An Overview of the Creation/Evolution debateSeptember 2006

IntroductionWhy is it important? Credibility of scriptureDid God say? If you cant believe the introduction of how things came into being, what can you believe?Sin, salvation and the nature of man: no creation--no sin, no salvation.Effect on society (ex: Nazi Germany)Whats the difference? Cant both be true? - The problem with Theistic evolution:Not compatible with scriptureFacts dont support it

Its not Science versus the Bible. Is a clash of world views. Evolution is based on an atheistic (naturalism) world view. Cannot allow God as an explanation.

Evidence is interpreted based on ones world view. No such thing as objectivism.

It takes more faith to believe Evolution than the creation account. The Creation model explains what we observe much more coherently.

Creation ModelSin is the cause of death and sufferingGod destroyed the world by a worldwide floodMan was created in the image of God, but is fallenGod created ALL thingsGod created the universe and everything in it in 6 days

Evolution ModelAbout 4.6 billion years ago the earth evolvedAbout 3.5 billion years ago life evolvedHumans evolved from ape-like creaturesBut is there enough time?Time, chance, and natural processesAbout 15 billion years ago the universe exploded into existence

The Creation DaysGenesis account not written like a myth:Literal 24-hour days (not a era)Meaning of Yom (Day)Yom with a numberEvening and morningGenesis 1:14 (seasons, days, years)Exodus 20:11 (ten commandments reference)Words used to indicate timeNarrative not poetryLit. In the beginning created God the heavensGenealogies (Gen 5, 1Chron 1, Luke 3)The Lords references (ex. Mark 10:6 from the beginning of creation God created them male and female)

The Cause of Physical DeathBible: sin (Rom 5:12, 1Cor 15:21)The Curse (Genesis 3:17)Put out of the Garden to keep from eating from the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24)Created Very Good (Genesis 1:31)Animal death fossilsPlant deathfossilsEvolution: natural process

The Genesis FloodBible: worldwide FloodRained 40/40 daysSprings of the deepAll land creatures perishedAll mountains were coveredEvolution: myth or local floodProfoundly changed the world

Problems with evolution Not enough time. Dating very unreliable (example K-Ar dating of Mount St. Helens rocks (1986) gave 350,000 years).

What is evolution? Some scientists use whatever helps their argumentfor some it is just change. But really: Goo to you

Note: Natural selection is NOT evolution. Lots of evidence for natural selection (Sarfati 2: page 209)

Natural selection is a sorting and/or loss of existing genetic material, not an increase in specific complexity or information

Natural SelectionAbility to adapt to the environmentSurvival of the fittestCan natural selection cause one kind (species) to become a new kind?Genetic VariationCan only select from existing informationCan cause a loss of informationHas no foresight into the future

Natural Selection and MutationsTimeNatural selection should eliminate harmful disordersMutations and disordersIf evolution is true

Mutation

MutationsInsertionsDeletionsInversionsDuplicationsTranslocationsRecombination'sMost are harmful or neutralProgrammed gene expressionsBacteria resistance to antibiotics actually a loss of information (Sarfati 2, page 96)

Mutations and EvolutionBut there is no evidence that DNA mutations can provide the sorts of variation needed for evolution There is no evidence for beneficial mutations at the level of macroevolution, but there is also no evidence at the level of what is commonly regarded as microevolution.Jonathan Wells, Ph.D. Molecular Biology

The most serious problem with Evolution: InformationSarfati 2: page 56: The key issues is the type of change required to change microbes to men--changes that increase the genetic information content. The 3 billion DNA letters store in each human cell nucleus convey a great deal more information (specified complexity) than the over half a million DNA sequences in the simplest self reproducing organism.

The Cell and ComplexityEnormous Complexity

The Cell and Complexity

Probability and LifeWhat are the chances of getting all heads every time I flip a penny100 heads in a row?1 head in a row?1 in 22 heads in a row?1 in 43 heads in a row?1 in 88 heads in a row?1 in 2562100 or 1030

ProbabilitiesA single protein: 10191A single cell: 1040,000 (i.e. impossible)(note: estimated number of atoms in the universe= 1080)Probability of arising by chance:

Probability and LifeIf a particular amino acid sequence was selected by chance, how rare an event would this be?... The great majority of sequences can never have been synthesized at all, at any time. Francis Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, 1981, pp. 51-52.

Probability and LifeThe likelihood of life having occurred through a chemical accident is, for all intents and purposes, zero. Robert Gange, Ph.D. (research scientist with extensive research in the field of cryophysics and information systems.), Origins and Destiny, 1986, p. 77.

Apes and Man are claimed to be 98 percent alike DNA wise (out of 3 billion DNA base pairs), but this is a HUGE gap. (Sarfati 2, page 186: 2 percent equals 60 million changes, or equivalent information to twenty 500 page books. From what we know of mutations in mammals with 20 year generations, 10 million years enough to produce about 1,700 changes not 60 million!).

Just because something physically resembles another is not evidence that they evolved from one another (its the genes that matter)

The Cambrian explosion of fossilsIf evolution were true: we would expect a huge body of transitional organisms in the fossils. Fact: there are few and most very debatable.

How are fossils formed? Primarily through cataclysms (eruptions, floods).

Fossil RecordCenozoicMesozoicPaleozoicThe foundation

EraPeriodTime (mil)Quarternary1.8 presentTeritary6.5 1.8Cretaceous14.5 6.5Jurassic208 14.5Triassic245 208Permian290 245Carboniferous363 290Devonian410 363Silurian440 410Ordovician505 440Cambrian544 505Precambrian650 - 544

Cambrian544 - 505Precambrian650 - 544

Examining the EvidenceMorphologyTimeDarwinian ModelActual Data

Cambrian ExplosionThere is no question that such gaps exist. A big gap appears at the beginning of the Cambrian explosion, over 500 million years ago, when great numbers of new species suddenly appeared in the fossil record.David Berlinski (evolutionist), A Tour of the Calculus, 1995

Cambrian ExplosionThe Cambrian explosion is not just a case of all the major animal phyla appearing at about the same place in the geologic column. It is also a situation of no ancestors to suggest how they might have evolved.Ariel Roth (Ph.D. Zoology), Origins,1998, p. 184.Where are the thousands of observable intermediates?

The intermediates problemSome hoaxesSome interpretations from very littleSome not intermediaries at allTextbooks feature a lot of artistic impressions (not actual creatures!)!

Lets look at two:

Alleged IntermediatesHorse (Picture below left is an artists creation-art not science)ArchaeopteryxWhales

Life Sciences, Prentice Hall, 2002, p. 164.

Whale Evolution: A Study of DeceptionFor instance, modern whales are the descendants of four-legged land animals that are also the ancestors of horses and cows. As you can see in Figure 10-4, fossil intermediates between modern whales and their 60-million-year-old ancestor reveal a history of slow transformation.Biology: Visualizing Life, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1998, p. 177.

DeceptionKenneth Miller, Finding Darwins God,1999, p. 265.Ambulocetus skeleton, as drawn in Millers bookAmbulocetus reconstruction, as drawn in Millers book

DeceptionPakicetus: another candidate for whale evolutionArtist reconstructionOnly the shaded portions of the skull were found

The problem of the absence of transitional beings or a credible transition pathExample of the problem of Birds (Archaeopteryx)

Education and TextbooksTo many paleontologists a bird is a dinosaur with feathers. That definition may sound odd, but it makes sense.Biology, Miller and Levine, 2002, p. 907.

ArchaeopteryxLike modern birds, it had flight feathers, but otherwise it was more like some small bipedal dinosaurs of its era; for instance, like those dinosaurs, Archaeopteryx had teeth, wing claws, and a tail with many vertebrae.Biology: Concepts and Connections, Campbell, Mitchell, and Reece, 2000, p. 390.

What Textbooks Dont IncludeAs for its reptile characteristics, yes, it had claws on its wings, but so does the ostrich, and nobody considers it part reptile.True, Archaeopteryx had teeth, but so did other fossil birds, and its teeth differed distinctly from those of reptilesAs to Archaeopteryxs tail, further inspection has shown it strongly resembles a swans. James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard, 1999, p. 18.

Birds Are Different From ReptilesBirds are so different from other creatures that there would have been hundreds of thousands of intermediate forms between birds and land animals if birds had evolved.Stuart Burgess (Ph.D. Engineering Design, Professor of Combustion Theory, extensive study in the area of design in nature), Hallmarks of Design,2002, p. 47.

Reptile to Birds: necessary changesDevelopment of feathers Reform of respiratory systemReform of skeletal system hollow bonesReform of digestive systemReform of nervous systemConstruction of bills & beaksMastery of nest buildingAcquisition of flightDevelopment of sound producing organ

The Feather (evolved from reptile scales?)

ArchaeopteryxPaleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But its not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of paleobabble is going to change that.Alan Feduccia (World authority on birds), Science, Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms, 1993

ConclusionIf evolution did not have the implications about God and morality, it would have been unceremoniously discarded a long time ago.Evolution is not a theory, its also not a fact, its at best a working hypothesis. Evolution is a pseudo-intellectual justification for materialism (Sarfati 2, page 154).

Fallacies and dishonesty in science and philosophy(examples used to try to discredit Christianity)

Allegation: The Bible teaches a flat earthIsaiah 40:22 He who sits on the circle of the earth globo in Italian (Litt: globe) Khug in Hebrew = sphericity or roundness.

The Lord in Luke 17:34-36 implies a round earth.

The idea that Columbus had to disprove that the earth was flat is a myth started by Washington Irving in his 1828 book The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus It was a self confess mixture of fact and fiction. The historian J.B. Russel (Inventing the Flat Earth, 1991) has documented that nearly all Christian scholars who had ever discussed the earths shape have assented to its roundness

Allegation: Religion is hindering scientific progress Example: Galileo and the earth turning around the Sun. The opposition to Galileos ideas is presented as having come from the Church, but many historians have pointed out that the first to appose Galileo was the scientific and philosophic communities (Aristotelian/Ptolemaic theory; Sarfati 1: pages 98-99)

Dishonest science Ernest Haeckel, 1874 Embryo diagrams, reproduced in many biology books (even until recently), to purport to show very great similarities between embryos of many different organisms were falsified. Haeckels ideas on evolution were the instrumental to the Nazi view of the world. (Sarfati 1: pages 85-87)

In fact many, many famous scientist were creationists- Newton, Pascal, Galileo, Euler, Pasteur, Boyle, Faraday, von Braun, etc. (Sarfati 1: page 26)

ReferencesWe are blessed now to have more material support for creation than ever before and all at a touch of a button

Refuting Evolution, 1999, Jonathan Sarfati (about $10); An Answer to the National Academy of Sciences 1998 book Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science

Refuting Evolution 2, 2002, Jonathan Sarfati (about $10); An answer to a PBS series Evolution in 2001 on evolution and a Scientific American issue 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.

Answers in Genesis: website and journals www.answersingenesis.org. Many of the slides I have used are from their education section.

-The end!

To achieve 100 heads in a row you will need to flip the penny over 31 million times a sec for over 1-quadrillion yearsThese pictures are drawn by an artist. It is not what was found.Note no pelvic girdle was found. This hinders interpretations of locomotion.In Eichsttt, Germany, in 1984 there was a major meeting of scientists who specialize in bird evolution, the International Archaeopteryx Conference. They disagreed on just about anything that was covered there on this creature, but there was very broad agreement on the belief that Archaeopteryx was a true bird. Only a tiny minority thought that it was actually one of the small, lightly built coelurosaurian dinosaurs [small lightly framed dinosaurs].

Feathers have a basic form of a central hollow supporting shaft called a 'rachis' and a number of fine side branches. These side branches have even finer sub-branches in contour feathers. The side branches in these are called barbs and are linked together by a set of barbules and their hooklets sometimes called 'Hamuli'. Barbs have side branches of their own called barbules. The upper ones containing a series of hooklets and the lower ones without hooks but slightly convex in form to catch the hooklets of the barbules from the next barb along the shaft. Secondaries - the major lifting feathers, between the primaries and the body, attached to the ulna.