"Evolution itself is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible." Carl Sagan
"If Darwinism is true, then there are five inescapable implications: there is no evidence for God, there is no life after death, there is no absolute foundation for right and wrong, there is no ultimate meaning for life, and people don't have free will (our thoughts would be the result of a random process and thus be meaningless)" William Provine of Cornell University
As we take on this topic of science and the Bible in hopes to answer objections like "How can the Bible be God's word when it has been shown to be false in the area of science?", hopefully I can give you some questions to give back to unbelievers to ponder in hopes to make them "doubt their doubts." Also I hope to strengthen your confidence in the scripture when all around us we are told that if you don't believe in evolution you are an idiot. Ben Stein made a movie on this topic called Expelled and if you have time, watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HErmp5Pzqw
So, besides the religion or theology of evolution that we see in the above quotes, which in effect say that evolution is a theory that purports to explain the world without God, what do we as Christians have to say about the science of evolution that could make skeptics pause to think?
I. Evolution violates the Laws of Science
Lets approach it all from the philosophical side first.
Here are three laws that are broken if evolution is true
1. something can't come from nothing. If evolution is true then nothing produced something which is preposterous. Suppose you heard a loud bang and you ask what caused that bang and I reply "nothing, it just happened". You wouldn't accept that, yet without God, that is exactly how things happened - they just did. We call this the Law of Cause and Effect. Every effect must have a cause. If your milk carton falls off the table onto the floor, you seek a cause - someone bumped it, someone bumped the table, an earthquake happened, etc. but milk cartons do not fall off the table without a cause. In the same way, something as magnificent and big as the universe must have a cause. Louie Giglio talks about this in his "How Great is our God" talk and if you have time watch this.
Here is how logicians would argue the philosophical case against evolution
1. whatever begins to exist has a cause
2. the universe began to exist - this is generally accepted by scientists now. With the introduction of the Big Bang Theory it is felt that the universe had a beginning. Einstein and his theory of relativity describes the expansion and deceleration of the universe which indicated that the universe is exploding outward from a point. That instant when the universe originated from a point of no size at all is called the singularity. Also, the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics - the first law properly stated declares that the amount of actual energy in the universe remains constant. The second law states that the amount of useable energy is decreasing but hasn't depleted yet. It is like an hour glass that is draining but is not run down yet. It implies that there was a time when the hourglass was full and tipped over.
3. the universe has a cause
The question will immediately arise, "Who caused God? But premise #1 said "whatever begins to exist..." God didn't begin to exist." Atheists used to be very comfortable in maintaining that the universe is eternal and uncaused...
They can no longer hold that position because of the Big Bang Theory. Therefore they can't really object when I make the same claim about God. " William Craig
The supernatural cause must be uncaused, timeless, and immaterial. Uncaused - can't be an infinite regress of causes. Timeless - it was the creator of time. Immaterial - created space and transcends space so can't be material. This allows it to impart immaterial "stuff" as we will see soon.
2. The second problem, philosophically with evolution is that Non-life can't produce life. Non-life, has no life to give. This is the scientific law of biogenesis. Any life formed in the lab is done by an intelligent designer using some materials that already have life in them, i.e. cloning. You can't give what you don't have. "Water cannot rise above its source. You can see why Darwin might have thought that life "happens" or as Jeff Golblum would say in Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way". Back in the late 1800's they believed in a process called "spontaneous generation". Life was felt to develop spontaneously. In decaying meat, maggots would develop. Years later Francisco Redi did an experiment which showed if flys weren't allowed to interact with the meat, maggots didn't develop. Then Pasteur showed that air contains microorganisms that can multiply in water giving the illusion of spontaneous generation of life. Darwin didn't think it would be very difficult to create life from non-life because the gap between the two didn't seem that great to him. In 1905 Ernst Haeckel described living cells as being merely homogeneous globules of plasm. In those days they didn't have any way of seeing the complexity that exists within the membrane of the cell. Early investigators considered cells as bags of enzymes. Life was little more than the correct mixture of ingredients - get the mixture right and life was inevitable.
"... It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts,—light, heat, electricity etc. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured, or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed. " Charles Darwin
In an experiment we all heard about if we took biology in school, we learned about Miller's spark chamber. - Miller recreated an atmosphere of the primitive earth in a laboratory and shot electricity through it to simulate the effects of lightening. Before long he found that amino acids, the building blocks of life, had been created. Carl Sagan called this the single most significant step in convincing many scientists that life is likely to be abundant in the cosmos. However there were numbers of problems with this experiment.
problems
1. Miller used ammonia, methane, and Hydrogen because he knew that if you have nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen they won't react. However from 1980 on, NASA scientists have shown that the primitive Earth never had any methane, ammonia, or hydrogen. Instead it was composed of water, carbon dioxide, and Nitrogen and the experiment won't work with those.
2. It never produced life. One can find much protein in a butcher shop or graveyard, but no life
3. It demonstrated involvement of an intelligent being on multiple levels - the choice of a complex apparatus, the choice of chemicals used, the use of an electrode, the choice of a heating and cooling procedure by Miller was actually going against what he was trying to prove, that it happened randomly.
4. The chamber also produced substances toxic to life
5. The amino acids on the DNA strand are "right handed" and the amino acids produced were "left handed"
So try as hard as they can, evolutionists can't produce life from non-life. This is the law of biogenesis.
3. The third philosophical argument is that Non-intelligence can't give rise to intelligence. - A world of living, conscious, thinking beings has to originate in a living source, a mind. Information doesn't arise from non-information. Information has no material or physical existence. You can't see it, taste it, weigh it yet is as real as any material or physical entity that exists. Some of these nonmaterial entities that exist besides information are first and foremost God, then love, logic, mathematics, laws of science, thoughts, emotions, morality, truth, justice, hate, intelligence, conscience to name a few. For example a cell phone is run by any operating system. If you weigh the cell phone, then delete the software program, it will weigh the same but now is a worthless piece of junk composed of metal, silicon, and plastic. Information is non-material, like intelligence, and therefore must have been given by an immaterial cause, i.e. God. Immaterial does not come from material.
Waterfalls can be explained by natural causes but hydroelectric plants have an intelligent cause. Wind erosion can be explained by natural causes but windmills cannot. The grand Canyon can be explained by natural causes but the faces on Mt. Rushmore required intelligent intervention. A rounded stone in a stream can be explained by natural causes but an arrowhead calls for an intelligent cause. If you were shipwrecked on a deserted island and as you were digging through the sand you found a clay coffee mug, you would assume that intelligent life had been there before you or is currently there. If we believe in intelligent life from a clay mug, how much more from the scientific study of nature.
Information is in all life: it is contained in the DNA of every living cell of every plant, animal, and human being on this earth. It is the blueprint that tells a cell how to grow, reproduce, and operate. DNA is the most complicated, intricately organized "computer program" and database system in existence. It is also the most compact storage mechanism known to man.The DNA molecule in the nucleus is wrapped up in special covers called chromosomes. The total length of a DNA molecule wrapped up in the chromosomes is 1 meter. A chromosome is one nanometer thick, in other words a billionth of a meter. One human DNA molecule contains enough information to fill a million-page encyclopaedia, or to fill about 1,000 books. The question is how did the first cell obtain the information and control system necessary to fuel its engines and keep them running? It couldn't have just happened because it is necessary for intelligence to beget intelligence and immaterial to spawn immaterial.
Carl Sagan said, "the receipt of a single message from space is enough to know there is intelligence out there." Sagan wrote the book Contact where radiotelescopes are scanning space and just getting static. Then one day they receive a string of prime numbers and therefore conclude that this is a message from an intelligent creature.
If a message from outer space of a string of prime numbers is enough to convince you that there is intelligent life in outer space, how much more the information contained in the DNA of a living animal. It is certainly reasonable to make the inference that this isn't the random product of unguided nature but rather the unmistakable design of an intelligent designer.
4. Lastly, the second law of thermodynamics states that in a closed system order goes to disorder, not the other way around. This is the law of entropy. We all know this intuitively. Our rooms go to chaos, our cars need tune ups - they don't tune up as you drive them. My body is aging and falling apart not getting better and I periodically have to untangle my fishing line for some reason. Yet evolutionists state that over hundreds of millions of years, the "simple" became complex through the processes of mutation and natural selection. Yet these, with a critical mind don't really explain what we see in nature.
The mechanism of evolution is flawed..
1. mutations don't improve the genetic code, they degenerate it. There are no good mutations, only destructive ones. Scientists know this. Why do you think they have you wear a lead apron when getting x-ray'd. Why do they tell women to try to have kids before 35 and continually invent tests to check for fetal mutations? Why don't they want you marrying a close relative?
2. Natural selection tells how organisms survive, not how they arrive.
3. Transitional forms. If there is a gradual progression from simple to complex (really complex to more complex) we should see intermediate forms in the fossil record and among us today. Steven J. Gould a noted Harvard paleontologist states that "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." Eldridge states,"Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms."
5. Sudden appearance - Precambrian explosion - The fossil record shows in rocks that are dated at 570,000,000 years old, there is a sudden appearance of nearly all the animal phyla and they appear fully formed without a trace of the evolutionary ancestors that Darwinists require.
This has been compared to a tornado going through a Boeing 747 parts plant and assembling a functioning plane. Even if this happened infinity times, a plane wouldn't assemble and even if it could, you would need information to fly it.
II. Evolution can't make sense of the universe's complexity
science has come up with the Anthropic principle which means that evidence points to the fine - tuning or tweaking of the conditions of the universe from the very beginning so that human life could ultimately emerge. There are over 100 conditions listed that had to be just right for human life to emerge. Here are just a few of them listed by astronomer Hugh Ross
1. number of star companions
- if more than one: tidal interactions would disrupt planetary orbits
- if less than one: not enough heat produced for life
- if greater: not enough heavy elements to make rocky planets
- if less: stellar density and radiation would he too great
- if greater: luminosity output from the star would not be sufficiently stable
- if less: range of distances appropriate for life would be too narrow; tidal forces would disrupt the rotational period for a planet of the right distance
- if redder: insufficient photosynthetic response
- if bluer: insufficient photosynthetic response
- if stronger: planet's atmosphere would retain huge amounts of ammonia and methane
- if weaker: planet's atmosphere would lose too much water
- if farther away: too cool for a stable water cycle
- if closer: too warm for a stable water cycle
- if thicker: too much oxygen would he transferred from the atmosphere to the crust
- if thinner: volcanic and tectonic activity would be too great
- if longer: diurnal temperature differences would he too great
- if shorter: atmospheric wind velocities would he too great
- if greater: tidal effects on the oceans, atmosphere, and rotational period would he too severe
- if less: earth's orbital obliquity would change too much causing climatic instabilities
- if stronger: electromagnetic storms would be too severe
- if weaker: no protection from solar wind particles
- if greater: surface temperature differences would be too great
- if less: surface temperature differences would he too great
- if greater: runaway ice age would develop
- if less: runaway greenhouse effect would develop
- if larger: life functions would proceed too quickly
- if smaller: life functions would proceed too slowly
- if greater: runaway greenhouse effect would develop
- if less: insufficient greenhouse effect
- if greater: surface temperatures would become too low
- if less: surface temperatures would he too high; too much uv radiation at surface
- if greater: too much fire destruction
- if less: too little nitrogen fixing in the soil
- if greater: destruction of too many life-forms
- if less: nutrients on ocean floors would not be uplifted
Creationists who founded modern science
Kepler - Astronomy Pascal - hydrostatics Boyle - chemistry Newton - physics
Faraday - magnetic theory Mendel - genetics Pasteur - bacteriology Kelvin - thermodynamics
Lister - antiseptic surgery Maxwell - electrodynamics Ramsay - isotopic chemistry
III. Evolution can't make sense of irreducible complexity
Darwin admitted, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, then my theory would break down." This leads to the argument of "irreducible complexity". Life on Earth at its most fundamental level, in its most critical components is the product of intelligent activity.
The truth is that a one cell organism is extremely complex. It has been described as a high tech factory complete with artificial languages and decoding systems, central memory banks that store and retrieve massive amounts of information, precision control systems that regulate the assembly of components and safeguard against errors, assembly systems that use principles of prefabrication and molecular construction, and a replication system that allows the organism to duplicate itself at bewildering speeds.
In addition to the irreducible complexity of the cell,no one at Harvard University, the National institute of Health, National Academy of Sciences, Nobel prize winners - no one can give a detailed account of how the cilium, vision, the process of blood clotting or any complex biochemical process could have formed by a Darwinian process. When you look at something like the human ear which has three bones arranged in such a way that when sound waves hit them they pound on an ear drum which sends impulses through the acoustic nerve to the brain which then interprets those impulses. Wouldn't these three bones have been discarded in the evolutionary process long before they worked?
Can a Christian believe in evolution? Of course; believing in Creationism is not a prerequisite for salvation, only recognizing our sinfulness and by faith receiving Christ's sacrificial death on the cross for us and being born again by the Holy Spirit thus entering into an eternal relationship with our Father who created us for that very purpose. Therefore, if a person wants to continue to hold onto evolution and be saved, they can. In fact there are many theistic evolutionists who solve the problems of biogenesis, anthropic principle, irreducible complexity, information by saying that God began life. He created life. They then join the simple going to complex and the violation of the second law of thermodynamics with the radiometric dating of the earth, the geologic columns and layers, and the kingdom, class, order, phyla systems accepted as fact in text books by saying not only did God create the first cell but He directed it using the process of evolution supernaturally overseeing that process.
There are a number of problems with this stance which as the Christian grows in their knowledge of the scripture will probably have to wrestle with.
1. The Bible teaches that death entered into the world through sin.( Rom. 5:12) Evolution is built on millions of years of death until mankind arrived on the scene
2. The Bible says that God looked at each day and said "It was good". Is the advancement of creation through the evolutionary process of death and killing off the weak, really "Good"?
3. Jesus believed in the Genesis account (Matt. 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6-9)
4. Evolution's chronology is at odds with the biblical account
Evolution Genesis
Sun before earth Earth before sun
Dry land before sea Sea before dry land
Atmosphere before sea Sea befor atmosphere
Sun before light on earth Light on Earth before sun
Stars before earth Earth before stars
Earth at same time as planets Earth before other planets
Sea creatures before land plants Land plants before sea creatures
Earthworms before starfish Starfish before earthworms
Land animals before trees Trees before land animals
Thorns and thistles before man Man before thorns and thistles
TB pathogens and cancer before man Man before TB pathogens and cancer
(dinosaurs had TB and cancer)
Reptiles before birds Birds before reptiles
Land mammals before whales Whales before land animals
Dinosaurs before birds Birds before dinosaurs
Insects before flowering plants Flowering plants before insects
Sun before plants Plants before sun
Dinosaurs before dolphins Dolphins before dinosaurs
In my personal opinion, I feel that as a Bible believing Christian that we shouldn't accept the theory of evolution in any form for the following reasons.
1. The theory was formed to explain the universe apart from God. We know that this is a faulty premise so why even go there or give credence to this.
2. "As far as Christianity was concerned, the advent of the theory of evolution was catastrophic. The decline in religious belief can probably be attributed more to the propagation and advocacy of the intellectual and scientific community of the Darwinian version of evolution than to any other single factor." Michael Denton - molecular biologist This theory has destroyed the faith of so many teens, college students, and young believers and kept so many from coming to the faith that we need to recognize it as what it is, a tool of the devil, so why amalgamate it with Christianity.
3. As we see from all the scientific objections above such as biogenesis, information, irreducible complexity, entropy, transitional forms, Precambrian explosion, etc., the theory of evolution is a bad theory. Secular scientists hold to it with threats of ostracizing all those who don't bow down , simply because they haven't come up with another theory that leaves out a creator. Why as Christians, accept something out of peer pressure even though you know it's not true. You came to believe in Christ against the flow, why follow the crowd now?
That being said, I feel creationism should be a bit of a family secret. In other words, even though we know it to be true, this can't be made an issue with the non-Christian. In other words, if they reject Christ because of Creationism, we have done the Kingdom a disservice. Just like politics, predestination, capital punishment, abortion, and other issues may be issues we feel passionately about, these are issues for people to wrestle with after salvation, not before.
However, if people won't listen to anything you say because of this issue, here are some questions that you might use to open discussion;
1. How do you think life began?
2. Doesn't it seem odd that we don't see any transitional forms alive now?
3. Why do you think it went against the flow, i.e. simple becoming complex?
4. Do you think we are done evolving?
5. Do you think survival of the fittest is a good thing?
6. How do you deal with the fact then, that your life is a random accident and it really has no meaning?
7. Do you think Jesus rose from the dead? (always get back to the resurrection)
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