true history.
2) Chapters 1-11 of Genesis contain no forms of Hebrew poetry including contractive or completive parallelism. Neither are they parables, which when used in scripture are always introduced as parables.
3) The sovereignty of God is a unifying theme to the whole of Genesis, which falls to the ground if any part is mythical and not true history. Each portion reinforces the historical authenticity of the other.
4) The principle people mentioned in Genesis chapters 1-11 are referred to as real, not mythical, people many times in the rest of the Bible. Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel and Noah are referred to in 15 other books in the Bible.
5) The Lord Jesus Christ referred to the creation of Adam and Eve as a real historical event in Matthew 19 and mark 10, and to Noah as an historical person and the flood as a real historical event in Matthew 24 and Luke 17.
6) Unless the first eleven chapters of Genesis are authentic historical events, the rest of the Bible is incomplete and incomprehensible as to its full meaning. The revelation, the progress and the consummation of God’s redeeming purpose starts in Genesis chapter one where we find that the entrance of sin into human life was a fact that merited the judgment of God. Otherwise the substitutionary atonement makes no sense.
7) The Apostle Paul’s exposition of the Gospel has no meaning if Genesis is not real history. Please review Romans 5:19 and I Corinthians 15:21-24, 45.
So, should Genesis be taken literally? “If we apply normal principles of Biblical exegesis (ignoring pressure to make the text conform to the evolutionary prejudices of our age) it is overwhelmingly obvious that Genesis was meant to be taken in a straightforward, obvious sense as an authentic, literal, historical record of what actually happened.” (Russell Grigg, M.S.)
Article Eight
Why Evolution Contradicts Scripture
(Reason Seven)
The New Testament confirms man was created, not evolved. The Scripture on this is abundant, so I must be selective. Mark 10:6 says “God made them male and female,” at the very beginning of time. The evolutionary explanation of the divergence of male and female entities with very different but complimentary characteristics is not only naïve but stretches intellectual credulity to the breaking point. Here are two independent forms of life which are totally dependent as far as reproduction of life. Such a marvelous system as this can only work if both are complete and fully functioning from the start, just as God said it was. To imagine this male-female divergence as a process taking millions of years is ludicrous in terms of evolutionary mechanisms of survival of the fittest and genetic mistakes. A partially evolved system has no function and certainly could not survive for untold ages until it was perfected!
Once again, the most reasonable and satisfying explanation of the origin of the two sexes is given by God – the One who was there at the time. While blind faith in evolution is confusing, the God of reason doesn’t want us to be confused. Some Christians are so eager to compromise scriptural truth with false evolutionary philosophy that they will “grab at straws” rather than give up. The two conflicting false views of origins most often held by compromising Christians today are:
(1) The “Big Bang” followed by billions of years of astronomical evolution — the Earth evolves to support life — God steps in and creates the first living cell — millions of years of biological evolution occur —man evolves from the apes — God decides to “pronounce Him man” at a certain point of evolution
(2) The same beginning scenario but after millions of years of biological evolution on earth, including the first living cell, God steps in and creates man in His image (Some include creation of new species at intervals).
These views are both forms of a philosophy called “progressive creation” and neither is the least bit scriptural nor is supported by a shred of scientific evidence. We have already shown that God’s nature would never allow Him to use evolution as a part of His method of creation. But Colossians 1:14-17 slams the door on all of this. To summarize it: Christ created all things in the space-mass-time universe, “visible and invisible” – even the invisible atom of which all things are built, “powers” – all energy and the laws of physics which govern its use, and “by Him all things consists” – not only the universe is held together by Him, but the very nucleus of the atom for which there is no known physical force to hold it together. It is a most powerful Creator that we worship!
Article Nine
The Effect of Evolution on Evangelism
In the first eight articles we have looked at seven ways evolution of any kind contradicts scripture. In this article I wish to point out some very unique New Testament scripture that explains why the unsaved have a hard time accepting Christ in these last days. Earlier I mentioned that Moses wrote the book of Genesis under the inspiration of God. Now Jesus Himself confirms this, so there is no doubt. In John 5:45-47, to paraphrase, Jesus told the Jews that even though Moses had written about Him as their Messiah, they didn’t believe it! Jesus said, “if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me…but if you believe not his writings, how shall you believe my words?”
This is such an important point that it’s repeated in Luke 16:31, this time adding that even though He will be raised from the dead, they still won’t believe because they didn’t believe God’s Word through Moses to begin with. Today many Jews and unsaved people world-wide have rejected the words of Moses likewise concerning God as Creator. As Jesus pointed out, if we reject God’s Word through Moses, even concerning the creation of all things by Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:9), then we will have a hard time accepting Jesus as God’s Son, the Savior of man. It is a problem of the heard, not of the head. When we reject the creation account, it’s not because of knowledge. If we reject any of God’s Word at all, the rest becomes meaningless and therefore powerless. “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3)
Today, most schools which our children attend are teaching the rejection of more than just the creation account. They deny that God has judged man’s sin with a worldwide flood. Paraphrasing 2 Peter 3:3-6, people in the last days will scoff at the idea of a worldwide flood. They will proclaim that God does not intervene in man’s history and therefore the idea of God sending a Messiah is not possible. Peter says that they will deny the earth perished in a flood.
Even more significant, he says that they will be “willingly ignorant” of this fact. That means in spite of God’s Word clearly stating it and in spite of all the geological evidence that the flood left behind, they will still choose not to believe God has judged man’s sin in this manner. As Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis) so aptly states, if there was a flood of Noah, you would expect to find “billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the earth.” That’s exactly what you find in the fossil record. It is God’s reminder to man of His intervention and judgment. It is just this fact, that God judges sin, that these scoffers in the last days will willingly ignore, and deny there ever was a flood!
Article Ten
Timothy and Science
To conclude our discussion of the contradictions of the New Testament with evolutionary philosophy, I would like to mention the last statement which Paul leaves with Timothy as a warning at the conclusion of his first letter to him. Paul is admonishing Timothy as a young preacher to be very careful to avoid being fooled by false science. In I Timothy 6:20-21 Paul calls this “profane and vain babblings.” The Greek word used in all texts is “gnosis” which means exactly the same as knowledge. Real knowledge is truth, and John 17:17 says, “thy Word is truth.” In other words, God’s Word contains real knowledge, and since knowledge and science are equivalent, then true science must be based on a framework of understanding revealed in God’s Word.
To be specific, false science or “science falsely so called,” is conclusion based on false or incomplete evidence, interpreted by a false framework of understanding. This is exactly the basis of evolutionary teaching which so dominates the thinking and philosophy of today. It is the purest form of profane and vain babblings that you will ever find.
Of course science can never tell us anything for sure about our origin because it was a one-time event of the past and is not observable or able to be tested by scientists. This is knowledge that can only be revealed by the One who was there at the time. God makes the point clear when He asks Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if you have understanding.” (Job 38:4)
So far in this series we have seen that the supposed evolutionary process is a cruel and inefficient system which God’s holy nature would never allow Him to incorporate as a process in His acts of creation. We have explored how both the Old and New Testaments flatly contradict the notion of evolution and how it is actually false science as it is not observable or testable. Finally, we have seen how it blatantly contradicts the known laws of science and the observable data. Next time we will briefly focus on the fruits of evolutionary philosophy.
Article Eleven
The Fruits of Evolutionary Philosophy
Evolution has no doubt been the most influential philosophy of our century, first creeping into education, then into government – policies and laws, then into society – affecting our thinking on abortion, “gay” rights, and other social / moral issues, and even more devastatingly, into religion and Christian doctrine.
Possibly the most horrific fruit of evolutionary belief was Nazism. When Darwin completed his Origin of the Species, he subtitled it Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. When Hitler read this, he became a zealous evolutionist, and justified his desire for world dominance on the supposed scientific basis of this hypothesis. He reasoned that German people (Arian race) were more highly evolved and therefore should assert their dominance over the lesser races (Jews, Blacks, Arabs, etc.) for the good of the human race in general. Hitler committed the most atrocious acts of recorded history, murdering over 17,000,000 people, more than have died in all wars on earth since Christ, and all justified by his belief in the evolutionary philosophy of “might makes right” so eloquently stated by Darwin.
Just as Hitler justified his atrocities by his faith in evolution, there have been many other leaders who have wreaked destruction under the same premise. Mussolini, for instance, believed that peace wasn’t even a desirable goal. He reasoned that since struggle and bloodshed are part of the evolutional process, it should be a continuing pat of national and international policies. To allow world peace would actually hamper the progress of human evolution. Likewise, Karl Marx was one of Darwin’s most ardent admirers. After studying the “scientific” presuppositions of Darwin’s writings, he decided in his own mind that it was true because it gave him a scientific basis for his brain child – communism. The state would take the place of God in its directing force over the less evolved and less fortunate masses.
John Dewey, the “father of modern education,” had absolute faith in evolution which became the basis of his principles of education which have had so much influence in public education policies. Dewey, a proclaimed atheist, even signed the Humanist Manifesto which states that man is a natural product of his environment and was not created, but evolved. Belief that man is just an animal led people like B. F. Skinner and Pavlov to impose their conclusions, based on animal experimentation, on our classroom curriculum and methodology for many decades. So whether we are talking about Nazism, fascism, communism, or humanism, evolution is the one philosophy which supports them all. Such are the fruits of evolution!
Over the last several articles we have seen that a true Bible believer’s only option is a universe ordered into existence from nothing over a literal six day period by an omniscient and loving God. It is obvious that God’s creation reflects intricate and complex design. God did it all without any help from “lady luck,” “mother nature,” or “father time” (the gods of evolution!). And it is no coincidence that all the evidence from every field of science agrees with this.
It may not be too well known, but all the great fathers of modern science were proclaimed Christians. As they studied the creation, they were drawn to reflect on the awesomeness and glory of God. As we study science, free from the bonds of evolutionary bias, we will always find that God’s world agrees completely with God’s Word. These great men of science certainly did not see their search as a lack of faith as the God of the Bible was revealed in their study of His creation.
Article Twelve
God’s Orderly Nature Revealed in His Laws of Physics
“All things were made by Him” says John 1:3 referring to Jesus Christ. This of course includes all the laws and principles which govern the functioning of His universe. “And behold it was very good” says Genesis 1:31 referring to the original creation. A perfect place for man to live in perfect peace and in harmony and fellowship with God. “The heavens and the earth were finished…and God ended His work” says Genesis 2: 1-2 referring to the fact that everything that God wanted in the cosmos was there, and no new matter would be created until the end of time (the new heaven and the new earth).
And so it was that this fact became God’s first physical principle – which we call the first law of physics. You have probably heard this stated that “matter can be neither created nor destroyed.” This is also called the law of conservation of matter and energy. It simply means that the amount of matter in the universe remains constant and it is not possible for new matter to appear. It can change forms, be converted to energy and back to matter, but under God’s first law, you can’t get something from nothing. This power is God’s alone. Remember, He created “Ex-Nihilo” – from nothing. But in the physical world, every effect must have a cause and God is the infinite first cause.
Therefore, we can eliminate one of the Godless evolutionary theories – the “steady state” theory, which states that matter somehow mysteriously creates itself somewhere in space at the same rate it is converted into usable heat energy. This would keep the total amount of matter consistent, but violates the first law of physics as well as God’s statement in Genesis. The only other explanation offered by evolutionists is the familiar “big bang theory.” At this point you will have to put on your “blind faith” glasses to see this one clearly. Here goes… “All the matter in the universe was originally compacted into a baseball-sized particle. It exploded and filled space with moving masses of basic elements. As expansion from the point of explosion slowed, these masses began to organize themselves into clusters which went on to further internal organization, producing galaxies, star-systems, planets, moons, comets, etc.”
Chemical evolution then began on certain strategically located planets and behold, life began! Of course, all of this is taking billions of years (to help it seem more credible). From a single living cell to multi-celled organisms to multi-trillion celled man, and all it took was time and chance. The frog becomes the handsome prince when kissed by the fair maiden of time (millions and billions of years).
For this to be a credible scientific theory there must be evidence for it and it must fit with the known laws of physics. The “big bang” fails on both counts. Every element of it requires blind faith as it violates the basic principles of science and, of course, the clear teaching of God’s Word. It not only violates the first law of physics, but the second as well. This law states that all matter is loosing energy and complexity (information) with the passage of time. Everything is wearing out, running down, and becoming less organized. Or you could say all living and non-living systems are growing old and approaching death as far as the usable energy and order within it (Isaiah 51:6).
The “big bang” states just the opposite… “Order and complexity are increasing over time, having begun from a chaotic explosion.” Could two statements be more opposite? Order never comes from chaos without the input of intelligence and energy from outside the system. Imagine an explosion in a junk yard resulting accidently in a 747 jumbo jet, or an explosion in a print shop resulting in Webster’s Dictionary with a letter out of place. Ridiculous? Actually the chances of this happening are greater than one living cell forming itself by accident as the big bang requires. “All order and complexity, from a simple star system to the unfathomable complexity of the human brain has resulted from an explosion and nothing more.”
Why do we insist on believing something so ludicrous? Read Romans 1:28 again. The “big bang” doesn’t explain 1) where the ball of matter came from to start with, 2) how long it existed before the explosion, 3) what caused it to explode, or 4) how it can operate in violation of the 2nd Law of Physics. But Exodus 20:11 gives us the answers.
As I have said before, Christianity is not a blind faith. God tells man to open his eyes and see that “I am.” There is a clear mandate from Scripture to do this) Psalm 19, Romans 1:20, etc.). If God did create, then certainly our study of His creation (scientific research) can only lead to praise!
Article Thirteen
God the Mathematician
Some people have classified mathematics as a science…an “exact science.” Whether it is or not, one thing is for sure – it helps keep scientists honest (the figures don’t lie). Many noted mathematicians have applied this science to theories on the origin of life using probability math, the same method used in calculating the chances of winning at gambling.
Consider a single living cell. It either happened by chemicals randomly bumping into each other or it was put together by intelligent design. “Come let us reason together.” A cell is so complex that we can’t possibly make one today using our most intelligent efforts. So we throw our hands up and declare “it happened by accident.” Now is that reasonable or is it blind faith? But what if you give it millions of years to happen?
Well, mathematicians have shown that adding vast ages for the cell to “evolve” doesn’t help at all. The simplest cell has over a trillion bits of information, more than the total number of words in all the books of the largest library in the world. Each bit must 1) be present at the same place and 2) at the same point of time and 3) must be in the correct order from the start. If one bit is missing or out of precise order, there can be no living cell.
So what are the odds of it evolving by accident? One chance in ten followed by 480 zeros. In probability math, one chance in ten followed by fifty zeros is considered to be zero – no chance. Therefore, one in 10 followed by 480 zeros can never happen no matter how much time, space, matter, or energy you want to mix into the “primordial soup.” Only God can create a cell and make it live!
As a builder I have learned what it takes to build a house properly. Of course, the obvious thing to most people is all the different building materials of which the house will eventually be composed. However, this is only a small part of the picture. All the materials (concrete, lumber, dry wall, wiring, shingles, etc….) can be placed on the lot and no matter how long it sits there or how much raw energy from the sun, lightening, or power lines passes over it, they will not begin to organize into a house. What else is needed?
Two things: 1) A directing program. This can be supplied by the blue prints showing exactly how each piece of material is to be organized. 2) Energy conversion mechanisms. These are things that take raw energy and convert it into different forms of usable energy. This would include the different workers and the tools they use. For example, it takes a skill saw to make raw electrical energy to cut the lumber and workers to operate the saw.
Well, by now you’re probably saying this is all quite obvious, but what has it got to do with creation? Just this: For life to occur in the simplest cell, which is infinitely more complex than a house, it must meet the same requirements. Unfortunately for the evolutionist, neither of these requirements are met. The directing program itself had to be designed by God the master Architect. We call this “blue print” the genetic code. Neither is there an energy conversion mechanism to focus raw energy in the specific directions specified by the genetic code.
In order to get order from disorder, God made it quite obvious that an intelligent Designer and a power from outside the system of materials must be present. Personally, I suspect it was God!
Article Fourteen
After Their Own Kind
Last time we discussed the requirement of a directing program for putting a living cell together from basic chemicals. This of course is called the genetic code and it directs from inside the cell. The cell could never have happened on its own without the genetic “blueprint” directing its millions of components into the exact order. And yet the DNA molecules which compose the genes, being an integral part of the cell itself, cannot function unless it is already within a living cell. The point is that these complex DNA molecules could never evolve slowly over millions of years because it must be housed within that which it replicates.
I know this is a little confusing but it points to the fact that the genetic code does not, and never could, create a living cell. It merely reproduces that which it is already a part of. The conclusion is, of course, that these highly complex genes themselves require a designer from outside in the same way the blue prints for a house require an architect.
Once established, the cell can then reproduce exact copies many times. However, it can not produce something different or more complex than itself as evolution requires, unless the code is redesigned. The only time this is observed to happen is when radiation or chemicals from outside interact with the DNA structure. In every observed case this is known to cause mistakes and disorder in reproduction (mutations) resulting in such things as birth defects. It never results in increased order and complexity as evolution would require. In other words, life can only come from life which must have an original point of origin. We Christians call it creation!
A natural phenomenon which is a confirmation of Biblical history, the world-wide flood in specific, is the fossil record within the earth’s layers. This is our only direct window to the past, showing physical evidence of what the earth (and its inhabitants) was like years ago. Strangely enough, the evolutionist, realizing that fossils would be the only chance of showing any evidence for evolution of living creatures, has for years tried to find examples of one species slowly changing into another. And yet after more than a hundred years and millions of specimens collected, not one unquestionable intermediate form has been found. All fossil samples have been shown to be either variations within species or extinctions of completely differentiated creatures. There is nothing in between, i.e. a fish growing legs and crawling onto land, or a reptile growing wings and turning into a bird.
Regardless of what public school text books have claimed as intermediates, they have all been discredited by other qualified scientists (paleontologists). Dr. Colin Patterson, an evolutionist and curator of the largest fossil collection in the world, has written a book in which he plainly states there has never been found even one transitional form which would demonstrate evolution. So then, what do the fossils tell us? Quite simply, that these creatures were suddenly buried by water flow and sediments which preserved their exact forms on a world-wide scale. They are completely differentiated, which shows they only reproduced “after their own kind.” Sounds a lot like Genesis, doesn’t it!
Article Fifteen
“Ape-men” (Fossil man)
An area that has always been intriguing in the study of origins is that of fossil man. If you remember in the last article it was shown there are no intermediate fossils between animal species. But what about man’s ancestors? Are there transitions in the fossil record between animals and man?
My first memories of this go back to my high school biology book which had beautiful illustrations of a monkey gradually changing through several stages into modern man. It’s very impressive until you realize these are just an artist’s imagination and have nothing to do with actual fossils that have been found. It’s interesting that the fossils of man are extremely rare. There exists today, after a hundred years of searching, barely enough to cover a dining room table. Most of these bones are fragments or a tooth in a piece of jaw bone and were found widely scattered. There does not exist any complete, or even partially complete, frame which would be valid evidence of an intermediate between monkey and man.
The speculation about the bone fragments is so far removed from the method of true scientific investigation that one would have to suspect that there was some other motive here other than the search for truth. I suppose that if you must start from the presupposition that evolution is true , then you have no choice but to speculate in that manner about these fossil bone fragments. Add to that the competition in the scientific community to be published in a scientific magazine and appear in the media, and you have a situation that is conducive to wild unbased speculation which is equivalent to science fiction. The skin, the hair, the color, the expressions, eating habits, social customs, etc. that is so often surmised from a single tooth are so far removed from the scientific method, that it is difficult for the seeker of truth to give any credibility at all to such writing.
The great author Samuel Clements once made a very insightful statement about this. He said, concerning science, “Nowhere else can you get such wholesale speculation from such a trivial investment of facts.” How true that is when it comes to belief in evolution. So then, what is the actual evidence attributed to man’s ancestors and how should it be interpreted? The list is grouped according to the evolutionary supposition of the earliest ancestor down to modern man.
1) Ramapithecus – a few teeth and jaw fragments were found. Although these teeth were smaller than the average modern ape’s, there are some apes today with similar sized teeth, so these finds are not distinguishable from pure ape.
2) Australopithecus – (southern ape) This category consists of Zinjanthropus and Homo habilis. Included here is the highly publicized “Lucy” discovered by Donald Johanson. He found a human knee in 1973 and in 1974 found parts of the frame and scull of a chimp-like creature over a mile away from the first site and much deeper in the earth. He put the two together, proclaimed “ape-man,” and became famous overnight. “Lucy” is 3½ feet tall and has a brain case 1/3 the size of a human. This improper association of one fossil with another is quite common in the race for recognition in the scientific community. Today, in the same area of Ethiopia, there exist baboons which are almost identical to these fossils.
Article Sixteen
Homo erectus – the Fossil Finds
In our discussion of fossil man in the previous article we saw the lack of objectivity used in the improper association of completely different fossils in the race to present an intermediate (missing link) between ape and man. The next supposed progressive level has been termed Homo erectus. This group supposedly walked upright and had a larger cranial (brain case) capacity than the average ape. The first in this series was found by Dr. Dubois in Java, East Indies. It was a scull of a giant gibbon ape and true human sculls were found near the same site. He kept this secret until just before his death and then confessed it to be a fraud! Today, no paleontologist accepts the Homo erectus “Java man” as legitimate yet it still appears in some school text books as evidence of human evolution.
Another Homo erectus claim was made by Dr. Black in Peking, China when he found a single tooth. Other scull fragments were claimed to have been found but were somehow lost before they could be examined by the scientific community. The tooth was similar to many human teeth today and can not be considered evidence for a human-ape intermediate. In addition, human fossils were found at the same site which is impossible if modern man is separated from the apes by several million years.
The only remaining specimens of Homo erectus can be quickly dismissed. “Heidelberg man” turned out to be a modern man with short stature due to inbreeding and poor diet. “Nebraska man”, which was offered as evolutionary evidence in the famous Scopes trial in Dayton, TN, was a single tooth which turned out to be that of an extinct pig. “Piltdown man” was a deliberate fraud and a real embarrassment to evolutionists. As we can see, all the efforts to connect man to the apes have been discredited by other qualified scientists, resolving these fossils to be either pure ape, pure human, or deliberately fraudulent.
The next supposed evolutionary level has been labeled Homo sapiens – meaning smart man. This group included the famous Neanderthal man whose bones were discovered in the Neander Valley in Germany. The first bones found showed a stooped posture and so it was immediately concluded that he was an ape-man. Further examination of these bones revealed this appearance to be caused by arthritis and rickets due to poor diet. Today he is classified as fully human.
The next “step” toward man was the Cro-Magnon race whose bones were found in France. Both Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal have cranial capacities larger than modern man and are otherwise indistinguishable from you and me. It is now known that he grew flowers, made tools, practiced art and religion and could write. He sounds more gifted than some of us!
The most devastating evidence against apes being man’s ancestors, and is rarely mentioned anywhere, is that the bones and artifacts of modern man have been found at lower levels in the earth than all the other ape-like fossils. Now this is a real problem if you assume evolution to be true because it means modern man must be ancestral to the apes – reverse evolution! In addition, human footprints have been found with dinosaur tracks and human jewelry in coal beds supposedly formed millions of years before man evolved. In other words, nothing really fits a progressive evolutionary picture here but rather seems to be positioned randomly as would be predicted by catastrophic global flooding conditions (as in Genesis 6).
So, where are the ape-men? No doubt still in the minds and hearts of those who would always interpret the evidence according to the assumption of evolution which, by blind faith they have already decided to be true. In other words, evolution is their pre-assumed framework for interpreting the evidence and it must be made to fit at all costs. On the other hand, if the Bible is taken as a framework for understanding the evidence from the fossils within the earths layers, it all fits together beautifully and makes perfect sense without strained interpretations and presuppositions. The stones are indeed “crying out” the truth of God’s Word if we would only listen (Luke 19:39-40).
Article Seventeen
How Old Is the Earth and Why Does It Matter?
How old is the earth? This question has been speculated about at least since the dark ages. Only in recent history has science shed some light in this area. Of course, the Bible has given us an account of all earth history since the creation along with a time frame in the form of genealogies within which the events occur. One might wonder why God would spend so much time in His Word in establishing these precise time frames from Adam to Jesus. I suspect it is to let us know God is involved in all earth events from the beginning, with the time-line pointing directly back to Him as Creator. This leaves no room for sin natured man, who invariably strives to omit God’s direct involvement in the lives of mankind, to speculate about the past.
The Bible defines a rather young earth on the order of several thousand years, and as Bible-believing Christians we should not be trying to force vast ages or creating huge gaps in the Bible that are not there. Why are some Christians bent on doing this? Because they are convinced by what they have been told by others that the earth is billions of years old. This belief is based on faith in what they have heard and not on real knowledge because most don’t know the evidence.
Evolutionists must declare the earth to be very old because vast ages are absolutely necessary for the concept of increasing complexity by chance to seem even remotely possible. In other words, a frog turning into a handsome prince is laughable, but a frog over millions of years gradually evolving into a prince somehow seems plausible to some people. It’s because of the way our minds have been conditioned since kindergarten.
Some Christians have the notion that the Bible differs vastly from science concerning the age of the earth. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have already pointed out the great contrast between what the Bible teaches and what evolutionists believe. I use the word “believe” because the exact age can never be known for lack of direct observation of the event, but we can get an indication of approximate age from present day observations of processes that go on in and around the earth.
In nature things are constantly happening such as erosion, accumulation of various minerals in the oceans, decay of radio active elements, changes in the atmosphere, and so on. These processes take place at a certain rate today. Once the rate is determined, it can be projected backwards in time to an assumed starting point and an approximate age can be established. However, different processes yield different ages for the earth. This can only mean that there are assumptions involved in these processes and making wrong assumptions will cause vast differences in age indications. The two main assumptions are 1) the process rates have always been the same as they are today, and 2) nothing has come into play to change the quantities which occur as a result of the process.
As it turns out, 95% of the processes studied so far are in relative agreement, yielding rather young ages for the earth. Those processes that yield the very youngest ages require fewer and more valid assumptions than the 5% which yield the great ages for the earth.
In the next article we will look briefly at specific processes at opposite ends of the age spectrum and discuss their validity.
Article Eighteen
How Old Is the Earth? (continued)
As explained in the previous article, the age of the earth cannot be measured directly, only indirectly by means of natural processes occurring in the earth and projecting the rates at which they accrue backwards in time to establish a supposed beginning point. About 5% of those measured yield great ages for the earth, and all involve rates at which radioactive elements decay. The ones that give the greatest ages are the ones most used by evolutionists, but they also involve the greatest number of assumptions which many scientists now realize are invalid. These include Uranium decay into lead, Radioactive Potassium decay into Argon and Rubidium decay into Strontium.
This article is not the place to give detailed explanation of the assumptions, but it is sufficient to know that in the formula used to derive the age of a rock there are eight factors and five of these are purely assumed values. These values are determined arbitrarily according to pre-assumed belief in evolution and an old earth, so that, when they are plugged into the equation, it will yield the greatest age for that sample.
Today’s “geochronologist” (earth dater) knows that these assumed values are wrong, realizing that they fluctuate greatly yielding very inconsistent results. For example, a sample dated twice by the uranium decay method often will yield two very different ages; or a sample dated by uranium will vary greatly in age when dated by the potassium method. Volcanic rocks known to have formed less than 200 years ago have yielded ages of millions of years using uranium.
Are there processes which don’t involve so many invalid assumptions? Absolutely, and they reveal a young earth. Perhaps the best natural process to use to find the approximate age of the earth is the decay of the earth’s magnetic field. If you’ve ever used a compass, you know the earth has magnetic poles. It is, in reality, a giant electro-magnet whose current is losing its strength as time passes. Its rate of decay has been measured for over 145 years and has been determined precisely. The rate is ever increasing and today is very rapid. In 1500 years the earth will have no magnetic field left.
The magnetic field serves the purpose of protecting us from harmful radiation pouring in from space, thus preventing birth defects. But, how strong was this magnet in the past? Using its known decay rate, we can project back in time to a strength that would be most ideal to human life. Six thousand years ago the strength would have been 35 gauss. This would yield maximum protection for the earth and yet leave it structurally sound. If you project back as far as 10,000 years, its strength would be equivalent to a magnetic star (over 100 gauss), causing the earth’s surface to collapse on itself, and of course, making life impossible. From this evidence we see the earth cannot be much over 6000 years old according to this evidence from science.
There are many other processes which yield very young ages for the earth, in agreement with scripture, but we only have space to mention a few. The erosion rate of soil is such that if the earth were as much as 15 million years old, it would be completely flat, with on mountains, hills, or valleys left. Using the rate of 25 billion tons per year, this shows the earth to be only a few thousand years old. The accumulation of sediments on the ocean floor is linked to erosion and yields a similar age for the earth. Salt build-up in the oceans (mentioned in Genesis 14:3) was no doubt accelerated by the flood. Today the rate is 450 million tons per year. Evolutionists want the ocean to be 3 billion years old. If this were true, salt would be at 100% maximum saturation in the oceans, but it is only at 27% today. Carbon 14 is still building up in the atmosphere. If the earth were only 33 thousand years old, there would be a state of equilibrium between formation of radioactive carbon (C14) in the atmosphere and the amount decaying back to natural carbon (C12) from organic material on the earth. But equilibrium does not exist! There is about a 24% imbalance yielding an age of less than 10 thousand years for the earth’s atmosphere. And so on it goes with 95% of studied processes indicating a relatively young earth. These processes, set in place by God, not only show His providence, but again confirm the truthfulness of His Word!
Article Nineteen
People and Stars and the Age of the Solar System
Anyone who studies the population growth rate of man immediately runs into a serious problem if he assumes that people have been on the earth for several million years. The worldwide population growth rate today is about 1% per year. If we use a rate of only 1/2% throughout all history and project this rate of growth backward in time, we can get a rough idea of when the human population got its start. The variables here are the length of an average generation, average individual life spans, and factors which caused premature deaths (wars, diseases, etc.).
Without showing a lot of math, let me simply say that by using conservative figures for these variables, the population of the earth today would have taken only about four or five thousand years to produce. This is less than what the Bible teaches as to when man was created. However, let’s not be guilty of 2 Peter 3:5-6. The flood occurred about 1500 years after creation and the human population began to multiply again from only six people (Noah’s three sons and their wives). This, according to Scripture, happened about 2500 years before Christ. Add to this some 2000 years since Christ and you have about 4500 years since Noah – in very close agreement with the time we just calculated to reach our current population numbers.
At this same moderate rate of population growth (1/2% per year), the population would double every 144 years. If man had been on the earth for as long as 100,000 years, baring any repetitive worldwide destructions during this time, the population would have gone through some 700 doubling cycles, making the current population approximately 10 followed by 70 zeros. Now try to imagine the 3,000,000 years of supposed human evolutionary history. Once again the Bible emerges as the credible source of knowledge, and evolution as the foolishness of man’s imagination (Romans 1:20-22).
Genesis 1:14 says “let there be lights in the heavens. . . for signs and seasons. . .” A sign gives information about something else. In this case it is obviously the nature of God, the Creator. All throughout history man has been fascinated by the stars and has studied their positions and movements. Today we study their composition, distances, and speeds. What information do the stars give us about the universe and its origin?
Galaxies are clusters of stars (billions of them) held in formation by gravitation. Some are in elliptical shape and some are spiral. The spirals, such as our own Milky Way galaxy, are in the process of winding up, as indicated by giant curved arms extending from their centers, much like winding a watch spring. This is a process for which a rate cam be estimated and projected either backward or forward in time.
For example, Andromeda, a nearby spiral galaxy, is supposed to be ten billion years old and yet it is winding up around its center so fast that it would have been completely would up billions of years ago. This is true for all spiral galaxies. The fact that this type of galaxy still exists indicates a far younger age of the universe than evolutionists claim.
A little closer to home, we observe comets which are large chunks of ice that orbit the sun periodically like the planets. Haley’s Comet, for instance, circles the sun every seventy (70) years. Each time it loses a small percentage of its mass to the sun. In less than ten thousand years there would be no more short term comets left in the solar system. Yet we observe many still in existence. How do you explain this? By realizing our solar system, like the earth, was created less than ten thousand years ago, just as the Bible indicates (Psalm 19:1-2).
Our knowledge of the heavens is the most limited of all areas of science, which is why there is so much speculation in this area. Again, one must start with a premise upon which to organize data we receive as we study “outer space.” That premise will be either naturalistic or super-naturalistic. As you would guess, the evolutionists choose the naturalistic premise, i.e. the universe formed itself without the help of a supernatural Creator. This being the case, they need billions of years as the incubator of the proposed evolutionary process.
If all things happened on their own, there must be a very simple explanation of the ultimate origin. For the evolutionists it is an event they call the “big bang.” In other words, all reality started with an explosion. Well, this is simple enough, but it simply doesn’t explain anything! Since this theory is taught almost exclusively in public schools and is also believed by many Christians, I think it warrants a little discussion here.
First of all, what always happens as the result of an explosion? In a word, chaos. Particles of the original mass fly outward randomly in all directions. At first they accelerate, then they decelerate because of gravity. Each particle would be continually moving further from every other particle until the energy from the explosion was expended and the outward expansion stopped. An explosion like the “big bang” is an event of disorder, yet evolutionists would have us believe that all the complexity we observe around us resulted from an explosion.
In the next article (in the Sept-Oct Illuminator) we will look at the obvious problems with the big bang theory, and see how the Bible gives us the only reasonable explanation.
Article Twenty
The Big Bang Backfires
“The Big Bang Backfires!” That should be the title of an article in The Scientific American magazine if there were total honesty in reporting all the evidence that has been gathered from space research in the last fifty years.
Editor’s Note: As the editor I have made the decision to condense the information on the Big Bang and move on to Jim Lee’s conclusion for this section. The information is good as always, and for those science buffs out there it would probably be very informative. But since it deals with astrophysics, the “Doppler effect”, galaxy clusters, and the spectral analysis of the chemical composition of stars it might get a bit laborious for the average reader. Let’s just say that once again Mr. Lee has shown the many scientific problems that must be confronted for one putting his or her faith in The Big Bang explanation of creation. So let us move on at this point.
If there were a big bang, there would be other tell-tale signs of the explosion. Our space researchers have continually been looking for heat, certain gases, and background radiation that would be evidence of an explosion. And even with the help of the Hubble telescope they have not found these required elements.
As we discussed earlier, no order can come from an explosion other than radial motion. Yet the universe is highly structured and ordered. From clusters of galaxies and quasars to star systems such as our own solar system and the earth itself, we see order and complexity that can never occur as a result of an explosion. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. The universe seems to have started in a highly ordered condition and is now in the process of deterioration and energy loss. This concurs with the Second law of physics.
Finally, no one has ever come up with a cause for the big bang explosion in the first place. What made this super condensed ball explode? No one knows; it just did! So, once again the choice is obvious – Psalm 33:6-9.
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deep in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the LORD; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.
The purpose of The Creation Corner has been to demonstrate the complicity and harmony of scientific knowledge with a straight forward understanding of the Bible. In so doing, it has also shown the absurdity of evolutionary thinking when held in the light of scientific evidence. Too many Christians have bought into evolutionary concepts without really understanding the implications of such belief. They have done so strictly because of media saturation with opinions and beliefs of some science writers whose predetermined philosophy of science will not allow then to even consider the possibility of a Creator, regardless of the overwhelming abundance of evidence that supports it.
What if, in a trial, the jury was only allowed to hear the prosecution? Every time the defense tried to speak, the judge ruled “out of order.” Well, obviously the jury, having the evidence from the defense withheld from them, would side with the prosecution, no matter how flimsy the evidence.
It sounds absurd, but this is exactly what is going on today regarding creation. The many various “personalities” of the scientific community are the prosecution, the media is the judge of admissible evidence, and we are on the jury. What we have is a mistrial due to repression of evidence.
If Christians even knew a fraction of the evidence for a recently created universe, as the Bible plainly teaches, a trial would not even be necessary. The evidence demands a verdict. The disposition of the jury would be that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. . . .the sea and all that in them is.” (Genesis 1:1 and Exodus 20:11)