Please don’t ask me…Isn’t evolution a fact, so why are you relying on religion when science has the answers?
Today I am going to deal with the topic of science, creation, and God.
I would normally present arguments against Darwin’s Origin of species (today’s evolution illustration), but many times when we are preparing for a discussion about evolution (macroevolution) as outlined by Darwin, we need to begin in the beginning. Darwin begins with the idea of one cell, and as he states in his book, it is from this original cell that the “tree” of life that began macroevolution began.
A few things before we get into this…
First, evolution, on one hand, is fact, that is microevolution (microevolution) – defined as changes within a species – for example, there are different breeds of dogs or horses, but despite their difference in size, shape, or color they are all still dogs and horses
Macroevolution (Charles Darwin tree of life)– as defined, is all species have their origins in an original cell. There has to be any proof, no fossil record or anything else that would suggest this to be a fact it is a theory and simply that.
For the sake of argument we are not going to spend much time on that the challenge before all those who believe in evolution, “where did the original cell come from?”
There are three “missing elements” that have to be in place for Darwin’s theory to even be a theoretical possibility:
– the origin of the universe (and all matter),
– the origin of the first living organism
– the encoding of information in DNA.
Our goal when addressing this question for our friends is to lead them to an understanding that before we even get to the possibility of evolution, we have to discuss how that first cell, Darwin describes as the root of all living things, came into being.
The Bible is clear for us on two points today regarding this argument
- Matthew 28 tells us to “go into all the world and make disciples” when arguing these point as with two weeks ago the topic of homosexuality it is important that we make disciples first and then teach them to observe all things. We could lose someone coming to Christ if we immediate engage in an evolutionary debate rather than posing the question anyone who believes in evolution must answer apart from God
- I can not go into as much detail as I would like because of time but this is a skimming the surface type of thing, and there are some books I could recommend if you want to go deeper but we begin with the book, the Bible
Genesis 1:20,21
And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:24-28
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
This is the creation story I believe, regarding the origin of man but to get there for those who believe evolution we must help them to think through and reconcile the three missing elements I mentioned earlier…this is hard and very cerebral, but I am hoping this morning to give you an understanding that you can share with others
- The origin of the universe and all matter
Carl Sagan, (Carl Sagan) the agnostic, scientist and astronomer said: “In order to make an apple pie you must first invent the universe.”
In other words, to place it in an evolutionary mindset, for evolution to get off of the ground, you have to begin with the stuff…where did the stuff come from to create the universe we talked about some of this when we discussed proof for the existence of God
Remember matter, matters where did the first cell come from where have the chemicals originated to create the first cell?
To eliminate God from the equations, you must believe that all of the stuff was just here randomly bumping into one another until finally, something came together into something that eventually developed into the building blocks of life. Without cause or purpose, these things eventually became us.
We can come to an agreement that the Big Bang happened all of this mass of energy and matter, but there is no answer as to where that energy and matter originated that is a question apart from God that can not be answered.
Most scientists will state that all matter, energy, and time began at the Big Bang but apart from God that cannot answer how that happened. However, they do try to argue it away by using philosophical naturalism or the elimination of anything supernatural possibly occurring.
The good news is many scientists are walking away from that point of view over 1000 from leading universities around the world including all the Ivy League and for those of us here in Pittsburgh CMU, Pitt and of course there are more truly thinking scientist and professors from Penn State. They have all signed a document called the Dissent from Darwinism found at this website www.dissentfromdarwin.org.
The statement says this… “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”
I don’t think I need to stress this point further as I explained the weekend of May 5th you can hear it here
or on our app under weekend messages
Just as a quick reminder we said this
- Whatever begins to exist must have a cause for its existence. 2. The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe must have a cause for its existence.
- The attributes of the cause of the universe (being timeless, existing outside of space, and so on) are the attributes of God.
- Therefore, the cause of the universe must be God. And this squares perfectly with the book of Genesis
- The encoding of information in DNA
It takes vast amounts of information to form one single cell
(William Dembski)“The key feature of life is information—specified complexity. Even the most simple bacterial cells teem with vast amounts of information. A single primitive cell would require hundreds of thousands of bits of information precisely sequenced in its DNA. . . . In the entire history of the universe, chance can only produce 400 bits of prespecified information, equivalent to Shakespeare’s famous lines “To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer.” The first primitive cell is therefore far beyond the reach of chance-based mechanisms. Because there is not evidence of simpler life forms from which bacteria could have evolved . . . Evolutionary biologists are left with a mystery.
Dembski and McDowell “Understanding intelligent design” William Dembski is considered the “dean” of intelligent design
If one primitive cell takes that much information to sequence what about human beings Francis Collins who headed the Human Genome Project described the information contained in human DNA this way (Francis Collins)
“This newly revealed text was 3 billion letters long and written in a strange and cryptographic four-letter code. Such is the amazing complexity of the information carried within each cell of the human body, that a live reading of that code at a rate of three letters per second would take thirty-one years, even if reading continued day and night. Printing these letters out in regular font size on normal bond paper and binding them all together would result in a tower the height of the Washington Monument. For the first time on that summer morning this amazing script, carrying within it all of the instructions for building a human being, was available to the world.”
When President Bill Clinton stood next to Francis Collins (Clinton Collins photo) to declare the completion of the Genome project, he said, “We are learning the language in which God created life.”
Why use such theological terms?
Because the scientific breakthrough revealed the vast enormity and impossibility of all of this the idea is that only the finger of God could cause this to happen.
Dean Kenyon (Dean Kenyon), biophysicist, from San Francisco State University co-authored a book attempting to prove the origin of life without supernatural involvement only to find himself after more research repudiating his findings, “I had come to the point where he was critical of all naturalistic theories of origins. Due to the immense molecular complexity of the cell and the information-bearing properties of DNA, Kenyon now believed that the best evidence pointed toward a designer of life.”
- The origin of the first living organism
The last point I want to make today is that while Darwinian evolution starts with a cell at the base of the tree of Life where did that original cell come from?
Many other scientists over the decades have proposed a variety of theories about the original inception of life—from sheer chance, to the (later disproved) inherent attraction between the building blocks of living matter, to life “riding in on the backs of crystals,” to a theory known as panspermia, which says that life was planted here by beings from outer space.
Many scientists simply accept that life is here, acknowledge that they don’t know how it got here.
The first life did not come through gradual, successive steps, as the theory of Darwinian evolution demands. Mathematician William Dembski,
The first life form emerges suddenly. According to standard dating, this first emergence of life was around 4 billion years ago. For the first 500 million years, the earth was too hot and turbulent for any life form to exist. And then, shortly after the earth was cool enough, certain types of bacteria appear suddenly and abundantly.
What this means is, contrary to what we’d expect according to the principles of Darwinian evolution in which the earliest life-forms should have been traceable back to smaller and simpler component parts, the fossil record shows early life just showing up—bam!—unannounced and fully formed.
So not only did Darwin not have an explanation for first life but the way, according to the fossil record, that life formed flies in the face of his theory.
Just to build a simple protein you need to get the just right amino acids together. Add to that they must be all left-handed amino acids and they all must fall into a very specific sequence. The possibility of all this happening is one chance in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That’s a ten with 125 zeroes after it! And that would only be one protein.
There is no scientific record nor statistical chance that life could have formed without some kind of intelligence or power
As Christians, I believe we have the best answer to the beginning of life
You may have noticed that I’ve said very little in the way of direct criticism of Darwin’s actual theory of evolution. Instead, I’ve shown that his theory can’t even get off the ground without three preconditions that neither Darwin nor broader science has been able to explain:
- How did the universe and matter, in general, get here? (Yes, I accept some version of the Big Bang, but naming it doesn’t explain it; the entire universe exploding out of one infinitesimally small point . . . sounds to me, not like a scientific explanation, but like a miracle of God.)
- Who wrote the informational instructions—the DNA “recipes”—that are required for life to form or replicate?
- How did life originate in the first place? (Science offers no real answers.)
I believe all three of these points powerfully demonstrate, from a scientific perspective, the need for an intelligent designer.
Please remember when discussing these points our goal is to make disciples first, we are not making converts to creationism that will come as they study God’s word but disciples knowing that Jesus can and will meet them where they are today