The Creation vs. Evolution debate is much older than most people are aware of - and has always been more about philosophy and religion than Science.
1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
"For there are those who, giving the name of atoms to certain imperishable and most minute bodies that are supposed to be infinite in number, allege that these atoms, as they were carried along by chance in the void, all clashed fortuitously against each other in an unregulated whirl. They thereby commingled with one another in a multitude of forms. Entering into combination with each other they gradually formed this world and all objects in it. This was the opinion of Epicurus and Democritus. How we bear With these men who assert that all those wise constructions are only the works of common chance? But truly these men do not reflect on the analogies even of small, familiar things that might come under their observation at any time. For, from such things, they could learn that no object that has any value – and that is fitted to be serviceable – is made without design." Dionysius of Alexandria. 262 AD
"Man is not merely a rational animal, who happens to be capable of understanding and knowledge – as the croaking philosophers say." Tatian 160
“Who can bear to hear it said that this mighty habitation, which is composed of heaven and earth and is called the cosmos, was established in all its order and beauty by those atoms that hold their course – devoid of order and beauty? Or, that this same state of disorder has grown into this true cosmos of order?” Dionysius of Alexandria 262
Does it really matter if we believe in an “old earth” or a “young earth” as it relates to God’s creative ability?
"People believe the ideas of the evolutionary development of life on earth for many reasons: it is all that they have been taught and exposed to, they believe the evidence supports evolution, they do not want to be lumped with people who do not believe in evolution and are often considered to be less intelligent or “backward,” evolution has the stamp of approval from real scientists, and evolutionary history allows people to reject the idea of God and legitimize their own immorality. Evaluating the presuppositions behind belief in evolution makes for a much more productive discussion. Two intelligent people can arrive at different conclusions using the same evidence; so their starting assumptions is the most important issue in discussing historical science...." (Bert Thompson, PhD. In Microbiology from Texas A& M)
It does matter because it’s not just a discussion about science - it’s a discussion, ultimately, about a world view that has God and His Word at the center - creating, sustaining, and redeeming vs. A “goo to you” philosophy that has us as nothing more than animals who are not accountable to anything other than our own inbred drives and desires.
Remember that Epicurus fella that was mentioned in that quote of an early Christian writer from 262 AD. Who was this Epicurus that Dionysius references? He was a philosopher who from 341BC to 269 BC! Yes, before Christ!
This is a short synopsis of his belief system - of his world view, taken from the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - The philosophy of Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.) was a complete and interdependent system, involving a view of the goal of human life (happiness, resulting from absence of physical pain and mental disturbance), an empiricist theory of knowledge (sensations, including the perception of pleasure and pain, are infallible criteria), a description of nature based on atomistic materialism, and a naturalistic account of evolution, from the formation of the world to the emergence of human societies. Epicurus believed that, on the basis of a radical materialism which dispensed with transcendent entities such as the Platonic Ideas or Forms, he could disprove the possibility of the soul's survival after death, and hence the prospect of punishment in the afterlife. He regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and punishment as the primary cause of anxiety among human beings, and anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational desires. The elimination of the fears and corresponding desires would leave people free to pursue the pleasures, both physical and mental, to which they are naturally drawn, and to enjoy the peace of mind that is consequent upon their regularly expected and achieved satisfaction.
Charles Darwin was a student of Epicurus. Remember that little book that Darwin wrote a few years ago that supposedly started this whole “scientific” line of thinking. - On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
Did you catch that full title?
Why is a fundamentally religious idea, a dogmatic belief system that fails to explain the evidence, taught in science classes? Karl Popper, famous philosopher of science, said “Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical [religious] research program ….” Michael Ruse, evolutionist science philosopher admitted, “Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.” If “you can’t teach religion in science classes”, why is evolution taught? What, might be the results of such teaching, and thinking?
Romans 1:18-23
"18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures."
For those who claim Christianity as their faith, there is one big problem with the “old earth” theory - SIN!
31God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. - Genesis 1:31
12Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— - Romans 5:12
From a scientific standpoint we can see God pointing out the fact that evolution is not possible through the mutation of genes. Generally speaking, genes loose information when mutation takes places, they don’t add information.... SIN entered in, things are always in a state of decay. The evolutionist would have us believe that we are constantly getting better and better. (Here, too, is another statement of faith contrary to God’s Word related to sin.) A major problem for evolution is the huge increase in information content of organisms through time. Evolutionary theory accepts additions and deletions of information as evidence of evolution of a population. The problem is that through the imagined history of life on earth, the information content of the genomes of organisms must have increased dramatically. Beginning with the most primitive form of life, we have a relatively simple genome compared to the genomes that we see today. Mutations are said to provide the fuel for the evolutionary engine. Virtually all observed mutations result in a loss in the information content of a genome. There would need to be some way to consistently add information to the genome to arrive at palm trees and people from a simple single-celled organism—the hypothetical common ancestor of all life on earth. Evolutionists have failed to answer the question, “Where did all the new information come from since mutations are known to reduce information?” You cannot expect evolution, which requires a net gain in information over millions of years, to occur as a result of mutation and natural selection. Natural selection, evolution’s supposed mechanism, causes a loss of information and can only act on traits that are already present!
The Bible is not meant to be something that is only understandable by those with the proper education or degree - it’s God’s Word to all His people!
129 Your testimonies are wonderful; Therefore my soul observes them. 130 The unfolding of Your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple.
Psalm 119:129-130
For some, pride is a big issues when it comes to this discussion. There is a fear of looking backwards, or simple minded when we rely on God’s word. Often, this fear is born out of ignorance - a lack of understanding of the problems with evolutionary thought, and misunderstanding about the origins of evolutionary thought, and a misguided thought that it is only scientific in nature. As I showed above, evolutionary thought is a philosophy that is contrary to God’s plan and work in the world. So often, however, we end up like Israel of old, and buy into the cultural world view in which we live, and end up loosing sight of Who God is and What God is wanting to do in us and through us! My hope is that we can come to the Bible and recognize that we can rely on it for our World View! That it is wholly trustworthy and reliable. And that you don’t have to have a list of degrees behind your name in order to understand it!
It intrigues me how even in the Mennonite Church there is this assumed belief that if you don’t have a Seminary degree than you can’t really understand the Bible! That goes against the early Anabaptist movement and pull away from the Catholic church - that stated only certain individuals can really be trusted to interpret the Bible.
As it relates to creation and “science” - there are committed Christian Scientists, who are very well versed in both the physical sciences, as well as in the Word, who recognize the holes in the Evolutionary theory.
What about the Big Bang theory? Dr. Jason Lisle, Ph.D - Astrophysics
Video - (Found at the Answers in Genesis Website.)
4 How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust, And has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood. 5 Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders which You have done, And Your thoughts toward us; There is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, They would be too numerous to count. - Psalm 40:4-5
When it comes to the creation account, the whole of Scripture points to a literal 6 days of Creation.
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God 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, one day. - Genesis 1:2-5
“It is dangerous to wholly disdain the literal meaning particularly of Genesis, where the unchangeable decrees of God for the constitution of the universe are set forth.” Methodius 290
11 “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. - Exodus 20:11
6“But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. - Mark 10:6
There are many scientific problems with the theory of evolution.
Evolutionist admit they have no way of knowing how life originated.... “Nobody knows how a mixture of lifeless chemicals spontaneously organized themselves into the first living cell.” Andrew Knoll, professor of biology, Harvard, said, “we don’t really know how life originated on this planet”. A minimal cell needs several hundred proteins. Even if every atom in the universe were an experiment with all the correct amino acids present for every possible molecular vibration in the supposed evolutionary age of the universe, not even one average-sized functional protein would form. So how did life with hundreds of proteins originate just by chemistry without intelligent design?
Why is natural selection, a principle recognized by creationists, taught as ‘evolution’, as if it explains the origin of the diversity of life? By definition it is a selective process (selecting from already existing information), so is not a creative process. It might explain the survival of the fittest (why certain genes benefit creatures more in certain environments), but not the arrival of the fittest (where the genes and creatures came from in the first place). The death of individuals not adapted to an environment and the survival of those that are suited does not explain the origin of the traits that make an organism adapted to an environment. E.g., how do minor back-and-forth variations in finch beaks explain the origin of beaks or finches? How does natural selection explain goo-to-you evolution?
Living things look like they were designed, so how do evolutionists know that they were not designed? Richard Dawkins wrote, “biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.”4 Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, wrote, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”5 The problem for evolutionists is that living things show too much design. Who objects when an archaeologist says that pottery points to human design? Yet if someone attributes the design in living things to a designer, that is not acceptable. Why should science be restricted to naturalistic causes rather than logical causes? Who in their right mind would look at this building we are sitting in and say it didn’t have a creator or that it just appeared over billions of years?
How did sex originate? Asexual reproduction gives up to twice as much reproductive success (‘fitness’) for the same resources as sexual reproduction, so how could the latter ever gain enough advantage to be selected? And how could mere physics and chemistry invent the complementary apparatuses needed at the same time (non-intelligent processes cannot plan for future coordination of male and female organs).
Why are the (expected) countless millions of transitional fossils missing? Darwin noted the problem and it still remains. The evolutionary family trees in textbooks are based on imagination, not fossil evidence. Famous Harvard paleontologist (and evolutionist), Stephen Jay Gould, wrote, “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology”.6 Other evolutionist fossil experts also acknowledge the problem.
How do ‘living fossils’ remain unchanged over supposed hundreds of millions of years, if evolution has changed worms into humans in the same time frame? Professor Gould wrote, “the maintenance of stability within species must be considered as a major evolutionary problem.”
Science involves experimenting to figure out how things work; how they operate. Why is evolution, a theory about history, taught as if it is the same as this operational science? You cannot do experiments, or even observe what happened, in the past. Asked if evolution has been observed, Richard Dawkins said, “Evolution has been observed. It’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening.”
Jason Lisle, Ph.D in the closing paragraph of an article - Evolution - the Anti-Science states, "Evolution is anti-science and anti-knowledge. If evolution were true, science would not be possible because there would be no reason to accept the uniformity of nature upon which all science and technology depend. Nor would there be any reason to think that rational analysis would be possible since the thoughts of our mind would be nothing more than the inevitable result of mindless chemical reactions. Evolutionists are able to do science and gain knowledge only because they are inconsistent; professing to believe in evolution while accepting the principles of biblical creation."
We were created in God’s Image!
Genesis 1:27
27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
