Evolution Vs. Creation: The Great Debate

*Note...after years of further research and study, I am now in firmly in the camp that embraces Historic Christianity and theistic evolution. It is backed by the very best research and is, in my current understanding, most credible in following the truths of science and scripture.

**www.biologos.org

***Book recommendation: Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design, by Drs. Loren and Deborah Haarsma

https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Christian-Perspectives-Evolution-Intelligent/dp/159255573X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Deborah+Haarsma&qid=1591581744&sr=8-1

****Amazon's #1 book on Religion and Philosophy: The Language of God, by Dr. Francis Collins

https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744/ref=zg_bs_12460_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=C014J1YKNA04KWE0VT91

Creation Vs. Atheism: The Great Debate

Debate is not over Creation and Evolution. There is a third very popular proposition on how life began. Summed up in Time Magazine article. "Forget bubbles, comets or ocean vents. Scientists should be looking at pizza for the answer. I can remember when my college roommates and I routinely created life every week in our refrigerator. My theory is that around 4.5 billion years ago, the earth was bombarded by intergalactic pizzas. These then provided the ideal breeding ground in which early organisms could thrive and later evolve." Mark D. Greene, "How Life Began," Time, 142:8, November 1, 1993

Big Bang has come under a lot of controversy lately. Titles of "Down with the Big Bang;" "The Big Bang Theory Goes Kerplooey;" "The Big Bang Theory Explodes;" "Sorry, Big Bang Theory is a Dud;" "Map Challenges Theory of Universe;" "Astronomers' New Data Jolt Vital Part of Big Bang Theory;" "Quasar Clumps Dim Cosmological Theory." These have been titles of a few of the articles found in newspapers and science journals in the last two or three years, as the Big Bang theory has received one body blow after another "but the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up" (II Peter 3:10)

Gallup Poll in July of 1982, 1,518 people sampled from 300 areas across the nation: 44% agreed we’re here by special creation. 38% God guided the evolution of man. Only 9% believe God is not in the picture.

Right off: Science and the Bible are not in conflict. The conclusions of both are sometimes biased. But we have nothing to be afraid of by honest evaluation. There are thousands of Christians who are scientists–they just so happen to be outnumbered by thousands who are evolutionists. Yet they are both looking at the same evidence. Next week we’re going to find out why this is. We’ll look more into astronomy, time, Einstein, see a video clip of a creation/evolution debate, and hear some amazing quotations.

Hugh Ross, an Christian astrophysicist, who earned his PH.D in astronomy, wrote "The work of secular scientists is the friend, not the foe, of Christians. Their efforts have given us some of the strongest evidences for our Creator, God, and Savior."

Let’s first of all look at the claims of the bible about creation...

Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created." Bible nowhere says when God created. No time line.

Jesus said in Mark 10:6 "But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.'"

Psalms 19:1-4 "The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies announce what his hands have made. Day after day they tell the story; night after night they tell it again. They have no speech or words; they have no voice to be heard. But their message goes out through all the world; their words go everywhere on earth."

Romans 1:20 "There are things about God that people cannot see--his eternal power and all the things that make him God. But since the beginning of the world those things have been easy to understand by what God has made. So people have no excuse."

Three bedrock assumptions that evolutionists have given for our origins have all been shown to be on shaky ground. We’re going to look at these three tonight.

Spontaneous Generation

How did we get the conditions on planet earth that brought us our first one-celled animal from which all life forms supposedly evolved? For many years, evolution explained our origins by "spontaneous generation". Simply stated, this means that under the proper conditions of temperature, time, place, etc., decaying matter simply turns into organic life.

“This simplistic idea dominated scientific thinking until 1846, when Louis Pasteur completely shattered the theory by his experiments. He exposed the whole concept as utter foolishness. Under controlled laboratory conditions, in a semi-vacuum, no organic life ever emerged from decaying, nonliving matter. Reluctantly it was abandoned as a valid scientific issue. Today no reputable scientist tries to defend it on a demonstrable basis. That is why Webster says it is "now abandoned." It never has been and never can be demonstrated in the test tube. No present process is observed that could support the idea of spontaneous generation. Obviously, if spontaneous generation actually did take place in the distant past to produce the first spark of life, it must be assumed that the laws that govern life had to be completely different from what they are now. But wait a minute! This won't work either, because the whole evolutionary theory rests upon the assumption that conditions on the earth have remained uniform throughout the ages” (How Evolution Flunked the Science Test)