Austin Robbins
View of the rising Earth as seen by the crew of Apollo 8 as they came from behind the moon after the lunar orbit insertion burn.
The charge is frequently leveled at creationists that, while they may be good at tearing down evolutionary theory, they are weak in presenting their own theory of creation. Most high school and college teachers, if they deal with the subject of creation at all, do so under the dictum that “creation is religion; evolution is science.” In fact, my grandson’s ninth grade world history teacher asked his class, “What is the only evidence for creation?” The only answer he would accept was “the Bible.”
God said it!
To most Christians that answer is sufficient. “God said it, I believe it, that settles it!” While a commendable attitude toward Scripture, that statement lends credence to the popular view that Christians generally are ignorant of science. God, however, invites us to “come, let us reason together” and commands us to “be ready always to give an answer to anyone that asketh you a reason” (Is 1:18; 1 Pt 3:15). We must be prepared to answer the criticism that creation rests solely on Scripture, and, therefore by implication is not “scientific.”
That both creation and evolution are metaphysical concepts, not science, is not generally admitted by evolutionists. Yet such is the case. Leading thinkers in evolutionary theory have on occasion voiced that conclusion. Dr. Niles Eldredge, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, stated that he viewed both theories as antithetical “sets of assumptions” in the sense that he did not “see one set as falsifiable in favor of the other” (see Sunderland 1984:23). Dr. Colin Patterson (1978:145–47), Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, said of Darwin’s theory:
the first part of the theory, that evolution has occurred, is therefore a historical theory, about unique events, and unique events are, by definition, not part of science, for they are unrepeatable and so not subject to test.
Patterson said he liked a quote from R. L. Wyson’s book The Creation/Evolution Controversy:
BSP 12:2 (Spring 1999) p. 58
The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same kind of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion (see Sunderland 1984:27).
Design
Scientific evidence for creation is abundant in the world in which we live. In the first place it is not hard for us to recognize the evidence of design. One of the marks of creation, be it the creation of an artistic image or a feat of engineering, is design with a purpose. Purposeful design distinguishes all created objects from those which occur by natural processes. A classic example of this is the distinction between a pebble and an arrowhead. I have found pebbles in a farmer’s field with shapes mimicking various objects. I have also found arrowheads in the same field. These loudly proclaim themselves to be the result of a purposeful design. The shapes of the pebbles resulted from the action of time, chance and the inherent properties of matter. Softer parts were worn away more rapidly and harder parts more slowly. The arrowheads, on the other hand, were shaped with a specific purpose.
Each of us is called upon, day by day, to distinguish between these two kinds of order. We do it almost without thinking. We see design and purpose all around us. We also see random, happenstance events. It is not hard to separate the two. Even scientists who subscribe to an evolutionary origin of the world are forced to recognize the distinction between designed and random events. Those who search for signs of intelligence in outer space must discriminate between random cosmic radiation and orderly, organized signals. The random ones are discarded and only the orderly, organized ones are evaluated to see if they really came from space. Interestingly, all the organized signals thus far received had their origins on earth and were created by man.
Design always implies a designer. This has been instinctively known from the beginnings of man’s intellectual voyage. In 1802, William Paley wrote a book entitled Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature. This book contained many references to natural selection but correctly referred to them as selective elimination of imperfect specimens. Paley cogently argues that the presence of design requires a designer, just as the presence of a watch requires that there be a watchmaker.
In the nearly two centuries since Paley, the potency of his argument has not diminished—it has increased. With our knowledge today of information theory and its agreement with the laws of thermodynamics, we can now understand that information is always lost in every transition. Design really does require a designer. Sunderland (1984: 142) quoted Sir Fred Hoyle, British astronomer and mathematician of considerable fame, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, in their book Evolution From Space:
The speculations of The Origin of Species turned out to be wrong, as we have seen in this chapter. It is ironic that the scientific facts throw Darwin out, but leave William Paley, a figure of fun to the scientific world for more than a century, still in the tournament with a chance of being the ultimate winner.
Sunderland (1984: 142) noted that in the final chapters of their book, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe conclude that Paley was the winner, for they made it clear that life is in all respects “deliberate.”
A second evidence of creation is the existence of life itself. Some ancient cultures held that living things came from nonliving matter. Egyptians considered the Nile mud to be the origin of frogs. Babylonians thought rotten meat became flies. However, over a century ago Louis Pasteur, among others, put that notion to rest. He demonstrated once for all that life comes only from life. This is called the Law of Biogenesis.
Chemistry
Chemistry alone cannot produce life. The famous experiments of Millers, Fox, Urey and others, far from demonstrating “life in a test tube,” to use a reporter’s expression, were colossal failures as far as producing even the right kinds of building blocks for living systems. The very energy sources and raw materials used were far more efficient at tearing down the resulting amino acids that in producing them. In fact, a trap was necessary in the apparatus to remove the products from the system as soon as they were formed. Without it they would have been destroyed and thus could never have combined to form more complex molecules.
In addition, the end products of these experiments were both levo-rotated (left-handed) and dextro-rotated (right-handed) forms of molecules in equal proportions. All living cells contain only levo-rotated molecules. Most of the end products were wrong for life forms, or, if they were the correct ones, they were most frequently in the wrong relationships to each other. Also, these end products contained more of the very amino acids which would be highly destructive of the ones needed for life. Left to themselves, these chemicals never could have produced anything close to a living cell. It would be like trying to throw a “13” with a pair of dice. The possibility doesn’t exist and thus the probability is zero.
All these biochemical life experiments assume a certain pre-biotic environment in the ancient earth. Foremost among the requirements is the absence of oxygen. Yet all geologic indicators show the earth’s early rocks were highly oxidized at least 300 million years (by an evolutionary time scale) prior to the appearance of living forms! Dr. Dean H. Kenyon, a biochemist and Professor of Biology who taught courses on evolution and the origin of life many years, wrote, with Steinman, Biochemical Predestination. In it the authors argue that life arose spontaneously from non-living matter. By 1982, Dr. Kenyon had completely revised his views. Writing a forward to Morris and Parker’s book What is Creation Science? (1982), he stated:
It soon became apparent to me that the creationist challenge to evolutionism was indeed a formidable one. I no longer believe that the arguments in Biochemical Predestination (Kenyon and Steinman 1969), and in similar books by other authors, add up to an adequate defense of the view that life arose spontaneously on this planet from non-living matter.
BSP 12:2 (Spring 1999) p. 59
He went on to state:
If after reading this book (What is Creation Science?) carefully and reflecting on its arguments, one still prefers the evolutionary view, or still contends that the creationist view is religion and the evolutionary view is pure science, he should ask himself whether something other than the facts of nature are influencing his thinking about origins (Morris and Parker 1982: forward).
Species
A third evidence for creation is the existence of distinct species. Scientists who study the relationships between various plants and animals, sorting them into categories, are termed taxonomists. The word comes from the term taxon, meaning group. The basic premise with which taxonomists operate is that creatures which are alike are placed together, and those which are different are placed in different categories. The categories (taxons) used are, from large to small, the Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species. Man, for instance, is classified as belonging to the animal kingdom, the chordate or vertebrate phylum (possessing a backbone), the mammalian class (nursing its young), the primate order (having flexible hands and feet with five digits), the hominid family (with only two legs). His species is Homo, meaning man, and his genus is sapiens, meaning “wise.” Sometimes a sub-species in noted, also sapiens, possibly meaning wisest of the wise.
As one studies the vast diversity of plants and animals living today, one is struck by the distinct characteristics of each. It is not hard to distinguish between the examples of living forms. Taxonomists easily note which ones are more alike and which are different. But even in this there is some controversy. Taxonomists themselves are divided into two groups, “lumpers” and “splitters.” Some, the lumpers, minimize the slight differences between forms and place them in the same category. Others, the splitters, place these minor variants in separate categories. Among the bovines, for instance, Jerseys and Guernseys are different, but more like each other than horses. Morgans and Clydesdales are both more like each other than they are cows. Red oaks, white oaks, pin oaks and black oaks are distinctly different, yet are more alike than pine trees. Man is not hard pressed to distinguish between the various living plants and animals. This, too, is an evidence of creation, since no continuum exists between the flora and fauna living today.
View of the rising Earth as seen by the crew of Apollo 8 as they came from behind the moon after the lunar orbit insertion burn.
Fossils
Fossils, remains of formerly living things, present a more difficult problem. With only the skeletons or other remains (such as footprints) with which to work, lacking observation of the living creature, taxonomists have a harder job to do. Yet even among the fossils the basic differences are readily noted. There are, however, two major differences between the fossil world and the living world. These two major distinctions of the fossils compared to living things are extinction and stasis.
BSP 12:2 (Spring 1999) p. 60
Were one to be transported, after living in the Carboniferous, for instance, into today’s world, he would likely be surprised at the absence of many familiar types. “Where are all the dinosaurs?” “Where are all the ferns?” “Where are all the tigers?” would be his questions. Many more plants and animals existed in the past than are present today.
Yet the fossilized creatures we see in rocks have much the same characteristics as living forms. Many have disappeared, but the ones that remain are very much like the fossilized forms. Jellyfish from the Ordovician, for example, are just like living jellyfish today. Clams from the Cambrian are like clams we eat today. Bats, long fossilized, are just like the bats flying each evening to catch their meal of insects. And so it goes. This situation is termed stasis, meaning it stayed the same. Far from indicating slow gradual evolution of one type from another, the fossil record is graphic evidence of creation. The creatures of the past are the same as creatures alive today! The absence of transitional forms, the stasis of fossil and living forms, is one of the most telling evidences of creation.
The Cambrian “explosion of life” is in perfect harmony with the concept of creation. The abrupt appearance of every phylum of animals in the Cambrian, with no apparent ancestors leading up to them, is powerful evidence of creation. Basic kinds of plants and animals have not changed; some died out, but the others are still with us.
There are other evidences of creation which could be cited but space does not permit. Morris and Parker (1982:96) quote Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species on the absence of transitions between forms:
intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic change, and this is perhaps the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.
David Raup, Curator of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (which houses about 20% of all fossil species known) stated concerning Darwin’s admission:
Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded…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 (see Morris and Parker 1982:97).
Parker (Parker and Morris 1982:97) goes on to summarize the situation thus:
Darwin said the fossil evidence was perhaps the most serious and obvious objection against the theory. Raup is saying that 120 years of research have made the case for Darwinian evolution even worse!
One could cite the presence of footprints “indistinguishable from those of habitually barefoot Homo sapiens” in strata contemporaneous with the most ancient of the Australopithecines (Tuttle and Webb 1989: 316). The Kanapoi arm fragment (KP271), which is totally modern in appearance, by “searching analysis” utilizing computerized comparisons with modern man was dated at 4.5 million years ago (Howells 1981:70–71). The list goes on with evidence for creation all around us.
To state that the Bible is the only evidence of creation is to ignore the facts of science. True, the Bible is one testimony to creation, not because it is a science text, which it is not, but because it is a text of history. It does relate, sometimes in precise and graphic terms, the history of the world. To this the facts of science, though not the philosophy of some scientists, agree.
Bibliography
Darwin, C.
1963 The Origin of Species. New York: Washington Square (reprint).
Howells, W. W.
1981 Homo Erectus: Papers in Honour of Davidson Black. Toronto: University of Toronto.
Hoyle, F., and Wickramasinghe, C.
1981 Evolution From Space. London: Dent and Co.
Kenyon, D.H., and Steinman, G.
1969 Biochemical Predestination. New York: McGraw Hill.
Morris, H., and Parker, G.
1982 What is Creation Science. San Diego: Creation Life.
Paley, W.
1802 Natural Theology or Evidences for the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature. London: Tegg.
Patterson, C.
1978 Evolution. London: British Museum.
Raup, D.
1979 Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History.
Sunderland, L.D.
1984 Darwin’s Enigma. San Diego: Master Books.
Tuttle, R. H., and Webb, D.M.
1989 The Pattern of Little Feet (abstr). American Journal of Physical Anthropology 78.2: 316.