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Creation or Evolution?

Creation or Evolution?. Steve Taylor. Outline. What are the issues? Definition of terms Evolution – the problems What about the fossils? Don’t all scientists believe in Evolution? Creation – how do we know its true? Does it matter? Some conclusions… The Christian Answer.

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Creation or Evolution?

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  1. Creation or Evolution? Steve Taylor

  2. Outline • What are the issues? • Definition of terms • Evolution – the problems • What about the fossils? • Don’t all scientists believe in Evolution? • Creation – how do we know its true? • Does it matter? • Some conclusions… • The Christian Answer

  3. What are the issues? There is a battle for the beginning: in Schools and Universities, on the media, in the Church…. • Where did the Universe come from? • How did life begin? • Why are we here? • What is Man - animal or something more ? • Is the Bible true? • Does Science contradict the book of Genesis? • How old is the earth? • So what?

  4. Creation ‘In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth’ Genesis 1:1 • God created: • time, space, matter and energy and all life • man and woman (in His image) • suddenly, i.e. in six days, by His Word • all very good • God is eternal, immaterial (a Spirit), powerful, personal, wise and good

  5. Evolution • Evolution: “the origination of species by development from earlier (simpler) forms of life over millions of years by the processes of natural selection and/or mutation” Collins Dictionary

  6. Evolution • Problems: • No experimental proof • Life from non-life? • Fossil evidence missing • Information requires intelligence • Mechanism?

  7. Evolution: no experimental proof • Science based upon observation and experiment: the scientific method • ‘Not one change of species into another is on record… we cannot prove that a single species has been changed’ Charles Darwin ‘My life and letters’ vol1

  8. Evolution : life from non-life ? • Everyone has grown from a single cell, programmed by DNA in the nucleus: • Vacuoles, ribosomes, cytoplasm, centriole, mitochondria, cell membrane….. • There’s no such thing as a simple cell ! ‘Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which, a functional gene or protein is complex beyond our own creative capacities… which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man?’ Dr Michael Denton, molecular biologist ‘Evolution – a theory in crisis’ (1986)

  9. Evolution: Lack of fossil evidence- missing links still missing • ‘The family trees which adorn our textbooks are based on inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils’ Prof. S. J. Gould, ‘Natural History 86, 5, p.13, (1977) • Firstly, why if species have descended from species by fine gradations, why do we not see everywhere innumerable transitional forms?…this perhaps is the most serious objection to my theory’ Charles Darwin ‘Origin of Species’ ch.VI Difficulties of the theory

  10. Piltdown Man • 1912: Skull and Jawbone found in a gravel pit in Piltdown, Sussex. • Experts were convinced that the ‘missing link’ had been found • 1953: the Piltdown skull was Carbon dated • human cranium/ lower jaw:orangutan/ teeth filed to look human • By 1953 an estimated 500 doctoral theses had been written! • Conclusion: deliberate fraud !

  11. Nebraska man • 1922 (February): ‘ I have here ….a molar tooth which very closely approaches the human type’ H.J Cook, Nebraska • 1922 (April): Illustrated London News, full page reconstruction • Tooth later (1928) found to belong to an extinct pig ! • Conclusion: mistake !

  12. Intelligence from an unintelligent source ? The SETI project Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence • Last 30 years: no signals • ‘2-2-4’ has 12 bytes of information: intelligent source • DNA has 4,000,000,000 bytes: accident?

  13. Life too complex to have arisen by chance DNA: an information storage medium – possesses the highest known information storage density • ‘Imagine 1050 blind persons each with a scrambled Rubik’s cube and try to conceive of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have the chance of arriving by random shuffling (random variation) of just one of the many biopolymers upon which life depends…. nonsense of a high order’ Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, (Nobel Prizewinner), New Scientist 92, 1280, p527 (1981)

  14. Mechanism - how did it happen ? • A mousetrap is ‘irreducibly complex’ : it will not work without all its parts in place: it is intelligently designed ‘Darwin’s Black Box’ Prof. Michael Behe (Free Press) 1996

  15. Mechanism - how did it happen ? • The human vision system is much more complicated than a mousetrap: – could it be the product of random mutations and natural selection? • Darwin recognised the problem: ‘ To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light….. Could have been formed by natural selection, seems I freely confess absurd in the highest degree’ Charles Darwin, ‘Origin of Species’ chap. VI: Organs of extreme perfection The marvel of human vision: each eye is ‘hard wired’ to the brain which correctly interprets the image and processes the information

  16. What about the fossils? • Fossils: form by sudden death followed by rapid burial (e.g catastrophe) as opposite • Approximately 95% of all fossils are marine (e.g shellfish) • 4.75% are algae and plant fossils • 0.2375% are invertebrates (e.g insects) • 0.0125% includes all vertebrates (e.g fish, 1500 dinosaur skeletons) • Species appear abruptly, fully formed and remain static (e.g coelacanth) • The fossil record is best understood as a result of a world wide flood that destroyed the continents and land dwellers (Genesis 7) • There are at least 300 flood stories in different civilisations around the world Above: fossil jellyfish

  17. Photograph of a ‘mother and baby’ ichthyosaur fossilised during childbirth (with acknowledgments to ‘Creation’ magazine)

  18. Don’t all scientists believe in Evolution? • Not all scientists accept Evolution • Faraday, Maxwell, Fleming….etc: all Creationists • ‘In six days’ 50 practising scientists who believe Genesis 1 say why • Creation Research Society (CRS) has over 700 members • Others have never considered the scientific evidence which supports the Biblical Creation account • Some (sadly) are prejudiced: ‘… no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying … for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.’ Lewontin, R., The New York Review, 1997, p. 31

  19. Creation – how do we know its true? • Creation is taught in the Bible which claims to be the inspired Word of God • The Bible is completely self consistent: infallible • The Bible is accurate historically, archaeologically, scientifically: inerrant • The Bible been fulfilled over and again prophetically: confirmed • Contains many eyewitness accounts of the life and miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ who said: • ‘Have you not read that He which made themat the beginning made them male and female?’ • Matthew 19:4

  20. Does it matter? • What we believe about origins greatly influences our behaviour: • ‘At some future period, not very far distant, as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.’ • Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, vol. I, 201. • Hitler justified the Nazi death camps and anti-semitism on the basis of his misguided evolutionary beliefs

  21. Some conclusions... • Evolution - not proven in the past: • no solid fossil evidence: missing links still missing • Evolution - not observed experimentally: • natural selection: cannot account for the massive increases in genetic information needed to go from molecules to Man • random mutation: no experimental proof of information-adding changes • Undirected ‘molecules to Man’ evolution goes against well established scientific laws: • 2nd Law of Thermodynamics "...I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science...It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw[s] and holes as sound parts." Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, cited by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991) p. 456, 475

  22. The Christian message… • ‘In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth’ • Genesis 1:1 • ‘Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned’ Romans 5 :12 • Because of our wrongdoing (sin) there is there is a ‘missing link’ that we all need: Christ died for our sins… the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God I Peter 3:18

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