In the beginning God created

The True Origin of Species

Genesis 1

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

The True Origin of Species

• The Bible presents a consistent message

• That God created the world and all life

– Moses – Exodus 20:11

– David – Psalm 8:3-6

– Isaiah – Isaiah 45:12,18

– Jesus – Matthew 19:4

– Paul – Acts 17:14-16

The True Origin of Species

• Genesis 1:1-5

• The earth was initially dark and covered in water

• The bible records how

“God said”“and God made”

• This was achieved by God’s

power – his “holy spirit”

• The earth was changed into

a planet that was uniquely

capable of supporting life

• “It was very good”

The True Origin of Species

Planet Atmosphere Surface Temperature Other

Mercury None Cratered -180 to 500 C Waterless

Venus Sulphuric acid and

carbon dioxide

Cratered Ave 464 C Atmospheric

pressure over 90

times that of earth

Earth Oxygen and

nitrogen

Water and land -40 to 50 C

Mars Carbon Dioxide Cratered and rocky

desert

Ave -63 C Very low atmospheric

pressure

Jupiter Hydrogen, Helium

and Ammonia

Liquid hydrogen and

helium

Ave -144 C

Saturn Hydrogen, Helium

and Ammonia

Liquid hydrogen and

helium

Ave -176 C

Uranus Methane, Hydrogen

and Helium

Ice, Methane and

Ammonia

Ave -215 C

Neptune Thin temporary

atmosphere when

closest to sun

Ice, Methane and

Ammonia

-235 C

Pluto Thin temporary

atmosphere when

closest to the sun

Frozen Methane Ave -223 C Very low atmospheric

pressure

The True Origin of Species

Isaiah 45:12, 18

The Origin of Species

• Written by Charles Darwin – published 1859

• Theory of evolution

• Natural selection;

– favoured survival of those individuals with

advantageous characteristics

– elimination of those less favoured

“Survival of the fittest”

• Process would occur gradually

• Over long periods accumulation of small

favourable variations would lead to origin of

new species

• Over millions of years this process would

account for the whole variety of plants and

animals on earth

• “Micro evolution” has been evidenced on a molecular level

– Viruses (e.g. AIDS) which mutate in order to evade the human

immune system

– Disease causing bacteria have made a comeback as strains

have developed the ability to resist antibiotics

• BUT Evolution at the macro level has not been evidenced

• The progression that Darwin saw as small steps at a biochemical

level are huge chasms

The Origin of Species

The Origin of Species

• Variation within a species is a well known phenomenon

• “After his kind”Genesis 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25

• The main obstacle for evolution is how major changes occurred

• How did a vertebrate come from an

invertebrate?

• No evidence that this occurred – evolution remains a theory

• Darwin expected the fossil record to

fill this gap – the missing links remain

Spontaneous generation

• Louis Pasteur• 1859 experiment

• Boiled meat broth in a flask that had a long neck which curved downward, like a goose.

• The flask remained free of growth for an extended period.

• When the flask was turned so that particles could fall down the bends, the broth became quickly clouded.

• Disproved the theory of spontaneous generation

The Origin of Species

• Question – How did life originate?

• Darwin suggested that the original spark of life

may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes".

The life and letters of Charles Darwin

Soup Theory

1. The earth had a chemically reducing atmosphere

2. The atmosphere exposed to energy in various forms produced simple organic compounds (monomers)

3. These accumulated in a “soup”

4. By further transformation more complex organic polymers – and ultimately life developed in the soup

Miller – Urey sought to establish point 2 with experiment in 1953 formed simple organic

compounds

Mathematical improbability

• “The chances that life just occurred on earth are about as

unlikely as a typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747”

C Wickramasinghe

– Evolution from Space 1981

Mathematical improbability

• H J Muller Estimated on % of mutations which are beneficial – based on chance excluding natural selection

• Number of mutations to convert Amoeba into a horse – 1,000 raised to the power of million

• “this impossible and meaningless figure serves to illustrate the power of natural selection in collecting favourable mutations and minimising waste of variation, for horses do exist and they have evolved.”

• Sir Gavin de Beer, A Handbook of Evolution 1970

The True Origin of Species

Genesis 1:20-28

The Eye

• “How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life originated”Charles Darwin – The Origin of species

Cat Flea head

- small round ocellus (simple eye)

The Eye

• “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely breakdown”

• Charles Darwin – The Origin of species – Organs of extreme perfection and

complication

The Eye

• “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”Charles Darwin – The Origin of species - Organs of extreme perfection and complication

The Eye

The Eye

The Eye

Irreducible Complexity

• “ .. a single system composed of well matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”

• Michael Behe – Darwin’s Black Box, The Biochemical challenge to Evolution 1996

The True Origin of Species

Psalm 139:13-16

In the beginning God created

Acts 17:22-31

The True Origin of Species

Ida (Darwinius masillae): the Missing Link at Last?

• Is it a sensational find?

– “a direct connection between

humans and the rest of the

animal kingdom”?

• Or an underwhelming find?

– a well preserved fossil lemur

– opposable thumbs and nails

– Ankle bone formation

purportedly similar to humans –

but many differences

– Lacks grooming claw – variation

within species