This series is taken from a talk I did at the Arizona AWANA Conference 2009 at Palmcroft Baptist Church. Several people asked for information more in-depth than just my handout notes, so here they are.
The purpose of my presentation was to discuss 2 critical lies that face the Church today. These lies come at our families - and the kids coming to our AWANA clubs - from several different cultural places. School, media, the Internet, even sometimes from with the Church... we can't fight knowledge with mere knowledge. 2 hours of AWANA, maybe a couple more hours of church on Sunday can't undo the damage of 80+ hours a week of indoctrination into a conflicting worldview. But we are aware of the effects of the lies in question, and if we truly care about these kids, we can make a difference. The world seeks conformity to its belief system, but it doesn't - and never will - care about these kids as people created in the image of God. We must.
Lie #1 - Darwinian Evolution "A Cosmic Accident"
A) It Erodes the Authority of the Bible
The lie of evolution has probably done more damage in our current America than any other, primarily because of the philosophy marching silently behind it. Many Christians feel cowed by the "scientific" community into some kind of compromise between the Bible and evolution, and many more see it as something that's not worth fighting about. We will first look at evolution in the realm of science, compared to what the Bible teaches: can a Christian who believes Scripture to be inerrant also believe in evolution?
No. In Genesis 1, the Hebrew word for day used is "yom." Yom doesn't always mean a literal day, but when used in conjunction with the phrase "evening and morning," it always refers to a literal day, not a passage of time. A second problem between Scripture and evolution is that, in addition to lots of time, evolution needs lots of death. According to the theory, it takes nearly countless generations for one species to turn into another. A Christian who believes the Bible has another problem at this point: nothing died before Adam sinned. Romans 5 is clear on the point that "through one man (Adam) sin entered the world, and death by sin." If nothing is dying, nothing is being selected for or against, and thousands or millions of years aren't helping the evolutionary process.
The simple fact of the matter, scientifically, is the lack of any evidence for evolution, anywhere. Finch beaks, dog breeds, moth color - all we can witness are changes within species, not the transformation of one species becoming another. No transitional forms are recorded in the fossil record. We see an earth, as we observe it, where everything continues to produce after its own kind (Genesis 1). And while the existence of a designer cannot be proved according to the scientific method, neither can the purposeless forces of Darwin's theory. The fact comes down to your assumptions before you look at the evidence. Everywhere we look, we see evidence of design, and we believe in the Designer. Proponents of evolution see this same design, complex nearly beyond understanding, and attribute it to natural selection over billions of years. And it is in this moment, as an evolutionist acknowledges that no Designer, no God, exists, that we come to the greatest danger. Evolution is not an assault on true science alone, but on every subject we can study. This is a lie whose reach stretches across the human experience.
How does this all erode the authority of the Bible? We serve a God who claims perfection, in Himself and His Word as it was given to us. If one point of the Bible is false, the whole book is a waste of time. It is not a book of good intentions and tips for living; it is a book of Absolute Truth, or it is a colossal waste of our lives. We don't have the space here to give the whole conflict its just discussion. But you need to understand that your issue, as a Christian, is not with science. Your disagreement is with the false assumptions of many who study science and draw incorrect conclusions because of their prejudice when studying the evidence.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"No transitional forms are recorded in the fossil record"
ReplyDeleteThere are THOUSANDS of transitional fossils. Thousands of them, Charles, and anyone reading this should be aware of the fact.
Here is a list of just a few transitional fossils; any open-minded skeptic should look up. Don't be put off by the latin names. This is not an attempt to blind anyone with science. Anyone can look these up and, with luck find a readable description of them:
Tiktaalik (remarkable - is it a fish or an amphibian? you decide)
Diacodexis
Archeopteryx lithographica (is it a bird or a dinosaur? You decide)
Ursavus elmensis
Australopithecus afarensis (an ape that walked upright)
Cynodictis
Plesictis
Haplogale
Tungurictis spocki
Anagale, Barunlestes
Protosciurus
Protungulatum
Ambulocetus natans (one of my personal favourites. The name means, 'Walking, swimming whale.')
Hyracotherium
I could go on, and on, and on...
There are THOUSANDS of transitional fossils. Now you have been informed, please do not repeat that piece of misinformation. If you do, you'll by lying.
Ah, the fun of transitional fossils!
ReplyDeleteHere is a quote from the Talk Origins own website, which brings forth the exact point I am making. The first part of his quote is widely quoted by Creationists, but let’s focus on the 2nd part of what he says, which is just as helpful:
". . .Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else." -Colin Patterson (author of Evolution) as cited at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html.
Another great quote from David Raup at the Field Museum of Natural History:
"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 a result of more detailed information." (Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, 50:22-29)
Please note that these are not Creationists, or anyone “friendly” to the Creationist or ID movements within science.
At the end of the day, a look at fossils exposes the presuppositions of the observer. Fossils cannot tell us if they are transitional to anything; Patterson is absolutely correct. They may or may not have been. An evolutionist looks at the fossil record and connects dots, saying that we can show evolution from fossil X to fossil Y to fossil Z. A creationist looks at the fossil record and sees evidence entirely consistent with Biblical history: creatures of various species now deceased and encased in rock layers due to some catastrophic event, such as a worldwide flood.
And what about Darwin, the man himself? Here is what he wrote:
“…[T]he number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, [must] be truly enormous. Why then is not every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graded organic chain, and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” He further stated that “He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory.”
In other words, Darwin himself tells us the grounds on which his theory can be disproved. The discovery of many more fossils since his time has not proved him correct, as we have seen above. We need to be careful of what we consider ‘scientific fact’ versus ‘scientific theory,’ and when we are we see that Darwin’s ideas still fall in the latter category.
Charles,
ReplyDeleteCherry picking a few quotes, and copying them here, is not the same as showing that 'there are no transitional forms...in the fossil record.' You are simply wrong on that score. There are thousands of transitional forms. Some are so plentiful, and so finely graded, that the scientists studying them can not agree which group to classify them, which is exactly what you would expect to find if evolution were true.
If the Flood Hypothesis were true, we would expect to find mixed up dead things in a massive flood layer of graded sediment. But that is exactly what we do not find. No mixed up dead things, but different forms in different layers. No big, graded layer (which is what you find after a flood), but lots of distinct sedimentary layers.
There are no mammals in Cambrian rock. Why is there *not a single one*? Why not? If there was a big flood, you should find, mixed around together, examples from all creation. And, the fossils line up so reliably, that you can date rock by which fossils you find. 'Circular logic!' you will cry. But no. The rocks are dated by other methods as well, not just by the fossils. It's just that, the fossils line up, in the geological collumn, so realibly, that layers of sediment can be dated, reliably, by what kind of fossil is typified there.
And here's the difference between PROPER geology and flood geology: Proper geology works, flood geology does not. When money is on the line, such as when oil exploration companies are looking for petroleum, they call in real geologists, who will examine the fossils and use them to date the rock, which helps in finding oil. Flood geology, on the other hand, exists for one reason only: to make people feel better about their theology. That is very different from real science, which depends on acheiving reliable results. The Flood hypothesis fails EVERY TEST.
The next point on fossils and evolution is historical. Darwin could never have dreamed how elegantly his thoery would be confirmed by future discoveries. He made a hypothesis: 'We should find transitional forms.' Did we find them? And how! And, here's the thing, Charles, paleontologists find them _where they are looking for them_. When Neil Shubin went looking for a lobed fish, with 'wrist bones' and 'finger bones,' he didn't dig at random. He dug in Devonian stone, which was deposited at the time, according to his understanding of fish-amphibian evolution, that such a creature should have existed. That's what you call a slam-dunk for evolution, Charles. You find a fossil, of the sort you're looking for, in the place you predicted it should be found. There are many, many examples of such slam-dunks. We got 'em. Oh, do we ever.
--Andy