|
EVOLUTIONISM - CREATIONISM
©
Carlos Padilla, March 2012
Jesus Christ mastered
nature with such authority that the apostles had never seen before, to the point
that they feared greatly when Jesus calmed the storm and they said to one
another: "Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!". Mark 4:41.
The Bible also shows
Jesus Christ as creator of the universe: John 1:1-9, Colossians 1:15, Hebrews
1:2. This approach, specially about the Person of the Son, are unknown to
many, even Christians. However, it is surprising to observe that a large percentage
of Christians, as well as many atheists, believe in evolution as the only
possible theory since it is what they have learnt in schools and universities
and it is even supported by many churches- it is know as theistic evolutionism.
These questions, and
answers, will be the first part of a two-part study under the Science and Faith
section, to provide an update on what many scientists from prestigious
universities have investigated, and the empirical results of their work compare
to the theory of evolution and the Bible text in Genesis. The second part of
this study will talk about Science and Intelligent Design. The two final
questions will be: If science proves that Creationism and Intelligent Design are
scientific theories, will this change the beliefs of those who study them? and,
if science proves that evolution is impossible, will the contents of what is
being taught in schools and universities change, as well as the scientific
community, offering to teach - at least - the two alternatives?. Let the
fascinating journey into the origins of life begin.
EVOLUTIONISM
The General Theory of
Evolution says that non-living matter that
came from nowhere, organized itself into galaxies and life
in planets. Living organisms with the ability to reproduce themselves and,
furthermore, with adaptative variations to the environment, through internal changes
known as mutations. The latter predospose organisms to evolve and change to the
point of turning into new species, from a single-cell organism right through to
man, and every species in between. The self-copy errors - mutations - in each
organism, are different and produce new information. For evolutionists,
mutations - instead of having a weakening effect that will cause extinction of
the species - actually produce a genetical adaptation to evolve. Through natural
selection they explain micro-evolution (variations within the same species),
but also macro-evolution, from one specie to another, with a common ancestor to
all of them.
Naturalism, from
nothing to everything, life. Science versus Darwinian faith.
Five simple arguments
against Evolutionism could be:
- Life cannot
generate from nothing. Not even the first living cell can originate from
non-living matter.
- Genetics includes a
specific pre-programmed code for each species and does not allow for one species
to turn into another. Mutations are deterioration of capacity, not a
improvement.
- There is no fossil
evidence of any transitional species
- The age of the
Earth is thousands of years, not thousands of million years, according to the
dating systems that have been investigated, according to the layers of the
earth's crust and the effects that have been observed, specifically in the
Polonium haloes. They have left their imprint on granite, which can only happen if the
rock becomes solid within hours of their existence.
- The Bible agrees
with scientific evidence in favour of Creationism and Intelligent Design, and
the more science advances, the more we find that the Bible is right.
You can learn more
about scientific arguments on the origin of life, evolution and creationism in:
http://creation.com
CREATIONISM
The Biblical model of
Creation explains the existence of matter and living organisms to intelligent
man through the intelligent action of God the Creator of the
universe, who has a plan, a purpose and proves through the design of His
Creation that He has left His print so that we can understand rationally and
scientifically what He has created. Life originates through His intervention,
biological and animal life according to their species. DNA is the base of
information that the Architect of life designed and included in the genes, which
He has used to create every life, programming
each specie to use only the components that keep it alive. In this vision of life,
mutations are not defects, they are part of the patterns of information that
allow each specie to adapts to the environment, but they do not give them the
capacity
to change form one species to another. There are no intermediate species. God is
the creator of the universe, of matter, energy, life. His glory is manifest in
the whole of Creation for man to believe that He exists and seeks to have a
relationship with Him.
Five simple and most
common objections to Creationism are:
- Theistic
Evolutionism
- The majority of the
scientific community and universities teach evolutionism.
- The universe cannot
be as young as the Bible says, it is thousands of millions years old.
- Where there days
and plants before the sun existed?
- It is obvious that
species evolve from one to another, because there are many similarities between
them. Monkeys into men, etc. and there are also fossils, aren't there?
You can learn more
about scientific arguments on the origin of life, evolution and creationism in:
http://creation.com
BIBLE TEXT GENESIS 1
AND 2
In
the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth.
2
The earth was without form, and
void; and darkness was
on the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God was
hovering over the face of the
waters.
3
Then God said, “Let there be
light”; and there was light.
4
And God saw the light, that it
was good; and God divided the
light from the darkness.
5
God called the light Day, and
the darkness He called Night. So
the evening and the morning were
the first
day.
6
Then God said, “Let
there be a firmament in the
midst of the waters, and let it
divide the waters from the
waters.”
7
Thus God made the firmament, and
divided the waters which were
under the firmament from the
waters which were above the
firmament; and it was so.
8
And God called the firmament
Heaven. So the evening and the
morning were
the second
day.
9
Then God said, “Let the waters
under the heavens be gathered
together into one place, and let
the dry land appear”; and it was
so.
10
And God called the dry land
Earth, and the gathering
together of the waters He called
Seas. And God saw that it was
good.
11
Then God said, “Let the earth
bring forth grass, the herb that
yields seed, and the fruit tree
that yields fruit according to
its kind, whose seed is in
itself, on the earth”; and it
was so.
12
And the earth brought forth
grass, the herb that yields seed
according to its kind, and the
tree that yields fruit, whose
seed is in itself according to
its kind. And God saw that it
was good.
13
So the evening and the morning
were the
third day.
14
Then God said, “Let there be
lights in the firmament of the
heavens to divide the day from
the night; and let them be for
signs and seasons, and for days
and years;
15
and let them be for lights in
the firmament of the heavens to
give light on the earth”; and it
was so.
16
Then God made two great lights:
the greater light to rule the
day, and the lesser light to
rule the night. He made the
stars also.
17
God set them in the firmament of
the heavens to give light on the
earth,
18
and to rule over the day and
over the night, and to divide
the light from the darkness. And
God saw that it was good.
19
So the evening and the morning
were the
fourth day.
20
Then God said, “Let the
waters abound with an abundance
of living creatures, and let
birds fly above the earth across
the face of the firmament of the
heavens.”
21
So God created great sea
creatures and every living thing
that moves, with which the
waters abounded, according to
their kind, and every winged
bird according to its kind. And
God saw that it was good.
22
And God blessed them, saying,
“Be fruitful and multiply, and
fill the waters in the seas, and
let birds multiply on the
earth.”
23
So the evening and the morning
were the
fifth day.
24
Then God said, “Let the earth
bring forth the living creature
according to its kind: cattle
and creeping thing and beast of
the earth, each according to its
kind”; and it was so.
25
And God made the beast of the
earth according to its kind,
cattle according to its kind,
and everything that creeps on
the earth according to its kind.
And God saw that it was good.
26
Then God said, “Let Us make man
in Our image, according to Our
likeness; let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea, over
the birds of the air, and over
the cattle, over all
the earth and over every
creeping thing that creeps on
the earth.”
27
So God created man in His own
image; in the image of God He
created him; male and female He
created them.
28
Then God blessed them, and God
said to them, “Be fruitful and
multiply; fill the earth and
subdue it; have dominion over
the fish of the sea, over the
birds of the air, and over every
living thing that moves on the
earth.”
29
And God said, “See, I have given
you every herb that yields seed
which is on the face of all the
earth, and every tree whose
fruit yields seed; to you it
shall be for food.
30
Also, to every beast of the
earth, to every bird of the air,
and to everything that creeps on
the earth, in which there is
life, I have given every green
herb for food”; and it was so.
31
Then God saw everything that He
had made, and indeed it was very
good. So the evening and the
morning were
the sixth
day.
Genesis
2: Thus the heavens and
the earth, and all the host of
them, were finished.
2
And on the
seventh day God ended His
work which He had done, and He
rested on the seventh day from
all His work which He had done.
3
Then God blessed the seventh day
and sanctified it, because in it
He rested from all His work
which God had created and made.
PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE
AND FAITH
Philosophical issues
we can question science and Bible faith on the scientific models of the origins
of life could be:
- Is there an eternal
God?
- Did God create the
universe or is matter eternal?
- Did the Big Bang
happen, and where did the matter that made the Big Bank come from?
- Did God make
Creation in six days or did it evolve over thousands of millions of years?
- Did God create man,
Adam and Eve, already as adult beings, or did they evolve from primates?
- Will the dead
resurrect?
- Is there life after
death?
- Does eternal life
in God's Paradise depend on man's sin?
- Is Jesus Christ the
Saviour of all people on earth, of all ages?
- Does God make
miracles?
- Is God going to
look after my life and is He going to bless me?
- Can an atheist
receive faith on the Bible?
CREATIONIST
SCIENTISTS
The long list of
creationist scientists supports the evidence that life and the universe cannot be explained
scientifically through the theory of evolution.
Some of the most
relevant creationist scientists are:
16th Century: Francis
Bacon, introduced the Scientific Method. Galileo Galilei, Physics and Astronomy.
Johan Kepler, Astronomy.
17th Century: Robert
Boyle, Chemistry, Gas Dynamics. Isaac Barrow, Mathematics. Isaac Newton,
Dynamics, Calculus, Universal Law of Gravitation, Reflecting Telescope; he wrote
more about the Bible than about science. John Woodward, Palaeontology.
18th Century: Carolus
Linnaeus, Taxonomy, Biological Classification system. Jean Deluc, Geology.
James Parkinson, Medicine. John Dalton, Atomic theory, Gas laws. Michael
Faraday, Electromagnetism, Field theory. Samuel Morse, Telegraph.
19th Century: Richard
Owen, Zoology and Paleontology. Matthew Maury, Oceanology and Hydrography.
Thomas Anderson, Chemistry. Gregor Mendel, Genetics. Louis Pasteur,
Bacteriology, Biochemistry, Sterilization, Immunology. Lord Kelvin, Energy,
Absolute Temperature, Atlantic Cable. William Huggins, Astral Spectrometry.
William Ramsey, Archeology.
20th Century: Blaise
Pascal, Hydrostatics, Barometer. Arthur Ernest Wilder-Smith, Ph.D. in
Physical Organic Chemistry and other sciences, received three Golden Apple
Awards. Michael Behe, Ph.D. in Biochemistry.
Nobel Prize winning
scientists who believe in Intelligent Design:
Albert Einstein, Max
Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Robert
Milliakan, Charles Townes, Arthur Schawlow, William Philips,
Sir William H. Bragg, Guglielmo Marconi, Arthur Compton,
Arno Penzias, Alexis Carrel, Sir John Eccles, Joseph Murray,
Sir Ernst Chain, George Wald, Derek Barton, Christian
Anfinsen.
There
is an increasing number of relevant scientists, holders of important Ph.D. and
positions as Professors in reputable universities, research laboratories and
regular contributors in scientific media, who believe in and defend Creationism
and Intelligent Design. This was already noticeable in the 20th century, but now
in our 21st century this is becoming a surprising and well-known phenomenon
amongst the scientific community. The reason is that, the more we know about
science, the more it fits in with the Creationist and Intelligent Design models,
and less with Evolutionism, although the infliences from the atheist world in
the scientific world is still a dictatorship and inquisition which has to be
confronted by those scientists who, according to the evidence, are not willing
to lose their empirical reputation and defend truth in their discoveries.
You
can read more about these scientists in:
http://creation.com
SCIENTIFIC MODELS OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
In
our times, there are more than two theories on the origins of life, some are
posed by man and other by the Bible. Man-made: Evolutionism, Gap theory,
Progressive Creationism, Day/Age Theory, Theistic Evolution. Bible-based:
Creationism, Intelligent Design?. Which one do you believe?
SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS
The scientific
arguments we want to present in this first part of the study will focus on
Evolutionism and Creationism. The second part will provide scientific evidence
for Intelligent Design, which deal with more complex structures where design can
be verified through scientific methods.
Unlocking the
Mystery of Life
It is shocking to
listen to Doctors and Professors in biochemistry, biology and other fields, who
have studied in universities under the prevailing, and generally accepted,
evolutionist environment, who have later earned their Ph.D., and who are members
of the most prestigious universities in the world, telling their story about how
they realized they had been deceived, blinded and misled along a fairy-tale path
that is losing more and more credibility when confronted with the empirical
evidence of these disciplines. Whilst, as they investigate and discover new
facts, with the vast array of knowledge available now and their scientific means
and capacity, scientists themselves, the scholars of science change their
opinions. Part of this comment is based on statements made by Dr. Michael Behe,
Ph.D. in Biochemistry, "converted" to creationism after reading the book
"Evolution, a theory in crisis" written by Dr. Michael Denton, Ph.D. in
Biochemistry and Molecular Biologist.
The Cambrian
Explosion
Towards the middle of
the 19th century the basins in Karoo, Africa, were discovered, and over 800
thousand million vertebrates were found. Or the Baltic amber deposits, kept in
museums. They are known as fossil stratum because they contain remains of
petrified plant, animal and human remains, and hardly any unicellular organisms
(photosynthesis). There are no fossils in the Pre-Cambrian rocks. 250.000 fossil
species of plants and animals. Over 1.000.000 living species. No intermediate
fossil. The immediately higher stratum suddenly shows almost every group of
living creatures, perfectly formed in their complexity, no intermediate species
- this is what is known as the Cambrian Explosion. Darwin wrote the key
question: "Why are there no fossils of intermediate species amongst so many
fossils found?. This is the major problem in my theory."
Heredity
The heritable traits
expressed in our genes are transmitted from parents to their children. There are
dominant factors and recessive factors. The first ones perpetuate and the others
don't. Gregor Mendel has been considered the father of genetics, who has proved
that evolution through genetics is not possible. New species cannot be produced,
there can only be changes within the same species. The genetic code is
considered the book of life of each living creature, as the Bible says; DNA is
already considered in the Bible 900 years before Christ. Man discovered the
possibility of making hybrid creatures within the same species to improve them,
the same as with plants and vegetables used as food, or flowers and with
animals. It was discovered that hybrids of different fruits that were
artificially formed were actually sterile.
Biological Evolution
Evolutionist thinking
already had followers amongst philosophers of ancient Greece, such as
Anaximander, who used to say that animals lived in the water and that is where
the rest of the species came from. Empedocles and Aristotle followed the same
naturalism thinking. Likewise, Chinese thinkers such as Zhuangzi, taoist (5th to
3rd centuries b.C.). But it was in the 18th and 19th centuries that the theory
of evolution had social impact, through Pander, Lamarck and Darwin. But the key
of revolution in the origin of life came in the 1940s with the discovery of DNA,
responsible for transmitting genetic information, the "tree of life". However,
not even genetics has been able to explain the absence of intermediate species.
A theory known as Punctuated Equilibrium is the explanation provided by the
scientists Eldredge and Gould for absence of transitional creatures between
species. This theory supports that changes occur suddenly to a genetic level and
one species changes into another without leaving any intermediate species,
overnight.
Darwinism is
supported upon natural selection as evolutionary mechanism, species with traits
that are best suited to the environment survive and perpetuate themselves, the
useless ones disappear. The birth of a species is gradual and over a long period
of time, but acknowledges that geological records are incomplete - the argument
being that it was due to lack of knowledge at the time - but the situation has
not changed at present. Neodarwinism supports excluding Lamarck's hereditary
theory in favour of Weismann's proposal on sexual reproduction, which creates a
new a variable population in each generation.
Evolutionism known as
Modern Synthesis proposed by Huxley and other scientists from different fields,
who were looking for empirical facts to support evolutionist biology, is based
on sexual reproduction. Again, it produces the genetic combination of different
groups of population, known as genetic recombination. Mechanisms of reproductive
isolation have been identified, that prevent the members from producing
offspring, through reproductive isolation mechanisms. But adding Modern
Synthesis to present day knowledge has left the neodarwinian concept of
environmental natural selection outdated. Again, fossil records do not support
this theory of gradual change, it actually shows species suddenly appearing
after long periods of immutability. Three major catastrophes caused massive
extinctions. Molecular biology through the genome code does not support the
Mendel-based Synthetic Theory of slow evolution through mutation changes.
Human evolution
If the Homo Sapiens
comes from a mitochondrial Eve that is 250.000 (?) years old, how is it possible
that chromosomal Adam is just 60.000 years old? This question tries to argue
that Adam and Eve were not alive together at the same time. But what this
scientific evidence shows is that the oldest female ancestor where all living
women come from (who has been named Eve) is four times older that man's, who is
the common ancestor to all men (who has been named Adam). The Bible does not
contradict this evidence at all (except for the amount of years, which depends
on the dating system), but not in the fact that the oldest woman found so far
can be four times older than man. In fact, Noah and the four women who were in
the ark with him (his wife and his three sons' wives) were all descendants of
Eve. Finding the ascending line to Adam and his chromosome to Eve's times is
what is missing at the moment.
Fossils
Which arguments are
evolutionists providing to explain lack of transitional fossils?
One argument is that
some changes have occurred too fast and they have not left any fossils, another
one is that certain organisms do not leave any fossils due to their environment
or because their body's characteristics make it difficult to fossilize. The
other excuse, is what Darwin said about the fossil record being far from
perfect.
What are the
requirements for fossilization?
A rapid burial, with
binding agents to avoid decay or scavengers, within hours, not years.
What is the proposed
transitional specie between amphibians and reptiles? What are the issues?
Seymouria is the
creature which, according to evolutionist dating, is 280 million years old. This
is, in fact, 30 million years younger than the first real reptiles - Hylonomus
and Palorthyris - which means that reptiles would be millions of years older
than their so-called ancestors. The change from amphibians to reptiles would
imply a series of new structures and biochemical changes.
What is a living
fossil? What is their relevance for evolution?
A living fossil would
be a creature that is alive today, a transition link between one specie and
another one. If such a creature was found...would it be the evidence that
evolutionists are looking for?
CONCLUSION
A message for parents
regarding their children: If in your country they only teach about evolution and
you have been able to understand that your children deserve to know the
scientific truth, or at least the possibility of studying both theories, and the
educational systems are not likely to 'evolve' in their way of thinking, you
will have to become their teachers and study this interesting subject in depth.
If the Big Bang is
science fiction and requires a lot of faith to believe in it, why don't you
believe in the Bible instead, that is the Word of God, which science is coming
closer to every time because they have no other empirical choice, due to greater
knowledge at present.
In the second and
last part of this study we will deal with such interesting and concluding topics
as the dating of the earth and universe, genetics, and the famous lost link,
through "Science and Intelligent Design".
Final words are from
Romans 1:20-22: "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal
power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew
God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in
their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise,
they became fools"... But Jesus Christ tells us in Revelation 1:17b and 3:14b: "Do
not be afraid; I am the First and the Last; I am He who lives, and was dead, and
behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of
Death"... "These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True
Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God." ... and let us say, amen Lord,
Hallelujah, yours is the glory in the whole universe, in the skies and the earth
and in heaven, Your Throne. Amen.
|