Why Should I Believe…Creation vs. Evolution?
Genesis 1:1-31
The Biblical Account of creation…
…best accounts for the Beginning
Evolution says, “In the beginning, We have no idea”
Creation says, “In the beginning God created…”
…best accounts for the fossil record
Evolution says life developed over billions of years
Creation says life developed over 6 days
Cambrian Explosion
…best accounts for the variety of life
Evolution says the variety of life is due to a gain of genetic information
Creation says the variety of life is due to a loss of genetic information
Slide
Turn with me to Genesis 1. It is the first book of the Bible. Read with me chapter 1.
Genesis 1
1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day.
6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning--the second day.
9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning--the third day.
14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fourth day.
20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fifth day.
24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." 29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground--everything that has the breath of life in it--I give every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the sixth day.
Intro
This is the account of Creation as the Bible tells it.
This has been the account of creation that people have believed for most of history as we know it.
About 150 years ago, however, this account of creation began to be challenged.
Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859 and the theory of naturalistic evolution began to be believed by some.
In the intervening 150 years, Creation and Evolution have been 2 opposing views used to account for how the World was created and life as we know it came to be.
Now each side of this debate has the same evidence to look at and yet they continue to arrive at 2 very different conclusions.
Why is that?
Worldview matters
I will tell you that it is because of the particular worldview that is held.
What is a worldview?
A worldview is a framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts with it.
If you hold a Biblical Worldview you believe God created the world and gives meaning to life. You will interpret evidence through this worldview.
Another worldview would be a naturalistic world view. Naturalism is a worldview that holds there is no need for God and all of life and life events can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.
Now people holding each worldview will examine the evidence and see how it fits into their particular worldview.
When evidence is discovered and interpreted by whomever, if it does not fit neatly into the worldview a person holds, one of 2 things is happening.
The evidence is being misinterpreted or
The theory is wrong.
One evolutionist states it this way
“When scientists do not understand how some aspect of our universe operates, they do not assume an unknowable supernatural cause.”
Evolution and the Fossil Record –accessed on 5/1/2009 @ http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution/natureoftheory.html
That is because he is starting from a worldview that does not believe in God.
For me starting from a worldview that does believe in God, when things don’t add up completely, I will continue to look for answers, but would have no problem attributing it to a supernatural cause understanding that I may never completely understand, because belief in that conforms with reality.
This is what makes the debate of creation or evolution so difficult to overcome for both sides.
So now that we have some basis of understanding of where these theories and worldviews come from, this morning I am going to give an overview of some of the main differences between Creation and Evolution and why I believe Creation best accounts for the evidence we find.
First,
Slide
The Biblical Account of Creation
Best Accounts for the Beginning
Evolution doesn’t have a theory that explains the beginning.
Evolution Says, “In the Beginning, We have no idea!”
Slide
Here is what an article from Live Science, a site that would be more in line with evolutionary thinking than creation, in regards to “How did the Universe Begin?” http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070813_gm_universe.html
According to the standard Big Bang model, the universe was born during a period of inflation that began about 13.7 billion years ago. Like a rapidly expanding balloon, it swelled from a size smaller than an electron to nearly its current size within a tiny fraction of a second.
Initially, the universe was permeated only by energy. Some of this energy congealed into particles, which assembled into light atoms like hydrogen and helium. These atoms clumped first into galaxies, then stars, inside whose fiery furnaces all the other elements were forged...
But there are things about it that make some scientists uneasy. For starters, the idea that the universe underwent a period of rapid inflation early in its history cannot be directly tested, and it relies on the existence of a mysterious form of energy in the universe’s beginning that has long disappeared…
"We’ve also learned there has to be dark matter in the universe, and now dark energy," said Paul Steinhardt, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University. "So the way the model works today is you say, ’OK, you take some Big Bang, you take some inflation, you tune that to have the following properties, then you add a certain amount of dark matter and dark energy.’
"What’s disturbing is when you have a theory and you make a new observation, you have to add new components," Steinhardt added. "And they’re not connected ... There’s no reason to add them, and no particular reason to add them in that particular amount, except the observations. The question is how much you’re explaining and how much you’re engineering a model. And we don’t’ know yet."
That is where the evolutionary model is at today in terms of a beginning. We have some mysterious energy with some mysterious matter that came together in particular amounts and by chance formed a particular place called earth where life was able to begin in some unknown way.
So, instead of seeing that it is possible that there could be a creator God, you make up some eternal energy and eternal dark matter that no longer exists today.
And that is science?
On the other hand,
Creation Says, “In the Beginning, God created …”
Slide
God created the heavens and the earth for His glory.
Can this be tested in a lab? No
But no creation model is going to be able to be tested in a lab.
We look instead for what best conforms to what we see and know.
Creation best accounts for what we see and know and even find evidence for.
We talked about “Why Should I believe in God?” 2 weeks ago. We saw that God has made himself known through creation and our conscience. The fact that there is a God conforms to what we think, feel and see.
But we read in Romans that people turned away from the knowledge of God. People want to do what they want to do. If we can explain things without God, then we can live how we want and not worry about having to answer for the things we do.
If we don’t have to believe that “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” then we don’t have to believe in God at all and we can live how we want.
Coming up with a beginning to how a finite universe started and life began becomes a real problem for those who want to remove God from the picture, however.
That a supernatural, infinite, intelligent God designed the universe and began things is the best, most rational explanation for how a finite, non eternal universe that has a beginning started.
Not only that, but
The Biblical Account of Creation
Best Accounts for the Fossil Record
Slide
Let’s consider
Evolution says that life developed over billions of years
Slide
For evolution to work, it requires minor changes over generations that ultimately add up to major changes through millions and billions of years. That is because it requires a whole lot of time to go from non living chemicals to single celled living organisms to multi-celled living organisms to the complex organisms that we see through the recorded history we know.
Originally, according to evolution, that that would take 100’s of millions and billions of years which doesn’t allow for testing in a lab.
So, instead, we look to fossil evidence to help us see history.
Fossils are found in these rock formations.
Now we have found lots of fossils, but the fact is fossils are rare considering all the animals that have aver lived through history.
Most living plants and creatures decay and vanish along with any sign of them.
That is because fossilization takes some very special circumstances.
According to an evolution website,
“In the first step of fossil formation an animal or plant must die in water or near enough to fall in shortly after death. The water insulates the remains from many of the elements that contribute to decomposition.”
Accessed 5/1/2009 at http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/fossil_formation.html
So any fossils that we have must have died in or near water.
Now as we go further and further down the strata, the rock formations where we find fossils, we don’t find much before what is known as the Cambrian Period other than some single celled bacteria and the like.
But once we enter the Cambrian Era, there is what is known as the Cambrian Explosion.
In the first third of this era, we find nearly all major Phylum of life as we know it.
The fossil record goes from practically nothing to nearly everything in a very short time according to evolution.
Listen to what an article in Time Magazine had to say concerning the Cambrian Explosion.
SCIENTISTS USED TO THINK THAT THE evolution of phyla took place over a period of 75 million years, and even that seemed impossibly short. Then two years ago, a group of researchers led by Grotzinger, Samuel Bowring from M.I.T. and Harvard’s Knoll took this long-standing problem and escalated it into a crisis. First they recalibrated the geological clock, chopping the Cambrian period to about half its former length. Then they announced that the interval of major evolutionary innovation did not span the entire 30 million years, but rather was concentrated in the first third. "Fast," Harvard’s Gould observes, "is now a lot faster than we thought, and that’s extraordinarily interesting."
… and, even more startling, … all but one of the phyla in the fossil record appeared within the first 5 million to 10 million years. "We now know how fast fast is," grins Bowring. "And what I like to ask my biologist friends is, How fast can evolution get before they start feeling uncomfortable?"
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983789-4,00.html
Time magazine, When Life Exploded, Monday, Dec. 4, 1995, p.4 online
Evolution again was supposed to be small changes over very, very long periods of time, hundreds of millions or billions of years.
Now, even by their dating, single celled to nearly every major animal family in a 5 to 10 million year period? What happened to the evolution of life over billions of years? This sounds more like everything came into being at one time.
Now compare that with what Creation says
Creation says life developed over six days
Slide
Let’s look at this and see how the fossil record fits into a creation account.
God created all plants, animals and humans in 6 days.
There is no death until sin enters the world through Adam and Eve’s disobedience.
Death occurs but there would unlikely be fossilization of these people and animals who die because they aren’t covered in water, except for some things that live in the water.
As man becomes more corrupt, God is displeased.
Listen to
Genesis 6:11, 17-22
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence…
17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark--you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. …20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. …22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
Ok, so in the creation account, we find that God had created every type of animal and plant and human in 6 days or for our purpose in a very short time span.
If the creation account were true, we would not expect to find much in the way of fossilized records before this flood.
But with the flood, we would expect to find every major group of animal fossilized within a relatively small area of the rock layers because of the flood and the sediment that captured them and buried their dead bodies.
That seems to correlate with what we find in the Cambrian period in the strata.
Nearly all major phylum of life found in a relatively short period of time.
I want to quote again Samuel Bowring from MIT what he asks his biologist friends.
"How fast can evolution get before they start feeling uncomfortable?" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983789-4,00.html
Time magazine, When Life Exploded, Monday, Dec. 4, 1995, p.4 online
Discrepancy of years?
Now some will say well how do you account for the discrepancy in years between what a creation theory states and what evolution theory states.
I will say this, we do not yet have all the answers, but notice how often science has changed dates significantly over time. And the time keeps getting smaller and smaller. Just in the article I read, they went from life evolving over 75 million years to 5 to 10 million years.
Not only that, but dating methods have to start with assumptions of constant rates of decay and while we can test that in a lab and things appear constant over 10’s of years, do they stay that way over 100’s or 1000’s of years?
There have been examples of us knowing when something occurred in the very recent (last 20 years) and the dating has come back to be millions of years.
"Is the Lava Dome at Mount St. Helens Really a Million Years Old?" by Keith Swenson
http://www.creationism.org/articles/swenson1.htm
It is my biblical worldview that makes me think this, but as I have seen the dates that evolutionists offer up keep changing and narrowing, and the mistakes in dating that have been made, my thinking does not fly in the face of reality.
Finally,
The Biblical Account of Creation
…best accounts for the Variety of Life
Slide
If we look around at the world we see all kinds of plants and animals.
In the animal kingdom, there are all kinds of families and species.
We have humans and dogs and cats and bears etc.
Among humans alone look at those around you.
Every person is different, no two the same. And on this earth are nearly 6.5 billion people all different.
What can account for all this variety?
Well,
Evolution says the variety of life is due to a gain of genetic information
Slide
Remember that evolution says that everything started from nothing. And then from the something that was started by nothing, life somewhere evolved from non life.
This first life was simple and then became self replicating. Eventually there would be errors or mutations and evolution would take place.
That is a very basic analysis of evolution and I am sure that an evolutionist would explain it differently.
But the basic premise is that simple life became more complex as beneficial mutations were reproduced and handed down to the next generation of cells.
This next generation would have more genetic information than the grandparent cells.
Throughout the next billions of years, mutations would have resulted in continued increased genetic information so as to evolve into you and I, the extremely complex, multi celled organisms of today from the simple single celled organisms that sprung into being.
But listen to what biophysicist, Dr. Lee Spetner says in an article entitled – “DNA evidence for Evolution”
This is a problem for Darwinian evolution however, because “genetic mutation does not appear to provide a mechanism for that increase…Reptiles and birds are very different. Reptiles have no genetic information for wings or feathers. To change a reptile into a bird would require the addition of. . .complex information. . . . I really do not believe that the neo-Darwinian model can account for large scale evolution. What they really can’t account for is the build up of information. . . .And not only is it improbable on the mathematical level, that is theoretically, but experimentally one has not found a single mutation that one can point at that actually adds information. In fact, every beneficial mutation that I have seen reduces the information,”
From all about Creation website article “DNA evidence for Evolution” – accessed 5/1/2009 http://www.allaboutcreation.org/dna-evidence-for-evolution-faq.htm
Mutations in DNA do make changes in animals, but there is no additional information added. And whatever changes have been shown in a lab or over time are all micro evolutionary changes, small changes that don’t change the animal into a different animal, only the same animal with different features, which Creation has never argued with.
Some birds grow bigger beaks or small beaks depending on their environment and natural selection. Some dogs have longer hair or shorter hair.
But what has never been shown is some animal, a fish perhaps, becoming another animal, a dog. Any changes that have taken place from natural selection or mutations in the DNA change an aspect of the fish, but it is still a fish and no new information has been added, but actually as you go down the chain, information is lost.
The tree of life in evolution says information in our DNA grows over time.
On the other hand,
Creation says the variety of life is due to a loss of genetic information
Slide
Creation says that all the different animals are were made “each according to their kind.”
The variety of life that we see among animals within animal families is due to losing DNA information.
Let me give a simple example.
Dog genetics
Slide
Imagine 2 original dogs on the Ark having medium length hair. They have all the genes for all the dogs that we see today.
Anyway, these dogs mate and because each has a long and short hair gene, they can have all different kinds of offspring with short hair, medium hair and long hair.
Slide
So you have 3 types of animals that could be a result.
Well, let’s say the environment in this area bets very cold.
Through natural selection, the long haired dogs may find an advantage and they live longer and breed together more.
Slide
Eventually, the short haired dogs would die out and the medium haired dogs too. You would be left with only long haired dogs in this location because they have lost the genetic information to produce short haired or medium haired dogs.
You could do this same thing in a hot location and perhaps it would be the short haired dog that would have the advantage and become dominant in that area.
Now in different locations you have different looking dogs, and there DNA would be slightly different, but they both would have lost information in their DNA, not gained it.
Notice though, even though the dogs are different, they are both still dogs.
These differences are exactly what we would expect to find all over the world through the biblical account. In the Bible we find the people after the flood seeking to build a huge tower. Listen to what the Bible tells us in
Genesis 11:5-9
Slide
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
Slide
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel--because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
The biblical account gives understanding to how there are differences in people and animals that live in different places because of what God did and also because of natural selection. As those people reproduce and animals reproduce, certain qualities are better suited to their environments. And through natural selection, they become dominant in their environments.
But this is not because of an increase in information in the DNA, it is due to a limiting, a loss of genetic information available.
Slide
And they don’t change what they are.
Dogs are dogs whether they are French poodles or Alaskan Malamutes or Siberian huskies.
Humans are human, whether they exhibit characteristics of Asian descent, European, middle Eastern, or African.
Cats are cats, whether they are African tigers or Siamese cats
Every undisputed form of “evolution” that evolutionists claim is of the type that makes adaptations within family of animal, not a change from one family of animal to another.
The Variety of life that we see is better accounted for through how God designed all of creation rather than a macro evolutionary model.
Conclusion
Listen, those who believe that God created everything do not have all the answers.
We will never have all the answers. And that does not mean we should not continue to seek answers and research origins. We should.
But there is plenty of evidence that points to the fact of an eternal God who created the world and everything in it.
I have not even talked about the irreducible complexity of many of our systems, or the second law of thermodynamics.
But with so much evidence, why do many not believe?
There are some who would prefer to remove God completely from how life developed and came to be, because if we could do that, we would not have to answer to anyone but ourselves. It is a worldview without God.
To be able to truly understand the world around us requires a relationship with God.
Proverbs 1:7 - the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Through a relationship with the Lord through Jesus Christ, we are going to be able to continue to grow in our knowledge and understanding of the world around us and we will be able to live this life with the purpose we have been designed for.
Ultimately, evolutionary theory, says we have no purpose. It is by chance we have come to be. Eat and drink for tomorrow you die.
When we understand that God created us and He gives us purpose, life becomes worth living.
If you are here today and want to know more about a relationship with Jesus Christ, we would love to share that with you.
Romans 10:9 - That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
If you would like to enter into that relationship with Christ, just do what the Bible says and confess your belief to the Lord about who Jesus is and that you believe He died for your sins and rose again to give you eternal life.
If you have other needs that you would like to pray about, we will have people at the front available to pray with you.
Let’s pray.
