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ANSWERS IN GENESIS UPON THIS ROCK
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AiG: A One Issue Ministry?
by Richard Fangrad, CEO, AiG –Canada
14 August 2001
While AiG deals with the origins controversy, we are not a ‘creation science’ group per se. It is true that we deal with the scientific aspects of origins, but let me share with you what God has truly called us to do.
Carl Wieland, CEO of our Australia-AiG office and founder/editor of Creation magazine, has described our activities as ‘equipping God’s army’. This ‘equipping’ is done primarily through the materials (print, video, audio, Web, magazines, etc.). Also, our speakers are an important part of the process, as they communicate the importance of the accuracy of the Bible (particularly Genesis), and challenging believers to be able to defend their faith.
Yet because it is virtually impossible for our speakers to fully explain the spiritual, social and intellectual benefits of understanding Genesis in a short sermon or lecture, it’s then that the materials take over. The special offers you see in our newsletters each month reflect our desire to get accurate, high-quality, faith-building information into the hands of Christians. But this is not the ultimate goal of AiG—only a means to an end.
AiG believes that by equipping you (and the church) to build your thinking on the Bible in every area (not just moral and spiritual areas), you will be able to show that the Bible (not evolution/millions of years) is the best explanation for things we observe in the real world. The Bible explains things like fossils, death, disease, light coming from stars millions of light years away, canyons, changes in living things, etc. Yet presenting this is still only a means to an end.
The central ‘issue’ that AiG promotes is evangelism through the church. We want to see people equipped with answers that they could use to win their friends and neighbours to Christ! Offer answers to questions that prevent people from trusting Christ as their Lord and Saviour. Questions like, ‘Where did Cain get his wife? How did Noah get dinosaurs on the Ark? Did God really create in six days? Does carbon dating prove an old Earth? Have there been many ice ages? Is Jesus really God? How do we know the Bible is accurate?’ …and many more. (For answers to these and many more questions on Genesis, the Bible, God, and Creation/Evolution, visit our Q&A section.)
The materials in our catalog are selected because they deal with areas where the accuracy of Biblical truth are questioned. No part of the Bible is more attacked by non-Christians (and Christians) than Genesis. That’s why, in addition to proclaiming the authority and accuracy of the Bible, we deal with creation, evolution, the age of the Earth, and the sciences that relate to those topics.
Indeed AiG MAY BE a ‘one issue’ ministry, and the one issue that we focus on—equipping the church for evangelism—is one of the most important tasks for Christians today! In a time when we see the Christian influence in society losing ground faster every day, it is a time for ‘God’s army’, the church, to take action.
We trust that our speakers, Web site, resources, and magazines have strengthened your faith in the accuracy of the Bible. AiG hopes that you will use the materials and what you learn from them to influence your friends and neighbours for Christ.
Please pray for us—that together, God would use us to reach our communities with the message of the truth, accuracy, and authority of the Bible from the very first verse.
COPYRIGHT © 2001 Answers in Genesis Ministries International www.AnswersInGenesis.org
Some thoughts from Dave
The following brief CNN article is like hundreds that go out all the time. But I've put in red the remark that got me thinking. The reporter states that the significance of the astronomical "science" research they are doing is to "better understand the evolution of planetary systems." It occurred to me that much of this government $ponsored path of research is really nothing more than a search for supporting data to prop up evolutionism. At least that is the admission of the reporter here. Of course we know this is true. And from what I have observed, it is on a very grand scale. Think about it. How much publicly sponsored space "research" has as it's primary or secondary goal to "better understand" evolution? (Yes, SETI thankfully was privatized a few years ago, but that is just one program, besides NASA has officially adopted much of what SETI was about anyway). Publicly sponsored research programs also exist in many other scientific disciplines ie life sciences and earth sciences where evolution is a major research element. Just how many research programs, grants and publicly funded field studies are there that have unashamedly stated at least part of their mission is to better understand evolutionary processes? Processes that don't happen and never happened in the first place. Such research is a crock.
It follows that such programs and research efforts which are the life blood of thousands of evolutionary trained scientists and educators whose research involving evolutionary evidences would become fluff if classical evolution seriously loses it's credibility on a broad scale. If evolution loses it's grip as the 'central controlling principle in science', what would these thousands of researchers do for research projects? The high priests of education clamor to expand their ranks of trained "experts" and pry open the floodgates of public research grant money to keep their droves of fellow researchers employed somewhere and doing research projects funded by the colleges and universities they control. It is their turf. It is their syndicate. It is their bread and butter, their lifeline of existence. If evolution is exposed and uprooted and discredited as it should be, their evolutionary based research becomes pointless. They are out of business. They and their life work become irrelevant.
This is like having a neighborhood where the mob controls the streets. You only do business in that neighborhood in concert with the mob. If law and order and true freedom of doing business prevail, the mob is out of business. The mob is going to try to wipe out any competition for the sake of their own existence. They are a heavily networked crime family who will go to great lengths to protect and maintain their interests. They engage in many businesses that on the surface look like any other reputable business. But they cook the books. They shake people down. They intimidate witnesses, and they take out anyone who will not play by their rules. They will turn on members of their own family in a hearbeat. They have an understanding with government officials, even the media, so everyone can live and let live. Once in a while an upstart prosecutor comes to town and begins to investigate, compile evidence, and actually lands one of the mobsters in prison. He does so with great opposition and personal cost. He is threatened and bullied. And the crime syndicate just shifts gears and contines their dominance. The prosecutor is exhausted and everyone goes back to their normal routine.
This creation/evolution battle we are in is not merely an academic pursuit for truth. It is more than the conflict of opposing world views. To be sure it is a spiritual battle, as all battles for truth ultimately are. But we also need to admit the reality of the landscape as it currently exists. We are up against a faceless media-enabled academic and governmental crime syndicate that routinely traffics in lies, distortion, bribery, intimidation, witness tampering, extortion, murder (of truth and evidence), collusion, slander, racketeering, and conspiracy. This is not child's play. They are obviously not nearly as interested in truth and evidence as they are in power and funding. They do not prize science, they promote propaganda that muddies the water to the general public so they can continue their pursuits unencumbered by the pressure of truth and public knowledge. It is true they are holding tightly to their philosophy that offers rationale for their godlessness, but in the short term, it is their paycheck, their careers, personal significance, and turf control they are willing to fight for.
This picture may sound like an unfair characterization to some. But the evidence is well documented and the battle on the streets of ideas and information flow is very real. We are up against a formally unorganized but very well networked crime syndicate that will not give up their turf peacefully. They are an institution. They are a coalition of government, media, and academia that will not fall until they are fully exposed, indicted, disarmed, bankrupted, and run out of town by the people they do business with everyday. Some people will always believe lies and be easily confused and intimidated. There will always be organized crime wherever it is permitted to exist. But it is in the power of the people holding only to the truth to put these thugs on the run.
The government won't do it. The media won't do it. Academia will not purge it self any time soon because they are too deeply entangled in the mob themselves. It has to be the people. We have a lot of work to do to stir up and equip the people at the grass roots level..
Dave
OVCEA Ohio Valley Creation Education Association
Here is the article.
CNN.com
Ann Kellan on why astronomers 'follow the water'
Ann Kellan on why astronomers 'follow the water'
Astronomers say a giant star in its death throes seems to be vaporizing a host of comets, raising the possibility that another planetary system possesses water, an ingredient necessary for known life. CNN Science Correspondent Ann Kellan explains.
Q: Tell us a little bit about the dying star? How far away is it? How big is it? When will it be declared dead?
KELLAN: Its name is CW Leonis, better known to astronomers as IRC+10216. It is about 200 parsecs, or 650 light years away. In the infrared spectrum, it is the brightest star in the sky -- after our own sun, of course!
CW Leonis is a red giant, which means it is dying. It is burning up its nuclear fuel supply and expanding, shedding material from its outer layers rapidly. Eventually, after about 10,000 to 30,000 years or so, scientists think it may become a planetary nebula.
Q: Does the dying star pose any danger to Earth?
KELLAN: It poses no danger to Earth.
Q: How are scientists getting their information about the star? Are they watching it with a telescope or are they using a satellite to study it?
KELLAN: NASA is using a satellite called SWAS, which stands for Submillimeter Wave Astronomy. It studies interstellar gas clouds and their chemical composition. According to the NASA Web site, "The primary objective of SWAS is to survey water, molecular oxygen, carbon and isotopic carbon monoxide emission in a variety of galactic star forming regions."
Q: Why is the star dying?
KELLAN: It has burned out its nuclear fuel supply. When that happens, the star begins to shed its outer layers and expands into a Red Giant.
Q: What do researchers hope to learn from the dying star?
KELLAN: By studying a dying star, scientists will better understand the evolution of planetary systems like our own solar system.
Q: What does a dying star have to do with the search for life on other worlds?
KELLAN: In this case, scientists are seeing signs of water surrounding this dying star. Water is a sign of life as we know it. So scientists want to know if planets like ones in our solar system once existed around this star and if life existed there.
Q: Will the research on the dying star help us better understand our own sun?
KELLAN: Sometime in the future, about 6 billion years from now, our sun will burn out its nuclear fuel supply and expand -- its atmosphere growing to about the orbit of the planet Earth, sizzling and evaporating everything in its path.
Our story today shows that this type of expansion and evaporation is possibly happening in a solar system similar to ours, around the star CW Leonis. In the search for life outside our own solar system, the mantra has been, "follow the water."
That's exactly what scientists think they've found around CW Leonis -- water vapor from what they think was a belt of comets surrounding the star that are now beginning to melt.
Did Jesus say He created in six days?
by Ken Ham, AiG-US Executive Director
August 25, 2001
A rather vehement ‘old-Earther ’ wrote recently and claimed: ‘a twenty-four [hour] understanding of the creation days was never stated explicitly by Jesus ….’ Well, did Jesus anywhere clearly state that the Earth was created in six ordinary (approximately 24 hours each) days?
Dr Charles Taylor, an Australian linguist and author of "The First 100 Words", conducts an in-depth study of each of the first 100 Hebrew words contained in Genesis 1:1–2:4a. It is an extra-ordinary look at how the Hebrew text is meant to be taken literally.
When confronted with such a question, most Christians would automatically go to the New Testament to read the recorded words of Jesus to see if such a statement occurs.
Now, when we search the New Testament Scriptures, we certainly find many interesting statements Jesus made that relate to this issue. For instance:
1. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female (Mark 10:6).This makes it clear that Jesus taught the creation was young, for Adam and Eve existed ‘from the beginning ’–not billions of years after the universe and Earth came into existence.
2. Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you –Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words? (John 5:45-47). In this passage, Jesus makes it clear that one must believe what Moses wrote. And one of the passages in the writings of Moses in Exodus 20:11 states: For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. This, of course, is the basis of our seven-day week –six days work and one day rest. Obviously, this passage was meant to be taken as speaking of a total of seven literal days based on the Creation week of six literal days of work and one literal day of rest.
In fact, in Luke 13:14, in his response to Jesus healing a person on the Sabbath, the ruler of the synagogue, who knew the law of Moses, obviously referred to this passage when he said, There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day. The Sabbath day here was considered an ordinary day, and the six days of work were considered ordinary days. This teaching is based on the law of Moses as recorded in Exodus 20,where we find the Ten Commandments –the six- day Creation week being a basis for the Fourth Commandment.
One could consider many more passages that certainly imply that Jesus taught that He created in six days, but are there any explicit passages?
I believe there are. However, one has to approach this issue in a slightly different manner. Why just go to the New Testament to try to find out if Jesus stated He created in six days?
Why not the Old Testament? After all, Jesus is the second person of the Godhead, and has always existed.
First, Colossians makes it clear that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was the one who created all things: For by Him all things were created that are in heaven, and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. (Colossians 1:16-17).
We are also told elsewhere in Scripture how Jesus created: By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth … For He spoke, and it was done (Psalm 33:6,9).
As well as this, we know that Jesus is in fact called ‘the Word ’: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. (John 1:1-3).
So Jesus, who is the Word, created by speaking everything into existence.
Now, consider Exodus 20:1: And God spoke all these words, saying…. Because Jesus is the Word, this must be a reference to the preincarnate Christ speaking to Moses. As we know, there are a number of appearances of Christ (‘theophanies ’) in the Old Testament.
John 1:18 states: No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. There is no doubt, with rare exception, that the preincarnate Christ did the speaking to Adam, Noah, the patriarchs, Moses etc.
Now, when the Creator God spoke as recorded in Exodus 20:1, what did He (Jesus) say? As we read on, we find this statement: For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day ….
Yes, Jesus did explicitly say He created in six days.* Not only this, but the one who spoke the words ‘six days ’ also wrote them down for Moses: Then the LORD delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly (Deuteronomy 9:10).
Jesus said clearly: He created in six days! And He even did something He didn’t do with most of Scripture –He wrote it down Himself. How more authoritative can you get than that?
*Even if someone is convinced that God the Father was the speaker in Exodus 20:11, the Father and Son would never disagree. Jesus said in John 10:30: ‘I and my Father are one’ [neuter –one in the essence of deity,not one in personality].
This article comes from "THE GENESIS NETWORK" web site.
MYTHS OF EVOLUTION
Evolution is Science, Creation is Religion
This myth infers that evolution explains the real world of science and human experience while creation relates to some etherical realm of spirits. It is equivalent to saying that creation is a parable -- something that didn't really happen --but it teaches some moral principles. This favorite put-down of atheistic evolutionists discredits biblical creation for the majority who are unfamiliar with Scripture. Everyone knows the Bible contains parables and visions and that it does explain things about spirit beings. But the Bible, from cover to cover, records very real historical events that happened and will happen in the real physical world where Science can study natural phenomena. The Bible frames all it's teachings on real historical events --some of them miraculous. These supernatural events occurred in real history, in spite of some remarkable explanations from fools who have said in their heart, "There is no God!" Creation is a series of supernatural events that the Bible says happened in real time, in real space and to real matter. Nothing in Scripture permits us to view these events as parables. God said He made it All in Six Days.The Bible Tells WHO not HOW.
Like most myths, this is a half-truth. Unlike evolution, biblical creation identifies the creative force that caused it all. Evolution has yet to identify any productive cause. The belief that random chance can produce good has no basis in logic or science. Most important, scientific HOWS are of little consequence in understanding origins --we want to know what happened HISTORICALLY. The Bible is full of HOWS that tell the ways of our all-wise, all-powerful sovereign Creator. The HOWS of creation teach us the Miracle-Worker's purposes. The HOWS of creation are just as important as the HOWS of all other Bible events. God said He made it All in Six Days, that's HOW
Experts can Harmonize Evolution with Scripture
All such harmonizations are an illusion because evolution and the Bible are fundamentally opposite in the structural elements they propose. The time frame, the sequence, the events, the purposes, the reasons, the methods, the processes -- everything is opposite. More important, the physical explanations carry incompatible meanings. God said He made it All in Six Days. That doesn't harmonize with any evolutionary mixture.
It doesn't really matter which view you hold.
From all appearances this myth seems to be true. Creation believers and evolution believers work and live successfully in all walks of life. Both of these contradictory worldviews cannot be true; one of them is giving their believer a false perception of reality, false values, false self-image, a false view of God, a futile lifestyle vs. purpose and meaning in life, moral relativism vs absolutes, a foundation for humanism and atheism vs. a foundation for Bible doctrines. What difference does it make? Do you agree? God said He made it All in Six Days. Believe Him! This of all myths should be one that concerns us all. The majority of church attendees today feel that it doesn´t matter what you believe. Just believe that God did the creation. The truth of the matter is that if the foundation to a building doesn´t really matter, the intensity placed in building it would be left out. The foundation is the "Beginning" as Genesis is the book of beginnings. If you and I as Christians do not think it matters what our faith is founded on, we are in more trouble than we thought. We must be concerned about why we believe and what we believe. If we reject biblical creation we will soon begin to question other miraculous works of God.
Insisting on Recent Creation Turns Scientists off God.
Yes, it will turn SOME scientists away from God. So will the virgin birth, the deity of Jesus, the miracles of the Bible and every supernatural intervention in the physical world of man's experience where Naturalism claims that science reigns. But believing these material, historical events is the ONLY WAY to come to God. Why would we bring scientists to some wimpy imitation of God? Why not show them the God who, "revealed His almighty power and invisible attributes" (Rom.1:20) by working ONLY supernaturally during creation. Creation was the one opportunity to display the extent of His power, uninhibited by any divine or delegated limits He later imposed on Himself. Even little children understand if they will FIRST BELIEVE. Even scientists CAN'T understand if they won't FIRST BELIEVE.
We should remain open-minded to all views.
This sounds like good advice --Christians should be considerate of others. More important than considerate, Christians are believers --they believe God. If God has spoken and has told us the truth, then we better believe Him. To not believe God after He has told us the truth is not optional. Open-mindedness to God's words is essential, but if we persist in willful ignorance we commit the disastrous sin of unbelief. Ironically openmindedness also hardens into a firm position. We will find that what we won't believe, we can't believe. Unfortunately unbelief is never stationary, it's a slope. If we reject biblical creation we will soon begin to question other miraculous works of God. God said He made it All in Six Days. That's not very open-minded of Him.The following articles may be found on Answers in Genesis website, Answersingenesis.org.
Time magazine Christians
by Dr Don Batten2 June, 2001
A pastor likened the lives of some Christians to Time magazine, calling them ‘Time magazine Christians’. By this he did not mean that they read too much of Time magazine. Rather, such Christians, like Time, have everything in sections–politics, business, science, art, cinema, etc., with their Christianity tucked away near the back, in a section labelled ‘religion’.
Answers in Genesis is about getting Christians away from such compartmentalized thinking, to be ‘holistic’ Christians—so that our whole lives reflect the influence of Christ. Romans 12:1,2 says: ‘I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and pleasing and perfect will of God.’
This reflects the Lord Jesus’ exhortation: ‘… you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ (Mark 12:30)
In other words, we are to worship God with everything we have and are. Every part of our lives should reflect the renewing influence of the Holy Spirit. Sadly, there are many today who think of their faith only in terms of Bible reading, prayer and church, and perhaps witnessing. They have not connected their faith to the real world—of history, science, business, ethical decisions, etc.
Quarantined faith?
There are many wearing the badge ‘Christian’ today who have quarantined their faith into ‘a page at the back of the magazine’. This can be seen in ‘Christians’ who cannot be trusted in their business dealings, or who do not strive for excellence in their work. The apostle Paul encourages us that ‘whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men’ (Colossians 3:23).Compartmentalized thinking sees Christians voting for politicians who live immoral lives and espouse such things as abortion ‘rights’, even late-term abortions, and even evolutionary indoctrination in schools in the name of ‘good education’.
It also sees ‘Christian’ teachers and lecturers happy to teach a curriculum soaked in secular humanism. In fact, many of the traditional ‘church schools’ strive so much to not allow Christian thinking to affect what they teach (that would be biased!) that they probably turn out more atheists than the government schools do. Nevertheless, many of the teachers in these schools would say that they are Christians.
Such people dust off their ‘faith’ for an outing at church once a week, or perhaps less frequently, but the rest of the time they are little different from the unbelievers they rub shoulders with every day. They are not the salt and light they are meant to be.
Where did this shallow approach to Christian faith come from?
A leap in the dark?
In the 1700s, influential philosophers taught that people could work everything out using reason alone –without reference to God or the revelation of the Bible. This view is known as ‘rationalism’.The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard rejected this rationalism, correctly seeing that such thinking leads to loss of all meaning. At the same time he did not fully accept the supernatural nature of the Bible—that God inspired it to be understandable, objective truth, so he had little rational basis for meaning anyway.
However, having a Christian upbringing, he wanted to have the comfort of ‘faith’ as a source of some meaning in an otherwise meaningless world. 'Faith' then became a ‘leap into the dark’—an irrational grasping after meaning where none can be known to exist. This became known as ‘existentialism’. Kierkegaard, in elevating the subjectivity of Christian faith, effectively downplayed the objectivity of the Bible's claims and paved the way for modernists such as the German philosopher Nietzsche.
Nietzsche took the idea that God cannot be known in any objective sense further, concluding that ‘God is dead’, meaning that the very idea of God is dead because in his view the God of the Bible did not exist. Because there was no God as an objective source of morals and meaning, Nietzsche suggested that the State could impose these on people. He also espoused Darwinian struggle. Nietzsche’s views inspired Hitler, whose Nazism became the ultimate fruit of the evolutionary tree.
Interestingly, Kierkegaard, although a Dane, was very popular reading in Germany between the World Wars. In fact, the ability of many of the churches in Germany to go along with the Führer could be attributed to the compartmentalized thinking and loss of authority of the Bible that existentialism encouraged.
Belief in the ‘cosmic Christ’ or ‘the Christ within’ might sound nice. However, it is not the faith in the real Creator of everything whom the Bible reveals–the God who gave Law, such as ‘you shall not murder’, and will judge those who break it.
The call to ‘don’t think about it, just believe’ of some teleevangelists today is not Christian faith; it is existentialism dressed up with Christian jargon. No, Christian faith is based upon the faithful testimony of those who have seen and heard things that really happened (1 John 1:3); it is not a blind, irrational faith.
Two boxes
Compartmentalized thinking received a big boost when Christians started flirting with evolutionary thinking. Churchmen have mainly used a ‘two boxes’ approach to accommodate evolution. Pope John Paul II recommended this approach with his ‘two magisteria’ (or non-overlapping magisteria—NOMA) statement about evolution.Many modern theologians use phrases that reflect this approach, such as: ‘the Bible is not a science textbook’, ‘the Bible tells us the way to Heaven, not the way of the heavens’, ‘the Bible is about why, not how’, etc.
Well-meaning Christians sometimes make statements like these. However, they are inadvertently disconnecting Christian faith from the real history of the world—a good Creation that became corrupted with death and suffering through the sin of Adam, and all his descendants share that corruption and the consequences of sin. Without the sin of the real first Adam, there is no meaning to the dying and rising from the dead of Jesus Christ, the last Adam, taking upon himself the curse of death for the lost descendants of the first Adam.
Faith divorced from the ‘real world’ of history and science is not biblical Christian faith.
‘My head can now agree with my heart’
A man had been attending a church for several months, attracted by the integrity and love evident in the lives of the Christians, as well as the sincere, meaningful worship. However, he found he just could not yield to the Gospel call.Then, when he heard the Creation/Gospel message, he said, ’My head now agrees with my heart. I have wanted to believe for months, but my head was saying, “This does not make sense.” Now it does.’ What had happened? The Bible had been connected to the real world. Such people are looking for permission to believe, but for them, evolutionary indoctrination renders the Christian worldview incomprehensible. The very doctrine of evolution robs life of all meaning and purpose—the ‘universal acid’, as one evolutionist said.
Christians also find it true that ‘the heart cannot delight in what the head cannot believe’.
A person who lends out the Answers in Genesis video series (featuring Ken Ham and Gary Parker) told me of a pastor who had tendered his resignation from his church. He had lost all enthusiasm for preaching and teaching.
This pastor watched the videos and he realized what had happened. Evolutionary indoctrination had gradually gnawed away at his faith and he had wondered more and more about the truthfulness of the Bible account of history. In the end he had lost all confidence in the book he was supposed to believe and teach. The fire had gone out.
He now repented of his unbelief and asked his church if he could withdraw his resignation. He now knew what he should be teaching. That was four years ago and this church has seen their pastor transformed and the church is now growing.
Such is the importance of the message that the Bible is authoritative from the very first verse– the message that Answers in Genesis proclaims around the world.
BULLET-PROOFING BELIEF
Don Batten and Jonathan Sarfati talk to research chemist Patrick YoungMeet a leading scientist whose work has included research on the material used in space-age applications and the bullet-proof vest—and who believes the Bible from cover to cover.
Dr Patrick H. Young, B.S., Ph.D., is a technical service manager at the DuPont Laboratories in Ohio, USA. He is the holder of patents related to Kevlar® (which is used in bullet-resistant vests, for example) and Mylar® (the magnetic tape in video cassette recorders), with two other patents pending. His outstanding achievements have earned him awards and recognition, including being voted one of the outstanding young men of America in 1989, and one of the outstanding young men of science in 1993.
In today’s violence-ridden times, television footage of police wearing bullet-proof (bullet-resistant is perhaps the more proper, but less used term) vests is familiar to many. Perhaps not everyone, though, knows that the bullet-proof material used in these vests is a synthetic fibre called Kevlar®, which is 10 times stronger than steel by weight. We recently spoke to a senior research scientist at DuPont, the makers of Kevlar®. Dr Patrick Young, though not the actual inventor of Kevlar® (that was a Dr Stephanie Kwolek), holds patents related to the processes of its manufacture.
He told us more about this fascinating material:
‘Its strength lies in its chemical structure. It is spun as a liquid crystal, forming a very rigid rod polymer, and when it’s oriented it’s very stiff. That particular characteristic plus the fact that it really has no melting point (in fact, it decomposes before it melts) gives it flame-retardant properties. It’s used a lot in aeroplanes for that reason, also in automobile brake and clutch pads. There are many different applications for Kevlar®, besides the one everyone thinks about — “bullet-proof” vests.’
Dr Young has extensively researched Kevlar’s® bullet-proof characteristics:
‘It is an interesting mechanism. Its chemical structure enables it to stop a bullet by flattening out and thus absorbing the impact energy.’
As pleased as Dr Young was to tell us of his work with bullet-resistant vests, it wasn’t long before the conversation turned to something he considers much more important—namely, having a bullet-resistant faith. This leading researcher speaks passionately of his concerns for the many people who do not understand the fundamental importance to Christianity of the Genesis creation account.
‘I run into many professing Christians who believe, for example, that "God used evolution to create". I’m flabbergasted that they don’t understand that if you throw away Adam, the Fall and the original sin, then you throw away Jesus Christ and His reason for coming, and the whole thing falls like a house of cards.’
Patrick Young says:
‘I was taught evolution in high school, and though I was raised in a Christian environment, nobody was standing up and opposing it, so it was kind of just migrating into my mind and staying there.’
He says he probably dealt with this by:
‘trying not to think about it … there were many other things on my mind, going through school, studying chemistry. My training in Christianity was more of a “New Testament only” thing, with emphasis mostly on Christian living. Thankfully, in the last 10–15 years, God has given me a hunger to go back into the Old Testament … and I now know that Genesis is crucial to understanding the Gospel.’
In his daily work, Patrick sees the hand of the Creator. He says:
‘The whole world of chemistry is a well-behaved world. If you understand the principles of it you can do a great deal to control it. To me, that’s evidence of design and a designer right there! If all that came about by chance (as evolutionists claim), I would not believe that the world of chemistry would be as well-behaved as it is.’
Dr Young’s comments are consistent with the thinking of the successful pioneer scientists, who believed that God is a God of order. Therefore, especially since we are made in God’s image, we should be able to understand the world to a substantial extent. (In fact, contrary to the common claims in the media and educational circles, this Christian/creationist view provided the very foundation of modern science.) Dr Young affirms that his success in research chemistry is founded on this basic philosophy. And he is quick to acknowledge that for all man’s ingenuity and breakthroughs in developing high performance man-made fibres, they yet fall short of the God-designed ‘natural’ fibres such as spider silk.
We are often told that ‘no real scientist’ disbelieves in evolution. So we asked this leading chemist, a ‘real scientist’ by any definition, what he thought of the evolutionary idea of life evolving from lifeless chemicals in some primordial soup.
He said, ‘I’ve read a great deal on that; it’s clearly a gross over-simplification to state that if some simulated lightning is put into a beaker and creates some amino acids, you are on the way to making life. One needs to realize that to go further from this point your experiment would need to have developed only certain specific types of amino acids, either the dextrorotatory ("right-handed") or the laevorotatory ("left-handed") type—and guess what?! That doesn’t happen—nobody has been able to do that, and so the "primordial soup" belief system has absolutely no scientific evidence to support it.’
Dr Young says:
‘Probably 90–95% of the people who tell me they believe in evolution, when I ask them to tell me why, they cannot do so. They can’t explain it in a scientific manner, but when they come across somebody who can explain Creation in a scientifically valid manner, they kind of just turn around and walk away.’
So why don’t more scientists, with all their education, recognize the fact of the Creator? Dr Young is forthright:
‘Most of the scientists I come across, I believe that they wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and see their god. I think there is a level of arrogance in the scientific community and that is probably the reason why they don’t have the belief system needed for God—because they would first have to crucify that arrogance.
‘The key to a person’s thinking stretches back to the foundations of their education’.
Dr Young is critical of the US public education system’s handling of the creation/evolution debate, which, he says, ‘attempts to brainwash children to go in a certain direction’, i.e. undermining the very foundations of Christianity.
'Little wonder, says Dr Young, that so many Christians today are ineffective when it comes to sharing their faith. ‘The frozen chosen’ he calls them, sadly—paralyzed through a lack of understanding of the foundational truths of the Gospel.
To reinforce his point, Dr Young draws an analogy between being effective as a chemist and being effective as a Christian:
‘In chemistry, you need to first grasp the basic foundational principles. As a chemist, if I have that basic foundation of chemistry, then when I start actually doing the research, it’s that foundation that makes things so much easier, so I can be much more creative. So, too, with Christianity; to be effective one must have a sound understanding of the foundations—and that means understanding Creation and Fall and their relevance to the Gospel. Sadly, teaching on Genesis is generally very poor.’
But he is greatly heartened to see that Christians are beginning to wake up to the importance of this issue. He says:
‘I remember listening to Ken Ham in a seminar a few weeks ago; he did a phenomenal job on teaching a proper understanding of Genesis, and it was just amazing to see the number of people whose eyes were as big as saucers when they walked out of there! They said, "I really didn’t know that!" — and they had been Christians for years.’
As Dr Young affirms from his own experience, the effect of a fuller understanding of Genesis and the Gospel not only helps make one’s own faith more ‘bullet-proof’ but equips Christians with the confidence to go out and share the Good News with others, as the Lord commanded in Matthew 28:19–20.
He excitedly explains:
‘As far as I am concerned now, my basic role in life is to be someone who follows God and His purposes, and God has placed me in a unique position in my work. I travel a great deal, interact with many people, and am able to speak about certain things, so I find openings to talk about some things that may plant “Gospel seeds”.
‘I’ve always told my wife that I have an interesting ministry flying in a passenger aircraft at high altitude because I’ve got a captive audience—they can’t go anywhere.’
At the end of our talk, Dr Young was warmly and spontaneously appreciative of the Answers in Genesis ministry. He said:
‘I believe it is something that needs to keep on happening. I’ll continue to cover the AiG ministry in prayer because I believe you are at the front line of those who are proclaiming the Word of God, so the devil will definitely keep on attacking your marvellous work.’
We felt privileged to have spoken to a strong Christian, passionate about sharing his faith, who also happens to be one of the leading industrial research scientists in the world.
COPYRIGHT © 2001 Answers in Genesis Ministries International www.AnswersInGenesis.org
Do I have to believe in a literal creation
to be a Christian?
by Russell GriggBy this I mean believe that God created the world in six normal days, that there was then a real rebellion against God by an actual Adam and Eve, followed by the entry of death, suffering and carnivory into a once-perfect world, and that the first chapters of Genesis are a literal, historical account of all this. So does one have to believe this to be a Christian?
Becoming a Christian
In the New Testament, a Christian is seen as someone who does two things:1. Believes that Jesus Christ (who was fully God and fully man), through His death on the Cross and His Resurrection, has paid the penalty for our sin. Cf. If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved’ (Romans 10:9).(1)
2. Obeys the command to repent (literally, changes one’s mind—about God and sin), that is, to acknowledge that one has lived and acted in rebellion against God, and to ask God’s forgiveness for this.(2) Cf.‘God.....commands all men everywhere to repent’ (Acts 17:31a).(3)
Ken Ham is best known for his message on the relevance of creation and the importance of Genesis. Humorous and easy to read, "The Lie, Evolution" powerfully equips Christians to defend the book of Genesis and opens eyes to the evil effects of evolution on today’s society. He shows that it is impossible to reconcile Christianity and evolution or billions-of-years and remain logically consistent.
Is it then enough just to believe in Jesus and repent? Well, these two things imply that there exists a holy God against whom we have rebelled and so incurred the penalty for doing so. But why does our disregard for God and our failure to keep His laws merit any penalty at all, let alone the death penalty?
Answer: When we read the first three chapters of Genesis, we see that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were created with a holy, godly nature and they lived in fellowship with God. However, they chose to rebel against Him and so became corrupt in themselves, hostile to God, and guilty before Him. Their rebellion was an affront to the holiness of God who had created them, and it earned them the death penalty (Genesis 3:17–19), about which they had been warned (Genesis 2:17, 3:3). This corruption, hostility and guilt involved the whole human race (Romans 5:12–19),(4) and we have inherited their death penalty also (Romans 6:23), which we deserve.(5)
It is true that one can go through the steps of becoming a Christian without accepting or even knowing the Genesis account of Creation and the Fall.(6) However, such a minimal belief system misses out on the full measure of what God has provided as the basis for our coming into a right relationship with Him. This includes the totality of His Word to us, incorporating the logical foundation which Genesis supplies to the whole doctrine of Salvation.
This leads to a shallow faith that has little root in the Word of God and so has little foundation to resist the attacks and ridicule of sceptics, atheists, liberal religious leaders, fellow students, or work-mates, etc. In the parable of the sower, it was because they had no root that the seeds which fell on stony ground withered away when they sprang up and were scorched by the sun (Matthew 13:5–6, 20–21).
Today Genesis is under attack as never before—not only by sceptics who ridicule it, but also by ‘Christian’ teachers who, in their books and sermons, blatantly misrepresent what the text says, to try and make it conform to the conclusions of some of modern science, with its antitheistic presuppositions. So then, how can one tell what any part of God’s Word, and in particular Genesis, actually means?
Answer: The key to understanding the meaning of any book of the Bible is to ask, ‘What was the intention of the author?’ When we do this with Genesis (e.g. by comparing the style of the first chapters with that of the rest of Genesis),(7) it is very evident that Moses’ purpose, under God, was to write an authentic, historical and factual account, beginning with the creation of the universe and Earth, and then narrating the history of mankind from the creation of Adam to the death of Joseph (Genesis 50:26). (8,9)
Living as a Christian
Let us now examine some of the problems faced by a Christian when he or she does not accept what Genesis says about a literal Creation.1. There is a slippery slope into unbelief that accompanies disbelieving any part of the Word of God. If some part of the Bible is not true because it does not mean what it says, how do we know that other parts, such as the Virginal Conception of Jesus or the forgiveness of sin, are true? In the 1940s and ’50s, American evangelist Charles Templeton’s preaching helped lead thousands of people to profess faith in Christ, but then he began to compromise with long-age evolutionary concepts. As a result, he had no answer to the spurious claims of evolutionist scientists and their atheistic theories about the origin of the Earth, life, etc., and no answer to the problems of suffering and evil in the world.
In his autobiography, Farewell to God, Templeton tells how this compromise led him into total apostasy. He came to deny the accounts of Creation, Noah’s Flood, and the supernatural origin of the Ten Commandments.(10)
He also ended up denying the Virginal Conception of Jesus, miracles, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Salvation, the efficacy of prayer, and the existence of the Trinity.(11) He concluded:
‘I believe that there is no supreme being with human attributes—no God in the biblical sense—but that all life is the result of timeless evolutionary forces, having reached its present transient state over millions of years.’(12)
It is important to note that some of those who profess faith at mass evangelism rallies are like Templeton, and make an emotional decision without a proper foundation. Thus it is not surprising that many professing converts ‘fall away’, like Templeton did.
Evangelism
2. As a Christian, how do you propose to share the Gospel with those who hold the worldview that there is no God because matter formed itself in a ‘big bang’ billions of years ago, and life began spontaneously from chemicals in some primordial pond where the conditions were ‘just right’? How are you going to convince them that there is a Creator God to whom we must give account, without first showing that their worldview is incorrect? How are you going to do this, if you say that Genesis allows for everything to begin with a ‘big bang’?How will such people be convinced of the relevance to them of the death of a man on a cross 2,000 years ago, and of their need to repent, if they are not first given good reasons to abandon their atheistic worldview and to replace it with one based on the existence and claims of the Creator God of Genesis? An essential part of the Gospel is that there is a coming Day of Judgment. Genesis shows us not only that God has the authority to judge us, but also that He has the power to enforce our attendance!(13)
In fact, chapters 6–8 of Genesis show that God has already judged mankind with the global Flood, and Jesus (Luke 17:26–27) and the Apostle Peter (2 Peter 3:5–7) said that the coming judgment would be just as real. However, if Noah’s Flood was just mythical or local, why should we believe in judgment to come? Thus those who teach that Genesis describes a ‘big bang’ and a local Flood undermine the urgency of God’s coming judgment.
3. How do you propose to share the Gospel with those whose worldview says that there is no such thing as sin because there is no absolute difference between right and wrong? [See also Q&A: Morality and Ethics] How are you going to convince them that they are lost and need a Saviour? Without the Genesis account of the rebellion against God by our first parents, and the Curse that followed, there is no basis for the origin of sin, or the fact that sin needs to be atoned for, or that Christ did this by His death on the Cross and His subsequent Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:21–22).
4. If you believe only what you choose to believe in God’s Word, how will you wield the Sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17), when it is blunted or broken by non-acceptance of its total truth?
5. How are you going to share the Gospel with those who see the pain and suffering of people and animals, and say that if God exists He cannot be a God of love as the Bible says (1 John 3:8)? Without the Genesis account that the world God originally made was ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31), and the Genesis account of the Curse that fell on the Earth as a result of Adam’s sin (resulting in death and suffering), so that the present world is not the way God made things, there is no answer. Long-age compromise views, even if anti-evolution, undermine the Gospel at this very point.
In fact, God made man ‘in His own image’ (Genesis 1:27), so that He and man could have communion together. When man turned away from God in disobedience, God was grieved, so much so that in His love He gave His Son to be our Redeemer and win us back to Himself (John 3:16).
Conclusion
Do you have to believe in a literal Creation to be a Christian? The short answer is ‘No’. The long answer is ‘No, but …’.References and notes
1. See also John 11:25; Acts 16:31; 1 Corinthians 15:1–4; Ephesians 2:8; etc.2. Not just being sorry that one has been found out for some immoral or criminal act.
3. See also Mark 1:15; Acts 3:19; 2 Peter 3:9; etc. Not all ‘salvation’ texts in the Bible contain both instructions, but they are often used synonymously, as each implies the other. Thus faith in Christ’s death for us involves our acknowledging that He died for our sin, and repentance in the Biblical sense involves there being a means whereby we may be justly forgiven, namely that Jesus has paid the penalty for our sin.
4. This shows the error of those who teach that sin is a feeling of low self-esteem. Not everybody has low self-esteem, but the Bible says that ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23).
5. See Grigg, R., Why did God impose the death penalty for sin?, Creation 15(1):32–34, 1992.
6. Many missionaries begin Bible translation with one of the Gospels and many tribal people have been converted as a result. However, many more genuine (i.e. persevering) conversions usually occur when missionaries begin their evangelism by teaching about Creation and the Fall from Genesis. See McIlwain, T., Firm Foundations: Creation to Christ, New Tribes Mission, Sanford, Florida, 1991.
7. One of the main themes of Genesis is the sovereignty of God. This is seen in four notable events (Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and Babel), and in God’s relationship to eight notable people (Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph). There is thus a unifying theme to the whole of Genesis, which fails if any event is not true history; each event reinforces the historicity of all the other events.
8. It is true that the Bible contains poetry (as in the Psalms), parables (as recorded in the Gospels), and metaphors (as when Jesus said, ‘I am the bread of life’). However, Genesis is not written in any of these distinctive styles. See Grigg, R., Should Genesis be taken literally?, Creation 16(1):38–41, 1993.
9. Genesis 1–50 gives the foundational history of the Jewish people; other nations are covered only as far as the end of chapter 10.
10. Templeton, C., Farewell to God, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, pp. 37–71, 1996.
11.Ref. 10, pp. 89–153.
12. Ref. 10, p. 232. See also Ham, K. and Byers, S., Slippery slide to unbelief, Creation 22(3):8–13, 2000.
13. See Grigg, R., Curse and catastrophe: the four great judgments of God on all of sinful humanity, Creation 16(2):42–44, 1994.
“It’s not science”
by Don Batten
by Don Batten
Anti-creationists, such as atheists by definition, commonly object that creation is religion and evolution is science. To defend this claim they will cite a list of criteria that define a ‘good scientific theory’. A common criterion is that the bulk of modern day practising scientists must accept it as valid science. Another criterion defining science is the ability of a theory to make predictions that can be tested. Evolutionists commonly claim that evolution makes many predictions that have been found to be correct. They will cite something like antibiotic resistance in bacteria as some sort of ‘prediction’ of evolution, whereas they question the value of the creationist model in making predictions. Since, they say, creation fails their definition of ‘science’, it is therefore ‘religion’, and (by implication) it can simply be ignored.
Response
Many attempts to define ‘science’ are circular. The point that a theory must be acceptable to contemporary scientists to be acceptable, basically defines science as ‘what scientists do’! In fact, under this definition, economic theories would be acceptable scientific theories, if ‘contemporary scientists’ accepted them as such.In many cases, these so-called definitions of science are blatantly self-serving and contradictory. A number of evolutionary propagandists have claimed that creation is not scientific because it is supposedly untestable. But in the same paragraph they claim, ‘scientists have carefully examined the claims of creation science, and found that ideas such as the young Earth and global Flood are incompatible with the evidence.’ But obviously creation cannot have been examined (tested!) and found to be false if it’s ‘untestable’.
The definition of ‘science’ has haunted philosophers of science in the 20th century. The earlier approach of Bacon, who is considered the founder of the scientific method, was pretty straightforward:
observation-->induction-->hypothesis-->test hypothesis by experiment-->proof/disproof-->knowledge.
Of course this, and the whole approach to modern science, depends on two major assumptions: causality and induction. The philosopher Hume made it clear that these are believed by ‘blind faith’ (Bertrand Russell’s words). Kant and Whitehead claimed to have solved the problem, but Russell recognized that Hume was right. Actually, these assumptions arose from faith in the Creator-God of the Bible, as historians of science like Loren Eiseley have recognized. Many scientists are so philosophically and theologically ignorant that they don’t even realize that they have these (and other) metaphysical assumptions. Being like a frog in the warming water, many do not even notice that there are philosophical assumptions at the root of much that passes as ‘science’. It’s part of their own worldview, so they don’t even notice. We at AiG are ‘up front’ about our acceptance of revelation (the Bible). Unlike many atheists, we recognize that a philosophy of life does not come from the data, but rather the philosophy is brought to the data and used in interpreting it.
Perceptions and bias
The important question is not ‘Is it science?’ We can just define ‘science’ to exclude everything that we don’t like, as evolutionists do today. Today, science is equated with naturalism: only materialistic notions can be entertained, no matter what the evidence. The prominent evolutionist Professor Richard Lewontin said:‘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.’
Now that’s open-minded isn’t it? Isn’t ‘science’ about following the evidence wherever it may lead? This is where the religion (in the broadest sense) of the scientist puts the blinkers on. Our individual worldviews bias our perceptions. The atheist paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, made the following candid observation:
‘Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective “scientific method”, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology.’2
So the fundamentally important question is, ‘which worldview (bias) is correct?’, because this will determine the correctness of the conclusions from the data.
Science a creationist invention
Of course the founders of modern science were not materialists (Newton, widely considered the greatest scientist ever, is a prime example) and they did not see their science as somehow excluding a creator, or even making the Creator redundant. This recent notion has been smuggled into science by materialists.Michael Ruse, the Canadian philosopher of science also made the strong point that the issue is not whether evolution is science and creation is religion, because such a distinction is not really valid. The issue is one of ‘coherency of truth’. See The Religious Nature of Evolution. In other words, there is no logically valid way that the materialist can define evolution as ‘science’ and creation as ‘religion’, so that he/she can ignore the issue of creation.
A valid distinction
However, we can make a valid distinction between different types of science: the distinction between origins science and operational science. Operational science involves discovering how things operate in today’s Creation—repeatable and observable phenomena in the present. This is the science of Newton. However, origins science deals with the origin of things in the past—unique, unrepeatable, unobservable events. There is a fundamental difference between how the two work. Operational science involves experimentation in the here and now. Origins science deals with how something came into existence in the past and so is not open to experimental verification / observation (unless someone invents a ‘time machine’ to travel back into the past to observe). Studying how an organism operates (DNA, mutations, reproduction, natural selection etc.) does not tell us how it came into existence in the first place.Of course it suits materialists to confuse operational and origins science, although I’m sure with most the confusion arises out of ignorance. Tertiary (college / university) courses in science mostly don’t teach the philosophy of science and certainly make no distinction between experimental / operational and historical / origins sciences. Organometallic chemist Dr Stephen Grocott, although having been through at least seven years of university training, later remarked [see The Creation Couple]:
‘Though I’d been working as a scientist for 10 years, I really only learnt what science was through Answers in Genesis. Some of the things people call “science” are really outside the realms of science; they’re not observable, testable, repeatable. The areas of conflict are beliefs about the past, not open to experimental testing.
Both evolution and creation fall into the category of origins science. Both are driven by philosophical considerations. The same data (observations in the present) are available to everyone, but different interpretations (stories) are devised to explain what happened in the past.
The inclusion of historical science, without distinction, as science, has undoubtedly contributed to the modern confusion over defining science. This also explains the statement by Gould (above), who, as a paleontologist, would like to see no distinction between his own historical science and experimental science. Gould rightly sees the paramount importance of presuppositions in his own ‘science’ and assumes that it applies equally to all science. Not so.
Do you believe in hot water?
Creationists have absolutely no problem with operational science, because the evidence drives operational science. It does not matter if you are a Christian, a Moslem, a Hindu, or an Atheist, pure water still boils at 100°C at sea level. However, the true Hindu might still think it is all an illusion, and some atheists embracing postmodernism espouse that ‘truth’ is an illusion. However, origins science is driven by philosophy. One’s belief system is fundamental to what stories you accept as plausible. Now if the majority of practitioners of origins / historical science have the wrong belief system (materialism), then the stories they find acceptable will also be wrong. So a majority vote of ‘contemporary scientists’ is hardly a good way to determine the validity of the respective stories. And origins science, or historical science, is essentially an exercise in story telling—Lewontin alluded to this story telling in the quote above. See also Is it science?Define terms consistently!
It also suits materialists to shift the definition of evolution to suit the argument. Let’s be clear that we are discussing the ‘General Theory of Evolution’ (GTE), which was defined by the evolutionist Kerkut as ‘the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form.’3 Many, perhaps inadvertently, perform this switching definitions trick in alluding to mutations in bacteria as corroborating ‘evolution’. This has little to do with the belief that hydrogen changed into humans over billions of years. The key difference is that the GTE requires not just change, but change that increases the information content of the biosphere. See also this discussion.Predictions or ‘postdictions’?
Many evolutionists proffer mutations and antibiotic resistance in bacteria (operational science) as being some sort of prediction of evolution (origins science). In fact, genetics (operational science) was an embarrassment to evolution, which is probably the major reason that Mendel’s pioneering genetics research went unrecognized for so many years (Mendel’s discovery of discreet genes did not fit Darwin’s idea of continuous unlimited variation). When mutations were discovered, these were seen as a way of reconciling Darwinism with the observations of operational science—hence the neo-Darwinian synthesis of Mayr, Haldane, Fisher, etc.So, Darwinism never predicted anything, it was modified to accommodate the observations. In fact, because Darwinism is so malleable as to accommodate almost any conceivable observation, science philosopher Karl Popper proclaimed that it was not falsifiable, and therefore not a proper scientific theory in that sense.
What about the predictions of evolution vs creation? The track record of evolution is pretty dismal. See How evolution harms science. On the other hand, modern science rides on the achievements of past creationists—see How important to science is evolution? and Contributions of creationist scientists. For a clear example of modern-day scientific predictions based on a creationist model, see Beyond Neptune: Voyager II Supports Creation.
Popper’s notion that evolution is not a falsifiable scientific theory is underlined by the many ‘predictions’ of evolutionary theory that have been found to be incompatible with observations; and yet evolution reigns. For example, there is the profound absence of the many millions of transitional fossils that should exist if evolution were true (see Are there any Transitional Fossils?). The very pattern in the fossil record flatly contradicts evolutionary notions of what it should be like.
The evolutionist Gould has written at length on this conundrum.
Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, none of the cases of antibiotic resistance, insecticide resistance, etc. that have been studied at a biochemical level (i.e. operational science) have involved de novo origin of new complex genetic information (see the book Not By Chance. In fact, evolution never ‘predicted’ antiobiotic resistance, because historically it took the medical field by surprise—see Anthrax and antibiotics: Is evolution relevant?
Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, breeding experiments reach limits; change is not unlimited. See the article by the creationist geneticist, Lane Lester. This matches exactly what we would expect from Genesis 1, where it says that God created organisms to reproduce true to their different kinds.
Evolutionists expected that, given the right conditions, a living cell could make itself (abiogenesis); creationists said this was impossible. Operational science has destroyed this evolutionary notion; so much so that many evolutionists now want to leave the origin of life out of the debate. Many propagandists claim that evolution does not include this, although the theories of abiogenesis are usually called ‘chemical evolution’. See Q&A Origin of Life for papers outlining the profound problems for any conceivable evolutionary scenario.
Falsified but not abandoned
So, why do evolutionists persist with their spurious theory? For many it’s because they have never heard anything else. For avowed materialists it’s the ‘only game in town’—the only materialistic story available to explain how everything came to be; the materialist’s creation myth. It’s a bit like the proverbial ostrich putting its head in the sand, thinking that all that exists is what it can see under the sand. The ostrich’s worldview excludes everything that it does not find convenient. In the darkness of the sand, all unacceptable facts cease to exist.Light in the darkness!
Jesus Christ came as ‘the light of the world’ (John 8:12), when the Second Person of the Trinity took on human nature. He came to shed the light of God in dark places. The greatest darkness is to live without God; to live as if you are a cosmic accident, just ‘re-arranged pond-scum’, as one evolutionist put it. Sadly, many are being duped into thinking that way and we are seeing the horrendous consequences in escalating youth suicide, drug problems, family break-up, violence, etc. How much we need the light of Jesus to shine! God will hold each one of us accountable—all of us deserve His condemnation. But the Bible says that He has provided a way of escape through Jesus Christ for all that turn to God, humbly admitting our need of forgiveness. See Here’s the Good News.For more information about the above issues, and more, check out the Q&A section, or use the search window to search for articles on subjects of interest.
References
Richard Lewontin, ‘Billions and billions of demons’, The New York Review, January 9, 1997, p. 31.Stephen Jay Gould, 1994, Natural History 103(2):15.
Kerkut, G. Implications of Evolution, Pergamon, Oxford, UK, p. 157, 1960.
