[_ Old Earth _] EVOLUTION - A BELIEVER'S PERSPECTIVE

[St. bernard]

The following is not my work; hence, I do not assume to take any credit for it. I present this simply because these studies offer irrefutable evidence proving the folly of Darwin's theory, 'that man evolved from lesser beings'... which disputes the Word of God according to the Bible... that's what the arguments are all about; aren't they?

So! Take the weight off and relax, and have a serious look at how Bible believers perceive this issue. Note! This is food especially for Christians who have a need for a 'muscle-bound' argument on the subject of... 'EVOLUTION'.

Bless all who take the trouble to read and digest this.

A Creationist's Challenge To Evolutionists
Author:Robert Congelliere​

In TimeMagazine, August 23, 1999, evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould asserted that "evolutionis as well documented as any phenomenon in science" and "we can callevolution a 'fact'". This is typical of the stratagem used byevolutionists: If you make a statement strong enough and repeat it oftenenough, you may be able to convince yourself and others that it may be true. Iwould like to remind evolutionists that, despite their dogmatism, there aremany knowledgeable people who do not believe that the evidence supports thetheory of evolution.

One of themost-powerful pieces of evidence against evolution is the fossil record. Ifevolution occurred by slow, minute changes in living creatures, there would bethousands of times more transitional forms of these creatures in the fossilbeds than complete forms. Since the billions of fossils that have been foundare all complete forms, the obvious conclusion is: Evolution has neveroccurred! Though evolutionists have stated that there are many transitionalforms, this is simply not true. What evolutionists claim to be transitionalforms all have fully functional parts. A true transitional form would havenon-functioning parts or appendages, such as the nub of a leg or wing.

(1) Where are the trillions offossils of such true transitional forms?

Critics ofcreationism often say that creationism is simply religion, whereas evolutionismis based on science. The Bible says in Genesis 1 that all creatures reproduce"after their kind" (no change to another kind, i.e., no transitionalforms). So the complete absence of transitional forms in the fossil recordsupports creationism.

(2) Is this scientific evidencefor creationism, or isn't it?

I have alsonoted that evolutionists only discuss this subject in the broadest terms. Ifevolution is true, why don't they give us answers to questions such as these:

(3)Where did all the 90-pluselements come from (iron, barium, calcium, silver, nickel, neon, chlorine,etc)?

4) How do you explain theprecision in the design of the elements, with increasing numbers of electronsin orbit around the nucleus?

(5) Where did the thousands ofcompounds we find in the world come from: carbon dioxide, sodium chloride,calcium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid, oxalic acid, chlorophyll, sucrose,hydrogen sulfide, benzene, aluminum silicate, mercaptans, propane, silicondioxide, boric acid, etc.?

How was itdetermined how many bonds each element would have for combining with otherelements? When did these compounds develop from the elements (before the bigbang, during the big bang, after the big bang)? When evolutionists use the term"matter", which of the thousands of compounds are included? Whenevolutionists use the term "primordial soup", which of the elementsand compounds are included? Why do books on evolution, including grade-school,high-school and college textbooks not include such important, basicinformation? Evolutionists aremasters of speculation. Why don't they speculate about this?

(6) How did life develop fromnon-life?

(7) Where did the humanemotions, such as love, hate, and jealousy come from?

(8) What are the odds that theevolutionary process, proceeding by random changes, would produce human beings,plus millions of species of animals, birds, fish, and insects, all withsymmetrical features, i.e., one side being a mirror image of the other? We takesymmetry in all these creatures for granted, but is that a reasonable outcomefor a random process?

(9) What are the odds that ofthe millions of species of animals, birds, fish, and insects, a male of eachspecies developed at the same time and in the same place as a female of thesame species, so that the species could propagate?

(10) Why are there 2 sexesanyhow? This is not foreordained in the evolutionary framework. Is there somesort of plan here?

(11) If the first generation ofmating species didn't have parents, how did the mating pair get to that pointanyhow? Isn't evolution supposed to progress when an offspring of a mating pairhas a beneficial mutation?

Conclusion: Noparents, no evolution. A species would have to jump from a primitive form to afully developed male and female, each with the ability and instinct to mate.

(12) How did the heart, lungs,brain, stomach, veins, blood, kidneys, etc. develop in the first animal byslow, minute steps and the animal survive while these changes were occurring?

For example,did the first animal develop 10% of complete veins, then 20%, and on up to100%, with veins throughout its entire body and brain? Then how did the heartslowly develop in the animal and get attached to the veins in the right spot?How did the blood enter the system? The blood could not enter before the veinswere complete or it would spill out. Where did the blood come from? Did theblood have red corpuscles, white corpuscles, platelets, and plasma? At whatpoint in this process of development did the heart start beating?

Did the animaldevelop a partial stomach, then a complete stomach? After the stomach wasformed, how did the digestive juices enter the stomach? Where did thehydrochloric acid as part of the digestive juices come from? What about itskidney and bladder? The animal better not eat anything prior to this. How didthe animal survive during these changes? (And over thousands of years?) Ofcourse, at the same time the animal's eyes must be fully developed so it cansee its food and his brain must be fully developed so the animal can controlits body to get to the food.

Like theheart, brain, veins, and stomach, all of the organs and systems in the firstanimal's body must be fully functional in the first moments of life. Thisindicates that evolution couldn't occur, and the fossil record indicates thatit didn't occur!!! In other words, if you cannot come up with a detailed, feasiblescenario of how the first animal developed, the whole evolutionary theory goesout the window, because it never could have even gotten started! Or is yourattitude going to be: "Don't bother me with such details. My mind is madeup."?

(13) Why do books on evolution,including biology textbooks, always start with a fully developed animal whenattempting to explain how one species developed into another species? Why don'tevolutionists first explain how the first animal developed? (An animal with aheart, lungs, brain, stomach, etc.)

(14) What are the odds that theevolutionary process, proceeding by random changes, would produce a system inhuman reproduction whereby exactly 50% of offspring are male and 50% are female(based on 50% X-chromosomes and 50% Y-chromosomes)? Again – is there some sortof a plan here?

To acreationist, the incredible complexity of human life, animal life, plant life,and the universe is absolutely overwhelming evidence that there must have beena designer.

Evidence for adesigner: The law of gravity is basic to an understanding of the universe.

(15) Where did the law ofgravity come from? Did it have a beginning? Isn't it reasonable to assume thatwhen matter was created, the law of gravity was established at the same time toregulate matter?

Furtherevidence: The earth receives an incredible amount of energy from the sun, eventhough the sun is 93,000,000 miles away. Yet the earth only receives one partin 2 trillion of the sun's total energy. And since the sun is only an averagestar among the 100 trillion billion stars in the universe, the total energy inall these stars is absolutely beyond human comprehension. (I have read that thenumber of stars is greater than the number of grains of sand in every beach anddesert in the world!)

(16) Where did this energy comefrom? Isn’t the only reasonable answer that it was the result of a creative actby an almighty designer/creator?

(17) Why do evolutionistssummarily dismiss the evidence from design without any serious consideration?

ProfessorD.M.S. Watson, zoologist and Chair of Evolution at University College Londonhas given us some insight as to why this is so. He said, "Evolution [is] a theoryuniversally accepted not because it can be proved by logically coherent evidenceto be true, but becausethe only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible". This of course is an admission that the foundation ofevolution is not science, but a rejection of the supernatural. Evolutionthen is simply the best alternative anyone has been able to come up with. Thisalso means that evolution is the only field in science where one decides on theanswer first, and then looks for evidence to support that predetermined answer.

(18) Other than rejection ofthe supernatural, how else can one explain the steadfast adherence ofevolutionists to this theory even though they do not know the origin of the 3main bases of evolution: the origin of matter, the origin of energy, and theorigin of life?

If you believe in evolution:

(19) Can you give us just onecoercive proof of evolution, i.e., a proof that absolutely eliminates any otherpossible explanation for the origin of the universe, the material world, andhuman life?

(20) Isn't it true that ratherthan proofs of evolution, all that evolutionists can come up with are evidencesfor evolution to someone who already believes in evolution?

Let's see someanswers to important questions such as these, rather than a discussion of whatis science and what is religion. That type of discussion is entirelyirrelevant. What we seek is the truth, and creationism is a far more reasonableand logical explanation of the origin of the universe, the material world, andhuman life.

Students: Makea copy of this CHALLENGE TO EVOLUTIONISTS and ask your teacher or professor togive you answers to these questions. If they cannot, you have a right to beskeptical that what they are teaching you about evolution is true. Also, givecopies to your fellow students so that they too will be aware that there are hugeflaws in the theory of evolution. And of course it is still a theory, not a"fact".

Robert H. Congelliere

 

[St. bernard]

Robert Congelliere continues to say in his manuscript... ACreationist's Challenge To Evolutionists...

Big Problems With The Big Bang

Author:Bruce Malone

Ithas beendemonstrated both mathematically and experimentally that time is notaconstant, but is dependent on the gravitational pull at the location wheretimeis being measured. This concept was first proposed by Albert Einstein and iscalledgravitational time dilation.

Thisarticleis one of many found within Mr. Malone's excellent book, Search forthe Truth.

Numerousexperimentsseem to indicate that this strange concept is true. For instance,time moves 5microseconds per year slower at the Royal Greenwich Observatory(which islocated at sea level) than it does at the National Bureau ofStandards inBoulder, Colorado (which is 1 mile above sea level). Atomic clocksflown aroundthe world in different directions seem to vary by the amountpredicted byEinstein’s equations. The direct result of this gravitational timedilation isthat seemingly strange things happen to time near areas of spaceknown as blackholes.

Ablack holeis an area where matter is so concentrated that its gravity preventseven lightfrom escaping. Indirect observations seem to indicate that severalareas of ouruniverse do indeed contain black holes. Black holes are so densethat theyactually "bend" the fabric of space. In addition, timemovesexceedingly slow at the boundary of the black hole. Thus, if you couldmovefrom the center of a black hole outward, while observing what was happeningfaraway, it would appear that clocks and all natural processes were proceedinginrapid fast-forward. Although one has never been observed, Einstein’sequationsalso predict the existence of "white holes". Instead ofcollapsinginward, matter (and space itself) would expand outward from a"whitehole". When matter inside the white hole moves past theboundary, theboundary begins to shrink inward. Eventually the radius shrinks tozero and thewhite hole disappears, leaving behind all of the matter which itoriginallycontained. However, the first material out would have aged millionsor billionsof years while the last material out may only have aged a matter ofdays.

Dr.Russell Humphreys has proposed that this expansionof a "white hole"rather than the standard "big bang"theory is the method God used tocreate the universe we live in. Three effectsshould be apparent if this is howour universe formed. First, the expansion ofspace would have left a veryuniform background radiation throughout theuniverse. Second, as space itselfexpanded, the light coming from stars (whichformed as the matter moved out ofthe white hole) would be shifted toward thered end of the spectrum. Third, ifthe earth was close to the center of ouruniverse, it would have been one of thelast things to have emerged from thewhite hole. Billions of years would haveelapsed for distant stars givingplenty of time for light from those stars tohave reached the earth. Thesethree observations are exactly what we find as weobserve our universe!

Fromthemoment that all the matter of the universe was created (day one ofcreation),until the earth emerged from near the center of the white hole (atwhich pointstars would have appeared), it is quite mathematically feasible thatonly four24-hour-days had passed on earth. Although this theory is quitecontroversial(and rejected out of hand by those who are committed toevolutionarydevelopment theories), this type of work demonstrates that there isnotnecessarily a contradiction between a six day creation and modern science.

EvolutionIs Based On ModernMyths​

Author:Alpha Omega Institute​

Thereis apreponderance of scientific evidence to support creation as thecorrectexplanation for our existence. The misconception that evolution issciencewhile creation is religion is propagated by a variety of"myths"surrounding the ‘so-called evidence’ for evolution in totaldisregard of thearchaeological discoveries in evidence of support ofIntelligent Creation.

Myth:

Our universe is the result of explosive expansion of the"Cosmic Egg" billions of years ago.

Reality:

Thisjust ignores the bigger question-who laid the "cosmic egg"? The firstlaw of thermodynamics proves that matter and energy cannot just appear.Evolutionists must ignore the most basic law of science at the very start oftheir belief system. Furthermore, explosions do not result in increasedorganization of matter. Has an explosion ever created ordered complexity?

Myth:

The fossil record proves evolution.

Reality:

Thereare no transitions between vastly different types of animals in either theliving world or the fossil record. Lining up three objects by size or shapedoes not prove that one turned into the other.

Myth:

Structural and biochemical similarities prove common ancestry.

Reality:

Thelack of fossil transition strongly refute this myth. Common ancestry is onlyone of two possible explanations for similarities. Purposeful design canexplain the same features in a more direct way. In addition, totally differentorganisms often display similar features. This supports the existence of acommon designer.

Myth:

The rock layers of the earth form the pages of earth's historyshowing million of years of evolutionary progression.

Reality:

Thefossil record does not show a clear "simple-to-complex" progressionof life forms. Life is complex and well developed wherever it is found in thefossil record. Major groups of plants and animals appear suddenly in the fossilrecord, with nothing leading up to them. Most rock layers and the fossils theycontain can be explained better by a worldwide flood and subsequent events.

Myth:

Radiometric dating methods are "absolute." They areaccurate and reliable.

Reality:

Althoughradiometric dating methods seem to show a trend of great age, these methodsdepend upon numerous other assumptions. When used to date events of known age,such as lava flow in Hawaii or the Grand Canyon, they have been wrong by ordersof magnitude. How can we be sure they are accurate for events of unknown age?Furthermore, the vast majority of dating method indicate a very young earth.

Myth:

The human body contains many "vestigial organs" ,leftovers from our evolutionary development.

Reality:

Althoughat one time there were dozens of features of the human body listed asvestigial, most have been shown to have important functions. After all, even ifa few parts have lost their original function that does not prove evolution. Todemonstrate evolution, you need to show the development of completely newstructures, not the loss and degeneration of previous characteristics.

Myth:

The fossil record for human evolution is complete and clear.

Reality:

Alltoo often the propagandists for evolution present their story with statementssuch as, "Every knowing person believes that man descended from apes.Today there is no such thing as the theory of evolution, it is the fact ofevolution." (Ernst Mayr) The evidence for human evolution is fragmentaryand reconstruction involves artistic license. Many competent scientists totallyreject evolution. They acknowledge that it is not even a good scientific theory,much less a fact.

Thisis acondensation of an article by Dave Nutting of Alpha Omega Institute.AlphaOmega is a non-profit creation education organization in Colorado and canbereached at http://www.discovercreation.org/.

Acomplete setof articles examining science and reality from a Christianperspective can befound at http://www.searchforthetruth.org/

 

[St. bernard]

Further to Robert Congellier's study, he presents 'James Perloff's' study entitled... 'Ficticious Apemen'... He writes...
In 1999, following the controversial de-emphasis ofevolution in Kansas schools, Time Magazine struck in its August 23 issue withan editorial denouncing creationists and a huge cover story called "How Man Evolved." The latter displayed man's supposed oldest ancestor–Ardipithecus ramidus – while neglecting to tell readers that its fragments had been found scattered over an area of about one mile, and put together to form a"missing link."

Time's cover was of a reconstructed ape-man skull, yet well less than half the skull consisted of actual fossil fragments – the rest was plaster, moulded by imagination. The most recent issue of Time, dated July 23, takes no less liberty. On the cover is a painting of an ape-man called Ardipithecus ramiduskadabba with the headline "How Apes Became Human." Inside, the article begins: "Meet your new-found ancestor." The painting is based on some fragmentary bones recently found in Ethiopia by a graduate student named Yohannes Haile-Selassie.

Time assures it’s readers that the creature walked upright. The evidence for this? A single toe bone. Time displays the bone with the unequivocal caption: "THIS TOE BONE PROVES THE CREATURE WALKED ON TWO LEGS." But not until the last page of the eight-page article do readers learn that the toe bone was actually found some ten miles from the other bones.What evidence exists that the toe bone belonged to Haile-Selassie's other specimens? None, other than speculation!

There is great danger in basing conclusions on a single bone. In 1922, paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, an ardent evolutionist, was shown a single tooth found in Nebraska by geologist Harold Cook. After examining it, Osborn declared it belonged to an early ape-man, whom he named 'Hesperopithecus haroldcookii' in Cook's honour. Popularly, it became known as "Nebraska Man." Osborn hailed the tooth as "the herald of anthropoid apes in America." At the American Museum of Natural History,William K. Gregory and Milo Hellman, specialists in teeth, said after careful study that the tooth was from a species closer to man than ape. Harris Hawthorne Wilder, a zoology professor at Smith College, wrote: "Judging from the tooth alone the animal seems to have been about halfway between Pithecanthropus [Java Man] and the man of the present day, or perhaps better between Pithecanthropus and the man of the Neanderthal type. ..." In England, evolutionist Grafton Elliot Smith convinced the Illustrated London News to publish an artist's rendering of Nebraska Man. The picture, which appeared in a two-page spread and received wide distribution, showed two brutish, naked ape-persons, the male with a club, the female gathering roots. All this from one tooth! However, further excavations at Cook's site revealed that the tooth belonged neither to ape nor man, but to a peccary, a close relative of the pig.

Or take the Piltdown Man. It was declared an ape-man, 500,000 years old, and validated by many of Britain's leading scientists, including Grafton Elliot Smith, an atomist Sir Arthur Keith and British Museum geologist Arthur Smith Woodward. At the time the discovery was announced (1912), the New York Times ran this headline: "Darwin Theory Proved True." For the next four decades, Piltdown Man was evolution's greatest showcase, featured in textbooks and encyclopaedias. But what did the Piltdown Man actually consist of? A very recent orang-utan jaw, which had been stained to look old, with its teeth filed down to make them more human-looking, planted together with a human skull bone, also stained to create an appearanceof age.

Those who think such mistakes no longer occur need only consider the Archaeoraptor, promoted in a 10-page colour spread in the November 1999 National Geographic as the "true missing link" between dinosaurs and birds. The fossil was displayed at National Geographic's Explorers Hall and viewed by over 100,000 people. However, it too turned out to be a fake – someone had simply glued together fragments of bird and dinosaur fossils. Even if Time turns out to be correct, and Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba walked on two feet, would it prove he was our "newfound ancestor"?

This assertion is based on a long-standing evolutionary assumption, usually stated something like this: "Humans are the only creatures that have evolved to the point where they can walk on two feet; therefore, if we can find the fossil of an animal that could walk on two feet, such a creature was our ancestor."However, the assumption that two-footed mobility establishes human kinship is groundless. Gorillas occasionally walk bi-pedally; Tanzanian chimpanzees are seen standing on two legs when gathering fruit from small trees; Zaire's pygmy chimpanzee walks upright so often that it has been dubbed "a living link." Science News reports of the latter: "Like modern gorillas they tend to be knuckle-walkers on the ground, yet they seem to be natural bipeds, too, frequently walking upright both on the ground and in the trees." So even if a fossil creature did have some limited ability to stand on two feet, it doesn't make itman's ancestor any more than these modern apes.

And man is not the only bipedal creature. Birds are bipedal; so was the T-rex. Therefore, are they human ancestors? Time refers to"fossil discoveries as far back as Java Man in the 1890s" as validating the relationship between man and ape. But Time does not relate much of what is known about those finds. The Java Man story began with Ernst Haeckel, the German zoologist who has become notorious for using fraudulent drawings of embryos to prove the theory of evolution (See the July issue of WorldNet Magazine). Haeckel was convinced that an ape-man must have existed,and he named it Pithecanthropus alalus: ape-man without speech.

One of Haeckel's students, Eugene Dubois, became determined to find Pithecanthropus. Haeckel believed men might have separated from apes somewhere in Southern Asia. So in 1887, Dubois signed up as a doctor with the Dutch medical corps in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia),intending to hunt for fossils during all his spare time. Dubois, it should benoted, had no formal training in geology or paleontology at the time, and his"archaeological team" consisted of prison convicts with two army corporals as supervisors. Years of excavation produced little of significance. Then, in 1891, along Java's Solo River, the labourers dug up a skullcap that appeared rather apelike, with a low forehead and large eyebrow ridges. Dubois initially considered it from a chimpanzee, even though there is no evidence that this ape ever lived in Asia. However, the following year, the diggers unearthed a thigh bone that was clearly human. Dubois, like Piltdown's discoverers, presumed that an apelike bone somewhere near a human bone meant the two belonged to the same creature, constituting Darwin's missing link. Haeckel, who had not even seen the bones, telegraphed Dubois:"From the inventor of Pithecanthropus to his happy discoverer!"

In 1895,Dubois returned to Europe and displayed his fossils. The response from experts was mixed, however. Rudolph Virchow, who had once been Haeckel's professor and is regarded as the father of modern pathology,said: "In my opinion, this creature was an animal, a giant gibbon, infact. The thigh bone has not the slightest connection with the skull." The circumstances of Dubois' find were unorthodox. He had apparently been absent when the convicts dug up his fossils. Maps and diagrams of the site were not made until after the excavation. Under such conditions, a modern dig would be disregarded. In 1907,an expedition of German scientists from various disciplines, led by Professor M. Lenore Selenka, travelled to Java seeking more clues to man's ancestry in the region of Dubois' discovery. However, noe vidence for Pithecanthropus was found. In the stratum of Dubois' find, thescientists found hearths and flora and fauna that looked rather modern. The expedition's report also noted a nearby volcano that caused periodic flooding in the area. Java Man had been found in volcanic sediments. The report observed that the chemical nature of those sediments, not ancient age, probably caused the fossilization of Pithecanthropus. Nevertheless, the Selenka findings and various deficiencies of Dubois' work were largely ignored, and Java Man became one of evolution's undisputed "facts."

Then there was Peking Man, worked on and validated by a number of Piltdown alumni, including Davidson Black, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Smith. In seeing text book portrayals of Peking Man, few students learned that the skulls had been found in scattered little fragments, and that the reconstructions were actually composites taken from various individuals. Where fragments were missing, plaster substituted, and the famous final images of Peking Man were the creations of a sculptress named Lucille Swann. Later, all of the Peking Man fossils mysteriously vanished, except for a couple of teeth, preventing Peking Man from being subjected to the kind of checking thatd oomed Piltdown Man.

Neanderthals were long portrayed as ape-men, stooped over. This misconception was largely the result of a faulty reconstruction by French paleontologist Marcellin Boule,who mistook the skeleton of a man with kyphosis (hunchback) for an ape-man in the process of becoming upright. Another snag: Neanderthal skulls are larger than those of modern humans. This flies in the face of evolutionary tradition, which says that man evolved progressively from creatures with smaller brains and skulls. In any event, Neanderthals are no longer classed as "ape-men," and some evolutionists have even discarded them as human ancestors; which basically leaves us with australopithecines, currently in vogue as man's ancestor. However, australopithecine fossils show that they had long forearms and shorthind legs, like today's apes. They also had long curved fingers and toes, like those apes use for tree-swinging. This may pose a problem for Time's thesis, since it claims the toe bone of Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba was over 5 million years old, yet relatively human-like – implying that it was more evolved than the toes of australopithecines, who supposedly came 2 million years later. The main substance to the claim that austral opithecines are our ancestors is some evidence suggesting that the famed "Lucy" and her peers may have walked upright. But as noted, limited bi-pedality does not prove human ancestry, and a number of scientists – contrary to the impression created in Time – have disagreed that australopithecines are man's relatives. Britain's Lord Solly Zuckerman, who was raised to peerage for his scientific achievements, was a leading authority on australopithecines, having subjected them to years of biometric testing. He stated:

For my own part, the anatomical basis for the claim that the australopithecines walked and ran upright like man is so much more flimsy than the evidence which points to the conclusion that their gait was some variant of what one sees in subhuman primates, that it remains unacceptable.

Charles Oxnard, former director of graduate studies and professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, subjected austral opithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis. Stephen Jay Gould called him "our leading expert on the quantitative study of skeletons." Oxnard concluded:

[T]he australopithecines known over the last several decades are now irrevocably removed from a place in the evolution of human bi-pedalism, possibly from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes and certainly from any place in the direct human lineage. All of this should make us wonder about the usual presentation of human evolutionin introductory textbooks, in encyclopaedias and in popular publications. In such volumes not only are australopithecines described as being of known bodily size and shape, but as possessing such abilities as bi-pedality and tool-using and-making and such developments as the use of fire and specific social structures. Even facial features are happily (and non-scientifically) reconstructed.

 

[St. bernard]

Concluding James Perloff's study entitled 'Ficticious 'Apemen''...

The July 23Timeincludes a graphic showing the evolution of man, starting with the supposedArdipithecus ramidus kadabba, with progressively more human figures culminatingin man. However, it is very easy to arrange bones to demonstrate"evolutionary progress". In 1927,Osborn, along with otherevolutionists, created a diagram of man's evolution. Skulls were displayed inprogressive order. No. 1 in the sequence was the fraudulent Piltdown Man. No.4 was a Neanderthal; No. 6 Cro-Magnon Man. No. 8was labelled "Australian"(aborigine). No. 9? "Negro." No.10?"Chinese." No. 11 (andlast)? "Caucasian."

Because99percent of an organism's biology resides in its soft anatomy, it is very easyto invest a bone with imagination. For this reason – despite the protests ofDarwinists – evolutionary anthropology is not a science like physics orchemistry. The laws of physics and chemistry can be demonstrated in a highschool laboratory. Evolutionary anthropology, on the other hand, consists ofspeculations about unobserved events that supposedly occurred millions of yearsago. Science cannot observe the past with the same authority as the present. AsLowenstein and Zihlman noted in New Scientist: "The subjective element inthis approach to building evolutionary trees, which many palaeontologistsadvocate with almost religious fervour, is demonstrated by the outcome: Thereis no single family tree on which they agree."

There was awealth of evidence concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy: hundreds ofeye witnesses interviewed by the Warren Commission; the Zapruder movie thatcaught the actual slaying; the autopsy; fingerprint evidence; ballisticsevidence. Nevertheless, controversy has never stopped raging about whatactually took place. Scores of books challenged the evidence, offering widelydiffering explanations as to who killed Kennedy, from what angle(s) he wasshot, etc. Even the autopsy results were challenged in a best-selling book.

Granted, theKennedy assassination was apolitically charged event. Nonetheless, if that muchdisagreement can occur over something that happened just 38 years ago, how cana paleontologist pickup a fragment of bone, supposedly 5 million years old, anddeclare its meaning with a high degree of certainty? Unlike the Kennedyassassination, there are no eye-witnesses who saw this creature, no Zaprudermovie of it, no soft tissues to examine.

Otherweaknesses permeate the Time article. It states that Haile-Selassie's bones areknown to be 5.6-5.8 million years old, because this "can be accuratelygauged by a technique known as argon-argon dating." It says the resultwas" confirmed by a second dating method." However, argon-argondating has been demonstrated in various studies to be unreliable, and Timedoesn't mention what the second method was.

Time refers tothe "astonishingly complete skeleton of Lucy"– but those words beliethe fact that about 60 percent of Lucy's skeleton, including most of the skull,was missing.

In explainingwhy apes began to walk upright, Time quotes anthropologist C. OwenLovejoy:"To walk upright you have to do so in synchrony. If the ligamentsand muscles are out of synch, that leads to injuries. And then you'd be cheetahmeat." But even fully coordinated, healthy human beings cannot outrun acheetah! Time also neglects the fact that species vary widely withinthemselves. Darwinian anthropologists use cranial capacity, (skull size) tojudge the evolutionary status of our supposed ancestors, disregarding the factthat even in modern humans, cranial capacity ranges from700 to 2200 cubiccentimetres, and has no bearing on intelligence. People's bone structure variesgreatly, based on heredity, age, sex, health and climate. Some are big-boned,some small-boned. There are sumo wrestlers and pygmies. Doubtless, our ancientforebears were also diverse in their looks. How, then, can one assign a singlefossil bone to a distinct place in human history? Apes vary widely, too;australopithecines may simply be a type that became extinct. Science journalistRoger Lewin, though an outspoken evolutionist, has noted:

It is an unfortunatetruth that fossils do note merge from the ground with labels already attachedto them. And it is bad enough that much of the labelling was done in the nameof egoism and a naive lack of appreciation of variation between individuals;each nuance in shape was taken to indicate a difference in type rather thannatural variation within a population.

Another odditysurfaces in Time's diagram of the evolution of humans, chimps and gorillas.Human ancestors are shown going back almost 6 million years. But no chimpanzeeor gorilla ancestors are depicted before a million years ago. If chimps andhumans really diverged about 7million years ago, as Time asserts, then whereare all the fossils of chimpanzee and gorilla ancestors? Why does every bonefragment turn out to be a human ancestor? Perhaps that question was answered byDr. Tim White, anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Thoughquoted in Time, and noted as Haile-Selassie's thesis adviser, he has previouslystated: "The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want somuch to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone."
As creationist Marvin Lube now notes, "Noone will care if you discover the oldest fossil broccoli, but if you arefortunate enough to discover the oldest fossil human, the world will beat apath to your door."

 

[St. bernard]

Further to this discussion, Bruce Malone's study entitled, 'Fossils Do Not Prove Evolution' gives further insight worth pondering...


Fossils! The very name brings to mind images ofuntold ages past . . . dinosaurs roaming ancient swamps . . . slow but steadyprogression as simple sea life was transformed into today's complex variety. Isthis an accurate reconstruction of the past or is ‘a worldwide flood’ thecorrect explanation of the fossil record?

Fossils are the preserved evidence of past life.They are found in every part of the world, including the tops of the highestmountains. They may be as simple as a seashell which has left a permanentimpression in sandstone or as grandiose as a giant plesiosaur whose bones haveturned to rock after rapid burial. The fossils themselves tell us neither theirage nor how they became encased in the rock layers. Rather, they must beinterpreted within some view of earth history. Many people have been led tobelieve that the existence of fossils proves that millions of years havepassed. In reality, fossils can form quite rapidly. Heat and pressure fromrapid burial can accelerate the fossilization process. Geologic conditionsfollowing a worldwide flood would have exceeded anything imaginable today andmust have led to the rapid fossilization of the plants and animals on a massivescale.

Fossilization can happen rapidly under the rightconditions, but it is a rare event today. Yet there are mass burial sitesthroughout the world that are tightly packed with millions of fossils.Apparently, billions of organisms were washed together by the mass destructionof the worldwide flood, completely buried, and rapidly fossilized. Thesemassive and extensive fossil graveyards would be the predictable result of aworldwide flood, but would hardly fit the slow accumulation model whichcontinues to be taught as the primary explanation of the fossil record.Something dramatically different must have happened in the past to have causedthe wide spread fossilization which we find all over our planet. Noah's floodwould have been this event.

Geologists and paleontologists operating from aChristian worldview acknowledge the possibility that a worldwide catastropheburied unimaginable amounts of plant-sand animals. This was the disasterdocumented in the first book of the Bible. It lasted at least one year and hadreverberations which lasted for centuries. Sea creatures would have been buriedfirst (the salinity and temperature of the oceans would have changed during thecatastrophe, wiping out massive numbers of these sea creatures). Even after theflood, plant and animal extinction would have been common as many types ofcreatures failed to adapt to dramatically changing conditions.

Although any order of burial in a flood would bepossible, the general tendency would be for sea life to be buried in the lowerrock layers and land animals to be buried indifferent rock layers correspondingto their ecological niche. This tendency is generally found.

Creation geologists (and there are many of them)believe that the majority of the geologic record is a result of geologicactivity during and subsequent to the year-long worldwide flood. This floodwould have been an incredible complex event.

Geologist and paleontologists operating from anevolutionary world view acknowledge local catastrophes, but do not allowconsideration of a worldwide flood. This would wipe out the "slow changeover eons of time" interpretation of the fossils which is needed tocontinue believing in evolution.
Onlyone interpretation of the evidence can be correct and only one interpretationof the evidence agrees with what the Bible claims is the history of our planet.

 

[DarkHorseRising]

I really don't have the time to reply to everything here, so I'll point out some of the more glaring flaws:


1. You assert that the fossil record only contains "complete" forms and not "transitional" forms. I'm confused as to your meaning of these terms. Yes, all fossils have nothing but functioning parts; that's how it works. A minor variance in genotype produces a slight variation in the phenotype, which may confer a slight advantage to the organism. It absolutely must have a function in order to be selected for. A trait that's not functional will experience no positive selective pressure whatsoever.

3. The 91 elements past Hydrogen (Helium through to Uranium) were produced from the sun, or other stars. This is a process known as nuclear fusion. It has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution.

4. This makes me worry that you don't understand basic chemistry. The atomic numbers are sequential because protons exist as single units, not fractions. Few atoms do have an equal number of protons and electrons; in most cases the electrons are shared or moving.

5. The valence number of each element was derived mathematically and then proven experimentally. For example, if you were to break down pure water, you would get 2 moles of hydrogen atoms for every mole of oxygen atoms. The ratio is constant, indicating a 2:1 relationship.

6. it didn't.

9 & 10. Your assumption as to how sexual reproduction began is wildly incorrect. In a nutshell, sexual reproduction allows for the removal of bad genes from a population. Males and females developed from the differing strategies of gamete production. With females, the gamete is heavily invested in, whereas with males, large numbers of gametes are produced in the hopes that a few will survive and reproduce.

14. This is the process of meiosis. We have two copies of our genotype; males therefore have an X and Y chromosome and females have two X chromosomes. gametes however are haploid, not diploid. So every female gamete has an X chromosome, whereas half the male gametes have an X and half have a Y. Each sperm has a 50% chance of fertilizing the egg.

17. I can turn this question around. Why do opponents of evolution assume that God is only capable of creating fixed, immutable species? I don't believe for a minute that God is incapable of creating a genetic code capable of allowing life to withstand a changing world. In fact, the more complex we discover our world to be, the more proof that it's not just an accident or freak of nature; that God clearly had a great plan in it all.

20. I'm not sure what your distinction is between "proofs" and "evidences". Formal proofs only exist in mathematics. Evolution has been observed in many, many cases both in laboratory settings and in nature. This is all evidence.

 

[St. bernard]

In the same vein and with a view to offer a genuine Christian's perspective of the theory of evolution, I present the published work of Rebekah Branham Smith and her husband George Smith.


In 1857, Darwin came up with astory of creation that does not require a Creator. His ideas are illogical,un-provable, and contain more wishful thinking than fact. Yet, for nearly 150years, he has been hailed as one of the greatest intellectuals of our century.How much longer will Darwinists be able to deny the obvious?



The creed of theevolutionists reads thus: "I believe that life on Earth began byitself, spontaneously, in a primordial chemical stew that contained the properraw materials to produce a living cell. Over millions of years, this primitivesingle-cell creature, by chance and random mutation, grew more complex,becoming sponges, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and ultimately our own hairyfamily, the mammals."



This is the philosophyof naturalistic evolution that is being taught as fact to students in oureducational system, regardless of whether they or their parents object. But thereal fact is that new scientific discoveries have Darwinists scrambling to findevidence to support the evolutionary process. Many of the top biologists arenow willing to concede that the "fact" of evolution is, in reality,nothing more than an assumption.

Interestingly, at the very moment when creationists seem to be gaining groundin the evolution debate, Pope John Paul II has chosen to officially extend hisinfluence, and the influence of the Catholic Church, to include the cause of Darwin. In a statementissued to his Pontifical Academy of Science (a group of 80 academic advisors) afew weeks ago, he declared that "new knowledge leads to recognition ofthe theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis." A"convergence" of scientific evidence gathered in the past 50 yearsmakes "a significant argument in favor of this theory," hewrote.

For the Roman Catholic Church to take a stand in favor of evolution is nosurprise. Since Pope Pius XII called evolution a "serious hypothesis"in 1950, successive popes have attempted to reconcile religion and science byembracing a theory that is known as "theistic evolution" (the theorythat God created living forms indirectly, through natural selection, and thatnature by itself has the power to bring forth life from non-life), a hybridphilosophy of compromise that is even more diabolical than that of pureDarwinism.

But the real surprise in the pope's recent declaration was his statementregarding "new knowledge." Is he talking about evidence? If so, thenyou can rest assured that he is bluffing, and that once again Satan is tryingto muddy the waters. There is evidence - real evidence - but it is far frombeing a "significant argument in favor of this theory." It isevidence that even the most ardent Darwinists cannot explain away.

A fact that is rarely, if ever, mentioned by the teachers of Darwin's doctrine is thatDarwin himself was never totally confident with his own theory! In hisbook, The Origin of Species, he noted: "The number of intermediatevarieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, [must] be truly enormous.Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of suchintermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such graduatedorganic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objectionwhich can be urged against my theory." Darwin attributed this lack of fossilevidence to the fact that paleontology was at that time a very new science. Hesurmised that surely, with the passing of time, more fossils would be found tofill the gaps that he could not account for.

Surprise! Paleontologists have certainly foundmore fossils, but they have only worsened Darwin'sdilemma. The scientific evidence proves that most fossil species appeared allat once, fully formed, and they changed very little throughout their existence.These observations, referred to as sudden appearance and stasis, havebeen rationalized by evolutionary theorists as being periods for which thegeological record had not yet been found. However, in 1987 major fossil bedswere discovered in Greenland, China, Siberia, and Namibia that prove that a period ofbiological creation occurred at virtually the same instant in geologic time allaround the world. This has been named the Cambrian Explosion - an erathat appears to have occurred approximately 530 million years ago, when almostevery animal phylum, (the major taxonomic group of animals and plants)seemingly popped into existence from nowhere, sketching out the blueprints for virtuallythe whole animal kingdom!

The word phylum (phyla for plural)refers to the broadest classification of animals, as opposed to a singlespecies. For instance, the phylum that contains humans also includes everyanimal with a backbone - from frogs to elephants. But as different as thecreatures within a phylum are, even greater are the differences between phyla.Just as the body architecture of a chimpanzee is very different than that of afish (same phylum), that difference is even more inherent when compared to aslug or sea urchin (separate phylum). The most significant aspect of theCambrian Explosion isn't just the sudden appearance of new species. It is thesimultaneous appearance of species that are so different that they belong indifferent phyla. Such an occurrence directly contradicts Darwin's theory that new phyla are producedas species slowly split off from each other, developing different body plansaccording to their needs.

Last year, Time magazine titled theircover story on the Cambrian Explosion "When Life Exploded,"2 and they posed the question: "Where did thisextraordinary bestiary come from, and why did it emerge so quickly?"Geologists, geochemists, and paleontologists have launched what is being calledan "unprecedented effort" to find what might have occurred to haveput evolution into sudden overdrive. They need to explain why "complexcreatures with teeth and tentacles and claws and jaws materialized with thesuddenness of apparitions," otherwise, it will look too much like amiracle. But even they are forced to admit that they must "delicatelyslide across data-thin ice, suggesting scenarios that are based on intuitionrather than solid evidence."

So, where is the "new knowledge" that supports Darwin's theory? It should be hard to tellwhere one species ends and another begins, but that's not what the evidenceshows. Science has been left with not one, but thousands of missing links toaccount for. More than 100,000 species have been identified from fossils (in Darwin's day, only a fewhundred such fossil species were known). More than a million living specieshave been identified by science today. But between the extinct fossil speciesand the living species, only a very few could (arguably) be considered as a"link" between the two (living and fossil).

The field of molecular biology has not been kind to Darwin's theories either. There is absolutelyno evidence to support the assumption that unintelligent material processes arecapable of forming living organisms by chemical evolution. Experiments with pre-bioticstews (warm ponds enriched with life-building molecules) conducted in anattempt to show that a live, single-cell creature can be created; have failedto produce anything even remotely resembling life! Dr. Hugh Ross, an astronomerand the founder of Reasons to Believe, a Christian apologetics organization,writes in his book, The Creator and the Cosmos, regarding a scientificprinciple known as irreducible complexity:

"Under natural circumstances, destructive chemical processes operateat least as frequently as constructive chemical processes. The bottom line is[that] the odds for the assembly of the simplest living entity actually growworse as more details are figured into the calculation.... Minimum complexitypresents another problem. Organisms below a certain level of complexity cannotsurvive independently." 3

In an irreducibly complex system, each and every part of that system must be inplace and operating, and if any one of the parts is removed or destroyed, allfunction ceases. This irreducible complexity exists even at the level of asingle cell. Since the invention of the electron microscope (in 1931,seventy-five years after Darwin published his theory), science has been ableto observe a level of complexity in even the most simple bacterium that makesthe most advanced microprocessor we can produce seem primitive by comparison.And it's all or nothing, which cancels out any argument by Darwinists that thecomplex functions of a single cell such as synthesis, repair, and communicationdeveloped through a process of mutation and natural selection.

Also on the molecular level, science now knows that species have much the samestructure that they have always had, and biologically speaking, no reason canbe found to assume that current species descended from earlier species.Obviously, there is a similarity between some life forms, but similarity notenough to prove a transition from one to another. As biologist PaulNelson, editor of Origins Research, a journal devoted to thecreation/evolution controversy, explains: "There's no biologicalmechanism we know of that can produce that kind of change." Of course,we aren't surprised at the similarities between some species. Their existencemerely shows that the Creator combined certain features of His previouscreations in His own evolutionary process. As God’s prophet to this final age,William Marrion Branham illustrated regarding the design of man: "He might have given him a handlike a monkey. He might have given him a face like a chimpanzee. He might havegiven him a foot like a bear. But, God put a soul in a man. "4

In the face of such evidence, you may ask, "Why won't Darwinism die?"The fact is that science cannot allow it to die. For nearly 150 years, the Darwinianversion of evolution has been presented to the public as indisputable,scientific fact. Any belief in creation by intelligent design has beencharacterized as superstition and religious bias. Darwinism is the only othertheory science can come up with so that the secularists can have a creationstory of their own, so they can't possibly rule it out. Therefore, Darwinismmust be true, because nothing else (according to their thinking) will work!Such intellectual arrogance cannot abide with Truth!

Just consider the amount of faith it actually takes to believe in arandom-accident universe versus a God designed, finely balanced universe. Westand with Brother Branham as he so candidly points out, "That takes too muchfaith for me. I'd just rather believe what God said - that He created man.That's all there was to it."5

1. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species New York Avenel Books.
2. Madeline Nash, "When Life Exploded," Time, December 4,1995.
3. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, Navpress, 1993. P. 141.
4. William Branham, "Resurrection of Lazarus, 51-0729a.
5. William Branham, "The Resurrection of Lazarus," 53-1122.

 

[St. bernard]

In continuing the publication of Rebekah Branham Smith and George Smith's genuine Christian perspective...

In the beginning, God created the heavens andthe earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon theface of the deep.​

GENESIS 1:1

1 ¶ In the beginning God created the heavenand the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void;and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And theSpirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.


What events transpired betweenthe first and the second verses of Genesis is unknown to man. But something didoccur during that "hundreds of billions of trillions of years -eons oftime."' The fossil evidence that remains in the crust of the earthprovides a tantalizing glimpse of at least one life cycle that began then endedbefore our civilization came into being. Perhaps this unknown interval betweenthe first two verses embraced several prehistoric ages. Scofield notes:"The first creative act refers to the dateless past, and gives scope forall the geologic ages." Enlightened Christians believe in an earth, (andyes, the universe also) which history and scientific research proves is eonsold.

Bible scholars have long speculated regarding the possibility of a pre-Adamflood that covered the earth, destroying all previous life. Isaiah 45:18,speaking of the creation of the earth, reads, "...he created it not invain (tohu)" a word meaning "to lie waste," showing thatbetween Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 (where the earth has been rendered without form andvoid), there was a catastrophe, possibly even several catastrophes. Exodus20:11 tells us that "In six days the Lord madeheaven and earth..." The differencebetween creating(tocall into existence something out of nothing) and making(to form or fashion something out ofmaterials already existing) adds Scriptural grounds to this understanding ofthe creation story. Then in Genesis 1:28, we read God's command to the firstman and woman, "...multiply and replenishthe earth," the same command given to Noah and his sons in Genesis9:1, after the deluvian destruction. GENESIS9:1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, andmultiply, and replenish theearth. Definition – replenish = Fillsomething that had previously been emptied; refill.


Signs of theTimes

There are two passages in the Message of the Hour (that wepresently know of), where Brother Branham refers to a previous occupation ofthe Earth:

I believe everyseed was laying right there, from some other civilization or something, and assoon as the water lifted off and the light struck it, up come the trees andeverything. THE FOURTH SEAL63-0321

The natural man, bythe knowledge, looks backward for his achievement (that's science, see), towhat God has done in a former creation. They go out and pick up clods, and getpieces of rocks and fossils, and elements, and ties them together. COUNTDOWN 64-0209

As intriguing as this may sound, it is important that we remember also BrotherBranham's warning that all the fossils, and all the evidence that may be dug upfrom some "other civilization" has nothing to do with thiscivilization, and (most importantly) it has no bearing on the Word of God.2

In this age, when the voices of the humanists are trying to drown out theTruth, it is satisfying to know that the answers to the questions of creationand evolution have been provided for us in the Word of God by the Message ofthe Hour. But let's not forget that we are God's creations, and the part of Hismarvelous design that matter most. We matter so much that He sent His Son,Jesus, to us, to redeem us unto Himself.

Let's join our voices with that of King David, as he cried out more than 3,000years ago to the Creator: "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully andwonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth rightwell." Psalm 139:14

1. "The Spoken Word Is The Original Seed," 62-03 1 8.

2. "Resurrection of Lazarus,"51-0729a.


Is Anybody OutThere?
Life on Mars, and Beyond

Earth, this infinitesimal ball of rock on which we live,circles the sun once a year. Our entire solar system rotates around the core ofthe Milky Way Galaxy once every 250 million years. Our sun is one of 100billion stars in our galaxy, and our galaxy is one of 100 billion (estimated)galaxies in the observable universe. Andromeda our closest neighbor, is twomillion light years away. The two of us - Andromeda and the MilkyWay - aremembers the Local Group, a bunch of galaxies on the edge of a large spiral ofgalaxies known as the Virgo supercluster. Beyond that lie so many clusters andsuperclusters of galaxies that it takes volumes just to catalog them. Theentirety of the universe is of a magnitude totally incomprehensibleto the mortal mind. So, to limit God's creativeness to our planet alone wouldcertainly be narrow-minded of us, wouldn't it?

I once asked my father the direct question, "Are there men on Mars?"

With a chuckle he replied, "No, there are no men on Mars, or on any otherplanet in our galaxy. There is life on other planets in the universe, but theyare not free moral agents, as we are." (That would make them angels, whichanswered some of the questions I had regarding the UFO's being"investigating angels!")

Recently, NASA called a press conference to announce that scientists havedetermined that there was, at one time, life on Mars. Pinpoint-sized flecks (ahundredth the width of a human hair) containing hydrocarbons, discovered on a13,000-year-old meteorite that was found 12 years ago in Antarctica, have beenidentified as the fossilized remains of Martian bacteria.

Beginning with the Viking Project in 1976, science has actively been lookingfor the possibility of life on Mars. According to biologist Harold Klein, wholed the project, "the existence of life on Mars might help explain theorigins of life here." Science reasons that if they can prove that lifearose on Mars and Earth independently (and therefore spontaneously), that wouldstrongly indicate that life is not something rare and special, but an ordinaryevent that occurs wherever there is enough water and light.

However, research also indicates that every year, two tons of Martian materialrain down on Earth. Conversely, two tons or so of Earth's material bombard Marsmaterial that has been en-route for an estimated 10 million years.2If we are to believe that this exchange of material is as abundant as scienceclaims, then who can say when (100 million years ago?) or how many times apiece of debris may have made a journey among the planets since the beginningof creation?

Once again, science is chasing shadows, dreaming of the day when they will beable to prove that life can be created without Intelligent Design. Unable toprove their theories on Earth, with typical bravado they have now moved on toMars.

Rebekah

1. Stephen Goode, "A Giant Totters: Can Darwin Survive?" Insight,December 21,1992.
2. Madeline Nash, "Was the Cosmos Seeded With Life," ~me, August19,1996.

 

[St. bernard]

I really don't have the time to reply to everything here, so I'll point out some of the more glaring flaws:

17. I can turn this question around. Why do opponents of evolution assume that
God is only capable of creating fixed, immutable species? I don't believe for a
minute that God is incapable of creating a genetic code capable of allowing life
to withstand a changing world. In fact, the more complex we discover our world
to be, the more proof that it's not just an accident or freak of nature; that
God clearly had a great plan in it all.

Hey Darkhorse! As presented, none of the work is mine... and none of what you presented implies that I, as a child of God, (who not for a minute believes that God ever resembled an ape, and in whose image man, (my ancient ancestors) was created) evolved from an ape of any kind.

Your job may well be to disprove the work, BUT PRODUCE FACTS AND HARD, TANGIBLE PROOF! Read the entire post first! As for your point No. 17, the only one that appears relevant, I concur with you as I do with much of what you wrote. Our creator is omnipotent. I am aware that there are adaptations to the elements and I rest assured that you feel 'it's not just an accident or freak of nature; that God clearly had a great plan in it all.' I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT IT WAS THE CREATORS PLAN; NOT JUST THAT HE HAD A PART OR PLAN IN IT! THAT MAKES ONE SUSPECT THAT SOMETHING ELSE HAD A FINGER IN THE PIE OF CREATION. THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD... AND HE IS A SPIRIT; AND ALL THAT WAS CREATED WAS CREATED 'IN' HIM. I CALL HIM A 'HIM' BECAUSE HE MANIFESTED HIMSELF AS A MAN - 'JESUS'. Thanks for your input! Bless you!

 

[DarkHorseRising]

I really don't have the time to reply to everything here, so I'll point out some of the more glaring flaws:





Hey Darkhorse! As presented, none of the work is mine... and none of what you presented implies that I, as a child of God, (who not for a minute believes that God ever resembled an ape, and in whose image man, (my ancient ancestors) was created) evolved from an ape of any kind.

Your job may well be to disprove the work, BUT PRODUCE FACTS AND HARD, TANGIBLE PROOF! Read the entire post first! As for your point No. 17, the only one that appears relevant, I concur with you as I do with much of what you wrote. Our creator is omnipotent. I am aware that there are adaptations to the elements and I rest assured that you feel 'it's not just an accident or freak of nature; that God clearly had a great plan in it all.' I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT IT WAS THE CREATORS PLAN; NOT JUST THAT HE HAD A PART OR PLAN IN IT! THAT MAKES ONE SUSPECT THAT SOMETHING ELSE HAD A FINGER IN THE PIE OF CREATION. THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD... AND HE IS A SPIRIT; AND ALL THAT WAS CREATED WAS CREATED 'IN' HIM. I CALL HIM A 'HIM' BECAUSE HE MANIFESTED HIMSELF AS A MAN - 'JESUS'. Thanks for your input! Bless you!

I understand that the works weren't yours, but when you present a long block of text that quickly displays major errors in the understanding of science and how the world works, people are disinclined to read the rest of it seriously.

Your position appears to be unclear, so I apologize for any assumptions I made. While I'm a huge fan of supporting documentation and reference material, there is a limit at which it becomes overdone. It might help your cause to begin by positing your opinions, and then offering select examples that support them, while ending off with links to the long documents that you've posted.

 

[Free]

This topic is going to be moved to the Christianity & Science forum. For those involved in the discussion, if you wish to continue with it, you must request permission to access the Science forum if you have not done so already.

 

[Barbarian]

(1)

Where are the trillions offossils of such true transitional forms?

The Karoo formation (billions) the "White Cliffs of Dover" (trillions). Among others.

Critics ofcreationism often say that creationism is simply religion

A modern revision of Christianity.

whereas evolutionismis based on science.

Being based on evidence, evolutionary theory is science. Based on the utterances of an Adventist "prophetess" YE creationism is a religion.

The Bible says in Genesis 1 that all creatures reproduce"after their kind"

No it doesn't. It says they were created according to their kind. If you have to edit God's word to make your point, isn't that an important clue for you?

So the complete absence of transitional forms in the fossil recordsupports creationism.

Let's test that. Name me two major groups, said to be evolutionarily connected, and I'll see if I can find something transitional between them.

I have alsonoted that evolutionists only discuss this subject in the broadest terms. Ifevolution is true, why don't they give us answers to questions such as these:

(3)Where did all the 90-pluselements come from (iron, barium, calcium, silver, nickel, neon, chlorine,etc)?

Physcists have noted that all the elements except hydrogen, helium, and maybe a little lithium, came from exploding supernovae. Would you like to learn about the evidence for that?

) How do you explain theprecision in the design of the elements, with increasing numbers of electronsin orbit around the nucleus?

Turns out that there are various numbers of electrons for the same elements. They are called "ions."

(5) Where did the thousands ofcompounds we find in the world come from: carbon dioxide, sodium chloride,calcium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid, oxalic acid, chlorophyll, sucrose,hydrogen sulfide, benzene, aluminum silicate, mercaptans, propane, silicondioxide, boric acid, etc.?

Chemistry. What do you know about kinetic theory? I can explain if you want to hear.

How was itdetermined how many bonds each element would have for combining with otherelements?

Atoms are most stable when they have completed shells. This is 8th grade science here.

When did these compounds develop from the elements (before the bigbang, during the big bang, after the big bang)?

There were no atoms at all until the four forces decoupled a long time after the "big bang" (which wasn't a bang at all).

When evolutionists use the term"matter", which of the thousands of compounds are included?

Matter is anything that has mass. Again, 8th grade science.

Whenevolutionists use the term "primordial soup", which of the elementsand compounds are included?

You're confusing abiogenesis and evolution.

Why do books on evolution, including grade-school,high-school and college textbooks not include such important, basicinformation?

Because they taught it in 8th grade. Where do they teach evolution in grade school?

Evolutionists aremasters of speculation. Why don't they speculate about this?

(6) How did life develop fromnon-life?

The Earth brought forth life.

7) Where did the humanemotions, such as love, hate, and jealousy come from?

Complex nervous system, plus an immortal soul.

(8) What are the odds that theevolutionary process, proceeding by random changes, would produce human beings,plus millions of species of animals, birds, fish, and insects, all withsymmetrical features, i.e., one side being a mirror image of the other?

Darwin's great discovery was that it wasn't random.

We takesymmetry in all these creatures for granted, but is that a reasonable outcomefor a random process?

See above.

(9) What are the odds that ofthe millions of species of animals, birds, fish, and insects, a male of eachspecies developed at the same time and in the same place as a female of thesame species, so that the species could propagate?

It doesn't work like that. Maybe you could do a little reading and get back to us about it?

(10) Why are there 2 sexesanyhow?

Some species have no sexes. Some have more than two.

This is not foreordained in the evolutionary framework.

Turns out it is. Want to learn about it?

(11) If the first generation ofmating species didn't have parents

Why wouldn't they?

how did the mating pair get to that pointanyhow?

Earliest I know about are conjugating bacteria. And for them, mating is optional. It is for a lot of more advanced species, too.

Isn't evolution supposed to progress when an offspring of a mating pairhas a beneficial mutation?

That's one way.

A species would have to jump from a primitive form to afully developed male and female, each with the ability and instinct to mate.

See above. Surprise.

(12) How did the heart, lungs,brain, stomach, veins, blood, kidneys, etc. develop in the first animal byslow, minute steps and the animal survive while these changes were occurring?

Pick one, and I'll show you.

For example,did the first animal develop 10% of complete veins, then 20%, and on up to100%, with veins throughout its entire body and brain?

Nope.

Then how did the heartslowly develop in the animal and get attached to the veins in the right spot?

The most primitive heart is just a thickened blood vessel with muscles and valves found in regular blood vessels. Want to see the evidence for that?

Like theheart, brain, veins, and stomach, all of the organs and systems in the firstanimal's body must be fully functional in the first moments of life.

Nope. Even partially-functional ones can permit survival.

(13) Why do books on evolution,including biology textbooks, always start with a fully developed animal whenattempting to explain how one species developed into another species?

Evolution assumes living things and describes how they change over time. Even Darwin just suggested that God made the first living things.

Why don'tevolutionists first explain how the first animal developed? (An animal with aheart, lungs, brain, stomach, etc.)

The first animals didn't have all that stuff.

14) What are the odds that theevolutionary process, proceeding by random changes, would produce a system inhuman reproduction whereby exactly 50% of offspring are male and 50% are female(based on 50% X-chromosomes and 50% Y-chromosomes)? Again – is there some sortof a plan here?

Turns out it's not random. BTW, the ratio isn't always 50/50.

To acreationist, the incredible complexity of human life, animal life, plant life,and the universe is absolutely overwhelming evidence that there must have beena designer.

It is borderline blasphemous to call God a "designer." Some ID leaders suggest God might be a "space alien."

You're all over the lot on this one, and you have a load of misconceptions to deal with. Focus on something you think you understand, and we'll talk about it in some detail.

 

[zeke]

Being based on evidence, evolutionary theory is science.

Not quite, amigo - many "practitioners" of evolution have made it "a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity". You have been mislead - again...

‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.

‘… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’

Michael Ruse - evolutionist and former professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph (Canada).​

 

[zeke]

It is borderline blasphemous to call God a "designer."

LOL - do you just pull this stuff out of the air?

design: conceived or created by a designer​

God created "in the beginning" using design.

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Being based on evidence, evolutionary theory is science.

Not quite, amigo

Here's a way to test it. Ask a scientist why he accepts evolution. If he says "because Darwin said so", it's a religion. If he starts citing evidence, it's science.

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
It is borderline blasphemous to call God a "designer."

LOL - do you just pull this stuff out of the air?

God is no mere "designer." Designers have to figure things out, and are limited. This is why the ID guys say that the "designer" might be a "space alien."

Not my God.

design: conceived or created by a designer

God created "in the beginning" using design.

I know your new religion says so, but the Bible does not. God is not limited.

 

[zeke]

God is no mere "designer." Designers have to figure things out, and are limited.

God created the Universe with design - open your eyes...and your mind. Your Magisterium has misinformed you.

This is why the ID guys say that the "designer" might be a "space alien."

LOL - what "ID guys" are you referring to or are you pulling out of the air once again?

 

[zeke]

Ask a scientist why he accepts evolution. If he says "because Darwin said so", it's a religion. If he starts citing evidence, it's science.

Darwinism has always been based on circularity - 'evolutionism is true because evolutionists say it is true'. You have bought into a fallacy my friend.

Have you ever found your yet missing evidence that proves man and chimp have a common great-granddaddy or are you still scratching your head? Still scratching - right? :yes

 

[Barbarian]

(Barbarian notes that IDers think the "designer" might be a "space alien")

LOL - what "ID guys" are you referring to or are you pulling out of the air once again?

"While most people -- including me -- will think the designer is God, some people might think that the designer was a space alien...". Michael Behe (quoted in Pittsburg Post-Gazette")

"It could be space aliens. There are many possibilities." (William Dembski, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle)

"For this purpose, it does not matter whether the intelligence is thought to belong to God, or to some alien race of intelligent beings, or to some entity we cannot yet imagine." (Phillip Johnson, posting in the ARN discussion forum)

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/HistoryID2.cfm

 

[Free]

Not quite, amigo - many "practitioners" of evolution have made it "a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity". You have been mislead - again...

‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.

‘… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’

Michael Ruse - evolutionist and former professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph (Canada).​

Michael Ruse is confused and confusing matters. Evolutionary theory in and of itself can rightly be called science and it is studied and promoted by both theists and non-theists. There may be those who promote it as "an explicit substitute for Christianity," but that does not mean it actually is.