The Evolution of a Creationist

[Soldier4Christ]

The Black and  Yellow Garden Spider

The black and yellow garden spider is a special creation of the God of the Bible. As does each species of spider, it has its own unique web, which may be spun more than two feet in diameter. At the center of the web, the spider makes a dense area of silk that often gives the appearance of a zipper or zig-zag bulk of silk.

The female weaves an egg-sac that is pear-shaped and about one inch in diameter. She then hangs the egg sac somewhere close to her main web.


"This spider lays all her eggs at once. There are usually 40 or 50. As each egg is expelled the female dusts it with a powdery substance. This dusting gives the egg a coating that looks like the bloom on a plum or a grape.

The eggs are enclosed in a silken cup at the center of the sac. The cup, in turn, is covered by a layer of flossy silk. And for additional protection the female weaves another layer of silk around both the cup and the floss. This outer covering is tightly woven and brown in color. Shortly after the eggs are laid they hatch. The young are known as spiderlings. They break out of the shells by means of an organ known as the "egg tooth". This later disappears." [1] 

The black and yellow garden spider is like a miniature manufacturing plant. It produces different kinds of webbing in more than one color for different purposes, as well as making the powdery substance with which it coats its eggs. Some of its webbing is sticky to entrap insects for food. Other parts of the web are not sticky, enabling the spider to move rapidly across the web without ensnaring itself. How does evolution (the impersonal plus time plus chance) explain the complicated ability of one spider to produce different types of webbing for different purposes and even in different colors (varying from white to brown)? And how does evolution explain the presence of an "egg tooth" in a baby spider?

When the spider decides it is time to move on to new territory, it has an ingenious means of travel:

"To reach new locations the spider travels by a means of transportation known as "ballooning". A spiderling or spider throws out streams of silk. These threads form a sort of "flying carpet." It rises on warm currents of ascending air, and spiders and spiderlings are borne aloft and scattered far and wide. Sometimes they go as high as 14,000 to 15,000 feet and travel hundreds or even thousands of miles." [2]

Spiders undergo several moults before they are fully grown. If they do not shed their skin, they die. How would the spider know this until it grew too big for its shell and died? Dead spiders do not evolve new abilities!

The skin moults and splits open in a special manner. First, the spider injects a certain liquid called "moulting fluid" between his outer old skin and his newly developing skin. Where does this special fluid come from, and how does the spider know what to do with it and when to use it? Using the moulting fluid too soon or too late is fatal!

The way that the old skin splits is crucial. If it cracks open in the wrong places, or at wrong angles, the spider perishes.

"Once the old skin is sufficiently loose, splits appear along the sides of the body and in front of the eyes. But no horizontal split occurs across the body. The vertical split along each side of the body and the one crosswise in front of the eyes form a flap of skin.

The spider pushes up the flap like a man thrusting up a hinged trap door. It pushes and pushes and pushes until the flap drops back over the abdomen. Out of the opening wriggles the spider." [3]

What infinite care our Creator-God has taken in the design of the spider! This little creature breaks the rules of the evolution model with its marvelous complexity. It needed God to create it just like it is with all its abilities and peculiarities. The black and yellow garden spider is a marvel of God's creation -- the God for whom nothing is impossible (see Luke 1:37), and who daily lives to make intercession for us (Romans 8:34) and who loves us so much that He willingly gave His life for us (John 3:16).
 

[1] Will Barker, Winter-Sleeping Wildlife (New York: Harper and Row, Pubs., 1958), pp. 94-96.

[2] Ibid: Will Barker, p. 96.

[3] Ibid: Will Barker, p. 97.

[Soldier4Christ]

4  "MISSING LINKS" ARE MISSING

As a college student I was convinced that evolution was true and that, in time, scientists would find the missing pieces. I thought science would ultimately provide us with an unbroken chain of evidence supporting the evolution and relationship of all things. Many scientists are still hoping for this evidence. However, Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard, believes that the unbroken chain of evolutionary evidence will never be found -- that what we see in the fossils and in living creatures is more accurately explained with the creation model. Gould is still an evolutionist, but he writes:

"The birds of Massachusetts and the bugs in my backyard are unambiguous members of species recognized in the same way by all experienced observers.

This notion of species as "natural kinds"...fit splendidly with creationist tenets....

But how could a division of the organic world into discrete entities be justified by an evolutionary theory that proclaimed ceaseless change as the fundamental fact of nature?" [1]

Dr. Gould is making a statement about what we see as opposed to what evolution theorizes we ought to be seeing. We see discrete entities, distinct species. In the fossil record, there are fish, turtles and cockroaches. They are individually distinct, identifiable creatures. In life, we can also see fish, turtles and cockroaches. We can identify them. They are not l/2 fish and l/2 turtle or l/2 turtle and l/2 cockroach. We do not see elephants evolving fins or whales evolving wings. The discrete entities we see in the fossil record and in life are not "questionable" species. They are not transitional forms, as evolution would require. This is a problem for the evolutionist. If evolution is true, creatures should not be so easily identifiable. Every creature should be difficult to categorize, classify and name, if evolution is correct (and life is "evolving along"). Could it be that evolution is not correct? That each animal is easily identifiable (as giraffe or beetle or fish or turtle or cockroach) truly does "fit splendidly with creationist tenets." Ceaseless change in the fossils or living plants and animals does not appear to be "...the fundamental fact of nature".[2] (Emphasis added).

GOD CREATED KINDS

God tells us He created each plant and animal after its own kind (Genesis 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25). Nothing evolved from some lower life form and nothing is presently evolving into a higher life form. From a creationist position, what we see in the fossil record and in life is exactly what we would expect to see. The lack of transitional forms is why evolutionists have the "missing link" problem, although some deny this. The "missing links" are missing. They are completely absent in the fossil record and in living organisms. They never will be found. God created each plant and animal after its own kind, therefore, you would not expect to see "missing links".

"MISSING LINKS" OR "UNBROKEN TIES"

The evolutionist's propaganda machine constantly barrages us through public TV, magazines and newspapers with broad ambiguities and undocumented claims supporting evolutionary theory. A letter in the Dallas Morning News by Drs. Alvin and Joel Taurog of Southwestern Medical School exemplifies this type of propaganda:

"Biological evolution asserts that all living organisms are interrelated by unbroken ties of genealogy. Although referred to as a theory, evolution is as much a fact as anything discovered by science, as well confirmed as the rotation of the planets around the sun or the roundness of the earth. The concept of evolution is central to biology and a massive body of evidence corroborates the evolutionary origin of all living organisms, including humans. While much remains to be learned regarding the mechanisms of evolution, the evolution of species is accepted by biologists as proven fact." [3]

Let us evaluate this paragraph of Drs. Taurog. If "...all living organisms are interrelated by unbroken ties of genealogy", then the leading evolutionary thinker of Harvard, Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, is wrong. Gould states:

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." [4]

"Gradualistic evolution" means evolution of one creature into a more sophisticated and more complex creature over long periods of time. One creature gradually becomes another if given enough time. Gradualistic evolution, if true, should have evidence of transitional intermediate life forms in fossils and in living animals. Gould continues:

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt." [5]

What Gould is saying is that the missing links remain missing. There are no transitional (in-between) forms. No plant or animal is evolving into a higher form as far as the fossils can confirm.

"SUNRISE" OR "EARTH TURN"

Where are these "unbroken ties" referred to by Drs. Taurog? They present no scientific evidence to support their view. The evidence is only implied. They do appear to erect a "straw-man-creationist" and to take a few sideways swipes at him. In mentioning the "rotation of the planets around the sun or the roundness of the earth" as true science, are they implying that the Bible and creationists believe in the "sun rising on a flat earth"? How accurate are these doctors in the use of language? Do they say to a patient, "Did you see the beautiful sunrise this morning?" Or would they be scientifically accurate and ask "Did you see the beautiful earth turn this morning?" The Bible uses common, ordinary language. That the earth is not flat, but a sphere is taught in Isaiah 40:22: "It is He that sitteth upon (above) the circle of the earth..." (KJV). The Bible teaches that as God looks down upon earth, it appears as a sphere or circle. Psalm 19 (New American Standard Version) is a scripture that uses normal language and refers to the sun rising. The Bible is not inaccurate because it uses common figures of speech.

Where can we find the "massive body of evidence (that) corroborates the evolutionary origin of all living creatures, including humans" (as Drs. Taurog allege)? The "massive body of evidence" proving the evolution of man would not fill a single casket according to evolutionist and prolific author Dr. Lyall Watson:

"The fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than specimens. The remarkable fact is that all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin!" [6]

Drs. Alvin and Joel Taurog say still more:

"When religion and science come into conflict, it is generally in the realm of belief....Scientific belief is based solely upon evidence that is validated by observation, experiment and prediction; neither religious belief, nor any other belief system, is subject to these constraints." [7]

Apparently, Drs. Taurog believe that the evolution model of one cell to man is science and thus can be validated with the scientific method. Creation science is apparently religious belief in their view. They add, "The interrelationships among living organisms from microbes to man have never been clearer,..." It is not clear precisely what these doctors are referring to, but from the smallest life forms to the largest, from the simplest to the most complex, there is no scientific evidence to prove that they (small to large or simple to complex) are related as ancestors to or progeny from each other. Natural History of May 1977 (p. 14) published the words of Dr. Stephen Jay Gould:

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils... We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study."

[Soldier4Christ]

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY DISPROVES  EVOLUTION

Even at the level of molecules, evidence to support evolution is lacking. In chapter 2, we discussed the fact that at the cellular level of living creatures there are important differences that distinguish between basic kinds of flesh. For instance, the cells that make up the flesh of birds and fish are not the same. Scientists are studying even smaller entities than cells as they examine the molecules of the cell. This field of study is named Molecular Biology.

A book that every Christian family (and non-Christian, as well) should have is, Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins. Written by creationists as a supplemental high school biology textbook supporting the view that life demands a designer, this book deals with the molecular evidence for creation.

"The study of living things on the molecular level is a relatively new field. The information that scientists derive from molecular biology may be used to compare and categorize organisms, a field known as biochemical taxonomy. Biochemical analysis holds out the promise of making taxonomy a more precise science, because it allows differences between various organisms to be quantified and measured....

Proponents of intelligent design read similarity in structure as a reflection of similarity in function. All living organisms must survive in the same universe and must fit its ecological web. All must fit into a food chain. The need to function within a common universe puts common physical and chemical requirements on all organisms. It would be both logical and efficient for an intelligent agent to design living things with a common biochemical base....

The significant new contribution biochemistry offers is a mathematically quantifiable means of determining how similar classes of organisms are. But when several similarities are put side by side, the pattern that emerges contradicts all expectations based on evolution." [8] (Emphasis added).

Animals that evolutionists have always believed to be closely related in the evolutionary chain are now known to be unrelated when studied at the molecular level. Kenyon and Davis continue:

"To use classic evolutionary terminology, amphibians are intermediate between fish and the other land-dwelling vertebrates. Yet, analysis of their amino acids does not place amphibians in an intermediate position. This is true no matter what species of amphibian we choose for comparison. Based upon the evolutionary series, we would expect some amphibians to be closer to fish ("primitive" species) and others to be closer to reptiles ("advanced" species). But this is not the case. No matter which species are taken as the basis for comparison, the distance between amphibians and fish, or between amphibians and reptiles, is always the same....

The revolution in molecular biology has given us new, mathematically quantifiable data on the similarities in living things. But the data have served to support a picture of the organic world consistent with the theory of intelligent design." [9] (Emphasis added).

Author Michael Denton [Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Harper and Row, 1986)], a Ph.D. in molecular biology (who is not a creationist as far as I know), argues that evolution from one cell to man is not indicated at the level of the molecule. After looking at molecules for evidence for "missing links" between the different classes of creatures, Denton writes (p. 286):

"There is a total absence of partially inclusive or intermediate classes, and therefore none of the groups traditionally cited by evolutionary biologists as intermediate gives even the slightest hint of a supposedly transitional character."

Of course, if there is no evidence for evolutionary relationships at the level of molecules, which are the basic building blocks of nature, then the idea of evolution of enzymes, proteins, plasma and tissue is totally absurd. The Bible says:

For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens
(He is the God who formed the earth and made it,
He established it and did not create it a waste place,
But formed it to be inhabited).
I am the Lord, and there is none else...
And there is no other God besides Me,
A righteous God and a Savior;
There is none except Me. (Isaiah 45:18,21b)

Dr. Vincent Sarich, an evolutionist and Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, did a series of studies at the molecular level on the evolution of man. At first, his studies were scorned by his evolutionary colleagues. He had the audacity to announce in 1967 that Ramapithecus (proclaimed by Elwyn Simons and David Pilbeam of Yale to be one of the earliest ancestors of man) was not at all ancestral to man, but more probably an ancestor to the orangutan.

"The year was 1967. Sarich and his partner, Allan Wilson, were comparing blood proteins from human beings, chimpanzees and gorillas -- finding them remarkably similar. After analyzing the slight differences, they decided that the ancestors of human beings must have diverged from those of the African apes only about 5 million years ago, instead of the 20 million to 30 million years that fossil evidence seemed to suggest.

Their conclusion was regarded by many paleontologists as heresy. It was bad enough that Sarich and Wilson were challenging the conventional estimate of the age of the human line. Worse, they were doing it with test tubes and biochemistry -- all but ignoring the fossils on which so much evolutionary theory was based. Most experts then believed that human beings could trace their ancestry at least as far back as a 14 million-year-old creature called Ramapithecus, and paleontologist Elwyn Simons, then of Yale, spoke for many of his colleagues when he pronounced the Sarich-Wilson work "impossible to believe."

Times have changed. While Simons still thinks Ramapithecus may be a human ancestor, he has little company. New fossil discoveries have convinced many experts that the animal was ancestral to the orangutan." [10]

Molecular research is eliminating the supposed evolutionary ancestors of people, one by one.

[1] Stephen Jay Gould, "A Quahog is a Quahog," Natural History, Vol. 88 (7), August-September, 1979, p. 18.

[2] ibid.

[3] Drs. Alvin and Joel Taurog, Dallas Morning News,March 6, 1987, Letters to the Editor.

[4] Stephen Jay Gould, "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?", Paleobiology, Vol. 6 (1), January, 1980, p. 127, as quoted in The Quote Book, p. 8.

[5] Stephen Jay Gould, "The Return of Hopeful Monsters," Natural History, Vol. LXXVI (6), June-July, 1977, p. 24. Quoted in

The Quote Book, p. 8.

[6] Dr. Lyall Watson, "The Water People," Science Digest, Vol. 90, May, 1982, p. 44.

[7] Drs. Alvin and Joel Taurog, Dallas Morning News, March 6, 1987, Letters to the Editor.

[8] Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, Of Pandas and People (Dallas: Haughton Publishing Co., 1989), pp. 34-36.

[9] ibid, pp. 37,38.

[10] Kevin McKean, "Preaching the Molecular Gospel," Discover, Vol. 4 (7), July, 1983, p. 34.

[Soldier4Christ]

The Gecko Lizard  AND

  The Human Ear

These two marvels of God's creation are included not only to display God's incredible designs in His creatures, but also to acquaint you more fully with the type of information you can glean from the creationist magazine, Creation Ex Nihilo. The following are articles in Creation Ex Nihilo magazine Vol. 14, No. 4 of September - November 1992 (published by Creation Science Foundation Ltd., P.O. Box 302, Sunnybank, QLD, 4109, Australia), by Robert Kofahl, Ph.D., and Tom Wagner. In my opinion every family should subscribe to Creation Ex Nihilo!

Dr. Robert Kofahl teaches us about the gecko lizard on page 6.

 

"A Lizard on Your Ceiling"

"The gecko lizard can walk across your ceiling upside down without falling off. How does it do this? Until a few years ago scientists did not know, though they proposed several conflicting theories. Examination of the toe-pads of the gecko with optical microscopes at up to 2,000 diameters magnification revealed thousands of little fibres arranged like the tufts of bristles in a toothbrush.

Yet the question remained unanswered. An answer was finally provided by the powerful scanning electron microscope, which was able to take a series of remarkable photographs magnified to 35,000 diameters and more.

What was revealed? The gecko has on its toe pads many millions of fine fibres tipped with little suction cups, each about eight millionths of an inch in diameter. In conjunction with this, the lizard's feet are designed so that the tips of the toes bend or curl upward so that he can peel off the suction cups gradually at each step and not get himself too firmly stuck to the surface. It is estimated that the gecko has at least 500 million suction cups on his toes.

The extraordinary microscopic structure of the gecko lizard's toe pads clearly indicates intelligent purposeful design. No remotely plausible scheme for the origin of the gecko's suction cups by random mutations and natural selection has yet been proposed by evolutionary theorists. And should some scientist with a clever imagination succeed in devising such a scheme, he would still be without a scrap of fossil evidence to demonstrate that the hypothetical process of evolution actually took place in the past."

"-- You can't see with the naked eye the tiny suction cups on a gecko's foot. But each chevron-shaped ridge on the gecko's amazing foot pad is composed of millions of fibres tipped with microscopic suction cups. This allows it to walk upside down across your ceiling, or sideways across your wall --."

With such marvelous evidence of a designer, how can anyone doubt the existence of God?
In the same issue of Creation Ex Nihilo, Tom Wagner composed a "Think Spot" detailing some specifics concerning the human ear (page 13):

"Your Hearing: A powerful pointer to God's creation"

"Contemplation of the size of things that have been created can be a very effective tool in comprehending the greatness of God. For example, consider the Creator's technical ability in a study of human hearing. The ability of our ears to detect sound is much greater than the minimum expected requirement for survival had man simply evolved.

In a book edited by David Lipscomb, 1988, Hearing Conservation in Industry, Schools, and the Military, we read on page 303:

     
 'The ear is capable of sensory response to sound whose pressure at the ear drum is no greater than two ten-thousandths of a millionth of barometric pressure. This pressure moves the ear drum about one one-hundred-millionth of an inch. That dimension is approximately one one-hundredth the width of a hydrogen molecule, the tiniest of all known molecules. Therefore, throughout a significant portion of the ear's dynamic range, it is moving in sub-molecular dimensions.'

       To visually grasp the incredible sensitivity Lipscomb describes, imagine what it would be like to watch a six-foot man, standing on the surface of the earth, shrink to only one one-hundred-millionth of an inch. The earth, shrinking also - but still enormous when compared to the man - would proportionately reduce to a tiny ball no bigger than the small letter 'o' on this page! The man would become utterly invisible, even to the powerful microscopes of today.

      Given this example, a person can begin to appreciate the way God has created the incomprehensibly tiny, as well as the unimaginably large things of this universe. It also helps us to consider the miracle of hearing with which our Creator has blessed us. Something we should thank Him for. After all, 'Faith cometh by hearing...'

  So praise be to God for what He has done!" 

[Soldier4Christ]

5      ORANGUTANS, MONKEYS   AND MAN

   When studied at the level of molecules, cells, or fossil bones, the evolutionary ancestors of people (ape-man or man-like-apes) are not to be found. In spite of this, elaborate attempts are made to "prove" that man evolved from early primates (ape-like creatures).

In the late sixties and early seventies, much of the scientific community ruled Ramapithecus (an ape-like creature) ancestral to the orangutan or to an ape, instead of its original position as ancestral to humans. When considering Ramapithecus in 1973, Alan Walker and Peter Andrews wrote their belief that the jaw of Ramapithecus was that of a true ape (Nature, Vol. 244, 1973, p. 313).

Yet, in 1982, the son of Louis and Mary Leakey, who are world famous pioneers in the study of "prehistoric" man, stated:

"Ramapithecines are thought to be the group from which our ancestors evolved." [1]

PILTDOWN MAN

   If Ramapithecus appears in school or college textbooks as part of the evolution of man, it can be discarded, as should the Piltdown man, which was shown to be a hoax in 1953.[2]  Piltdown's filed teeth and bone had been stained to make it appear to be ancient.

 Fourteen years after Piltdown Man was proven by the evolutionary scientific community to be a total fake and bad joke, Harvard University Press published these words (admittedly this is a long quote, but I include it to display how far the evolutionary community will go to support their insupportable claims even years after one of their "evidences" has been proven to be a fraud):

"Unlike all other fossil men is Eoanthropus, known from a fragmentary skull and the right half of a lower jaw with two teeth, the first and second molars, in place. The specimens were obtained by Mr. William Dawson from a small opening by the roadside at Piltdown, Sussex, England, and described by Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. It is difficult to determine their age, for fragments of mammals characteristic of the Pliocene and Pleistocene are mingled in the river-borne gravel. If contemporaneous with the most modern of them, Piltdown man was probably not more recent than the third interglacial stage, since Hippopotamus and other subtropical animals occur with it.

The skull is so fragmentary that those who have studied it have been unable to agree as to the proper reconstruction: estimates of its cranial capacity have varied from 1079 cc. to 1500 cc. , and an intermediate figure of about 1300 cc. has finally been reached. It is not at all of the Neanderthal type, but has a high forehead like that of modern man. Aside from the fact that the bones are exceedingly thick, it is not peculiar. The jaw, however, is admitted by all to be more like that of a chimpanzee than like that of any man, living or extinct. This was recognized in the original description. The two teeth are like human molars, but the remainder of the jaw affords too much space to be filled by ordinary teeth. Hence, in his restoration of the anterior part, Smith Woodward made the canines large, like those of a chimpanzee, and allowed for a small diastema. The correctness of his view was demonstrated in a striking way the year after publication, when Dawson and Father Teilhard de Chardin, who were resifting the gravel at the spot where the jaw was found, found a large canine. It is twice as large as that of a man and almost exactly like that of a modern chimpanzee. This association seemed to many to be an unnatural one, so the jaw was attributed by some to a species of chimpanzee. The later finding of a few more fragments at a near-by site seems, however, to have convinced most of those interested that skull and jaw belong together. Eoanthropus dawsoni (Piltdown man), then is to some people the missing link between man and the apes. The forehead is high, the brow ridge insignificant, and the brain large, all features of man, but the chinless jaw has the big canines of an ape." [3]

Thus as late as 1967, the prestigious Harvard University Press was still promoting the Piltdown Hoax as a possible "...missing link between man and the apes", when it had been proven a sham nearly fifteen years earlier.

  NEBRASKA MAN

Nebraska man was formed from a single tooth found in 1922. In 1924, the skull was found and the tooth fit perfectly in the empty socket -- it was a pig's tooth! [4]

 NEANDERTHAL AND CRO-MAGNON

We might also add that Neanderthal and Cro-magnon man are now believed to be normal European Homosapiens. Some of these "prehistoric men" have a larger brain cavity than modern man.

Dr. Percy E. Raymond of Harvard University, states in regard to Neanderthal:

"In actual capacity, the cranial cavity was larger than that of the average European, some skulls measuring l,600 cc." [5]

Donald Johanson, one of the world's most recognized experts on "fossil man", writes:

"...Neanderthal Man. He was another Homo. Some think he was the same species as ourselves....

I consider Neanderthal nonspecific with sapiens, with myself. One hears talk about putting him in a business suit and turning him loose in the subway. It is true; one could do it, and he would never be noticed. He was just a little heavier-boned than people of today, more primitive in a few facial features. But he was a man. His brain was as big as modern man's, but shaped in a slightly different way. Could he make change at the subway booth and recognize a token? He certainly could." [6]

According to evolutionist Johanson, Neanderthal is not prehistoric man, not some ancient evolutionary ancestor, but just like us, modern man!

 PEKING MAN

Peking Man has been categorized as Homo erectus. He disappeared during World War II. There is not a single bone left of Peking Man, although books have been written about the international search for the "bones".

An entertaining and readable book on the search for Peking Man was written by Christopher Janus with William Brashler, entitled, The Search for Peking Man. Mentioned in the book as one of the people who aided in the discovery of Peking Man is Teilhard De Chardin -- one of the perpetrators of the Piltdown Man hoax! [7] Since De Chardin was implicated in the Piltdown hoax and managed to involve himself with Peking man as well, how can we be certain that the documentation we have of Peking man is reliable?

   Janus records the total number of Peking Man fossil fragments before the Japanese invasion of China:

"... they labeled, described, photographed and categorized the casts of the 175 fossil fragments that had been collected" [8]

Peking Man supposedly consisted of:

"...5 skulls, about 150 jaw fragments and teeth, 9 thigh bones and fragments, 2 upper arm bones, a collar bone, and a wrist bone" [9]

All these bones have disappeared! Apparently, the evolutionary scientists cannot even agree on how many bones represented Peking Man. Johanson records:

"...5 skulls, 15 smaller pieces of the skull or face, 14 lower jaws and 152 teeth." [10]

So there is no hard evidence that Peking Man is an ancestor of Homo sapiens. Some photographs of Peking skulls remain. The skulls were broken into from the rear and most probably, the brains served as food for true Homo sapiens. It would hardly be likely that the ancient ancestor of man lived concurrently with man and that his brains would be considered a delicacy of his great-grandchildren, homo sapiens. As early as 1957, French paleontologist, Dr. Marcellin Boule, proposed that the people who made the tools that killed Peking Man were true Homo sapiens.[11]

[Soldier4Christ]

JAVA MAN

   Dr. Eugene Dubois discovered another creature in the "Homo erectus" category, which he called "Java Man". Java Man was a skullcap and leg-bone. By the end of his life, Dubois recanted. He believed the leg-bone to belong to Homo sapiens and the skullcap that of a giant ape or gibbon.

HEIDELBERG MAN

The other commonly mentioned Homo erectus is Heidelberg Man. Johanson writes:

"Heidelberg Man, for example, was named Homo heidelbergensis. His finder recognized that he was a man and, thus, belonged in the genus Homo, but decided to put him in a species of his own." [12]

Heidelberg Man consists of a single fossil -- a lower jaw with teeth.[13] Heidelberg Man is imagination built around a "jawbone"!

"LUCY" AND THE AUSTRALOPITHECINES

Even Australopithecus is open to question. The star of this "human ancestor" is Donald Johanson's 3½ foot tall "Lucy". Supposedly, Lucy was the first creature to walk on two feet instead of four feet, like other apes did (and still do). Lucy resembles Homo sapiens in three ways (theoretically): her knee, arm-leg length, and left pelvic bone. She has a human-like knee joint, but this joint was found sixty to eighty meters deeper in the rock strata and almost a mile away from the rest of the skeleton. To claim that this knee joint belonged to a partial skeleton found about a mile away is as logical as saying a chicken drum stick bone found in the parking lot of the local Kentucky Fried Chicken establishment was originally the leg of a chicken whose partial skeleton was found in your back yard. There is no way to prove the knee-joint is part of Lucy's skeleton. Johanson published Lucy's arm-leg length ratio to be 83.9%. In other words her arm bone was said to be 83.9% as long as her leg bone. This would place her about midway between ape (arm and leg of equal length) and human (arm about 75% of leg length). The 83.9% seems quite specific, but the leg-bone had been broken in two or more places and one end was crushed. The pieces do not fit perfectly together, so there is no way to accurately measure it. The 83.9% sounds good, but it is a guess (see Ex Nihilo, Vol. 6, 1983, p. 5).

The other human-like bone is the left pelvic bone. This bone is complete and is used to prove Lucy walked upright. The problem is that this bone does not prove upright walking. Johanson believes the bone has been distorted by some means. And yet, there is no other pelvic bone with which to compare it. The bone as it stands, more likely shows Lucy to have walked on all fours!

According to another evolutionist, Dr. Solly Zuckerman, Australopithecus is an ape and walked on all fours like an ape. Zuckerman evaluated the pelvic bone of the Australopithecines and he concluded that this telltale bone corresponded in one type of measurement to monkeys and baboons. Looking at it from another angle, it was "...completely unlike man, and identical with monkeys and apes.[14]

     Fellow evolutionist Dr. Charles Oxnard, believes Australopithecus walked in a fashion similar to a chimpanzee[15] or an orangutan. Oxnard writes:

"Let us now return to our original problem: the Australopithecine fossils. I shall not burden you with details of each and every study that we have made but...the information...shows that whereas the conventional wisdom is that the Australopithecine fragments are generally rather similar to humans and when different deviate somewhat towards the condition in African apes, the new studies point to different conclusions. The new investigations suggest that the fossil fragments are usually uniquely different from any living form; when they do have similarities with living species, they are as often as not reminiscent of the orangutan." [16]

Lyall Watson is right. There does not appear to be enough bones from "true" fossil man, "...to fill a single coffin."

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ART

Even the artwork typically used to depict these creatures is questionable. Those National Geographic-type pictures of apes gradually becoming more and more human until you finally see the man on the street (usually with an ape-like haircut and a beard) are called anthropological art.

"Unfortunately, the vast majority of artists' conceptions are based more on imagination, than evidence.... Much of the reconstruction, however, is guesswork. Bones say nothing about the fleshy parts of the nose, lips or ears. Artists must create something between an ape and a human being: the older a specimen is said to be, the more ape-like they make it.... Hairiness is a matter of pure conjecture.

The guesswork approach often leads to errors." [17]

How did the above words get into an evolutionary magazine like Science Digest? Those National Geographic pictures of "evolving" man are "artists' conceptions", "imagination", and "guesswork". When is the last time you saw a bone with hair on it? Or how do the artists know what kind of ears or lips to put on skull fragments or even whole skulls? There are no lips on skull bones. As Science Digest confesses, it is the artists' imagination. This is not science!

Every bone or bone particle discovered so far has been classified, by one evolution expert or another, as ape, monkey, or man -- not ape-man or man-ape.

IS A MONKEY ALMOST A MAN?

There are other facts to be considered when attempting to prove that man had ape-like evolutionary ancestors. J. W. Klotz lists a few of the important differences between man and the primates.[18] I have edited Dr. Klotz's list of 31 major differences down to the ten most outstanding in my opinion. If man evolved from the primates, then everything in the right column (characteristics of primates) would have to somehow evolve into the characteristics of man in the left column.

        Man                                              Primate

1. Permanent bipedal locomotion           1. Walks on all fours

2. Great toe in line with other toes          2. Great toe like a thumb

3. Brain larger                                       3. Brain smaller

4. Head balanced on top of the             4. Head hinged in front of spinal column
        spinal column

5. Less mature at birth                           5. More mature at birth

6. More vertebrae                                   6. Less vertebrae

7. Shorter arms                                      7. Longer arms

8. Longer legs                                        8. Shorter legs

9. One type hand                                    9. Another type hand

10. 46 chromosomes                              10. 48 chromosomes

These are real, basic differences between man and the primates. Let us examine three.

[Soldier4Christ]

THE GREAT TOE

What would it take to evolve a great toe like that on the foot of a primate into a great toe like that on the foot of a man? This digit on a primate is located and functions like a thumb. With its thumb-like great toe, it can grab onto a tree limb.

And yet the great toe of man comes out the front of his foot in a line with his other toes. In reality, there is no animal in the supposed evolutionary family of man with a great toe positioned somewhere between man's "out the front" and primate's "more toward the rear and out the side". There are no living animals and no fossil animals that display a great toe migrating toward the front of the foot. Surely "survival of the fittest" would ensnare and destroy any primate that lost its ability to grab limbs with its "evolving higher" great toe! It would quickly become extinct and would not evolve on up in the "evolutionary chain" to man.

HEAD PLACEMENT

The placement of the head is also quite significant. A human head is balanced on top of the spinal column to facilitate walking and running in the upright, two-legged position. Where is the evidence that the primates somehow managed to move their heads from being hinged in front of the spinal column (for ease of function on all fours) to the top of the spinal column as in humans? How could a creature function, whose head was placed halfway between the primate and man? Obviously, the "survival of the fittest" would catch up with it also. It would probably become extinct in one generation.

BABY HUMANS ARE HELPLESS

Evolution seems to be going in reverse as you look at the ability of human babies to survive, compared to the primates. Human babies are totally helpless at birth and for months afterward. Baby apes are ready to run to safety or climb onto their mother's back for a ride soon after birth. How would those first human babies have survived? And, what is the probability that the last set of ape-parents would give birth to dizygotic twins (a male and female) which could not only survive as the first non-ape human babies, but could reproduce offspring (male and female) which could again reproduce and on and on? And, why do we still have so many species of apes and monkeys, if they are evolving into something else, perhaps even into people? Again may I emphasize the fact that what we see in real life today and over the span of recorded history are discrete, identifiable animals, plants and people; not intermediate, transitional life forms.

A MASSIVE POPULATION PROBLEM

If, as evolutionists believe, monkey-like creatures evolved into man about 1 million years ago, (Lucy is said to be around 2.8 million years old), we would anticipate a massive population problem. Dr. Henry Morris gives some interesting figures in his book, Biblical Cosmology and Modern Science, published in 1970. Assuming parents lived to the age of 35 and had four children, roughly 3 billion people would have been produced in just the first thousand years!  You might say, "Well, that is too many children." Dr. Morris shows the figures for a family with three children, using the same condition as above. In roughly 2 thousand years the population of earth would have reached about 4 1/2 billion. With 2.5 children per family and extending the length of a generation to 43 years, in little more than 4 thousand years 3 billion people would populate the earth. To quote Dr. Morris verbatim: "It begins to be glaringly evident that the human race cannot be very old!" [19]

According to Dr. Morris, if the earth's population started with two people 4,300 years ago, it would only have to increase at the rate of 0.5% per year in order to reach the population of the world of 1970. This 0.5% is significantly less than the 1970 population growth rate of about 2% per year. The farther back in history you go, the higher is the percentage of growth. Less industrialized people have bigger families on the average.

Dr. Morris states that the best secular estimate of world population at the time of Christ, is 200,000,000 people. Using 2.75 children per family, plus a 40-year generation and starting with 2 people in 2340 B.C., there would have been about 210 million people alive in A.D. 1. These figures would fit the Biblical time frame nicely.

Bringing into consideration the effects of disease and wars on population growth, Dr. Morris says:

"But what about the possibility that the great plagues and wars of the past may have served to keep the population from growing at the indicated rates? Could the population have remained static for long ages and only in modern times have started to expand?

We are unable to answer these questions dogmatically, of course, since population data are unavailable for earlier times....

Furthermore, there is really no evidence that the growth of population has been retarded by wars or disease epidemics. The past century, which has experienced the greatest mushrooming of populations, has also witnessed the most destructive wars in all history, as well as the worst plagues and famines." [20]

Dr. Morris singles out the Jewish people as a good example of the accuracy of his population estimates. The Jewish people had no homeland for many years. They suffered persecution and the holocaust. Morris states that if the average Jewish family had 2.4 children and a 43-year generation, that in 3,700 years (beginning about the time of the patriarch, Jacob) there should have been 13,900,000 Jewish people alive by 1970. [21]

Man could not possibly have been here as man for even l,000,000 years. Using Morris' figures, l,000,000 years is over 28,600 generations, which would put the world population of 1970 at 10 to the 5,000th power! That is enough people to fill the entire universe, and we are not including rats and rabbits. As Dr. Morris said,

"It begins to be glaringly evident that the human race cannot be very old! ...the assumption of the evolutionists that man first appeared a million or more years ago becomes completely absurd when examined in the light of population statistics." [22]

If man has been recognizable as man for 30 million years, 15 million years or even 500,000 years, there should be hundreds of billions of fossils scattered in huge piles all over the earth! Where is fossil man? Let's face it -- man has not been and cannot have been on earth for very much longer than a few thousand years! If studies of population statistics demand a short (few thousand years) history of man on earth, then evolution of man over thousands or millions of years is, most unlikely if not totally, impossible!

PREHISTORIC MAN IS NOT PREHISTORIC

Could it be that "prehistoric" man was not "before history" after all? Job may have been referring to the type of people scientists call "cavemen" as he wrote:

"But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.
Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me, in whom old age was perished?
For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste.
Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat.
They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as after a thief;)
To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth, and in the rocks.
Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they were gathered together.
They were children of fools, yea, children of base men: they were viler than the earth." (Job 30:l-8)

Perhaps "cavemen" were cast-offs from the civilized societies of their day. Possibly these were people given over to a reprobate mind due to their habitual sin and decadence. In any event,they were not man's ancestors. They lived concurrently with man.

The God of the Bible says He created man after His own image from the dust of the earth:

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Genesis 2:7)

God formed man from dust, not from some prehistoric, ape-like, hominid creature or the primordial ooze. The dust became, by God's creative design and power, a man; but the man had no life until God breathed life into him. Genesis 2:7 clearly shows that man's emergence from some previous living creature is not true. He came from non-living dust which became, by God's creative design and power, a man -- a man which had no life until the living God breathed life into him. This means that man could not have evolved from some more primitive "LIVING" monkey-like creature. People were created by God in God's own image. There can be no compromise for the Christian as to the origin of man. We did not come from monkey-like creatures but through the indescribable, unfathomable, supernatural power of the God of the Bible.

[Soldier4Christ]

THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE

God placed man, the pinnacle of His creation, in a special environment of delicately balanced systems. Scientists are now calling this balance of ecosystems (that support the life of man) the "Anthropic Principle". For our lives to be maintained we must have exactly the correct amounts of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, sunlight, magnetic field, speed of rotation and revolution of earth, distance from the moon, distance from the sun, ozone, water, gravity, etc., etc., etc. All of these factors must be in the correct amounts, in the right places, at the right times, and in exact relationships with each other. For instance, if our earth's gravity was weaker, our atmosphere would thin out and be unable to support life. If gravity was stronger, undesirable gases such as ammonia gas would be held in higher concentrations and be detrimental to life. That means our earth has to have been made exactly the right size to generate the perfect amount of gravity to support our atmosphere. But it also had to be the right size to hold our moon in orbit -- that means the moon had to be made the right size so it wouldn't drift off into space or crash into earth -- and the moon also had to be the right size so that the ocean tides stay under control. We could go on and on with this, but the fact is the evolution model as an explanation for this incredible universe comes up grossly lacking! God, the God of the Bible, is to be praised and He, alone, is to receive the glory and the honor.

"It is a good thing to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High." (Psalm 92:1)

[1] Richard E. Leakey, Human Origins, Lodestar Books (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1982), p. 20. For much information about fossil-man from a creationist perspective please read: Bones of Contention by Marvin Lubenow (Baker Books: Grand Rapids) 1992. Also: The Illustrated Origins Answer Book by Paul S. Taylor (Eden Productions, P.O. Box 41644 Mesa, AZ  85274-1644) 1992.

[2] See The Hominid Gang: Behind the Scenes in the Search for Human Origins by Delta Willis, with an introduction by Stephen Jay Gould (New York: Viking Press, 1989), p. 24. See also The Piltdown Man by Ronald Millar (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1972), front cover slip.

[3] Percy E. Raymond, Prehistoric Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969) pp. 282, 283.

[4] See The Hominid Gang, p. 22. Also W. R. Bird's The Origin of Species Revisited (Regency: Nashville) Vol. 1, pp. 227,228. (1991).

[5] Raymond, p. 281.

[6] Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), p. 20.

[7] Christopher Janus, The Search for Peking Man (New York: MacMillan Pub. Co., Inc., 1975), p. 31.

[8] Ibid, p. 30.

[9] Ibid, p. 32.

[10] Johanson and Maitland, p. 34.

[11] Marcellin Boule, Fossil Men (Dryden Press, 1957), p. 535.

[12] Johanson, p. 36.

[13] Raymond, p. 280.

[14] "It turned out that the angle of twist between the main plane of the ilium and the ischio-pubic part of the innominate in the Australopithecine cast corresponded to that in the four-footed macaque or cercopitheque monkeys and baboons,...Another dimension we have examined describes the length of the body of the ischium relative to the innominate as a whole...In this feature, Australopithecus is completely unlike man, and identical with monkeys and apes." Sir Solly Zuckerman, Beyond the Ivory Tower (New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1970), pp. 89,91.

[15] Dr. Chas. Oxnard, "Human Fossils: New Views of Old Bones," American Biology Teacher, Vol. 41, No. 5 (May, 1979), 264.

[16] Ibid, p. 273.

[17] Author unknown, "Anthropological Art," Science Digest, 89 No. 3 (April, 1981), 44.

[18] J. W. Klotz, Genes, Genesis, and Evolution (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1972), pp. 332-336.

[19] Henry M. Morris, Biblical Cosmology and Modern Science (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1970), p. 75.

[20] Ibid, p. 76.

[21] Ibid, p. 77.

[22] Ibid, pp. 75, 77.

[Soldier4Christ]

The Giraffe
      Let us look at another of the marvels of God's creation -- the giraffe. The giraffe had to be created as a fully, functional and unique animal.[1] A mature bull giraffe grows to be about 18 feet tall. In order to pump blood up his long neck to his brain, the giraffe needs a powerful pump. His heart is about 2½ feet long. It is so powerful that, as the animal bends down to satisfy its thirst, the blood pressure is more than enough to burst the blood vessels of the brain.

Evolution says something does not evolve until it is needed. But the giraffe would not know it needed to protect its brain from the devastation of excessive blood pressure until it had died of brain

hemorrhage while taking a cool drink. How can it "evolve" a protective mechanism, after it knows it needs it, if it is no longer alive to do it?

The giraffe has a protective mechanism which was designed by our Creator. As the bull bends his head down for a drink, valves in the arteries in its neck begin to close. Blood beyond the last valve continues moving toward the brain. But instead of passing at high speed and pressing into the brain and damaging or destroying it, that last pump is shunted under the brain into a group of vessels similar to a sponge. The brain is preserved and the powerful surge of oxygenated blood gently expands this "sponge" beneath it.

However, from this mechanism another problem arises. A lion creeps up and prepares to kill its spotted prey. The giraffe quickly raises its head and, without something to compensate for the reduced blood flow, passes out. It got up too fast for the low pressure and oxygen content of the brain. The lion eats a hearty meal, and the giraffe were it alive, would realize that it had better evolve some mechanism to re-oxygenate its oxygen-deprived brain! We all know that dead animals don't evolve anything, even though evolution demands its creatures realize they need an improvement before that improvement begins to evolve.

But the giraffe survives! The Creator designed it in such a way that as he begins to raise his head, the arterial valves open. The "sponge" squeezes its oxygenated blood into the brain, the veins going down the neck contain some valves which close to help level out the blood pressure, and the giraffe can quickly be erect and running without passing out and becoming lion lunch. God made the giraffe just like it is with all systems complete and ready for any emergency. There is no way the giraffe could have evolved its special features. The functional mechanisms of the giraffe demand God to be their Creator. Why not God as the Creator of everything?

Everyone agrees -- a giraffe is a giraffe. It is a distinct species, a discrete entity. No one would say a giraffe is a "missing link" or a "transitional form". A giraffe is not some creature emerging from some other creature or changing into a "higher" or more complex animal -- a giraffe is a giraffe! It can be scientifically examined with results that display the necessity of a single creative act. This long-necked creature had to have been originally formed with all of its complex features fully functional.

The giraffe testifies to the existence of its Creator!

[1] God in Creation by Bob Devine, Chicago: Moody Press, 1982, pp. 35-37 describes the giraffe and the necessity of a Creator. This booklet shows how ten different animals and plants demand a Creator by their special features.

[Soldier4Christ]

6  THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AND
        THE DAYS OF THE CREATION WEEK

   In 1971, two students had the courage to politely challenge one of their professors (me) to defend his position on the origin of all things. That seemed to be a fairly easy job since I was convinced that huge volumes of factual scientific evidence proved evolution (over billions of years) to be true. By 1972, this professor's stomach was churning with frustration! The evidence for an old universe promoted as proven fact by evolutionists was nowhere to be found. This is not to say that there is lack of writing on the subject of evolution, but that there is no true scientific evidence that is not based on assumptions (refer back to the beginning of Chapter 2, "seven basic assumptions").

   It was obvious to me back in the early 70's that evolution needed long periods of time. Couldn't those days of Genesis 1 be a billion years each? If we can somehow impose long periods of time onto the text of Genesis 1, evolution and the Bible quite nicely harmonize with each other. Or so I thought.

24-HOUR DAYS OR AEONS OF TIME?

Those days of Genesis are 24-hour days! If we believe the Bible, they cannot be one billion years each. Even the logic in the Ten Commandments demands 24-hour days [It wouldn't hurt any of us to review the Ten Commandments], so let's make some observations from Exodus 20:1-20:

1.   And God spake all these words, saying,
2.   I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3.   Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4.   Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
5.   Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
6.    And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
7.    Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
8.     Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9.     Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10.   But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11.   For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
12.   Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
13.   Thou shalt not kill.
14.   Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15.   Thou shalt not steal.
16.   Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
17.   Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
18.   And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they
removed, and stood afar off.
19.   And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.
20.   And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

Did you notice that man's work week is parallel to God's work week (Exodus 20:9-11)? Thus, if man works six 24-hour days, then the logic of Exodus 20:11 requires that God worked six 24-hour days and rested during the seventh day as man is to rest one day a week.

Hebrew scholars universally agree that the days (the Hebrew word "yom") of Genesis 1, are 24-hour days. These scholars may not necessarily believe that God has the ability to create everything in six normal days, or they may not even believe that the Bible is God's inspired Word, but they do believe the Hebrew word, yom, means 24-hour day. Liberal scholars have tried to claim that some primitive writer who had no knowledge of science and geology wrote down a brief account of the origin of man in overly simplistic terms. Many scholars say that it does not matter what the words say, but simply that it is the meaning or the message behind these "word-symbols" that is important. However, if that is true, then we might as well throw out the Hebrew and Greek lexicons (dictionaries). Every word in Genesis 1, is in the Hebrew lexicon. Every word has a definite meaning and we can look up what that meaning is. It is not some nebulous "word-symbol" that is limited in meaning only by the extent of the imagination of the reader.

More than ninety-eight percent of the time that yom (day) is used in the Old Testament (over 2,500 times), it means 24-hour day or the daylight part of a standard day. The rest of the time it refers to such things as the "Day of the Lord", which scholars argue could be anywhere from a 24-hour day to 1,000 plus years to eternity. The fact is that Genesis 1, uses yom with clarifiers such as day one, day two, etc. Everywhere else in the Bible that yom is used with clarifiers (numbers one, two, three, etc.) it unquestionably indicates a 24-hour day.

[Soldier4Christ]

EACH DAY IS HALF LIGHT AND HALF DARK

God used every word He possibly could to show us He is referring to one rotation of the earth in front of its source of light or 24-hour "yoms" in Genesis 1. He literally says, "...There was evening and there was morning, day one; ...there was evening and there was morning, day two"; etc. Each day had an evening and each day had a morning. In Genesis l:5, God says, "And God called the light Day (yom), and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

Notice that each day was part light and part darkness. This eliminates theistic evolution and day-age theories, since each day (one billion years?) would be half light and half dark! You cannot evolve anything in 500 million years of darkness or, for that matter, in 500 million-year stretches of unrelenting sunlight.

We might ask, "How old was Adam when he died?" Genesis 5:5 reads: "And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died." If one single Genesis 1 day equals one billion years as evolution demands, and Adam lived through at least half of day six, all of day seven and 930 more years, then how old was Adam when he died? Was he, let's say, 1 billion 500 million 930 years old? Or did he die at the age of 930? You can't have both!  You can't have long periods of time (day-age, theistic evolution, progressive creation) and the Bible. Either Adam was 930 years old when he died, or you can throw out Genesis 1:1 through 5:5!!

DAYS, YEARS AND SEASONS

God had words that He could have used if He had wanted us to understand those days of Genesis, Chapter 1, to be longer than 24 hours. One of these Hebrew words is "olam". Olam means a long period of time and can even mean everlasting. God put all the necessary words into the Hebrew text to make it unmistakably clear to the reader -- these are 24-hour days.

Look at Genesis 1:14:

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years".

God here differentiates between days and seasons and years. How can anyone stretch a Genesis 1 day into a billion years and then make any sense at all of Genesis 1:14? If a day is a billion years, then how long is a season or a year? Is a Biblical year 365 billion years? Even the most radical evolutionists claim the universe is not much older than twenty-billion years! God lines up all these time words for us in one verse to prove that He means 24-hour days. You can't make any sense at all of Genesis 1:14, if you insist on the theistic evolution or day-age or progressive creation views. (Don't forget -- we do not subject the Bible to science, we subject science to the Bible.) If "science" tells us we must have long geologic ages to explain the existence of all things, but the Bible says God did it all in six normal days, then we must believe the Bible by faith and know that science has some more research to do to catch up with the Bible.

   The Ten Commandments in the Bible are one of the root causes of belief in the evolution model. Scientifically credentialed people closely examine God's creation. What they see is the handiwork of God (Romans 1 and Psalm 19), but they nevertheless choose to believe the lie of evolution because they do not want to acknowledge their sin, as recorded in the Ten Commandments. To accept belief in God, who wrote those Ten Commandments with His own finger, becomes unthinkable. Belief would place man in a position of submission and obedience to his Creator. Furthermore, this position of submission and obedience demands responsibility before this holy God and ultimately, the certainty of judgment -- realities that people do not like to think about. We know we are sinners. We cannot even live up to our own standards, let alone God's righteous standards. It is easier to live in the fantasy-land of evolution than in reality when we are separated from our Creator by our own unholiness and pride. Life appears to be less complicated and more comfortable as we believe the lie of evolution.

No rational person would argue that God's Ten Commandments are invalid or inaccurate or harmful to society. If obeyed by everyone, we would have a near-perfect, crime-free and pollution-free world.

   Did you notice that the seven-day creation week is mentioned in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:11)? Is this not fascinating? In view of all the many things the Creator could have mentioned to be preserved forever, He chose, in the midst of His Ten Commandments, to call attention to the original seven-day week of creation.

There is no question about the English translation of the Ten Commandments. What we read is precisely what God said. He said, "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is..." (Exodus 20:11) That means exactly what it says. In a literal six days, the Lord made everything that exists, whether it exists in the heavens or on the earth or in the seas. He made it functionally mature and with the appearance of age. That would include the entirety of the macrouniverse (stars, planets, sun, moon, comets, asteroids, angels, etc.) and the microuniverse (the molecules, atoms and quarks, of elephants, beetles and sharks). A six-day creation leaves no room at all for theistic evolution and its billions of years, or for a "gap" between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Some of the early twentieth century Bible scholars came to believe in a "gap theory" due to the influence of evolutionary "science". These godly men believed that science had established great geologic ages and "prehistoric" man to be a proven fact. They went to the early Chapters of Genesis and attempted to subject the Bible to science by postulating a "gap" between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. But the sun, stars, heat, light, atmosphere and universe were not yet created. Nothing existed nor could it exist in the supposed "gap" between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. There was no "pre-Adamic" race of wicked people living in the "gap". Not only could they have not existed without light, but sin and wickedness did not enter the universe until the fall of Adam.

Romans 5:12 teaches:

"Wherefore, as by one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."

A sobering result of Adam's sin was death, but before Adam's sin there was no death. If there was no death before Adam (the very clear statement of God's word), then it would be impossible to have "pre-Adamic" people dying.

Actually, the entire creation was affected by Adam's sin and it still "groans" with thorns, thistles and entropy as it awaits its redemption. Romans 8:22-23 states:

"For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."

[Soldier4Christ]

Holding to the "gap" position not only demands death before the Fall, but it also forces changes in the Biblical text. Genesis 1:2 must be changed from "And the earth was without form and void" to "and the earth became without form and void." God uses the very same word for "was" in Genesis 2:25 and 3:1. Genesis 2:25 says: "And they were both naked..." Adam and Eve were not created with clothes and then "became" naked. The same can be said for the serpent in 3:1. It is not that he "became" crafty after not being crafty; he was crafty from the beginning. The Gap theory necessitates changes in other Biblical texts also. For a comprehensive study of problems with the Gap theory please read Dr. John Whitcomb's book The Early Earth: Revised Edition. We do not need to accommodate Scripture to what we might believe to be factual science -- the geological ages -- by imposing a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 or by stretching the 24-hour days of Genesis 1 into long ages of geologic time. Men who have done this, most probably in all innocence, violate a basic rule: The Bible must never be subjected to science, but science must always be subjected to the Bible.

My position, quite frankly, is of one who committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ later in life than most (age 27) and who endured a gut-wrenching five-year struggle with this issue. When I came to faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I became a theistic evolutionist. I then saw, as many men and women have seen (when exposed to the true truth of the Bible), the total "rightness" and reality of God's six-day creation. The science I studied showed the incredible complexity of every plant, animal and insect and yet had no sane answer to the "why" and "how" of this complexity except to say, "no one plus nothing equals everything" or "all that 'is' results from the impersonal plus chance plus time." Our God, the Almighty Creator, does not need time. He is above time. The Creator, the Lord Jesus, displayed His supernatural ability to act without time restraints through His miracles. When we believe Genesis 1 as it is written, we bow in worship and in submissive trust of our awesome, infinite Creator. As Job said:

"I know that Thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee."

"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye seeth thee."

"Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:2, 5, 6)

Earlier, we mentioned (Scott Huse, The Collapse of Evolution, and Walter Brown, In the Beginning) the documentation showing that the details of evolution and the specifics of Genesis 1 do not match up. For example, evolution says reptiles developed first and then birds evolved out of reptiles, but the Bible says birds came first (Genesis 1:20-23) and then reptiles (Genesis 1:24-26). If we again go back to thinking about the days of Genesis, then certain things are not logical when we hold to long periods of time. For example, God made plants on the third day (Genesis 1:12, 13), but He created insects on the sixth day. Many plants need insects to pollinate them. How could they survive more than two billion years, while waiting for insects to "evolve"?

Evolutionary theory does not have the answers for how we got here. Evolution forces us to throw out the clearly written and easily understood words of Genesis 1-11, since the two are not compatible. Do we believe the Bible or have we placed our trust in the foolish speculations of men, based on the foundation of the scientifically unprovable assumptions of so-called science (see the beginning of Chapter 2, "seven basic assumptions")?

Since origins are scientifically unverifiable for either evolution or creation, then we are dealing with "faith". No human was there to verify the "Big Bang" and no person was there to witness the Creation.

Many of us easily profess to believe in Jesus Christ as the virgin-born Son of the one true God and in His resurrection from the dead. We accept this truth, without flinching, but we limit God to a "Trial and Error" entity not capable of "speaking the Creation into existence", but rather relying on billions of years and an evolutionary process to finally "get it right".

It is my contention that the main reason for rejecting a creationist view (especially in light of the statements by evolutionists which give the creationist position credence) is mankind's basic pride and rebellion. Evolution allows us to be independent of God so that we do not feel any accountability to God. Evolution takes some pressure off our conscience!

The current, pervasive New Age teaching that "we each have within ourselves the god consciousness and can achieve godhood by our own strength as we learn to look within ourselves and develop our full potential" further fans the flames of self-sufficiency, selfishness and independence from any power greater than ourselves. This New Age teaching promotes evolution and is deadly deception. It is the way of death as it leads people to reject the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. New Age evolutionary thinking also convinces people that they cannot believe the first eleven chapters of Genesis to be the literal Word of God.

FLOOD WATERS COVERED THE EARTH

Included early in Genesis is the account of Noah and the flood. If evolution is true, then a global flood taking place about 5 thousand years ago is impossible! Evolution demands millions of years, not just a few thousand, for creatures and ecosystems to evolve. We sometimes hear this historical event referred to as the flood of Noah. It was not Noah's flood. It was God's flood! The flood was God's judgment on the sin which had spread to cover the earth. Genesis 6:5-14a describes God's heartbreak at the sinfulness of mankind and His recognition of Noah as the only righteous man on the face of the earth.

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.
And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man,and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
Make thee an ark of gopher wood...."

[Soldier4Christ]

THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL LAND-BASED FLESH

What has God told us was His purpose in sending the global flood? Genesis 6:5 records that God saw the great wickedness and evil in mankind. Genesis 6:17 states the actual purpose of the flood: "... to destroy all flesh." The types of life to be destroyed are more specifically listed in Genesis 7:21-23:

"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:
All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.
And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and to fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark."

The purpose of this great judgment by water was to destroy all dry-land life. Dry-land life extended well beyond the Tigris and Euphrates valley! The flood was not designed to destroy marine life although many water creatures were destroyed by the flood as is seen in the fossil record.

Peter tells us (II Peter 3:5-13) that there are three heaven and earth systems in God's eternal plan. The first system was totally destroyed by the water of the flood which was the judgment of God in Noah's day. Remember it was the violence (Gen. 6:11) that moved God to judgment! (What is the content of the movies and cartoons that you and your family are watching? Have you noticed the geometric increases in violence?)

The second heaven and earth system (our present system, II Peter 3:7) will be destroyed by fire so hot as to destroy even the foundational molecules of the earth and sky (II Peter 3:10). The root of sin, wickedness and violence will finally be burned out of existence. So, how are you investing your resources (time, money, talents)? Only three things will not be burned up -- God; God's Word, the Bible; and people. Are you investing eternally in God's Word and people?

The third heaven and earth system is called the new heavens and new earth (II Peter 3:13). This eternal, righteous heaven and earth system is also referred to in Romans 8:21, Revelation 21:1 and perhaps Isaiah 65:17. It will last forever. Only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life will inherit the New Heavens and New Earth. Have you come to the sacrificial Lamb, the Creator Jesus, in faith believing that He alone has the power and right to save your soul? Have you committed the rest of your life to Him and to His service?

The Lord Jesus contrasted the days of Noah and the flood judgment to His Second Coming:

"And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered  into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all." (Luke 17:26, 27)

The flood is treated in the Bible as an actual event. Noah is not some mythical character. The Lord Jesus and writers of the Bible believed and taught about a literal man named Noah and an actual global flood. Nowhere in the Bible is the flood characterized as a local river overflow as some scholars have hypothesized. The words of Genesis 6-9 have concrete meanings in the Hebrew lexicons. These are not symbols depicting a mythological event recorded by some primitive scribe whose concept of the world was limited to the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. This flood covered "...all the high hills that were under the whole heaven..." (Genesis 7:19 Emphasis added). The heaven here referred to is the atmospheric heavens surrounding our earth where the birds fly (see Genesis 1:20).

THE ARK OF NOAH

Would God move Noah to build an ark 437 feet long, 73 feet wide and 44 feet deep for a local river overflow? The ark was big enough to carry, on one deck, all the kinds of dry land animals needed to repopulate the earth. Scientists have estimated that Noah would have to take about 35,000 sheep-sized animals on the ark to give us all the kinds of creatures we have today. The ark was big enough to carry 125,000 sheep-sized animals. 35,000 creatures could have been kept on one of the three floors in the ark. Noah probably took young animals (even baby dinosaurs) since they would eat less and take up less space. Noah and his family could have lived on the top deck and he could have trapped the insects on the bottom deck.

Would you need an ark to save birds during a local river overflow? Have you ever heard of a local river overflow that lasted longer than a year? The Genesis flood did.[1] Why would God give Noah 120 years to build the ark (Genesis 6:3) when it would have been much easier to move his family and flocks out of the Mesopotamian Valley? In 120 years Noah could have moved quite a distance away from the flood if it was just a local river overflow! Dr. John Morris has an excellent video on this very subject called The Deluge, filmed on location at Mt. Ararat in Turkey. It is produced by I.C.R., P.O. Box 2667 El Cajon, CA  92021, (619) 448-0900.

Could God have taken care of Noah, his family and that ark-load of creatures for a whole year? Genesis 8:1 begins by saying: "And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him...."  That word "remembered" is a special word. It has the idea in the text of the Hebrew language of intimate care and watchfulness. The concept of knowing needs and acting on that knowledge is contained in the word. It was not that Noah was stranded in the ark and God had been busy doing other things. Then God suddenly looked down and said, "Oh, my! I just remembered Noah." This word carries with it the concept of meeting needs.

Some creationists have posited that the process of hibernation may have begun during the flood. Perhaps many animals slept through most of the ride. Numerous animals that do not normally hibernate can be made to do so in certain laboratory conditions. The ability to hibernate is displayed by such animals as: bats, skunks, woodchucks, prairie dogs, badgers, bears, certain mice, humming birds, garter snakes, turtles, toads, spiders, beetles, dragonflies, grasshoppers, garden snails, etc. etc. It is not impossible to believe that some, if not many, animals slept a good part of that year. Many Bible "scoffers" refer to Noah and the Ark as just a myth or story and not an actual historical event. This could be, in part, because of the seeming impossibility of so few people caring for that large a number of animals. Hibernation of the animals and insects would definitely have decreased the time demands for feeding and scooping by the eight human ark passengers. No one can say exactly what went on in the sealed ark, but God knew and cared and saw to it that the remnant of His creatures survived.

THE ALTAR, THE RAINBOW AND THE DRUNKENNESS

Remember what happened when Noah came out of the ark? Three major things come to mind: the altar, the rainbow and the drunkenness. The first recorded event in the life of Noah after his departure from the ark was his worship. He built an altar to the Lord and worshipped His Savior. Genesis 8:20-21:

"And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done."

[Soldier4Christ]

As a result, God gave Noah the promise of the rainbow. Was the rainbow God's Covenantal sign to man that He would never again send a local river overflow? Of course not! If it was a local river overflow in the known "world" of the writer's day, then the rainbow as a covenantal sign means nothing. There have been many local river overflows in the Middle East since Noah's day. The rainbow means God will never again destroy life upon the earth with a flood.

The account of Noah's drunkenness is also important in the study of creationism. There may be several reasons for the inclusion of this episode in God's eternal Word, but it could very readily serve as a hint that man is no longer living in heaven and earth system #1 now that the flood is over. The pre-flood environmental and ecological system (#1) was destroyed by the flood. The present heaven and earth system (#2) is different.

Reading certain selections from II Peter 3 presents to the reader God's eternal plan, which includes three heaven and earth systems: The heaven and earth of Adam and Noah (system #1); the present heaven and earth (system #2); and the New Heavens and new Earth of eternity (system #3).

3.    Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
4.    And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
5.    For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
6.   Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
7.    But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
10.  But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
13.  Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. (II Peter 3 selections)

It is probable that heaven and earth system #1 had a heavier atmosphere than our present system (#2). The increased atmospheric pressure was the result of God taking water off the surface of the earth (see Genesis 1:6-8) and putting it above atmospheric heaven or, more specifically, the expanse or firmament that the birds fly in (see Genesis 1:20). These "waters above" came down in Noah's day and may have set up the condition that quite possibly caused Noah's drunkenness.

Alcohol ferments faster and gets into your blood and brain more quickly in system #2 than it did in system #1 because the atmospheric pressure was reduced by at least one half as the water came down as rain. Alcohol fermentation rates are doubled when the pressure is cut in half. It appears that Noah was caught by surprise. He was God's righteous man. He had not forgotten to make an altar and sacrifice in worship of his Lord and Savior. Noah probably made the same amount of wine that he made before the flood. But now, in system #2 with the atmospheric pressure less than one half of what it was in system #1 when Noah entered the ark, the wine would ferment at least twice as fast and get into his physical system twice as fast -- catching Noah with a surprise inebriation. We have no record that Noah ever got drunk before or after this incident. Perhaps one reason our Creator gives us this sad account is to hint at the difference between system #1 and system #2.

   Our present heaven and earth are vastly different than the pre-flood heaven and earth of Noah's day. That is the reason we do not have dragon flies with a wingspread of 32 inches, or chambered nautilus shells eight feet tall or 300,000 pound dinosaurs walking the earth today. And yet people lived in system #1 and are still thriving in system #2. Only God could have designed life to work efficiently in two significantly different systems. There is no one like Him!

6.   Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee, O Lord; thou art great, and thy name is great in might.

12. He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.

16. The Lord of hosts is his name. (Jeremiah 10:6,12,16)

[1] For much more information about the Flood-judgment of God read: The Genesis Flood by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian & Reformed Pub. Co., 1961).

[Soldier4Christ]

The Angler Fish

One of God's amazing creations is the deep-sea Angler fish. This fish makes its home more than a mile deep in ocean water. On her forehead the female has a "fishing rod" tipped with an "artificial worm". She dangles this "bait" over her mouth to attract her next meal. Ah, but there is a problem -- her next meal cannot see the bait, since it is too dark under more than a mile of sea water. Starvation sets in while she waits for her first deep sea fish dinner. At last, she realizes "I must do something about this darkness problem". But, alas, it is too late. She is dead and dead fish can not evolve the adaptations needed to rectify problems, even though evolution says she doesn't evolve something until her situation (or environment) tells her that it is needed to survive.

The only possibility is that God created the Angler fish with all the fully-functional equipment it needed to survive at great depths. To solve the darkness problem, God created a special kind of light on the bait. This light displays highly advanced technology -- it gives off no heat! A compound called Luciferin is oxidized with the help of an enzyme scientists named Luciferase, and this reaction produces heatless light. Ask an evolutionist how a deep-sea fish could evolve the ability to produce high-tech light on an artificial bait dangled over the fish's mouth? God has made His creation to display His glory and power. No one could look at the Angler fish and say it is the result of the "impersonal plus time plus chance", unless that person had already decided to refuse to believe in the God of the Bible (Romans 1). The vain speculations of evolution lead to foolish thinking and impossible conclusions.

Naturally, the Angler fish needs to reproduce and has a special way of doing this. In the darkness of the deep, it is difficult for the male and female to find each other. God designed the eggs of the female so that they float up through a mile of ocean to the surface. On the ocean surface the eggs form a jellylike mass and then hatch. The young fish, male and female, grow and mature in the surface waters. At a certain point in their development, the male finds a female and bites and holds on to her abdomen. Soon the tissues of the female grow into and attach to the mouth tissues of the male, and the female drops to the bottom of the ocean carrying her parasite male with her not to separate "til death do they part". He found her in the light of the surface waters, so he does not have to grope around in the dark of the deep looking for a mate. How could all of this evolve when it is so ultra-specialized and unique?

Why does the female not chase the male away when he bites her abdomen? Evolution provides no explanation. What possible evolutionary mechanism enables the male's circulatory system to merge with the female's? And from what creature did this peculiar fish evolve? Evolution has no answers.

A major difference between the Angler fish and other fish is the Angler's lack of a swim bladder, which is an air sac to provide buoyancy and to prevent sinking. If it had evolved without an air bladder, it would sink and die. If it had an air bladder and had evolved the bait and light in surface waters, it would be easy prey for other predators and "survival of the fittest" would force it into extinction.

Another feature of the deep sea Angler is its special body, which is designed to prevent crushing. A pressure of over 2,000 pounds per square inch is exerted on the body of the fish at one mile deep. It survives this great pressure with no problem. On the other hand, if the first Anglers were surface fish and lost their air bladders, (through let's say, some unexplainable genetic mutation) and then sank to the bottom of the sea, they would have been crushed. Dead animals don't evolve any further.

The deep-sea Angler had to have been created with all its special equipment fully functional. God says that as we study His creation, it should cause our thoughts to focus on the Creator and to give Him thanks and honor Him as God (Romans 1).[1]

   [1] For a super treatment of the Angler fish and other highly specialized animals read: The Natural Limits to Biological Change, by Lane P. Lester and Raymond G. Bohlin (Zondervan, 1984).