Dr Adrian Bury's blog
Christian theology, basic teachings, apologeticsThoughts on Creation
In the beginning…
Sooner or later, every child asks his parents the question, “Where did I come from?” Adults are also curious about how everything that exists came into being. Because however far we look, and whatever instrument we measure with, we find order everywhere: from the distant galaxies to subatomic neutrinos, everything is in its place. And no matter how extreme the conditions, all the remote nooks and crannies of the world are teeming with life.
This question must have occupied man throughout the ages, because “origin myths” are to be found in all tribes and peoples of the earth. Everything springs from the mixing together of the primordial fresh- and salt-water oceans (Babylonian Enuma Elish), or all material things are an imperfect reflection of the invisible spiritual realm (Ancient Greek Platonism). Of course, we modern, civilised people can only smile at such things as these, because scientists have now proven that everything came together by itself following a big bang which happened fifteen thousand million years ago… (Did you ever see an explosion which resulted in an increase of order?)
How can we be sure? Human beings were not there at the beginning of all things, none of us were present to see the origin of the universe, but there was a person, who was there, who has revealed to us what happened. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” – says the first sentence in the Bible, then the description of the process of creation continues in Genesis 1 and 2. But it is not just at the beginning; the fact of creation is encountered in many places, for many reasons and in many situations on the pages of Scripture. In his distress, Job met with his Creator, and was comforted with the thought that as God had created everything, and was holding the universe in his hands, surely he must be trustworthy (Job 38-42). Numerous psalms include praise to the creator God, e.g., “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere him. For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded and it stood firm.” (Psalm 33: 6-9). Jesus himself points to the reality of creation when teaching on marriage and divorce, “But at the beginning of creation God made them male and female.” (Mark 10: 6). And just consider the subject of continuous worship from the heavenly hosts, “Whenever the living creatures give glory, honour and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say: ‘You are worthy, our lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.’” (Rev. 4: 9-11).
So a Biblical mentality cannot be understood apart from creation. Furthermore, creation not only provides comfort in times of difficulty and give us cause for praise, it also forms a basis for Christian teaching. Because man only needs redemption if he is first created in the image of God, and has then fallen into sin. If man is nothing other than a chance combination of atoms, and sin is nothing more than the “survival of the fittest,” then why should one repent, and what of?
Once again the question of evolution arises, as everyone knows “religion deals with creation, but evolution is scientific fact.” But not everything that we know is true. To quote an evolutionist scientist, “The theory of evolution (is) a theory universally accepted not because it can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.” (D.M.S. Watson, 1929). 1 He is not the only one to have made such a statement. From this it becomes clear that Christians accept creation by faith, but scientists accept evolution – by faith. Christianity is therefore religion, and evolution is – science? It is much more a philosophy, idealism and atheistic religion.
Let’s just think about science for a while. Research uses the “scientific method,” which works something like this. Observations are made of a situation, and on the basis of the results, a hypothesis is constructed. The hypothesis is then tested by making predictions of the results of various experiments, based on the hypothesis. If the results confirm the predictions, the hypothesis is supported, and it becomes a theory. If other results are obtained, then the hypothesis must be abandoned, or at least modified.
Let us assume, therefore, that creation and evolution are two alternative hypotheses for the origin of the universe. We can now consider several fields of study to see which theory fits the results more closely.
The Bible tells us that in the beginning God created the universe (Genesis 1-2). This process continued for a week, and was then completed. In the present time, God is not creating anything, he is just maintaining and preserving what has been made (Hebrews 1: 2-3). Apart from this, since and because of the fall of man, the creation is “subject to frustration” and in “bondage to decay.” (Romans 8: 20-21). In other words, from an original, perfect, completed state, the universe has been deteriorating for around ten thousand years.
The evolutionary hypothesis, on the other hand, claims that starting from a primordial chaotic state, the world is become gradually more complicated, more ordered, more arranged and more complex, all the work of pure chance. In other words, the universe has been continuously improving and developing itself for fifteen thousand million years.
These two theories postulate totally opposite processes. Which one agrees with present conditions? The two laws of thermodynamics have been known for around 100 years, and they are completely general. Simply expressed, the first is that all processes involve an exchange of energy, but the total energy remains constant, and the second is that no energy exchange is ever perfect, so this always results in an increase in entropy, or disorder, of the system. This means that it is a scientific fact that the order of all systems is constantly decreasing, and it never increases. This agrees with the Bible, and is in complete opposition to the postulates of evolutionary theory.
According to the Bible, God created the various species or kinds of animals in the beginning (in creationist language, baramins), which have since then been proliferating. A certain amount of variation within the kinds is to be expected (e.g. the baramin “dog” would produce the Alsatian, the Chihuahua, the wolf, the fox, etc., the “cat” kind would develop into the domestic cat, the lion, the tiger, etc.), one species would never change over into another species. Evolution, on the other hand, assumes that all the living beings that have ever existed all developed from one original cell. The expectation, then, is that there would be no sharp boundaries between species, but there would be a continuum or spectrum, in which each species would gradually be transformed into the next. The living world and the fossils would be full of transitional forms, or “links.”
Reality agrees with the first picture. Sharp distinctions are observed between species, both in the living world and in the fossils. Every species appears suddenly in the fossil record, and disappears just as suddenly (assuming for the time being that we accept the geological ages of many millions of years). It is not just that there is a “missing link” between apes and man – the truth is, there is no chain, as all the links are missing: lifeless chemicals – single celled organism; single cell – invertebrate; invertebrate – fish; fish – amphibian; amphibian – reptile; reptile – bird; reptile – mammal, etc.. Darwin knew that this fact constituted a problem for his theory, but he thought that sooner or later the transitional forms would be found in the rocks. After around one hundred and fifty years of additional seeking, they have not appeared.
According to Biblical chronology, the world cannot be more than 10-15 thousand years old, though evolution postulates that four and a half thousand million years have passed by since the formation of the earth. Unfortunately, there are no scientific methods for determining the absolute age of the earth unequivocally, though several procedures exist which may provide a maximum age. The best known of these are the radioactive dating methods, e.g. uranium-lead or potassium-argon, which are used to measure the age of rocks. These are used by evolutionists, because in general they provide long ages, but the problem is that they are not really reliable, as when lava flows from volcanoes which have erupted recently are tested, the results are too high in nearly every case. One example is the rock in the Kaupelehu flow from the Hualalai volcano in Hawaii, which was formed in 1801 according to historical sources. 12 samples from these rocks were dated using various procedures, and the published results show the youngest to be 140 million years old, and the oldest 2.96 thousand million years old. 2 So much for the reliability of the radioactive dating methods!
Other methods indicate a younger age for the earth. If the amount of a certain ion in the sea is measured, and the annual rate of increase is also determined, then the maximum age of the ocean can be calculated, assuming that the ion was not initially present. This calculation has been carried out for various elements. The results differ, but it must be remembered that this method provides a maximum and not the absolute age of the sea. Here are a few results: chlorine – 90 million years, sodium – 50 million years, copper – 50,000 years.
Since the strength of the earth’s magnetic field has been measured, it has been observed to be decaying exponentially, with a half life of 1,400 years. Assuming that this process has been constant, then when the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain, the magnetic field would have been twice as strong, and in the time of the prophet Elijah, it would have been four times as powerful, etc.. Extrapolating back to a mere 15,000 years ago, the earth’s magnetic field would have been as great as that of a magnetic star, which means the world could not have existed in a solid state.
The fact is, that the results obtained in numerous other scientific fields also agree much better with the concepts of “intelligent design” and “young creation” than with “blind chance.” For want of space, these cannot all be detailed here, but just to list some of them: probability theory, informatics, biochemistry, molecular biology, palaeontology, geology, genetics, etc.. The evidence is so overwhelming, that even atheistic evolutionists change their minds sometimes. British Nobel prize winning scientist Chandra Wickramsinghe recently stated, “From my earliest training as a scientist I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has had to be painfully shed. I am quite uncomfortable in this situation, the state of mind I now find myself in. But there is no logical way out of it. I now find myself driven to this position by logic. There is no other way in which we can understand the precise ordering of the chemicals of life except to invoke the creations on a cosmic scale. . . We were hoping as scientists that there would be a way round our conclusion, but there isn’t” 3
So why do so many people accept evolution? Because they learnt it at school? Because they think it is a proven fact? They haven’t thought it through, but scientists must understand it? Perhaps. Or else, along with the doctor quoted about, do they feel more comfortable if there is at least an apparent basis for the assumption that there is no God?
If there is no God, and if man is just the product of the chance vibration of atoms and a great length of time, then his existence may be meaningless, but at least he can do whatever he wants with no pangs of conscience whatsoever. If creation occurred, however, then there is a Creator, to whom he must answer for his actions. And more and more of the results of modern science are an encouragement for us to take notice of the Apostle Paul: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (letter to the Romans 1: 18-20).
So in spite of the 19th century “origin myth,” the natural world points to the fact that it had a designer. But this is not just bad news. The Bible also tells us what he is like, and how we can get to know him.
Footnotes:
- D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p. 233.
- David Plaisted, The Radiometric Dating Game.
- Sir Frederick Hoyle and Chandra Wickramsinghe, There Must Be A God, Daily Express, Aug. 14, 1981.
Bibliography:
Thank you for this interesting and thought-provoking look at the debate between those who trust God’s Word to be inerrant in its teachings regarding our origins and those who rely on man’s fallible guesswork. The studies and work done by Dr. Morris certainly deserves respect, patrticularly within the community who call themselves believers. The theory of godless evolution is so full of defects, it is incredible how any thinking person can accept its innumerable, provably false contradictions as truth!