DARWIN: A BIBLICAL AND SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE

[Marvin L. Lubenow states in 'Bones of Contention', Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1994, pp. 181-183]:

"Now allow me to quote Darwin:

'But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.'

...Darwin said that the number of intermediate forms fossilized in the rocks must be enormous, that they have not been found, that their absence is the most serious objection one could have against his theory, and that they have not been found only because of the imperfection of the fossil record. Darwin felt that the fossil evidence was so important, and the lack of transitions was such a serious threat to his theory, that he devoted an entire chapter in the Origin to 'The Imperfection of the Geological Record.'...

For a hundred years evolutionists paraded the fossils they found as evidence for evolution... ...In the early 1970's, when it became obvious that we had a more than adequate sampling of the fossil record, the grim reality dawned that those transitional fossils were not to be found. The punctuated equilibria model of evolution was then invented to explain why they were not found. However, it is imperative to emphasize that the punctuated equilibria model does not remove the need for transitional fossils. It just explains why those transitions have not been found. Certainly, the punctuated equilibria theory is unique. It must be the only theory ever put forth in the history of science which claims to be scientific but then explains why evidence for it cannot be found...

[EXCERPT FROM WIKIPEDIA:

"In evolutionary biology, punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory that proposes that once a species appears in the fossil record, the population will become stable, showing little evolutionary change for most of its geological history.[1] This state of little or no morphological change is called stasis. When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and geologically rapid events of branching speciation called cladogenesis. Cladogenesis is the process by which a species splits into two distinct species, rather than one species gradually transforming into another.

Punctuated equilibrium is commonly contrasted with phyletic gradualism, the idea that evolution generally occurs uniformly by the steady and gradual transformation of whole lineages (anagenesis).[2]

In 1972, paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould published a landmark paper developing their theory and called it punctuated equilibria.[1] Their paper built upon Ernst Mayr's model of geographic speciation,[3] I. M. Lerner's theories of developmental and genetic homeostasis,[4] and their own empirical research.[5][6] Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Charles Darwin[7] is virtually nonexistent in the fossil record, and that stasis dominates the history of most fossil species."

The popular myth is that the hominid fossil evidence virtually proves human evolution. The reality is that this evidence has been a disappointment to evolutionists and is being de-emphasized. In actuality, the human fossil evidence falsifies the concept of human evolution. The Bible, the Word of the living God, clearly declares that humans were specially created. The human fossil evidence is completely in accord with what the Scriptures teach."

[Lubenow, op. cit., pp. 189-192]:

"Many think of Darwin as a religious man. He studied for the ministry at Cambridge. His wife, Emma Wedgwood (daughter of Hosiah Wedgwood, maker of Wedgwood china), seems to have been an evangelical Christian. Also, Darwin refers in the Origin to creation and to God. There are even reports that toward the end of his life Darwin experienced the new birth. Unfortunately, all of this gives a false impression.

It was parental influence that caused Darwin to study for the ministry. Even in his early years Darwin's personal commitment to orthodoxy seems to have been minimal. Emma's influence upon Darwin was basically one of restraint. He never shared her faith but often softened expressions of his opposing views out of respect for her. His references to creation in the Origin were highly critical of that doctrine. His references to God were only those of a theist, not those of an orthodox Christian. Darwin's spiritual journey was actually a journey in reverse. He moved from an anemic orthodoxy in his early years to a nonorthodox theism in his middle years to agnosticism in his senior years. It is inaccurate to ever describe Darwin as an atheist. However, the influence of evolution upon him was fatal. It would not be difficult to show a relationship between his commitment to evolution and his rejection of biblical Christianity he rejected.

Reports of Darwin's alleged conversion have been common in some evangelical circles for many years. Not only was Darwin said to have experienced the new birth, but he was also reported to have repudiated his writings on evolution. I have personally seen tracts making these claims. As much as we might wish that these reports were true, I am sorry to say that they are actually false. Since none of Darwin's biographers report any such experience and there are no other records of it, about the only way to verify such an event would be through his personal correspondence.

In 1919, Darwin's son Francis published a biography of his father together with a collection of his father's correspondence...

[Francis Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1919)]

A study of the letters written by Charles Darwin between the time of his alleged conversion and the time of his death clearly reveals that he experienced no such change of mind and heart. Not only is there a total lack in these letters of any reference to a conversion to Christ, there are many positive expressions of his continued faith in evolution. As far as can be determined, Darwin remained an evolutionist and an agnostic to the day of his death. It is a misunderstanding to think there is evidence from Darwin's life that evolution is compatible with biblical Christianity.

The second major misunderstanding of Charles Darwin concerns the nature of his accomplishments. While it is commonly thought that his major work was an attempt to put the concept of evolution on a solid scientific foundation, that was only a secondary matter. His scientific evidence for evolution was not that impressive. Darwin's major accomplishment was not in the area of science but in the area of philosophy. Allow me to quote one of the world's leading biologists, Ernst Mayr (Harvard University):

'Nothing could be more wrong than the immemorial assertion; 'Darwin was no philosopher.'

'One must grant Darwin's opponents the validity of two of their objections. First, Darwin produced embarrassingly little concrete evidence to back up some of his most important claims. This includes the change of one species into another in succeeding geological strata, or the production of new structures and taxonomic types by natural selection. More importantly, ...Darwin.,..left...totally unanswered certain serious problems like the origin of life and of new genetic variation...'

[Ernst Mayr, 'Evolution and God' (Book Review), Nature 248 (22 March 1974): 285]

...Not only was Darwin's contribution primarily in philosophy, it was a philosophy bent on a specific mission: to show that creation is unscientific. The most extensive research into Darwin's religious attitudes and motivations has been done by historian Neal C. Gillespie (Georgia State University). He begins his book with this comment: 'On reading the Origin of Species, I, like many others, became curious about why Darwin spent so much time attacking the idea of divine creation.'

[Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), xi]

Gillespie goes on to demonstrate that Darwin's purpose was not just to establish the concept of evolution. Darwin was wise enough not to stop there. Darwin went for the jugular vein. Darwin's master accomplishment was to convince the scientific world that it was unscientific to believe in supernatural causation. His purpose was to 'ungod' the universe. Darwin was a positivist. This is the philosophy that the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge; no other type of knowledge is legitimate. Obviously, to accept that premise means to reject any form of divine revelation. Darwin accomplished one of the greatest feats of salesmanship in the history of the world. He convinced scientists that it was unscientific to deal with God or creation in any way. To be scientific, they must study the world as if God did not exist.

Ernst Mayr recognized the true significance of what is called the Darwinian revolution:

'...the Darwinian revolution was not merely the replacement of one scientific theory by another, as had been the scientific revolutions in the physical sciences, but rather the replacement of a world view, in which the supernatural was accepted as a normal and relevant explanatory principle, by a new world in which there was no room for supernatural forces.'

[Mayr, 285]

In all of this, it is important to realize that Darwin was not an atheist. He did not exterminate God. He just evicted God from the universe which God had created. All that God was allowed to do was to create the 'natural laws' at the beginning. From then on, nature was on its own. With God out of the picture, evolution fell into place rather easily, since evolution seemed to be the only viable alternative to Special Creation. Allow me to say it again. The establishment of evolution was only a secondary accomplishment of Darwin's. His major accomplishment was to 'ungod' the universe. With that accomplished, evolution became a 'natural.'

We are now getting down to basics. The real issue in the creation/evolution debate is not the existence of God. The real issue is the nature of God. To think of evolution as basically atheistic is to misunderstand the uniqueness of evolution. Evolution was not designed as a general attack against theism. It was designed as a specific attack against the God of the Bible, and the God of the Bible is clearly revealed through the doctrine of creation. Obviously, if a person is an atheist, it would be normal for him to also be an evolutionist. But evolution is as comfortable with theism as it is with atheism. An evolutionist is perfectly free to choose any god he wishes, as long as it is not the God of the Bible. The gods allowed by evolution are private, subjective, and artificial. They bother no one and make no absolute ethical demands. However, the God of the Bible is the Creator, Sustainer, Savior, and Judge. All are responsible to him. He has an agenda that conflicts with that of sinful humans. For man to be created in the image of man is very comfortable.

Evolution was originally designed as a specific attack against the God of the Bible, and it remains so to this day. While Christian Theistic Evolutionists seem blind to this fact, the secular world sees it very clearly. Darwin's associate, Thomas Huxley, saw it clearly over one hundred years ago, when he wrote:

'The doctrine of Evolution, therefore, does not even come into contact with Theism, considered as a philosophical doctrine. That with which it does collide, and with which it is absolutely inconsistent, is the conception of creation, which theological speculators have based upon the history narrated in the opening of the book of Genesis.'

[Thomas Huxley, 'On the Reception of '''the Origin of Species''', ' The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Francis Darwin, ed. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1919) 1:556]

Things have not changed. Darwin is very much alive. Sir William Paton (University of Oxford) wrote in 1986:

'Perhaps it is not so much the possible existence and human awareness of some higher being that can most worry a scientist, but the idea of that being interfering with the natural course of events, with '''natural law.''' '

[William Paton, 'Is the reductionist beyond belief?' (Book Review), Nature 324 (11 December 1986); 52]

Evolutionists believe that evolution embraces the entire history of the universe. If Huxley's god doesn't even come into contact with evolution (the history of the universe), it is obvious that this absentee god is not the god of the Bible. Paton's 'higher being' is forbidden to interfere with natural law. Thus, 'natural law' is really Paton's god, for it is the highest power. Any similarity between Paton's natural law and New Age pantheism's 'the force be with you' is not accidental. The New Age gods are the natural fruit of evolutionary theory. The present spiritual battle in our society is not between theism and atheism. It is between the God of the Bible and the gods of evolution and pantheism."

[John D. Morris makes the following statement in article #223 entitled " 'Natural Selection' verses 'Supernatural Design' " which appeared in the Jan '92 issue of the periodical "IMPACT" published by the Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, Ca]:

'''Christianity and evolution cannot both be true. Evolution is, at its very essence, an atheistic explanation of the world around us.

Consider the following oft-repeated quote from Sir Julian Huxley, who, until his recent death, was perhaps the world's leading spokesman for evolution:

"Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed; since natural selection could account for any known form of life, there was no room for a supernatural agency in its evolution...we can dismiss entirely all ideas of a supernatural overriding mind being responsible for the evolutionary process."

On the other hand, Scripture, in many places and in many ways, identifies God as Creator, and claims that His creation was an act of forethought, of planning, of design. Supernatural processes were used to accomplish this design, not just natural processes. [Ps 19:1; Rev 4:11].

These two concepts, supernatural design versus natural processes operating by chance, represent the two views of origins, and are opposite. They cannot both be true. Nobel Prize-winning zoologist Jacques Monod said it this way: "...it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation...Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution."

The recent edition of the authoritative Encyclopaedia Britannica informs us that:

"Darwin did two things: He showed that evolution was a fact contradicting literal interpretations of Scriptural legends of creation and that its cause, natural selection, was automatic with no room for divine guidance or design."

Many Christians believe in evolution, but they must come to realize that the evolutionary way of thinking, is a logical necessity if, and only if, there has been no supernatural input in nature.

Furthermore, if evolution is true, the entire Christian faith is a sham. Dr. William Provine, Professor of History and Biology at Cornell University and author of many anti-creation articles wrote recently that Darwin recognized:

"...if natural selection explained adaptations, and evolution by descent were true, then the argument from design was dead and all that went with it, namely:

1) the existence of a personal God,

2) free will,

3) life after death

4) immutable [unchangeable] moral laws, and

5) ultimate meaning in life.

BUT EVOLUTION IS NOT A FACT! Evolution is not even in a category of things that could ever be a scientific fact! It is a world view about the past - an historical reconstruction. It is a way to interpret scientific data, such as rocks, fossils, and complex living systems which exist in the present. It is a potential answer to the question, "What happened in the unobserved past to make the present get to be this way?"

As we have seen, this answer encompasses far more than merely a scientific proposal. As currently understood by leading evolutionists, it embraces strict naturalism, an anti-God philosophy, and results in a denial of the major doctrines of Scripture.

Darwin, in his writings, letters, and memoirs, promoted natural selection as a means by which the incredible design obvious in every living system could be derived through purely mechanistic, naturalistic processes. He devoted great energy to refuting the writings of William Paley, in which Paley reasoned that one can infer from the functional complexity of a system that intelligence was necessary in its formation. Just as a complex watch necessarily implies a watchmaker, so living systems, much more complex than a watch, demand that a Creator was involved in their origin. His position was eminently logical, but necessarily implied a Creator-God.

And this helps explain why Darwin and his modern disciples combat the concept of design with such vigor. If such a Creator exists, He has the authority to set the rules for His creation, and the authority to set the rules for breaking His rules. Accountability for our actions to a holy, Creator-God is not easily accepted by the natural man.

Jesus told Nicodemus, "And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19).

If no supernatural agency has been at work throughout history, then creation is dead. But if evolutionists even allow a spark of supernatural design in history, then evolution is dead, for evolution necessarily relies on solely natural processes.

But design in living things is obvious. Even the single celled-organism is complex beyond the ability of scientists to understand, let alone duplicate. All of life is governed by the marvelously complex genetic code, which contains not only design and order, but what is equivalent to written information. This DNA code must not only be written correctly, [but] the rest of the cell must be able to read it and follow its instructions, if the cell is to metabolize its food, carry out the myriad of enzyme reactions, and, especially to reproduce. This code had to be present at the origin of life. How could it have written itself? And how could the various organelles [parts of the cell] learn how to read and obey it?

Carl Sagan, the modern-day evolutionary spokesman has admitted:

"The information content of a simple cell has been established at around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica."

And yet he believes the code wrote itself, by purely random natural processes, as non-living chemicals sprang to life!

Is this view really credible? Is it really scientific to ascribe to natural processes functions and products which clearly are the result of intelligent design? The Bible tells us that even "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"

[Ro 1:20]:

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."

[Ps 19:1-3]:

(v. 1) The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of His hands.

(v. 2) Day after day they pour forth speech,

(v. 3) There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

A favorite example of obvious design has always been the human eye with its functioning parts - the lens, cornea, iris, etc., the controlling muscles, the sensitive rods and cones which translate light energy into chemical signals, the optic nerve which speeds these signals to a decoding center in the brain - and on and on.

The eye was unquestionably designed by an incredibly intelligent Designer Who had a complete grasp of optical physics.

Darwin was frustrated by the eye's complexity, even though he knew only a fraction of what scientists have now discovered about the eye. In his book "Origin of Species" [p. 133], he included a section entitled "Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication", in which he declared: "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree".

Yet in the next several pages, he discussed how he thought it might have happened.

One may wonder why Darwin was forced to adopt and defend what he admitted was an absurd conclusion. His reasoning is made plain in the following quote. Keep in mind that Darwin was raised in a nominally religious home, but whose extended family had a well established anti-Christian perspective. Darwin, himself, studied for the ministry, as was common in those days for individuals of a scholarly bent, but eventually rejected the Christian faith.

In a May 22, 1860 letter to Professor Asa Gray of Harvard, propagator of evolution on the American continent, Darwin wrote, evidently to answer Gray's advocacy of "theistic" evolution

[Theistic Evolution = God created the universe and sat back and let it evolve. Darwin wrote]:

"I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence (or goodness) on all sides of us. There seems to me to be too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the ichneumonidae (parasites) with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed (parenthesis added)."

Notice that Darwin was not looking at the eye and concluding an evolutionary origin. He looked at the pain, suffering, misery, and death in the world, and concluded that there must not be a God as revealed in the Bible.....if there was such a God, He wouldn't have created the world as we encounter it.

[What Darwin missed is that GOD DID CREATE A PERFECT WORLD WITHOUT SUFFERING MISERY AND DEATH EVERYWHERE...(Gen 1:1-2:25). And God saw that it was good Gen 1:18,21,25 and very good 1:31 until the Fall )! But Adam's disobedience, (Gen 3:1-7), caused the world to deteriorate into what it is today - all creation reflects this disobedience. (Cp Gen 3:17-20; Ro 5:15-19). And this perfect creation will be restored in everyone who trusted in Christ as Savior and in the whole universe of His creation by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. (Compare Isa 11:6-9; Romans 8:18-23). Dr Morris' article goes on to say]:

Notice that Darwin was not looking at the eye and concluding an evolutionary origin. He looked at the pain, suffering, misery, and death in the world, and concluded that there must not be a God
as revealed in the Bible. If there was such a God, He wouldn't have created the world as we encounter it.

[Remember, God didn't create the world the way it is today but rather decreed that it would decay and devolve as a result of man's sin, (Adam's sin as the federal representative of man (Ro 5:15-19 - you or I would have disobeyed as well)].

You see, Darwin had a theological problem. He had rejected the Biblical doctrine of the entrance of death into the world as a result of sin. Adam and Eve had rebelled against the Creator's authority, resulting in the distortion of God's original, deathless, "very good" creation, [Gen 1:31]. Darwin rejected the doctrine that the Creator had, Himself, died to pay sin's penalty, and had conquered death by rising from the dead, one day to abolish pain and suffering and misery and death forever.

[Cp John chapter 3; Ro 3:21-26. This will happen in His sovereign time when all men have been given a chance to partake of this salvation. Cp Ro 8:18-25; 2 Pet 3:9-13. Dr Morris goes on to write]:

Having rejected the God of the Bible and the possibility of supernatural input into the universe, all Darwin had to work with were natural processes. These led to ...[what Darwin admitted himself were]..absurd conclusions, but if there is no God, there remains no other choice. [only absurdity remains after God has been ruled out].

The existence of suffering and death has led many to abandon the concept of God. But to one who accepts the Bible's teachings on these foundational issues, there is no need to embrace solely natural processes as creator.'''

The following question and answer article appeared in The New American magazine, June 20,1988, p. 53-4:

"Q. The gradualism of Darwinian evolution has come under fire recently. Punctuated equilibria, a more recent attempt to explain the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, is presently being offered by such notables as Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge. This theory postulates that evolution occurred rapidly, in small, isolated populations. No record was left of the evolutionary process in the fossil record because the changes were so rapid. How do the most recent theories square with known scientific fact?

A. [Dr John Morris] One of the biggest problems that evolutionists have always faced is that there are no transitional forms. There is no recorded change from one basic type of an animal into another. This was a major problem to Darwin. In his book, "The Origin of Species", he dedicated a good bit of space to the lack of transitional forms. He said that it was the most obvious and serious argument that could be martialed against his theory. Darwin assumed that all living things today had come from a common ancestor and proposed a possible scenario whereby that might happen.

Q. The failure to discover transitional fossils since Darwin's time has proved to be an embarrassment to evolutionists, hasn't it?

A. The fossil record does not record any transitions from one basic type of animal into another basic type. But, in spite of the lack of evidence from the fossil record, evolutionists insist that such transitions have taken place. It is their presupposition. They "know" that evolution has taken place. To these scientists who accept the theory of punctuated equilibria,

[It is not even a theory because theories by definition have to be repeatable in order to be observable in order to be provable. Creation is not in man's capacity to be repeatable. So evolution is an hypothesis - a model of what happened (and so is creationism)],

To these scientists who accept the theory of punctuated equilibria, the lack of transitional forms proves then [so the evolutionists say] that evolution took place rapidly, and left no transitional forms.

Q. Isn't that a rather broad assumption for some evolutionists to have made?

A. Their frustration comes from the fact that they have already assumed evolution to be true. It seems to me that the fossil record is much more in favor of the creation model. A creationist would predict that there would be no transitional forms in the fossil record because the Bible says clearly that God created the basic kinds of animals [all at once]. They did not evolve from other types of animals. Since basic animal types did not come from other animals, no in-between animals ever existed to leave fossils, and the fossil record would contain these huge gaps. The creation model demands that the fossil record looks like it does.

But the evolutionists have assumed that creation is not to be considered, and so they are limiting their scope of investigation to these mechanisms within their own world view. In doing so , in my opinion, they have denied truth and are doomed to languish in empty speculations such as punctuated equilibria.

Q. So the lack of transitional forms is behind the need for "new" theories [models] to explain evolution?

A. If it is true that evolution has happened, then you must propose some kind of mechanism that allows evolution to take place without leaving transitional forms, for there are no transitional forms! The world's leading paleontologists [fossil scientists] all admit this! Punctuationalists presuppositionally hold that we all descended from a common ancestor and prove their brand of evolution from lack of data. The fact that we have no data proves punctuated equilibria in their minds. Their logic?

[PRESUPPOSED] Fact #1: Evolution has occurred.

[PRESUPPOSED] Fact #2: We have no transitional forms.

Therefore evolution occurred rapidly in isolated populations and left no transitional forms. Obviously, this is an argument from lack of data.

Q. Doesn't the "scientific method" demand that theories fit observable facts and evidence, and not the other way around?

A. Science deals with the present. We study chemical processes, biological life, fossils and so on, in the present. The only thing we have access to is the present. Scientists make measurements and observations in the present.

Now, when scientists want to talk about the past, they may study the present and make inferences about the past based on what they see. But, they cannot study the past. Every piece of data in the modern world has to be interpreted. But you cannot interpret it completely free of any bias. Scientists are all biased and prejudiced people, just like anyone else.

When scientists attempt to interpret the past, the scientific method doesn't apply. Who can observe or repeat the "Big Bang"? Who can repeat the origin of life? It just doesn't happen.

You can't do it. So it is outside the realm of empirical science. Scientists can believe, by faith, one way or the other; once you set up your world view, then you can study the present world and see if the present world fits the way your world view says that it ought to be.

Q. Why isn't creationism considered the stronger model since it fits the facts so well?

A. Creationism isn't even considered by many scientists. Scientists ought to be willing to investigate all possible solutions to a particular problem. Unfortunately, evolutionary scientists today have decided that anything that is of a supernatural nature is to be excluded from the realm of possibility. The definition of science used to be the search for truth, but these days it is the search for naturalistic explanations. In other words, the supernatural is presuppositionally excluded. Of course, a supernatural Creator implies a personal, thinking, transcendent God, a concept many refuse to accept. Many scientists, now faced with the overwhelming scientific objections to a completely naturalistic evolution, are turning to an "extra-natural," as opposed to a supernatural, explanation.

Consider Dr. Francis Crick, who won the Nobel prize for the discovery of DNA, who now claims it is impossible for life to have evolved here on earth given the natural laws that we observe. It couldn't have happened

[the way evolutionists say].

So Crick, a brilliant, world-class geneticist, now claims that life came here on a meteorite.

It came from outer space.

Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous astronomer in Britain, is now saying the same thing, as are many scientists. They call it "transpermia" - that life rode here on a meteorite or was brought here or that something "out there" has done it, but not God!

[This begs the question, 'Who created life on the meteorite?'].

Q. In a recent ICR [Institute for Creation Research] newsletter, Henry Morris stated:

"The neo-Darwinian religionists (Huxley, Dobzhansky, Dewey, etc.) thought that evolutionary gradualism would become the basis for the coming world humanistic religion. Evolutionists of the new generation, on the other hand, have increasingly turned to punctuationism - or revolutionary evolutionism - as the favored rationale, largely because of the scientific fallacies in gradualism increasingly exposed by creationists. This development has facilitated the amalgamation of Western scientism with Eastern mysticism." Do you also see this happening?

A. Naturalistic evolution just doesn't work. Evolutionists everywhere are beginning to recognize that and are beginning to look for other answers. Many are turning to the paranormal and to the cosmic and to other sources to salvage their theory of development, still without recourse to a personal Creator.

Finally, evolutionists fail to answer a number of critical questions:

1) If the moon is billions of years old like the earth, how come the astronauts only discovered a few thousands of years of dust everywhere on its surface?

2) The first law of thermodynamics is one of energy conservation: "Energy is neither created nor destroyed" The second law of thermodynamics can basically be stated that in spite of this conservation (First Law), the energy available for useful work does decrease so that the universe can be said to be "running down." Example: The sun's energy is dissipating via heat into the universe. So EVERYTHING IS DE-EVOLVING AND NOT EVOLVING!!

3) If the earth is billions of years old and revolved around the sun for those billions of years; then how could life have existed even in its most primitive form because the sun would have been too hot as a young star billions of years ago and would have made any form of life on earth impossible?

4) If everything in the universe is DEVOLVING (winding down) and not evolving according to Newton's second law of thermodynamics then how is it that evolutionists claim that man and animals have always been evolving into something higher? Thousands of species go to extinction each year and NO NEW SPECIES has been observed to have been forming since the days of recorded observation. It appears that man and the animals are also 'DE-EVOLVING'. We are not going through a process of evolution but devolution.

5) Why couldn't a Creator God have created such things as the light already arriving on earth from far distant stars, substances with a certain amount of original radiation etc. etc., so that life on earth today is as it is without having to go through billions of years of time?

6) Where did the first matter come from? (It could not have caused itself. Matter does not have the intelligence to cause anything that is creative and original).

7) If matter always existed, as some falsely maintain, why could there not be a creator God apart from matter Who always existed?

8) Fossil evidence in rock strata shows sudden appearance of major groups of species and not a finely graded and continuous development of species. Often rock strata show different species right next to one another when evolutionists say that one of the species was to have evolved into the other millions of years later. Often upper (later) rock strata show a supposedly much "earlier" life form than a lower strata. Could not a world-wide flood better explain how lighter, simpler, more floatable animals would appear in upper strata?

9) Many Christians, claiming to be evolutionists, state that the 6 days of creation are days which are each billions of years long. But the Bible says differently: In Genesis chapter 1 the days are said to have an evening and a morning, i.e. creation took place in a literal six twenty-four hour days. Scripture supports a literal 24 hour day in the Genesis One passage on creation. Compare Gen 1:5, 8, 13-14, 19, 23, 31; Ex 20:8-11. The Hebrew word "yom" with an ordinal adjective (first, second, etc.) means 24-hr days whenever this construction occurs in the Old Testament. The normal understanding of the fourth commandment - (resting on the 7th day - Ex 20:11) - would require this interpretation if one is to rest for one day and not for a billion years.

10) Where did the soul of man come from? The lowest type of man is far higher than the highest of animals in so many ways, especially because man has the capacity to worship God.

11) Even hydrogen, a basic building block of matter, is not simple. It is composed of particles including proton, neutron and electron all obeying and operating flawlessly according to fixed laws. Where did these laws come from? How could they have evolved? Wouldn't they have to have been in matter to start by design?

12) The magnetic force of the earth has been observed as diminishing at a predictable rate every year. If the earth is billions of years old, even millions, this magnetic force would THEN - MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO - have been so huge as to be strong enough to pull in a whole galaxy like a black hole would. Therefore life on earth millions of years ago would have been impossible.

13) Based on predictable rates of erosion, mountain ranges such as the Rocky Mountains should not exist today if you go back millions of years.

14) If carbon dating is so accurate how come it has been reported that some LIVING snails and LIVING trees were recorded as being 2500 & 10,000 years old? How is it that very young lava flows in Uinkaret Plateau in western Grand Canyon are recorded as being millions of years older than the Cardenas Basalt which is the oldest & most deeply buried strata? Is the carbon dating system reliable at all?

Could not God have created various forms of matter and life with various starting points of radiation? Could not additional radiation have been added to the world after the flood when the canopy of ice was removed from the earth's atmosphere thus allowing in [external] radiation from the sun [and elsewhere] & throwing off estimates of age using such a dating system?

15) If man is just another species in the chain of evolution, then why can't they simply evolve as they have been doing for thousands of years, killing one another, slaughtering and eating animals at will?

William P. Hoar states, (The New American, Nov 16, 1992, 'Evolution as Religion,' pp. 32-33):

"The Guardian Weekly, in discussing Dr. Eldredge's model, put it this way in 1978: 'In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them.'...........

....There are even intriguing suspicions - expressed by some prominent evolutionists - that Jesuit philosopher and paleontologist Teilhard deChardin was culpably involved in the long-standing Piltdown Man hoax. Johnson recounts a supposed ancestor of homo sapiens found under Piltdown Commons in Sussex during 1908-1915, and not exposed as a hoax until 1953:

The pressure to find confirmation [of a missing link] was so great that it led to one spectacular fraud, Piltdown Man - which British Museum officials jealously protected from unfriendly inspection, allowing it to perform forty years of useful service in molding public opinion.........

........Using a famous metaphor by British astronomer Fred Hoyle, the author observes that the chance that a living organism would emerge from a 'prebiotic soup' is about as likely 'as a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.' Chance assembly, Johnson elucidates, is the way a naturalist says 'miracle.'

Indeed, Nobel Prize biochemist Francis Crick stated in his book Life Itself: 'An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many of the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.' So what has scientist Crick come up with as a possible explanation? He advances a theory [model] which has also been raised as a possibility by the aforementioned astronomer Fred Hoyle and his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe - that of 'directed panspermia' from an extraterrestrial civilization.

This passes for science, while those who believe in a Creator are mocked?"

[Henry M. Morris states in the October 1994 issue , (#70), of 'Impact', pp aa-cc]:

"The Lord Jesus Christ...clearly affirmed the truth of recent creation. Jesus Christ was the Creator of all things (note John 1:1-3:10; Colossians 1:16; Ephesians 3:9; Hebrews 1:2, 10; etc.).....Christ says there have been people on the earth since the very beginning of the world - and He ought to know, for He was there!

For example, when the Pharisees asked Him about marriage and divorce, He replied that 'from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female' (Mark 10:6). He did not say that God made the first man and woman fifteen billion years after the beginning of the creation, but right from the beginning of the creation. In fact, the whole creation had been prepared for them (even the stars had been made to serve them 'for signs, and for seasons.' Genesis 1:14, 16), and they were given 'dominion...over all the earth' (Genesis 1:26). Such a stewardship responsibility would be an anachronism if animals and plants had already been living and dying - many even becoming extinct - for long ages before they were placed under some kind of human 'dominion' (note also Hebrews 2:6-8)......

What conceivable purpose could God have had in interposing a billion years of suffering and death in the animal kingdom prior to implementing His great plan of salvation for lost men and women?

[And what purpose to have creation reflect the lost condition of man before Adam and Eve were even created much less lost?]

He is neither cruel nor capricious, and would never be guilty of such pointless sadism....

Beginning with Abel (the first prophet of God according to Jesus in Luke 11:51), God sent prophet after prophet to transmit His word to men. More often than not their message was opposed, even to the point of bloodshed, and this also has been going on from the beginning. Jesus Himself referred to 'the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world' (Luke 11:50). That is, prophets have been preaching and dying since the very foundation of the world - not starting five billion years later.

This opposition to God's plan has been instigated by Satan himself. Jesus called Satan 'a liar, and the father of it,' as well as 'a murderer from the beginning' (John 8:44). He had not only deceived Eve with his humanistic philosophy ('ye shall be as gods,' Genesis 3:5), but also had caused Cain to murder God's first prophet. This too was at 'the beginning,' not five billion years after the beginning for even if animals had been dying for a billion years before this, as theistic evolutionists claim, their deaths could not be called 'murders.' Note also 1 John 3:8: 'The devil sinneth from the beginning.'

There is yet coming a time of God's great wrath on this unbelieving world. Again it was Jesus who said: 'In those days shall be affliction, such as was not since the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time; (Mark 13:19). The clear premise of this prophecy by Christ was that there had, indeed, been tribulation and affliction 'since the beginning of the creation which God created' (and, therefore, people had been on the earth all during that time), but that the coming period of 'great tribulation' would be still worse.

Also note that, according to these words of Christ, the creation had both a 'beginning' and a termination ('created' is in the past tense, in consistency with the use of this word all through the Bible). The world and its inhabitants are NOT continuously being created, as evolutionists and many progressive creationists would have us believe, for the creation was a completed event of the past. See also Hebrews 4:3 for a clear affirmation that all of God's 'works were finished from the foundation of the world.' Thus, the Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom all things were created in the beginning, has repeatedly made it clear that the supposed billions of years of a groaning, travailing creation (note Romans 8:22) prior to man's creation and fall never existed at all. God created men and women at the beginning, and then, when Adam sinned, quickly began to implement His great plan of redemption. To the redeemed He has promised 'a kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world' (Matthew 25:34), without the slightest intimation that there would be a fifteen-billion-year prelude before He would ever start the program of redemption.

The same emphasis was later carried forward by His apostles. Peter, for example, promised the soon return of Christ, 'Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began' (Acts 3:21).

Similarly, at the birth of John the Baptist, the prophet/priest Zacharias stressed that God's 'horn of salvation'' was coming, 'as He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began' (Luke 1:70). Thus, just before and just after Christ's earthly ministry, we are assured that Jesus spoke clearly and truly when He said that God's prophets have been transmitting God's word to man not just since human history began, but 'since the world began.' Thus the world and its human inhabitants began essentially at the same time.

Consider also the testimony of the apostle Paul: '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' (Romans 1:20). This powerful verse explicitly tells us that the evidences of God can be seen so clearly in His created world that it is inexcusable for people not to see them. Furthermore, they were being seen and understood by people, not just since a certain imaginary population of evolving hominids [= imaginary creatures very human like which supposedly preexisted and evolved into human beings] somehow acquired souls, but 'from the creation of the world.'