Introduction
1) We have studied a little about this subject in the past.
A) Age of the Earth
B) Species
C) Natural Selection
D) Genetic Mutations
2) These constitute the major problems that are in evolutionism. I invite you to review
those lessons at your convenience to refresh our memories.
3) The purpose of this investigation is to get a real handle on what the issues really are
and how we can show that Biblical creationism (the fact that the accounts in Genesis
chapters 1 and 2 are true) is the only world view that can make sense of what we see
in nature.
4) In this study, we will not be concentrating on the evidence per say. We will look at
the concept of world views and how they are foundational to how we interpret
the evidence.
5) I believe it will surprise you to see that it is the Biblical Creation world view that
enables us to know anything.
6) In fact, I believe, that we can show the ultimate proof for a literal Genesis.
I) The place of scientific evidence
1) What is the place of scientific evidence in the origins debate?
2) Do things like DNA, fossils, rock layers, age of the earth really support evolution
or do they support creation as described in Genesis?
3) Many people think that an unbias investigation of the evidence is the absolute
standard by which the origins debate can be settled.
4) However, such a view does not stand up to careful scrutiny for reasons that we will
discuss later.
5) Some take the opposite approach to the origins issue. They believe that scientific
evidence is utterly irrelevant to the debate. The issue being more a matter of faith
than reason.
6) However, this is overly simplistic and will not stand up to rational investigation.
7) Scientific evidence by itself will not settle this matter as we shall examine.
8) Nonetheless, it is important to be aware of a few of the best scientific arguments
for Biblical creation, however this is not the ULTIMATE PROOF.
II) Scientific arguments for Biblical Creation
1) Information Science
A) This is one of the most compelling, commonly used scientific arguments
for creation. It involves the field of INFORMATION SCIENCE.
1) In this technological age, we are inundated with all sorts of
information. But few people stop to consider what information
really is, and where it comes from.
2) We can define information scientifically as a coded message
containing an expected action and intent.
3) Under this definition, the words on this paper qualify as information.
That is to say they are encoded, the words represent ideas.
4) The expected action is that the you, the reader, will read and act
upon the words, and the intended purpose is that you will become
better at defending the Genesis account.
B) DNA also contains information.
1) The DNA molecule is a long molecule found within living cells and
resembles a twisted ladder. The rungs of the ladder form a pattern
of base pair triplets that represent amino acid sequences or the
building blocks of proteins.
2) DNA contains the “instructions” to build the organism.
3) So different organisms have different DNA patterns.
4) DNA qualifies under the definition of information
a) It contains an encoded message, the base pair triplets represent
amino acids.
b) It has an expected action, the formation of proteins
c) It has an intended purpose, life.
C) Theorems
1) Whenever we find any sort of information there are certain rules that
apply, these are called theorems. Here are 2
a) “There is no known law of nature, no known process, and no
known sequence of events that can cause information to
originate by itself in matter.”
b) “When its progress along the chain of transmission events
is traced backward, every piece of information leads to a
mental source, the mind of the sender.”
2)The first tells us that matter does not spontaneously generate
information.
3) The second tells us that only a mental source can generate new
information.
4) In one sense, these theorems are hardly profound; we take for granted
that when we read a book it has an author. No one reading this study
would conclude that it was generated by a sequence of typos that
gradually accumulated over time. We take for granted that a mind
(No matter how small) is ultimately responsible for the information
that it contains. The theorems of information science confirms this.
D) Life could not have come about in an evolutionary sense
1) These theorems tell us that life cannot have come about as it is stated
by the evolutionists.
2) The information in DNA cannot have come about by mutations and
selection because the laws of information science tell us that all
information comes from a mind.
3) Yet this makes sense in light of Biblical Creation. It was by the mind of
God that the initial information was placed in the DNA sequence.
4) This information has been copied many times, and some of it has been
lost. But the information in our DNA ultimately comes from God
5) The laws of information science confirm creation.
2) Irreducible Complexity
A) This is one of the items that we have studied in the past.
B) It was under the study of Genetic Mutations
C) You may refer to that study.
3) Age Indicators
A) We covered this quite extensively when we discussed the age of the earth.
B) Again, you may refer to this study to refresh your memory.
C) On item that we did not discus in that study was the evidence that comes
from comets.
1) Comets are made of ice and dirt, and they orbit in elliptical paths
that occasionally bring them close to the sun.
2) When a comet passed close to the sun, solar radiation heats the
comet, causing the icy material to vaporize and disperse into space.
3) Since comets are constantly losing material, they cannot exist forever.
4) It has been estimated that a typical comet can last for a maximum of
about 100,000 years before completely running out of material.
5) This is not a problem for the Biblical creationist who believes in a
literal reading of Genesis 1.
6) If the universe is billions of years old, then why do we still see comets
today? They would have disappeared a long time ago.
III) Evidence and Rescuing Devices
1) The scientific evidence that we have just looked at certainly confirms Biblical creation.
A lot more evidence could have been given, but this shall do for our study.
2) Because of this, evolution would seem to stand refuted. It may seem that we have
proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that scientific evidence proves Biblical
creation and disproves the notion of evolution. However, this is not the case.
3) The above examples are very good arguments indeed. But they are not the
ULTIMATE PROOF. They do not actually prove biblical creation, nor do they utterly
refute evolution.
4) Rescuing devices
A) When faced with these kinds of evidences, the evolutionist can always invoke
what is called a “rescuing device”. That is, an evolutionist can invent a story
to explain away apparently contrary evidence. Let’s see how this works with
the comets argument for a young solar system.
1) Evolutionary astronomers believe that the solar system is billions of
years old.
2) Yet they see comets within it.
3) He can observe that comets disintegrate quite rapidly, and they compute
that they can only last 100,000 years or so.
4) How are they to resolve this dilemma?
a) There must be a source that generates new comets to replace the
old ones.
b) So they have proposed on “Oort cloud (named after its inventor
Jan Oort).
c) This cloud is an enormous hypothetical sphere of icy masses
that surround our solar system. It is supposedly far beyond the
most distant planets, beyond the range of our most powerful
Telescopes.
d) They suppose that on occasion, objects in the Oort cloud are
dislodged from their distant orbit and thrown into the inner solar
system to become brand new comets. Since these new comets
continually replace the old ones, the solar system could be
billions of years old.
5) No one has ever seen the Oort cloud. It is supposedly much to far away
to detect the small objects within it. Currently, there is no
observational evidence of any kind for the cloud.
6) This is a rescuing device that “saves” the evolutionist’s view from
evidence that would otherwise seem to refute it.
B) Is a rescuing device unacceptable?
1) The answer might surprise you. It is NO, a rescuing device is not
necessarily wrong. In fact we all use these devices, even the
Biblical creationist.
a) The distant starlight problem is a great example that we also
use rescuing devices.
b) This is the argument that the universe must be billions of years
old since it apparently takes a very long time for light from the
most distant galaxies to reach earth.
c) This would seem to be irrefutable evidence that the universe is
in fact billions of years old. How does the Biblical creationist
account for this. A rescuing device.
d) There is no definitive, verified solution to this problem.
e) Several models have been proposed to explain this problem yet
they to (just like the Oort cloud) are rescuing devices.
2) Is this arbitrary? No, the creationist and the evolutionist both have a
reason to believe what they believe. It is called a world view.
3) World view
a) We all have a way of thinking about the world, a world view.
b) Our world view contains our most strongly held convictions
about how the world works, how it came to be, the nature of
reality, the nature of truth, and how we should live.
c) Most people today have not given much thought to their own
world view. In fact many do not even realize that they have one
d) Such people tend to think that all knowledge is acquired by
unbiased observation of the evidence. This is called
“Empiricism” and it is itself a kind of world view.
e) We cannot help but have some beliefs about how the world
works, how we obtain knowledge, and how we should live.
f) Even if we believe that we have no such beliefs, this is a belief
itself. There’s no escaping it. It is inevitable to have one.
A rational world view is not.
g) A wold view is like mental glasses. It affects the way that we
look at the world.
f) A person wearing red glasses sees everything as being red. A
person wearing evolution glasses sees evolution everywhere.
I) The world if not really red everywhere, but the glasses do affect
our perception of the world and the conclusions that we draw.
j) The evolutionist sees the world differently then does the Biblical
creationist. We have the exact same facts, but what we make of
those facts is colored by our world view. Thus, we interpret the
same evidence differently.
k) This point cannot be overstated. Much of the frustration that
exists in the evolution-creation debate is due to this fact, that
the evolutionist and creationists must interpret the same data
differently due to their different world views.
C) All have one
1) Many people do not want to accept the fact that all evidence must be
interpreted in light of prior beliefs-a faith commitment of some kind.
2) Many have the assumption that evidence should be approached in a
neutral and unbiased fashion. That is without any previous beliefs.
3) This is impossible to do.
a) This view is itself a belief.
b) It is a belief about how we should look at the evidence,
c) One more thing to remember, in order for our observations of
evidence to the meaningful, we would already have to believe
that our senses are reliable. It would do no good to observe the
evidence if we did not believe that our observations were real
and reliable.
4) We cannot avoid wearing mental glasses, having a world view,
5) What is important to make sure that we have on the right pair.
a) An incorrect world view will draw out incorrect conclusions
about the universe.
b) A correct world view will prevent us from drawing the wrong
conclusions and can improve our understanding about the
universe.
D) Examples of such
1) Magic acts
a) You see a magician saw a woman in half.
b) Your senses tell you that you saw this and that it happened
c) But the conclusion that you draw from it is not based on what
you have seen.
d) You draw the conclusion that it is a trick because your world
view prevents you from drawing the wrong conclusion, that
the woman was actually cut in half.
2) UFO’s
a) Your neighbor tells you that she saw a UFO last night.
b) Your world view will immediately kicks in and helps you to
process and interpret the evidence.
c) As additional information is given, you begin forming hypothese
based on your world view.
d) Perhaps they saw an alien spacecraft, a top secret government
aircraft, or maybe they have been drinking again last night.
e) The conclusion that you draw will be influenced not only by the
evidence, but also by your general understanding of the universe
f) If you are convinced that ET’s do not exist, you will not draw the
conclusion that you neighbor did.
E) Our world view restrains us
1) Our world view constrains us and guides us in the interpretation of the
evidence.
2) This is true in every aspect of life from origins to our view of the Bible.
3) Our world view tells us what to make of the evidence.
4) This aspect should be clear now, everyone does this.
5) The creationist looking at comets concludes that the solar system
is young. The evolutionist looking at comets concludes that there must
be an Oort cloud. A creationist examining the information in DNA
concludes that there is a creator. The evolutionist looking at the same
evidence concludes that mutations or some unknown mechanism has
generated the information.
6) We all interpret the facts in light of our world view. Any evidence that
seems to challenge our world view can always be explained by
invoking a rescuing device.
7) Many of the debates about origins are not very effective because the
opposing sides do not understand the nature of world views, evidence,
and rescuing devices.
8) This is the reason that the parties always leave the debate so frustrated.
The creationist leave the debate wondering why the other person could
not see the evidence for a young earth. The evolutionist like wise
leaves the debate in the same frustrated way, not understanding why
the creationist cannot see the evidence for an old earth.
9) This frustration stems from a failure to consider the real issue; people
always interpret evidence in a way that is compatible with their
world view.
10) Thus, evidence by itself will never settle the debate.
IV) A Mexican standoff?
1) Since evidence will never settle the issue, it would appear that there is no rational
resolution to the issue of origins. After all, no matter how compelling the evidence
for either side may be, the opponent will always interpret that evidence in light
of their world view.
2) Since this is the case, that evolutionist and creationist have different world views,
is there any way to rational resolve the issue?
3) There is, and that will be the topic we will begin to discuss at our next class.
4) What we will discover is that the Biblical creation world view must be true, because
it is the only rational possibility.
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