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Theory and Evidence (Part 2)

By Richard Gunther

  

Computers have proven evolution works.

Oxford professor Richard Dawkins has claimed that a program he has designed proves evolution works. The program consists of a line from Shakespeare - "Methinks it is like a weasel" which has been totally jumbled. The computer then unjumbles the letters and in only 64 steps comes to the quotation. The trouble is the computer has already been programmed to find the sentence, whereas evolution has no goal or final solution to reach. The computer does not use random processes - it even has a restriction on the number of letters it can use. No new information is generated because the computer always reaches the desired sentence each time without changing it or making it better, and the computer actually shows that in order to achieve a meaningful order in this string of letters, the input of intelligence is required. - exactly what creationists would say.

The fact is Dawkins needs a great amount of gullibility on the part of his readers and followers in order to make a case for evolution with such a feeble exercise as this.

The history of the world and the origins of its many civilisations are lost in the mists of time.

The Bible clearly explains when the different nations of the world began to appear, and where they came from. Of Noah’s grandchildren, 16 grandsons are named in Genesis 10. After the Babel dispersion (Gen.11) the descendants of these grandchildren fanned out over the earth and established various nations of the ancient world. (For more on this see Creation mag 20(4) 1998, page 22.)

Evolution vs Creation, ( -as outlined in Genesis) can be fitted together in harmony.

There is no harmony between the two accounts, in fact they are diametrically opposed at several crucial points.

The Bible begins with God - evolution denies that there ever was a god. The Bible shows how God works by written revelation and shows that God purposefully made us - evolution denies all this totally.

All one has to do from this point is compare point by point the supposed order of evolution with the sequence in Genesis 1. The discrepancies become obvious.

Evolution reduces God to something Man invented, removes God from public life, gives Man the incentive to decide rights from wrongs, allows political groups to determine laws. Creation puts God first, allows Him into public life, gives Him the prerogative to decide morals and includes His Law into civil law.

If Evolution is true : there is no life after death, materialism is all there is, Man is the only authority and self-fulfilment is the highest aim. If Creation is true : there is life after death, spiritual life is real, God is the highest authority and the highest priority in life is to love and obey God.

The moon either broke away from the earth or was captured as it came by, or perhaps it is the remnant of a huge cloud of dust which collapsed inwards? At any rate, the moon is an unpurposeful phenomena.

The size, speed, substance and orbital distance of the moon are all delicately balanced. If any of these parameters were lost disaster would strike Earth.

God created the moon to give light to the earth - which it does because it is large and reflective. He also created it to mark seasons - which it does because it has 29 and a half day phases, thus marking the months and seasons.

The moon also creates tides, which helps oxygenate the ocean waters when they break on shores, and it also drives ocean currents which keep the seas from stagnating.

The moon, like all things, is in a decaying orbit, receding about 4 cm every year from Earth.

Some trees are older than the Bible date for creation.

The Bible date for creation is calculated first by history back to the time of Christ, and then by history and Bible dates based on the ages of various kings and other people. The general view is approximately 4000 BC. However, the Great Flood destroyed all the living trees in about 4500 BC so any trees growing today must be no older than this date.

The claim that trees have been found which are older than 6500 years has been made quite often, yet subsequent tests have always proven it to be unsubstantiated.

One example is a stand of what looks like many huon pines which cover one hectare on a Tasmanian mountain. The trees, it is claimed, are actually all part of a single parent, which has been dated at 10,500 years. Some media reports have dated it at between 30,000 and 40,000 years.

Drill-core sampling of the trees has shown no evidence to support the longevity claims. Tree-ring dating has shown an age of about 4,000 years. The oldest living bristlecone has been dated by this method at about 4,600 years - which fits almost perfectly with the end of the Flood.

The truth is, no living things have been found older than about 4,500 years old. This is what we would expect if the world was repopulated by plants and animals after the global Flood, (about 2,500 BC).

Time magazine reported, in Nov. 15th 1999 page 18 that "the world’s oldest tree, known as ‘Eternal God’ is the giant redwood that lives in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in California - dated at 12,000 years old" However, tree ring counts (dendrochronology) of drill-core samples show that the oldest living organisms are 4000 year old bristlecone pines. Redwood trees generally range from 600 to 1200 years, with the oldest clocking in at 2,200, which was felled in 1934. Dendrochronologists have since said that Time magazine was in error, due perhaps to negligence in checking sources, or over-zealous reporting. The tree in question is actually sign-posted as an Estimated Age : 1500 years.

DNA is a mechanical chain of nucleotides which came about by accident.

Dr. Eric Norman, who has a B.Sc. In Physics (University of Missouri), a BA In Chemistry (Southern Illinois University), an MS In Biochemistry and a Ph.D. In Biochemistry (Texas A&M University), spent many months trying to connect just three bases in a nucleotide. He found that to connect these bases a protective group molecules had to be attached on parts of the molecule to prevent wrong connections. A catalyst was also needed as a condensing agent, and the chemical reaction had to take place in a completely water-free environment. Even the humidity of the air was enough to prevent the reaction.

The human DNA consists of some 3 billion DNA nucleotide ‘rungs’ yet every one of them has to form and be replicated in order for life to proceed. It is impossible, as far as Dr. Norman is concerned, for DNA to form by accident, let alone all the other things such as sugars, proteins and lipids.

The formation of DNA contradicts at least three laws : the second law of thermodynamics - because simple arrangements must be growing into more complex arrangements, the law of probability - because it is unbelievably improbable for a DNA spiral to form by accident, and the law of information - because inanimate matter cannot arrange itself into a meaningful code without exterior influence.

Left to itself DNA will break down. Unprotected by a cell membrane or organised mechanisms of repair and maintenance, DNA never keeps its order intact, yet evolutionists require people to believe that some time in the past all of these factors were operating in reverse.

The Niagara Falls proves that the Earth is very old because of the speed at which it is retreating.

In the mid-1880’s Charles Lyell came out with his uniformitarian ideas. He thought the Earth had been shaped by slow and gradual forces over millions of years, and he seized on the Niagara Falls as an example of proof. However he made some very serious mistakes in his measurements.

In 1841 the Falls were much harder to reach than they are today. When Lyell visited them he used the memory of a local plus a few measurements to work out the speed at which the Falls were cutting through the edge of their bed. From these figures he estimated that the Falls Gorge was 35,000 years old - much older than the Bible allowed. He then published these findings in ‘Principles of Geology’, and because few people had ever seen the Falls, and because Lyell was a respected gentleman, his report was accepted as true.

Lyell, being an avid evolutionist, did not let facts spoil his theory, so it was not surprising that he ignored other reports which gave a much faster erosion rate. Later, eyewitnesses reported in over the years from 1842 to 1927 that erosion was about 4 - 5 feet per year. This rate ruined Lyell’s estimate and put the Falls Gorge age at about 7-9000 years. This estimate has now been found wanting, because the erosion rate is actually faster still.

With the discovery of other planets, the chances of finding life elsewhere in the universe are now much higher.

Planets do not shine by their own light, but reflect it as they orbit near a star. As this reflected light would be as feeble as one billionth of that of the host star, Earth-bound telescopes would not be able to find it, so no planets the size of earth could be seen.

One way in which earth scientists try to find distant planets is by noting whether a star ‘wobbles’ as a planet pulls on it while orbiting. This periodic fluctuation can be measured, and planets may be the cause. However none of the claimed planets has been detected by telescope, and several other theories to explain the ‘wobble’ have been put forward : star pulsations, sunspot-like blemishes, double-star systems, or the presence of brown dwarf stars - these are weak stars with masses between that of Jupiter and our sun.

Any planet which is able to cause a detectable wobble in a distant star would need to be at least as large as Jupiter, in which case it would be about 318 times the mass of Earth, and totally uninhabitable.

In order to orbit a star, a planet needs to be placed in an orbit with very strict parameters. It has to be moving at exactly the right speed compared to its mass and distance. Any variation in the parameters and the planet will either escape its orbit or spiral into the star. These parameters alone make our own solar system a remarkable collection of finely balanced objects, and it seems unlikely that a similar arrangement could occur by accident. (The accretian disk model does not explain the origin of the solar system, so we are faced with yet another mystery, unless we accept the Genesis account of origins)

Life from Space is a real possibility, as microbes are carried about from planet to planet. Perhaps that is where life originally came from 4 billion years ago, and from which all life on Earth has now evolved?

Let us suppose that microbes are living on a planet. They have to leave it in order to reach another planet, but they lack propulsion. For any object to break free from the pull of gravity, it must achieve ‘escape velocity’. For Earth this is 11.2 km per second, or just over 40,000 kph (11,500 mph). As volcanoes do not eject materials at these speeds, the most likely alternative is asteroid impact, which might blast debris into space.

But even if some microbes did fly away from a planet on debris, their journey across space would be most hazardous. The nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri - 4.3 light years away. This means that light, travelling at 300,000 kps (186,000 mps) would take 4.3 years to reach us. If a planet was orbiting Proxima Centauri and a rock was blasted off it at escape velocity, it would take 115,000 years to reach Earth.

Rocks coming from a planet 40 light years away would take over a million years to reach Earth.

But what of the journey? Radiation would bombard the rock, destroying any DNA it might contain. Near-absolute temperatures would crack and splinter any cells on or in the rock. There would also be no nutrients, oxygen or water. On reaching Earth the rock would heat up until it was molten and then strike the earth at great speed with tremendous force.

But even if, due to a fairy-tale scenario, some microbes did survive all these things, they would not be able to do anything more than reproduce themselves, because evolution is not possible without the input of new useful information.

If rocks can be blasted away from Mars and land on Earth, they might also be blasted away from Earth and land on Mars. It is therefore possible that the remains of life may be found on Mars.

If life was found on another planet in our solar system it might be due to : 1. Contamination from Earth’s own probes, 2. The result of meteorite strikes on Earth, 3. The result of bacterial spores from Earth’s upper atmosphere being pushed into Space by the solar wind, 4. The result of God’s creative work.

Canyons take tens of thousands or millions of years to form.

Providence Canyon, near the town of Lumpkin in Southwest Georgia, is a canyon with sides 50 metres deep 180 metres wide and 400 metres long. (160, by 600, by 1300 feet). According to folklore, the Canyon started to form in flat pastureland, with some trees, in the 1790s when rain water started to cut into American trails - or perhaps water running off the Patterson’s barn, or the local school, in 1855 was the cause. By the 1940’s farmers were aware of the canyon’s growth because they kept losing fences, animals and equipment down the sides as the edges widened. Today the Canyon is still growing.

Human remains prove that Man has been on Earth for tens of thousands of years.

In 1997 huge publicity was given to remains of an Australian Aboriginal site, dated at 116,000 to 176,000 years. However, independent experts did their own dating and came up with less than 20,000 years. One of these experts, a Dr. Nigel Spooner, checked the data on a sample dated at 50,000 years and came up with 5,000 years or less.

In Feb. 2001 remains of an Australian were dated at 60,000. One of the big problems with this sort of dating is the lack of population. Given that there were humans living that long ago, they have left almost nothing to show for over 50,000 years of habitation - no roads, trails, tracks, buildings, tools, artefacts, graves, monuments etc. Also, their population has apparently remained reasonably static for 50,000 years, which is itself very unusual and most unlikely. Compare this with the population of Europe and surrounding countries, which has risen from a few thousand to several billion in only three or four thousand years.

Biosphere 2 was built to show that a Man-made isolated living environment could supply all the factors necessary for sustaining life in a range of ecosystems.

Biosphere 1 and 2 both failed. Despite an investment of about US$200 million from 1984 to 1991, and a multi-million dollar operating budget, it proved impossible to sustain 8 human beings with adequate food, water and air for 2 years. Just 1.3 years after enclosure in 1991, oxygen levels had fallen to the point that oxygen had to be added from the outside. Nineteen of 25 invertebrates became extinct. All the species which could pollinate plants became extinct, as did most insects. Water and air pollution became acute and temperature control was a problem.

On the other hand, God has designed a Biosphere which functions beautifully, and sustains life on all levels adequately without any sign of breaking down - even though humans are constantly attacking it.

The Genesis account and Science are two different things. Science is true, but Genesis is just religious myth.

Science is always changing its statements - but the Bible never does.

Time and time again ‘scientific’ statements have been either thrown out, modified, or replaced by new ones. For example it was once thought that trains could not go very fast because some scientists thought all the air would be sucked out. Other scientists thought Man would never be able to fly. Others thought the moon was about 60 feet deep in dust. Others thought life arose spontaneously. Others thought the "cell" was a simple thing. Others thought simple systems gradually grew more and more complex without external aid. Others thought genetic information was blended over time. Others thought there were no such things as germs. Others thought there were only four ‘elements’.

As the scientist Matthew Maury once said "I have been blamed by men of science . . . For quoting the Bible in confirmation of the doctrines of physical geography. The Bible, they say, was not written for scientific purposes, and is therefore no authority in matters of science. I (totally disagree). The Bible is authority for everything it touches. What would you think of the historian who should refuse to consult the historical records of the Bible, because the Bible was not written for the purposes of history? The Bible is true and (good) science is true, and therefore each, if truly read, but proves the truth of the other". (Address given at the University of the South in East Tennessee, Nov. 30, 1860. Words in brackets added for clearer reading).

There are many spiritual leaders in the Church who have abandoned the clear statements of Genesis, and slipped into the ever-changing theories of science. Once the literal reading is thrown out, the evolutionary millions of years can be adopted. The "fruits" of this sort of ‘do-it-yourself’ reasoning are :

1. People start interpreting the rest of the Bible using the fallible methods of fallible men,

2. Once millions of years are accepted, bloodshed, death, disease and suffering are allowed to exist before Adam sinned, which chips away at the credibility of the gospel, because the gospel includes in its framework the teaching that Adam was the first man to sin,

3. It seems that God is unable to clearly communicate, and needs lots of secular thinking to help make His words understandable,

4. People think there must be a difference between God’s Word and Science,

5. People become afraid to stand up for the Bible in case they are laughed at.

Euthanasia (usually) involves the killing of a patient shortly before they are expected to die anyway. It is not murder, or self-murder, because these words apply to a moral universe. Euthanasia is part of the evolutionary picture - it is just the death of an animal. It can therefore be applied to killing deformed, useless, old and handicapped people - a great benefit to other more healthy humans.

In Holland, where euthanasia is not strictly legal but tolerated, in one year more than 2700 euthanasia deaths were reported - 50% were involuntary. This shows that, were euthanasia legal and acceptable, many people would die for trivial reasons. Human life is devalued the further we go from the Bible.

In 2 Sam.1:1-16 an Amalekite claimed that Saul had asked to be put to death. David angrily destroyed the man.

In Gen.9:6 God says "Whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man." Anyone who kills another person is therefore responsible for that death - except in strictly correct legal situations.

God’s Word shows that it is not Man’s responsibility to take his own or anyone else’s life.

Arguments for euthanasia - with a Christian response :

It is our right to die - it is God’s will that we exercise freedom of choice, but He has told us that we are precious, and offers solutions to those who may be dying.

The law allows euthanasia - none of Man’s laws can supersede God’s eternal Laws.

I am in unbearable pain - there are many drugs which can ease or remove pain.

I am depressed - friends, visitors, various media, drugs and so on can alleviate this.

I have terminal cancer and will die soon anyway - while you live you have time to do good, to think, to set things in order and to achieve many useful things.

Once evolution was accepted in Nazi Germany, euthanasia was practised on the terminally ill, the disabled and the elderly, then the Jews and anyone else who seemed to be useless, such as gypsies.

Cloning will make it possible to make exact genetic copies of any living thing - including humans.

Cloning has been carried out successfully with a sheep (Dolly) but many difficulties have arisen. One is the enormous expense. Another is the fact that it takes many attempts before the process proceeds correctly.

When a cell divides, a string of nucleotides are removed from the ends of the DNA spiral. These nucleotides, called telomeres, are like beads, and they are stripped away until a major gene is reached at which point the cell dies. This is usually the 50th cell division. What this means is if cells are taken from an organism which is 20 cell-divisions old, the cloned cells will divide only 30 more times before they die. This is a major difficulty with cloning.

In the right hands, cloning may be a good thing. It may provide better crops, larger animals, organs and substances useful for healing. In the wrong hands it could lead to irreversible disaster.

The whole universe came from an enormous explosion - a ‘Big Bang’ from which all the details including life formed by completely random processes.

The Hubble orbiting telescope has given us pictures of the furthermost reaches of Space, and instead of finding more primitive galaxies - as we would expect if they were formed by an explosion - we find galaxies just as complete as any which are nearer to Earth.

Another problem with the ‘Big Bang’ theory is that it totally contradicts the first two Laws of Thermodynamics. Firstly, energy and/or matter cannot be created out of nothing. Energy and matter are interchangeable. And secondly the universe is moving from complex to less complex, which contradicts the Second Law, which says that the whole universe must have moved the other way some time in the past - but there is no known process by which this could have happened.

Put simply, the universe is not a random scattering of matter, as we should expect to find in an explosion. No known laws could produce such balance, order and design from a random scattering of matter.

The universe is slowly being mapped and what has been discovered so far is a structure not unlike immense bubbles. The walls of the bubbles are galaxies and clusters of galaxies, and the interior of each bubble is an enormous expanse of nothingness. These shapes are quite the opposite to what ‘Big Bang’ believers expected to find so they are once again modifying their theories to fit their theories.

In his book ‘A Brief History of Time’ British physicist Stephen W. Hawking asks "Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from". At the end of his book he says "We find ourselves in a bewildering world. We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask : what is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?" Unfortunately Hawkings steers away from the Bible and confines himself to equations, so he ends up with no answers to his questions.

As far as Hawkings knew, the universe was the result of a ‘Big Bang’ which blew outwards from a central point and formed the vast and beautiful heavens - completely my accident.

However, if the universe came about by such an explosion, matter should be evenly distributed. It is not. Matter is concentrated into zones and planes. Distant galaxies are clustered together like continents - according to two astronomers Gella and Huchra, who embarked on a lengthy measuring program.

Petrified forests show that many thousands of years ago trees were buried slowly and preserved.

The Yellowstone National Park spans three states in America. In some places in the Park erosion of hillsides has uncovered upright petrified trees - such as Specimen Ridge, where there are 27 layers or levels on which the trees are found. The total vertical height of Specimen Creek, which contains 50 layers or levels is 1200 metres (3,400 feet).

He evolutionary theory as to how these trees got like this is that originally there was just one level, where trees grew, and these trees were covered so a new forest could grow on top, and so on, until the whole hillside represented many growths and coverings over thousands of years - an estimated 40,000 in fact. The trouble is, the evidence doesn’t match the theory.

The trees have their roots torn off, which shows they were transported to the site and didn’t grow there. The trees have no branches either, which shows they were stripped away before they were deposited on the site. Many of the tree stand vertically through the layers, which shows that the layers were laid down continuously, and not in separate stages. The trees are vertical, which shows that they must have been held upright while they were buried, and not fallen over as trees normally do. The trees are all of the same chemical and mineral composition which shows that they share a common time and origin. The trees show no layers of soil or humus, as normal forest do. The trees are found in conjunction with other fossils which normally are not found in forests.

The best explanation is the Great Flood, which shows that trees caught up by water were transported roughly to the area, where they gradually sank vertically and were covered by successive layers of sediment, which later hardened and petrified the wood.

Comets come from distant parts of the universe and testify to its great age.

There are orbit the sun every hundred years or so. Every orbit sees a loss of material such that these comets have a life span of only a few thousands of years. IF comets came into being at the same time as the solar system, then the solar system must be only a few thousands of years old.

In order to keep the theory (that the universe is very old) running, evolutionists have invented a sort of ‘comet nursery’ which provides a regular supply of new comets. They have even given this undetected ‘nursery’ the Kuiper belt, and backed it up with unsubstantiated and unconfirmed statements.

The uncountable billions of stars whose light comes to us from so far away bear witness to the enormous age of the universe.

One puzzling problem is How did the light from millions of light-years away reach planet Earth from so far away in only a few hours during creation week? The answer is twofold. First of all we are dealing with a miracle God, so the presence of light is no problem to Him. After all, He created two humans without making them go through conception, birth and growth. Jesus made wine from water in an instant. Nothing is too hard for God.

Secondly, we are actually given some clues in Scripture.

Job 26:7 He stretches out the north over the empty place, and hangs the earth upon nothing. Isaiah 40:22 It is he that sits on the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in:

Isaiah 44:24 Thus says the LORD, your redeemer, and he that formed you from the womb, I am the LORD that makes all things; that stretches forth the heavens alone; that spreads abroad the earth by myself . . ."

In all three verses the heavens are said to be "spread" out. One simple way to grasp this is to hold a rubber band between two fingers then pull your fingers apart. The fingers travel away from each other but the rubber band continues to link them. In a similar way it seems that God created the stars and spread them apart, allowing Earth to be bathed in their light right from the start. (Logically, if Earth was younger than some far reaches of the universe, there would be many stars which would not be visible yet, as their light would still be travelling towards us, yet we never see new stars or galaxies suddenly appear.)

How many stars are there? See Jer. 33:22 - the number of stars is about the same as the number of sand grains.

With the unaided eye we can see about 6000 stars altogether in both hemispheres. With a small telescope we can see about 30,000. With the Hubble telescope we can see so many we can’t count them, yet God calls them all by name - Ps.147:4. By way of illustrating this, imagine a computer which can count 10,000 million stars every second. It would take a computer working at this speed 30 million years to cover most of the whole night sky, and it would still have a few more to count.

Noah’s Ark was too small to hold all the animals.

Many people draw a stupid picture of something from the Bible, and then throw criticism at it. This is called setting up ‘straw men’. For example, they look at Judas, who betrayed Jesus, and then say "Call that a Christian!?" By picking the worst example, or the ‘fringe’ fanatic, it is easy to discredit something. When it comes to Noah’s Ark, many people are under the mistaken impression that it was quite small, and/or that every animal on earth today was crammed into it. Such was not the case.

First of all, how many types of animal did Noah take on board? Noah did not need to take sea creatures, or plants, or insects. Only animals which breathed "through nostrils" (Gen.7:22) which means through the nose. This rules out insects, but includes all invertebrates and reptiles, and of course includes all the dinosaurs. And there is nothing in Scripture to suggest that Noah took fully grown creatures - babies would have been quite sufficient.

What we call a ‘species’ today does not equate with what God calls a ‘kind’ in the Bible. A ‘kind’ was a ‘gene pool’ from which many different offshoots could come, such as the dog family (dogs, wolves, jackals, dingoes), or cat family (manx, Siamese, Persian), or horse family. Hidden in the genetic code was the potential to produce African and Indian and Mammoth elephants, likewise black and white and ginger rabbits. So all Noah needed was a male and female of a ‘kind’ and subsequent breeding produced the many varieties.

One common objection concerns the dinosaurs. They were too big, say the critics. But of the 668 supposed dinosaur genera, only 106 weighed more than 10 tons when fully grown. The median size of the dinosaurs was about the size of a rat, while 11% were about the size of a sheep. There is no reason why the animals which came to the Ark could not have been very young, and therefore small.

How large was the Ark? It was 300x50x30 cubits, which is about 140x23x13.5 metres (459x75x44 feet), so its volume was 43500 cubic metres (or 1.4 million cubic feet) which is the equivalent of about 522 standard American stock cars, each of which can hold 240 sheep.

Consequently there was plenty of room to give each of the animal pairs adequate room. Food supplies might have taken up 15% of the space and drinking water might have taken up 9.4%.

There is also the possibility that many of the animals hibernated, or rested most of the time. The Flood lasted about one year.

Its high time that certain sceptics showed some intellectual integrity and actually read the Bible, instead of making ridiculous comments about something they know so little about.

(For further details see ‘Noah’ Ark A feasibility study’ by John Woodmorappe).

Human blood consists of percentages of concentrations of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iodine, chlorine, which are similar to sea water, which shows that the ancestors of humans once lived in the sea.

The truth is the mineral concentrations in human blood are not similar at all to sea water. The chlorine and sodium contents are only 20-30% of sea water, whereas the iron content is 250 times greater. Compared to sea water, blood has little magnesium, but 9,000 times a much selenium.

Furthermore, even the blood of crabs, which actually live in or near the sea is different to sea water.

But the whole evolutionary view is flawed because of their assumption that the sea has been salty for millions of years. Salt is steadily being added to the sea through erosion off the land, and it would take 62 million years, starting with pure fresh water to reach the present salinity. However, evolutionists say that amphibians crawled out of the sea 350 million years ago, which means that the sea wasn’t salty then - so how can evolutionists claim that blood is related to the salt in the sea so long ago? The sea wasn’t salty then!

The fact is, when God created the sea and the creatures in the sea, He created them for each other, perfectly tuned and in harmony. There was no need for God to wait for anything to evolve before He changed something.

Compare human blood with sea water, per milligram per litre:

Sodium 3220 10800

Chlorine 3650 19400

Potassium 200 392

Calcium 50 411

Magnesium 27 1290

Phosphorus 36 0.09

Iron 1 0.004

Copper 1 0.001

Zinc 1.1 0.0002

Chromium 1.1 0.002

Bromine 4 67

Fluorine 0.1 1.3

Boron 1 5

Selenium 0.9 0.0001

Blood is incredible! It is not primitive sea water, but a highly complex and vital fluid . . . it carries oxygen from the lungs to every cell, and it carries carbon dioxide away from every cell, it carries food (glucose) to every cell and carries waste products away. It carries minerals, amino acids, vitamins, enzymes, special cells and proteins and chemicals vital to healing, growth-regulation and maintenance of the whole body. It carries clotting materials, and it regulates body temperature by bringing warmth to the extremities. Blood is always on the move, forming part of a vast network of channels which wind through the entire body.

Evolution has produced many marvellous creatures. The amazing functioning of these organisms shows the diversity possible through evolution.

Michael J. Behe, a man who keeps away from revealing whether or not he is a creationist or Christian, has written a book called ‘Darwin’s Black Box’ (The Free Press, New York, 1996) in which he uses the expression "irreducible complexity". By this he means a system which could not function if just one part of it was missing. For example a mouse trap.

If all the parts of a mousetrap are present, all in their correct place, and shaped accordingly, the whole trap works. But remove just one part and the entire trap will not work. Mr Behe shows in his book how Nature is designed in much the same way.

Blood clotting relies on a cascade of very complicated events. So does the process of photosynthesis, digestion, and the seeing eye. None of these things would run smoothly, or even function, if just one tiny part of the whole was missing. This indicates that the systems were designed as whole systems, and goes totally against the evolutionary idea that they arose little by little over vast ages. (Of what use is a three-quarters eye, or a half wing? There is no advantage for a creature to have a partially present limb or internal system, because, according to evolution, only the fittest survive, and there is no advantage in a non-funtioning organ).

Oil deposits were formed millions of years ago.

Oil is a mixture of organic materials and water. It is usually found deep underground, under sedimentary rock. sealed by non-porous ‘cap’ rocks. Oil sometimes seeps upwards and away very slowly but at measurable rates. In these cases, if the seepage can be measured, the age of the oil deposit can be estimated. Seepage rates usually indicate that the oil is not millions of years old, because if it was that old it would be long gone.

The fact that oil is trapped under sedimentary rock indicates that a huge amount of organic material was once collected, trapped and covered by less organic layers, which subsequently hardened into rock. This is evidence of the Great Flood, which tore huge amounts of organic matter away from the ground and deposited it in heaps, covering it rapidly by sediment and sealing in.

Oil does not take millions of years to form, because that sort of time would allow it to seep away before any large amount was present.

A Wichita company has found a way of using heat and pressure to turn garbage into oil in minutes. Waste Recovery Inc. Says it can take ‘leftovers from yesterday’s dinner, grass clippings, old newspapers, sawdust or any other organic matter’ and in 10-15 minutes turn it into a burnable fuel.

Bird evolution from reptiles is confidently believed by many scientists to be a fact.

When it comes to beliefs, what matters is whether or not there is good evidence on which to base ones beliefs on. If there is, then a belief has credibility, but if there is no evidence, the belief is empty of credibility.

In order for a reptile to evolve into a bird, the reptile would have to evolve a different breathing system, its bones would have to become hollow, its mouth would have to become a beak, its legs would have to become thinner and grow claws instead of toes, its skin would have to change from scales to feathers and many other changes would need to occur. There are no transitional forms in the fossil record, showing any of these changes. There are reptiles and there are birds, but no intermediate forms.

The archaeopteryx is supposed to be a link between reptiles and birds. Most scientists believe that the archaeopteryx was a true bird. Its skeleton is specialised, its feathers are true feathers, and its whole body except for the feet and face are feathered. It has a strong ‘wishbone’ - furcula - which shows that it was able to fly well, and it has feet suitable for perching not walking along the ground.

The theory of evolution has been endorsed by many church leaders.

Unfortunately this is true, but endorsement does not equal accuracy. " . . . let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That You might be justified in your sayings, and might overcome when You are judged". Romans 3:4 In this verse Paul explains that even if every human in the whole world was mistakenly or deliberately convinced that they were right, it would make no difference to God. God is always right. So when it comes to evolution, even if every human in the world was convinced that the Theory was correct, it would not be correct if it contradicted God’s "sayings".

One such misguided church leader was Rev. Charles Kingsley, an amateur naturalist and ordained Anglican curate, chaplain to Queen Victoria and writer of novels. One of his stories ‘The Water Babies’ begins with Tom, a human child who becomes an amphibian with gills, and who lives in the water, and in the story Mother Carey (Mother Nature), says "I am not going to trouble myself to make things . . . I sit here and make them make themselves."

In 1867 Kingsley publicly declared his belief that man was descended from apes and that the world was millions of years old, in two lectures entitled ‘Science and Scripture’. He also held racist views "The Black people of Australia, exactly the same race as the African Negro, cannot take in the gospel . . . Poor brutes in human shape . . . They must perish off the face of the earth like brute beasts."

One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, so the days of Genesis must be ages not literal days.

"For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Psalm 90:4

"But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." 2 Peter 3:8

This verse (2Pet.3:8) is commonly used to attack the Genesis account, but what it says is "one day with the Lord is "as" a thousand years" or "like" a thousand years. Like is not the same as is.

However, in the first of the two verses the writer is comparing the way we see time with the way God sees it. God is eternal, while we are temporal. God inhabits everlasting realms, while we measure our lives in feeble years. What is a thousand years to a God who has no beginning or end? As insignificant as a watch in the night - a mere hour or two of our time.

In the second of the two verses, Peter is not referring to the six days of Creation at all. The context does not allow this verse to refer to Genesis, but the subject which Peter is describing, which is the long-suffering and patience of God. He is not saying that one day = a thousand years either. He is speaking about the Lord’s patience.

But let us, for a moment, look at what happens if we take the critic’s view, and equate a day with a thousand years. In Genesis the plants are created on day 3 and the insects are created on day 6, so most of those plants had to survive 3000 years before they could be pollinated.

Cave men were the forerunners of modern Man.

The Bible teaches that God created the first humans perfect, wise and noble. However, after they sinned, God brought in degrading forces, which reduced Man to less glorious dimensions. For several hundred years people multiplied until God announced the coming Flood. The Great Flood wiped out all but 8 people, and these 8 repopulated the world. The whole world was different after the Flood, being mountainous and colder, and a 400-500 year Ice Age made things even more difficult, reducing many people to starvation, disease and malnutrition. Many inventions and teachings were lost as migrating tribes moved across the land masses, and some of these people had to find shelter in caves. These people were not ‘primitive’ in its most basic sense. They knew how to make musical instruments, sew their clothes, make tools, draw and paint, hunt, shape pots and fashion other useful items, speak and sing, and pass on stories of the past.

The fact is Man started off fully civilised and then ‘devolved’ rather than the other way round.

Even if there was a world-wide flood, the planet would take thousands of years to recover.

When Mt. Saint Helens erupted in 1980 the volcano devastated over 500 square km of forest, streams and tranquil lakes, by blasting everything away and covering the remains with grey ash, steaming pumice and mud flows. Some scientists at the time said "It will never be again, in our lifetime" and some said it would be "impossible for insects to recover at all".

Three years later 90% of the original plant species are growing within the blast zone. Many creatures actually survived the blast - ants survived in underground colonies, salamanders survived in the soft wood of decomposing logs, fish survived in ice-covered lakes, many plants survived as their roots were protected by soil and snow-pack. As vegetation reappeared, herbivores moved back in - elk, deer, beavers. As insect life increased, birds returned. Salmon and trout made it up muddy streams, frogs started to live along stream banks, along with toads and salamanders. Many species survived the blast as seeds, spores, eggs and larvae.

Ten years after the eruption plant and animal populations are approaching the level they were at before the eruption. Obviously it does not take long for life to move into a barren wilderness - which indicates that it was not long after the Great Flood that the planet was clothed in life again.

It is obvious, when one looks at the Earth, that it is very old, because it looks old.

It is not at all obvious to some people that the Earth is old. It all depends on what they want to see. If they have already assumed that sedimentary rocks take millions of years to form they will think that a sedimentary rock face is millions of years old. If they believe that most sedimentary rock was formed quickly by a global flood only 4 and a half thousand years ago, they will think that the rocks are comparatively young.

An example of this sort of thing is the Island of Surtsey. This island was born in only a few days from a huge undersea volcanic eruption off Iceland (in the North Atlantic) in 1963. During this eruption large forces did an enormous amount of geological work in a short time.

It is usually assumed that an island must first be built up by a volcano and then, over hundreds or thousands of years, gradually ‘settle down’ and become habitable. However, in the case of Surtsey, only a few months elapsed before the new land was varied and mature. For example, the boulders on the beach took only three weeks to become rounded and smooth from abrasion, and a sandy beach was already formed some distance below them.

The National Geographic (Thorarinson) put it this way " . . .in one week’s time we witness changes that elsewhere might take decades or even centuries . . . Despite the extreme youth of the growing island, we now encounter a landscape so varied that it is almost beyond belief." (Vol. 127 no. 1965 page 726. Note the amazement.

Another area of Earth which appears to be old is Australia’s Salt Lake - Lake Eyre, in south Australia. Evolution-minded experts have postulated that, if a flood occurred every 50 years, the salt would have taken 73,000 years to build up. However, after some investigation, it was discovered that the lake is covered about ever 8 years, which reduces the time to form it to 12,000 years. Furthermore, other evidence suggests that inland Australia was much wetter in the past, with rain forests and flooding, so the time it took to form the salt deposits is further reduced to well within the time frame which the Bible gives us. ON THE OTHER HAND if Lake Eyre is as old as the ‘experts’ say, namely 2 million years, there should be an enormous amount of salt. 99.99% of this salt is missing!

Living fossils are relatives of creatures which were thought to be extinct millions of years ago. The remains of these ancient relatives are usually found in the fossil record.

A "living fossil" is usually greeted with amazement by evolution-minded people because they have already assumed that whatever is found in the fossils is millions of years old. Creationists have no problem with the discovery of "living fossils" because they know that the fossils are only about 4,500 years old.

One feature of "living fossils" is very significant : if the fossil and the living representative of the fossil are matched up, no significant difference can be seen between them The older the evolutionists say the fossil is the more awkward things are, because evolution requires gradual change over time. If no change has occurred, no evolution has happened.

On thing which has been noticed many times is the fact that living creatures or plants today match fossils in every way except size. In the fossil record some creatures, such as dragonflies, ferns and shell fish, are many times larger than their living representatives. This shows that, if anything, there has been a genetic loss, rather than a gain, since the ancestor creature or plant was buried.

An example of a "living fossil" is a tree discovered in Australia nicknamed the Wollemi pine, whose fossils have been dated at 150 million years.

Dr. Joachim Sceven has collected hundreds of examples of "living fossils". (For more on this see Creation magazine March 1998 and other issues)

 

Humans were much more primitive in the past compared to modern Man.

Ancient Egypt is supposed to be one of the first civilisations, yet many of its achievements baffle the best efforts of modern people to understand just how they did what they did. For example the huge structures, the pyramids, the immense statues, the fine jewellery, the synthetic paints, the delicate and beautiful ornaments, and the exact alignment of their temples with certain stars.

According to Dr. Colin Fink of the electrochemistry department at Colombia University, the Egyptians copper-coated many artefacts using a form of electrochemical exchange. This involved a mixture of chemical elements which, when an object was immersed, caused an electrochemical charge to build up which deposited the copper permanently on the object. Scientific American refers to this as "a secret later lost and not rediscovered until Faraday".

By Cleopatra’s day the Parthians had developed an electric battery. The battery used a thin copper disc at the base of a small 10-centimetre (4 inch) cylinder. It was used to gold plate jewellery.

What appears to be a model glider was also found in Egypt, in a tomb dated at 2000 BC

In Greece a device was discovered which seems to have been used for computing planetary motion. Others think it might have been a clock. Some have called it a computer. But all agree that the mechanics are ahead of its time.

The city of Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus valley, believed to be one of the earliest known civilizations had a system of sanitation at least equal to that of many European cities in the 1900’s.

The Romans built temples in Baalbek, Lebanon, whose columns stood on a single foundation stone which was laid by an earlier civilization. The columns weighed about 2000 tonnes.

Carved from a single block of volcanic rock, the ‘gateway of the sun’ at Tiahuanaco weighs an estimated 100 tonnes. However the people of that day carved, transported and lifted it to its present position.

At Stonehenge, England, and many other places, huge stones have been transported and erected in precise alignment.

In the ruined city of Uxmal, a Mayan city, one building alone required 1 million tonnes of materials for its construction. (The Mayan calendar began with a creation date of 3114 BC)

None of these (or any of the hundreds of other "anomalous’) discoveries should amaze us, as the Bible is clear as regards human intelligence. The descendants of Noah were just as intelligent as any average human today. In fact something is hinted at in Genesis 11:6-9. God divided the languages because He saw that, if humans were left much longer "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do", and the same applies to humans today.

The remains of a huge structure in England have been revealed by X-ray. The building was originally 10 metres high (34 feet) with a diameter of 95 metres (320 feet) and was supported by 400 wooden columns each about 1 metre (3.3 feet) in diameter. Surrounded by a 6-metre ditch the entrance faced exactly to the point on the horizon where the sun rose on the summer solstice. The building was apparently set up about the same time as Stonehenge, which shows that even back then people were extremely intelligent and skilful.

All scientists are generally trustworthy and reliable.

This may be true "in general" but there have been quite a few scientists who have deliberately lied, misled and faked their findings in order to ‘prove’ their theories.

One example is Ernst Haekel, who claimed that as an embryo develops it goes through the evolutionary stages which its ancestors went through millions of years ago. (Called embryonic recapitulation). While it is true that there are some similarities between many embryos - which is what we would expect of the same God created life - there are certainly no gills or fish tails common to all embryos at any stage.

Ernst Haekel was a keen evolutionist, and so keen was he to ‘prove’ his theories that he drew embryos the way he thought they should look, rather than as they really were. Michael Richardson, a lecturer and embryologist at St. George’s Hospital Medical School, London, has exposed the fraudulent drawings - as have many other experts. Richardson assembled an international team, took photographs, and did some comparisons. The results - all embryos from different species are very different.

Haekel’s drawings were declared fraudulent by professor His in 1874 and were included in Haekel’s quasi confession, but, according to Richardson, Haekel’s drawings were later used in a book in 1901, called ‘Darwin and after Darwin’ and have since found their way into many biology texts. Now that we know the deception for what it is, will there be an embarrassed rush by schools and libraries to remove the books, or at least explain the error?

Sometimes whales are discovered with a hind leg, which proves that they have an evolutionary past.

Despite this and other claims, the actual evidence for a ‘leg’ is completely lacking. What has been found however is an abnormal growth in the skeleton of a Greenland Right whale, due to a bone disease. The ‘leg’ exists only in the evolution-minded observer, who interprets any bump or lump in terms of the theory they already believe.

For a leg to form on a whale a huge amount of new information would need to be present in the whale’s DNA, and there is no known mechanism by which this could happen. Whales always inherit the genetic information passed on to them by their parents and nothing more.

There is nothing about the anatomy of modern whales, including the occasional abnormalities, which does not fit easily into creationist views.

Some evolutionists have claimed the following three fossils as whale ancestors :

1. Pakicetus - consisted of only a jaw and some skull fragments. Hardly enough evidence to build such a huge claim on.

2. Basilosaurus - this creature did have functional hind limbs, but evolutionists themselves have admitted that they were probably used for grasping during mating.

3. Ambulocetus - this one had clear-cut hind limbs and was obviously able to walk, but it is so different to the whales it is supposed to be related to it does not fit in anywhere as a transitional form. Whales don’t have legs, this creature does, so where are the transitional forms?

Humans learned to speak by gradually making their grunts more complex.

Human speech is not the same as animal grunts, squeaks, growls and other noises. As H. Gipper a linguist said "All assumptions that human speech developed gradually from animal grunts, or that gestures changed incrementally into audible language, cannot be sustained. Such erroneous hypotheses compare the specifics of human speech with the communication systems of animals. It can be stated emphatically that the essence of human speech is not communication. Communication exists everywhere in the animal kingdom. Human language is in the first place a knowledge medium; this encompasses an intellectual/spiritual access to the observable world. The essence of speech lies in the possibility of assigning specific meanings to articulated sounds, thereby making them mentally accessible."

Another interesting fact is that humans alone have a ‘speech centre’ in their brain, which is there because of genetic inheritance. It is as if humans are ‘pre-wired’ for speech before they are born. This means that no amount of effort will ever achieve speech in any other creature, simply because no other creature is capable of it. (In the same way no amount of training will teach a pig to fly, because they do not have wings).

Speech, human language, is something which children learn from their parents, or whoever they are raised by. This has been demonstrated many times in cases where children have been raised without hearing speech. They have often been totally unable to learn to speak - depending on how old they are when contact is made with them - which indicates that the ‘speech centre’ has atrophied. Because human language is learned only from other humans, there must have been an original human who taught language to the first offspring. This supports the Bible, which says that Adam and Eve were already able to use language at the time of their creation (Adam named all the animals. God spoke to Adam and Eve). At the tower of Babel God gave the languages to the people. At the day of Pentecost the disciples found they could already speak different languages. Obviously, because language cannot evolve, there must be some other explanation for its origin.

Wood takes millions of years to become petrified.

‘Popular Science’ Oct. 1992 ran an article about research conducted at the Advanced Ceramic Materials Lab, at the University of Washington in Seattle. Researchers there have made a wood-ceramic composite which is 20-120% harder than regular wood. The process is surprisingly simple. All they do is soak the wood in a solution containing silicon and aluminium compounds. The solution fills the pores in the wood. The wood is then oven-cured at 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Deeper penetration is achieved under pressure and the resulting rock-hard product is similar to petrified wood.

In the Australian Lapidary Magazine, Jan 1970, page 9 there is a report of a piece of wood which had petrified in only a few years. The wood bears the marks of an axe, so it may not be much older than 70 years. Another piece has holes drilled through it. There are several other similar reports like this in the report.

Wood becomes petrified in stages :

1. Silica enters in a solution,

2. Silica penetrates cell walls,

3. Cell walls progressively dissolve as they are replaced by silica,

4. Silica framework continues to build up,

5. Hardening takes place as the wood dries out.

Darwin recanted and became a Christian just before he died.

There is no doubt that Darwin fell away from the gospel. He was baptised an Anglican and brought up by a Unitarian mother. He trained to become an Anglican clergyman and intended to enter the ministry but instead he boarded the HMS Beagle as an unpaid naturalist. Despite all the godly Christian influences on his life, Darwin accepted Lyell’s teaching ‘Principles of Geology’ and departed from belief in a recent creation for the Earth. When Lyell died Darwin said "I never forget that almost everything which I have done in science I owe to the study of his great works."

About 1836-1839 Darwin wrote "I had gradually come by this time to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus or the beliefs of any barbarian."

In 1859 he produced ‘Origin of Species’ and in a letter to Joseph Hooker he wrote "I am almost convinced . . . that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable." Many commentators have pointed out that the "murder" he spoke of was in effect the "murder" of God.

Darwin abandoned the Old testament and then went on to renounce the gospels : "the more we know of the fixed laws of nature, the more incredible do miracles become." And "the men of that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible to us."

Surrounded as he was by unbelievers, and having soaked his mind in literature that rejected the concept of divine judgement in earth’s history, he said : "I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."

In 1880 he wrote : "I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, and therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God."

Darwin died on April 19th 1882 at the age of 73. In the years that followed several stories surfaced in which he was supposed to have undergone a deathbed conversion. These stories were included in sermons in May 1882. However the best know is that attributed to Lady Hope, who claimed she had visited a bedridden Charles at Down House in autumn 1881. She claimed that as she entered she found Charles reading Hebrews. She claims that she spoke to him of Genesis and was invited back the next day to speak about Jesus in front of other invited people. This story first appeared in a 521 word article in the American Baptist journal (‘The Watchman Examiner’).

All of Darwin’s family deny the story. Darwin’s daughter wrote : "I was present at his deathbed. Lady Hope was not present during his illness, or any illness. I believe he never saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier . . .The whole story has no foundation whatever."

Darwin’s biographer, Dr. James Moore, lecturer in the history of science and technology at the Open University in the UK has spent 20 years researching the data over three continents. In his 218 page book he describes Lady Hope as "a skilled raconteur, able to summon up poignant scenes and conversations, and embroider them with sentimental spirituality."

The fact that humans have so many different blood groups indicates that they have a variegated origin.

There is only one gene in humans which controls the blood type. There are three versions of that gene, known as alleles - A, B or O. Since the gene is always present as a pair of alleles, with one allele inherited from each parent, two alleles are always present, so the possibilities are : AA, BB, AB, AO, BO or OO.

If Adam and Eve were AO and BO their children could have any of the subsequent variations : AO, BO, AB, OO, AB, AO, AB, BO, AA, BO, BB, AO.

If they had 56 children there would have been 14 of each blood group.

Most of the scientific world is evolution-based in its thinking - because ‘real’ scientists could never accept the Bible as literally true as regards origins.

Many of the founding fathers of modern science were Bible-believing Christians. These scientists include :

Louis Agassiz - glacial geology, icthyology

Charles Babbage - computer science, operations research, actuarial tables

Francis bacon - scientific method

David Brewster - optical mineralogy

Robert Boyle - chemistry, gas dynamics

Wernher Von Braun - space rockets

George Washington Carver - agricultural chemistry

Georges Cuvier - vertebrate palaeontology, comparative anatomy

John Dalton - atomic theory, partial pressure law, colour blindness

Humphry Davy - thermokinetics, miner’s safety lamp

Leonard Euler - calculus of partial differentials, fluid flow equations, conic sections,

network theory

Henri Fabre - electric motor, galvanometer

Michael Faraday - electric generator, transformer, field theory

John Ambrose Fleming - electronics, thermionic valve

Joseph Henry - electric motor, galvanometer

John Herschel - double stars, Uranus, galactic astronomer

William Huggins - spectroscopy in astronomy

James Joule - thermodynamics, law of conservation of energy

Johannes Kepler - astronomy, laws of planetary motion

Richard Kirwan - mineralogy

Carl Linnaeus - classification system, systematic biology

Joseph Lister - antiseptic surgery

Matthew Maury - oceanography, hydrography

James Clerk Maxwell - electromagnetic field equations, statistical thermodynamics

Gregor Mendel - genetics

Samuel Morse - telegraph, Morse code

Isaac Newton - laws of motion, law of gravity, calculus, reflecting telescope

Blaise Pascal - barometer, hydrostatics, theory of probability

Louis Pasteur - bacteriology, biogenesis law, pasteurisation, vaccination and immunisation

William Prout - food chemistry

William Ramsay - inert gasses, isotopic chemistry, transmutation of elements

John Ray - natural history

Bernhard Riemann - non-Euclidean geometry

James Young Simpson - chloroform, gynaecology

Nicolaus Steno - stratigraphy

George Stokes - fluid mechanics

John Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) - inert gasses, model analysis

Percy Tait - vector analysis

Rudolf Virchow - pathology

William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) - absolute temperature scale, laws of thermodynamics, transatlantic cable

John Woodward - palaeontology

Wilbur and Orville Wright - powered flight

Leonardo da Vinci - hydraulics

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