Category Archives: creation

Evidence for Evolution

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I recently found this blog and was reading a few of the previous articles about creation/evolution. It struck me as odd that this Christian blog would remark on the reasonableness of evolution and then essentially says, “Well, even though this evidence confirms atheism, I’m still gonna’ be a Christian.”

For one, the evidence (as will be shown below) was impotent in proving evolution, but most importantly, the writer did not understand the importance of our starting point being revelation from God . If God and his revelation are not the starting point from which we interpret all evidence, then there is no precondition for intelligibility. We can only know things if the Creator revealed himself as a self-authenticating authority.

We must first start with the presupposition that God exists, and to know anything for certain, he must have revealed himself. Since he revealed himself as the Creator in his Word, we can know some things (not everything as he has not revealed everything). And since his revealed word also has definite things to say about the history of the universe and mankind, we can trust those things.

The evolutionary worldview differs sharply from what has been revealed in God’s Word, so we know that they are not true, and all evidence will show this. For a more complete rebuttal of the Grand Theory of Evolution, you can check out my Creation Manifesto. But below answers, what the writer of the Isaiah53 blog says is the emperor’s clothes best evidence for evolution:

  1. DNA – The universal common genetic code is strong evidence for a single designer. Information does not coalesce by natural processes. Specified complexity requires a designer. As a database administrator, I understand the critical nature of coded information being correct, and I reject the idea that the hard work I put in to formulate thousands of lines of code could be thrown together by natural forces like gravity, erosion, or combustion. As DNA is far more complex than the most sophisticated computer code, it is beyond logic to expect genetic code to have been formulated or improved by natural processes absent a designer. As far as all genetic code being similar, it only makes sense that the code be very similar but not exactly the same since all organisms were intended to be nourished by the same food source: plants. Plants, while classified as “alive” today are really just self-replicating food sources. Genesis 1:29-30. Since all genetic code is similar, it can be nourished by the same food source. If genetic code were wildly different, the only thing that humans would be able to eat for nourishment would be ourselves.
  2. Fossils – The fossil record shows variation within the same families of animals, but any theoretical transition between kinds of animals is missing. The fossil record however, is a strong indication that the Bible is true. In Genesis 7, God brings a catastrophic worldwide flood upon the surface of the earth that killed every living thing that was not on the ark. So Christians would expect to find billions of dead things buried in water-sorted rock layers. That is exactly what is found! So, why have human remains not been found with dinosaur remains? Would you live in the vicinity of dinosaurs? Probably not. Neither did pre-flood humans. They are buried in different layers, not because they lived at different times, but because they lived in different places. As far as the existence of fossils goes, it is an insurmountable problem for evolutionists to explain. Why are the rock layers perfectly flat with no erosion markers between the layers? Surely after each layer is exposed for thousands/millions of years there would be erosion between the layers. Why is there no bioturbation (root/worm-path fossils) in the layers? Why are the layers sorted by soil type? After thousands/millions of years soil types would be mixed and jumbled. Why are there fossils across multiple layers of rock? Did these dead animals/plants/trees lay exposed for millions of years while it was waiting to be buried by multiple layers of rock? To get fossilized material at all, an organism has to be buried quickly to avoid scavenging and decomposition, so the existence of fossils is actually unexpected from an evolutionary worldview that relies on slow, destructive processes. Fossils and the geologic layers are actually strong evidence for a catastrophic worldwide flood.
  3. Genetic Commonalities – This is pretty-well covered in item 1. But to further show that this is a false indication of evolution, the most recent research of DNA is showing that the genetic code is orders of magnitude more complex than originally thought. Junk DNA has been shown to be a false prediction of evolution as the entire DNA strand is now proving to be useful for the organism…exactly as one would expect if an omnipotent Creator designed everything from the beginning. For anyone interested in doing more research on this issue, check part one of this six part issue. A great quote from the article says, “If ENCODE is right, then Evolution is wrong.” Hint: ENCODE is right.
  4. Common Traits in Embryos – This line of reasoning was disproven over 100 years ago. Let me say that again, so it sinks in: Common traits of embryos was disproven over ONE HUNDRED years ago!!!! This was based on the fraudulent drawings made by Haeckel in the 1800s and recognized for the lie that they were within years of his submission. It’s absolutely irresponsible for this line of reasoning to be used as evidence for evolution. Gill slits??? Please!
  5. Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics – This has nothing to do with microbes to microbiologists evolution. As stated, there are a few individuals present in bacterial colonies that are already resistant to antibiotics. So, in the presence of antibiotics, these mutants will thrive and be able to produce more offspring. As is required by evolution, no new information is added…only the gene pool is thinned by antibiotics, which is natural selection in action. Natural selection thins the gene pool; it does not create anything new. People have misunderstood what natural selection means, but it is an expectation that is perfectly in line with a biblical worldview. For more information on antibiotic resistant bacteria, you can check out this article.

So, as you can clearly see, these “evidences” for evolution are completely misunderstood or misrepresented. They are actually strong evidence that the Creator can be trusted in his revealed word. Since God can be trusted about the past, we can put our faith in Him completely for our future!

ENCODE Eviscerates Evolution

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The Grand Theory of Evolution essentially tells us that with no divine intervention, all biological creatures came from a rock while developing through small, successive modifications to mature into the tree of life that is seen today.

While popular and convenient, the grand theory of evolution has been facing very serious scientific challenges. One of the most recent of these challenges comes from the ENCODE project, which analyzed the human genome. Their findings undermined the predictions and expectations of evolution. Although the project itself is very technical, some clever people at EvolutionNews.org, have written four of a six part analysis of the project.

Here are some highlights from each of the blog entries:

  • Post One – “If the human genome is indeed devoid of junk DNA as implied by the ENCODE project, then a long, undirected evolutionary process cannot explain the human genome. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, then all DNA, or as much as possible, is expected to exhibit function. If ENCODE is right, then Evolution is wrong.”
  • Post Two – “Despite their bluster, critics have been unable to disprove what a leading ENCODE researcher stated in 2014: “There is not a single place in the genome that doesn’t have something that you might think could be controlling something else.”If we’re willing to follow ENCODE’s experimental evidence where it leads, unhindered by evolutionary assumptions, evidence of important genomic function is everywhere.”
  • Post Three – “Critics like Dan Graur charge that ENCODE is guilty of “divorcing genomic analysis from its evolutionary context” -and that’s exactly right. ENCODE’s empirically based finding that the vast majority of our genome is functional has withstood theoretical, evolution-based objections from critics. Maybe a divorce from evolutionary thinking is exactly what we need to liberate biology from bad evolutionary assumptions and explain what’s happening inside our cells.”
  • Post Four – “However, what I’ve shown above only scratches the surface of a huge body of literature. Again and again, evolutionary biologists have predicted that our genome is primarily useless junk. Occasional caveats from evolutionary scientists, allowing that some small amount of the “junk” might be functional, do not mitigate the widespread, longstanding view that our cells are full of junk DNA. We now know that, on this point, evolutionists were wrong. The “junk DNA” paradigm has conclusively faltered.”

Evolution has been masquerading as science for decades. It has become common to expel people from the discussion if they fail to worship at the altar of Saint Darwin, but with the latest findings, the charade is proving to be empty bluster.

Evolution is diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview, and is now being challenged on scientific grounds.

If we stand on the unmovable foundation of God’s Word, then there is a basis for Absolute Truth by which we can do science. Trusting what God has told us about our past gives us faith to trust Him with our future as well.

What Could Persuade You?

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What Could Persuade You that evolution were not true?
If archaeologists found a rabbit in the Cambrian layers of soil then evolution would be disproven…right?
Well, as it turns out, proverbial rabbits are found all of the time in layers much “too old” for them. The problem is that people do not change their view based on conflicting evidence…they evolve their interpretation of the evidence to fit their view.
In an article entitled Radiometric Backflip, Volume 37, Issue 1, Creation Magazine describes just such an example. Here’s an example where the “science” (based on absolute radio metric dating) proved suggested that the rock layers of the Santo Domingo rock formation were 200 million years old (Nature 417 (6892):936-938, 27 June 2002).  But when footprints of sandpipers were found in layers of soil underneath the 200 million year old layers, scientists were able to scrub away 175 million years to make the data fit with the idea that sandpipers evolved about 37 million years ago. It must have taken quite a bit of soap to scrub away 175 million years that fast.
And this is not an isolated case. A hominid fossil, KNM-ER 1470 was found beneath soil that had originally been absolutely dated at over 200 million years old. Once the fossil was found, Richard Leakey requested a re-test. Not surprisingly, the NEW absolute dates of between 2-5 million years fit perfectly in the range that was needed to perpetuate the evolutionary myth. What happened to the original 200 million years? They were donated to a local charity for all we know.
So no amount of evidence will change someone’s mind regarding origins. This is why it is so important for Christians to be familiar with presuppositional apologetics. Everyone has presuppositions that define how we interpret evidence. So, the argument is not over evidence; the argument is over which presuppositions can correctly account for the preconditions of intelligibility. Only Christianity can account for intelligibility
Christians presuppose that there is a Creator God and that he revealed himself through the Bible, through creation, and in Jesus. Those who presuppose that there is no God are reliant on billions of years and a creative mechanism (evolution by natural selection and random mutation) to explain the origin and development of life.
So to convince someone that there is a God and that his word is infinitely reliable, you have to show how their atheistic presupposition contains contradictions.
We can trust God’s Word about history, and since it is a reliable history book (and the revealed Word of God), we know that we can trust God at his word regarding salvation and our future hope (Romans 8.)

Global or Local Flood

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Today’s mantra of global warming has grown tedious since the “evidence” turns out to show exactly the opposite of what those who would have us give up our rights are advocating.

But there are all kinds of interesting websites showing the new coastlines if the polar ice caps melted. Gone would be New Orleans, Florida, the East coast, and most of England. It would be sad to see Disney World submerged, and I so enjoy watching the English Premier League (it just wouldn’t be the same if it were the English Premier Water Polo League.) And I didn’t even mention the lost habitat of the lovable polar bears. This terrible scenario would all be as a result of the waters rising just 70 meters.

WaterLevelRise

It’s been said by the old earth movement that the flood of Noah’s day was a localized flood. They have put up reasons like, there’s not enough water, the writer of Genesis would not have known about the whole globe, and there’s no evidence of a global flood. All of these objections have been answered and shown to be false multiple times. A serious objection to the old earth theory of a local flood is God’s promise never to flood the earth again. Genesis 9:8-17 records God’s repeated covenant that he would never again flood the earth like he did when he destroyed all life and the earth. If we are to accept the old earth proposal that this was a local flood, then God would have broken his word because there have been many catastrophic local floods.

One argument that I have never heard used to counter the old earth local flood heresy is the water level above Mt. Ararat argument. Today, Mt Ararat stands almost 17,000 feet above sea level. Many volcanic eruptions have been recorded from this mountain, so it’s safe to say that this mountain has been much taller in the past. Mt. St. Helens lost over 1000 feet to its overall height when it erupted in 1980, so it’s not beyond reason to believe that Mt. Ararat would have been much taller the further back in time we go towards the catastrophic flood of Genesis 7-9. But for the sake, of argument, let’s say it was at its current height of 17,000 feet.

We know from Genesis 7:19-20 that “all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.” Some translations have cubits calculated at about 20 feet. We also know from Genesis 8:4, that the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters would have had to cover Mt Ararat to be in accordance with scripture, so what would happen to the coastlines if the seas were to rise about 17,000 feet? Our four memorialized Republican presidents on Mount Rushmore would be over 2 miles below the surface of the water. The Eiffel Tower would be three miles below the surface. And remember this is if we assume the waters to ONLY be as high as the old earth people tell us. If we take the Bible at its word, we know that it covered all of the mountains however high they were at the time. At the very least, we know that the flood covered the high mountains of Ararat, so if we take the old earth view of a local flood seriously, we have to assume that God put up some kind of imaginary boundaries at the edge of his flood area…but why would we want to do that. Why not take the words of scripture to mean what they actually say rather than trying to inject one’s pet theory into the text?

An ardent old earth advocate might say, “Well what if the ark landed at the base of Mt Ararat? The local flood waters could have just carried the ark to the base of this mountain.” Nice try, but the text says that the waters covered the mountains to a depth of fifteen cubits. So, it doesn’t matter at which point on the mountains of Ararat that the ark landed; the only highest mountain in the only range mentioned in the text is surely covered by more than 15 cubits of water. That’s a minimum of 17,000 feet.

We can trust God’s Word to be the authoritative source for interpreting evidence. We can trust what God’s Word has said about history, so we can trust what God’s word tells us about salvation and our future hope! You are valuable because you are created in God’s image, and he purchased your future with the death of his precious Son.

Hitch Your Wagon to a Star

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Just make sure it is the right star. I first heard this phrase (Hitch your wagon to a star) in Kenny Tamplin’s 90’s release, Get Out of My Sun. At least now you know some of my obscure musical tastes. Anyway, the idea is that if you know someone who is rich or smart or famous, then maybe you can get something that you didn’t necessarily earn. I’m going to take this on to a logical conclusion with the recognition that if you got your riches, fame, or information based on a falling star, then you too are doomed.

If you’ve hitched up to a falling star (or foundation) then your wagon (or worldview) is also bound to fail.

Titanic_OldEarth

Old Earth Creationists have been shouting the mantra of the necessity for Christians to embrace Big Bang Cosmology and other naturalistic-based ideas (evolution, deep time…) One of the more famous groups to have done this is Hugh Ross’s outfit, reasons.org. They claim that the Bible introduced the Big Bang cosmology to the world. One of the many problems with the idea of the old earth creationists is that the Bible does not have anything at all to do with the Big Bang. As noted in Genesis 1, God created dry land on day 2, plants on day 3, stars/planets on day 4, birds/fish on day 5, and land creatures on day 6 (including mankind). But the Big Bang theory describes something totally different in a totally different order in a totally different time frame. The two creation stories are completely different.

Despite the obvious differences, the old earth creationists continue to hang onto the idea that naturalistic assumptions about the universe should form the basis by which Christians should interpret scripture, and from a cursory look at their websites, they have grown adept at this method of interpreting the Bible.

Unfortunately, for them, like phlogiston, abiogenesis, and leech-blood-letting before, the Big Bang model has been tossed aside by secular scientists. In this article, the naturalistic thinkers no longer want the universe to have a beginning because this would seem to imply that there were a Higher Power, to whom they might be responsible.

Big Bang? What Big Bang? In a new theory, researchers suggest that the start of the universe may have involved no bang at all.

There’s no need for Christians to compromise the revealed Word of God to try to accommodate naturalistic assumptions about creation…especially as they have a tendency to be discarded as more information is discovered.  You can trust God’s Word as revealed in the Bible to be true and unchanging.

UPDATE:

“The science is settled! It is beyond dispute that the Big Bang never happened.”

“What?! New evidence is in, and the Big Bang never happened?”

“The science is settled! The universe is eternal. The Big Bang never happened. Those who cling to the Big Bang are science deniers!”

http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/02/10/watch-the-big-bang-never-happened/

Genetics is no friend to evolution

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You might have heard the mantra, “Creationists are stupid or wicked because they hate science or don’t understand that genetics proves evolution.” If not, a quick web search will confirm that this mantra is prevalent.

Rather than believing the mantra, the scientists at the Institute for Creation Research have been doing actual scientific work that proves quite the opposite. In this article, you can see that scientific predictions by creationists are confirmed by the actual data, and the predictions that evolutionists expect are incorrect by several orders of magnitude.

Pay special attention to the charts below that come from the article, as they tell the story.

new_genetic_clock_charts_Human
new_genetic_clock_table1

At the end of the article, the author also answers the anticipated objections from the evolutionists. So, instead of the mantra holding weight, the evidence actually points towards biblical creation being the most reliable model.

The Bible is ultimately trustworthy and is the standard for authority. If we start with the pre-supposition that the Bible is the revealed Word of Almighty God, then we can expect his creation to coincide with the facts of his revelation. As scientific study progresses we continue to find this to be true.

For the Children!

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Should Christians worry about the incursion of atheism into the nursery? Finding adults and reasoning too challenging, atheists are now targeting children with their message of the non-existence of the Creator. As shown here, evolution by random mutation and natural selection is a philosophy designed to exclude God from his rightful place as the author of life.

According to the Wall Street Journal, children have a natural tendency to attribute their surroundings to intelligent design.

By elementary-school age, children start to invoke an ultimate God-like designer to explain the complexity of the world around them—even children brought up as atheists.

This is alarming to the atheists, so they have planned a strategy to indoctrinate the children with evolution early on in order to counter the children’s intuitions of a creative designer.

Dr. Kelemen and her colleagues thought that they might be able to get young children to understand the mechanism of natural selection before the alternative intentional-design theory had become too entrenched.

The secret may be to reach children with the right theory before the wrong one is too firmly in place.

It is an intentional strategy by atheists, and it is important for us as Christians to recognize the battlefield. If evolution is accepted within the walls of Christendom, then before long, the children will have no need for the Creator. Besides the obvious negative side of children embracing evolution in place of biblical creationism, there’s really no reason for anyone to be deceived since the global flood explains the evidence much better.

Information Theory Sounds Complicated for Evolution

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Information Theory. DNA is a code. It contains information that must be transmitted and interpreted. The components of DNA, nucleotides, exist as four “letters” which are guanine, adenine, thynine, and cytosine. The reason that we can call DNA information is that these four letters have no inherent attraction to each other to compose the patterns that we recognize today as having purposeful code within.

Could the proliferation of DNA in all living things be the creative signature of Almighty God?

If you think of it like the little plastic letters with magnets on the back, where kids can put words up on the refrigerator door, you can understand the relationship that these DNA letters have towards one another. In the same way that the plastic toy letters do not have any chemical, magnetic, or other reason to arrange themselves in any particular order, the DNA letters have no reason to arrange themselves in the specific patterns necessary for living things to be coded and reproduced. Without someone specifically arranging the letters to have meaning to the reader (in the case of DNA, the reader would be RNA). The plastic, magnetic letters are attracted to metal objects, but they are not chemically or magnetically predisposed to a particular arrangement, and we find this same situation for DNA letters.

Plastic magnetic letters do not arrange themselves into readable words, phrases, or thoughts without outside guidance.

As a novice software engineer and experienced database administrator, I understand that complex codes for programs must be planned and implemented by intelligent programmers.

This small code sample pulls information out of an ANSI-compliant relational database:

SELECT Name, EmployeeID, BirthDate FROM EmployeeTable WHERE HireDate > ’09-17-2014′;

The compiler would generate an error were this code to change to either of these:

SELEKT Name, EmployeeID, BirthDate FROM EmployeeTable WHERE HireDate > ’09-17-2014′;

SELECT SELECT Name, EmployeeID, BirthDate FROM EmployeeTable WHERE HireDate > ’09-17-2014′;

I would not expect that copying one of my programs over and over millions of times would generate new code that would perfectly complement the existing code. If any changes to the code were to happen because of an error or duplication during copying, I would expect the code to be broken. But this same logic is used by evolutionary thinkers to say that through copying mistakes in DNA, new traits are acquired by organisms that were previously unknown.

Music is another form of information. Would you expect that copying sheet music over and over millions of times would result in perfectly timed bridges to new verses, or would you expect the sheet music to become muddled and unreadable?

How about digital music? Would you expect the copying of mp3 files over and over millions of times to seamlessly add complimentary notes, chords, or verses? Neither should we accept the assumptions of evolutionists that random mutations will create new features in creatures.

UPDATE: Despite their commitment to Deep Time, the science presented by the Discovery Institute in the article and twenty minute video are fantastic. In it, they show how information cannot be generated without intelligent guidance and that random processes destroy information.

[Dr. Axe’s] experiments [while working at Cambridge University] enabled him to estimate that for every DNA sequence that generates a short functional protein of just 150 amino acids in length, there are 10 to the 77th amino acid arrangements that will not fold into a stable three-dimensional protein structure capable of performing that biological function.

One correct sequence for every 10 to the 77th power incorrect sequences!…

To put this in perspective, keep in mind there are only 10 to the 65th atoms in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

Keep in mind that the number, 10^77, is the number for finding a SINGLE protein, so to find the proteins for all of life would require far more and larger numbers. The case for naturalistic evolution is slain by mathematics.

Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline

Adam and Eve meet in Genetics

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Mitochondrial Eve/Y-chromosome Adam. This line of reasoning is complicated, but I’ll do my best to be brief. Mitochondria is a component in the cell that is passed on only from the mother to her daughter. And since mutation rates are measurable (from grandmother to mother to granddaughter), the idea that a mitochondrial eve (the first woman) can be calculated to have existed at a certain point in time. The calculated age of the mitochondrial eve is about 6000 years ago. There are some evolutionary calculations that say the mitochondrial eve is dated to have existed 250,000 years ago. But the calculations are based on the assumption that mankind and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor, and the mutation rate comes from that assumption rather than the measurable one (from grandmother to granddaughter). The measurable rate fits the Biblical data very well, but it does not fit the evolutionary assumption at all.

Y chromosome Adam is a similar line of reasoning except that it measures the decay rate of the y chromosome, which is passed on only from a father to his son. When these mutational rates are measured and extrapolated back in time, the date fits perfectly with Noah having lived about 4500 years ago. So, while Y-Chromosome Adam does not refer to the historical Adam, the scientific research makes sense when read from a biblical perspective.

DnaInheritance

The latest research from the scientists at ICR reveals that evidence from genetics points strongly to a creation about 6000 years ago, just like the Bible claims.

The results of these genetic studies fit perfectly with the predictions of a young-earth creation timeframe but make no sense when millions of years are added to the mix—the clocks simply cannot have been ticking that long.

Yet again, the scientists at ICR show clearly that the Bible’s historical account of the first pair of humans is verified by today’s science.

Third, studies reveal genetic “clocks” that confirm the Bible’s timeline of a recent creation. Every generation, sperm and egg cells incorporate over 100 DNA copying errors. These errors, or mutations, gradually build up. This means you have at least 100 more mutations than your parents, 200 more than your grandparents, 300 more than your great-grandparents, etc. Wind back the mutation clock far enough and we arrive at Adam and Eve, whose DNA was created error-free. At this rate, humanity wouldn’t last for even 1,000 generations.

 

 Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline

That’s a Big Gap!

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Photo by Josh Sorenson on Pexels.com

I’ve heard some people say that there is a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. And not just any gap…a gap the size of billions of years. This gap is said to be a safe haven for dinosaurs and billions of years of accumulated soil deposits to hide. There’s no reason to hide the existence of dinosaurs and soil deposits, because they are clearly explained in Genesis 6-11.

Genesis 6:5-7 describes a literal worldwide flood that killed all air-breathing animals and people except those that were on board the ark. Since we have the Chrono-genealogies for the men from Adam to Abraham, we know that this flood occurred about 4500 years ago.

  1. Confirmed by Jesus’ words (Matthew 24:35-39)
  2. Confirmed by 2 Peter 3:5-6
  3. Confirmed by 1 Peter 3:20

The gap view suffers from the same shortcoming that was discussed in sections 2, 3, and 6. Since there was no death before Adam sinned, then the deaths of animals and people had to have happened after that time. Their deaths were recorded in the sedimentary rocks laid down during the flood of Noah’s day. There’s no need for a gap.

For additional research see

 Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline