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Creation or Evolution?
Steve Taylor
Outline
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What are the issues?
Definition of terms
Evolution – the problems
What about the fossils?
Don’t all scientists believe in Evolution?
Creation – how do we know its true?
Does it matter?
Some conclusions…
The Christian Answer
What are the issues?
There is a battle for the beginning: in Schools and
Universities, on the media, in the Church….
 Where did the Universe come from?
 How did life begin?
 Why are we here?
 What is Man - animal or something more ?
 Is the Bible true?
 Does Science contradict the book of Genesis?
 How old is the earth?
 So what?
Creation
‘In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth’
Genesis 1:1
 God created:
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time, space, matter and energy and all life
man and woman (in His image)
suddenly, i.e. in six days, by His Word
all very good
God is eternal, immaterial (a Spirit), powerful,
personal, wise and good
Evolution
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Evolution: “the origination of species by
development from earlier (simpler) forms
of life over millions of years by the
processes of natural selection and/or
mutation”
Collins Dictionary
Evolution
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Problems:
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No experimental proof
Life from non-life?
Fossil evidence missing
Information requires
intelligence
Mechanism?
Evolution: no experimental proof
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Science based upon
observation and experiment:
the scientific method
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‘Not one change of species
into another is on record…
we cannot prove that a single
species has been changed’
Charles Darwin ‘My life and
letters’ vol1
Evolution : life from non-life ?
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Everyone has grown from a single
cell, programmed by DNA in the
nucleus:
Vacuoles, ribosomes, cytoplasm,
centriole, mitochondria, cell
membrane…..
There’s no such thing as a simple
cell !
‘Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the
smallest element of which, a functional gene or protein is complex beyond our
own creative capacities… which excels in every sense anything produced by the
intelligence of man?’
Dr Michael Denton, molecular biologist ‘Evolution – a theory in crisis’ (1986)
Evolution: Lack of fossil evidence
- missing links still missing
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‘The family trees which adorn our textbooks are based on inference,
however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils’
Prof. S. J. Gould, ‘Natural History 86, 5, p.13, (1977)
Firstly, why if species have descended from species by fine gradations, why
do we not see everywhere innumerable transitional forms?…this perhaps is
the most serious objection to my theory’
Charles Darwin ‘Origin of Species’ ch.VI Difficulties of the theory
Piltdown Man
1912: Skull and Jawbone
found in a gravel pit in
Piltdown, Sussex.
 Experts were convinced
that the ‘missing link’ had
been found
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1953: the Piltdown skull was Carbon dated
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human cranium/ lower jaw:orangutan/ teeth filed to look human
By 1953 an estimated 500 doctoral theses had been written!
Conclusion: deliberate fraud !
Nebraska man
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1922 (February): ‘ I have
here ….a molar tooth which
very closely approaches the
human type’
H.J Cook, Nebraska
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1922 (April): Illustrated
London News, full page
reconstruction
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Tooth later (1928) found to
belong to an extinct pig !
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Conclusion: mistake !
Intelligence from an unintelligent source ?
The SETI
project
Search for
Extra-Terrestrial
Intelligence
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Last 30 years: no signals
‘2-2-4’ has 12 bytes of
information: intelligent source
DNA has 4,000,000,000 bytes:
accident?
Life too complex to have arisen by chance
DNA: an
information storage
medium –
possesses the
highest known
information storage
density
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‘Imagine 1050 blind persons each with a scrambled Rubik’s
cube and try to conceive of them all simultaneously arriving
at the solved form. You then have the chance of arriving by
random shuffling (random variation) of just one of the many
biopolymers upon which life depends…. nonsense of a high
order’
Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, (Nobel Prizewinner),
New Scientist 92, 1280, p527 (1981)
Mechanism - how did it happen ?
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A mousetrap is ‘irreducibly complex’ : it will not work
without all its parts in place: it is intelligently designed
‘Darwin’s Black Box’ Prof. Michael Behe (Free Press) 1996
Mechanism - how did it happen ?
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The marvel of human
vision: each eye is
‘hard wired’ to the
brain which correctly
interprets the image
and processes the
information
The human vision system is much
more complicated than a
mousetrap: – could it be the
product of random mutations and
natural selection?
Darwin recognised the problem:
‘ To suppose that the eye with all
its inimitable contrivances for
adjusting the focus to different
distances, for admitting different
amounts of light….. Could have
been formed by natural selection,
seems I freely confess absurd in
the highest degree’
Charles Darwin, ‘Origin of
Species’ chap. VI: Organs
of extreme perfection
What about the
fossils?
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Above: fossil jellyfish
Fossils: form by sudden death followed by
rapid burial (e.g catastrophe) as opposite
Approximately 95% of all fossils are
marine (e.g shellfish)
4.75% are algae and plant fossils
0.2375% are invertebrates (e.g insects)
0.0125% includes all vertebrates (e.g fish,
1500 dinosaur skeletons)
Species appear abruptly, fully formed and
remain static (e.g coelacanth)
The fossil record is best understood as a
result of a world wide flood that destroyed
the continents and land dwellers (Genesis
7)
There are at least 300 flood stories in
different civilisations around the world
Photograph of a ‘mother and baby’ ichthyosaur fossilised during childbirth (with
acknowledgments to ‘Creation’ magazine)
Don’t all scientists believe in Evolution?
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Not all scientists accept Evolution
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Faraday, Maxwell, Fleming….etc: all
Creationists
‘In six days’ 50 practising scientists who
believe Genesis 1 say why
Creation Research Society (CRS) has over
700 members
Others have never considered the
scientific evidence which supports the
Biblical Creation account
Some (sadly) are prejudiced:
‘… no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how
mystifying … for we cannot allow a Divine
Foot in the door.’
Lewontin, R., The New York Review, 1997, p. 31
Creation – how do we know its true?
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Creation is taught in the Bible which claims to be the inspired Word of God
The Bible is completely self consistent: infallible
The Bible is accurate historically, archaeologically, scientifically: inerrant
The Bible been fulfilled over and again prophetically: confirmed
Contains many eyewitness accounts of the life and miracles of the Lord
Jesus Christ who said:
• ‘Have you not read that He which made them at
the beginning made them male and female?’
Matthew 19:4
Does it matter?
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What we believe about origins greatly influences
our behaviour:
‘At some future period, not very far distant, as
measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will
almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout
the world the savage races.’
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Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, vol. I, 201.
Hitler justified the Nazi death camps and antisemitism on the basis of his misguided
evolutionary beliefs
Some conclusions...
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Evolution - not proven in the past:
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Evolution - not observed experimentally:
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no solid fossil evidence: missing links still missing
natural selection: cannot account for the massive increases in genetic
information needed to go from molecules to Man
random mutation: no experimental proof of information-adding changes
Undirected ‘molecules to Man’ evolution goes against well established
scientific laws:
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2nd Law of Thermodynamics
"...I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond
the bounds of true science...It is a mere rag of an hypothesis
with as many flaw[s] and holes as sound parts."
Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, cited by Adrian Desmond and
James Moore, Darwin, (New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, 1991) p. 456, 475
The Christian message…
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‘In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth’
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Genesis 1:1
‘Through one man sin entered into the world, and death
through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all
sinned’
Romans 5 :12
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Because of our wrongdoing (sin) there is there is a
‘missing link’ that we all need:
Christ died for our sins…
the just for the unjust, that
He might bring us to God
I Peter 3:18