Creationism or Evolution?

The two most popular explanations for the origin of man are; 1. Creation – the idea that we were created by an all-powerful God and 2. Evolution – the idea that life was formed accidentally by an interaction of pre-existing elements. Evolutionists reject the idea of an all-powerful God because they say the idea is unscientific. Facts, they say, must be observable by the senses. And since God cannot be brought into the lab for examination, He is not even considered as a possibility. Ironically, evolution is not observable by the senses.

Creationists, on the other hand, contend that belief in an all-powerful God is consistent with scientific principles. We can know that God exists even though we cannot see or touch Him? To illustrate my point, consider radio waves. We believe they exist, and yet we cannot see or touch them. And we believe it because the evidence allows for no other conclusion. We turn on our cell phones and we can talk to people hundreds of miles away. Thus, we can know that radio waves exist even if we cannot see or touch them.

Similarly, we can know that God exists because the evidence allows for no other conclusion. For instance, we can infer the following from the Second Law of Thermodynamics: (1) Natural processes always tend toward disorder, (2) the simple will never produce the complex and, (3) the universe is running down. Nothing has been observed to break this law. The Theory of Evolution would require us to believe that observable laws of nature are false. If the universe is running down (stars burning out), that would make the universe finite. Anything finite had a beginning. And anything with a beginning, needs a cause. Consequently, the universe could not have always been here.

If, as some say, all we have is nature, then time as we know it would be eternal. Thus, all finite processes, or any series of finite processes, should have been completed in the past. This would be true no matter how far back in time that you went. And that is because any finite process requires a day one. And there is no day one. So, for us to exist here and now is not natural. And yet we do exist here and now. Therefore, the cause of our existence must be supernatural. Our name for that supernatural cause is God. We think of this God as an intelligent being because there is logical detail in His creation.

Evolution is represented as a fact in many of our schools. However, it is nothing more than a theory. A close examination of this theory reveals several problems. We are told that at one time our planet was a molten mass. After it cooled down, a variety of complex and delicately balanced ecosystems consisting of tens of thousands of species of land and sea animals, plants, and bacteria were formed by chance. All this supposedly evolved from a burnt rock, which is all the earth would have been once it cooled down. Of course, all of this raises a question; if life could come into existence by chance chemical reactions, why can’t the process be repeated in the laboratory with deliberate actions, millions of dollars, and the brightest minds?

But what about the fossil record, isn’t that evidence of evolution? The fossil record actually creates problems for the theory of evolution. The biggest problem is the absence of any transitional forms. Transitional forms are not important to evolution – transitional forms are evolution. No transitional forms, means no evolution! So, what is a transitional form? We are told that evolution takes millions of years. Consequently, if a fish were to evolve into a land animal there would be billions of variations along the way. Each of these variations would be a transitional form. But as I said previously, there are no transitional forms in the fossil record. Even in the earliest fossil layers we find completed, complex life forms, such as clams, snails, jellyfish, sponges, worms, etc. No one has been able to find fossilized ancestors for a single one of them.

Another problem arises when we realize that even the so-called "simple" life forms are not really simple. Today we know that a cell is one of the most complex structures known to man. In a book titled "The Evidence for Creation" by Dr. G.S. McLean, Roger Oakland and Larry McLean, we find the following on page 113:

The cell has turned out to be a micro universe containing trillions of molecules. These molecules are the structural building blocks for countless complex structures performing chains of complex biochemical reactions with precision… a single cell surrounded by a cellular membrane exhibits the same degree of complexity as a city with all of its systems of operation, communication and government. There are power plants that generate the cell’s energy, factories that produce enzymes and hormones essential for life, complex transportation systems that guide specific chemicals from one location to another and membrane proteins that act as barricades controlling the import and export of materials across the cellular membrane.

In the nucleus of every cell is the DNA. DNA contains millions of bits of coded information – information necessary for the building and development of our bodies. The inner workings of our DNA is highly complex. Is it not reasonable to conclude that something this complex had an intelligent designer?

Within the human body there are several irreducibly complex systems. That is, systems that would not function if they were any simpler. One example is our digestive system. Microvilli, which line the intestines, are microscopic bristles that somewhat resemble the bristles of a hairbrush. The spaces between the bristles are wide enough to allow nutrients to pass through to be absorbed and digested. However, the spaces are narrow enough to block the passage of bacteria, bacteria that would kill you if they were allowed to pass. This in itself, refutes the theory of evolution, which contends that when a need presents itself, the body adapts by gradually changing (evolving) over millions of years. In this case millions of years would be too long. As soon as the deadly bacteria appeared, the body would have minutes to hours to design and evolve a system to block them. Failure to do so would result in immediate extinction. Our continued existence rules out evolution.

What about the ape men fossils? No one has ever found a fossil that indicates a link between man and ape-like ancestors. Fossils are either pure ape or pure man. Some of the supposed ape-man skulls were pieced together with fragments and are either guesses or hoaxes. Others, like Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon are fully human. The artistic renditions of ape-men are in large part the product of imagination. Boyce Rensberger, writing in Science Digest in 1981 stated: “Unfortunately, the vast majority of artist’s conceptions are based more on imagination than on evidence. … Much of the reconstruction, however, is guesswork. … Artists must create something between an ape and a human being; the older the specimen is said to be, the more ape-like they make it.”

Some say God created everything in a primitive state and then evolution took over. But Scripture says otherwise: "Look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus, also mankind comes into being" (2 Maccabees 7:28).

Richard Lewontin, a prominent evolutionary scientist, exposes a serious flaw with his side of the debate. He wrote:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door (“Billion and Billions of Demons” The New York Review, January 9, 1997, page 31).

“Scientists claim to have found our common ancestor – a woman who lived 200,000 years ago and left resilient genes that are carried by all of mankind” (Newsweek January11, 1988). They even call her “Eve.” However, being committed evolutionary scientists they attempted to fit her into the evolutionary narrative. But think of it; according to the theory of evolution, at the time this woman walked the earth, there would have been millions of other people in existence. How is it that only her descendants survived until the present day? 

Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist from North Carolina State University, discovered the remains of blood cells and soft tissue in T-Rex bones. The T-Rex in question is said to be 68 million years old. According to science textbooks blood cells and soft tissue would never last that long. Upon making such a discovery you would think the age of the bones would be reassessed. But that did not happen. Instead, they are trying to figure out how a dinosaur’s blood cells and soft flexible tissue still exists after 68 million years. Somehow that does not seem logical. In the end we are left with two choices: Either an intelligent being created everything out of nothing or nothing created everything out of nothing. Which do you suppose is more likely?

Next Week: The Bible