Creation
1 Does it matter?
There is no chapter in the Bible that is more under attack by the enemy than Genesis 1. Why?
Genesis 1 is foundational to God being God and why He has authority over us. He made us and owns us – which is exactly why so many people would prefer it not to be true.
God reveals Himself through His creation (Psalm 19:1; Rom 1:20) so Satan needs to provide an alternative explanation.
People don’t want to be accountable to God, e.g. “I don’t want to serve a God who…” But if God is God, He makes the rules and what you would like the rules to be is irrelevant
People understand that they cannot prescribe to a real God, so they must argue He does not exist. If you want to do your own thing you have to deny God. And to deny God you have to deny creation.
Without a creator God
There is no one to be accountable to
You can be your own God
There is no basis for morality
Is it any wonder that the decline of all values coincided with evolution teaching replacing creation?
See Romans 1:18-32 for the results
Does it matter whether Genesis 1 is historic truth? Yes, if the enemy can convince people that Gen 1 is not literal and true, it becomes easy to doubt and throw out the rest of the Bible as well. At the very least it opens the way to picking and choosing which parts of the Bible you want to believe. How can you evangelise and disciple from the Bible if it is unknown whether the verses you are using are true?
Satan uses the evolution theory as a very effective means to destroy children’s faith, to keep people from accepting Christ, and to rob God of the glory due to Him (compare Psalm 19:1). A survey found that acceptance of the evolution theory is the number one reason for college age young people to lose their faith, but that those who were able to defend the creation account coherently were likely to thrive in their faith.
Rejection of the creation account is also arguably the biggest stumbling block to evangelism:
If the Bible is fictional, why would anybody listen? How can fiction be an answer to my problems?
It is no longer relevant
There is no sin to be saved from. What would you need a saviour for?
Many Christians attempt to ignore the issue or compromise by trying to reconcile the Bible with evolution theory, through interpretations such as the gap theory[1], day-age theory[2], etc. This is futile, dangerous and unnecessary.
Such attempts inevitably contradict the Bible. For example, if “God created through evolution”, there must have been death before Adam sinned – contrary to Romans 5:12 and 1 Cor 15:21-22.
Christians are not expected to leave their brains at the church door. Clear answers are available, and Creation is a better, more logical and more scientific explanation of the evidence we observe.
1 Peter 3:15 says “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you…” You may grit your teeth and believe without evidence, but will the person you are trying to evangelise? You have a duty to be able to answer objections.
2 A clash of world views
Atheists need to explain the universe and the plant and animal kingdom without a god. Theories such as evolution and the Big Bang theory fulfil this need. Because of their unwillingness to accept God as a cause, they have to be willing to accept evolution despite evidence to the contrary. For example, evolutionist prof. DMS Watson wrote[3]: “Evolution [is] a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.”
Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist (and self-proclaimed Marxist), is one of the world’s leaders in promoting evolutionary biology. He wrote this very revealing comment (the italics were in the original). It illustrates the implicit philosophical bias against Genesis creation — regardless of whether or not the facts support it:
“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a 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.”
There is so little evidence for evolution that based on normal scientific principles the theory should have been rejected long ago. Evolutionists resort to changing the definition of science so that only evolution fits their definition. In reality, their theory has become so unscientific that it should rather be seen as an alternative religion.
It is therefore not a clash of Christianity versus Science, but rather a clash between two different world views. In normal operational (“true”) science, theories can be tested via repeatable laboratory experiments – this leads to inventions such as lasers, cell phones, etc. When it comes to “historical” science (theories of origins) such experiments are not possible and one has to rely on speculation and conjecture to explain that which can be observed. The theory depends on your point of departure or world view. The Christian scientist observes the Grand Canyon and sees evidence for a Global Flood; the evolutionist scientist observes it and sees evidence for slow processes over incredibly long ages. Neither can be proven correct directly, but the Christian view better explains the evidence and explains more of it. For example, if the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon water must have flown uphill in the past! (The top of the canyon is higher than the origin of the water flowing through it).
Within both Christianity and atheism there are different theories, but the Christian will (or should) search for an explanation that is consistent with the Bible, while the atheist will inevitably search for an explanation that excludes any divine influence.
It is deceiving and dishonest for evolutionists to claim that their theory is scientific, while creation is not.
The Bible contains amazing scientific insights that were totally unknown at the time, e.g. Isaiah 40:22 – the earth is round and Job 26:7 – the earth is suspended in space without support.
Evolutionists resort to many intellectually dishonest stratagems to punt their theory. For example, they would claim that evolution means “descent with modification” via natural selection, point to examples such as bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics as examples, and then claim that that proves that all living matter could have arisen from nothing in the same way. In the process they usually simply ignore the question how the DNA that drives the trait natural selection selects for could have arisen, where the first cells came from, where the building blocks of the first cells came from, and even that descent with modification almost always involves a loss of genetic information, while their “pond scum to man” theory involves an astronomically staggering gain of genetic complexity and information that is statistically so impossible the believing it really requires blind faith.
3 A few of the problems of the evolution theory
DNA contains the instructions (recipe book) on how to build cells, organs, etc.
It is the best information storage known. Each human cell contains about 3 Gigabytes of data at a density of 1000 terabytes per square millimetre. Error correction machinery keeps copying errors down to 1 per 100 million letters. Natural selection can only select for a trait that already exists. That is coded for in the DNA. But where did the first DNA come from? How the DNA that causes the traits that natural selection can select for arose is an insurmountable problem for the evolution theory. Evolutionists have to resort to mental gymnastics – even including a proposal that life came to earth from aliens! But that merely moves the problem of the origin of life to elsewhere in the universe.
The evolution of complex structures (eye, ear, flagellum motor etc) would require massive increases in genetic information. But how? For the evolutionist, random mutation is the only game in town. But there is no example where a mutation has increased genetic information. Natural selection eliminates stuff that does not confer an advantage, so evolution of complex structures should not be possible to arise over generations as they have no benefit until late in the process. An impossible number of mutations is required in short succession. And evolutionists recognize that eyes must have arisen independently at least 30 times because there is no evolutionary pattern to explain the origin of eyes from a common ancestor. In other words, the impossible happened at least 30 times…
Example: Flagellum motor. Certain bacteria use this like a propellor to swim. It runs at up to 100 000 rpm. The motor comprises a stator, rotor, drive shaft and bushing that guides the driveshaft out through the cell wall. Plus a clutch. And forward and reverse gears. All of them needed for it to function. And a non-functioning motor would be a liability so all the components must arise simultaneously. The flagellum could not work without about 40 protein components all organized in the right way. To expect that you would have all that arising through simultaneous random mutation defies belief. Even if the 40 parts existed (which it did not) it would be like saying if you disassemble a motorcycle engine and put all the parts in a box, the engine will assemble itself if you shake the box long enough.
Another example: Sexual reproduction – how could that have “evolved”? The egg is specifically designed to be fertilized by the seed, and the seed has to match the egg perfectly. But here’s the problem: The seed and the egg specifically made for each other must by pure chance randomly through an undirected mutation process arise at exactly the same time! And they must know to go and look for each other. And then what is supposed to happen with the fertilized egg? Going from vegetative reproduction to sexual reproduction on a random basis is clearly impossible.
The scientific method says that if you come up with a theory you must test it with the available evidence and if it no longer explains the evidence it must be rejected. There are so many problems with the evolution theory that it should have been rejected long ago. With what we know today acceptance of the evolution theory requires blind faith. The theory has become a religion!
4 How old is the earth?
Evolutionists need an old earth because in their theory totally random events had to lead to the complexity of life we see today, and for that to have any semblance of possibility requires a very long time for the random events to take place. Millions of years is the fudge factor in evolution. Somehow the impossible becomes possible if you give it enough time.
But even ignoring that, long ages do not solve the evolutionist’s problem. If plants and animals changed slowly over long ages one would expect to find many fossils of transitional forms. However, there is a notable lack of such fossils. So the idea of “punctuated equilibrium” was born to explain this lack. Basically, it boils down to saying that for vast amounts of time plants and animals stay the same – then they suddenly change a lot. So suddenly that there is no time for transitional fossils to form. But that then leads back to the original problem: How could so much change have occurred in a time that is so short that it leaves no evidence?
Fossil dating usually involves circular reasoning – the rocks in which the fossils occur are dated by the fossils found in them and the fossils are dated by the rocks in which they are found. There are many other problems as well, such as the same single fossil being partly in one layer and partly in another which are supposedly millions of years apart. It is more reasonable to assume that the bulk of fossils originated during Noah’s flood.
Although a “young earth” as the Bible teaches is ridiculed by evolutionists (end even by many Christians) there is actually a LOT of evidence that point that way. For example, if the earth was old the sea should have been saltier, the earth’s magnetic field should have been weaker, etc. etc.
Evolutionists often claim that it takes vast amounts of time for dead trees to be petrified and for stalactites and stalagmites to form. However, trees blown into a lake by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens petrified within a few years and amazing stalactites are often found in mine tunnels that were recently abandoned and even in a military bunker that was only decommissioned after the end of the Cold War.
Canyons do not necessarily require a long time to form. At Mount St. Helens a 40m deep canyon was carved in one day!
Dinosaur remains are found where the tissue is still soft, containing blood cells and from which scientists were able to isolate the DNA – and this from a species which was supposed to have become extinct 65 million years ago.[4] Dinosaur tracks are found in riverbeds where erosion would certainly have removed them after a few million years!
It is much more logical to accept the Bible account of an earth that was created recently.
A last aside: It is also interesting to note that ancient art contains depictions that appear to match known dinosaurs. Is it possible that the artists observed these animals? The Bible also contains descriptions of animals not known today e.g. Job 40:15-24, Job 41 and Isaiah 27:1. Is it possible that these refer to now extinct animals that were still around in Job’s time?
5 Resources
www.answersingenesis.org
www.creation.com
Don Batten: The Answers book
Jonathan Sarfati: Refuting Evolution
Jonathan Sarfati: The Greatest Hoax on Earth
Kent Hovind videos are available on Youtube
6 Summary
Creation is a reasonable belief
Is not unscientific
A better explanation for observed evidence than evolution
Answers to challenges are available
The debate is important
Compromise is dangerous and unnecessary
Remember this website: www.creation.com
[1] Basically that there is a gap of millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.
[2] That the days in Genesis 1 are really long periods of time rather than actual days
[3] The following are extracts from the book Refuting Evolution by Dr Jonathan Sarfati
[4] See http://creation.com/dino-dna-bone-cells
