Creation versus Evolution - Basics revisited
Here at this blog I post articles by others and essays by, well, me. I began this blog as a commentary blog on religion and science and politics, primarily. It appears that the creation versus evolution question has come to dominate the blog, at least at the present time. It seems like a good time to review some basic points for the benefit of new readers and to remind veteran readers.
1) Point of view, or worldview - I have a specific worldview, the set of assumptions through which I see and interpret the world. Think of a worldview as a set of eyeglasses, perhaps, through which everything you see is filtered. I have one, you have one and everybody has one, including every scientist in the world.
My worldview includes a belief in a Creator God who created the world. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and I consider myself a Christian. I am a conservative politically. I am a sports nut. I love nature and literature and music and science. I enjoy working with teenagers and volunteer my time to do so, as does my wife and one of my adult children.
Some people have difficulty with this concept, believing that their particular worldview is simply The Truth = unassailable fact. Hey, I believe that my worldview is correct but I am able to see that it is my opinion. Sadly, some folks just don't get it...No, a naturalistic atheistic evolutionist worldview is not fact, it is opinion.
2)Operational Science - operational science is the nuts-and-bolts of science. The scientific method is a staple of operational science, in which:
*a problem or question is addressed with a hypothesis
*a test is devised that tests the hypothesis
*if successful, the test is repeated several times and ways to see if the results are consistent
*if still successful, now we have a valid theory
*if the theory withstands further testing and is accepted by the scientific community as consistently true, it becomes a law.
Operational science deals with any question pertaining to matters of the here and now. Organisms and elements that can be accessed can be perused and tested. Systems that are in place and operations that are in existence now can be observed.
For instance, when our garden Hostas began to show signs of being eaten, we were glad that there were already a few theories of sluggology in place. According to previous tests, the likely culprit for our problem was the garden slug and previous tests had shown that, if we put out a pan of beer, the slugs would prefer the beer to the Hosta and crawl in only to drown.
We did find that our test, as expected, fit the theory to a "T". Slugs crawled in and they didn't crawl out. However, we also discovered that baby toads also liked the beer and we did modify the experiment by placing a kind of chicken wire over the pan so that slugs could enter but toads could not.
Our experiment supported that particular theory of sluggology concerning slugs and beer. It did solve the problem of the Hostas. It may be that, with this particular kind of Hosta and beer and slug, it could be determined someday to be a Law of Sluggology.
Yeah, the above was a little bit tongue in cheek. But it illustrates an important point, that the science that helps cure diseases and send people into space and makes engines more efficient is operational science - the science of rubber meeting road.
Operational science is happening in labs all over the globe. The idea of whether evolution may or may not be true or not doesn't enter in to operational science. It is important to emphasize that, in operational science, experimentation can yield results that can serve to more or less "prove" or "disprove" a hypothesis.
3) Historical Science - Historical science, which includes the study of origins, is not quite so neat. You can and will bring presuppositions into a lab to do an experiment in the realm of operational science, but the experiment will yield results that either support or do not support your presuppositions. In the case of historical science, experiments and observations are generally unavailable. One must take evidence found today to apply to yesterday and therefore the presupposition you bring to the problem will determine the conclusion you reach based on the evidence you view. You cannot prove or disprove your point but can only try to apply logic to intuit what must have been.
Sadly, the world doesn't understand this and many people believe that evolution, which is not even a testable theory, is a proven fact. Evolutionists have done a great job of marketing their viewpoint completely apart from the evidences available. But when you look behind the curtain of the Great and Terrible Oz of evolution, you see a little man of supposition where proven fact was believed to reside.
Evolution is not fact, it is not even a theory, it is a supposition. No one has ever proved or demonstrated evolution in action ever, at any time.
Creation is also a supposition. It cannot be tested and it cannot be proven and it has not been observed.
So please understand that in the realm of historical science, particularly in the world of creation science versus evolution science, it is all about the interpretation of evidence, period. One must simply decide for oneself which model fits the evidence best in one's own opinion.
~~~~~~~
The Big Things First - The big questions about who we are and how we got here cannot be answered in terms of proofs. So we can only look at evidences and decide, according to logic and in accordance with our worldviews, what makes sense.
Where did everything come from?
"Edward Tryon, Nature Magazine, 1973: "I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time."
Atheistic Evolution says that everything came from a natural cause. However, no cause is discernible so we need an "uncaused cause." The answer from this camp? The Big Bang. One of the latest versions of this Bang is Guth's Grand Guess, an inflation model of the aforementioned Bang. Guth himself says, "The Universe burst into something from absolutely nothing - zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere." April 2002 issue, Discover Magazine.
What follows is all the instances that scientists have observed in which something comes from nothing:
*
*
*
Still there? Yep, no evidence. However, there is the First Law of Thermodynamics:
Biblical Creationism - Says that everything was created by God in a six day period of time, including time itself.
Genesis 1:1 - "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Creationists believe that an Eternal God created the Universe and everything in it. God is the cause of all existence. I personally see this explanation as far more logical and reasonable than "it just happened, even though it cannot happen."
There are all sorts of ways to look at all the evidences. The various Bang suppositions change on a regular basis. The likelihood is that the explanation you are willing to believe is the one that matches up with your worldview. The atheistic evolutionist would argue that it is illogical to argue that a supernatural being simply created matter from nothing. But then that same person will accept the idea of matter creating itself from nothing instead.
The Bible stands as evidence for God as the Creator of all things. If you accept that the Bible is the Word of God, then you have your answer. Big if, as we all know.
Where did life come from?
The atheistic evolutionist will say that somehow life generated from non-life. However there is another law involved here, the Law of Biogenesis:
“There is no publication in the scientific literature—in prestigious journals, specialty journals, or books—that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred. There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations.” Michael Behe in Darwin's Black Box.
Abiogenesis is also against the law, as it were. Yet it is the keystone of the atheistic evolutionists' point of view, for if life didn't just happen by chance, there had to be a Creator and certainly an atheist cannot abide the thought of a creator!
One way to get around the fact that abiogenesis has never been observed and seems to be impossible here on earth is panspermia, the idea that life began elsewhere and then was transported here.
"Most scientists have long assumed that life on Earth is a homegrown phenomenon. According to the conventional hypothesis, the earliest living cells emerged as a result of chemical evolution on our planet billions of years ago in a process called abiogenesis. The alternative possibility--that living cells or their precursors arrived from space--strikes many people as science fiction. Developments over the past decade, however, have given new credibility to the idea that Earth's biosphere could have arisen from an extraterrestrial seed...."
Yes, in this way atheistic evolutionists move the problem to somewhere else in unobserved space at some unobserved time. Oddly enough, there have recently been two fields of scientific study established, being astrobiology and exobiology. The cynic in me says that such fields were developed to help NASA receive funding and keep the dollars flowing into the SETI project.
At any rate, here are the instances of extraterrestrial life that have been observed by scientists:
*
*
*
Yes, there are no instances. But how about the number of times that life has been observed to come from non-life here on earth?
*
*
*
Again, there are none.
Creationists believe that God created all life, as recounted in Genesis chapter one. The Bible has an explanation for the source of all life, God.
~~~~~~~
Those who are determined to keep God out of the discussion are doing so based upon their worldview and not because it is good science. Virtually every field of science was established by a Creationist. Sir Isaac Newton would be the most influential founder of physics and Galileo Galilei would be included in the discussion, Sir Francis Bacon was the founder of the scientific method. Here is a chart from 50 Nobel Laureates and Other Great Scientists Who Believe in God. Notice how most of these 16-21st century fathers of science were believers in a Creator God. IV
Darwin, Haeckel and Huxley kind of stand out as sore thumbs in this list, eh?
Then there is the father of modern rocket science, Werner Von Braun, who said, "I find it...difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe." from Ann Lamont's 21 Great Scientists Who Believed The Bible.
Dimitrov's online book also contains a list of 20th century Nobel Laureates in the sciences...
Now as it happens some scientists who associate themselves with a faith are not classic creationists, such as Einstein. Einstein did believe in God, but was unsure what form God was to be encountered and exactly how much He was involved in things at present.
Do you believe in creation or evolution? I suggest very strongly that it is your worldview that drives your belief. One reason that I post this blog is because I do believe that worldviews can be changed with strong evidences and logic. I am one who came all the way from classic evolutionist to creationist after I decided that I needed to look carefully at the evidence and think for myself.
The evolution versus creation debate begins with origins. Where did the Universe come from? Where did life come from? The atheistic evolutionist can only say that he believes by faith that they somehow just happened.
Next, we'll look at some questions that come immediately after the first two very obvious questions. By the way, if you are an evolutionist and want to argue that the first two points are not even about evolution, sorry, I just don't buy it. You have to have a Universe and you have to have living organisms in order to begin even discussing evolution and if those who believe in evolution want to concede that God created the Universe and then created life, then, frankly, what do we need evolution for anyway? The next logical step is to concede that God made life as we know it today and that evolution is not worth discussion.
1) Point of view, or worldview - I have a specific worldview, the set of assumptions through which I see and interpret the world. Think of a worldview as a set of eyeglasses, perhaps, through which everything you see is filtered. I have one, you have one and everybody has one, including every scientist in the world.
My worldview includes a belief in a Creator God who created the world. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and I consider myself a Christian. I am a conservative politically. I am a sports nut. I love nature and literature and music and science. I enjoy working with teenagers and volunteer my time to do so, as does my wife and one of my adult children.
Some people have difficulty with this concept, believing that their particular worldview is simply The Truth = unassailable fact. Hey, I believe that my worldview is correct but I am able to see that it is my opinion. Sadly, some folks just don't get it...No, a naturalistic atheistic evolutionist worldview is not fact, it is opinion.
2)Operational Science - operational science is the nuts-and-bolts of science. The scientific method is a staple of operational science, in which:
*a problem or question is addressed with a hypothesis
*a test is devised that tests the hypothesis
*if successful, the test is repeated several times and ways to see if the results are consistent
*if still successful, now we have a valid theory
*if the theory withstands further testing and is accepted by the scientific community as consistently true, it becomes a law.
Operational science deals with any question pertaining to matters of the here and now. Organisms and elements that can be accessed can be perused and tested. Systems that are in place and operations that are in existence now can be observed.
For instance, when our garden Hostas began to show signs of being eaten, we were glad that there were already a few theories of sluggology in place. According to previous tests, the likely culprit for our problem was the garden slug and previous tests had shown that, if we put out a pan of beer, the slugs would prefer the beer to the Hosta and crawl in only to drown.
We did find that our test, as expected, fit the theory to a "T". Slugs crawled in and they didn't crawl out. However, we also discovered that baby toads also liked the beer and we did modify the experiment by placing a kind of chicken wire over the pan so that slugs could enter but toads could not.
Our experiment supported that particular theory of sluggology concerning slugs and beer. It did solve the problem of the Hostas. It may be that, with this particular kind of Hosta and beer and slug, it could be determined someday to be a Law of Sluggology.
Yeah, the above was a little bit tongue in cheek. But it illustrates an important point, that the science that helps cure diseases and send people into space and makes engines more efficient is operational science - the science of rubber meeting road.
Operational science is happening in labs all over the globe. The idea of whether evolution may or may not be true or not doesn't enter in to operational science. It is important to emphasize that, in operational science, experimentation can yield results that can serve to more or less "prove" or "disprove" a hypothesis.
3) Historical Science - Historical science, which includes the study of origins, is not quite so neat. You can and will bring presuppositions into a lab to do an experiment in the realm of operational science, but the experiment will yield results that either support or do not support your presuppositions. In the case of historical science, experiments and observations are generally unavailable. One must take evidence found today to apply to yesterday and therefore the presupposition you bring to the problem will determine the conclusion you reach based on the evidence you view. You cannot prove or disprove your point but can only try to apply logic to intuit what must have been.
Sadly, the world doesn't understand this and many people believe that evolution, which is not even a testable theory, is a proven fact. Evolutionists have done a great job of marketing their viewpoint completely apart from the evidences available. But when you look behind the curtain of the Great and Terrible Oz of evolution, you see a little man of supposition where proven fact was believed to reside.
Evolution is not fact, it is not even a theory, it is a supposition. No one has ever proved or demonstrated evolution in action ever, at any time.
Creation is also a supposition. It cannot be tested and it cannot be proven and it has not been observed.
So please understand that in the realm of historical science, particularly in the world of creation science versus evolution science, it is all about the interpretation of evidence, period. One must simply decide for oneself which model fits the evidence best in one's own opinion.
~~~~~~~
The Big Things First - The big questions about who we are and how we got here cannot be answered in terms of proofs. So we can only look at evidences and decide, according to logic and in accordance with our worldviews, what makes sense.
Where did everything come from?
"Edward Tryon, Nature Magazine, 1973: "I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time."
Atheistic Evolution says that everything came from a natural cause. However, no cause is discernible so we need an "uncaused cause." The answer from this camp? The Big Bang. One of the latest versions of this Bang is Guth's Grand Guess, an inflation model of the aforementioned Bang. Guth himself says, "The Universe burst into something from absolutely nothing - zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere." April 2002 issue, Discover Magazine.
What follows is all the instances that scientists have observed in which something comes from nothing:
*
*
*
Still there? Yep, no evidence. However, there is the First Law of Thermodynamics:
First Law of Thermodynamics
The first law of thermodynamics is often called the Law of Conservation of Energy. This law suggests that energy can be transferred from one system to another in many forms. Also, it can not be created or destroyed. Thus, the total amount of energy available in the Universe is constant. Einstein's famous equation (written below) describes the relationship between energy and matter:
E = mc2
In the equation above, energy (E) is equal to matter (m) times the square of a constant (c). Einstein suggested that energy and matter are interchangeable. His equation also suggests that the quantity of energy and matter in the Universe is fixed.
So, what we see in the Universe today is that nothing is being either created or destroyed. The Big Bang is, so to speak, against the Law because such an event is never observed.Biblical Creationism - Says that everything was created by God in a six day period of time, including time itself.
Genesis 1:1 - "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Creationists believe that an Eternal God created the Universe and everything in it. God is the cause of all existence. I personally see this explanation as far more logical and reasonable than "it just happened, even though it cannot happen."
There are all sorts of ways to look at all the evidences. The various Bang suppositions change on a regular basis. The likelihood is that the explanation you are willing to believe is the one that matches up with your worldview. The atheistic evolutionist would argue that it is illogical to argue that a supernatural being simply created matter from nothing. But then that same person will accept the idea of matter creating itself from nothing instead.
The Bible stands as evidence for God as the Creator of all things. If you accept that the Bible is the Word of God, then you have your answer. Big if, as we all know.
Where did life come from?
The atheistic evolutionist will say that somehow life generated from non-life. However there is another law involved here, the Law of Biogenesis:
Law of biogenesis. The law which states, life arises only from existing life. Formulated after many years of extensive observation and experimentation. The ancient greeks believed that living things could originate from nonliving matter (abiogenesis) and that the goddess Gea could make life arise spontaneously from stones. aristotle disagreed, but still believed that creatures could arise from dissimilar organisms or from soil (an early form of evolution theory). variations of this concept of spontaneous generation still existed as late as the 17th century, but towards the end of the 17th century a series of observations, experiments, and arguments began that eventually discredited such ideas. This advance in scientific understanding was met with much opposition, with personal beliefs and individual predjudices often obscuring the facts. Francesco Redi, an Italian physician, proved as early as 1668 that higher forms of life could not originate spontaneously, but proponents of abiogenesis claimed that this did not apply to microbes and continued to hold that these could arise spontaneously. attempts to disprove the spontaneous generation of life from non-life continued in the early 1800s with observations and experiments by Franz Schulze and Theodor Schwann.
In 1864 louis pasteur finally announced the results of his scientific experiments. In a series of neat experiments, pasteur proved conclusively that only pre-existing microbes could give rise to other microbes (biogenesis). thus dr. louis pasteur finally overcame the longstanding belief in spontaneous generation of life. even so (regardless of the evidence) the belief that life could spontaneously arise from non-life (abiogenesis) was still stubbornly held on to by some, including thomas Huxley ('Darwin's Bulldog').
however, the law of biogenesis is now well established and it is generally accepted by scientists that abiogenesis has no scientific validity. The medical profession and food industry rely totally on the validity of the law of biogenesis for hygiene, sterilisation and food preservation.“There is no publication in the scientific literature—in prestigious journals, specialty journals, or books—that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred. There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations.” Michael Behe in Darwin's Black Box.
Abiogenesis is also against the law, as it were. Yet it is the keystone of the atheistic evolutionists' point of view, for if life didn't just happen by chance, there had to be a Creator and certainly an atheist cannot abide the thought of a creator!
One way to get around the fact that abiogenesis has never been observed and seems to be impossible here on earth is panspermia, the idea that life began elsewhere and then was transported here.
By David Warmflash and Benjamin Weiss
"Most scientists have long assumed that life on Earth is a homegrown phenomenon. According to the conventional hypothesis, the earliest living cells emerged as a result of chemical evolution on our planet billions of years ago in a process called abiogenesis. The alternative possibility--that living cells or their precursors arrived from space--strikes many people as science fiction. Developments over the past decade, however, have given new credibility to the idea that Earth's biosphere could have arisen from an extraterrestrial seed...."
Yes, in this way atheistic evolutionists move the problem to somewhere else in unobserved space at some unobserved time. Oddly enough, there have recently been two fields of scientific study established, being astrobiology and exobiology. The cynic in me says that such fields were developed to help NASA receive funding and keep the dollars flowing into the SETI project.
At any rate, here are the instances of extraterrestrial life that have been observed by scientists:
*
*
*
Yes, there are no instances. But how about the number of times that life has been observed to come from non-life here on earth?
*
*
*
Again, there are none.
Creationists believe that God created all life, as recounted in Genesis chapter one. The Bible has an explanation for the source of all life, God.
~~~~~~~
Those who are determined to keep God out of the discussion are doing so based upon their worldview and not because it is good science. Virtually every field of science was established by a Creationist. Sir Isaac Newton would be the most influential founder of physics and Galileo Galilei would be included in the discussion, Sir Francis Bacon was the founder of the scientific method. Here is a chart from 50 Nobel Laureates and Other Great Scientists Who Believe in God. Notice how most of these 16-21st century fathers of science were believers in a Creator God. IV
| Isaac Newton | Founder of Classical Physics and Infinitesimal Calculus | Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism, i.e., Athanasianism; believed in the Arianism of the Primitive Church) |
| Galileo Galilei | Founder of Experimental Physics | Catholic |
| Nicolaus Copernicus | Founder of Heliocentric Cosmology | Catholic (priest) |
| Johannes Kepler | Founder of Physical Astronomy and Modern Optics | Lutheran |
| Francis Bacon | Founder of the Scientific Inductive Method | Anglican |
| René Descartes | Founder of Analytical Geometry and Modern Philosophy | Catholic |
| Blaise Pascal | Founder of Hydrostatics, Hydrodynamics, and the Theory of Probabilities | Jansenist |
| Michael Faraday | Founder of Electronics and Electro-Magnetics | Sandemanian |
| James Clerk Maxwell | Founder of Statistical Thermodynamics | Presbyterian; Anglican; Baptist |
| Lord Kelvin | Founder of Thermodynamics and Energetics | Anglican |
| Robert Boyle | Founder of Modern Chemistry | Anglican |
| William Harvey | Founder of Modern Medicine | Anglican (nominal) |
| John Ray | Founder of Modern Biology and Natural History | Calvinist (denomination?) |
| Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | German Mathematician and Philosopher, Founder of Infinitesimal Calculus | Lutheran |
| Charles Darwin | Founder of the Theory of Evolution | Anglican (nominal); Unitarian |
| Ernst Haeckel | German Biologist, the Most Influential Evolutionist in Continental Europe | |
| Thomas H. Huxley | English Biologist and Evolutionist, Famous As "Darwin's Bulldog" | |
| Joseph J. Thomson | Nobel Laureate in Physics, Discoverer of the Electron, Founder of Atomic Physics | Anglican |
| Louis Pasteur | Founder of Microbiology and Immunology | Catholic |
Darwin, Haeckel and Huxley kind of stand out as sore thumbs in this list, eh?
Then there is the father of modern rocket science, Werner Von Braun, who said, "I find it...difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe." from Ann Lamont's 21 Great Scientists Who Believed The Bible.
Dimitrov's online book also contains a list of 20th century Nobel Laureates in the sciences...
| Albert Einstein | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Jewish |
| Max Planck | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Protestant |
| Erwin Schrodinger | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Catholic |
| Werner Heisenberg | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Lutheran |
| Robert Millikan | Nobel Laureate in Physics | probably Congregationalist |
| Charles Hard Townes | Nobel Laureate in Physics | United Church of Christ (raised Baptist) |
| Arthur Schawlow | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Methodist |
| William D. Phillips | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Methodist |
| William H. Bragg | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Anglican |
| Guglielmo Marconi | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Catholic and Anglican |
| Arthur Compton | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Presbyterian |
| Arno Penzias | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Jewish |
| Nevill Mott | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Anglican |
| Isidor Isaac Rabi | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Jewish |
| Abdus Salam | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Muslim |
| Antony Hewish | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Christian (denomination?) |
| Joseph H. Taylor, Jr. | Nobel Laureate in Physics | Quaker |
| Alexis Carrel | Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology | Catholic |
| John Eccles | Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology | Catholic |
| Joseph Murray | Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology | Catholic |
| Ernst Chain | Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology | Jewish |
| George Wald | Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology | Jewish |
| Ronald Ross | Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology | Christian (denomination?) |
| Derek Barton | Nobel Laureate in Chemistry | Christian (denomination?) |
| Christian Anfinsen | Nobel Laureate in Chemistry | Jewish |
| Walter Kohn | Nobel Laureate in Chemistry | Jewish |
| Richard Smalley | Nobel Laureate in Chemistry | Christian (denomination?) |
Now as it happens some scientists who associate themselves with a faith are not classic creationists, such as Einstein. Einstein did believe in God, but was unsure what form God was to be encountered and exactly how much He was involved in things at present.
Do you believe in creation or evolution? I suggest very strongly that it is your worldview that drives your belief. One reason that I post this blog is because I do believe that worldviews can be changed with strong evidences and logic. I am one who came all the way from classic evolutionist to creationist after I decided that I needed to look carefully at the evidence and think for myself.
The evolution versus creation debate begins with origins. Where did the Universe come from? Where did life come from? The atheistic evolutionist can only say that he believes by faith that they somehow just happened.
Next, we'll look at some questions that come immediately after the first two very obvious questions. By the way, if you are an evolutionist and want to argue that the first two points are not even about evolution, sorry, I just don't buy it. You have to have a Universe and you have to have living organisms in order to begin even discussing evolution and if those who believe in evolution want to concede that God created the Universe and then created life, then, frankly, what do we need evolution for anyway? The next logical step is to concede that God made life as we know it today and that evolution is not worth discussion.