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What is Evolution?
What Is Evolution? That is a good question to begin with. If you mean evolution in the design of machinery, housing or space travel, I'm in. If you mean the ability of a person to change his attitudes, skills or skin tone in the summer sun I'm still in. If you refer to the changes in a landscape due to the effects of tectonic and gradational forces I'm still on board.
However, when you start to assert (that science can demonstrate) that a distinct life form or species of plant or animal has changed, or can change, into another, or can change kingdoms, from plant to animal to human, you are asking me to insult my intellect and apply more faith than I can ever muster, without any evidence to encourage me. First of all, I have never seen that happen nor has anyone else in recorded history. Genetic scientists, with all their impressive skill, cannot make it happen in their sophisticated labs, and the earth sciences give no evidence in fossils or otherwise that it ever occurred. So why, I ask you, would anyone who respects himself or his reputation want to accept a theory that is absolutely without scientific basis or credibility of any other type. It is insupportable by the application of the scientific method and without a scrap of empirical evidence. Unless there is some other compelling reason to consider it as a possibility, I cannot distort my mind that far.
The theory of evolution, as is commonly understood, is based solely on a number of unproven assumptions to begin with. When new life forms cannot be demonstrated to appear suddenly in 1 or 2 generations, theory proponents assert that the process took place over countless generations during millions of years. If so, where are the tens of 1000s of gradual change fossils in the geological record? We find 1000s of terminal forms but no inter-terminal ones. They talk about looking for the missing link when they don't even have a chain! The so-called Piltdown Man and Borneo Man have been demonstrated to be total hoaxes foisted on the public for decades before being exposed as total frauds.
Gullible students are taught that simple life forms are found buried lower than more complicated ones and supposedly earlier in the development of the process, but that is not what the evidence shows! For every place that you can find simple organisms buried below complex ones there is a place where they are buried in the opposite order. Furthermore the orders are all mixed up in many parts of the world. What the archaeological and geological evidence does show is groups of simple and complex life forms buried or fossilized together according to their habitat, indicating a common and sudden time of death. Most fossils were formed 1000s of years ago and they and many of the earth's features are best explained by the very scientific Biblical Flood.
The universal experience of mankind and the well proven laws of thermodynamics give eloquent testimony to the fact that nothing gets more orderly, refined or complex all by itself. A garden left alone without the input of brains and muscle gets ragged and disordered, not neater, straighter and more organized. A child's room shows the same phenomenon until Mom comes and performs or supervises a tidy-up. Both of these examples show the need for the input of intelligence, order and energy from outside the zone needing improvement.
The second law of thermodynamics states the universal tendency of systems to run down or become disordered. This is also known as the law of entropy increase or randomness. A warm house in winter left untended for long enough will cool down. An icebox in a warm place will eventually warm up. Left to itself, which I don't expect it ever will be, our solar system will expire after millennia as the hot spots cool and the cold places warm up and all energy flows to a common level. I must ask who was there to supervise and design the increasing order, diversity, specialization and complexity of life forms during all these centuries of "evolutionary" enhancement? A study of open and closed systems will confront the evolutionist with scientific facts that challenge and stymie his assumptions.
Natural selection is often called upon to supply the evolutionary believer with a mechanism to account for all the marvelous variety and design we see around us. Let us examine a simple bacterium and its flagellum motor. In order to have one that functions at all, the 40 parts that are required to make it work must be present at the same time (generation) and place and appear in the correct order for assembly. But the mandate for natural selection to succeed, by its very definition, requires that if a useful mutation (i.e. one of these many parts) were somehow to appear in any one generation, it would have to be of some benefit to the creature to be retained. Since one part alone has no useful function it would thereby be dropped in the next generation. If such is the lot for the hapless bacterium how would he ever obtain and retain all these useless pieces, one generation at a time, until enough were present to be assembled by some unexplained process so he could keep and use them? This mechanism is, by its very nature, incapable of accounting for the existence or the derivation of this one apparatus of even one "simple" creature.
All of these impasses are only the tip of the iceberg for those who wish to set sail on this sea of fantasy. They have no reasonable explanation for the origin or existence of energy, matter (inorganic or its upgrade to organic), the earth, the solar systems or all the order and beauty we see around us. They are adrift on a voyage of imagination and great faith without a chart or compass or a promise of a harbor of safety.
My Bible, attested to by myriad archaeological, geological and historical proofs, 100s of fulfilled prophecies and other signs of Divine authorship and supported by countless oral histories of many tribes, tells me that God created the universe and distinct life forms on earth and ordered that they should reproduce after their own kind, not change from one to another. Adam, Noah and Moses knew all about the origin of the earth and life upon it, as did the historians of many other ancient civilizations. The world is full of the evidence, from many disciplines, for creation of all things by God, and more recently scientists of the highest echelons have, by force of research and logic, been forced to put forward the theory of intelligent design as the only possible explanation for the world in which we find ourselves.
When you find totem poles do you try to explain their origin by the effects of 100s of sand storms? When you discover a wrist watch do you surmise that it resulted from 1000s of explosions in land-fills until, "pow!" all of a sudden, in one lucky dump we were presented with the amazing wonder of a functioning watch that was already running!
It was pathetic beyond degree since Darwin, that otherwise intelligent professionals have been able to dupe themselves with the incredible religion of evolution. But now, since the tremendous discoveries in DNA and the genome project, when we can read the blueprints for every part of a person's body in the genetic code, it seems incredible beyond all limits that any informed person would try to retain the myth that our bodies were the result of blind chance when we have the manufacturing instructions staring us in the face!
Evolution is a choice, based on bad information or the rejection of obvious truth to satisfy our self-destructive desires. It cannot be the conclusion of good or honest science. The Bible says that the fool has said in his heart that there is no God. It also says that the reverence of God is the beginning of wisdom. Jesus gave His endorsement to the accuracy of the Book of Genesis and I'll stand with Him. I like to go sailing on charted waters and with a compass to guide me, aware of my port of departure and knowing the co-ordinates of my expected landfall. Besides all that, I'm just an ordinary guy and I don't have enough faith to make the great leaps required to believe in evolution, or is it devolution? I do have enough faith, however, to believe that a carver can make a totem pole and a watchmaker can make a watch. The other explanation is too far out for me.
I challenge you to watch the DVDs produced by Illustra Media available from the web site EYMI.net. Be Sure to see Unlocking the Mystery of Life, The Privileged Planet, The Exodus Revealed, and Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution. I am praying for you.
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By Art Willock, current Director of Expanding Youth Ministries,
Art is an educator, speaker, and retired farmer. He taught both in
elementary and high school, and has been a school principal too.
His wife, Rosella was a missionary in Japan for 20 years.
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