What do I mean by evolution? The theory that all living things – plants and animals – developed by small steps from a common ancestor by natural selection over millions of years.
Is evolution compatible with the Bible, as some teach? The creation account in Genesis is confirmed and alluded to in numerous places all through the Bible. Moses, Jesus and Paul were all creationists. The Bible flatly contradicts evolution at every point. Note:
God created the world and every thing in it, all very good, in six calendar days. These days are cycles of day and night, not indeterminate periods, as some claim. This is not poetry or myth, but plainly history, albeit elegantly written.
The world was made about six thousand and sixty years ago. This last fact is deduced from the chronological information given in the Bible. There is a continuous dated history that proceeds from Genesis chapter one to the time of the Prophet Daniel. His prophecy of the “seventy weeks” bridges the gap to the coming of Christ.
God made the earth on the first day, the atmosphere on the second, the sea and the dry land, and all the vegetation on the third day, the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day, the birds and the fish on the fifth day, land animals and man on the sixth day. Every creature was made with the ability to reproduce after its own kind. Man was separately created, directly from the earth, in the image of the creator.
Observe that, according to the Bible:
1. The cosmos is not eternal and self-existent; nor is it ruled by capricious “gods”, nor by blind impersonal forces, but by the One True and Living God, who made it all for His glory, and rules over all. “In the beginning God created...”
2. The earth is not billions of years old, nor is life hundreds of millions of years old. There is no time in the biblical record for the gradual random change that evolutionism posits, and without which it loses all appearance of plausibility.
3.Plants and animals do not share a common ancestor. None of the creatures do. Each was made individually, essentially just as it is today.
4. The biblical order is incompatible with the order given by evolutionists. For example, the sun, moon and stars were made
three days after the earth was. Birds were made before fishes. If you make these days to be “ages”, the Bible still cannot be reconciled to evolution.
5. Reproduction does not lead to new kinds of animals. The record stresses the fact that each plant and animal produces offspring of the same kind. Natural selection operates within kinds in a fallen world to enable them to adapt and survive.
6. There was no defect in the original creation. All was “very good”. Nature was not “red in tooth and claw” until after the fall, when by one man's sin, death entered the world. Without death, and lots of it, there can be no natural selection.
The case against evolution comes down to the conflicting claims of fallible scientific models versus the unchanging truth of the infallible word of God. While it is true that we can demonstrate the absurdity of evolution from reason alone, the fundamental question remains, “Yea, hath God said?” This is the evangelist's challenge, to eliminate all the excuses men make up to justify rejecting the word of God. We cannot bring them to faith, but we can leave them without excuse.
To this end, it is possible and useful to show that evolutionary theory not only is not supported by science; but that the facts of science militate against it. Our subject could occupy us for months or years – the evidence is so vast! We only have time to survey the field and touch on a few vital facts:
1.There is no evidence that evolution has ever taken place.
2. Evolution by random mutations is impossible.
3. Irreducible complexity proves design.
1. There is no evidence that evolution has ever taken place.
We do not see evolution taking place today. The changes we see in the genome are all degenerative. Genetic information is only being lost. This is true even in adaptation by natural selection, and in artificial selective breeding. The new genetic information needed for the gradual improvement of species is pure fiction. There is no possible source, just as there could have been no source for the original genetic information in an impersonal universe.
Mutations are the result of randomized damage to the genome. Like random errors in a computer program, they never improve the operation, but rather impair or destroy functionality. When enough errors accumulate, the computer will crash; and that would eventually be the destiny of all living things if the Lord had not made other plans for us.
What about the fossil record? Doesn't that prove evolution has
occurred? Actually, it proves the opposite!
There is a complete absence of the predicted transitional forms in the fossils. There are no ape-men, or reptile/mammals, or fish/amphibians. All the animals appear fully-formed and in definite, recognizable kinds, most of them representing phyla that are still alive today.
So-called “living fossils” are found in the fossil record in the same form as their living counterparts. How is it that they did not change over tens of millions of years?
The “millions of years” that evolutionists talk about is an illusion created by the misinterpretation of geologic data. None of the fossils come with dates or histories. Dating depends on presuppositions; thus it is not a completely objective process. Data not conforming to presuppositions is rejected as anomalous. Recent research has shown that the data are inconsistent with a very old earth (The RATE Project).
Fossils are rarely formed in normal circumstances. Dead plants normally decompose on the ground. Most dead animals are eaten by other animals or disposed of by man. Fossilization requires a rapid burial, and a gravesite that is not disturbed until the mineralization has occurred. The vast fossil graveyards all over the world demand a better explanation than uniformitarians can give. The global catastrophe of a worldwide flood in the days of Noah is not a myth or a children's story, but sober fact.
The geologic column is a myth. It exists nowhere in the world. Fossils are found in different orders in different places. Petrified trees and animals have been found extending through many layers of sedimentary rock. Human artifacts are commonly found in coal seams which are deemed millions of years old.
A stack of rock layers is sometimes found that is folded, which shows that all of them were in a plastic state at the same time. This proves that they were laid down in a short time, for they would not long remain plastic. (This also indicates that enormous forces were at work in the flood that have never been seen at work since.)
There was never enough water in the Colorado River to carve the Grand Canyon out of hardened rock, nor is it possible for it to have been shaped the way it is unless all the rock layers were soft and erodible at the same time. If you step into wet cement, you can leave a deep footprint, but once it has set, you can walk on it for a hundred years without leaving a mark. The rapid formation of a rock canyon was observed when Mount St. Helens erupted.
There is abundant evidence of a young earth and cosmos: the salinity of the oceans, the orbit of the moon, the brightness of the sun, the depth of sediment on the ocean floors, etc. Uniformitarian assumptions lead to contradictions.
2. Evolution by Random Mutations is Impossible
Almost all mutations are too small to have an impact on survival.
Almost all mutations are definitely harmful. We age and die primarily because of accumulated copying errors (@6000 by age 15).
All mutations destroy genetic information and lead to degeneration of the kind.
John Sanford (Read his book, Genetic Entropy.) estimates that each of us passes on about a hundred genetic mutations to our children each generation.
Random mutations cannot produce the long chain of beneficial mutations required for progress. Even if there were beneficial mutations.
DNA is protected from alteration by many mechanisms: the error correction system, the rejection of imperfect or foreign bodies in the cell, the reproductive hurdle. For a mutation to be passed on, it must occur in a reproductive cell, that is, an egg or a sperm. If one of the 200 million spermatozoa discharged at one time is mutated, it has an infinitesimal chance of being the one to win the race. On the other hand, defective zygotes are commonly aborted.
Mutations cannot and do not generate new genetic information. When Richard Dawkins was asked in an interview if he knew any mechanism whereby new information could be added to the genome, he got a puzzled expression, looked around for a long time without saying anything, and then said something completely unrelated to the question. You can watch the video on Youtube.
3. Irreducible Complexity Proves Design
The creation – indeed, every creature is astonishingly complex. It is evident to every unprejudiced observer that infinite intelligence was needed to create the world. But evolutionists claim that this complexity is a function of principles of variability and development “built into” the universe – and of very long periods of time. Mere complexity, no matter the degree, does not trouble them.
What drives them crazy is when we point out to them instances of “irreducible complexity”. What we mean by this is created systems that are composed of interdependent parts that could not have evolved by one small change at a time. Michael Behe's famous illustration of the principle is a simple mousetrap. (Read his book, Darwin's black Box.) Mousetraps are evidently designed. Each part contributes to a systemic function, but is useless by itself. There is no increased fitness in a living thing when it develops a useless new part. There is no Darwinian explanation for the accretion of many small changes that do the animal no good, but finally organize themselves into a marvelous new organ.
The eye is illustrative. Every eye has many parts that are all necessary to sight. None of them would be of any use without all the rest. Not only must all these parts be present, but they must be adjusted to fit and to work together. In addition, the eye must interface with the brain through an extremely complex network of nerves, with the heart through special blood vessels, and with the light available from the world outside so that the mind experiences accurate, clear and distinct images that are updated instantly and continuously. It is evident that natural selection could never account for all this. There is no reason why the individual parts would be retained until the eye had become fully functional.
There is no more exciting field of scientific discovery today than cell biology. To say that the cell is not a product of design is like saying that New York City happened by chance. The complexity of the cell is comparable to the complexity of a major city. There is no system that man has created for himself that does not have its counterpart – really, its archetype in the cell. Manufacturing, reproduction, transportation, maintenance, sanitation, security, energy production, and information systems that are more efficient and more reliable than anything we can contrive have existed from the beginning in every living cell.
And all these systems function together in a seamless way as one supreme system for the health of the cell. But more, these cells cooperate to form and sustain the organs, and all the systems of the whole body. The structural and functional unity of the body depends on the compatibility of its building blocks, which share a common system at the micro level.
Evolutionists are so afraid of the Intelligent Design movement that they have gone to court to try to stop it. Richard Dawkins' book, The Blind Watchmaker, was written to refute it. Dawkins, one of the most virulent atheists of our time, who blasphemes God continually in His books, and incites his followers to ridicule religious people, claims that the “overwhelming appearance of design” in nature is an illusion that can be explained by the fact of evolution. So he grants that nature appears designed, but insists that it isn't!
Howard Douglas King
Revised September 16, 2014
Is evolution compatible with the Bible, as some teach? The creation account in Genesis is confirmed and alluded to in numerous places all through the Bible. Moses, Jesus and Paul were all creationists. The Bible flatly contradicts evolution at every point. Note:
God created the world and every thing in it, all very good, in six calendar days. These days are cycles of day and night, not indeterminate periods, as some claim. This is not poetry or myth, but plainly history, albeit elegantly written.
The world was made about six thousand and sixty years ago. This last fact is deduced from the chronological information given in the Bible. There is a continuous dated history that proceeds from Genesis chapter one to the time of the Prophet Daniel. His prophecy of the “seventy weeks” bridges the gap to the coming of Christ.
God made the earth on the first day, the atmosphere on the second, the sea and the dry land, and all the vegetation on the third day, the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day, the birds and the fish on the fifth day, land animals and man on the sixth day. Every creature was made with the ability to reproduce after its own kind. Man was separately created, directly from the earth, in the image of the creator.
Observe that, according to the Bible:
1. The cosmos is not eternal and self-existent; nor is it ruled by capricious “gods”, nor by blind impersonal forces, but by the One True and Living God, who made it all for His glory, and rules over all. “In the beginning God created...”
2. The earth is not billions of years old, nor is life hundreds of millions of years old. There is no time in the biblical record for the gradual random change that evolutionism posits, and without which it loses all appearance of plausibility.
3.Plants and animals do not share a common ancestor. None of the creatures do. Each was made individually, essentially just as it is today.
4. The biblical order is incompatible with the order given by evolutionists. For example, the sun, moon and stars were made
three days after the earth was. Birds were made before fishes. If you make these days to be “ages”, the Bible still cannot be reconciled to evolution.
5. Reproduction does not lead to new kinds of animals. The record stresses the fact that each plant and animal produces offspring of the same kind. Natural selection operates within kinds in a fallen world to enable them to adapt and survive.
6. There was no defect in the original creation. All was “very good”. Nature was not “red in tooth and claw” until after the fall, when by one man's sin, death entered the world. Without death, and lots of it, there can be no natural selection.
The case against evolution comes down to the conflicting claims of fallible scientific models versus the unchanging truth of the infallible word of God. While it is true that we can demonstrate the absurdity of evolution from reason alone, the fundamental question remains, “Yea, hath God said?” This is the evangelist's challenge, to eliminate all the excuses men make up to justify rejecting the word of God. We cannot bring them to faith, but we can leave them without excuse.
To this end, it is possible and useful to show that evolutionary theory not only is not supported by science; but that the facts of science militate against it. Our subject could occupy us for months or years – the evidence is so vast! We only have time to survey the field and touch on a few vital facts:
1.There is no evidence that evolution has ever taken place.
2. Evolution by random mutations is impossible.
3. Irreducible complexity proves design.
1. There is no evidence that evolution has ever taken place.
We do not see evolution taking place today. The changes we see in the genome are all degenerative. Genetic information is only being lost. This is true even in adaptation by natural selection, and in artificial selective breeding. The new genetic information needed for the gradual improvement of species is pure fiction. There is no possible source, just as there could have been no source for the original genetic information in an impersonal universe.
Mutations are the result of randomized damage to the genome. Like random errors in a computer program, they never improve the operation, but rather impair or destroy functionality. When enough errors accumulate, the computer will crash; and that would eventually be the destiny of all living things if the Lord had not made other plans for us.
What about the fossil record? Doesn't that prove evolution has
occurred? Actually, it proves the opposite!
There is a complete absence of the predicted transitional forms in the fossils. There are no ape-men, or reptile/mammals, or fish/amphibians. All the animals appear fully-formed and in definite, recognizable kinds, most of them representing phyla that are still alive today.
So-called “living fossils” are found in the fossil record in the same form as their living counterparts. How is it that they did not change over tens of millions of years?
The “millions of years” that evolutionists talk about is an illusion created by the misinterpretation of geologic data. None of the fossils come with dates or histories. Dating depends on presuppositions; thus it is not a completely objective process. Data not conforming to presuppositions is rejected as anomalous. Recent research has shown that the data are inconsistent with a very old earth (The RATE Project).
Fossils are rarely formed in normal circumstances. Dead plants normally decompose on the ground. Most dead animals are eaten by other animals or disposed of by man. Fossilization requires a rapid burial, and a gravesite that is not disturbed until the mineralization has occurred. The vast fossil graveyards all over the world demand a better explanation than uniformitarians can give. The global catastrophe of a worldwide flood in the days of Noah is not a myth or a children's story, but sober fact.
The geologic column is a myth. It exists nowhere in the world. Fossils are found in different orders in different places. Petrified trees and animals have been found extending through many layers of sedimentary rock. Human artifacts are commonly found in coal seams which are deemed millions of years old.
A stack of rock layers is sometimes found that is folded, which shows that all of them were in a plastic state at the same time. This proves that they were laid down in a short time, for they would not long remain plastic. (This also indicates that enormous forces were at work in the flood that have never been seen at work since.)
There was never enough water in the Colorado River to carve the Grand Canyon out of hardened rock, nor is it possible for it to have been shaped the way it is unless all the rock layers were soft and erodible at the same time. If you step into wet cement, you can leave a deep footprint, but once it has set, you can walk on it for a hundred years without leaving a mark. The rapid formation of a rock canyon was observed when Mount St. Helens erupted.
There is abundant evidence of a young earth and cosmos: the salinity of the oceans, the orbit of the moon, the brightness of the sun, the depth of sediment on the ocean floors, etc. Uniformitarian assumptions lead to contradictions.
2. Evolution by Random Mutations is Impossible
Almost all mutations are too small to have an impact on survival.
Almost all mutations are definitely harmful. We age and die primarily because of accumulated copying errors (@6000 by age 15).
All mutations destroy genetic information and lead to degeneration of the kind.
John Sanford (Read his book, Genetic Entropy.) estimates that each of us passes on about a hundred genetic mutations to our children each generation.
Random mutations cannot produce the long chain of beneficial mutations required for progress. Even if there were beneficial mutations.
DNA is protected from alteration by many mechanisms: the error correction system, the rejection of imperfect or foreign bodies in the cell, the reproductive hurdle. For a mutation to be passed on, it must occur in a reproductive cell, that is, an egg or a sperm. If one of the 200 million spermatozoa discharged at one time is mutated, it has an infinitesimal chance of being the one to win the race. On the other hand, defective zygotes are commonly aborted.
Mutations cannot and do not generate new genetic information. When Richard Dawkins was asked in an interview if he knew any mechanism whereby new information could be added to the genome, he got a puzzled expression, looked around for a long time without saying anything, and then said something completely unrelated to the question. You can watch the video on Youtube.
3. Irreducible Complexity Proves Design
The creation – indeed, every creature is astonishingly complex. It is evident to every unprejudiced observer that infinite intelligence was needed to create the world. But evolutionists claim that this complexity is a function of principles of variability and development “built into” the universe – and of very long periods of time. Mere complexity, no matter the degree, does not trouble them.
What drives them crazy is when we point out to them instances of “irreducible complexity”. What we mean by this is created systems that are composed of interdependent parts that could not have evolved by one small change at a time. Michael Behe's famous illustration of the principle is a simple mousetrap. (Read his book, Darwin's black Box.) Mousetraps are evidently designed. Each part contributes to a systemic function, but is useless by itself. There is no increased fitness in a living thing when it develops a useless new part. There is no Darwinian explanation for the accretion of many small changes that do the animal no good, but finally organize themselves into a marvelous new organ.
The eye is illustrative. Every eye has many parts that are all necessary to sight. None of them would be of any use without all the rest. Not only must all these parts be present, but they must be adjusted to fit and to work together. In addition, the eye must interface with the brain through an extremely complex network of nerves, with the heart through special blood vessels, and with the light available from the world outside so that the mind experiences accurate, clear and distinct images that are updated instantly and continuously. It is evident that natural selection could never account for all this. There is no reason why the individual parts would be retained until the eye had become fully functional.
There is no more exciting field of scientific discovery today than cell biology. To say that the cell is not a product of design is like saying that New York City happened by chance. The complexity of the cell is comparable to the complexity of a major city. There is no system that man has created for himself that does not have its counterpart – really, its archetype in the cell. Manufacturing, reproduction, transportation, maintenance, sanitation, security, energy production, and information systems that are more efficient and more reliable than anything we can contrive have existed from the beginning in every living cell.
And all these systems function together in a seamless way as one supreme system for the health of the cell. But more, these cells cooperate to form and sustain the organs, and all the systems of the whole body. The structural and functional unity of the body depends on the compatibility of its building blocks, which share a common system at the micro level.
Evolutionists are so afraid of the Intelligent Design movement that they have gone to court to try to stop it. Richard Dawkins' book, The Blind Watchmaker, was written to refute it. Dawkins, one of the most virulent atheists of our time, who blasphemes God continually in His books, and incites his followers to ridicule religious people, claims that the “overwhelming appearance of design” in nature is an illusion that can be explained by the fact of evolution. So he grants that nature appears designed, but insists that it isn't!
Howard Douglas King
Revised September 16, 2014
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