Soul Liberty | Laying The Foundation On Creation

Laying The Foundation On Creation
by Robert Rouse
Jan 18, 2009

"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."
- Robert Jastrow

Everyone has moments in their life when they ponder their existence. Occasionaly it’s simply a question of ancestry; many times it involves the origins of life on Earth and the universe itself. I’m no exception to this. I was given a basic concept of how our existence might have come to be throughout my public school education. Teachers explained that a big bang quickly dispersed gases and such throughout the universe very quickly. Then, things cooled and slowed down; galaxies, stars, and planets formed. On Earth, there must have been a pre-biotic soup of complex chemicals that formed the earliest simple cells. The rest of the story is documented in the fossil record and the subsequent evolution of these simple cells eventually produced all life we see today. Of course, all of this must happened over billions of years. It all seemed logical and well-supported; I thought all that was left was to figure out the steps involved in going from our evolutionary beginnings to the present day.

Imagine my utter shock when I learned that the basic premises for all of this were based on mere speculation or flawed evidence and that there was another explanation staring me right in the face my whole life. The answer was in Genesis. I had heard about creation scientists who believe everything was created in six days as described in the Bible and that Earth is merely a few thousand years old. In the face of what we’ve been taught and led to believe our whole lives, this seems preposterous at first glance. Much of the criticism from other scientists stems from a perception that all creationists do is try to show the impossibility of evolution and that they say such things because they simply don’t understand how it works or they stubbornly refuse to abandon their faith despite scientific knowledge. But after over a year of obsessive investigation I’ve uncovered an entire network of PhDs in all disciplines that have done research, written volumes of technical papers and produced videos showing exactly how all of this could have happened in addition to showing the ultimate impossibility of what ignorant teachers spout to impressionable youngsters (and indeed, college students) without mentioning the other side. This investigation is what led me to reject my faith in evolution and put my faith instead in our Creator. I couldn’t come close to presenting even some of the arguments I’ve found, but I’ll try to cover the basics.

Religion and Science

First, let me clarify some things about science and religion. Religion is a worldview. Your beliefs and moral practices are based on that view. Science is a way to test a hypothesis. In science, you make predictions based on logic or mathematics that are testable and (preferably) falsifiable. Then, you interpret the results to see if they fit in to an overall theory, which is largely based on your particular worldview.

There are thousands of different religions, but on the question of origins they fall neatly into two categories: naturalist and creationist. The former is a belief that everything that’s in the universe is self-existent and was shaped by natural processes. The latter is a belief that the universe was created by a supernatural being that is eternal and exists outside of what we know as space and time. The difference is especially obvious concerning the origins of life.

By their very nature, scientific experiments must operate independently of any religious bias. It is an observation of facts to see if a prediction makes sense. That prediction comes from a biased worldview, but that has no bearing on the results. If the results falsify the theory or fail to adequately support it, it’s time for a new theory. As I have seen lately, the evidence used to support evolution as a basis of origins simply doesn't hold up. However, the only alternative to evolutionists’ worldview is to believe in special creation. That’s simply too hard to swallow for a lot of people who are reluctant to give up beliefs held their whole lives. Furthermore, theories presented by creationists pose an equally viable explanation of all the observations made by scientists thus far.

Compromise

Before I get into the nitty-gritty, you might be wondering how we might reconcile evolutionary teachings with Christian teachings. Why spend so much effort disproving evolution? After all, isn’t it possible that God used evolutionary processes to create the world? Couldn’t Genesis be interpreted as a day being comparable to a geological age? There are many ways to interpret the six days as described in Genesis, but all of them result incompromising key doctrines and scripture as a whole, as I will show.

The word “day” in our language can be used to describe the 12 or so hours that we can see the sun, it can be a full 24-hour day, or it can be sometime in the past (i.e. “Back in my day…”). In the Hebrew language (the language of the Old Testament), when that word is combined with words like “evening” and “morning” or when it’s given a number in front like “first”, “second”, and so on, it always means a 24-hour day. Every single one of the verses in Genesis that describe the creation says “and the evening and the morning were the (insert # here) day”.

The Bible is filled with references to God’s six-day work of creation. The fourth commandment in Exodus 20:11 spells this out clearly and Jesus used the history found in Genesis to explain his teachings in Matthew 11:23, Matthew 12:39, Matthew 19:4-6, Matthew 22:31-32, Matthew 23:35 ... and that's just in one book! If you think most of the creation story is metaphor or merely poetic, think about the genaeologies from Adam all the way down to Jesus Christ as detailed in Genesis 5, Matthew 1, and Luke 3. Then ask yourself, "Where do the metaphors end and the where does reality begin?"

Now, here's the bigger issue: death. Unless death came as a result of sin (Romans 5:12), then it existed before God declared everything "very good." For old-earth advocates, this means it existed for millions of years before that. Yet, every sane human being intrinsically knows that there is nothing "good" about death. Only the young-earth view that death (physical and spiritual) came through original sin sees death as an enemy - an imposter - that Jesus Christ conquers.

We mere humans have no business telling God how he must have gone about creating our world. He told us already! There’s no need for re-interpretation - no need for compromise. Let me show you why so many credible scientists (and theologians) see no conflict between scientific evidence and a young Earth.

The Evidence

Take it from the beginning: how did a primordial soup of chemicals form the first cell? In Darwin’s day, they thought cells were a blob with a dark spot in the middle. Now we know that even the simplest cell has as many complex systems as a space shuttle (with no exaggeration). But even complex things like crystal formations can be seen forming all over the place in nature. The problem is irreducible complexity. Consider Michael Behe's explanation of this using a mousetrap. A mousetrap has several parts. If you take any of the parts away, it ceases to function. All the parts could possibly be used elsewhere and can be found all over the place. Darwinian evolution would require that mousetrap to have formed step-by step, keeping the parts that helped and rejecting the parts that were useless (natural selection). Irreducible complexity is the idea that none of it is useful until everything is in place. Evolutionists have no good answer for this problem when it comes to the origin of life and many of the systems we see in complex organisms.

Suppose that first cell could have formed and survived. Now, it has to figure a way to reproduce. It also has to increase genetic complexity to form entire organisms and produce the diversity we see today. Unfortunately, geneticists have not yet found anything in nature that can add genes to their DNA and retain it for generations. There's speculation out there, but that's all it amounts to.

At this point, an evolutionist would likely chime in by saying that I’m ignoring the fact that we see evolution happening today with things like antibiotic resistance in bacteria. We see new species all the time, and living things evolve to adapt to their environment extremely well. Creationists have no beef with this because that’s a form of evolution which requires no new genetic information. A dog can beget different dogs, a bird can beget different-looking birds (like Darwin’s finches), but can an ape-like creature beget some transition to a human? That would require new information added to the DNA. That’s what creationists say can’t happen. There are limits to evolution and adaptation.

You have probably visited a museum with a display of the “ascent of man” showing clay replicas of fossils that show the transition from apes to humans. What you don’t know is that many of those transitional forms are either hoaxes that are still presented as proof or the fossil was nothing more than that of a tooth or small fragments of a skull. Fossils displayed as complete skeletons are usually a "Frankenstein" collection of other fossils found at different sites. Darwin himself said that if his theory were to be true, there must be thousands of these transitional forms. Millions of fossils later, we still see very little in the way of potential transitional forms. Even if you arranged enough complete fossils in a certain order to show the transition, this is still an interpretation. Similarity does not imply ancestry. The “Wilson nose” can be found elsewhere on earth outside of the Wilson family. Evolutionists will tell you that all of these fossils have been dated accurately and show that the timeline matches up perfectly. That’s wrong for a number of reasons, mainly the assumptions that go into the dating techniques.

What about the age of the earth? Doesn’t carbon dating (and other radiometric dating methods) show us beyond any real doubt that the earth is billions of years old? No, it doesn’t. The first (and worst) problem is that radiometric dating assumes uniformitarianism; that is, it assumes decay rates (and other necessary values) have always been constant. A group of researchers with the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) has found remarkable evidence that radioactive elements decayed much faster at some point in the past. They have also used other means of dating elements (such as helium diffusion rates through zircon) to determine the true age of the earth. Do you know what they found? That the data show the earth is between 4,000 and 10,000 years old! What’s worse – fossils that are supposed to be millions of years old should have no measurable C-14 left in them. C-14 has been found and measured in countless fossils found in all layers of the earth. This error can’t be explained by C-14 contamination, so don’t bother to bring it up. For more on the Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth (RATE) project, see ICR’s web site.

It only gets worse from there. You might ask how so many fossils and sedimentary layers could have formed if it takes millions of years for that to happen. The truth is that in lab experiments (by secular scientists) we see that fossils can form in a matter of hours under the right conditions, and in a matter of a few years under conditions commonly found in nature. Dr. Dino (Kent Hovind) has an impressive collection of fossilized pickles, hats, and even a fossilized cowboy boot with his leg still in it. It doesn’t take all that long. Layers could have easily been formed by Noah's Flood. We see proof of this possibility from examining polystrate fossils. Upside-down trees that penetrate several geologic layers are a good observation to support such a claim.

Geology can bee seen two ways: layers formed by sediments that were laid down and shuffled around over millions of years, or layers were formed and features were carved by a massive worldwide flood (ring any bells?). The Grand Canyon is a favorite subject among creationists. I was always told it was formed by the Colorado River over millions of years. But the highest point on the canyon’s ridge is several thousand feet higher than where the river enters. Rivers don’t flow uphill. You might explain that away by assuming tectonic shifts raised up the edge over time. In fact, there is evidence of uplift, but the way the layers bent indicates that the sediment had not hardened into rock yet. Also, if you look at a satellite photo, you’ll see that certain eroded features were made pointing in the opposite direction of the river flow.

Now for the universe: the main evidence for the Big Bang is that the universe is expanding and the cosmic background radiation shows it. There’s another proposal by physicist Russell Humphrys, Ph.D, called White Hole Cosmology. Just as everything sinks inward beyond the event horizon of a black hole, so does everything expand outward beyond the event horizon of a white hole. Thanks to Einstein's General Relativity, we can explain the problem of stars being billions of years old and millions of light-years away while only 6,000 years have passed on Earth. You see, time is VERY different when you include massive speeds and gravitational forces in terms of general relativity. In fact, creationist cosmology accounts for more astronomical observations than the Big Bang!

That’s only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, it’s only the snowman on top of the tip of the iceberg. There are still many, many questions I’m sure you must have zipping through your mind right now. I questioned this a lot at first, but in searching deeper I’m thoroughly convinced of all of it. If you require more explanation, more proof, there are a few web sites you can start with on our links page or using our creation search tool. If you still disagree, fine. Just don’t try to tell me that my interpretation is not scientific.

Bias

I would hope that the amazing discoveries and scientific experiments carried out by creationists would get roaring applause the world over, especially from Christians. They’ve taken what we already know about many fields of science and have moved the research a step further to test assumptions with actual experiments. They’ve scientifically shown the truth of the Bible. Why aren’t they getting peace prizes and a wealth of funding to carry on their research?

A fundamental tenet of the scientific community is never to invoke supernatural explanations. That's understandable, but presupposes that such a supernatural being could never exist or interact with our world. When a creationist comes forward with proof of a young earth, they are ridiculed and labeled as religious fundamentalists who don’t understand science. I don’t think it’s necessary to point out examples from history, but humans have seen a lot of great scientists come and go that were ridiculed in their time for their “radical” notions. American society is based on freedom and tolerance, but that doesn’t really apply when it comes to religion in academia.

Most scientific research is funded by government grants or universities. In a spirit of religious tolerance, neither the US government nor major universities will fund research that is clearly aimed at proving one religious concept over another. As a case-in-point, a creationist that works at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History got a paper on Intelligent Design published in a secular scientific journal. That caused quite a frenzy at the Smithsonian and sparked quite a lot of name-calling and bluffing. It was presented in documentary form in Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." (For the record, Intelligent Design is quite different from "creationism" as most creationists identify themselves. ID simply hold that life is designed, but is not interested in who did it or when.) Creationist researchers are funded by private donations. They are well-funded despite the obstacles because there are an overwhelming number of Christians who believe in a young earth and are afraid to make it public.

Evolutionists claim creationists have no authority because they haven’t been published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. They actually have, but the papers used to support a young earth or refute evolutionary hypotheses can only get published in peer-reviewed creationist journals. That’s akin to a requirement that you’re evolutionist to get published in secular journals, which are more numerous. The truth is that the creationists I’m referring to all got Ph.Ds from secular institutions like Cambridge, Princeton, and so on. Many of them didn’t turn to creationism until long after they graduated.

The Truth

What’s simple is true: you did not get here by some chance event that formed life from rain and lightning on rocks or in the sea billions of years ago. You are a direct descendant of Adam, the divine and special creation of God. It happened exactly as He described through the penmen of the Bible and is confirmed by the teachings of Jesus with no need for re-interpretation or revision. Don’t just take my word for it. Look into it yourself. Read the Bible and the findings of those who have devoted their lives to studying the science behind it. Find the answers you want in as little or as much detail as needed to thoroughly convince you. I pray you’ll find your way.