How Can You Talk With Your Children About Evolution?
Almost everywhere you turn, your children are being exposed to the "facts" of evolution rather than the flaws in the theory. What can you do to properly educate your kids? They need you to spell out the truth!
by Becky Sweat
If you have school-aged children, they're probably being exposed to evolutionary theory on a regular basis, whether you like it or not. In most public schools, evolution is a major part of the science curriculum.

Of course, even if your children are preschoolers, they still may be hearing a lot about evolution. Just take them to a zoo, visit a natural history museum, watch a nature show on television or read a book about animals. Darwin's theories are promulgated practically everywhere.

That's exactly why you, as a parent, need to do some talking of your own on this subject. You need to counteract these ideas. Remember, when your children are at school evolutionary theory is most likely being presented to them as fact. They're unlikely to be told anything about the flaws with Darwinian thinking or about the existence of a divine Creator.

True, your children may go to church with you. They may know you don't believe in evolution. But they're not likely to really understand why evolution is wrong unless you talk about it with them.

This may sound like a tall order. After all, evolution can be a daunting topic. However, you don't have to be skilled in biology or paleontology to see the fallacies in evolution and explain these to your children. Here are some practical suggestions for doing this and, even more importantly, teaching your children what the Bible says about creation.

1. Educate yourself about the issues.
While you don't need to be an expert in biology, you should at least have a general understanding of evolutionary theory before you discuss it with your kids.

Know the basic terms like survival of the fittest, speciation, spontaneous generation, common descent, random mutation, natural selection, etc. You should understand what these terms mean and how they fit into evolutionary theory. This will allow you to discuss the issues on an intelligent level.

Also request from The Good News the two free booklets Life's Ultimate Question: Does God Exist? and Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe? Both include lists of helpful books, most written by scientists, that support the booklets' main points.

You can also find a lot of helpful material at Web sites such as www.answersingenesis.org and www.icr.org, as well as in books published by creationist publishing houses. But you need to be mindful of their varying views. Not all creationists believe the same thing. The majority consider themselves "young earth" creationists, meaning they believe that the stars, planets, earth and life on earth were created by God only about 6,000 years ago.

If you think otherwisethat the earth is older than that, perhaps even as old as most scientists speculatethen you will have a lot of material to weed through when reading books and articles written by young-earth creationists.

"Old earth" creationists, on the other hand, believe that the earth and the universe are billions of years old, as described by astronomers and geologists. Within this category is the view known as "gap creationism." It maintains that the earth and life on it predate the time of man's creation and that the former world was plunged into chaos, necessitating a week of renewal in preparation for man's creation 6,000 years ago.

Also within the "old earth" category is "progressive creationism," which contends that the six "days" of creation in Genesis do not refer to literal 24-hour days, but rather epochs that could be millions or billions of years in duration.

These are just a few of the ways that creationist groups differ with each other. There's not room to describe all the different views here. The bottom line is that while these groups can provide a lot of good information to help you understand the problems with evolution, they can also give you many additional issues to grapple with if you don't hold the same beliefs regarding the age of the earth or the timing of creation. You need to choose educational materials very carefully.

2. Address evolutionary concepts head on.
Once you have a good understanding of the issues, you're ready to have some discussions with your children. Plan a time to talk with them about this subject. Don't just wait for your kids to ask you a question about evolution, because they may never do that on their own.

If you have regular family meetings at your house, you could make evolution one of the topics you discuss then. Or it could be a subject you bring up with your kids every now and then when you're all sitting around the dinner table.

Either way, you'll want to find out from your kids what they already "know" about evolution, to what extent they're hearing about it in school and if they have any questions or concerns about what they're being told. Then you can explain some of the fallacies with evolution, based on what you've found from all your reading.

But don't do all the talking yourself. Try to get an interchange going. You might ask your children if they can come up with some examples from nature of obvious intelligent design or irreducible complexity (the latter referring to structures or systems that could not have evolved in gradual stages, as complete assembly is necessary to provide functional benefit so as to be passed on in the process of natural selection). See if you can get them really thinking about this subject.

You can also use specially designed family field trips to address evolutionary ideas. That's what Jack of London, Kentucky, does. He and his wife often take their middle-school-aged kids on fossil-hunting hikes to the creeks, cliffs and hills near their home.

"All of the bedrock around here is full of fossils," he notes. "We'll show our kids the different fossils we find, and then I'll tell them isn't it interesting that we never find any fossils of transitional species (such as a fish with feet or a reptile with feathers), which would support claims of evolutionary change.

"Every fossil we find is a fully formed and functional species. Then I tell them that professional paleontologists have not found transitional fossils either. It's really driven the point home."

Obviously you'll need to tailor your talks to the age of your children. You can go into much more depth if you have a preteen or teen who is studying biology in school than you would if your child is much younger and hasn't learned about genes yet. With young children, you may just want to stress that there is no scientific evidence for the big changes from amoeba to fish to frogs to reptiles to mammals and leave it at that.

In addition to your planned talks, you should be ready to talk about evolutionary concepts whenever you encounter them. You might be at the zoo when a guide or sign states that giraffes evolved their long necks in order to eat leaves from the tallest trees. As soon as you can, take your children aside and remind them of why such concepts are false.

3. Familiarize your children with the biblical account of creation.
Not only should you be addressing what's wrong with evolution, but you should also be teaching your children about the biblical account of creation. Start this when they are very young. Read them the story of God's creation in Genesis 1 and 2 again and again until it is firmly fixed in their minds.

But don't stop with the book of Genesis. The Bible contains many verses that confirm the Genesis account of creation, particularly in the books of Psalms and Isaiah. Read these to your child too. Discuss these verses. Talk about what God did on each of the days of creation, and what it means for us today.

You might also want to take some family field trips to highlight creation. Take your children to a botanical garden and show them the intricate design in leaves and remind them again and again how unlikely it would be for such intricate patterns to occur by chance mutation and natural selection.

Visit a farm or petting zoo in the springtime when there are baby animals to illustrate the point that God created the animals and plants to reproduce each "according to its kind." If you have a garden, you can show your kids that particular kinds of seeds grow into particular kinds of fruits and vegetables.

Point out what a perfect system has been devisedthat it could not have happened without a creator. These kinds of hands-on lessons will make the creation story much more real to your children.

4. Develop a plan for confronting evolution at school.
Your children may be convinced that evolution is wrong, but how to deal with evolutionary teachings at school is another story. How, in good conscience, can they answer test questions about evolution? This is something you definitely need to address in your talks with your children.

First, explain that evolution is a very common belief in our society. For that reason, they need to know something about it. They need to know what people mean when they talk about evolution.

With that in mind, your kids can see tests simply as a measure of how much they know about this pervasive idea. When they answer test questions, they are not saying they believe in evolution; they are simply demonstrating their knowledge about the theory.

For example, with essay questions or if their teacher asks them a question in a class discussion, they could preface their responses with something like, "The generally accepted belief is . . ." or "Chapter 5 emphasized that . . ." These kinds of answers show that your children have done their homework and understand the concept of evolution, but without communicating that they believe in it.

5. Explain why it's important we do not accept evolutionary theory.
During your talks, you should stress why it is a big problem to accept the theory of evolutionthat it is an attempt to explain away the existence of God.

If the universe and life on earth evolved by itself over billions of years, then the Genesis account of creation is pure fiction and God isn't real. That is exactly what many in society want to believe and promulgate. If there's no God, then there are no absolutes about right and wrong and people are free to do whatever they want to do.

Explain this to your children. They need to understand that there really is an agenda here; evolutionary theory is being pushed on society for more reasons than simply the pursuit of science.

If your kids are older, they may ask you if it's possible to believe in God and evolution. This would be the time to explain the fallacies of theistic evolution. This theory is an attempt to integrate creationism and evolution. Theistic evolutionists believe that God did indeed create the universe, but He did so by guiding the process of evolution over billions of years.

You could explain that the tenets of evolution and creationism are so strongly divergent that it doesn't make sense to believe in both. Trying to do so reduces the Bible to insignificance, and opens the door for wrong thinking.

The only kind of evolution that Scripture allows for is microevolutionchange over time within created kinds, not change from one kind to another. Again, the missing intermediate links in the fossil record fit with what the Bible teaches, not with atheistic or theistic evolution.

What we believe really matters
To sum up, it certainly matters a great deal what we believe concerning the origins of the universe and of life itself. Darwin believed that life began when chemicals in a pond somehow became mixed together to spontaneously create living matter, even though he admitted it could not be proven. Today evolutionists cannot prove how life was first formed either.

But we know the answer. We know that God created us in His image. We also know that He has a wonderful plan for us, intending us to be a part of His eternal Kingdom. This should be something we think about often and regularly talk about with our children. That is the only way they will learn to separate truth from fiction, and hold fast to God's precious truths! GN

an argument is a method of reasoning wherein logic evaluates the quality of ratiocination
applied within in a series of statements meant to establish a definite proposition

---

A theory is not, "Hey, I've got a theory about where my sneakers are!" The meaning is completely and utterly different.

A scientific theory is not "just a theory", rather, it is completely the opposite.

A theory is a compilation of all the data, and when you have converging lines of scientific thought they merge to become a theory.

"Theory" does not mean random stabs in the dark, it means: an explanation of certain phenomena supported by a body of facts (usually) unifying similarly supported hypotheses such as atomic theory, gravitational theory, germ theory, cell theory, some-people-are-dumb-as-dirt theory and so on.

The Theory of Evolution for instance, is the explanation of all the biological, physical and related lines of scientific, demonstrable data. If just one of these parts were to be proven false, the entire theory would be subjected to intense scrutiny and revision.

When was the last time you heard someone proclaim: a theory is just a theory, therefore, the Theory of Gravity is "just a theory"?

Theories do NOT go on to be promoted as facts. They explain facts.

The Theory of Evolution will never be "proven" just like the Theory of Gravity will never be "proven". We don't "prove" theories. We support theories with facts. We don't have to "prove" the Theory of Gravity because things fall when you let them go. So we 'believe' in gravity.

Would it surprise you to know we're not sure why things fall? Oh, Newton had one idea, but then, Einstein had another. Did objects stop falling in the mean time while it was figured out? No. Things kept on falling. That's evolution. We observe it.

The Theory of Evolution is about "how" things evolve. We may not be certain of all the "hows" yet, but we're certain that things do indeed evolve. No doubt at all there. None whatsoever. Evolution has been, and is being, tested and observed, in laboratories as in 'real life'.

When you want someone to come out and say "the theory is proven", well, that's not going to happen because that doesn't exist - and that's okay, because the empirical evidence of apples falling and seeds becoming full grown according to their like, is incontrovertible.

- - -

Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome.

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (the theory) by which evolution (the fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory -natural selection- to explain the mechanism of evolution.

- Stephen J. Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981


Didn't understand any of it? Then you are most likely able to produce this little gem: "... but if we share common ancestry with chimps, why are there still chimps?"

When it is pointed out: for the same reason Americans share common ancestry with Europeans, but there are still Europeans, you cannot follow the logic - just too big a leap. It is not as if you are Evil Knievel, right?

Right.

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Feelings do not think, thoughts do not feel
and the human brain can only comprehend
three categories to put information in.

New!! Improved!! Now With T-Formula!!

__________Gnothi Sauton__________

People are intrinsically intelligent.

When people are put together, they become a herd.
When people are a herd, they become sheeple.
When people are sheeple, they become dumb animals.
When people turn dumb animals, they become treated as such.

10 Ways Darwin Got It Wrong
This year marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birthday and, coincidentally, 150 years since the publication of his book On the Origin of Species. One of the most influential books in modern history, it has helped shape philosophy, biology, sociology and religion in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. But both Darwin's theory and his book are doomed by major flaws.
by Mario Seiglie
Was Charles Darwin right about his theory? More importantly, how vital is it to find out the correct answer?

Unlike other scientific theories, Darwinian evolution touches not only science but also philosophy, morality, social science and even religion. Your worldview will be radically affected by how you answer the following question: Is Darwinian evolution true? So it's crucial to get it right!

After 150 years, much controversy still surrounds the theory of evolution. For instance, a recent CNN article, "Darwin Still Making Waves 200 Years Later," discussed the constant debates on the theory of evolution.

Since Darwin has been in the news with the bicentennial of his birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his famous book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, it's an excellent moment to reexamine key concepts of his controversial theory.

While mass media constantly bombards us with information favoring evolution, and science textbooks invariably teach what they believe Darwin got right, these sources rarely admit what he got wrong.

So here, in brief, are 10 assumptions of his theory that have turned out to be wrong. What is the truth in each case, and how can these issues affect your perspective and life?

1. The "warm little pond" theory
Charles Darwin once wrote to his good friend Joseph Hooker about the possibility of life arising spontaneously from "some warm little pond."

During his day, some scientists still believed in "spontaneous generation," the idea that life can arise from nonlifewhich was Darwin's hope. Later, the famous French scientist Louis Pasteur decisively refuted the idea, and 150 years of observation and experimentation have confirmed these results.

It turns out life is supremely more complex than Darwin could have ever imagined.

Several decades ago, the famous Miller-Urey experiment was supposed to shed light on the origins of life. By running a mixture of gases through heat and electricity, they produced a tarlike substance that formed some amino acids. But we now know that the experiment was rigged, since oxygen, which was excluded, would have ruined the results. And scientists have concluded that oxygen was present when life first appeared.

Even with this rigged experiment, however, there was no assembly of amino acids so as to reach the next level of the building blocks of lifethe enormously complex proteins, which themselves must be precisely integrated into sophisticated systems.

While the Miller-Urey experiment yielded the artificial chemical production of some crude organic building blocks, no building came of it. How do you get the loose blocks to form an elegant and functional housewith all the blocks in the right places?

This comparable house would also include a foundation, walls, doors, windows, roof, electrical power and a sewer system. Additionally, it needs to create a variety of materials besides the blocks that have to be precisely formed and fitted, and then it must have the ability to reproduce itself.

We are referring, of course, to a living cell, the staggering complexity of which defies the imagination. Indeed, the most primitive cell is far more complex than even the most sophisticated of houses, as pointed out in the next section of this article.

When scientists do the math, Darwinism just doesn't add up to anything probable or possible.

Sir Fred Hoyle, the late British astronomer and mathematician who was knighted for his scientific accomplishments, observed about the Miller-Urey experiment: "The...building blocks of proteins can therefore be produced by natural means. But this is far from proving that life could have evolved in this way. No one has shown that the correct arrangements of amino acids, like the orderings in enzymes, can be produced by this method...

"A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe" (The Intelligent Universe, 1983, pp. 18-19, emphasis added throughout).

The scientific evidence indicates that life did not and could not somehow arise spontaneously from some warm little pond, as Darwin thought. What we find from the evidence around us and from the fossil record is that, as the law of biogenesis states, life can only arise from life.

2. The supposed simplicity of the cell
Consider for a moment the simple, humble bacteria. What Charles Darwin saw under a crude microscope looked quite primitivea rounded glob of matter called "protoplasm"and he thought it consisted of a few elementary components that could be easily assembled.

Yet today we know bacteria contain complex molecular machines, each bacterium being more like a sophisticated automobile factory with multiple robotic devices and a complex control center.

As molecular biologist Jonathan Wells and mathematician William Dembski point out: "It's true that eukaryotic cells are the most complicated cells we know. But the simplest life forms we know, the prokaryotic cells (such as bacteria, which lack a nucleus), are themselves immensely complex. Moreover, they are every bit as high-tech as the eukaryotic cellsif eukaryotes are like state-of-the-art laptop computers, then prokaryotes are like state-of-the-art cell phones... There is no evidence whatsoever of earlier, more primitive life forms from which prokaryotes might have evolved" (How to Be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (or Not), 2008, p. 4).

These authors then mention what these two types of cells share in terms of complexity:

Information processing, storage and retrieval.
Artificial languages and their decoding systems.
Error detection, correction and proofreading devices for quality control.
Digital data-embedding technology.
Transportation and distribution systems.
Automated parcel addressing (similar to zip codes and UPS labels).
Assembly processes employing pre-fabrication and modular construction.
Self-reproducing robotic manufacturing plants.

So it turns out that cells are far more complex and sophisticated than Darwin could have conceived of. How did mere chance produce this, when even human planning and engineering cannot? In fact, no laboratory has come close to replicating even a single human hair!

3. His ideas about the information inside the cell
Back in Darwin's day, scientists didn't know what type or quantity of information was embedded within the cell. Darwin assumed it would be very elementaryonly a few instructions to tell the cell how to function.

Because he believed in the simplicity of the information of the cell, he came up with a theory called "pangenesis," where huge variations simply popped out of cells at randomsomething that was later proven
to be entirely false.

Moreover, 150 years later, the information inside the cell is now known to be truly mind-boggling.

First, you have to consider what type of information is stored inside the nucleus of a cell. It turns out to be a genetic languageequipped with a four-letter digital alphabet and even grammatical rulesvastly superior to any computer language ever designed by man. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, the world's largest software company, stated that "DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created" (The Road Ahead, 1995, p. 188).

Inside the nucleus of each human cell are found thousands of carefully codified instructions (called genes) that have to be translated, transported and reproduced. Information, scientists have realized, is not made of matterit has no mass, length or widthbut it can be conveyed by matter. Neither has it been shown that information can evolve or be improved through mutations.

Each human DNA molecule contains some three billion genetic lettersand, incredibly, the error rate of the cell, after all the molecular editing machines do their job, is only one copying mistake (called a point mutation) for every 10 billion letters!

As physicist and chemist Jonathan Sarfati explains: "The amount of information that could be stored in a pinhead's volume of DNA is equivalent to a pile of paperback books 500 times as high as the distance from Earth to the moon, each with a different, yet specific content. Putting it another way, while we think that our new 40 gigabyte hard drives are advanced technology, a pinhead of DNA could hold 100 million times more information" (DNA: Marvelous Messages or Mostly Mess? March 2003, online edition).

Could evolution and natural selection, without any intelligence behind them, create such precise and sophisticated DNA instructionsincluding the instincts, found in every species, that enable creatures to survive? It takes far more faith to believe that blind, random evolution could come up with such amazing DNA information than to believe an Intelligent Designer is behind this astounding amount of accurately coded language!

Remarkably, the discovery of this enormous quantity and quality of information inside the cell led a highly respected philosopher and atheist to renounce his belief that no intelligence was behind the design of the creatures we see around us.

"What I think the DNA material has done," says Sir Antony Flew of Great Britain, formerly one of the world's leading atheists, "is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.

"It's the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute. It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence" (There Is a God, 2007, p. 75).

Everything we know about DNA indicates that it programs a species to remain within the limits of its own general type. Genetic changes that do occur are typically small and inconsequential, while large mutations, rather than producing improved and novel designs, are overwhelmingly harmful to the organism's survival.

Darwin assumed the information inside the cell would prove to be simple, but he was flat wrong. Instead, it turned out to be of astonishing quantity, quality and complexity.

4. His expectation of intermediate fossils
During his life, Charles Darwin was puzzled over the fossil record. For it to back his theory, the evidence should show a fine gradation between the different animal species and have millions of intermediate links.

He stated it this way: "The number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. But assuredly, if this theory [of evolution] be true, such have lived upon the earth" (The Origin of Species,1958, Mentor edition, p. 289).

Yet faced with the evidence, he admitted: "The distinctiveness of specific forms, and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links, is a very obvious difficulty... Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection to my theory" (p. 287).

He thought that eventually the "innumerable transitional links" integral to his theory would be found. But have they?

As paleontologist and evolutionist David Raup readily admits: "Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much.

"The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time... So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection" (Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, 1979, p. 25).

Where is the gradual evolution of mutated species from one kind to another, what some scientists have dubbed "hopeful monsters," that Darwin predicted would eventually be found in the fossil record?

Niles Eldredge, another famous paleontologist, reluctantly answers: "No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history.

"When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution" (Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate, 1995, p. 95).

"This is the verdict of modern paleontology: The record does not show gradual, Darwinian evolution," notes journalist George Sim Johnston. "Otto Schindewolf, perhaps the leading paleontologist of the 20th century, wrote that the fossils 'directly contradict' Darwin. Steven Stanley, a paleontologist who teaches at Johns Hopkins, writes in The New Evolutionary Timetable that 'the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another'" ("An Evening With Darwin in New York," Crisis, April 2006, online edition).

In other words, the fossil record has let Darwin down. The "innumerable" missing links of mutating species among the classes of animals and plants are still missing. All that has been discovered are varieties of viable and supremely designed species that adapt to their environmentbut that show no positive, gradual mutations or any type of evolution taking place.

5. His failure to see the limits of variation of species
Darwin got the idea about natural selection in part from observing artificial selection. For instance, he noted the way pigeon breeders came up with a great variety of pigeons. Yet we should remember, they are still all classified as pigeons!

He thought that from this variety, given enough time, pigeons could eventually evolve into some other type of birds, such as eagles or vultures, and gradually, even to other creatures such as mammalian bats.

No one seriously disputes the notion of "change over time" in biologyheredity sees to that. We vary from our parents and grandparentsbut that is not what the theory of evolution is all about. It is really an attempt to explain how microorganisms, insects, fish, birds, tigers, bears and even human beings actually became what they presently are through the passage of time.

There is also no problem accepting what is called microevolution, or change within a species, where mutation and natural selection do play a role. We have examples in nature of these minor adaptations within organisms, such as microbial antibiotic resistance, modifications in the fruit fly's eyes and wings and the varying beak sizes of finches. But it's crucial to note that these microbes are still microbes, the fruit flies are still fruit flies and the finches are still finches!

Darwinian evolutionwhat is taught in the schoolsis about macroevolution, or changes beyond the limits of the species kind to create another distinct species. It consists of three suppositions: 1) all living things descend from a common ancestor; 2) the principal mechanisms for the changes are natural selection and mutation; and 3) these are unguided, natural processes with no intelligence at work behind them.

But have we seen either in present life forms or in the fossil record that creatures are slowly changing and mutating from one kind to another? Never.

As biochemist and agnostic Michael Denton states: "The fact is that the evidence was so patchy one hundred years ago that even Darwin himself had increasing doubts as to the validity of his views, and the only aspect of his theory which has received any support over the past century is where it applies to microevolutionary phenomena.

"His general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985, p. 77).

Zoologist Pierre Grasse, the late president of the French Academy of Sciences, boldly stated that these adaptations "within species" actually have nothing to do with evolution. They are mere fluctuations around a stable genotypea case of minor ecological adjustment. He compared these changes to a butterfly flying within the confines of a greenhouse, being able to fly only so far before it has to turn sideways or back.

Darwin hoped future research and discoveries would show that the more than a million species on the earth today or the millions of extinct animal fossils would reveal some gradual transition between them. His lack of understanding the laws of inheritance and the solid genetic barriers that were discovered between species has undermined his case.

6. His discounting of the Cambrian explosion
Darwin was aware of what is called the "Cambrian explosion"fossils of a bewildering variety of complex life-forms appearing suddenly, without predecessors, in the same low level of the fossil record. This obviously did not fit his evolutionary model of simple-to-complex life.

Instead of a few related organisms appearing early in the fossil record as he hoped, there was an explosion of lifewhere the various main body types (called phyla) of living creatures seem to arise around the same timein fact, 32 of the 33 phyla that we see today. Comparing this development to the progress of man's inventions, it would be as if a toaster, a washing machine, a refrigerator, an air conditioner and a car all of a sudden came on the scene with no mechanical devices preceding them.

Regarding the Cambrian explosion, Time magazine notes: "Creatures with teeth and tentacles and claws and jaws materialized with the suddenness of apparitions. In a burst of creativity like nothing before or since, nature appears to have sketched out the blueprints for virtually the whole of the animal kingdom. This explosion of biological diversity is described by scientists as biology's Big Bang" (Madeline Nash, "When Life Exploded," Dec. 4, 1995, p. 68).

This "Big Bang" of completely different creatures deep in the fossil record posed an enormous problem that Darwin had to admit undermined his theory.

He wrote: "To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer... The difficulty of assigning any good reason for the absence of vast piles of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian is very great . . . The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained" (The Origin of Species, pp. 309-310).

Furthermore, this dilemma for evolutionists still exists today, as biologist Stephen Meyer has explained: "'The fossils of the Cambrian explosion absolutely cannot be explained by Darwinian theory or even by the concept called 'punctuated equilibrium,' which was specifically formulated in an effort to explain away the embarrassing fossil record,' Meyer said. 'When you look at the issue from the perspective of biological information, the best explanation is that an intelligence was responsible for this otherwise inexplicable phenomenon' . . .

"'So when you encounter the Cambrian explosion, with its huge and sudden appearance of radically new body plans, you realize you need lots of new biological information. Some of it would be encoded for in DNAalthough how that occurs is still an insurmountable problem for Darwinists. But on top of that, where does the new information come from that's not attributable to DNA? How does the hierarchical arrangement of cells, tissues, organs, and body plans develop? Darwinists don't have an answer. It's not even on their radar'" (quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004, pp. 238-239).

Consequently, after 150 years of searching for an explanation for the Cambrian fossil record, there is still no evolutionary mechanism that can satisfactorily explain the sudden appearance of so many completely different life-forms.

What was found was not a single organism or a few gradually evolving into many, but instead there was a sudden emergence of a great zoo of lifea bewildering variety of complex life formsall emerging fully developed near the bottom of the fossil record.

7. His theory of homology
In his studies, Darwin noticed that different types of creatures shared some common features, such as the five fingers of a human hand and the five digits of a bat's wing or of a dolphin's fin. He postulated that this similarity in different species, which he called "homology," was evidence for a common ancestry.

Yet this argument is based on an analogy that's quite weak since the fossil record shows no gradual evolution of these limbs from one species to another. There is, however, another and simpler way to explain these common features. Instead of having a common ancestor, these similar features could simply be the result of a common design.

We see this common design in how man builds things. We construct a car, a cart and a vacuum cleaner with four wheels, but this doesn't mean they have a common ancestor merely a common design. Four wheels happen to give more stability and strength than three wheels and can better distribute the weight on top. We can deduce that a wise designer would have used this type of model of four legs to give stability and strength to many of the creatures that were made, instead of using three legs.

Similarly, the use of five digits in hands, wings and flippers indicates good design features repeatedly used to obtain optimal results. The same can be said for why creatures from frogs to man have two eyes, two ears and four limbsthey are evidence of good design and function.

Really, does it make more sense that a designer used these same patterns because they worked so well, or that blind chance in natural selection and mutations just happened to come up with the optimal design after so many trial-and-error attempts? If the latter was the case, where is the evidence of the many failed models that should have ended up in the scrap heap of the fossil record, as Darwin predicted? No such evidence has been found.

Indeed, when creatures that are supposedly far removed from one another on the evolutionary tree share common advanced characteristics, evolutionists maintain that these characteristics evolved separately. But what are the odds of the same complex characteristic evolving by chance multiple times? Again, common design is clearly a far more logical explanation.

8. His theory of human beings evolving from apes
In his second-most famous book, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin proposed that human beings evolved from some type of ape closely related to a chimpanzee.

But when you look closely, you see an enormous amount of difference between chimpanzees and man. The idea, so commonly thought, that we share 99 percent of our DNA with chimps has been refuted with the deciphering of the chimpanzee genome.

The similarity is now down to about 93 percent, according to more recent studiesresults that curiously have not made many headlines. Stephan Anitei, science editor for Softpedia, writes: "Well, the new study concludes that the total DNA variation between humans and chimpanzees is rather 6-7%. There are obvious similarities between chimpanzees and humans, but also high differences in body structure, brain, intellect, and behavior, etc." ("How Much DNA Do We Share With Chimps?" Softpedia, Nov. 20, 2006, p. 1).

Again, the question has to be asked: Is the similarity between chimpanzees and men due to a common ancestor or to a common Designer? If a common ancestor, why are human beings so drastically different now from this ancestor while chimpanzees have remained much the same? The fact is, we are not seeing any evolution presently going on in either chimpanzees or human beings.

The laws of genetics are as insurmountable as ever to have a chimp become anything but a chimp or a man become anything but a man. After 150 years of searching present living forms and the fossil record, no evidence of a fine gradation of species from ape to man has ever been found.

9. His theory of the tree of life
The only drawing Darwin had in his book The Origin of Species is that of the supposed "tree of life." It pictures the imaginary transformation of a common ancestor (at the root level) into the different species we see today (at the twig level). Yet the drawing is actually based on slight variations within a species after many generations, and then he adds some suppositions.

Again Darwin went well beyond the evidence. He took limited evidence about adaptations and extrapolated it to the idea that a species or genus (group of interbreeding species) can transform into a completely different oneall based on speculation. He cleverly said, "I see no reason to limit the process of modification, as now explained, to the formulation of genera [plural of genus] alone" (p. 121). He had to say this since no more direct evidence was forthcoming!

As Jonathan Wells notes: "The most fundamental problem of evolution, the origin of species, remains unsolved. Despite centuries of artificial breeding and decades of laboratory experiments, no one has ever observed speciation (the evolution of a species into another species) through variation and selection. What Darwin claimed is true for all species has not been demonstrated for even one species" (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, 2006, p. 64).

So instead of a "tree of life" that begins with one or a few common ancestors and then branches out, there is actually an inverted and quite divided "tree of life," where the branches of life were very diverse and numerous at the beginning. Through extinction and sudden appearances, we have fewer kinds of life-forms today than in the past.

"Of all the icons of evolution," adds Dr. Wells, "the tree of life is the most pervasive because descent from a common ancestor is the foundation of Darwin's theory...Yet Darwin knewand scientists have recently confirmedthat the early fossil record turns the evolutionary tree of life upside down. Ten years ago it was hoped that molecular evidence might save the tree, but recent discoveries have dashed that hope. Although you would not learn it from reading biology textbooks, Darwin's tree of life has been uprooted" (ibid., p. 51).

10. His rejection of biblical creation by God
Charles Darwin was a man of his times. The 19th century saw many major social upheavalspolitical, philosophical, economic and religiousand Darwin was deeply shaped by them.

His grandfather Erasmus Darwin, a non-believer who had written on evolution, and his father Robert, also a nonbeliever, had great influence on him. The death of his beloved daughter Annie at the age of 10 greatly diminished any faith he had in God.

Some 11 years after writing The Origin of Species, he candidly admitted his two main purposes for writing it: "I may be permitted to say, as some excuse, that I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to show that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change...

"Some of those who admit the principle of evolution, but reject natural selection, seem to forget, when criticizing my book, that I had the above two objects in view; hence if I have erred in giving to natural selection great power, which I am very far from admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations" (The Descent of Man, 1871, p. 92).

Notice that the first reason for writing his book was religiousfor he sought "to overthrow the dogma of separate creations." In other words, he had no room for a religious version of origins involving the Creator God of the Bible. He promoted the idea that the world of matter and energy, mainly through natural selection and variation, might well account for all life we see around usa philosophy of science known as scientific materialism.

"The publication in full of Darwin's Early Notebooks," says philosopher of science Stanley Jaki, "forces one to conclude that in writing his Autobiography Darwin consciously lied when he claimed that he slowly, unconsciously slipped into agnosticism.

"He tried to protect his own family as well as the Victorian public from the shock of discovering that his Notebooks resounded with militant materialism. The chief target of the Notebooks is man's mind, the 'citadel,' in Darwin's words, which was to be conquered by his evolutionary theory if its materialism were to be victorious" (The Savior of Science, 1988, p. 126).

Moreover, it seems Darwin never took into account the creationists of his day who believed the earth was much older than 6,000 to 10,000 years and that God created each species with a great capacity for adaptation as we see in the fossil record and presently today.

Instead he pigeonholed creationists as having to believe in a recent creation and in "fixed" species confined to specific geographical regions. This was a straw man he set up so he could then bash it time after time in his writings. For him, evolution was "scientific" and was to be viewed with an open mindbut within a closed materialistic systemminimizing or eliminating any role for intelligent design or God.

Yet instead of the data accumulated during the next 150 years pointing toward blind and random causes of nature doing the creating, we now see it, based on molecular, chemical, biological and astronomical evidence, pointing to a supremely intelligent Designer of all.

As University of California law professor Phillip Johnson so elegantly expressed it: "Darwinian evolution... makes me think of a great battleship on the ocean of reality. Its sides are heavily armored with philosophical barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked with big rhetorical guns to intimidate any would-be attackers...

"But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak [due to the growing case for intelligent design], and the more perceptive of the ship's officers have begun to sense that all the ship's firepower cannot save it if the leak is not plugged. There will be heroic efforts to save the ship, of course... The spectacle will be fascinating, and the battle will go on for a long time. But in the end, reality will win" (Darwin on Trial, 1993, pp. 169-170).

Darwin's bicentennial has arrived but, as Phillip Johnson predicts, Darwin's ideas will eventually end up in the trash heap of history. Johnson concludes: "Every history of the twentieth century has three thinkers as preeminent in influence: Darwin, Marx, and Freud... Yet Marx and Freud have fallen... I am convinced that Darwin is next on the block. His fall will be the mightiest of the three" (Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, 1997, p. 113).

We eagerly await that day when people will throw off this pernicious lie of, as Romans 1 describes, exalting what has been created and will instead return at last to acknowledge and worship a loving Creator! GN

Warning!! Reading and trying to comprehend content of posts by others is to be avoided at all costs.
No really. It's extremely dangerous, it might be contagious. You see, information might, heaven forbid,
contain weird messages, like, you know, knowledge, that sort of thing; cause allergic reactions like,
well, questioning stuff; brainwash you even, into a (shudder) rational thinking individual. Sneaky uh?

---

Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome.

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (the theory) by which evolution (the fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory -natural selection- to explain the mechanism of evolution.

- Stephen J. Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981

---

Feelings do not think, thoughts do not feel
and the human brain can only comprehend
three categories to put information in.

New!! Improved!! Now With T-Formula!!

__________Gnothi Sauton__________

People are intrinsically intelligent.

When people are put together, they become a herd.
When people are a herd, they become sheeple.
When people are sheeple, they become dumb animals.
When people turn dumb animals, they become treated as such.

The Evolution vs. Intelligent Design Debate
Jonathan Wells holds a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University. He is the author of many articles and the books Icons of Evolution (2000) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (2006), and coauthor of The Design of Life (2007) and How to Be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (or Not) (2008).
A Good News interview with Dr. Jonathan Wells by Mario Seiglie
The Good News: Dr. Wells, you have been following the evolution vs. intelligent design debate for quite some time. What is your opinion on how it's been faring and who is winning?

Jonathan Wells: Before I answer, it's important to clarify the issues. "Evolution" can mean many thingssuch as change over time, or minor changes within existing species, neither of which any sane person doubts. The problem is Darwinismthe theory that all living things are descended from a common ancestor by unguided processes such as natural selection acting on minor variations. Darwinists often confuse the issue by starting with the noncontroversial meanings of "evolution" and then slipping in their more controversial claims.

According to intelligent design, it is possible to infer from evidence in nature that some features of the worldsuch as some features of living thingsare explained better by an intelligent cause than by unguided natural processes. Intelligent design does not claim that everything is designed, nor does it claim that anything is perfectly designed. Nor does intelligent design tell us the nature of the designerthough many, including me, believe it was the God of the Bible.

Since Darwinism claims that all features of living things can be explained by unguided natural processes, and intelligent design claims that some features are better explained by an intelligent cause, there is an irreconcilable conflict between the two.

Currently, Darwinism is winning on the political, legal and media fronts in the United States. Most universities and public schools teach Darwinism as though it were unquestioned fact, though the truth is that a growing number of scientists are questioning it on evidential grounds.

Data from the genome projects are revealing major inconsistencies in the Darwinian claim that all organisms share a common ancestor, and no one has ever observed the origin of a new speciesmuch less the origin of new organs and body plansby variation and selection. On the other hand, the evidence for intelligent design is increasing. Sooner or later, the evidence will win.

GN: Some time back, you mentioned that if the "junk DNA" turns out to have viable functions, it would support the case for intelligent design. What does the recent data say on this subject?

JW: According to modern neo-Darwinism, genes that are passed from generation to generation carry a program that directs embryo development, mutations occasionally alter this genetic program to produce new variations, and natural selection then sorts those mutationsthe "raw materials of evolution"to produce new species, organs, and body plans. In the 1950s, molecular biologists discovered that proteins, the microscopic building blocks of bodily structures, are formed according to information encoded in different segments of DNA. They then equated "gene" with "protein-coding sequence" and "mutations" with molecular accidents in such sequences.

By the 1970s, however, it was clear that most of the DNA in human beings and many other animals does not code for proteins. In 1980, Francis Crick [codiscoverer of the structure of DNA] and Leslie Orgel argued in Nature that this noncoding DNA is merely "junk" that has accumulated in the course of evolution. For the next 25 years, many biologists continued to regard noncoding DNA as junk.

In his 2009 book Why Evolution Is True, neo-Darwinist Jerry Coyne compared predictions based on intelligent design with those based on Darwinian evolution. "If organisms were built from scratch by a designer," he argued, they would not have imperfections. "Perfect design would truly be the sign of a skilled and intelligent designer. Imperfect design is the mark of evolution; in fact, it's precisely what we expect from evolution" [p. 81].

According to Coyne, "when a trait is no longer used, or becomes reduced, the genes that make it don't instantly disappear from the genome: evolution stops their action by inactivating them, not snipping them out of the DNA. From this we can make a prediction. We expect to find, in the genomes of many species, silenced, or 'dead,' genes: genes that once were useful but are no longer intact or expressed" [pp. 66-67].

In contrast, Coyne said that creation by design predicts that no such genes would exist. "And the evolutionary prediction that we'll find pseudogenes has been fulfilled," he wrote. "Our genomeand that of other speciesare truly well populated graveyards of dead genes" [p. 67].

But Coyne was dead wrong. A growing mountain of data from genome-sequencing projects shows that most DNA performs essential functions. The Darwinists' claim that a large percentage of DNA is evolutionary junk is totally false. This reflects badly not only on them, but also on neo-Darwinism itself. By Coyne's logic, the genome-sequencing data refute neo-Darwinism and support intelligent design.

GN: This year is Darwin's bicentennial. What would you say is a good summary today about his writings on evolution?

JW: Why didn't we celebrate Mendel's centennial in the 1920s, or Newton's tricentennial in the 1940s? Both were great scientists.

Darwin is celebrated not because of his scientific contributions, but because his theory has become the creation myth of atheism. Darwin Day in the United States is a project of the Institute for Humanist Studies, which is dedicated to promoting "a nonreligious philosophy." Some atheists have even said they want to establish Darwin Day as a secular alternative to Christmas.

Most people never read The Origin of Species, but if they do they will find that it is a work of theology as much as science. Darwin's main argument was that certain features of living things "are inexplicable on the theory of creation," but make sense only on his theory of unguided descent with modification. Indeed, there are so many discussions of creation in The Origin of Species that U.S. courts might well consider it unconstitutional to use in public schools.

In my opinion, the best way to summarize Darwin's writings on evolution would be as a revival of ancient materialistic philosophy, such as that taught by the Greek Empedocles and the Roman Lucretius, illustrated with examples drawn from 19th-century natural science.

GN: What would you say was Darwin's greatest mistake regarding his theory of evolution?

JW: Darwin was mistaken about a lot of things. He was mistaken about heredity, which he attributed to characteristicssome of them probably acquired during an organism's lifetimethat were blended together from every cell in the body.

He was mistaken about vertebrate embryos, the earliest stages of which he believed showed us our fishlike ancestor in its adult state.

He was mistaken about the geographic distribution of species, which he thought could be explained entirely by migration or by geological separation.

He was mistaken in claiming that all organisms were part of one great "tree of life" with a common ancestor at the root.

And he was mistaken about the power of natural selection, which he arguedby analogy with artificial selection, which had never produced anything more than changes within existing speciesproduced new species, organs and body plans.

But Darwin's greatest mistake was to deny design in living things. The unguided processes he invoked have never been able to produce the major innovations needed for evolution. And the more we learn about living things, the more designed they look.

GN: Some scientists claim the chimpanzee genome is about 99 percent similar to the human genome, but others claim it is closer to 75 percent. What is the truth about this, and how significant are the findings?

JW: Comparing chimpanzee and human genomes is tricky, not the least because the sequences do not line up exactly and one has to decide where to start the comparison. The 99 percent figure involves only a part of each genome; and depending on the technique and the researcher, the estimates can vary significantly.

But whatever the estimate, the deeper question is, what does it mean? According to evolutionist Jonathan Marks, who published a book in 2002 titled What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee, it means very little. Marks argues that since there are only four [molecular compound] subunits in DNA, any two living things are bound to be at least 25 percent similar. Someone who claims that humans are 99 percent similar to chimps might as well add that humans are 35 percent similar to daffodils.

In fact, the similarity between chimp and human DNAwhatever the figure may beposes a problem for neo-Darwinism. According to neo-Darwinism, organisms are what they are because of their DNAwhich is why DNA mutations can supposedly provide the raw materials for evolution. Then why are chimps and humans so different from each other not only in their anatomy and physiology but also in their intelligence and behavior? Basing an estimate of their similarity on DNA comparisons alone is a byproduct of neo-Darwinian dogma, not biological science.

There is actually abundant evidence that embryo development is not entirely controlled by DNA. More information is necessary, and this information is located in cellular structures that the embryo inherits apart from its DNA. But neo-Darwinian dogma tends to blind people to this evidence and thereby hinders scientific progress.

GN: You are a prolific writer about intelligent design. What are you currently working on in this regard?

JW: In the past year I have written two book reviews: "Darwin of the Gaps," a review of Francis Collins' The Language of God and "Why Darwinism Is False," a review of Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True.

Mostly, however, I have been doing empirical and theoretical research in my own field, cell and developmental biology. The empirical research involves testing an intelligent design-guided hypothesis about a possible cause of cancer, which I published in 2005. The theoretical research involves formulating testable hypotheses about the nature and location of non-DNA information in the embryo, by analyzing the embryo as though it were a designed whole instead of an accidental byproduct of DNA mutations and natural selection.

GN: You mentioned some while ago that by the year 2025, the theory of evolution would have lost most of its appeal. Do you still think this date is feasible for that?

JW: Yes, I do. Of course, it's risky to put a date on such a prediction, but scientific discoveries are rapidly making Darwinism less and less plausible, and this is becoming more and more obvious to new students and to others not already committed to the old way of thinking.

I compare Darwinism to a frozen pond in the springtime. As winter passes and the days grow longer, the ice may look thick, but it becomes honeycombed with melt water. In the next thaw it may disappear overnight. GN

The bad news is, something went wrong during your formative years.
The good news is, it can be remedied - fairly easy too.

---

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (the theory) by which evolution (the fact) occurred. ,font color=yellow>Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory -natural selection- to explain the mechanism of evolution.

- Stephen J. Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981


"But if we share common ancestry with chimps, why are there still chimps?"

For the same reason Americans share common ancestry with Europeans, but there are still Europeans.
Apparently you cannot follow the logic - just too big a leap. It is not as if you are Evil Knievel, right?

Right.

---

Feelings do not think, thoughts do not feel
and the human brain can only comprehend
three categories to put information in.

New!! Improved!! Now With T-Formula!!

__________Gnothi Sauton__________

People are intrinsically intelligent.

When people are put together, they become a herd.
When people are a herd, they become sheeple.
When people are sheeple, they become dumb animals.
When people turn dumb animals, they become treated as such.

The bad news is, something went wrong during your formative years.
The good news is, it can be remedied - fairly easy too.

---

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (the theory) by which evolution (the fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory -natural selection- to explain the mechanism of evolution.

- Stephen J. Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981


"But if we share common ancestry with chimps, why are there still chimps?"

For the same reason Americans share common ancestry with Europeans, but there are still Europeans.
Apparently you cannot follow the logic - just too big a leap. It is not as if you are Evil Knievel, right?

Right.

---

Feelings do not think, thoughts do not feel
and the human brain can only comprehend
three categories to put information in.

New!! Improved!! Now With T-Formula!!

__________Gnothi Sauton__________

People are intrinsically intelligent.

When people are put together, they become a herd.
When people are a herd, they become sheeple.
When people are sheeple, they become dumb animals.
When people turn dumb animals, they become treated as such.

Creation or Evolution: Which Is More Believable?
The theory of evolution is being loudly trumpeted in this 200th anniversary year of Charles Darwin's birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of his On the Origin of Species. But have you read in detail what our Creator has to say about how mankind and the heavens and the earth came into being? Have you considered this crucial testimony?
by John Ross Schroeder
Science still asks many questions about the origin of life on earth. For example, New Scientist magazine has written: "There is much about planet earth that remains frustratingly unknown. How did it form from a cloud of dust? How did it manage to nurture life?" (Stuart Clark, "Unknown Earth: Our Planet's Seven Biggest Mysteries," Sept. 7, 2008).

Yet many scientists claim to understand the big picture. They generally say that the planets circling the sun "all formed from the same cloud of gas and dust that surrounded the sun at its centre, dust grains collided and stuck to each other, growing in size and generating ever larger gravitational fields. These clumps collided and merged, building the planets we know today. That's the big picture" (ibid., emphasis added throughout).

But is it really? Who in fact truly possesses the big picture? Do not Darwinians and other proponents of evolution casually overlook the truths revealed by the divine Creator who "inhabits eternity"? (Isaiah 57:15).

A large percentage of scientists believe the formation of our planet is the product of unplanned accidents. Likewise, the origin of life and all its marvelous complexity, they believe, is nothing more than the result of a series of chance events.

Do we really believe this? Could it be that a much more credible explanation is readily available?

Creation: A valid alternative?
The Bible tells its own story about the formation of our planet. Genesis 1:1 presents an overall picture: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Along with the rest of this chapter, other parts of the Bible provide us with many additional intriguing details.

Long ago God asked the patriarch Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job 38:4). This remains a humbling question for everyone today. None of us were present to witness the creation. Adam and Eve came along only after the physical creation was finished. Yet our first parents were the crown of God's work because, unlike the animals, they were made in His own image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-27; 5:1-2).

God questioned Job even further about the earth's origins: "Who determined its measurements? ... Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars [the angelic host] sang together and all the sons of God [again, the angels] shouted for joy?" (Job 38:5-7). A great number of scientists assume that the proportions of the earth were just a fortuitous accident. God says He deliberately measured it.

This entire biblical passage describes acts of intricate planning and forethought. The Creator compares His creative works to that of a builder. The apostle Paul plainly wrote that "God is not the author of confusion"or for that matter, accidents (1 Corinthians 14:33).

Paul told a congregation that had allowed some things to get out of control, "Let all things be done decently and in order" (verse 40). How much more would our Creator Himself do things in perfect order? He first planned, and then He executed His plans perfectly. One cannot read chapters 38 through 41 of the book of Job without understanding that God plans His creative acts in great detail.

The prophet Isaiah records other important declarations directly from our Creator: "My hand has laid the foundation of the earth" (Isaiah 48:13). A little earlier Isaiah had also stated: "Thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it" (Isaiah 42:5).

As Sir Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, has written: "The believer might wonder, as does Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society, in his Just Six Numbers, at the extraordinary precision of the six mathematical constants that determine the shape of the Universe, such that if even one were fractionally different neither we nor the Universe would exist" ("Genesis and the Origin of the Origin of the Species," The Times [London], Aug. 30, 2008).

What the creation teaches mankind
The apostle Paul declared, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualitieshis eternal power and divine naturehave been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20, New International Version).

But instead of those among the intelligentsia abiding by what they already knew about God from His glorious creation, they have often "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible manand birds and four-footed animals and creeping things" (verse 23). Today men prefer to almost deify evolution by teaching that human beings gradually emerged through a slow process of natural selection.

Yet the marvels of creation are meant to teach us God's nature and how He thinks and plans. King David of Israel often meditated on the heavenly bodies"your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars, which you have set in place" (Psalm 8:3, NIV)and was inspired by these wonderful works of God.

Moved by the magnificence of what he saw, David wrote: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world" (Psalm 19:1-4, NIV). Their mute but powerful testimony can be witnessed from every point on our planet!

The Bible tells us that the Creator "sits above the circle of the earth" and "stretches out the heavens like a curtain" (Isaiah 40:22). He revealed that the earth is round long before this truth dawned on most of mankind.

God affirmed His own creative action in Isaiah 45:12: "I am the one who made the earth and created people to live on it. With my hands I stretched out the heavens. All the millions of stars are at my command" (Isaiah 45:12, New Living Translation).

The role of men and the image of God
Astrophysicist Paul Davies has written: "We human beings have been made privy to the deepest workings of the universe. Other animals observe the same natural phenomena as we do, but alone among the creatures on the planet, Homo sapiens can also explain them. How has this come about?

"Somehow the universe has engineered not just its own awareness, but its own comprehension. Mindless, blundering atoms have conspired to make, not just life, not just mind, but understanding. The evolving cosmos has spawned beings who are able not merely to watch the show, but to unravel the plot. What is it that enables something so small and delicate and adapted to terrestrial life as the human brain to engage with the totality of the cosmos and the silent mathematical tune to which it dances?" (The Goldilocks Enigma, 2007, p. 5).

Scientists often ask the right questions, but do not always come up with the right answers. The Bible reveals that man is not an animal in the spiritual sense. Nor has the universe engineered human comprehension. Nor have "mindless, blundering atoms" caused human understanding. Nor has the so-called evolving cosmos spawned human beings. Instead, the Almighty God created man with all of these wondrous capacities.

Indeed, human beings were made in the very image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Later, God testified of man's awesome potential as He observed humanity's rebellious activities at the Tower of Babel: "And this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do" (Genesis 11:6, King James Version).

Why do human beings have this magnificent, though sadly misused, gift of imagination? "But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding" (Job 32:8, NIV).

Why life only on planet earth?
The New Scientist cover article mentioned earlier asked a highly relevant question: "How come Earth got all the good stuff?" Indeed, why is our planet so suitable for sustaining life?

The article continued, "We know that its distance from the sun provides the right amount of heat and the light to make the planet habitable." Venus is by far too hot, at more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and Mars far too cold. Why is the position of the earth just right?

Is this fortunate distance from the sun just a lucky coincidenceor much more likely a natural result of divine planning and forethought? Isn't this yet another big reason for believing in the Creator?

But let's not stop there. "Without the unique mix of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur that makes up living things, and without liquid water, life as we know it could not have evolved" (ibid.).

This unique mix of elements just conveniently happened so life could evolve? Or is this perfect combination of chemical elements more marvelous testimony to the fact that we can understand the Creator's mind through the creation itself, as Romans 1:20 attests? Science has provided mankind with many wondrous facts, but evolutionary scientists have drawn erroneous conclusions from those basic facts.

Yet many mysteries still remain for scientific thinkers. "Another big unknown is how Earth acquired its life-giving water supply. Being so close to the sun, it was probably too hot for water to simply condense out of the gas cloud as the planet formed" (ibid.).

One thing is for sure. If our planet were only a little closer to or farther away from the sun, the earth's water supply would either be evaporated away or frozen as ice. Either way, life as we know it would be impossible. You and I wouldn't exist.

New Scientist got its established facts right and, as mentioned, even asked some of the right questions: "Chemically speaking, Earth is simply better set up for life than its neighbours [the other planets in our solar system]. So how come we got all the good stuff?" This question still confronts us: Was it by sheer accident or by deliberate divine planning?

What really occurred remains firmly based in the creative nature and character of God. "For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who has established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited" (Isaiah 45:18). As Sir Jonathan Sacks observed, "The more we know about the intricacy and improbability of life, the more reason we have to wonder and give thanks" (The Times, Aug. 30, 2008).

The origin of life
But God gets no credit from strict evolutionists. Charles Darwin thought that life first emerged in a "warm little pond." Modern evolutionists have updated his speculation, proposing a "hot, briny liquid cauldron." Many evolutionists believe men are at one with the fish, having evolved into primates from the sea. While there may be common language in the genes, the only point this really demonstrates is one Master Designer.

God is the ultimate intelligent Designer who employed a basic template, so to speak. Incredible interdependency becomes obvious when we study the many forms of life in detail. The complex yet common design existing in this awesome universe shows one Architect, one Designer who crafted everything within an intricately planned framework into which all forms of life suitably fit.

Isn't God the giver of life? Genesis 1:21-25 tells us that the fish, the birds and the mammals were each created "according to its kind." Each kind of life was separately created. The apostle Paul made this astute observation: "All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish and another of birds" (1 Corinthians 15:39). This passage confirms what Genesis 1:21-25 reveals about separate kinds.

These basic biblical kinds did not and do not evolve into one another. Of course, it is certainly true that many varieties exist, say, within the basic dog "kind." But they cannot reproduce with any variety of the cat family. Neither dogs nor cats nor any other species show any evidence of eventually becoming another basic kind. There has been no crossover.

But did human life evolve? Naturalist Sir David Attenborough stated in an interview that to him, "it always seemed clear that we were related to monkeys" (Damian Whitworth, "David Attenborough on Charles Darwin," The Times, Jan. 22, 2009). Did African apes or Asian orangutans gradually evolve into human beings?

The biblical testimony is clear and unequivocal. Having been created in His image, humankindboth men and womenare patterned after the God kind (Genesis 1:26-27). The first man was a son of God by creation (Luke 3:38). The early chapters of Genesis tell us that Adam was the first human being, and Jesus Christ confirmed that Adam and his wife Eve constituted the first human couple (see Matthew 19:4-5; Mark 10:6-7). Later Paul affirmed that Adam was the first man (1 Corinthians 15:45). He also restated that "Adam was formed first, then Eve" (1 Timothy 2:13).

Perhaps the most marvelous masterpiece of all of God's designs is expressed in our own human bodies of both genders. King David of Israel was deeply moved to say, "I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14).

Many of our senior readers may remember that Reader's Digest once ran a series of intriguing articles about the wonders of the different parts of the human body under titles like "I Am Joe's Heart" and "I Am Jane's Womb." Think about who is responsible for the intricate marvels of our human ears and eyes: "Does the one who shaped the ear not hear? The one who formed the eye not see?" (Psalm 94:9, New American Bible).

Doesn't the extraordinary complexity of our own human frames testify to the existence of a Great Designer?

What evolution cannot explain
Well-known British atheist Peter Atkins states at the end of his book The Second Law: "We are the children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose ... This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the Universe" (1984, p. 200)

This reflects the disheartening emptiness we are left with if we deliberately choose not to believe in (or avoid seeking to prove) God's existenceand then reject His plan and purpose for our lives.

The atheistic theory of evolution supposes that life evolved by sheer chance. Yet evolution cannot provide any meaning and purpose for the presence of human life on planet Earth. Nor can it supply any credible explanation for the amazing intellect and creative capabilities of mankind.

This erroneous theory provides no hope for the future of our chaotic civilization. It offers no real reason for the cause of all the appalling problems afflicting our age. How can we make awesome technological progress but at the same time not yet understand how to effectively deal with the escalating evils that threaten to overwhelm us?

And yet, divine creation helps explain everything when we really come to know and understand its many implications. Scientists continue searching in vain for a theory that explains everythingwhen we already have one!

Ultimately, only the Bible explains both the origin and meaning of life on earth. Only God's prophetic Word reveals where mankind is really headed as we face an otherwise unknown and increasingly uncertain future. The Bible reveals why humanity exists and the majestic nature of our final destiny. Atheistic evolution, sadly, has no clue and no say! GN

"In the beginning an invisible entity created the earth, the solar system, the universe ... in six days ..." notwithstanding the facts that "day" is a unit of time dependent on the rotation of the not yet fully created earth and the not yet created sun while time itself cannot exist independent of the not yet created space time continuum.

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The creationist's doctrine centers around an invisible deity; "God", supposed to be perfect.

If God is perfect, then there can be no disequilibrium with(in) God (such is the nature of "perfect").
If there is no disequilibrium with(in) God, then there is nothing God needs, nothing God wants (thus nothing God must or will do).
A God that is perfect does nothing (except exist).
A perfect God that creates is therefore self-contradictory (and that of which its nature is self-refuting cannot, and therefore does not, exist).

An imperfect creator-God might be compelled to create what it does not have or feels is missing.
Imperfect however, begets imperfection which explains why imperfections exist since ultimately it is God who created all that is.
A creator-God therefore, must be, by implication, deduction, and thus definition, imperfect.
Those imperfect creator(god)s are us.

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Feelings do not think, thoughts do not feel
and the human brain can only comprehend
three categories to put information in.

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__________Gnothi Sauton__________

People are intrinsically intelligent.

When people are put together, they become a herd.
When people are a herd, they become sheeple.
When people are sheeple, they become dumb animals.
When people turn dumb animals, they become treated as such.