Study 13

Apologetics

Reasons To Reject Evolution

A.) First, let’s define our terms

1. From the World Book Encyclopedia: “Evolution is a process of gradual change, the formation and development of life on the earth. The idea that living things evolved from non-living matter and changed through the ages is called the theory of organic evolution, or simply the theory of evolution. According to this theory, the first single-celled organisms appeared about 3 or 4 billion years ago soon after the earth’s crust had formed and cooled. As time passed, more complex organisms gradually developed specialized characteristics that helped them adapt to their environment. The evolutionary process eventually produced all the species that inhabit the earth.”

2. Evolution is not a true scientific theory.
- A hypothesis implies inadequate evidence to support premise requiring more testing. A theory implies considerable evidence to support your premise but without absolute certainty. A law demands absolute & exact evidence that is uniform & sure that conforms to The Principle of Universality. (Gravity)

B.) Why should you reject evolution?

1. Evolution is not happening now because we have not observed it.
- The scientific method requires observation, then testing the data observed, and then repeating the experiments to make sure the first results are true.
- The evidence we see is that like kinds always give rise to like kinds of living things. In all the years of observing nature scientists have never seen this law broken or violated. The Bible clearly supports this evidence. Gen. 1:21-25 Gen. 8:18-19
- Dr. Henry Morris states, “What we see is an array of distinct “kinds” of plants and animals with many varieties within each kind, but with very clear and distinct gaps between the kinds. For example, there are many varieties of dogs and cats, but no “dats” or “cogs”.
- Evolution is not variation within a species but movement from one species to an entirely new one. The variation that Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands resulted from isolated animal life that had only developed variations within the species or kind. But, these animals had not become a new species. (birds had not become reptiles).
- Dr. Morris declares, “All present living kinds of plants and animals have remained fixed since creation, except for extinctions, and genetic variation in originally created kinds has only occurred within narrow limits.”

2. Evolution teaches that life came from dead matter.
- The theory called “Spontaneous Generation” was rejected in the 1600s because of the experiments of Italian scientist Francesco Redi. People in that day believed that maggots were created from decaying meat. Redi disproved spontaneous generation by doing experiments where he repeatedly covered one portion of meat and left another portion open to the air. He observed that the maggots only appeared on the meat left in the open air where flies had deposited their eggs. However, the belief in spontaneous generation still continued until French chemist Louis Pasteur finally settled the issue in 1859. He discovered that even the smallest amounts of bacteria did not arise spontaneously, but always grew from other bacteria, proving that living organisms always came from other living organisms. The French Academy of Sciences sponsored a contest for the best experiment either proving or disproving spontaneous generation. Pasteur boiled meat broth in a flask, heated the neck of the flask in a flame until it became pliable, and bent it into the shape of an S. Air could enter the flask, but airborne microorganisms could not - they would settle by gravity in the neck. As Pasteur had expected, no microorganisms grew. When Pasteur tilted the flask so that the broth reached the lowest point in the neck, where any airborne particles would have settled, the broth rapidly became cloudy with life. Pasteur had both refuted the theory of spontaneous generation and convincingly demonstrated that microorganisms are everywhere - even in the air.
- To believe that life spontaneously resulted from dead matter because of an electrical charge from some unknown source is to return to this false concept of spontaneous generation.
- Life can only come from other living organisms = human, animals, or microscopic.
- God who is the source of life is the One who created life. He also is the only One who can raise people to eternal life. 1 Tim. 6:13 John 14:6

3. Evolution should be rejected = no evidence of transitional forms in the fossil record.
- A transitional form means that you should see the conversion of a (fish into an amphibian, an amphibian to a reptile, reptiles to birds, or an ape into a man) in the fossil record. You should see one species transitioning into a new species. This of course would be powerful and essential evidence to prove evolution. Even Charles Darwin wrote in his Origin of the Species (see chapter 6 “Difficulties with the Theory”) that these transitional forms had to be found to prove his ideas. The fact is that there have been no transitional forms found to date from the literally billions and billions of fossils already unearthed. However, the fossils do reveal that all highly complex forms of life abruptly show up in the fossil record without evolutionary ancestors (transitional forms). Therefore, evolutionists have come up with a cleaver solution to this problem. To get around the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, modern anthropologists have come up with a new hypothesis called Graduated Equilibrium. This supposed explanation teaches that the species didn’t gradually evolve, but evolved from one species to another in giant steps so there would be no transitional forms in the fossil record. There is no evidence to support this idea either.

Note the actual evidence that anthropologists base their beliefs upon: Pictures cover the walls of every science classroom in America depicting the transition of apes to men. Here is the actual evidence. You decide if this is science or wishful thinking that leads people to draw these pictures?

a. Ramapithecus: Thought by many evolutionists to be the first hominid. Based on a handful of teeth and jaw fragments.
b. Australopithecus: Several of these creatures have been found in various parts of the world. Partial skulls with a pelvis, a limb, and foot fragments. These creatures are thought to be similar to gorillas with a cranial capacity averaging 500c.c. or less (1/3 the size of man), with ape-like jaws and teeth.
c. (Java Man) Pithecanthropus erectus: A scull-cap and two molar teeth were found with a human femur bone.
d. (Peking Man) Sinathropus pekinensis: Fragments of about 30 sculls, 11 lower jaws, 147 teeth, and a few highly fragmentary remains of several limb bones. All of this material was lost during the Second World War.
e. (Neanderthal Man): Today thought by most anthropologists to be fully human.

- Why are there no transitional forms found in the fossil record? Because there are none and it is proof that evolution has not occurred. Doesn’t this disprove the hypothesis of evolution?

4. Evolution is contrary to the Law of Entropy.
- Evolution contradicts the scientifically proven fact of the Law of Entropy (The Second Law of Thermodynamics). The Law of Entropy states that all matter tends to lose available energy as it is converted from one form to another, and as this energy is converted it moves toward decay, disorder, and disorganization. (Example: The energy produced by burning wood converts the wood to ashes). As any work is performed there is a loss of energy (increasing the entropy within a system) until the system can no longer perform that work (you can’t burn the ashes again). Henry Morris calls entropy “the universal law of decreasing complexity.” Evolution teaches the opposite, that there is an increasing complexity of matter: that matter is performing work (evolving), and this matter is moving toward greater order, complexity, and organization. However, this teaching violates the Law of Entropy.

Dr. Duane Gish states, “The fact that the universe, in its present state is deteriorating, has been fully verified by modern science. Everywhere we look, from the scale of the galaxies down to the scale of the atom, we find a universal, natural tendency of all systems to go from order to disorder; from complexity to simplicity. Thus, clusters of galaxies are dispersing as the galaxies move away from one another. The rotation of the earth is slowing; the magnetic field of the earth is decaying. Erosion constantly wears down the features of the earth. Our bodies wear out; we die and decay to a pile of dust. Our houses and our machines wear out and are finally abandoned and replaced. Many atoms decay to simpler products, and it is even being postulated that sub-atomic particles, such as the proton, decay, though ever so slowly, into energy. Each star, including our own sun, is constantly burning up billions of tons of fuel every second. Eventually, every star in the universe, unless God intervenes (which we are certain He will), will exhaust its fuel and become dark and cold. The universe would then be cold and dead, and, of course, all life would have ceased long before the last death throes of the universe. Even now, every so often a nova or supernova occurs, and a star very rapidly becomes less orderly, in a gigantic explosion.
This natural tendency towards disorder is so all-pervasive and unfailing that it has been formalized as a natural law - the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Isaac Asimov has stated it this way (Smithsonian Institute Journal, June 1970, p.6): "Another way of stating the second law then is: `The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!' Viewed that way, we can see the Second Law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself, it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order; how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out - all by itself - and that is what the Second Law is all about.

There is certainly no doubt, then, that modern scientific research has verified the truths expressed in Psalm 102:25-27. “Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will endure; yes, they will all grow old like a garment; like a cloak You will change them, And they will be changed. But You are the same, and Your years will have no end.” Many years of careful measurements by scientists, repeated many thousands of times, established beyond doubt the scientific truths expressed in that verses of Scripture.

5. Mutations and random forces cannot account for the engineering of complex life.
- Dr. Gish states, “The simplest cell and it’s DNA code is organized and energized in a more complex way than a super computer. Obviously, super computers don’t happen by chance and random forces.”
- Logic tells you that intelligent design has created them. Is. 42:5 Is. 43:7
- According to Henry Morris Ph.D., “Mutations are not organizing mechanisms, but disorganizing (in accord with the Second Law of Thermodynamics). They are commonly harmful, sometimes neutral, but never beneficial.”

6. Evolution can’t explain the “organs of extreme perfection and complication.”
- Darwin even admitted in Chapter 6 of Origin of the Species that is was hard to accept the fact that natural selection could produce the organs in our bodies that we marvel at.
- Darwin declared, “To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree possible.”
- In other words, if the eye had thousands of mutations over thousands of generations to naturally select out the humans that couldn’t see well, how could a human survive at all if he or she couldn’t see very well?
- This evidence should only bring us to the same conclusion of the psalmist: “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well” (Ps. 139:14).

7. The detrimental effects of Darwin’s hypothesis = Social Darwinism.
- Evolution is a complete worldview. It purports to answer all the “big” questions of life. “Who am I?” (Just an animal) “Where did I come from?” (A bunch of carbon atoms) “Where am I going?” (Back to dust) “What’s the meaning of life?” (There is no meaning, just survive by one of the philosophies that turns you on). However, God has created you in His image, to know Him, for His eternal purposes, to live by His truth, to find the meaning and joy of life. Gen. 1:27 John 10:10 John 15:5
- The result of Darwin’s teaching have become an entire philosophy called Social Darwinism. These ideas were first proposed by a British philosopher named Herbert Spencer and then by an American philosopher William Graham Sumner in the late 1800s.
- Social Darwinists believed that people and societies compete for survival and only the superior individuals and cultures survive to become powerful & wealthy.
- Fredrich Nietzsche in late 1800s (Nihilism) believing in Social Darwinism declared that revolution must occur and the world needed a new social order. Hitler carried his philosophy further in his belief in the superior master German race. We all know what evils resulted from his thinking. Every form of racism, bigotry, or oppression of any group arises from this belief in the social survival of the fittest and the superiority of your group.

Revised:

This study was written by Pastor Steve Carr. If we can be of any further assistance please contact us a www.calvaryag.org or (805) 481-2320.