CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION, (CONT.)

II) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)

C) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A RECENT CREATION FROM LIFEFORMS, (cont.)

2) PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A RECENT CREATION OF LIFEFORMS

a) INTERDEPENDENCE OF LIFEFORMS POINTS TO A FULLY COMPLETED RECENT CREATION

[Dr. Baugh, op. cit., p. 5-6]:

"A repetitive phrase given again and again [in the creation account in Scripture] is 'the evening and the morning,'... ....[So] "...creation days are literal [24 hour days]. The word "Yom" is used in the Hebrew, and unless there is a specific contextual arrangement, it always means a literal day... the reason the days of creation had to be literal is because of the interrelationship of life.

[Plant, insect, animal life and non-living elements of nature such as light, rain, air etc. are interdependent upon one another such that they need to be in creation at the same time for one another to survive]:

[Dr. Baugh, op. cit., p.9]:

"It was on day number three that God created the botanical life forms. It was not until day number four that God created the stellar heavens - the sun and the moon - to create the ability for photosynthesis. If the earth were enshrouded in a cloud of darkness, there would not have been the ability for photosynthesis until the sun and more of the stellar heavens were visible and usable as light sources. In a matter of forty-eight hours, most of the botanical life forms would be dead. In a matter of twenty-eight days, all of them would be dead without the ability, designed by the Lord, that the stellar bodies give for photosynthesis upon the earth.

Even if that were not the case, it was not until day number six that God created the insects that are so very important to the procreation of most of these botanical life forms. There is such an interplay of the life forms that the days of creation have to be literal [24 hour] days."

b) LIFE FORMS ARE DEVOLVING NOT EVOLVING

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 long term evolution but short term devolution.

c) PREVIOUS EXISTENCE OF EXTINCT CREATURES IS BEST EXPLAINED BY A RECENT CREATION AND THE FLOOD

[Dr. Baugh, op. cit., p.59-61]:

"In the sixth chapter of Genesis, we read that there were giants on the earth before the Flood. At Glen Rose, Texas, we have excavated some of the [giant human] footprints of those giants. Their footprints were preserved as they walked over the muddy sediment in the early phases of the Noahic Flood.

The environmental context before the Flood would exercise the full genetic viability for all life forms. [Full genetic viability ? the full capacity of a species to produce characteristics within its own species - without changing into another species] For example, today the dragonfly - which is a superior helicopter - has a wingspan not exceeding six inches. But in the fossil record, dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to thirty-six inches. But in the fossil record, dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to thirty-six inches. There has to be an explanation as to how at some point in time dragonflies grew to such gigantic dimensions. It would certainly require a greater concentration of oxygen. Conditions that would support such monstrous life forms, even in the insect world, scientifically dictate that there had to be.. ...a canopy above the earth [of a composite of 'metallic' supercold hydrogen sandwiched between two layers of solid crystalline ice which existed before the Flood. See pp. 78-80 for full details] In order to provide that much oxygen for animal life forms which were several times larger than are in evidence today, the oxygen would have to approach the level of toxicity, unless the atmospheric pressure was greater. Again, such an atmospheric condition can only be explained in terms of a firmament. Therefore, we have to follow the Biblical record of creation specifically or the environmental chain breaks into unconnected parts.

The greater atmospheric pressure, with approximately thirty percent oxygen, would have created optimal conditions. Thus, dragonflies could have grown to a size supporting a thirty-six inch wingspan.

Consider another illustration. In West Texas, there has been found a fossilized pterodactyl, a flying reptile, with a wingspan of fifty-two feet. There is no way this flying dinosaur (as it has been called) could have flown with the current atmospheric pressure. It would have been utterly impossible. But, with an atmospheric pressure of approximately thirty-two pounds per square inch, this flying pterodactyl would have had a field day..".

[Dr. Henry M. Morris stated, (Impact brochure, July 1993 issue, in article entitled, 'DRAGONS IN PARADISE')]:

"Genesis 1:21 [KJV], says that 'God created great whales,' but the Hebrew word for 'whales' (tanniyn) is translated 'dragons' in over 20 other passages. Note especially Isaiah 27:1: 'In that day the Lord...shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.'

This type of sea dragon was called a leviathan (see also Psalm 74:14; 104:26). It was described by God Himself in Job 41:1-34 as a fearsome, fire-breathing (v.21) monster whose scaly hide (vs. 15-17) could not be pierced with sword or spear (vs. 7, 26-29). God also described a huge land dragon called a behemoth (Job 40:15-24) that 'moveth his tail like a cedar' and is 'the chief of the ways of God,' impossible to capture (v. 17, 19, 24). Various other dragons are depicted as dwelling in different types of habitats and as being of various sizes (e.g., Isaiah 34:13; Micah 1:8; Malachi 1:3). In some of these cases, modern translations have rendered tanniyn as 'jackal,' but the Hebrew word means 'dragon,' or 'monster,' not jackal.

Dragons were even described in reputable zoological treatises published during the Middle Ages. Even though dragons sometimes were said to have supernatural abilities, all these ancient nations regarded them as real animals, frequently encountered by humans.

The article on dragons in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1949 edition) noted also that dinosaurs were 'astonishingly dragonlike,' even though its author assumed that those ancients who believed in dragons did so 'without the slightest knowledge' of dinosaurs. All dinosaurs are assumed by evolutionary geologists to have been extinct since the end of the Mesozoic Era, about 65 million years ago, whereas the first dinosaur fossils were not discovered until early in the 19th century.

In any case, dinosaurs - like dragons - are said to have existed at one time in great numbers and varieties all over the world. Great dinosaur bone beds have been found on every continent, as far north as Spitzbergen in the Arctic Ocean and as far south as Antarctica, about 400 miles from the South Pole.

Even more astonishing have been the vast numbers of dinosaur tracks and trails. The symposium Dinosaur Tracks and Traces (Ed. by D. D. Gillette and M. G. Lockley, Cambridge University Press, 1989, 454 pp.) documents hundreds of dinosaur-track sites all over the world. They are found in alluvial-fan deposits, flood-plain sediments, lake sediments, dune-like formations, deltas, and shoreline systems.

Many geologists have decided recently that the age of the dinosaurs did come to a sudden end as the result of a global catastrophe of some kind, although there is much disagreement as to what type of catastrophe this may have been. A great flood, accompanied by tremendous eruptions, with the implied resulting worldwide climatic change from subtropical to the present latitudinal variations, could well account for the vast dinosaur graveyards and trackways all over the world? The Bible, of course, describes just such a flood that occurred several thousand years ago. There are now thousands of scientists who have become creationists and are convinced that the Biblical flood provides a much better explanation than the geological-age system for the phenomena of earth history, including the dinosaurs and their extinction.

In that connection, suppose the dinosaurs continued to survive for a time in the post-flood world. This would account perfectly for all the dragon stories, many embellished over the centuries with legendary accretions, but at the same time based on a substantial residuum of fact. Bill Cooper, a British student of antiquities, has published a most impressive compilation of dragon/dinosaur encounters with ancient people ('Living Dinosaurs from Anglo-Saxon and other Early Records.' Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, volume 6, no. 1, 1992, pp. 49-66).

It may even be that some dinosaurs still survive in isolated regions and especially in the oceans and deep lakes of the world. The famous plesiosaur-like creature dredged up near New Zealand in 1977 (see Oceans magazine, November 1977 pp. 56-59) and the numerous native accounts of a brontosaur-like animal in the swampy interior of the Congolese rain forests (see Science magazine, November 1980, pp. 6,7) should be neither dismissed nor ignored.

Most creationists believe that dinosaurs have co-existed with man from the beginning, only becoming extinct in the Middle Ages. That being so, one must envision a pre-flood world with vast herds of dinosaurs occupying many areas in every region. The antediluvian population would certainly be familiar with their existence...

Even after the flood, dinosaurs could still be seen occasionally, though not in the great herds common in former times. At the climax of the Satan-caused sufferings of the prophet Job, for example, God told him to observe two of these great animals, the land-dwelling behemoth and the ocean-dwelling leviathan, and to realize that - even though no man alone could ever vanquish such awesome reptiles - God was well able to defeat them, for it was He who had made them....

...Although the behemoth was the strongest of all created land animals, 'He that made him can make His sword to approach unto him' (Job 40:19). And though the leviathan 'is a king over all the children of pride,' yet God says that not even leviathan can 'stand before Me' (Job 41:34, 10). God one day 'shall punish leviathan...and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea' (Isaiah 27:1)."