Introduction
About the time I started seriously studying the bible and contemplating baptism in the early seventies, I read a news story about some researchers who were attempting to create life from simple chemicals. The story was that these scientists had produced something similar to amino acids in the lab and with the proper environmental conditions they would be able to generate a life form. I had attended the Church of Christ three times a week for my entire life. I also had received an indoctrination in evolution in school and I was trying to mesh what I heard in church with what I was taught in school. As you can imagine, it was a very trying and confusing time. This news story and others like it actually helped me to make the decision to become a Christian. This is because I realized exactly how ignorant man is and how limited our understanding of God’s power is.
I went on to take many more courses in science in high school and college. I learned how to utilize scientific method: develop a theory, test the theory using verifiable means, document the results, and adjust the theory to fit the facts. I also grew spiritually. Each time I read or heard of some new scientific find or archaeological discovery, I could usually see how it would fit in God’s history or His plan. My faith in God and Jesus has continued to grow. Now 25 years later I wonder if those guys are still trying to produce life in a laboratory.
I suppose that I and others of my generation were fortunate. Today’s kids are so bombarded by "scientific facts" that seem to contradict the Bible that it is sometimes amazing that we have any new Christians. In the 1995 Grollier’s CD-ROM encyclopedia, the biblical creation account is referred to as a myth. College has ruined many a good plow hand. This is the reason I decided to investigate today’s scientific viewpoint and compare it to God’s account of creation. The Bible devotes only a few pages to our creation while science has accumulated mountains of information much of which is designed to contradict the Bible. Children need to hear about our true origin. They need to be given the opportunity to develop their own faith. What they need are the facts as we know them now. They will see that the Genesis account of Creation is more believable than evolution.
Job 38-40. God should not have to explain his creation to us. He certainly didn’t feel he needed to explain things to Job. This lesson is meant to ask the questions that are on the minds of children and to give answers or possibilities or theories to those questions. This lesson will also show that the Word cannot be compromised by any scientific theories. The majority of people who question creation have probably never read the biblical account to know with what they are arguing. The Christian should know not only what the Bible says, but also what the bible does not say. We do not know how God created our universe. As can be seen from Job, He did not mean for us to know.
Creation Vs Science. Testing the words of God by what science claims.
1st Day……Light, the 1st morning
In the biblical account of Creation, what happened on the first day (Gen 1:3-5). And God said, "let there be light". According to physics, light is what? Electromagnetic radiation produced from a chemical or physical (electrical) or nuclear (fusion or fission) reaction. God made man in his on image. When man begins a project indoors or at night, what is the first thing he does? Does this light have to be the sun or stars? Was there any fusion reactions occurring at this time according to the Bible?
Before the 1st Day…….The heavens and Earth water
So the first day there was light. But what was there before the light? Gen 1:1. "In the beginning , God created the heavens and the earth." When was the beginning? Obviously The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost were here when the heavens and earth were created. What were they doing before they created the heavens and the earth? The Bible must be referring to the beginning of our world. But it does not mean that the heavens and the earth were created on the first day. What was spoken into existence along with light? Obviously it was the first morning. With the first morning and then evening and then the next morning ended the first day. "And God said….evening and there was morning, the first day. These phrases were not used in Gen 1:1-2.
And God said "Let there be light". First Morning
Evening
Morning the first day.
Evening
Morning the second day. Etc.
So at some point in time before the first day the heavens and earth were created. At the time of the first day we had:
1. The heavens.
2. The earth. Formless and empty. Or became formless and empty?
3. The deep.
4. Water.
When were these created?
Science tells us that the universe is up to 10.7 billion yrs old. Also it says that our solar system is 4.65 billion yrs old. Does the Bible disagree? The Hebrew word for created (bara: something from nothing) is used only three times. 1, in the beginning, the heavens and the earth. 2, the animals on the fifth day , and 3, man on the sixth day. All other divine creations use the word asah which means to form or fashion or finish.
At some point in time, the earth became formless and empty. What does this mean? At some point in time did the earth have form and was full? Science says that the fossil record (and supposedly life) starts 3.5 billion years ago. These fossils were of bacteria. The dinosaurs supposedly lived 100 million years ago. Mammals came along 65 million years ago and the earliest humanoids are a few million years old. Where did all of this fossil record come from? Is there precedent for destruction from God? Does God promise ultimate destruction by fire? Could He have created other life forms similar to those found today before Genesis 1:3? Science has determined that over time the earth has gone through many periods of great destruction. These events were caused by ice, asteroids or comets, and flooding. Jer. 4:23-26, Isa 24:1, and Isa 45:18 indicate that the earth had undergone a cataclysmic change as the result of a divine judgment. Also Ezk. 28:12-15 and Isa. 14:9-14.
2nd Day……….the sky
On the second day, God created the sky (Gen. 1:6-8). "So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it." This could be the greatest example of God’s power and the absolute truth of the Bible. Science tells us now that of the known planets and other celestial bodies in our solar system, the earth is unique in it’s atmosphere. There are many layers to this atmosphere and its delicate composition is what allows life to occur. It is the only known celestial body with water and a habitable atmosphere. The Bible was written thousands of years ago. It is doubtful the human author knew anything of this on his own. He would have seen water in the seas, lakes, and rivers, but it is doubtful that he knew of evaporation, convection currents, the ozone layer etc. If the Bible is not the Word of our Creator and divinely inspired, why would a mere mortal even think of writing concerning the sky? How would he have known the importance of it? In a later time scientists thought the world was flat! On the earth described in Genesis, with no sun to begin the reaction, there would be no sky. The Bible says that the Lord produced an expanse. He did not create the sky as such.
3rd Day……..separated the water and land, vegetation
On the third day, God Gathered the water to one place and caused the land to produce vegetation. The laws of thermodynamics say that in the absence of an external energy source, matter will tend to rest. In the absence of internal radioactive heat produced in the earth’s core, and in the absence of the sun, the earth would be covered with a film of water or ice hundreds of feet thick. This is exactly the environment described in Genesis. For His plan, he had to produce dry land. You might expect the primitive author to write that the Lord made the dry land. But the Bible does not say He produced dry land. It correctly says he gathered the water to one place. Today water is gathered to one place by gravity and in the polar ice caps. He could have done that by turning on the earth’s internal combustion and beginning the earth’s rotation.
He also produced vegetation. The phrase "according to their kinds or according to their various kinds is used three times. He does not create the plants at this time but rather calls on the earth to bring forth the plants. Were the seed already present or did He simply produce new kinds? Could this vegetation now survive in the environment described? What changes has science recorded at the beginning of the Recent Epoch and when did it begin?
The Recent, or Holocene, Epoch is the younger major subdivision of the Quaternary Period. After the last Pleistocene Epoch glaciation, an interglacial interval of warming followed, causing the glaciers to withdraw (see GLACIER AND GLACIATION; ICE AGES). This marked the beginning of the Recent Epoch. The rate of decay shown by radiocarbon (carbon 14) occurring in early Recent wood, peat, shells, and bones indicates that the Recent Epoch began approximately 10,000 years ago.
Striking changes in the flora took place as successive types of vegetation established themselves in the wake of the melting ice or in response to climatic change. Such vegetative changes influenced human and animal migration as well.
At this point you have water, dry ground, and light. Gen 2:5 there was no rain yet but there were springs to water the plants. Why does the author point this out? In the Bible, man is shown to work with plants in Gen 2:15, 3:17-19,23. When does science say that plants were first domesticated? Where was this? Grolier’s 1.
In MESOPOTAMIA, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq (see FERTILE CRESCENT), cultivation began in the 9th millennium BC. The wheel was invented, pulleys were used to draw water from artificial canals, and complex IRRIGATION systems were constructed. Mesopotamians raised wheat and other cereal grains; were skilled in gardening; and domesticated the camel, donkey, and horse.
4th Day…….sun, moon, stars
On the fourth day, God produced lights in the expanse of the sky. The Bible does not say that He created the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. It simply states that He produced the lights. The heavens along with the sun, the moon and the stars were created in the beginning (Gen 1:1). All of these lights are caused by fusion reactions either directly or by reflection (moon). How did these fusion reactions begin? For man to produce a fusion reaction, it takes a tremendous amount of energy in the form of heat to get it started. Man has not been able to join atoms and produce this heat in a cold fusion reaction. Some tremendous force had to have begun the processes. Can these processes be turned off? Can humans turn off lights? If they were turned off in our universe, what would happen? Could the lights have been present but covered by dust etc.?
5th Day……fish and birds
On the fifth day, God created the creatures of the sea and the birds. This creation was something from nothing meaning it was a new creation. What does according to its kind mean? This phrase is used twice referring to creatures of the sea and birds. Could it be that these creatures and birds or similar creatures and birds had already existed at an earlier time but in a different form?
6th Day…….animals and man
On the sixth day, God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." The phrase "according to their kinds is used five times. During this time does science record any changes on the earth? Is there evidence of mass extinctions just before Adam? What changed? What happened to the mammoths, mastodons, saber toothed tigers, camalids etc. 10000 years ago?
Change in many mammal species also occurred during the Recent Epoch. The large and diverse mammal fauna of the southwestern United States during the Pleistocene Epoch consisted of numerous large animals--MAMMOTHS, MASTODONS, SABER-TOOTHED CATS, ground SLOTHS, camels, dire wolves, horses, and lions, among others--all of which disappeared in Recent times. Some European extinctions, such as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave bear, and giant elk, may have been induced by humans, but this possibility has not been proved.
Was anything alive on earth when the Lord was hovering over the water ? No! Can science say without doubt that anything was alive on earth after the last ice age? Altogether, "According to their kinds" is used ten times. When does science say animals were domesticated?
During the PALEOLITHIC Penis EnlargementRIOD--from at least 2.5 million years ago to about 8000 BC--people hunted, fished, or gathered their food (see PREHISTORIC HUMANS). From about 11,000 to 8000 BC flint-edged wooden sickles were used to gather wild grains, which were stored in caves; about 9000 BC sheep were domesticated in the Near East. From approximately 8300 to 6500 BC, during the MESOLITHIC Penis EnlargementRIOD, groups of people began to practice natural plant husbandry by simply broadcasting seeds and waiting for the harvest. The only crude tool needed was a haft of bone, wood, or antler fitted with a microlith--a small, sharp blade of stone--for reaping grain. Dogs were the first animals to be tamed, usually to help in hunting. In the Near East such herd animals as goats, sheep, and cattle were domesticated.
Also on the sixth day God created man. "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." This is where science (archaeology and paleontology) appear to differ with the Bible. But does it? The first thing that must be done in comparing the two is to create a timeline. The Bible while it is an excellent historical record does not give dates for what occurred in Genesis. As a matter of fact, much of Genesis occurred in what is known as prehistory or prehistoric times. Science tells us that writing came into existence five thousand years ago or 3000 B.C. Everything in Genesis up to Abraham and possibly to Moses time was passed on by word of mouth or by divine revelation. Students of the Bible recognize the word "son" as meaning descendant, "father" as meaning ancestor, "brother" as meaning relative, and begat as meaning ancestor of. If taken literally there are several examples of generations being skipped or years lost. It was obviously not the exact number of years which was important to the Lord and therefore the authors of the Bible.
Missing generations
There were at least several generations intentionally left out of Jesus’ lineage in Matthew 1:1-17. Notable omissions are the three kings, Ahaziah, Jehoash (Joash), and Amaziah. Uzziah (Azariah)was not the son but rather the great-great-grandson of Joram (Jehoram). Matthew most probably had access to the lineage of Jesus, but was it necessary then or now to mention every single generation?
Determination of the timing of the genealogies in chapters 5 and 11 can not be exact because of the meaning of the term begat (ancestor of). For example in Gen. 12:4 Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Haran, and according to verse 32 Terah died when he was 205, which means that Abraham was born when his father was 130. So if Gen 11:26 says Terah lived 70 years, and begat Abram, Nahor and Haran, it cannot be that Abraham was born when Terah was 70 (Acts 7:4). It must refer to one of the other sons. Abraham was listed first out of dignity. In the same way Shem was listed first even though he was not the eldest.
In Gen 46:18 Zilpah is credited with bearing her great grandchildren. In Gen 46:25 Bilhah bore her grandchildren and in Gen 10:15-18 Canaan bore whole nations.
Most students of the Hebrew text believe the "fathers" in these genealogies are noted men of their times and were the patriarchs of large families. They reigned over more than one generation. If A is the ancestor and B is the descendant, then the age of A is his age at the birth of that child from whom B eventually descended.
At any rate the time of Adam probably is not before 10,000 B.C. and is probably before 6,000 BC which is the date many scientist attribute to the time of Adam when examining the Bible for historical content. It is useful to go forward in time and work back to Adam.
Archeology and the Bible
Archeology back to the time of Abraham 2000-3000 BC has been found to agree with the Bible in every instance. The only sites of Biblical importance that have not been found are Sodom and Gomorrah which were destroyed by God. They may be at the bottom of the Dead Sea. Archeologist for years thought that King David was a fictional character until a monument honoring him was found near Jerusalem in 1992.
Humanity spreads out and bricks are made.
Gen. 11:7. God causes man to change his language at Babel. "So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth". Science says that prehistoric humans were spread to all the world during the Recent Epoch about 10,000 years ago. 8th millennium BC.
The spread of PREHISTORIC HUMANS to all habitable parts of the globe took place mostly during Recent times.
Gen 11:5 They used brick to make the tower. Science says that bricks were first used in Palestine in the 8th to the 9th millennium BC. They appeared in Mesopotamia in the mid 6th millennium BC.
In Palestine, mud bricks (sun-dried) are first found in levels designated pre-pottery Neolithic A (8th-9th millennium BC) (Kenyon 1979: 26).
Sun-dried bricks first appear in Mesopotamia at Samarran sites Sawwan and Choga Mami (mid-6th millennium BC) (D. and J. Oates 1976: 104). Kiln-fired bricks are first noted during the late Uruk period and become more common in the Jatndet Nasr period toward the end of the fourth millennium (Finegan 1979: 8; Singer 1954: 462; cf Salonen
1972: 72ff).
Prehistoric cities
In Gen 10:8 the first cities which were built or rebuilt after the flood by Nimrod, a descendant of Ham, have been found and dug up to their prehistoric pasts (5th to 8th millennium BC).
Nimrud, on the east bank of the Tigris 31 km (19 mi) south of Mosul, Iraq, was the ancient Assyrian capital city of Kalhu, or Calah, in the Old Testament. Its name derives from the legendary Assyrian hunting hero Nimrod. The city was founded (c.1250 BC) by Shalmaneser I of Assyria on ruins that may predate the 3rd millennium BC.
Nineveh, the capital of ancient ASSYRIA, lies on the left bank of the Tigris River opposite present-day Mosul, Iraq. Prehistoric occupation of the site dates back to at least the 6th millennium BC.
Akkad was an early name for northern BABYLONIA, derived from the capital city of SARGON of Akkad (fl. c.2350 BC). For almost a century and a half Sargon and his successors dominated all of MESOPOTAMIA and at times held tributary lands situated to the east and west.
Sargon and his Akkadians were Semites. Their language (Old Akkadian) is the earliest written Semitic dialect known, and their religious and social institutions clearly set them apart from the people of Sumer to the south.
The ruins of Babylon (from Bab-ili, meaning "Gate of God"), the 2d-1st millennium BC capital of southern Mesopotamia (BABYLONIA), stand beside the Euphrates about 90 km (55 mi) south of modern Baghdad, Iraq. Occupied in prehistoric times but first mentioned in the late 3d millennium BC, the city became important when its AMORITE king HAMMURABI (r. 1792-50 BC) gained control of all southern Mesopotamia.
The ancient Sumerian city of Uruk (biblical Erech; modern Warka) lies 250 km (156 mi) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. First settled (c.5000 BC) by the prehistoric inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the city developed (late 4th millennium BC) around the two sacred centers of Kullab and Eanna, which have yielded such evidence of early Sumerian civilization as monumental temples (at Eanna) decorated with cone mosaics, sophisticated sculpture, glyptic art, and some examples of the first pictographic writing.
The ruins of Ur (modern Muqayyar), the ancient Sumerian capital and religious center that the Bible identifies as the early home of Abraham, lie about 300 km (187 mi) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, and about 15 km (9.4 mi) southwest of the Euphrates River, which once flowed past the city. Modern studies have produced evidence that prehistoric occupation of the site (5th millennium BC) was interrupted by a flood that was formerly believed to have been the one described in Genesis.
Ancient Megiddo, identified at the mound of Tell el-Muteselim on the Plain of Esdraelon in present-day Israel, was a major Canaanite city of northern Palestine. Mentioned in the annals of TutHydromaxosis III, it was the site of a great battle between the Egyptians and a Syrian confederation in 1486 BC.
Occupation levels date back to the 8th millennium BC.
Excavations at ancient Jericho, identified as Tell al-Sultan, 10 km (6 mi) north of the Dead Sea, have revealed remains of the oldest city yet discovered by archaeologists. The earliest occupation of the site, dating from the 10th millennium BC, consists of remains of the NATUFIAN culture and includes what may have been a shrine. During the 8th millennium BC the site was greatly expanded under a culture known as the Aceramic, or Prepottery Neolithic A, and a wall 5.2 m (17 ft) high was erected around it. On the west side were found remains of a round tower 7 m (23 ft) high, with an internal flight of steps.
Natufian is the name given an early prepottery Neolithic culture of the Levant dating from about 10,500 to 8500 BC. It was first identified (1928) in the valley of Wadi en Natuf in Israel. Major sites have since been found in many parts of Israel and Jordan and in Syria. The culture of the Natufians marks a significant break with Late Paleolithic cultures following the close of the Pleistocene Epoch.
Most have been found to have huge flood layers in prehistoric times. Halleys Bible Handbook.
Divided earth?
Gen 10:25. At about the same time, Peleg, a descendant of Shem, was born. Peleg means division. He was named this because in his time the earth was divided. Most Biblical scholars think this reference is to the division of tongues at the tower of Babel. Gen 11. However if you wish to take a literal interpretation of this verse, Britain was separated from the continental landmass after the mid 8th millennium BC.
Star Carr, the first adequately recorded MESOLITHIC site found in Great Britain, is located 8 km (5 mi) south of Scarborough, in Yorkshire, England. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the site was occupied during the mid-8th millennium BC, a period during which Britain was still connected to the continental landmass. This fact would account for the site's affinities with other Maglemosian assemblages of northern Europe.
The Flood
Gen 7:11. The flood during Noah’s time was passed down by word of mouth to many prehistoric cultures indicating the greatness of the event. Many sites around the world show evidence of a tremendous flood during the same period of time. Notable sites that are remarkably similar are at Ur, Kish, Fara, and Nineveh. All of these cities had layers of occupation followed by 5 to 8 feet of clean water laid clay, followed by further layers of prehistoric occupation.
Bronze age
In Gen 4:22 we find that a descendent of Cain, Tubal-Cain, forged tools out of bronze and iron. The Bronze Age up until a few years ago had been considered to begin about 2500 BC with the Egyptians. Now archeology tells us that bronze metallurgy was first practiced in the ore-rich highlands of eastern Anatolia, more than 10,000 years ago.
The Bronze Age is the stage of prehistoric cultural development when BRONZE, an alloy of copper and tin, first came into regular use in the manufacture of tools, weapons, and other objects. It marks the transition between the NEOLITHIC Penis EnlargementRIOD (a phase of the Stone Age), when stone tools and weapons were predominant, and the succeeding IRON AGE, when the large-scale use of various kinds of metals was introduced.
Metallurgy was first practiced in the ore-rich highlands of eastern Anatolia, more than 10,000 years ago. Initially, during what is termed the CHALCOLITHIC ("copper-stone") Period, metals such as copper were treated like stone and beaten into shape with stones. The earliest known artifacts produced by the SMELTING of copper date from about 3800 BC at the site of Tepe Yahya, Iran. The bronze produced there presumably resulted from an accidental blending of copper with other metals, thus forming a new mixture with better properties than copper alone.
Where exactly is eastern Anatolia? Turkey. In Gen 2:10 we find the Garden of Eden located at the headwaters of four rivers. Now certainly the geologic contours of this land has changed over the centuries but four rivers can still be found to drain the area of eastern Anatolia.
Turkey is an independent republic occupying a region, partly in Europe and partly in Asia, that has played a major role in world history as a bridge connecting East and West. European Turkey, known as eastern THRACE, is bounded on the north by the BLACK SEA and Bulgaria and on the west by the AEGEAN SEA and Greece. It is separated from Asian Turkey (ANATOLIA or Asia Minor) by the BOSPORUS, the Sea of MARMARA, and the DARDANELLES Strait. Anatolia is bounded on the north by the Black Sea; on the east by Georgia, Armenia, and Iran; on the south by Iraq, Syria, and the Mediterranean Sea; and on the west by the Aegean Sea.
The eastern highlands are dotted with peaks reaching elevations of 3,000-4,500 m (10,000-15,000 ft) and surrounded by high lava-covered plateaus. The highest of the peaks is Mount ARARAT (Agri Dagi; 5,122 m/16,804 ft), in the extreme east. Vast stretches of the highlands consist of barren waste. Lake VAN is a large salt lake with underground connections to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, whose headwaters rise in the nearby mountains.
Farming
Gen 1-2. With Adam after the first sin man is introduced to farming. Gen 3-17. Also God gave Adam livestock, the first domesticates. Gen 1:24. Archeology tells us that about 10,000 years ago man domesticated plants and animals. This occurred in western Asia.
In MESOPOTAMIA, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq (see FERTILE CRESCENT), cultivation began in the 9th millennium BC. The wheel was invented, pulleys were used to draw water from artificial canals, and complex IRRIGATION systems were constructed. Mesopotamians raised wheat and other cereal grains; were skilled in gardening; and domesticated the camel, donkey, and horse.
Already in late prehistoric times, occupation by cave dwellers in various subregions set the stage for Anatolia's emergence as a center of the agricultural revolution identified with the Neolithic Period. Villages and towns of this era appear at Siirt, Diyerbakir, and Urfa (southeastern Anatolia); Tarsus and Mersin in the Cilician Plain; the Amuq Plain; CATALHUYUK (southeast of Konya); Hacilar (southwestern Anatolia); and Suberde (southwest of Konya). The 13-ha (32-acre) site at Catal Huyuk (c.7000-5600 BC) has produced outstanding artifacts revealing it as a metalworking, specialized-craft, and religious center.
In some areas humans adapted in a markedly different way to the end of the glaciation. Rather than diversifying their use of resources, as the Mesolithic people of the northern woodlands were doing, they focused their attention on a few reliable resources. The land to the east of the Mediterranean was one such area with evidence of this new orientation. Here some populations began to concentrate on exploiting wild sheep and goats and a few species of wild grasses that produced edible seeds. Gradually, as revealed in the archaeological record, a mutual dependence developed between the human populations and the animals and plants they exploited and protected. The favored species, breeding under human protection, became modified so that they could not have survived without it. The humans, in turn, living in permanent settlements near the resources they exploited and tended, could not easily revert to nomadic hunting. The people had become farmers, and the animals and plants, domesticates.
Western Asia is the best-known, and perhaps the earliest, center of domestication.
Man
The Bible says that man was created (bara - something from nothing) on the sixth day Gen 1:26. Evolution says that man slowly evolved from primates beginning 65 million years ago through several species reaching modern man about 10,000 years ago.
Since the discovery at Cro-Magnon, additional human skeletons have been found at a number of European sites, including GRIMALDI, Italy; Chancelade, France; and DOLNI VESTONICE and Predmost, in the Czech Republic. These human remains do not differ significantly from those discovered at Cro-Magnon, and this name is now generally employed in referring to all such anatomically modern humans found in Europe and the Middle East, from their rather sudden appearance about 40,000-30,000 years ago to the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, some 10,000 years ago.
In contrast to the earlier NEANDERTALERS, the Cro-Magnons, who are classified as Homo sapiens sapiens, possessed such modern human features as higher, more vertical foreheads--indicating a modern configuration of the frontal lobes of the brain--reduced brow ridges, smaller faces and teeth, and a chin.
The anatomy of these early modern humans was not identical, however, to that of present Europeans in all respects. Their skeletons show greater muscularity, suggesting they were employed in much more strenuous activities than those of most modern peoples, and among the skeletal finds skull features vary considerably. At the Czechoslovakian site of Predmost, for example, where some 20 skeletons were excavated from a common grave, certain skeletal remains are clearly modern in appearance, but others possess features very similar to those of the Neandertalers.
The Neandertalers (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) were a widespread subspecies of PREHISTORIC HUMANS that inhabited Europe and parts of Asia and North Africa from about 125,000 to about 40,000 years ago, immediately prior to the appearance of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) throughout the world.
Until recently, this is where evolution and the Bible parted company. There is simply no way that the Biblical creation and that part of science known as human evolution can be analyzed and shown to be able to coexist. Then in 1997, scientist analyzing the DNA of a Neandertaler revealed something remarkable; Neandertalers are in no way related to any modern humans. The chain which for years was taught in schools and universities to millions of students and illustrated in countless charts showing the progression from apelike creatures (homo erectus) through various stages to neanderthal, cro-magnon, and finally modern man has finally been scientifically destroyed.
Neanderthals-the brawny enigmas who mysteriously disappeared 30,000 years ago after coexisting with modern humans in Europe for tens of thousands of years-were not close relatives or even ancestral forms of existing people, a new study has found.
Instead, unprecedented DNA tests on a famous Neanderthal skeleton indicate that the creatures were almost certainly a separate species that contributed little, and probably nothing, to the present human gene pool.
Utilizing revolutionary DNA technologies, the oldest tie to prehistoric man only goes back 10,000 years.
Using DNA from a tooth, scientists at Oxford University have established a blood tie between a 9000 year-old skeleton known as Cheddar Man and Adrian Targett, an English school teacher. Targett lives in the town of Cheddar, just a half-mile from the cave where the bones were found. It is the longest human lineage ever traced.
"They would have shared a common ancestor 10,000 years ago," said Bryan Sykes, leader of the research team, "so they are related, just not very closely."
To scientists the Bible is accurate in every instance recorded except for the creation of life. But has science proved that anything was alive during the time the Biblical creation occurred? No! The longest unimpeachable incidence found on the entire earth for continuing life is the bristlecone pine tree at 8700 years (6700 B.C.).
Analyzing core samples from living pines and preserved wood from longdead trees, researchers have developed a bristlecone pine tree-ring chronology dating back some 8,700 years.
The age of a living bristlecone pine is determined by using a hand-operated drill (increment borer) to remove a core of growth that can be microscopically examined to determine the width of the annual rings. Carbon-14 dating is also used on this material, although different results may be obtained.
The next section will show why the earth was formless and void.
Ice Age
In comparing what science says to the Bible, the last fact in this reverse chronology that can be examined is before the time of the Lords work in Gen 1:3. Gen 1:1. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." The bible says that the earth was formless and empty (there was no order, chaos, nothing was alive), it was dark, there was water which the spirit of God was hovering over.
Science approximately ten thousand years ago records the end of the last ice age.
The Recent, or Holocene, Epoch is the younger major subdivision of the Quaternary Period. After the last Pleistocene Epoch glaciation, an interglacial interval of warming followed, causing the glaciers to withdraw (see GLACIER AND GLACIATION; ICE AGES). This marked the beginning of the Recent Epoch. The rate of decay shown by radiocarbon (carbon 14) occurring in early Recent wood, peat, shells, and bones indicates that the Recent Epoch began approximately 10,000 years ago.
What was the earth like before the last ice age and what was it like after the last ice age? Remember, before the last ice age we had a far different population of creatures and vegetation inhabiting the earth including mammoths, mastodons, and cro-magnon man. Research has shown that temperatures in tropical regions were below zero for a long time. In a presentation given in the Rayburn House Office Building on September 18, 1995, Dr. Lonnie G. Thompson (Ohio St University) and Dr. Michael Bender (University of Rhode Island) presented some impressive findings.
Dr. Thompson's work focuses on the climate record from tropical and subtropical glaciers. He and his colleagues have drilled and analyzed ice cores from the high mountains of Huascaran, Peru. These cores provide the very first tropical record of global and tropical climate change extending back 20,000 years. Their results show that glacial temperatures at high elevations in the tropics during the peak of the Earth's last ice age were 8o to 12o C. cooler than today. Previously, scientific results, based upon the record of climate change from tropical marine sediment cores, that suggested temperatures in the tropics varied little between an ice age and a period of global warming. However, these new data indicate that the tropical Atlantic was probably 5o to 6o C. cooler during the last ice age.
Converting to the Fahrenheit scale(deg F=9/5 deg C+32); the tropical Atlantic was probably 122-140 degrees F cooler than today. Since the average annual temperature for various parts of Peru range from 65-77 degrees F, the Ice Age conditions must have been uninhabitable. Unless the world shifted on it’s axis, the more temperate areas would have been even colder. Scientists can give no reasonable explanation for why these fluctuations occurred.
Some trigger mechanism, most likely from outside the Earth or its atmosphere, affecting the climate seems to be necessary. Solar energy intensities have not yet been found to vary sufficiently to have single-handedly produced an ice age, but solar activity as expressed in sunspots and radio blackouts on an 11-year cycle has been shown to relate to short-term fluctuations in the Earth's climate. Longer cycles are currently being sought by statistical means.
Then the earth went from a land that was uninhabitable to an earth of present day plants and animals and man in the space of a few centuries. The animals and plants and humanoids before this time were of a different type. We will never know for sure what the earth was like 10 to 12 thousand years ago, but science does know:
1) It was cold (no light?). Can science prove there was light at this time?
2) It was covered with water (ice). Temperatures in the tropical Atlantic were 122-140 degrees F less than the present.
The continental glaciers became very thick. Today more than half of the Antarctic ice sheet is more than 2,500 m (8,200 ft) thick; in central Greenland the ice is 2,000 m (6,600 ft) thick in most places. These have been measured by two drill holes, by seismic (wave) sounding, by radio-echo sounding, and by precise gravity measurements. Thickness has also been calculated by using a formula involving primarily the temperature of the basal ice and the slippage at the bottom. Similar calculations applied to the much larger Pleistocene ice sheets indicate that these were over 3,000 m (10,000 ft) thick in North America and 2,500 m (8,200 ft) thick in Europe. These thicknesses are independently confirmed by the isotopic ratios of oxygen, which differ between rainfall and snowfall ice; the oxygen isotopes of microfossil sediments that fell to the seafloor during the colder stages of Quaternary time indicate that the thickness of the ice averaged 2,500 m (8,200 ft) much of the time.
3) And science can not prove that anything was alive at that time. At least 99.9 percent of the species that have ever lived are now extinct.
Approximately 2 million different species of organisms are now living, but it is estimated that at least 99.9 percent of the species that have ever lived are now extinct and that some 2 billion species have evolved during the past 600 million years.
The Bible record matches the archaeological record all the way back to the first two chapters of Genesis and provides an unimpeachable record for creation in Gen 1:1. The Bible was written by ancient people without the virtue of modern science. Why should modern man question the first two chapters when it is correct thereafter? As we shall see, evolution requires much more faith.
Formation of our universe and earth. "In the Beginning"…
Science tells us that our universe was smaller than a grain of mustard seed 10.7 billion years ago. This "singularity" was infinitely dense as well as infinitely small and consisted of pure energy. Then a process called the big bang occurred in which all of this matter exploded beginning the history of the universe and which they calculate is still progressing. If I had to imagine how God created our universe, I believe that I would say as in Gen 1:1 that He created something from nothing and the story of the big bang would not be to far off. Matt 13:31, Mark, Luke.
After the big bang the question of how our earth was formed and how it came to its’ current position should be addressed. Was this just a random act? Why have none of the planets in our solar system or others shown any properties such as ours necessary for life. What are the odds that a planet like earth would have randomly occurred?
Distribution of elements. Hydrogen, oxygen and carbon are the essential elements for life. Earth is the only body found with anything close to sufficient amounts of these elements to produce life. If during the process of nucleosynthesis, anything would have happened even slightly differently, we could not exist. The timing had to be perfect.
Existence of gases. Earth for some reason had not yet expelled gases contained in the core at the time of massive solar winds produced by the sun. Therefore when volcanic activity started, the earth had the ingredients to form an atmosphere.
Distance from the sun. Venus is only 30% closer to the sun than earth, but the surface temperature average is 500 degrees C. The earth’s path around the sun only varies by 3%. If it was seven percent, water vapor could not condense. No other observed bodies have such a perfect orbit.
UV radiation. In order for life to occur, the earth must be close enough to absorb heat from the sun. However at this distance, UV radiation would kill all life. Radiation striking oxygen to produce ozone which shields the earth allows life to be sustained. Science tells us that the early earth had no free oxygen in which to produce ozone. Oxygen was produced by the first plants.
Magnetic field. Without a magnetic field, earth would be exposed to lethal doses of cosmic radiation. This field is produced by the movement of the earth’s molten core. Scientists can not explain the cause of the field.
There are many more significant things which had to happen in the formation of earth in order to create life. While there are billions of other stars with billions of other planets, the odds that a sequence of events happening to produce a habitable planet are beyond human calculation.
Has our sun been burning for 4.65 billion years? If so the sun would have been so large so as to absorb Mercury and Venus and prohibit life as we know it on earth. Also the sun and stars are composed mainly of hydrogen. During the fusion reaction, two hydrogen atoms are fused to produce helium and heat. If the universe is truly over 10 billion years old, we should have almost all helium. However the universe is composed of almost all hydrogen.
Science Vs. Science: How science has discredited itself .
The evolution of evolution
A brief discussion of how evolution is supposed to work.
In the 1890`s Darwin formed his Theory on the origin of the species. At that time the documented fossil record was incomplete (as it remains today). Up until this time scholars thought the earth was about 6000 years old. Darwin and other scientists realized that many species had traits in common. Darwin theorized that if species were able to change over time (some good, some bad), then the changes that proved to be advantageous would cause the recipients of the changes to thrive (natural selection). Scientists later attributed the cause of these changes to genetic mutations. They further realized that millions of years would be needed for this process to occur. Therefore they set out to prove the earth was very old. Along the way many sub-theories have been postulated and disproved. Simplistically, the following describes where most evolutionists now stand. Most agree that spontaneous generation occurred and then ?.
Spontaneous Generation. Inorganic matter magically forms organic matter in a primordial soup. DNA and other long chain amino acids are able to form against all odds.
Gradual evolution. Slow steady changes over millions of years through mutations and natural selection brings about new species. Over the years most scientists realized this was not what happened and have disavowed it.
Punctuated Equilibrium. Thousands of years of stasis followed by a remarkable change (positive mutations) followed by another period of stasis.
Neither? Almost as many theories have been proposed as there are species alive today. Most are based on a form of gradual or punctuated.
What exactly has been found in the fossil record?
One hundred and twenty years after Darwin developed his theory not one "link" has come to light. In fact as more research is done, more gaps seem to appear in the chain and more questions are posed. Of course, a scientist without a question to answer can be described in one word; unemployed.
The fossil record seems to have revealed a series of global catastrophes which has appeared to essentially destroy most if not all life, followed by different or new species appearing magically. The two most popular of these periods are the destruction of the dinosaurs and the last ice age when mastodons etc. were destroyed. There is no species which can be traced for millions of years of change. They live and then they die.
Unanswered questions for the evolutionist.
1. How can life ever have begun from nonliving matter? Amino acids can not join in the presence of oxygen. If there was no oxygen, there would be no ozone layer and UV radiation would kill any life. Further, long chain amino acids cannot be formed in water.
2. What came first. The enzyme or DNA? Specific enzymes are needed in order to replicate DNA. However the instructions for making these enzymes are located on the DNA.
3. Why are there no primitive cells either today or in the fossil record?
PRIMATIVE CELL? J. MONOD........ we have no idea what the structure of a primitive cell might have been. The simplest living system known to us, the bacterial cell .... in .... its overall chemical plan is the same as that for all other living beings. It employs the same genetic code and the same mechanism of translation as do for example, human cells. Thus the simplest cells available to us for study have nothing 'primitive' about them .... no vestiges of truly primitive structures are discernible. " .
SOURCE OF INFORMATION??? CARL SAGAN Cornell, "The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10 to the 12th power bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica."
RICHARD DAWKINS, Oxford, "Some species of the unjustly called primitive' amoebas have as much information in their DNA as 1000 Encyclopedia Britannicas.
CELL? MICHAEL DENTON Molecular Biologist (Agnostic), "To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the portholes of a vast space ship, opening closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.... Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which functional protein or gene - is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man?"
4. What are the statistical odds that a primitive cell could be formed randomly? Again, scientists say the solar system is 4.6 billion years old. They say life began 3.5 billion years ago. Therefore it took 1.1 billion years to randomly form life. The simplest protein molecule of the simplest primitive cell has 400 linked amino acids, each composed of 4-5 chemical elements. If only 100 elements are considered, the odds of these elements randomly coming together to form a single protein are 1 in 10 to the 158 power. There are only 10 to the 80 power electrons in the universe! If you had one billion attempts per second, for thirty billion years to make a 100 amino acid protein, the odds of success is 1 in 10 to the 53 power. The probability of chance formation of the DNA for a simple self replicating organism has been calculated at 1 in 10 to the 167,636 power. What about the odds of forming a brain?
5. Where did the variety of life found in the Cambrian period (500-570 million years ago) come from? Life went from simple worm like creatures to all the major animal groups in a period of zero to ten million years.
6. Why have no new Phyla been produced in 500 million years? Why were they all produced at one time?
STEPHEN GOULD, Harvard,"…one outstanding fact of the fossil record that many of you may not be aware of, that since the so called Cambrian explosion ... during which essentially all the anatomical designs of modem multicellular life made their first appearance in the fossil record, no new Phyla of animals have entered the fossil record.", Speech at SNW, Oct.2, 1990
RICHARD MONASTERSKY, Earth Science Ed., Science News, "The remarkably complex forms of animals we see today suddenly appeared ... this moment, right at the start of the Earth's Cambrian Period…marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the seas with the earth's first complex creatures....'This is Genesis material,' gushed one researcher .... demonstrates that the large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian and that they were as distinct from each other as they are today ... a menagerie of clam cousins, sponges, segmented worms, and other invertebrates that would seem vaguely familiar to any scuba diver."
RICHARD DAWKINS, Cambridge, "JM we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists .... the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation......
H.S. LADD, UCLA, "Most paleontologists today give little thought to fossiliferous rocks
older than the Cambrian, thus ignoring the most important missing link of all. Indeed the
missing PreCambrian record cannot properly he described as a link for it is in reality,
of life: the first ninetenths."
Penis EnlargementRCY E. RAYMOND, Prof of Paleontology, Harvard, "It is evidence that the oldest Cambrian fauna is diversified and not so simple, perhaps, as the evolutionists would hope to find it. Instead of being composed chiefly of protozoa’s, it contains no representatives of that phylum but numerous members of seven higher groups are present, a fact which shows that the greater part of the major differentiation of animals had already taken place in those ancient times."
7. Assuming we did evolve from nothing, how did sexual reproduction begin? Two totally compatible beings had to evolve at the same time in the same place with all systems functioning or one being had to split into two compatible beings ready to function!
8. Why do species appear completely developed and stay that way?
CHANGE PREVENTED, S. M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins Univ. "Once established, an average species of animal or plant will not change enough to be regarded as a new species, even after surviving for something like a hundred thousand or a million, or even ten million generations... Something tends to prevent the wholesale restructuring of a species, once it has become well established on earth."
VARIATION, NOT IMPROVEMENT, STEPHEN T. GOULD, HARVARD, We can tell tales of improvement for some groups, but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than a saga of accumulating excellence.
CONFESSION, CHARLES DARWIN, "There are two or three million species on earth. A sufficient field one might think for observation; but it must be said today that in spite of all the evidence of trained observers, not one change of the species to another is on record."
CHARLES DARWIN, "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 break down."
9. How have mutations created the variety of life we see today? Over 99 percent of induced mutations are defects. No mutant has ever been observed that crossed the line to another species.
PROFESSOR G.G. SIMPSON, one of the elite spokesmen for evolution, writes about multiple, simultaneous mutations and reports that the mathematical likelihood of getting good evolutionary results would occur only once in 274 billion years. That is assuming 100 million individuals reproducing a new generation every day. "Obviously such a process has played no part whatever in evolution."
MICHEL DELSOL, PROF. OF BIOLOGY, UNIV. OF LYONS, "If mutation were a variation of value to the species, then the evolution of drosophila should have proceeded with extreme rapidity. Yet the facts entirely contradict the validity of this theoretical deduction; for we have seen that the Drosophila type has been known since the beginning of the Tertiary period, that is for about fifty million years, and it has not been modified in any way during that time."
10. How can evolution explain symbiotic relationships?
11. How did the first life form defy the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. All things tend toward chaos. Disintegration of an organic compound is much more likely than random formation.
12. Where are all the people? Science says that man has been on the earth for 2.5 million years. Population statisticians have calculated that if man has been here for one million years and considering wars, famines, disease, a 45 year life span and conservative reproduction (2.5 children), there should be 10 to the 5000 power people on earth today. The known universe would only hold 10 to the 100 power people. Using the same statistics, in 6000 to 8000 years you would have 5 billion people.
13. Where are the precursors to winged creatures? There should be fossilized creatures that are similar to birds, bats, and insects without the advanced ability to fly.
Additional quotes from scientists.
Yet even the staunchest supporters of "Out of Africa" (a theory which says all modern humans evolved from Africa millions of years ago) concede that the issue is still unresolved. As Ian Tattersall, an evolutionary biologist and head of the anthropology department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, explains, "The emergence of Homo sapiens is
still the really big mystery in human evolution."
MUTATIONS IRREVELANT, STEPHEN T. GOULD, Harvard, "A mutation doesn't produce major new raw material. You don't make a new species by mutating the species. ...That's a common idea people have; that evolution is due to random mutations. A mutation is NOT the cause of evolutionary change." Lecture at Hobart and William Smith College, 14/2/1980
TEXTBOOK EVOLUTION DEAD, STEPHEN. T GOULD Harvard, "I we] I remember how the synthetic theory beguiled me with its unifying power when I was a graduate student in the mid -1960's. Since then I have been watching it slowly unravel as a universal description of evolution ... I have been reluctant to admit it - since beguiling is often forever - but if Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory is accurate, then that theory as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy." .
IMPLICATIONS OF INTEGRITY, FRANCIS CRICK, "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."
SEPARATE LIVING KINDS, STEPHEN JAY GOULD, Harvard, "Our modem phyla represent designs of great distinctness, yet our diverse world contains nothing in between sponges, corals, insects, snails, sea urchins, and fishes (to choose standard representatives of the most prominent phyla)."
SEPARATE FOSSIL KINDS, Valentine (U. CA) & Erwin (NH St.), "If we were to expect to find ancestors to, or intermediates between higher taxa, it would be the rocks of the late Precambrian to Ordovician times, when the bulk of the worlds higher animal taxa evolved. Yet traditional alliances are unknown or unconfirmed for any of the phyla or classes appearing then." .
"TREES" NOT FROM FOSSILS, S. J. GOULD, Harvard, "The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of the fossils."
STORY TIME, COLIN PATTERSON, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Nat. History, "You say I should at least show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived. l will lay it on the line-there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." "It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another. ... But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test. ... I don't think we shall ever have any access to any form of tree which we can call factual."
UNRELATED LOOKALIKES, J.Z. YOUNG, Prof of Anatomy, Oxford, "....similar features repeatedly appear in distinct lines. ...Parallel evolution is so common that it is almost a rule that detailed study of any group produces a confused taxonomy. Investigators are unable to distinguish populations that are parallel new developments from those truly descended from each other."
INTERPRETATION OF SIMILARITY, T.H. MORGAN Prof Zoology, Columbia, Univ., "If, then, it can be established beyond dispute that similarity or even identity of the same character in different species is not always to be interpreted to mean that both have arisen from a common ancestor, the whole argument from comparative anatomy seems to tumble in ruins."
NONGENETIC SIMILARITY, SIR GAVIN DEBEER, Prof. Embry., U. London, Director BathmateNH, "It is now clear that the pride with which it was assumed that the inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor explained homology was misplaced; for such inheritance cannot be ascribed to identity of genes. The attempt to find homologous genes has been given up as hopeless."
BOTHERSOM DISTRESS, STEPHEN J. GOULD, Harvard, Lecture at Hobart & William Smith College, 14/2/1980. "Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome .... brings terrible distress. ...They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don’t change, its not evolution so you don’t talk about it."
DESIGNS, S.J. GOULD, Harvard, "We can tell tales of improvement for some groups, but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than a saga of accumulating excellence .... I regard the failure to find a clear 'vector of progress' in life's history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record .... we have sought to impose a pattern that we hoped to find on a world that does not really display it."
DARWIN'S BIGGEST PROBLEM, "....innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? .... why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory".
MORE EMBARRASSING, DAVID M. RAUP, Univ. Chicago; Chicago Field Mus. of N.H., "The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would.... Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. ...ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as the result of more detailed information."
GOOD RECORD-BAD PREDICTION, NELES ELIDRIDGE, Columbia Univ., American Museum of Nat. Hist., "He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search. ... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong."
THE HORSE "STORY", COLIN PATTERSON, Senior Paleontologist British Museum of Natural History, "There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of the history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff."
STORY TIME OVER, DEREK AGER, Univ. at Swansea, Wales, "It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student ... have now been 'debunked’. Similarly, my own experience of more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineage's among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved them equally elusive."
REPTILE TO BIRD W.E. SWINTON, "The origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved."
ORDERS, CLASSES, & PHYLA, GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON, Harvard, "Gaps among known species are sporadic and often small. Gaps among known orders, classes, and phyla are systematic and almost always large. "
GENUINE KNOWLEDGE, D.B. KITTS, University of Oklahoma, "Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "seeing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them... The 'fact that discontinuities are almost always and systematically present at the origin of really big categories' is an item of genuinely historical knowledge."
NOT ONE ! D. S. WOODROF'F, Univ. of CA, San Diego, "But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition."
EVIDENCE A MATTER OF FAITH, A.C. SEWARD, Cambridge, "The theoretically primitive type eludes our grasp; our faith postulates its existence but the type fails to materialize."
"WE KNEW BETTER", NILES ELDREDGE, Columbia Univ., American Museum Of Natural History, "And it has been the paleontologist my own breed who have been most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality: .... We paleontologist have said that the history of life supports that interpretation [gradual adaptive change], all the while knowing that it does not."
"UNEMBARRASSED", GOULD & ELDREDGE, "In fact, most published commentary on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had previously been simply embarrassing; 'all these years of work and I haven t found any evolution. (R.A. REYMENT Quoted) "The occurrences of long sequences within species are common in boreholes and it is possible to exploit the statistical properties of such sequences in detailed biostratigraphy. It is noteworthy that gradual, directed transitions from one species to another do not seem to exist in borehole samples of microorganisms." (H.J. MACGILLAVRY Quoted) "During my work as an oil paleontologist I had the opportunity to study sections meeting these rigid requirements. As an ardent student of evolution, moreover, I was continually on the watch for evidence of evolutionary change. ...The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. These species appear in the section (first occurrence) without obvious ancestors in underlying beds, and are stable once established."
PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM, S.M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins U. "The record now reveals that species typically survive for a hundred thousand generations, or even a million or more, without evolving very much. We seem forced to conclude that most evolution takes place rapidly ... a punctuational model of evolution ... operated by a natural mechanism whose major effects are wrought exactly where we are least able to study them in small, localized, transitory populations. ...The point here is that if the transition was typically rapid and the population small and localized, fossil evidence of the event would never be found."
PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM? COLIN PATTERSON, British Mus. of N. H., "Well, it seems to me that they have accepted that the fossil record doesn't give them the support they would value so they searched around to find another model and found one. ...When you haven’t got the evidence, you make up a story that will fit the lack of evidence. "
INAPPLICABLE TO "KINDS", Valentine (Univ. of CA) & Erwin (MI St. Univ), "We conclude that ... neither of the contending theories of evolutionary change at the species level, phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibrium, seem applicable to the origin of new body plans. "
PALEONTOLOGY DOES NOT PROVE EVOLUTION, D.B. KITTS, University of Oklahoma, "The claim is made that paleontology provides a direct way to get at the major events of organic history and that, furthermore, it provides a means of testing evolutionary theories .... the paleontologist can provide knowledge that cannot be provided by biological principles alone. But he cannot provide us with evolution."
DON'T USE THE FOSSELS, MARK RIDLEY, Oxford, "...a lot of people just do not know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the fossil record. ...In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation."
FOSSELS INDICATE CREATION! E.J.H. CORNOR, Cambridge "Much evidence can be adduced in favor of the Theory of Evolution from Biology, Biogeography, and Paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation."
The homo sapiens who inhabit this earth at this point in time are an extremely lucky species. The Bible is filled with stories of people who had a hard time believing in God and then later in Jesus. In the Old Testament, people worshipped pagan gods and had more faith in them than in the one true God. Then God’s chosen people, the Jews, had a hard time accepting his Son. Even two thousand years later many Jews are still waiting for their Messiah.
Today people are no different than those found in the Bible. There are those who are believers and those who are not. Then there are those who are faithful and those who are not. The Biblical writers foretold of these things. However, due to the sacrifice of God’s Son on the cross we have the ability to be saved. This process starts with the education of the individual. Education is the engine which drives faith. The problem facing homo sapiens today is the quality and amount of education received by the majority of people and how this education influences their faith.
There are many who only hear the old sad theories developed by Darwin and his contemporaries. Some make sense such as natural selection (survival of the fittest). Mutations are a fact of life and are well documented (although positive mutations are almost impossible to document). However to attribute the development of all life as we know it to these phenomenon is a farce. Spontaneous generation is at best a fairy tale. As can be seen by the above quotes, many of the leaders in the fields of evolution, paleontology, microbiology etc. are convinced evolution as proposed simply doesn’t work. The question should be why are these unproved theories still taught (many of which have been totally disproved) and how long will the charade continue?
The short answer as to why is money, and as to how long it will continue is however long scientists in these fields are required to eat. As stated earlier the one absolute requirement for a scientist is to have a question or a problem. If the question or problem is definitively answered, then he better have another ready to be answered. In the field of evolution however, the dissemination of faulty information has far reaching and long lasting consequences. The possibility of destroying the faith of some poor souls simply to make a living might be compared to selling ones soul to the devil. As well the Biblical warnings against false prophets take on all new meanings.
The responsibility for a Biblical education falls on Christians and the Church. On a level playing field studious people can normally see the truths of the Bible and what is expected of them. When the field is tilted by a theory which at the start precludes divine creation, the opportunity for a Biblical education may also be precluded. If the Bible is truly studied, then faith will be developed as a matter of course. It should not have to compete with a mercurial process such as scientific method; once defeated it simply re-theorizes and attacks again carrying the exalted banner of SCIENCE at the front. Christians should not have to worry until the scientific community unanimously proclaims the LAW of evolution. And that day will never come!
The Book was written between nineteen hundred and over five thousand years ago by authors who knew not science from Adam’s off ox. The Words contained therein are as true today as they were then. They are unimpeachable. Some of the most cunning and devious minds the world has produced have tried to perjure those pages and have failed. Anyone can study them and find the way to a satisfying life and a home in heaven. The amount of faith required is much less than for evolutionists.
Sir Julian Huxley, one of histories’ leading proponants of evolution computed the odds of the process of natural selection being able to produce a horse with the benifit of every favorable evolutionary factor. All computations were based on chance development through the operation of nature, time, mutation, and natural selection. In his book Evolution in Action, Huxley gave the odds this way:
"The figure 1 with three million naughts after it; and that would take three large volumes of about 500 pages each, just to print!…No one would bet on anything so improbable happening; and yet it has happened."
Dr. George Wald, Nobel Prize winner of Harvard University, states it as cryptically and honestly as an evolutionist can:
"One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are - as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation."
Now those are two examples of faith; unfounded and misdirected faith. What might their thoughts be if only a small amount of their research time had been spent in Bible study.
