DOES SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE TODAY SHOW THAT GOD CREATED

THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH?  AND WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY

ABOUT WHEN HE CREATED?

 

 

What happened on April 24, 1992, that caused the following statements?

 

Stephen Hawking, Cambridge University Lucasian Professor of Mathematics: “It is the discovery of the century, if not all time.”¹

 

George Smoot, University of California at Berkeley, astronomer and project leader for the COBE satellite: “What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe.”  He added, “It’s like looking at God.”²

 

Michael Turner, Astrophysicist at the University of Chicago in Fermilab: “Unbelievably important.... The significance of this cannot be overstated.  They have found the holy grail of cosmology.”³

 

Carlos Frenk of Britain’s Durham University: “It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in my life as a cosmologist.”⁴

 

According to Science Historian Frederic B. Burnham, the community of scientists as a result of breaking events, was prepared to consider the idea that God created the universe “a more respectable hypothesis today than at any time in the last hundred years.”⁵  Even Ted Koppel on ABC’s Nightline in 1992 began his interview of an astronomer and a physicist by quoting the first two verses of Genesis.  The physicist immediately added verse 3 is also germane to the discovery.

 

“Astronomers who do not draw theistic or deistic conclusions are becoming rare, and even the few dissenters hint that the tide is against them.”⁶  Geoffrey Burbidge of the University of California at San Diego complains that his fellow astronomers are rushing off the join “the first Church of Christ of the Big Bang.”⁷

 

As Robert Jastrow has written, “Astronomers now find that they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth.  And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover.”⁸

 

Scientists have found that, “...all the data accumulated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries tell us that a transcendent Creator must exist.  For all the matter, energy, nine space dimensions, and even time, each suddenly and simultaneously came into being from some source beyond itself.  It is valid to refer to such a source, entity, or being as the Creator, for creating is defined as causing something–in this case everything in the universe–to come into existence.  Matter, energy, space, and time are the effects He caused.  Likewise, it is valid to refer to the Creator as transcendent, for the act of causing these effects must take place outside or independent of them.”⁹  Scientists refer to that beginning moment of the universe as “the Big Bang.”  Further, instead of this explosion-producing chaos, the exact opposite is true.  Science has discovered that the universe has been uniquely fine-tuned so that life can exist on earth.  Today, no physicist or astronomer who has researched the question denies that the universe, the Milky Way galaxy, and the solar system possess compelling hallmarks of intentional design for human life. 

 

Many researchers have commented over the past 20 years that it seems the universe “knew” humans were coming.  Physicist Paul Davies, in the 1980s, concluded: “[There] is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all.... It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe.... The impression of design is overwhelming.”¹⁰   In our nine television programs currently airing we are presenting some of the scientific evidence astronomers, biologists, and paleontologists have discovered.

 

What criteria must be met for a theory to be considered as scientific in the usually accepted sense?

A definition of science given by the Oxford Dictionary is:  "A branch of study which is concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed facts systematically classified and more or less colligated by being brought under general laws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truth within its own domain."

"Thus, for a theory to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be supported by events, processes, or properties which can be observed, and the theory must be useful in predicting the outcome of future natural phenomena or laboratory experiments."¹¹

 

What has science discovered about the beginning of the universe?

"Astronomers now find that they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth.  And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover."¹²

 

 "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.  And if the fixed stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being formed by the likewise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One."¹³

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."¹⁴

 

WHAT DOES SCIENCE KNOW ABOUT LIFE’S ORIGIN?

What is the evolutionary theory concerning how life originated?

"The first stage on the road to life is presumed to have been the buildup, by purely chemical synthetic processes occurring on the surface of the early earth, of all the basic organic compounds necessary for the formation of a living cell.  These are supposed to have accumulated in the primeval oceans, creating a nutrient broth, the so-called 'pre-biotic soup.'  In certain specialized environments, these organic compounds were assembled into large macromolecules, proteins and nucleic acids.  Eventually, over millions of years, combinations of these macromolecules occurred which were endowed with the property of self-reproduction.  Then driven by natural selection evermore efficient and complex self-reproducing molecular systems evolved until finally the first simple cell system emerged.  The existence of a pre-biotic soup is crucial to the whole scheme.  Without an abiotic accumulation of the building blocks of the cell no life could ever evolve.  If the traditional story is true, therefore, there must have existed for millions of years a rich mixture of organic compounds in the ancient oceans and some of this material would very likely have been trapped in the sedimentary rocks lain down in the seas of those remote times.  Yet rocks of great antiquity have been examined over the past two decades and in none of them has any trace of abiotically-produced compounds been found.  Most notable of these rocks are the 'dawn rocks' of western Greenland, the earliest dated rocks on earth, considered to be approaching 3,900 million years old.... As on so many occasions, paleontology has again failed to substantiate evolutionary presumptions.  Considering the way the pre-biotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence."¹⁵

Dr. Michael Denton, an Australian medical doctor and scientist, has lived and worked in London, England and Toronto, Canada.  This book by Dr. Denton attempts to explain the gathering evidence against evolution in its traditional form.  It points out the growing crisis in biology and suggests that an increasing number of research scientists are questioning strict Darwinism.

 

Do evolutionists have scientific facts to prove their theory that life arose from inanimate material solely by accident?

"The chance that higher life forms might have emerged (through evolutionary processes) is comparable with the chance that a 'tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.’”¹⁶

Sir Fred Hoyle is professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University College, Cardiff, Wales, Great Britain, and the originator of the Steady State theory of the origin of the universe.

"One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written."¹⁷

"One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible."¹⁸

 

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."¹⁹

Dr. Francis Crick, Nobel Prize winner and biochemist, was the co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule.

"A curious flaw of human nature is to permit the imagery of a catchy phrase to shape one's reasoning.  Haldane's hot dilute soup became 'primordial soup,' a feature that has been popularized for nearly 50 years without geologic evidence that it ever existed."²⁰

"The intuitive feeling that pure chance could never have achieved the degree of complexity and ingenuity so ubiquitous in nature has been a continuing source of skepticism ever since the publication of The Origin; and throughout the past century there has always existed a significant minority of first-rate biologists who have never been able to bring themselves to accept the validity of Darwinian claims. In fact, the number of biologists who have expressed some degree of disillusionment is practically endless.  When Arthur Koestler organized the Alpbach Symposium in 1969 called 'Beyond Reductionism,' for the expressed purpose of bringing together biologists critical of orthodox Darwinism, he was able to include in the list of participants many authorities of world stature, such as Swedish Neurobiologist Holgar Hyden, zoologists Paul Weiss and W. H. Thorpe, Linguist David McNeil and Child Psychologist Jean Piaget.  Koestler had this to say in his opening remarks: '...invitations were confined to personalities in academic life with undisputed authority in their respective fields, who nevertheless shared that holy discontent."'²¹

 

Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe is professor and chairman of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy, University College, Cardiff, Wales.

"Precious little in the way of biochemical evolution could have happened on the earth.  If one counts the number of trial assemblies of amino acids that are needed to give rise to the enzymes, the probability of their discovery by random shufflings turns out to be less than one in ten to the 40 thousand."²²

Neither Sr. Fred Hoyle nor Professor Wickramasinghe accept the Genesis account of creation, but each maintains that wherever life occurs in this universe, it had to be created.  They further reject Darwinian evolution itself.

"If anything is ten to the 50th power or less chance, it will never happen, even cosmically, in the whole universe.”²³

"In the human body, DNA 'programs' all characteristics such as hair, skin, eyes, and height.  DNA determines the arrangement for 206 bones, 600 muscles, 10,000 auditory nerve fibers, two million optic nerve fibers, 100 billion nerve cells, 400 billion feet of blood vessels and capillaries and so on.  Such extraordinary sophistication can only reflect intelligent design."²⁴

Scott Huse is a teacher and principal of Pinecrest Bible Training Center, Salisbury Center, New York. He also lectures on college campuses.  He holds the following degrees: B.S., M.S., M.R.E., Th.D., and Ph. D.

"The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder." (Stated by Charles Darwin in a letter to Asa Gray, the American biologist, written in 1861—two years after the publication of The Origin of the Species.)

[Concerning Darwin's statement about the eye, Denton writes]:

"It is easy to sympathize with Darwin.  Such feelings have probably occurred to most biologists at times, for to common sense it does indeed appear absurd to propose that chance could have thrown together devices of such complexity and ingenuity that they appear to represent the very epitome of perfection.... Aside from any quantitative considerations, it seems intuitively impossible that such self-evident brilliance in the execution of design could ever have occasionally hit on a relatively ingenious adaptive end, it seems inconceivable that it could have reached so many ends of such surpassing 'perfection."'²⁵

"Evolutionists greatly depend on random mutations to bring about the tremendous variation needed to produce all the life forms that now exist, including man.  But this is where the great evolutionary scientists think that the theory of evolution has broken down.  For example, Dr. Murray Eden, Professor of Electrical Engineering at M.I.T. who at the conference entitled Mathematical Challenges to Neo-Darwinian Interpretation found in the Wistar Institute Press delivered a paper entitled 'Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory.'  In this paper he commented on the possibilities of random mutations accounting for the great variation evolutionists say must have taken place.  He states, 'It is our contention that if random is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws, physical, chemical and biological."²⁶

Lewis Thomas makes this comment in Medusa and the Snail about the information-rich blueprint in the human gene:

“The mere existence of that cell should be one of the great astonishments of the earth.  People ought to be walking around all day, all though their waking hours, calling to each in endless wonderment, talk of nothing except that cell.... If anyone does succeed in explaining it, within my lifetime I will charter a sky-writing airplane, maybe a whole fleet of them, and send them aloft to write one great exclamation point after another, around the whole sky, until all of my money runs out.”²⁷

Writing about this same cell, Chandra Wickramasinghe, professor of applied mathematics at the University of Cardiff, Wales, reminded his readers that the statistical probability of forming even a single enzyme, the building block of the gene, which is in turn the building block of the cell, is 1 in 10^40,000.²⁸  The translation of that figure is that it would require more attempts for the formation of one enzyme than there are atoms in all the stars of all the galaxies in the entire known universe.  Though a Buddhist, Dr. Wickramasinghe concedes this supernatural notion.²⁹

 

So “impossible” is this event that Francis Crick, the Nobel-Prize-winning scientist who helped crack the code of human DNA, said it is “almost a miracle.”³⁰

 

Molecules and Cells

Next, we will discuss the odds of two very "simple" things evolving: 1) a molecule and 2) a cell. Remember that thousands and millions of these are needed for life to evolve, and not even the higher forms of life. To begin consider the following information about molecules:

• A single drop of blood has 35,000,000 red blood cells.

• A single red blood cell has 280,000,000 hemoglobin molecules, each molecule having 10,000 atoms.

• A single man has 27,000,000,000,000 (27 X 10¹²) red blood cells.

Again, molecules are so small that 1/4 teaspoon of water has 10²⁴ of them. Molecules vary from the simple to the complex. A simple molecule may consist of only a few bonded atoms, as in water (two atoms hydrogen; one atom oxygen). A complex molecule of protein may have 50,000 amino acids or chains of simpler molecules.

The Odds of a Complex Molecule

Noted astronomer Fred Hoyle uses the Rubik cube to illustrate the odds of getting a single molecule, in this case a biopolymer. Biopolymers are biological polymers, i.e., large molecules such as nucleic acids or proteins. In the fascinating illustration below, he calls the idea that chance could originate a biopolymer "nonsense of a high order":

At all events, anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the Rubik cube will concede the near-impossibility of a solution being obtained by a blind person moving the cubic faces at random. Now imagine 10⁵⁰ blind persons each with a scrambled Rubik cube, and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have the chance of arriving by random shuffling at just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only biopolymers but the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.³¹

DeNouy provides another illustration for arriving at a single molecule of high dissymmetry through chance action and normal thermic agitation. He assumes 500 trillion shakings per second plus a liquid material volume equal to the size of the earth. For one molecule it would require "10²⁴³ billions of years." Even if this molecule did somehow arise by chance, it is still only one single molecule. Hundreds of millions are needed, requiring compound probability calculations for each successive molecule. His logical conclusion is that "it is totally impossible to account scientifically for all phenomena pertaining to life."³²

Even 40 years ago, scientist Harold F. Blum, writing in Time’s Arrow and Evolution, wrote that, "The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all probability."³³

Noted creation scientists Walter L. Bradley and Charles Thaxton, authors of The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, point out that the probability of assembling amino acid building blocks into a functional protein is approximately one chance in 4.9 X 10¹⁹¹.³⁴  "Such improbabilities have led essentially all scientists who work in the field to reject random, accidental assembly or fortuitous good luck as an explanation for how life began."³⁵  Now, if a figure as "small" as 5 chances in 10¹⁹¹ is referenced by such a statement, then what are we to make of the kinds of probabilities below that are infinitely less? The mind simply boggles at the remarkable faith of the materialist.

According to Coppedge, the probability of evolving a single protein molecule over 5 billion years is estimated at 1 chance in 10¹⁶¹. This even allows some 14 concessions to help it along which would not actually be present during evolution.³⁶ Again, this is no chance.

Cells and Bacteria

Consider that the smallest theoretical cell is made up of 239 proteins. Further, at least 124 different types of proteins are needed for the cell to become a living thing. But the simplest known self-reproducing organisms is the H39 strain of PPLO (mycoplasma) containing 625 proteins with an average of 400 amino acids in each protein.

Yet the probability of the occurrence of the smallest theoretical life is only one chance in 10^119,879 and the years required for it to evolve would be 10^119,841 years or 10^119,831 times the assumed age of the earth!³⁷  The probability of this smallest theoretical cell of 239 proteins evolving without the needed 124 different types of proteins to make up a living cell, i.e., the chance of evolving this "helpless group of non-living molecules" in over 500 billion years is one chance in 10^119,701.³⁸ Dr. David J. Rodabough, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, estimated the more realistic chance that life would spontaneously generate (even on 10²³ planets) as only one chance in 10^2,999,940.³⁹

Whether we are talking about giving evolution every conceivable chance to evolve a single protein molecule or the smallest theoretical cell, the odds are still impossible.⁴⁰

In the 1970s Sir Frederick Hoyle calculated the mathematical probability that a single bacterium could be spontaneously generated. He determined the chance of this occurring was 1 in 10^40,000.

Hoyle confessed what most scientists are, strangely, unwilling to confess, "The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40 thousand naughts [zeros after it]. It is enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet or on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."⁴¹

But Harold Morowitz, a Yale University physicist, gave a far more realistic "probability" for a single bacterium. He calculated the odds of a single bacterium emerging from the basic building blocks necessary were 1 chance in 10^{100,000,000,000}.⁴²

This number is so large it would require a library of approximately 100,000 books just to write it out! Ponder that!

In his book, Origins—A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, Robert Shapiro comments concerning the probabilities calculated by Morowitz, "The improbability involved in generating even one bacterium is so large that it reduces all considerations of time and space to nothingness. Given such odds, the time until the black holes evaporate and the space to the ends of the universe would make no difference at all. If we were to wait, we would truly be waiting for a miracle."⁴³

Googols and Factorials

Again, these numbers are unimaginable. That’s why even scientists don’t know what to do with them. Consider that a given individual’s chance of winning the state lottery is about one in ten million. The odds of winning each successive week involve the multiplication of probabilities so that the odds of winning the lottery every single week of your life from the age of 18 to 99, a period of 80 years, is 1 chance in 4.6 X 10^29,120. In other words, it is infinitely more likely that you would win the lottery every week of your life consecutively, from the day you were born, without missing even one winning weekly ticket, for 80 years, than it is that we would have the spontaneous generation of a simple bacterium.⁴⁴

Physicist Dr. Howard B. Holroyd refers to the book, Mathematics and the Imagination, where the authors, Kasner and Newman, name the extremely large number 10¹⁰⁰, a "googol." Noting the fact that there could only, at most, have been 4.8 X 10³⁸ possible mutations in all the life forms throughout the history of earth Dr. Holroyd writes, "It is not possible in a googol of operations to select at random, from the possible infinity of forms, the shapes and arrangements of the dextral and sinistral bones of even one mammal…. Let us recognize that if a result depends upon a hundred factors, and if the probability of getting each one right is 1 in 10, then the probability of getting the whole 100 right is only one in a googol."⁴⁵

Dr. Holroyd also discusses factorial numbers. A factorial number is a number that multiplies each successive number by the next number. So ten factorial would be to multiply 1 X 2 X 3 X 4 X 5 X 6 X 7 X 8 X 9 X 10. Seventy factorial is around a googol (1.198 X 10¹⁰⁰). Sir Arthur Eddington estimated the total number of electrons and protons in the entire universe as approximately 3.145 X 10⁷⁹. This is infinitely less than 100 factorial, which equals 9.3 X 10¹⁵⁷. But when it comes to evolution, we are not dealing with 100 factorial but millions X millions factorial. To illustrate, there are 5,000 fibers in the auditory nerve of man that may be connected to the brain in 5,000-factorial ways—and probably only one is correct. The optic nerve has about one million fibers, and these may be connected to the brain in one million factorial ways. The odds they could have been connected correctly by chance cannot even be written out longhand. Holroyd proceeds to show by several other examples how absurd belief in chance evolution is. He points out that the straight hydrocarbon chain C40H82 has about 6.25 X 10¹³ isomers. It would be impossible for the entire human race, working full time for four billion years, just to study all the isomers of this single organic molecule of no great size.⁴⁶ (Yet it just happened to evolve by chance.) When we consider there are ten billion cells in the cerebral cortex, that there are several trillion nerve connections between cells in the brain, plus many other amazing factors, it becomes "preposterous beyond words" to believe that all this originated by chance:

Surely the probability of the whole body is far less than that of any of the internal organs: that of two eyes to send two images over two cables of 1,000,000 conductors each to form one image is less than that of one eye; and surely that of one eye is much less than merely taking the bones of the skeleton and placing them into their proper positions. [—which he calculates as 1 chance in approximately 5.6 X 10³⁸⁸.]⁴⁷

 

Have scientists found evidence that life has come into existence by chance anywhere else in the universe?

Since evolutionists have not found scientific evidence for life originating from non-life on earth they had hoped they could find evidence of life somewhere in the universe.  If they could, it would give them circumstantial evidence that life could originate by evolution someplace else.

"The discovery of life on one other planet—e.g. Mars—can, in the words of the American Physicist Phillip Morrison, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 'transform the origin of life from a miracle to a statistic."'⁴⁸

Dr. Carl Sagan is an American astronomer.

"That which makes me of this opinion, that those Worlds are not without such a Creature endowed with Reason, is that otherwise our Earth would have too much the Advantage of them, in being the only part of the Universe that could boast of such a Creature...."⁴⁹

"The discovery of life (on other planets), especially if it were to prove widespread, would of course have a very important bearing on the question of how life originated on earth.  For it would undoubtedly provide powerful circumstantial evidence for the traditional evolutionary scenario, enhancing enormously the credibility of the belief that the root from chemistry to life can be surmounted by simple natural processes wherever the right conditions exist."⁵⁰

"At present, if we are to exclude UFO's and the claims of Von Daniken and his fellow travelers, there is not a shred of evidence for extra-terrestrial life, and there is no way of excluding the possibility of life being unique to earth with all the philosophical consequences this entails."⁵¹

"It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find an elegance and an ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance.  Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which—a functional protein or a gene—is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything perused by the intelligence of man?  Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced artifacts appear clumsy.  We feel humbled, as neolithic man would in the presence of twentieth century technology.

"To those who still dogmatically advocate that all this new reality is the result of pure chance one can only reply, like Alice, incredulous in the face of the contradictory logic of the Red Queen:

“Alice laughed.  'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'  'I dare say you haven't had much practice,' said the queen.  'When I was your age I did it for half an hour a day.  Why, sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."'⁵²

 

WHAT HAS THE FOSSIL RECORD REVEALED ABOUT DARWIN’S MISSING LINK BETWEEN ALL THE PLANTS AND ANIMALS?

 

What evidence should we expect to find in the fossil record if Darwin’s theory of evolution is correct?

"Innumerable transitional forms must have existed.  But why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?... Why is not every geological formation in every stratum full of such intermediate links?  Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory."⁵³

"If it could be shown that this fact [gaps between widely distinct groups] had always existed, the fact would be fatal to the doctrine of evolution." (Thomas Huxley in his three lectures on Evolution, p. 619.)

"These evolutionary happenings are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible.  It is as impossible to turn a land vertebrate into a fish as it is to effect the reverse transformation.  The applicability of the experimental method to the study of such unique historical processes is severely restricted before all else by the time intervals involved, which far exceed the lifetime of any human experimenter.  And yet, it is just such impossibility that is demanded by anti-evolutionists when they ask for "proofs" of evolution which they would magnanimously accept as satisfactory."⁵⁴

"Darwin also holds out the hope that some of the gap would be filled as the result of subsequent collecting.  But most of the gaps were still there a century later and some paleontologists were no longer willing to explain them away  geologically."⁵⁵

Dr. Niles Eldredge is the chairman and curator of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

"One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions.  Nor is the problem a miserably poor record.  The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong."⁵⁶

Dr. Gould teaches biology, geology and the history of science at Harvard University.

"The reason for abrupt appearances and gaps is not the imperfection of the fossil record.  With over 200 million cataloged specimens of about 250,000 fossil species, many evolutionist paleontologists argue that the fossil record is sufficient: 'In part, the role of paleontology and evolutionary research has been defined narrowly because of a false belief, tracing back to Darwin and his early followers, that the fossil record is woefully incomplete.  Actually, the record is of sufficiently high quality to allow us to undertake certain kinds of analysis meaningfully at the level of the species.'

"It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera and families and that nearly all new categories above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences."⁵⁷

Dr. Simpson, one of the world's best-known evolutionists, was professor of vertebrate paleontology at Harvard University until his retirement.

"Evolutionism has been unable to yield scientific data about the origin, diversity and similarity of the two million species that inhabit the earth and the estimated eight million others that once thrived."⁵⁸

Dr. Donn Rosen is curator of fishes at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York.

"On the basis of the paleontological record, the creationist has the better of the argument."⁵⁹

Dr. Austin Clark was curator of paleontology at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.

"Several cockroach fossils...from the carboniferous period of earth's history make one thing clear, even back then, about 350 million years ago, the cockroach looked disgusting.  It hasn't changed much since."⁶⁰

"The 'peppered moth' experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection—or survival of the fittest—in action, but they do not show evolution in progress, for however the populations may alter in their content of light, intermediate or dark forms, all the moths remain from beginning to end biston betularia."⁶¹

"We are in the dark concerning the origin of insects."⁶²

Dr. Grasse is considered the outstanding scientist of France, the dean of French zoologists.

"Unfortunately, not a single specimen of an appropriate reptilian ancestor is known prior to the appearance of true reptiles.  The absence of such ancestral forms leaves many problems of the amphibian—reptilian transition unanswered."⁶³

"True birds have existed at least as long as archaeopteryx so that the latter could hardly have been their ancestor."⁶⁴

"Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vegetable Kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants."⁶⁵

"All three subdivisions of the bony fishes first appear in the fossil record at approximately the same time.  They are already divergent morphologically, and they are heavily armored.  How did they originate?  What allowed them to diverge so widely?  How did they all come to have heavy armor?  And why is there no trace of earlier, intermediate forms?"⁶⁶

The Evolutionist Julian Huxley admitted in his book Evolution in Action that the chances for the evolution of a horse are one in one thousand to the millionth power.  (This is the number one followed by three million zeros, or 1,500 pages of nothing but zeros!)  He admitted that no one would ever bet on anything so improbable.  Yet he persisted in believing it did happen!⁶⁷

"The fossil record tells us almost nothing about the evolutionary origin of phyla and classes.  Intermediate forms are non-existent, undiscovered, or not recognized."⁶⁸

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book.  If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them.  So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping to the defense of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job."⁶⁹

Colin Patterson is a senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London and a life-long evolutionist.  Colin Patterson's statement that he had left out the evolutionary transitions in his book, if he had known of any fossils, he certainly would have included them, is stated in Personal Communications by Colin Patterson to Luther Sunderland, Appalachian, New York, April 10, 1979.

"Unfortunately, the origins of most higher categories are shrouded in mystery: commonly new higher categories appear abruptly in the fossil record without evidence of transitional forms."⁷⁰

Dr. David Raup, previously curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, is now professor of geology at the University of Chicago.  He is a strong advocate of evolutionary theory:

"Gaps among known species are sporadic and often small.  Gaps among known orders, classes and phyla are systematic and almost always large."⁷¹

"The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic (gradual) evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid."⁷²

Dr. Stanley is professor of Paleobiology at Johns Hopkins University.  He is a recipient of the Schuchert award of the Paleontological Society and has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

"Increasing diversity and multiple transitions seem to reflect a determined and an inexorable progression toward higher things.  But the paleontological record supports no such interpretation.  There has been no steady progress in the higher development of organic design.  We have had, instead, vast stretches of little or no change in one evolutionary burst that created the entire system."⁷³

"We assume that none of the fossil species we are considering is the ancestor of the other." (Stated in a recent British Museum publication entitled "Man's Place in Evolution," p. 20.)

"The fossil record now reveals that species typically survived for a hundred thousand generations, or even a million or more, without evolving very much.  We seem forced to conclude that most evolution takes place rapidly, when species come into being by the evolutionary divergence of small populations from parent species.  After their origins, most species undergo little evolution before becoming extinct."⁷⁴

"If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after.  But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures.  This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found.  In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them."⁷⁵

"New species almost always appeared suddenly in the fossil record with no intermediate links to ancestors in older rocks of the same region."⁷⁶

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.  The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches...in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the gradual transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed."'⁷⁷

 

"If one were to prove this God of the Christians to us, we should be even less able to believe in Him."⁷⁸

"It is bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origin."—The Secular Humanist lawyer Clarence Darrow argued this at the Scopes Trial of 1925.

"Fifty-six years later at the Scopes II Trial in Arkansas, which was to decide whether Creation could be taught along with Evolution, the Secular Humanists argued in effect and won, that it is bigotry to teach two theories of origin.  Apparently what Secular Humanists mean is that it is bigotry to teach only one view when Creation is that view, but not when Evolution is that view."⁷⁹

"...The twentieth century would be incomprehensible without the Darwinian revolution.  The social and political currents which have swept the world in the past 80 years would have been impossible without its intellectual sanction.... the influence of evolutionary theory on fields far removed from biology is one of the most spectacular examples in history of how a highly speculative idea for which there is no really hard scientific evidence can come to fashion the thinking of a whole society and dominate the outlook of an age.  Considering its historic significance and the social and moral transformation it caused in Western thought, one might have expected that a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth....In the final analysis, we still know very little about how new forms of life arise.  The 'mystery of mysteries'—the origin of new beings on earth—is still largely as enigmatic as when Darwin set sail on the Beagle."⁸⁰

"There is a pretty widespread sense of dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought of as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called neo-Darwinian theory."⁸¹

"I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation.  I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it."⁸²

 

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT WHEN GOD CREATED?

      Now, I would like to share with you some further thoughts on what the Bible teaches about creation and science.  In doing so, I would like to cite Dr. Norman Geisler’s new Systematic Theology, Volume 2 entitled, “God and Creation.”  His words express what I believe, although I do not believe I could say as well as he.

 

The Current Debate on Creation/Evolution

      Since the time of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), debate has raged within Christianity on whether or not total evolution is compatible with the historic biblical and theological teaching on origins.  Two basic camps have emerged: theistic evolution and creationism.  Within the second faction (creationists), there are two major groups: old-earth creationists and young-earth creationists.  (The former are often called progressive creationists, and the latter, fiat creationists.)  Currently, in America, the young-earth creationists are led by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), based on the work of Henry Morris.  Progressive (old-earth) creationism is championed by Hugh Ross and his “Reasons to Believe” organization; another proponent of this view is Robert Newman at Biblical Se