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Creation Or Evolution

Does It Really Matter What You Believe?

Why has evolution become so widely accepted, and why has the Bible come to be viewed with such hostility? What has changed?

Only a few generations ago laws prevented the teaching of the theory of evolution in some communities and regions in the United States. The Bible was commonly accepted as true and a reliable account of our origins. But now almost the opposite is true. The Bible is banned from classrooms in American schools, and serious discussion of the biblical view of the creation of our universe-and our human origins-is forbidden. At the same time, criticism of the theory of evolution is at times ruthlessly suppressed in academic and scientific circles.

Certainly not all scientists agree that no Creator exists and that we as human beings are the product of random chance. In 1972 the California State Board of Education asked NASA director Wernher von Braun, who has been called the father of the American space program, for his thoughts on the origin of the universe, life and the human race. Here's how he responded:

"For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. In the world around us, we can behold the obvious manifestations of an ordered, structured plan or design . . .

"And we are humbled by the powerful forces at work on a galactic scale, and the purposeful orderliness of nature that endows a tiny and ungainly seed with the ability to develop into a beautiful flower. The better we understand the intricacies of the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based . . .

"To be forced to believe only one conclusion-that everything in the universe happened by chance-would violate the very objectivity of science itself. Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?

"Some people say that science has been unable to prove the existence of a Designer. They admit that many of the miracles in the world around us are hard to understand, and they do not deny that the universe, as modern science sees it, is indeed a far more wondrous thing than the creation medieval man could perceive. But they still maintain that since science has provided us with so many answers the day will soon arrive when we will be able to understand even the fundamental laws of nature without a Divine intent. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun? . . .

"What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electron as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive of Him?" (Scott Huse, The Collapse of Evolution, 1997, pp. 159-160).

Many educated people accept the theory of evolution. But is it true? Curiously enough, our existence as humans is one of the best arguments against it. According to evolutionary theory, the traits that offer the greatest advantage for survival are passed from generation to generation. Yet human reproduction itself argues powerfully against this fundamental premise of evolution.

If evolution is the guiding force in human development, how is it that higher forms of life evolved with male and female sexes? If humans are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, how is it that we have the disadvantage of requiring a member of the opposite sex to reproduce, when lower forms of life-such as bacteria, viruses and protozoa-are sexless and far more prolific? If they can reproduce by far simpler methods, why can't we? If evolution is true, what went wrong?

Let's take it a step further. If humans are the result of evolution continually reinforcing characteristics that offer a survival advantage while eliminating those that hinder perpetuation, how can we explain a human infant?

Among thousands of species the newly born (or newly hatched) are capable of survival within a matter of days or, in some cases, only minutes. Many never even see their parents. Yet, among humans, an infant is utterly helpless-not for days but for up to several years after birth.

A human baby is reliant on adults for the nourishment, shelter and care he or she needs to survive. Meanwhile, caring for that helpless infant is a distinct survival disadvantage for adults, since
giving of their time and energy lessens their own prospects for survival.

If evolution is true, and humans are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, why does a process as basic as human reproduction fly in the face of everything that evolution holds true?

Regrettably, such obvious flaws in the theory are too often overlooked.

Even Charles Darwin, whose theories about evolution took the world by storm, had second thoughts. In his later years he reflected on what he had started: "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them" (William Federer, America's God and Country, 1996, p. 199, emphasis added).

Now, almost a century and a half after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, we can see where his thinking has led. In Europe in particular, belief in a personal God has plummeted. In the United States, court decisions have interpreted constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion as freedom from religion-effectively banning public expression of religious beliefs and denying the country's rich religious heritage.

Meanwhile, the world languishes in the sorrow and suffering resulting from rejecting absolute moral standards. With no absolute standards, we have no reason to care what happens to our fellowman. We should seek only our personal gain regardless of the cost to others-acting exactly as evolutionary theory says we should.

Could man create a religion with no god? The widespread acceptance of evolution shows that we have done just that. The Bible teaches us that God created man. Evolution teaches us that man created God.

If God created man we have no right to ignore Him. If man created God we can easily ignore Him. What man has made he can do away with. Thus we are free to act as though God doesn't exist, free to dismiss the Bible, free to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong and how we will choose to live.

Which is the myth, God or evolution? Louis Bounoure, director of France's Strasbourg Zoological Museum and professor of biology at the University of Strasbourg, stated: "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless" (Federer, p. 61).

Professor Bounoure, though right about evolution, was wrong about one thing. Rather than being useless, evolution is quite useful if one wants to reject the idea of God.

In this booklet we examine the foundational premises of evolution. We consider the evidence evolutionists cite to support the theory. Perhaps most important, we look at the scientific facts evolutionists don't discuss in public-for reasons that will become clear.

You can know whether evolution is true. We hope you'll examine the evidence carefully. What you believe does matter.

The theory of evolution, long taught in schools and assumed to be true by many in the scientific community, is increasingly questioned by scientists and university professors in various fields.

Why do questions arise? It is because as scientific knowledge has increased researchers have not been able to confirm basic assumptions of the evolutionary theory-and in fact some have been refuted outright.

As more scientists and educators become aware of flaws in the theory, they are more carefully assessing it. In the United States some states' educational boards have become aware of the mounting scientific evidence against evolution and have begun to insist the theory be emphasized less or treated more evenhandedly in the classroom.

Yet there is a powerful insistence by many in the scientific community not to question the theory, for much is at stake.

Phillip Johnson, law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has written several books about the evolution debate. He approaches the evidence for and against evolution as though evaluating a legal case. He notes the strong vested interests involved in the debate: "Naturalistic evolution is not merely a scientific theory; it is the official creation story of modern culture. The scientific priesthood that has authority to interpret the official creation story gains immense cultural influence thereby, which it might lose if the story were called into question. The experts therefore have a vested interest in protecting the story . . ." (Darwin on Trial, 1993, p. 159).

Professor Johnson critically examines the logic and reasoning evolutionists use in the debate. He likens the carefully protected theory to a warship that has sprung a leak. "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 ready to intimidate any would-be attackers.

"In appearance, it is as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed to be only a few years ago. But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak, 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" (Johnson, pp. 169-170).

But what is behind the debate? How did an unproven theory gain such wide acceptance? How did alternate theories come to be summarily dismissed without a hearing? How did the biblical account of the origin of the universe and man lose so much credibility?

The roots of the battle between evolution and the Bible go back centuries.

Differing interpretations of the Bible

It is a shame that scientists and religious figures alike have perpetuated many myths about creation and nature. In the past few centuries, science has refuted some religious notions about nature and the universe that religious leaders mistakenly attributed to the Bible. Sadly, this has caused some religious leaders and institutions to take unnecessarily dogmatic stands that were only harmful in the long run.

At the same time misunderstandings about what the Bible does and does not say have led some on all sides of the debate to accept wrong conclusions.

For example, in late 1996 Pope John Paul II shocked both Catholics and non-Catholics when he mused that the theory of evolution seemed valid for the physical evolution of man and other species through natural selection and hereditary adaptations.

How did this startling declaration come about? What factors led to this far-reaching conclusion?

Time magazine commented on the pope's statement: "(Pope) Pius (in 1950) was skeptical of evolution but tolerated study and discussion of it; the statement by John Paul reflects the church's acceptance of evolution. He did not, however, diverge at all from Pius on the question of the origin of man's soul: that comes from God, even if 'the human body is sought in living material which existed before it.'

"The statement is unlikely to influence the curriculum of Catholic schools, where students have studied evolution since the 1950s. Indeed, taking the Bible literally has not been a hallmark among Catholics through much of the 20th century. Asked about the pope's statement, Peter Stravinskas, editor of the 1991 Catholic Encyclopedia, said: 'It's essentially what Augustine was writing. He tells us that we should not interpret Genesis literally, and that it is poetic and theological language'" (Time, international edition, Nov. 4, 1996, p. 59).

The Catholic theologian Augustine lived 354-430. The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes him as "the dominant personality of the Western Church of his time, generally recognized as the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity." It adds, "He fused the religion of the New Testament with the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy" (15th edition, 1975, Micropaedia Vol. 1, "Augustine of Hippo, Saint," pp. 649-650).

Little did Augustine realize he was doing his followers a grave disservice by viewing parts of the Bible as allegorical while simultaneously incorporating into his teaching the views of the Greek philosophers. For the next 1,300 years, covering roughly the medieval age, the view of those pagan philosophers became the standard for the Roman church's explanation of the universe.

Furthermore, ecclesiastical leaders adopted the earth-centered view of the universe held by Ptolemy, an Egyptian-born astronomer of the second century. "It was . . . from the work of previous (Greek) astronomers," says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "that Ptolemy evolved his detailed description of an Earth-centered (geocentric) universe, a revolutionary but erroneous idea that governed astronomical thinking for over 1,300 years . . .

"In essence, it is a synthesis of the results obtained by Greek astronomy . . . On the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets, Ptolemy again extended the observations and conclusions of Hipparchus-this time to formulate his geocentric theory, which is popularly known as the Ptolemaic system" (Britannica, 15th edition, 1975, Macropaedia Vol. 15, "Ptolemy," p. 179).

The Bible and the universe

Thus it was not the biblical perspective but the Greek view of the cosmos-in which everything revolved around a stationary earth-that was to guide man's concept of the universe for many centuries. The Roman Catholic Church made the mistake of tying its concept of the universe to that of earlier pagan philosophers and astronomers, then enforced that erroneous view.

Although the Greeks thought Atlas held up first the heavens and later the earth, and the Hindus believed the earth rested atop four gigantic elephants, the Bible has long revealed the true explanation. We read in Job 26:7 an astonishingly modern scientific concept, that God "hangs the earth on nothing." Science has demonstrated that this "nothing" is the invisible force of gravity that holds the planet in its orbit.

Centuries passed before Nicolas Copernicus calculated that the earth was not the center of the universe. However, he was cautious about challenging the Roman church on this belief. More than
a century would elapse before someone would be bold enough and possessed sufficient evidence to clash with the established religious authorities.

In the 1690s, after observing through a telescope the moons orbiting Jupiter, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei beheld clear evidence that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. Catholic authorities considered the idea heretical, and Galileo was threatened with death if he did not recant. Finally he did, although legend has it that, as he left the presence of the pope, he muttered under his breath: "But it (the earth) still moves."

"When the Roman church attacked Copernicus and Galileo," says Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer, "it was not because their teaching actually contained anything contrary to the Bible. The church authorities thought it did, but that was because Aristotelian elements had become part of church orthodoxy, and Galileo's notions clearly conflicted with them. In fact, Galileo defended the compatibility of Copernicus and the Bible, and this was one of the factors which brought about his trial" (How Shall We Then Live?, 1976, p. 131).

Ironically, these first battles between scientists and the Bible were over biblical misinterpretations, not what the Bible actually says.

The Bible and scientific advancement

Several centuries later, a more-proper biblical understanding actually furthered scientific advancements and achievements. The English scholar Robert Merton maintains that the values Puritanism promoted in 17th-century England encouraged scientific endeavors. A Christian was to glorify God and serve Him through participating in activities of practical value to his community. He wasn't to withdraw into the contemplative life of monasteries and convents.

Christians were to choose a vocation that best made use of their talents. Reason and education were praised in the context of educating people with practical knowledge, not the highly literary classics of pagan antiquity, that they might better do their life's work. Puritanism also encouraged literacy, because each believer had to be able to read the Bible for himself and not depend on what others said it meant.

Historians note that the invention of the printing press and subsequent broader distribution of the Bible in the 1500s played a large role in the emergence of modern science. "The rise of modern science," says Francis Schaeffer, "did not conflict with what the Bible teaches; indeed, at a crucial point the Scientific Revolution rested upon what the Bible teaches.

"Both Alfred North Whitehead and J. Robert Oppenheimer have stressed that modern science was born out of the Christian world view . . . As far as I know, neither of the two men were Christians . . . Because the early scientists believed that the world was created by a reasonable God, they were not surprised to discover that people could find out something true about nature and the universe on the basis of reason" (Schaeffer, pp. 132-133).

As this more biblically based science expanded, ecclesiastical leaders had to admit that some long-held positions were wrong. With the esteemed position that the earth was at the center of the universe proven false, the church lost both prestige and credibility to emerging science. As time went on, scientific study grew increasingly apart from the dominant religion, which was mired in its Greek and medieval thought. This gap has only widened with time.

Evolution's early roots

Although evolution wasn't popularized until 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, the roots of the idea go much further back in history.

"The early Greek philosophers," explains British physicist Alan Hayward, "were probably the first thinkers to toy with the notion of evolution. Along with many other ideas from ancient Greece it reappeared in western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries . . . But one great difficulty stood in the way. Nobody . . . could explain convincingly how evolution could have taken place. Each species seemed to be fixed. There seemed no way in which one species could give rise to another...

"Darwin changed all that with his theory that the way evolution worked was by 'natural selection.' He proposed that small variations in each generation-the kind of natural variations that enable breeders to produce new varieties of dogs and cows and apples and roses-would eventually add up to very big differences, and thus, over hundreds of millions of years, could account for every species on earth" (Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence From Science and the Bible, 1985, pp. 4-5).

Thus, in the late 19th century, scientists and educators were sidetracked from discovering the truth about the origin and meaning of life when they adopted Darwin's reasoning. Their widespread acceptance of an alternative explanation for the existence of man and the creation apart from the account of Genesis soon led to a general distrust of the Bible. This massive shift of thought has had far-reaching consequences. "Darwinism," says Dr. Hayward, "begins to look more like a huge maze without an exit, where the world has wandered aimlessly for a century and a half" (Hayward, p. 58).

Meanwhile the churches, having centuries earlier incorporated unscientific, unbiblical Greek philosophical concepts into their views, could not adequately explain and defend aspects of their
teachings. They, too, were ultimately sidetracked by their mixing of pagan philosophy with the Bible. Both science and religion built their explanations on wrong foundations.

Acceptance of evolution

Some of the reasons for the acceptance of Darwin's theory involved conditions of the time. The 19th century was an era of social and religious unrest. Science was riding a crest of popularity. Impressive discoveries and inventions appeared constantly.

Darwin himself had an impeccable reputation as a dedicated naturalist, but the length and tediousness of his book hid many of the weaknesses of his theory (he described his own book as "one long argument"). It was in this climate that Darwin's theory gained acceptance.

At the same time, the Roman church was being affected by its own cumulative mistakes about science as well as the critics' onslaughts against its teachings and the Bible. The church itself began to accept supposedly scientific explanations over divine ones. A bias against the supernatural slowly crept in.

The momentum grew in the 20th century until many Protestants and Catholics accepted theistic evolution. This is the belief that God occasionally intervenes in a largely evolutionary process through such steps as creating the first cell and then permitting the whole process of evolution to take place or by simply waiting for the first man to appear from the gradual chain of life and then providing him with a soul.

"Darwinian evolution to them," says Dr. Hayward, "is merely the method by which God, keeping discreetly in the background, created every living thing . . . The majority of theistic evolutionists have a somewhat liberal view of the Bible, and often regard the early chapters of Genesis as a collection of Hebrew myths" (Hayward, p. 8).

The implications for the trustworthiness of the Bible are enormous. Is it the inspired and infallible Word of God, or are parts of it merely well-intentioned myths? Are sections of it simply inaccurate and unreliable? Were Jesus Christ and the apostles wrong when they expressed their belief that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, created directly by God? (Matthew 19:4; 1Corinthians 15:45).

Was Christ mistaken, and did He mislead others? Is 2Timothy 3:16 true, that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine (teaching) . . ."?; Clearly, the implications for Christian faith and teaching are profound (see "The Testimony of the New Testament," p. 4).

Perhaps the effects of his theory on Darwin's own faith can illustrate the damage it can do to religious convictions. Darwin started as a theology student and a staunch respecter of the Bible. But, as he formulated his theories, he lost faith in the Old Testament. Later he could no longer believe in the miracles of the New Testament.

A danger lies in following in Darwin's footsteps. We should remember the old saying: If you teach a child he is only an animal, don't complain when he behaves like one. Can we not lay part of the blame for rampant immorality and crime on society's prevalent values and beliefs-derived to a great extent from evolutionary theory?

Darwinism and morality

If there isn't a just God to judge the actions of men, isn't it easier for man to do as he pleases? Sir Julian Huxley admitted why many quickly embraced evolution with such fervor: "I suppose the reason we leaped at The Origin of Species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores" (James Kennedy, Why I Believe, 1999, p. 49).

He later wrote, "The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a super-human being is enormous" (Essays of a Humanist, 1966, p. 223).

Could this perspective have something to do with the immorality rampant in so many schools and universities where God is banned from the classroom and evolutionary theory is accepted and
taught as fact?

Can the Genesis account be reconciled with the idea of an ancient earth? What about evolution? How strong is its case? Let's carefully weigh the evidence.

Can the theory of evolution be proven? After all, it is called the theory of evolution in acknowledgment that it is a hypothesis rather than a confirmed scientific fact.

Where can we find evidence supporting evolution as an explanation for the teeming variety of life on earth?

Since evolutionists claim that the transition from one species to a new one takes place in tiny, incremental changes over millions of years, they acknowledge that we cannot observe the process taking place today. Our lifespans simply are too short to directly observe such a change. Instead, they say, we have to look at the past-the fossil record that shows the many life forms that have existed over earth's history-to find transitions from one species to another.

Darwin's greatest challenge

When Charles Darwin proposed his theory in the mid-19th century, he was confident that fossil discoveries would provide clear and convincing evidence that his conjectures were correct. His theory predicted that countless transitional forms must have existed, all gradually blending almost imperceptibly from one tiny step to the next, as species progressively evolved to higher, better-adapted forms.

Indeed that would have to be the case. Well in excess of a million species are alive today. For all those to have evolved from common ancestors, we should be able to find millions if not hundreds of millions of intermediate forms gradually evolving into other species.

It was not only fossils of transitional species between apes and humans that would have to be discovered to prove Darwin's theory. The gaps were enormous. Science writer Richard Milton notes that the missing links "included every part of the animal kingdom: from whelks to whales and from bacteria to bactrian camels. Darwin and his successors envisaged a process that would begin with
simple marine organisms living in ancient seas, progressing through fishes, to amphibians-living partly in the sea and partly on land-and hence on to reptiles, mammals, and eventually the primates, including humans" (Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1997, p. 253).

However, even Darwin himself struggled with the fact that the fossil record failed to support his conclusions. ". . . Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? . . . Why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (Origin of Species, 1958 Masterpieces of Science edition, pp. 136-137).

". . . The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, (must) be truly enormous," he wrote. "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 which can be urged against the theory (of evolution)" (Darwin, pp. 260-261).

Darwin acknowledged that the fossil record failed to support his conclusions. But, since he thought his theory obviously was the correct explanation for earth's many and varied forms of life, he and others thought it only a matter of time before fossilized missing links would be found to fill in the many gaps. His answer for the lack of fossil evidence to support his theory was that scientists hadn't looked long enough and hadn't looked in the right places. Eventually they would find the predicted fossil remains that would prove his view. "The explanation lies, I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record," he wrote (p. 261).

He was convinced that later explorations and discoveries would fill in the abundant gaps where the transitional species on which his theory was based were missing. But now, a century and a half later, after literally hundreds of thousands of fossil plants and animals have been discovered and cataloged and with few corners of the globe unexplored, what does the fossil record show?

What the record reveals

David Raup is a firm believer in evolution and a respected paleontologist (scientist who studies fossils) at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum. However, he admits that the fossil record has been misinterpreted if not outright mischaracterized. He writes: "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found-yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks" (Science, Vol. 213, p. 289, emphasis added).

Niles Eldredge, curator in the department of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History and adjunct professor at the City University of New York, is another vigorous supporter of evolution. But he finds himself forced to admit that the fossil record fails to support the traditional evolutionary view.

"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long," he writes. "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 Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory, 1995, p. 95, emphasis added).

After an immense worldwide search by geologists and paleontologists, the "missing links" Darwin predicted would be found to bolster his theory are still missing.

Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould is perhaps today's best-known popular writer on evolution. An ardent evolutionist, he collaborated with Professor Eldredge in proposing alternatives to the traditional view of Darwinism. Like Eldredge, he recognizes that the fossil record fundamentally conflicts with Darwin's idea of gradualism.

"The history of most fossil species," he writes, "includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism (gradual evolution from one species to another):

"(1) Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional (evolutionary) change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking pretty much the same as when they disappear; morphological (anatomical or structural) change is usually limited and directionless.

"(2) Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors: it appears all at once and 'fully formed'" (Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, May 1977, pp. 13-14).

Fossils missing in crucial places

Francis Hitching, member of the Royal Archaeological Institute, the Prehistoric Society and the Society for Physical Research, also sees problems in using the fossil record to support Darwinism.

"There are about 250,000 different species of fossil plants and animals in the world's museums," he writes. "This compares with about 1.5 million species known to be alive on Earth today. Given the known rates of evolutionary turnover, it has been estimated that at least 100 times more fossil species have lived than have been discovered . . . But the curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fossils go missing in all the important places.

"When you look for links between major groups of animals, they simply aren't there; at least, not in enough numbers to put their status beyond doubt. Either they don't exist at all, or they are so rare that endless argument goes on about whether a particular fossil is, or isn't, or might be, transitional between this group and that.

". . . There ought to be cabinets full of intermediates-indeed, one would expect the fossils to blend so gently into one another that it would be difficult to tell where the invertebrates ended and the
vertebrates began. But this isn't the case. Instead, groups of well-defined, easily classifiable fish jump into the fossil record seemingly from nowhere: mysteriously, suddenly, full-formed, and in a most un-Darwinian way. And before them are maddening, illogical gaps where their ancestors should be" (The Neck of the Giraffe: Darwin, Evolution and the New Biology, 1982, pp. 9-10, emphasis added).

Acknowledging that the fossil record contradicts rather than supports Darwinism, professors Eldredge and Gould have proposed a radically different theory they call "punctuated equilibrium": that bursts of evolution occurred in small, isolated populations that then became dominant and showed no change over millions and millions of years. This, they say, is the only way to explain the lack of evidence for
evolution in the fossil record.

As Newsweek explains: "In 1972 Gould and Niles Eldredge collaborated on a paper intended at the time merely to resolve a professional embarrassment for paleontologists: their inability to find the fossils of transitional forms between species, the so-called 'missing links.' Darwin, and most of those who followed him, believed that the work of evolution was slow, gradual and continuous and that a complete lineage of ancestors, shading imperceptibly one into the next, could in theory be reconstructed for all living animals . . . But a century of digging since then has only made their absence more glaring . . . It was Eldredge and Gould's notion to call off the search and accept the evidence of the fossil record on its own terms" ("Enigmas of Evolution," March 29, 1982, p. 39, emphasis added).

As some observers point out, this is an inherently unprovable theory for which the primary evidence to support it is lack of evidence in the fossil record to support transitional forms between species.

Fossil record no longer incomplete

The fossil record has been thoroughly explored and documented. Darwin's excuse of "extreme imperfection of the geological record" is no longer credible.

How complete is the fossil record? Michael Denton is a medical doctor and biological researcher. He writes that "when estimates are made of the percentage of (now-) living forms found as fossils, the percentage turns out to be surprisingly high, suggesting that the fossil record may not be as bad as is often maintained" (Evolution:
A Theory in Crisis, 1985, p. 189).

He explains that "of the 329 living families of terrestrial vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians) 261 or 79.1 percent have been found as fossils and, when birds (which are poorly fossilized) are excluded, the percentage rises to 87.8 percent" (Denton, p. 189).

In other words, almost 88 percent of the varieties of mammals, reptiles and amphibians populating earth have been found in the fossil record. How many transitional forms, then, have been found? ". . . Although each of these classes (fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and primates) is well represented in the fossil record, as of yet no one has discovered a fossil creature that is indisputably transitional between one species and another species. Not a single undisputed 'missing link' has been found in all the exposed rocks of the Earth's crust despite the most careful and extensive searches" (Milton, pp. 253-254, emphasis added).

If Darwin's theory were true, transitional creatures such as invertebrates with partially developed backbones, fish with rudimentary legs, reptiles with primitive wings and innumerable creatures with semievolved anatomical features should be the rule, scattered throughout the fossil strata. But they are nonexistent.

What about fossil proofs?

At times various fossil species have been presented as firm proof of evolution at work. Perhaps the most famous is the supposed evolution of the horse as presented in many biology textbooks. But is it what it is claimed to be?

Notice what Professor Eldredge has to say about this classic "proof" of evolution: "George Gaylord Simpson spent a considerable segment of his career on horse evolution. His overall conclusion: Horse evolution was by no means the simple, linear and straightforward affair it was made out to be ... Horse evolution did not proceed in one single series, from step A to step B and so forth, culminating in modern, single-toed large horses. Horse evolution, to Simpson, seemed much more bushy, with lots of species alive at any one time-species that differed quite a bit from one another, and which had variable numbers of toes, size of teeth, and so forth.

"In other words, it is easy, and all too tempting, to survey the fossil history of a group and select examples that seem best to exemplify linear change through time ... But picking out just those species that exemplify intermediate stages along a trend, while ignoring all other species that don't seem to fit in as well, is something else again. The picture is distorted. The actual evolutionary pattern isn't fully represented" (Niles Eldredge, The Great Debate, p. 131).

Eldredge in effect admits that paleontologists picked and chose which species they thought fit best with their theory and ignored the rest. George Gaylord Simpson himself was more blunt: "The uniform continuous transformation of Hyracotherium (a fossil species thought to be the ancestor of the horse) into Equus (the modern horse), so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature" (Life of the Past, 1953, p. 119).

Professor Raup elaborates on the problem paleontologists face in trying to demonstrate evolution from the fossil record: ". . . We are now about 120 years after Darwin, and 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 transition than we had in Darwin's time.

"By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information-what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic (evolutionary)" ("Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Field Museum of Natural History
Bulletin 50, January 1979, pp. 22-25, emphasis added).

Paleontology's well-kept secret

What does all this mean? In plain language, if evolution means the gradual change of one kind of organism into another kind, the outstanding characteristic of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution-and abundant evidence to the contrary. The only logical place to find proof for evolutionary theory is in the fossil record. But, rather than showing slow, gradual change over eons, with new species continually emerging, the fossils show the opposite.

Professor Eldredge touched on the magnitude of the problem when he admitted that Darwin "essentially invented a new field of scientific inquiry-what is now called 'taphonomy'-to explain why the fossil record is so deficient, so full of gaps, that the predicted patterns of gradual change simply do not emerge" (Eldredge, pp. 95-96, emphasis added).

Professor Gould similarly admits that the "extreme rarity" of evidence for evolution in the fossil record is "the trade secret of paleontology." He goes on to acknowledge that "the evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils" ("Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, May 1977, p. 14, emphasis added).

But do paleontologists share this trade secret with others? Hardly. "Reading popular or even textbook introductions to evolution, . . . you might hardly guess that they (fossil gaps) exist, so glibly and confidently do most authors slide through them. In the absence of fossil evidence, they write what have been termed 'just so' stories. A suitable mutation just happened to take place at the crucial moment, and hey presto, a new stage of evolution was reached" (Hitching, pp. 12-13).

Regarding this misrepresentation of the evidence, Phillip Johnson writes: "Just about everyone who took a college biology course during the last sixty years or so has been led to believe that the fossil record was a bulwark of support for the classic Darwinian thesis, not a liability that had to be explained away . . .

"The fossil record shows a consistent pattern of sudden appearance followed by a stasis, that life's history is more a story of variation around a set of basic designs than one of accumulating improvement, that extinction has been predominantly by catastrophe rather than gradual obsolescence, and that orthodox interpretations of the fossil record often owe more to Darwinist preconception than to the evidence itself. Paleontologists seem to have thought it their duty to protect the rest of us from the erroneous conclusions we might have drawn if we had known the actual state of the evidence" (Darwin on Trial, 1993, pp. 58-59).

The secret evolutionists don't want revealed is that, even by their own interpretations, the fossil record shows fully formed species appearing for a time and then disappearing with no change. Other species appeared at other times before they, too, disappeared with little or no change. The fossil record simply does not support the central thesis of Darwinism, that species slowly and gradually evolved from one form to another.

Fact or interesting speculation?

Professor Johnson notes that "Darwinists consider evolution to be a fact, not just a theory, because it provides a satisfying explanation for the pattern of relationship linking all living creatures-a pattern so identified in their minds with what they consider to be the necessary cause of the pattern-descent with modification-that, to them, biological relationship means evolutionary relationship" (Johnson, p. 63, emphasis in original).

The deceptive, smoke-and-mirror language of evolution revolves largely around the classification of living species. Darwinists attempt to explain natural relationships they observe in the animal and plant world by categorizing animal and plant life according to physical similarities. It could be said that Darwin's theory is nothing more than educated observance of the obvious; that is, the conclusion that most animals appear to be related to one another because most animals have one or more characteristics in common.

For instance, you might have a superficial classification of whales, penguins and sharks in a group classified as aquatic animals. You might also have birds, bats and bees grouped as flying creatures. These are not the final classifications because there are many other obvious differences. The Darwinist approach, however, is to use the obvious general similarities to show, not that animals were alike in many ways, but that they were related to each other by descent from common ancestors.

Professor Johnson expresses it this way: "Darwin proposed a naturalistic explanation for the essentialist features of the living world that was so stunning in its logical appeal that it conquered the scientific world even while doubts remained about some important parts of his theory. He theorized that the discontinuous groups of the living world were the descendants of long-extinct common ancestors. Relatively closely related groups (like reptiles, birds, and mammals) shared a relatively recent common ancestor; all vertebrates shared a more ancient common ancestor; and all animals shared a still more ancient common ancestor. He then proposed that the ancestors must have been linked to their descendants by long chains of transitional intermediates, also extinct" (Johnson, p. 64).

Evolutionists exercise selective perception when looking at the evidence-rather like deciding whether to view half a glass of water as half empty or half full. They choose to dwell on similarities rather than differences. By doing so they lead you away from the truth of the matter: that similarities are evidence of a common Designer behind the structure and function of the life forms. Each species of animal was created and designed to exist and thrive in a particular way. Darwin and the subsequent proponents of the evolutionary view of life focused on similarities within the major classifications of animals and drew the assumption that those similarities prove that all animals are related to one another through common ancestors.

However, there are major differences in the life forms on earth. If, as evolution supposes, all life forms had common ancestors and chains of intermediates linking those ancestors, the fossil record should overflow with many such intermediate forms between species. But, as we have seen
earlier, paleontologists themselves admit it shows no such thing.

Simple life forms?

Since the fossil record does not support the traditional evolutionary view, what does it show?

We have already seen how several well-known paleontologists admit that the fossil record shows the sudden appearance of life forms. As Stephen Jay Gould puts it: "In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors: it appears all at once and 'fully formed'" (Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, May 1977, pp. 13-14).

When we sweep away the evolutionary bias inherent in most views, the fossil record does not show a gradual ascent from simple to complex. Some of the earliest fossils found are bacteria. What is interesting about bacteria is that they are not simple organisms at all.

In reality there are no simple life forms. Modern technology has shown that even a single cell is extraordinarily complex.

Michael Behe is associate professor of biochemistry at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University. Noting scientists' changing perceptions of the most elementary forms of life, he writes: "We humans tend to have a rather exalted opinion of ourselves, and that attitude can color our perception of the biological world. In particular, our attitude about what is higher and lower in biology, what is an advanced organism and what is a primitive organism, starts with the presumption that the pinnacle of nature is ourselves . . . Nonetheless, other organisms, if they could talk, could argue strongly for their own superiority. This includes bacteria, which we often think of as the rudest forms of life" (Darwin's Black Box, 1996, pp. 69-70).

When Darwin wrote Origin of Species almost a century and a half ago, scientists did not know nearly as much about the cell (and single-celled organisms) as we do today. Darwin thought that single-celled organisms were quite primitive. In fact, at that time many still thought that life could arise naturally from nonliving matter-for example, that decaying meat spontaneously produced flies.

Years passed before French scientist Louis Pasteur convincingly demonstrated, through a series of meticulous experiments, the impossibility of the notion. Yet even Pasteur had quite a battle with scientists of his day convincing them that life came only from preexisting life forms.

So Darwin's idea-that single-celled meant simple-was not questioned at the time. Later discoveries have shown that even the single-celled organisms found early in the fossil record are far more
complex than Darwin and others could have imagined.

An explosion of life forms

Paleontologists widely consider the Cambrian period, one of the oldest in their view, to be the earliest in which extensive life forms are preserved. Since only the remains of marine life are found in Cambrian strata, paleontologists interpret these deposits as dating to a time before land
animals had evolved.

The Encarta Encyclopedia says of this time: "By the beginning of the Paleozoic Era, the steadily increasing oxygen content of the atmosphere and oceans . . . had made it possible for the marine environment to support new forms of life that could derive energy from respiration. Although life had not yet invaded dry land or the air, the seas of the Cambrian Period teemed with a great variety of marine invertebrates, including sponges, worms, bryozoans ('moss animals)', hydrozoans, brachiopods, mollusks (among them the gastropods and species ancestral to the nautilus), primitive arthropods such as the trilobite, and a few species of stalked echinoderms.

"The only plant life of the time consisted of marine algae. Because many of these new organisms were relatively large, complex marine invertebrates with hard shells and skeletons of chitin or lime, they had a far better chance of fossil preservation than the soft-bodied creatures of the previous Precambrian Era" (1997, "Cambrian Period," emphasis added).

Notice that complex marine invertebrates are found in fossil deposits from the Cambrian period. Many don't realize it, but even paleontologists acknowledge that life does not start with only a few simple creatures. At the lowest levels of the geologic strata, the fossil record consists of complex creatures such as trilobites.

Time magazine said in a long cover story describing fossilized creatures found in Cambrian strata: "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" (Madeleine Nash, "When Life Exploded," Dec. 4, 1995, p. 68).

Contrary to the assumptions of early evolutionists, life does not start with only a few rudimentary species. Even those who hold to the traditional interpretation of the fossil record admit that it begins with many life forms similar to those we find today. At the same time, they cannot explain such a vast "explosion" of life forms in such a short amount of geologic time, which evolutionary theory predicts would take far longer.

Unanswered questions

Supporters of evolution have had to back down from the claims of Darwin and others. "Over the decades, evolutionary theorists beginning with Charles Darwin have tried to argue that the appearance of multicelled animals during the Cambrian merely seemed sudden, and in fact had been preceded by a lengthy period of evolution for which the geological record was missing. But this explanation, while it patched over a hole in an otherwise masterly theory, now seems increasingly unsatisfactory" (Time, p. 68).

Again, the facts etched in stone do not match the assumptions and predictions of evolutionary thought. Even if we accept the evolutionists' interpretation of the fossil record, we see life beginning at the lowest levels with complex creatures, with elaborate organs and other features-but with no known ancestors. Life does not start as predicted by evolution, with simple forms gradually changing into more-complex species.

Although toeing the evolutionary line, the Time magazine article admits: "Of course, understanding what made the Cambrian explosion possible doesn't address the larger question of what made it happen so fast. Here scientists delicately slide across data-thin ice, suggesting scenarios that are based on intuition rather than solid evidence" (Time, p. 73).

Evolutionists have been known to pointedly criticize Christians because they don't have scientific proof of miracles recorded in the Bible. Yet here is a supremely important geological event with far-reaching implications for the theory of evolution-but one for which scientists have no explanation. Of course, they must assume that life came from nonlife-in violation of the laws of biogenesis. But don't their fundamental assumptions also amount to faith?

A reasonable explanation is that the life forms found in the Cambrian strata were created by God, who did not work by chance but by design.

The fossil record is the only objective evidence we can examine to see whether evolution is true. But, rather than supporting Darwinism, it shows exceedingly complex organisms in what evolutionists interpret as the oldest fossil strata, no intermediate forms between species, little if any change in species over their entire span in the fossil record, and the sudden appearance of new life forms rather than the gradual change expected by Darwin and his followers.

If we look at the evidence objectively, we realize that the creation story in Genesis 1-describing the sudden appearance of life forms-is a credible explanation.

What have we learned since Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution, Origin of Species, was first published in 1859 ? Science has advanced greatly since those horse-and-buggy days. In addition to a thorough exploration of the fossil record, a vast amount of other information is readily available.

As we saw when discussing the fossil record, the controversy about evolution is increasing.

Francis Hitching gives a general view of the debate to date: "In April 1882, Charles Darwin died peacefully of a heart attack at his family home in Kent, England. His great theory, the basis of all modern biology teaching, had come to be accepted with a fervor close to reverence . . . Yet as 1982 approached, and with the centenary of his passing, change was in the wind. Feuds concerning the theory of evolution exploded rancorously in otherwise staid and decorous scientific journals.

"Entrenched positions, for and against, were established in high places, and insults lobbed like mortar bombs from either side. Meanwhile the doctrine of Divine creation, assumed by most scientists to have been relegated long ago to the pulpits of obscure fundamentalist sects, swept back into the classrooms of American schools. Darwinism is under assault on many fronts" (The Neck of the Giraffe, 1982, p. 7).

Why the confusion and contention? Simply put, as we saw with the fossil record, the increasing scientific evidence doesn't fit the Darwinist model-and evolutionists increasingly are finding themselves on the defensive.

How has this come about? It has happened mainly because the primary supposed proofs of the theory have not held up to further discovery and scrutiny.

What about natural selection?

After the fossil record, the second supposed proof of evolution offered by Darwinists is natural selection, which they hoped biologists would confirm. "Just as the breeders selected those individuals best suited to the breeder's needs to be the parents of the next generation," explained British philosopher Tom Bethell, "so, Darwin argued, nature selected those organisms that were best fitted to survive the struggle for existence. In that way evolution would inevitably occur. And so there it was: a sort of improving machine inevitably at work in nature, 'daily and hourly scrutinizing,' Darwin wrote, 'silently and insensibly working . . . at the improvement of each organic being.'

"In this way, Darwin thought, one type of organism could be transformed into another -for instance, he suggested, bears into whales. So that was how we came to have horses and tigers and things-by natural selection" (Tom Bethell, "Darwin's Mistake," The Craft of Prose, Robert Woodward and Wendell Smith, editors, 1977, p. 309).

Darwin saw natural selection as the major factor driving evolutionary change. But how has this second pillar of evolutionary theory fared since Darwin's day? In truth, it has been quietly discarded by an increasing number of theorists among the scientific community.

Darwin's idea that the survival of the fittest would explain how species evolved has been relegated to a redundant, self-evident statement. Geneticist Conrad Waddington of Edinburgh University defines the fundamental problem of advocating natural selection as a proof of Darwinism: "Natural selection, . . . turns out on closer inspection to be a tautology, a statement of an inevitable although previously unrecognized relation. It states that the fittest individuals in a population ... will leave most offspring" (Bethell, p. 310).

In other words, what are the fittest? Why, those that survive, of course. And what survives? Why, naturally, the fittest. The problem is that circular reasoning doesn't point to any independent criteria that can evaluate whether the theory is true.

Selection doesn't change species

Darwin cited an example of the way natural selection was supposed to work: A wolf that had inherited the ability to run especially fast was better equipped to survive. His advantage in outrunning others in the pack when food was scarce meant he could eat better and thus survive longer.

Yet the very changes that enabled the wolf to run faster could easily become a hindrance if other modifications of the body did not accompany the increased speed. For example, the additional exertion required to run faster would naturally place an added strain on the animal's heart, and eventually it could drop from a heart attack. The survival of the fittest would require that any biological or anatomical alterations would have to be in harmony and synchronized with other bodily modifications, or the changes would be of no benefit.

Natural selection, scientists have found, in reality deals only with the number of species, not the change of the species. It has to do with the survival and not the arrival of the species. Natural selection only preserves existing genetic information (DNA); it doesn't create genetic material that would allow an animal to sprout a new organ, limb or some other anatomical feature.

"Natural selection," said professor Waddington, "is that some things leave more offspring than others; and you ask, which leave more offspring than others? And it is those that leave more offspring; and there is nothing more to it than that. The whole guts of evolution-which is, how do you come to have horses and tigers and things-is outside the mathematical theory (of neo-Darwinism)" (Wistar Symposium, Moorehead and Kaplan, 1967, p. 14).

Tom Bethell gets to the heart of the problem with natural selection as the foundation of evolution: "This was no good at all. As T.H. Morgan (1933 Nobel Prize winner in medicine for his experiments with the Drosophila fruit fly) had remarked, with great clarity: 'Selection, then, has not produced anything new, but only more of certain kinds of individuals. Evolution, however, means producing new things, not more of what already exists' "(Bethell, pp. 311-312, emphasis added).

Bethell concludes: "Darwin's theory, I believe, is on the verge of collapse. In his famous book, (Origin of Species), Darwin made a mistake sufficiently serious to undermine his theory. And that mistake has only recently been recognized as such ... I have not been surprised to read . . . that in some of the latest evolutionary theories 'natural selection plays no role at all.' Darwin, I suggest, is in the process of being discarded, but perhaps in deference to the venerable old gentleman, . . . it is being done as discreetly and gently as possible, with a minimum of publicity" (Bethell, pp. 308, 313-314).

Sadly, the critical examination of natural selection has been undertaken so discreetly that most people are unaware of it-so the pervasive deception that began more than 140 years ago continues.

A look at random mutation

If natural selection is not the answer, what about the third supposed proof-random mutation-as a cornerstone of evolution?

Curiously enough, Darwin himself was one of the first to discount beneficial effects from rare changes he noted in species. He did not even include them in his theory. "He did not consider them important," says Maurice Caullery in his book Genetics and Heredity, "because they nearly always represented an obvious disadvantage from the point of view of the struggle for existence; consequently they would most likely be rapidly eliminated in the wild state by the operation of natural selection" (1964, p. 10, emphasis added).

In Darwin's lifetime the principles of genetics were not clearly understood. Gregor Mendel had published his findings on genetic principles in 1866, but his work was overlooked at the time. Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, Hugo De Vries rediscovered these principles, which evolutionists quickly seized on to support evolution. Sir Julian Huxley, one of the principal spokesmen for evolutionary theory in the 20th century, commented on the unpredictability of mutations: "Mutation . . . provides the raw material of evolution; it is a random affair and takes place in all directions" (Evolution in Action, 1953, p. 38).

So, "shortly after the turn of the (19th to the 20th) century, Darwin's theory suddenly seemed plausible again," writes Hitching. "It was found that once in a while, absolutely at random (about once in ten million times during cell division, we now know) the genes make a copying mistake. These mistakes are known as mutations, and are mostly harmful. They lead to a weakened plant, or a sick or deformed creature. They do not persist within the species, because they are eliminated by natural selection . . .

"However, followers of Darwin have come to believe that it is the occasional beneficial mutation, rarely though it happens, which is what counts in evolution. They say these favorable mutations, together with sexual mixing, are sufficient to explain how the whole bewildering variety of life on Earth today originated from a common genetic source" (Hitching, p. 49, emphasis added).

Mutations: liability, not benefit

What has almost a century of research discovered? That mutations are pathological mistakes and not helpful changes in the genetic code.

C.P. Martin of McGill University in Montreal wrote, "Mutation is a pathological process which has had little or nothing to do with evolution" ("A Non-Geneticist Looks at Evolution," American Scientist, January 1953, p. 100). Professor Martin's investigations revealed mutations are overwhelmingly negative and never creative. He observed that an apparently beneficial mutation was likely only a correction of a previously deleterious one, similar to punching a man with a dislocated shoulder and inadvertently putting it back into place.

Science writer Milton explains the problem: "The results of such copying errors are tragically familiar. In body cells, faulty replication shows itself as cancer. Sunlight's mutagenic (mutation-inducing) power causes skin cancer; the cigarette's mutagenic power causes lung cancer. In sexual cells, faulty reproduction of whole chromosome number 21 results in a child with Down's syndrome" (Richard Milton, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1997, p. 156). Yet evolutionists would have us believe that such genetic mistakes are not only not harmful to the afflicted creature
but are helpful in the long run.

Phillip Johnson observes: "To suppose that such a random event could reconstruct even a single complex organ like a liver or kidney is about as reasonable as to suppose that an improved watch can be designed by throwing an old one against a wall" (Darwin on Trial, p. 37).

We can be thankful that mutations are extremely rare. An average of one mistake per 10 million correct copies occurs in the genetic code. Whoever or whatever types 10 million letters with only one mistake would easily be the world's best typist and probably would not be human. Yet this is the astounding accuracy of our supposedly blind genetic code when it replicates itself.

If, however, these copying errors were to accumulate, a species, instead of improving, would eventually degenerate and perish. But geneticists have discovered a self-correcting system.

"The genetic code in each living thing has its own built-in limitations," says Hitching. "It seems designed to stop a plant or creature stepping too far away from the average . . . Every series of breeding experiments that has ever taken place has established a finite limit to breeding possibilities. Genes are a strong influence for conservatism, and allow only modest change. Left to their own devices, artificially bred species usually die out (because they are sterile or less robust) or quickly revert to the norm" (Hitching, pp. 54-55).

Some scientists reluctantly concede that mutations do not explain Darwin's proposed transition from one species to the next. Writing about zoologist Pierre-Paul Grassé, Hayward says: "In 1973 he published a major book on evolution . . . First and foremost, the book aims to expose Darwinism as a theory that does not work, because it clashes with so many experimental findings.

"As Grassé says in his introduction: 'Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution . . . Some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs' . . .

"Take mutation first. Grassé has studied this extensively, both inside his laboratory and in nature. In all sorts of living things, from bacteria to plants and animals, he has observed that mutations do not take succeeding generations further and further from their starting point. Instead, the changes are like the flight of a butterfly in a green house, which travels for miles without moving more than a few feet from its starting point. There are invisible but firmly fixed boundaries that mutations can never cross . . . He insists that mutations are only trivial changes; they are merely the result of slightly altered genes, whereas 'creative evolution . . . demands the genesis of new ones'" (Hayward, p. 25).

Embarrassingly for evolutionists, mutation is also not the answer. If anything, the self-correcting system to eliminate mutations shows that a great intelligence was at work when the overall genetic system was designed so that random mutations would not destroy the beneficial genes. Ironically, mutation shows the opposite of what evolutionism teaches: In real life random mutation is the villain and not the hero.

This takes us to one last point on mutations: the inability of evolution to explain the appearance of simple life and intricate organs.

The wondrous cell

Cells are marvelous and incredibly complicated living things. They are self-sufficient and function like miniature chemical factories. The closer we look at cells, the more we realize their incredible complexity.

For example, the cell wall is a wonder in itself. If it were too porous, harmful solutions would enter and cause the cell to burst. On the other hand, if the wall were too impervious, no nourishment could come in or waste products go out, and the cell would quickly die.

Biochemist Behe, the associate professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, summarizes one of the fundamental flaws of evolution as an explanation for any form of life. "Darwin's theory encounters its greatest difficulties when it comes to explaining the development of the cell. Many cellular systems are what I term 'irreducibly complex.' That means the system needs several components before it can work properly.

"An everyday example of irreducible complexity is a mousetrap, built of several pieces (platform, hammer, spring and so on). Such a system probably cannot be put together in a Darwinian manner, gradually improving its function. You can't catch a mouse with just the platform and then catch a few more by adding the spring. All the pieces have to be in place before you catch any mice."

Michael Behe's point is that a cell missing a tenth of its parts doesn't function only one tenth less as well as a complete cell; it doesn't function at all. He concludes: "The bottom line is that the cell-the very basis of life-is staggeringly complex. But doesn't science already have answers, or partial answers, for how these systems originated? No" ("Darwin Under the Microscope,"
New York Times, Oct. 29, 1996, p. A25).

Miniature technological marvel

Michael Denton, the microbiologist and senior research fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand, contrasts how the cell was viewed in Darwin's day with what today's researchers can see. In Darwin's time the cell could be viewed at best at a magnification of several hundred times. Using the best technology of their day, when scientists viewed the cell they saw "a relatively disappointing spectacle appearing only as an ever-changing and apparently disordered pattern of blobs and particles which, under the influence of unseen turbulent forces, (were) continually tossed haphazardly in all directions" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985, p. 328).

The years since then have brought astounding technological advancements. Now researchers can peer into the tiniest parts of cells. Do they still see only formless blobs, or do they witness something far more astounding?

"To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology," writes Dr. Denton, "we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design.

"On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units.

"The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometre in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules ...

"We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines. We would notice that the simplest of the functional components of the cell, the protein molecules, were astonishingly, complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial conformation.

"We would wonder even more as we watched the strangely purposeful activities of these weird molecular machines, particularly when we realized that, despite all our accumulated knowledge of physics and chemistry, the task of designing one such molecular machine-that is one single functional protein molecule-would be beyond our capacity . . . Yet the life of the cell depends on the integrated activities of thousands, certainly tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of different protein molecules" (Denton, pp. 328-329).

This is a microbiologist's description of one cell. The human body contains about 10 trillion (10,000,000,000,000) brain, nerve, muscle and other types of cells.

Did this come about by chance?

Yet, as complex as cells are, the smallest living things are even far more intricate. Sir James Gray, a Cambridge University professor of zoology, states: "Bacteria (are) far more complex than any inanimate system known to man. There is not a laboratory in the world which can compete with the biochemical activity of the smallest living organism" (Marshall and Sandra Hall, The Truth: God or Evolution?, 1974, p. 89).

How complex are the tiniest living things? Even the simplest cells must possess a staggering amount of genetic information to function. For instance, the bacterium R. coli is one of the tiniest unicellular creatures in nature. Scientists calculate it has some 2,000 genes, each with around 1,000 enzymes (organic catalysts, chemicals that speed up other chemical reactions). An enzyme is made up of a billion nucleotides, each of which amounts to a letter in the chemical alphabet, comparable to a byte in computer language. These enzymes instruct the organism how to function and reproduce. The DNA information in just this single tiny cell is "the approximate equivalent of 100 million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica" (John Whitcomb, The Early Earth, 1972, p. 79).

What are the odds that the enzymes needed to produce the simplest living creature-with each enzyme performing a specific chemical function-could come together by chance? Astrophysicists Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe calculated the odds at one chance in 1040,000 (that is, 10 to the 40,000th power: mathematical shorthand for a 10 followed by 40,000 zeros, a number long enough to fill about seven pages of this publication).

Note that a probability of less than 1 in 1050 is considered by mathematicians to be a complete impossibility (Hayward, pp. 35-37). By comparison, Sir Arthur Eddington, another mathematician, estimates there are no more than 1080 atoms in the universe! (Hitching, p. 70).

As long as evolutionists keep their conceptions as vague abstractions, they can sound plausible. But, when rigorous mathematics are applied to their generalities, and their assertions are specifically quantified, the underpinnings of Darwinian evolution are exposed as so implausible and unrealistic as to be impossible.

Scientists' revealing reaction

Molecular biochemist Behe comments on the curious academic and scientific reaction to discoveries about the intricacy of the cell: "Over the past four decades modern biochemistry has uncovered the secrets of the cell. The progress has been hard won. It has required tens of thousands of people to dedicate the better parts of their lives to the tedious work of the laboratory . . .

"The results of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell-to investigate life at the molecular level-is a loud, clear, piercing cry of 'design!' The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun or that disease is caused by bacteria or that radiation is emitted in quanta.

"The magnitude of the victory, gained at such great cost through sustained effort over the course of decades, would be expected to send champagne corks flying in labs around the world. This triumph of science should evoke cries of 'Eureka!' from ten thousand throats, should occasion much hand-slapping and high-fiving, and perhaps even be an excuse to take the day off.

"But no bottles have been uncorked, no hands slapped. Instead a curious, embarrassed silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell. When the subject comes up in public, feet start to shuffle, and breathing gets a bit labored. In private people are a bit more relaxed; many explicitly admit the obvious but then stare at the ground, shake their heads, and let it go at that.

"Why does the scientific community not greedily embrace its startling discovery? Why is the observation of design handled with intellectual gloves? The dilemma is that while one side of the elephant is labeled intelligent design, the other side might be labeled God" (Behe, pp. 232-233, original emphasis).

These discoveries reveal that the simplest living cell is so intricate and complex in its design that even the possibility of its coming into existence accidentally is unthinkable. It is clear evolutionists don't have a rational answer to how the first cells were formed. This is just one of their many problems in trying to explain a wondrous creation that they argue had to come together by chance.

When Darwin proposed his famous theory back in 1859, he was aware that one of the glaring weaknesses of his speculations was how to explain complex features in animals by small and gradual evolutionary steps. He admitted, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down" (Origin of Species, p. 149).

Close to 150 years later, research has provided numerous examples in nature in which complex organs in animals could not have developed by small, successive steps. From molecular science on up, many complex systems had to appear simultaneously, with all their components intact, or they would not function, thus offering no survival advantage.

Molecular biochemist Behe explains: "It was once expected that the basis of life would be exceedingly simple. That expectation has been smashed. Vision, motion, and other biological functions have proven to be no less sophisticated than television cameras and automobiles. Science has made enormous progress in understanding how the chemistry of life works, but the elegance and complexity of biological systems at the molecular level have paralyzed science's attempt to explain their origins" (Darwin's Black Box, 1998, p. x).

The bombardier beetle's chemical weapon

One example of this kind of biological complexity is the bombardier beetle's defense system. It has so many essential parts and chemicals that, if any are missing, the whole system will not work. Moreover, if everything did not work just right, the deadly chemical mixture inside the beetle would prove fatal rather than favorable.

The tiny beetle, less than an inch long, appears as a tasty morsel for many types of animals. But, as they near the beetle to gobble it up, they suddenly find themselves sprayed with a scalding and noxious solution that forces them to beat a fast retreat. How can this unassuming insect produce such a complex and effective defense system?

The components making up the beetle's effective chemical warfare have been analyzed by chemists and biologists down to the molecular level. When the beetle senses danger, it secretes two chemicals, hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, that end up in a storage chamber inside its body. By tensing certain muscles, it moves the chemicals to another compartment, called the explosion chamber.

But, just as a loaded cannon will not go off without some sort of ignition device, so these two chemicals will not explode without the right catalyst being added. Inside the beetle's body, this catalyst is injected into the explosion chamber. As a result, a boiling hot and toxic liquid is spewed out of the beetle's rear toward the threatening predator's face. All three chemical elements and chambers have to exist for this powerful defense system to work.

How could such a complex system evolve by gradual steps? With only the two chemicals mixing, nothing happens. But, when the catalyst is added in the proper amount and at the right time, the beetle is equipped with an amazing chemical cannon. Could all these components appear by a gradual, step-by-step process?

Francis Hitching comments on the bombardier beetle's defense system: "The chain of events that could have led to the evolution of such a complex, coordinated and subtle process is beyond biological explanation on a simple step-by-step basis. The slightest alteration in the chemical balance would result immediately in a race of exploded beetles. The problem of evolutionary novelties is quite widely accepted among biologists . . . In every case, the difficulty is compounded by the lack of fossil evidence. The first time that the plant, creature, or organ appears, it is in its finished state, so to speak" (The Neck of the Giraffe, 1982, p. 68).

Nevertheless, evolutionist Richard Dawkins tries to dismiss the complex features of the bombardier beetle by simply saying: "As for the evolutionary precursors of the system, both hydrogen peroxide and various kinds of quinones are used for other purposes in body chemistry. The bombardier beetle's ancestors simply pressed into different service chemicals that already happened to be around. That's often how evolution works" (The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p. 87).

This is not a convincing explanation at all for Dr. Behe, who has studied this beetle's components down to their molecular level. "Dawkins' explanation for the evolution of the system," he says, "rests on the fact that the system's elements 'happened to be around' . . . But Dawkins has not explained how hydrogen peroxide and quinones came to be secreted together at very high concentration into one compartment that is connected . . . to a second compartment that contains enzymes necessary for the rapid reaction of the chemicals" (Behe, p. 34).

Now that the whole defense system of the beetle has been thoroughly studied, even if the chemicals "happened to be around," this elaborate chemical cannon would not work without everything from the molecular level up working together and at exactly the right time. Dawkins' argument is as absurd as saying that if gunpowder, a fuse, a barrel and a cannonball "happened to be around," eventually they would put themselves together, carefully load the ingredients in the right sizes and proportions, and then go off at the right direction without blowing themselves up somewhere along the way. No, all the components had to be carefully and intelligently assembled in order to function.

Dr. Behe notes: "Some evolutionary biologists-like Richard Dawkins-have fertile imaginations. Given a starting point, they almost always can spin a story to get to any biological structure you wish . . . Science, however, cannot ultimately ignore relevant details, and at the molecular level all the 'details' become critical. If a molecular nut or bolt is missing, then the whole system can crash" (Behe, p. 65).

Astounding bird migrations

Consider another enormous biological complexity-how birds, such as certain storks, ducks, geese and robins, gained the ability to navigate accurately across thousands of miles of previously unknown territory and land in exactly the right zone and at the right time of year to feed and breed. Then, when winter ends in the northern hemisphere, they fly thousands of miles back and arrive safely in their same nesting grounds.

Homing experiments have revealed that these birds have inherited the ability to map their location using the stars by night and the sun by day. They subconsciously process astronomical data and gauge the altitude, latitude and longitude to fly unerringly to a predetermined place. They have an internal clock and calendar to let them know when to start and finish their migrations. Perhaps what is most surprising is that they are able to reach their distant destiny even on their first trip-without any experience!

For instance, the white-throated warbler migrates every year from Germany to Africa. Remarkably, when the adult birds migrate, they leave their offspring behind. Several weeks later, when the young birds are strong enough, they instinctively fly across thousands of miles of unknown land and sea to arrive at the same spot where their parents are waiting! How can these inexperienced birds navigate with such accuracy across thousands of miles and arrive safely to be reunited with their parents?

In North America the golden plover circumnavigates around most of the northern and southern hemispheres in its migrations. After nesting in Canada and Alaska, plovers begin their trip from the northeastern tip of Canada and fly across the ocean down to Brazil and Argentina, a trip of more than 2,400 miles. When the season is over they travel back north, taking a different route through South and Central America, then up the Mississippi basin all the way to their nesting grounds. They do this flawlessly year after year.

Dr. Huse comments: "The causes of migrations and the incredible sense of direction shown by these animals presents the evolutionist with one of the most baffling problems of science. Evolutionists are indeed hard-pressed to explain how these remarkable abilities evolved piecemeal through mere chance processes apart from any directing intelligence. The piecemeal development of such an instinct seems highly improbable because migratory instincts are useless unless perfect. Obviously, it is of no benefit to be able to navigate perfectly across only half of an ocean" (The Collapse of Evolution, 1998, p. 34).

The salmon's amazing cycle

Some species of salmon exhibit amazingly complex migrations. Hatching from eggs in streams, they spend the first few years of life in freshwater lakes and rivers. After growing to several inches they swim downstream to the ocean, where they adapt to a completely different chemical environment-saltwater-and spend the next few years.

In the process they often migrate for thousands of miles as they feed and grow. Eventually, toward the end of their lives, they leave the ocean environment and swim upriver and upstream against the current until they reach the very stretch of stream where they were hatched years earlier. There they spawn and die, with their decaying bodies providing nutrients for the newly laid eggs. The eggs then hatch to start a new generation, repeating the amazing cycle.

These many adaptations go against the supposed "numerous, successive, slight modifications" of evolutionary theory as well as plain common sense. If a species is well adapted to live in freshwater, why undergo the physiological changes necessary to live in saltwater? And why the enormous and exhausting trip back to their original birthplace only to face certain death?

How do these species, after traveling up to several thousand miles, manage to find the very streams in which they were first spawned several years earlier? No plausible evolutionary explanation has been offered.

The decoy fish

In Hawaiian waters swims the astounding decoy fish. When hunting for other fish to eat, it raises its dorsal fin, which appears as a small, helpless fish, complete with an apparent mouth and eye.

It then stays motionless except for the dorsal fin, which it moves from side to side to make the decoy appear to open and close its mouth. The fin itself becomes transparent except for the upper part of the fin, which looks like a separate fish. It turns a bright red, enhancing the illusion of a smaller fish. This unassuming creature has just created an optical illusion that even a Hollywood special-effects artist would envy. To an incoming fish the decoy looks like an easy meal, and as it moves in for the kill it suddenly finds itself inside the jaws of the decoy fish.

As Dr. Huse notes: "The decoy-fish clearly exhibits great ingenuity, attention to biological details, and a sense of purposefulness. No matter how one contorts one's reasoning, one cannot explain such a marvel in terms of the evolutionary theory. Such clear design does not result from mere chance but rather requires careful and deliberate blueprint encoding within the DNA of the decoy-fish by a highly capable molecular programmer"
(Huse, p. 36).

Dr. Huse notes other fish species that use similar deceptions to snare a meal. "One type of anglerfish has a 'fishing rod' coming out of its back with a luminescent 'bulb' at the end of it. Another, the deep-sea angler, has a 'light bulb' hanging from the roof of its mouth. It just swims around with an open mouth, dangling the lure from side to side. Small fish, attracted by the display, swim to their death right into the angler's mouth!" (Huse, p. 36).

He also notes that anglerfish have the ability to move their "bait" in a manner that mimics the real thing; an anglerfish with a fishlike bait will move it in a swimming motion while one with an appendage resembling a shrimp will move it with a shrimp's backward-darting motion. On those occasions when the anglerfish's "bait" is nipped off-as could be expected to happen under the circumstances-the anglerfish can fully regrow
it within two weeks (Huse, p. 36).

Gradual adaptations?

Now, with our greater understanding of enormously complex and integrated systems that rule all living systems, we see that Darwin's theory that all life evolved through a gradual system of adaptations can be easily and satisfactorily refuted.

Dr. Behe sums up the results of many years of working in molecular biochemistry: "The simplicity that was once expected to be the foundation of life has proven to be a phantom; instead, systems of horrendous, irreducible complexity inhabit the cell. The resulting realization that life was designed by an intelligence is a shock to us in the twentieth century who have gotten used to thinking of life as the result of simple natural laws" (Behe, p. 252).

Scientist Soren Lovtrup, admits, "I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science" (Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, 1987, p. 422).

Earlier we examined the weaknesses of the theory of evolution as an explanation for the bewildering complexity of the forms of life we see around us. Now we turn to the Bible itself to see what the Creator God says about His creation.

We should keep in mind that God does not usually explain all there is to know about a subject in one place in the Bible. His Word is not organized so we can turn to one passage and read all of His revelation about a particular truth.

God's truths are not revealed all at once. Although He often provides a broad outline of a truth early in the Scriptures, we find that He later fills in many of the details elsewhere in the Bible. The Bible itself speaks of this principle when it talks of "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, (and who) has in these last days spoken to us by His Son . . ." (Hebrews 1:1-2).

The nature of revelation

The biblical prophets did not always understand the significance of the prophecies they recorded under God's inspiration (Daniel 12:8-9). Their knowledge of the particular truth they received was sometimes incomplete.

"Of this salvation," writes the apostle Peter, "the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ (which) was in them was indicating when (it) testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things which angels desire to look into" (1Peter 1:10-12).

The prophets obviously had only partial information about eternal truths revealed to them. This is also the case with the account of creation in Genesis 1. God would reveal additional details later. Many Bible readers, however, mistakenly assume everything the Bible has to say about creation is explained there. Yet the Bible adds details later that clarify the Genesis 1 account.

Consider, for example, that Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It might seem as if this verse describes the beginning of everything, but God later reveals details of events and conditions that took place earlier.

The apostle John, writing under God's inspiration, takes us back to a time before events described in Genesis 1. "In the beginning," he states, "was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made" (John 1:1-3, emphasis added throughout).

Here the Bible reveals that, before the creation of the heavens and the earth described in Genesis 1, the Word was with God, and God made everything through the Word. None of this is revealed in the Genesis account, yet these details help us understand who God was in the beginning and at the time of the earth's creation. We see that John gives us more information that helps us understand what happened "in the beginning" in Genesis 1. (To better understand who and what God is, and how the creation proves His existence, please request your free copy of Life's Ultimate Question: Does God Exist?)

Similarly, Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as being "without form, and void." This sketchy description offers no explanation for why the earth was in this condition. However, God reveals more details in other parts of His Word. We have to compile and consider all pertinent scriptures on a subject to gain a complete understanding.

For example, in another passage God explains that angels were present at the creation of the earth. The book of Genesis doesn't mention this, but it is an important truth. We find this detail recorded in the book of Job, where God asks Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? . . . Who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted with joy?" (Job 38:4,6-7). The "morning stars" and "sons of God"-the angels-exulted as they saw the earth miraculously come into being.

The angelic revolt

A key to understanding why the earth was "without form and void" involves what happened to some of these angels. Again, nothing of this angelic story is described in Genesis. But, later in His Word, God reveals there was a great angel, Lucifer, who rebelled against Him. "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: 'I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God . . . I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High'" (Isaiah 14:12-14).

Here God explains that Lucifer had a throne, representing a position of leadership and authority. He rose from somewhere below to try to overthrow God, but was "cut down to the ground."

Where was this place where Lucifer had his throne? Jesus Christ, whom we saw earlier was the "Word" alongside God at the creation, reveals more details. "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven," He said (Luke 10:18). Lucifer, who became Satan, was cast down from heaven-to the earth!

The Bible explains that Satan retains his authority over this planet. Notice what Satan told Christ: "Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, 'All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish'" (Luke 4:5-6).

Christ resisted this temptation but did not dispute the assertion of Satan's present authority. The Bible shows in many places that Satan has authority over the earth. He is even called "the god of this age" in 2Corinthians 4:4.

It is no accident that in Genesis 3, shortly after God created Adam and Eve, Satan appeared on the scene. The earth was-and still is-his domain. He had been cast down to earth before man's creation took place. As noted in the account of the temptation of Christ, Satan had received authority over the earth. He then rebelled against God in a battle in which he was cast down to the earth, as Christ recounted.

The earth is Satan's realm. The book of Job records God asking Satan, "From where do you come?" Satan's reply was, "From going to and fro on the earth and from
walking back and forth on it" (Job 1:7).

How earth became waste and empty

In Genesis we do not see details of the awe-inspiring initial creation, the creation long before Adam and Eve about which angels sang for joy. We do not read how that creation came to be in chaos-
"without form and void."

The text, though, does offer clues. Notice that the New International Version has a marginal notation regarding the translation of Genesis 1:2: "Now the earth was (or possibly became) formless and empty . . ."

Does God reveal elsewhere in his Word how the earth came to be in this disorderly state, "formless and empty"?; He gives us some telling hints in the book of Isaiah. "For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited" (Isaiah 45:18).

The term in vain here is the same word translated "without form" in Genesis 1:2. Yet here Isaiah records God as saying He did not originally create the earth in this condition. Other scriptures, such as Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23, describe similar devastation on the earth using the same words translated "without form, and void" in Genesis 1:2. There is no doubt that these words describe the earth as being empty, void, a wasteland.

The Genesis account simply does not provide all the details. But the Bible as a whole fills in other parts of the story. The missing pieces are given in other scriptures, which tell us of Satan's rebellion against God. They describe his attempt to overthrow God, and, as a result of a great supernatural battle, that he was cast down again.

We see what appears to be a parallel situation in Revelation 12:7-9, which apparently describes an attempt by Satan to overthrow God shortly before Christ's return. "And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast
out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."

Yet God has allowed Satan to retain authority over this present world. Satan even offered Christ the opportunity to share rulership over the earth under him.

You can see that, when we examine all the Scriptures, we find a great deal more information that illuminates and explains the Genesis account.

Earth renewed and restored

Consider another section of Scripture in which God inspired David to understand more about His Creation. "O LORD, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions . . . You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth" (Psalm 104:24,30).

The surface of the earth needed a renewal when God created the present life forms we see around us. So what does the fossil record depict? It shows a series of fossilized life forms in layered deposits scattered in the earth's crust. Man as we know him, made in God's image with enormous creative and spiritual abilities, has left written records that take us back a little more than 5,000 years.

This is a tiny span compared with what most scientists consider the age of the earth and stars to be based on their research. Man, in an incredibly short time, built the pyramids-which to this day defy imitation. Man has traveled to the moon and sent spacecraft to explore our solar system and beyond. Such achievements show the enormous difference in the earth before and after Adam.

How long did the angels exist before man was created? The Bible doesn't reveal the answer. How long did it take Lucifer to persuade as many as a third of the angels to rebel with him? (Revelation 12:4). Remember, angels are spirit beings for whom aging is of no consequence (Luke 20:36). Whatever length of time this might be, perhaps millions or billions of years, the angels were created and lived before the creation of Adam and Eve and the days of the renewal of the earth described in Genesis.

Why did God create angels? "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?" (Hebrews 1:14). God "has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to the angels" (Hebrews 2:5). God created angels to serve mankind. God is working out His plan of salvation on earth. The creation waits for the glorious moment when man inherits what God the Father planned from the start.

"For I consider," writes Paul, "that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility (waste), not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God" (Romans 8:18-21). (For more details, be sure to request your free booklets What Is Your Destiny? and The Gospel of the Kingdom from the address nearest you listed on page 2.)

The Bible explanation

Can the Bible explain the fossil record, evidence pointing to an ancient earth and divine creation at the same time? Yes, it can. We don't know the details of what happened before man's time. But Christ has assured us that when He returns "there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light" (Mark 4:22).

Instead of wandering through the confused, chaotic maze of the theory of evolution like so many, we should look to God's Word for assurance. It is there-directly from our Creator-that we find the truth of man's origin.

Perhaps the following quote from George Sim Johnston best sums up that truth: "The book of Genesis has held up well under the scrutiny of modern geology and archaeology. Twentieth-century physics, moreover, describes the beginning of the universe in virtually the same cosmological terms as Genesis. Space, time and matter came out of nothing in a single burst of light entirely hospitable to carbon-based life. A growing number of chemists and biologists agree that life had its origin from clay templates (see Genesis 2:7) . . . I would say all this is a curious development for Darwinists" (Reader's Digest, May 1991, p. 31).

But these things aren't a "curious development" to those who faithfully believe, as Christ did, in "every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). They know that such truths have been recorded for mankind in the Bible for thousands of years.

It is to the Bible that we should turn for our moral standards, to discover our one true source of salvation and, perhaps most of all, for our belief in the invisible Creator God. Then we should not doubt the real origin of the species mentioned in the creation epic, that rock-solid book of beginnings, Genesis.

(Contents)

© 2000-2008 United Church of God, an International Association

Related Information on Our Site:

Sidebar: The Search for Alternatives to a Creator
Sidebar: Blood Clotting: A Biological Miracle
Sidebar: The Case Against Evolution
Sidebar: Ancient Near-Eastern Concepts of Creation
Sidebar: Cooperation or Competition: Symbiosis vs. Evolution
Sidebar: Darwinism Not the Same as Evolution
Sidebar: Earth's Age: Does Genesis 1 Indicate a Time Interval?
Sidebar: The Scientific Evidence: A Critical Choice
Sidebar: The Miracle of the Eye
Sidebar: What Does the Fossil Record Show?
Sidebar: Genesis 1 and the Days of Creation
Sidebar: The Greek Concept of Creation
Sidebar: Does It Really Matter What You Believe?
Sidebar: Out-of-Place Fossils
Sidebar: Scientists, Creation and Evolution
Sidebar: Two Supposed Examples of Darwinian Evolution
Sidebar: The Testimony of the New Testament
Table of Contents that includes "Creation or Evolution - Does It Really Matter What You Believe?"

Bible and science:

• Does It Really Matter What You Believe?
• The Bible and Astronomy
• When the Bible Seems to Disagree with Science
• Evolution or Creation: Does It Really Matter?
• Creation or Evolution: Did God Create Man?
• Creation and Evolution: The Bible Explanation
• Understanding Biblical `Kinds'
• The Battle Over the Bible
• Can You Believe Both the Bible and Evolution?
• Darwinism in the Classroom

• Asking the Crucial Questions
• The Beginning of the Universe
• The Case for a Creator
• Evidence in Plain Sight
• The Giver of Life
• How Big is Big?
• Meet God
• The Grandeur of Almighty God
• Grasping the Vastness of Our Universe
• Our Privileged Place in the Universe
• A Long Time From Now in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...
• An Incredible Universe
• A Long Time From Now in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

• Britain Debates Life's Ultimate Question
• The Search for Alternatives to a Creator
• Consequences of Ideas
• An Overview of Conditions Around the World - Jan/Feb 1997
• Creation or Evolution:An Interview With Phillip Johnson
• A Course on Evolution and Faith
• The Battle Over God
• Collateral Damage: The Darwin Bomb
• Questions and Answers
• Darwinism in the Classroom

• Is the Whole World Deceived?
• How Does God Reveal Himself?
• What Is Faith?
• Considering the Existence of God
• The Scientific Evidence: A Critical Choice
• Letters From Our