The Science of Creation and the Flood. Introduction to Lesson 5

Transcription

1 The Science of Creation and the Flood Introduction to Lesson 5 What about the evidence of the fossils we dig up? Are there missing links that prove evolution happened? What about the geologic column? Has DNA and Y-chromosome studies found Adam and Eve? Fossils A problem for the evolutionist is the lack of fossil showing a transition between an existing creature and something entirely different. Darwin wrote of this problem and assumed that eventually enough fossils would be dug up providing evidence for transitional forms. Millions of fossils have been dug out of the ground since Darwin and there still is no transitional creature that proves Darwin s theory. Instead, the fossil record supports abrupt appearance of all creatures fully formed. The idea is that evolution occurred in sudden jumps. Because this is admitted by prominent evolutionists, a theory postulating sudden change, rather than gradual change has been proposed. Others, grasping at straws, have moved the problem to other planets in the universe. They believe that earth may have been seeded from outer space. They refuse to consider that abrupt appearance of fully formed creatures also supports special creation by God. Thus, the missing links (transitional forms) are still missing. Note what some of the evolutionist scientists are admitting: DESIGNS, STEPHEN J. GOULD, Harvard, We can tell tales of improvement for some groups, but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than a saga of accumulating excellence.... I regard the failure to find a clear vector of progress in life s history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record...we have sought to impose a pattern that we hoped to find on a world that does not really display it., Nat. His., 2/82, p.22 DARWIN S BIGGEST PROBLEM, CHARLES DARWIN,... innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?...why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory. ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES. MORE EMBARRASSING, DAVID M. RAUP, Univ. Chicago; Ch. F. Mus. of N. H., The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn t look the way he predicted it would... Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn t changed much...ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as the result of more detailed information. Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol.50, p.35 GOOD RECORD BAD PREDlCTlON, NILES ELDRIDGE, Columbia Univ., A. M. N. H., He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin s predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong. The Myths of Human Evolution, p THE HORSE STORY, COLIN PATTERSON, Brit. Mus. of Nat. His.,. There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly when the people who 1

2 propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff. Harper s, p. 60, 1984 STORY TIME OVER, DEREK AGER, Univ. at Swansea, Wales, It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student...have now been debunked. Similarly, my own experience of more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineage s among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved them equally elusive., PROC. GEOL. ASSO., Vol.87, p.132 The Geologic Column and Fossils Evolutionists point to the so-called geologic column to support evolution. The column supposedly was formed throughout the supposed 4.6 billion year geologic history of the earth. As creatures evolved and died, they left fossils in the strata of the earth. Supposedly, the strata of the earth accumulated in defined strata layers over the entire 4.6 billion years. Any creature that existed and died when the stratum was laid down would be buried and fossilized at that particular level. Succeeding levels of strata would therefore produce more advanced creatures on the evolutionary timescale. But is this true? Does the geologic column provide evidence that evolution occurred? We will discuss another explanation for fossils occurring in the stratum in the exact order shown on the geologic column supporting special creation and a worldwide flood. Reptile Bird Fossils The textbooks in the schools are filled with evidences for evolution. On closer examination these evidences turn out to be nothing more than variation within the permissible limits of the genetic code of each kind of creature. The missing links represented by the reptile bird fossils of China turn out to be either admitted frauds or not intermediary between reptile and bird, since true birds older than these fossils have been discovered. These China birds, if authentic, turn out rather to be an extinct bird with teeth. There have been other birds with teeth. Teeth do not prove evolution. Notice the following quote from Nature magazine: FOSSIL BIRD SHAKES EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESES Fossil remains claimed to be of two crow-sized birds 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx have been found...a paleontologist at Texas Tech University, who found the fossils, says they have advanced avian features....tends to confirm what many paleontologists have long suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the direct line to modern birds. NATURE, Vol.322, 1986 p.677. Even with this statement, university textbooks, such as Evolutionary Analysis, still attempt to pawn Archaeopteryx off as proof that birds evolved from reptiles. 1 This is a misrepresentation. The student is not given the entire story. ADAM AND EVE DNA and statistical studies have located Adam and Eve. 1 Scott Freeman and John C. Herron, EVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS, Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Publishing, 1998, 2001, 2004, pp

3 CREATION NOTES LESSON 05 FOSSILS 1. In order to account for the missing intermediate fossils, scientists speculate that evolution moved at such colossal speed in the past that it left behind no record, while today evolution moves so slowly that it cannot be observed. This is contrary to their statements in support of uniformitarianism. They want it both ways when it suits them. 2. Because of their embarrassment over lack of fossil evidence for transitional forms, the Hopeful Monster theory, whereby a reptile laid an egg and out popped a bird, was proposed. The idea was that evolution happened in sudden spurts, without intermediate forms. The scientific establishment ridiculed him. Later punctuated equilibria, in essence the same theory, was introduced. The Hopeful Monster would have to occur twice in the same generation, producing male and female, for there to be reproduction possible. 3. Scientists account for lack of fossils in the pre-cambrian with the excuse that the rocks metamorphosed or eroded away. The major invertebrate fauna appear suddenly in the Cambrian strata with no ancestors. 4. The geologic column is the evolutionist s explanation of the time of appearance of the various types of creatures throughout the so-called geologic ages. This column does not appear in complete form anywhere on earth. In many instances the older strata is situated above the younger strata. 5. The geologic column can best be explained in terms of the flood of Noah, whereby the smaller less mobile marine creatures were buried first, while the larger more mobile and more intelligent creatures were able to escape to higher ground before being overcome and buried at successive higher levels. 6. Geologists typically date the strata (rocks) by the fossils found there. Paleontologists date the fossils by the strata in which they are found. This is a bit of circular reasoning. 7. Large scale fossilization does not occur today, but the fossil record attests that it did occur in the past. Where are the bones of the North American Buffalo? They have decayed and vanished. This evidence supports rapid burial in a worldwide flood. 3

4 8. There are basically two theories regarding evolution, either it happened gradually (gradualism), or suddenly in spurts (hopeful monster or punctuated equilibria). Many scientists abandon gradualistic evolution because of two characteristics of the fossil record: The abrupt appearance of new basic types of organism followed by little or no change. 9. Neanderthal man may be a homo sapien with rickets. Recent DNA tests, while touted as proving Neanderthal to be a separate species, actually show that his sequence difference to be in the range of modern humans. 10. Recently there has been much made about DNA tests of Neanderthal remains showing that they are separate species from modern man. However, the sequence difference between Neanderthal and modern humans was found to be in places. Modern humans differ from each other from 1-24 places. Despite the wishful thinking of evolutionist scientists, these differences of the Neanderthal are within the range of modern humans. 11. DNA quickly breaks down by water and oxygen. DNA might last tens of thousands of years at most. So there is serious doubt about the assigned 100,000 years of the skeleton from which the DNA was obtained. 12. The original brutish, stooped, apelike appearance of Neanderthal found in the textbooks and museums was purposely posed, and was due to preconceived evolutionary bias looking for the missing link. 13. The skeleton on which the original stooped brutish appearance was based was of a crippled man with osteoarthritis and rickets. We now know that Neanderthal man walked fully upright and would probably not cause a stir if he was dressed in a business suit and was sighted walking down Madison Avenue in New York City. We also know that his cranial capacity exceeded modern man s by 13 percent. 14. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon men were never primitive. There is even evidence that Neanderthal might still be living in Western Europe today. In every aspect, the shape of the modern West European skull is closer to the shape of the classic Neanderthal cranium than to that of any other modern group in other parts of the world. C. Loring Brace, Curator, University of Michigan s Museum of Anthropology. 15. Recently (2009), PBS aired The Case Against Intelligent Design that used similarity in DNA between chimpanzees and humans. The PBS documentary asserted that evolution was proven 4

5 since the DNA of human and chimps were 98% similar. The 98% similarity statement of the PBS documentary is misleading, and now considered false. Scientists now believe the similarity is in the 95-96% range. 16. According the Dr. Georgia Purdom: Here are some other interesting differences between the human and chimp genomes which are often not reported: The amount of chimp DNA is 12% larger than what it is in humans. Several hundred million bases (individual components of the DNA) of the chimp genome are still unanalyzed. In many areas of the DNA sequence, major rearrangements seem apparent. These account for perhaps 4 10% dissimilarity between chimps and humans. Chimps have 23 chromosomes and humans have only 22 (excluding sex chromosomes for both species). 17. According to Dr. David DeWitt: The use of percentages obscures the magnitude of the differences. For example, 1.23% of the differences are single base pair substitutions. This doesn t sound like much until you realize that it represents ~35 million mutations! But that is only the beginning, because there are ~40 45 million bases present in humans and missing from chimps, as well as about the same number present in chimps that is absent from man. These extra DNA nucleotides are called insertions or deletions because they are thought to have been added in or lost from the sequence. This puts the total number of DNA differences at about 125 million. However, since the insertions can be more than one nucleotide long, there are about 40 million separate mutation events that would separate the two species. 18. Anatomically modern homo sapien fossils are found in strata, contemporaneous with humanoid fossils, over the evolutionist's time charts back to 4.5 million years ago. How then can contemporaneous humanoid fossils, dated at same time period or later, be man's evolutionary ancestors? Since the fossils shown on the chart are in the same time period with anatomically modern homo sapien like fossils can any be the so-called missing link? According to Booher, Homo erectus might be a candidate, but he may just as well be fully man. 19. In their hast to prove evolution and provide a missing link, evolutionists have either mistakenly identified fossils or perpetrated frauds. MISSING LINKS & THE SEARCH FOR ADAM AND EVE 20. Lucy may best be described as, an unusual ape with small front teeth, large jaw and broad cheek teeth. A British anatomist describes Australopithecines, of which the best known is Lucy, as apes unrelated to man. Homo Sapiens (modern man) are found in strata lower than both Homo Erectus and Australopithecus. a. Not much found. b. The feet are missing. c. This makes it easy for evolutionists to assume that a Lucy like creature made the human like footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania. 5

6 21. Lucy was discovered by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray in 1974 at Hadar in Ethiopia. Lucy s age is said to be about 3.2 million years. Lucy was an adult female of about 25 years and was assigned to the species Australopithecus Afarensis. About 40% of her skeleton was found. She was about 3 6" tall (small for her species) and about 62 lbs in weight. 22. There is a find of footprints from Laetoli, Tanzania, found in volcanic ash, claimed by Mary Leakey to be of Australopithecus Afarensis (Lucy), an extinct monkey. She says the footprints are 3.6 million years old. In comparison with modern animals, the Australopitecines, of which Lucy is considered a member, resemble orangutans. According to Harold Booher: [T]he footprints [at Laetoli] are indistinguishable from human prints, so could not have been made by A. Afarensis whose feet were long, curved, and heavily muscled for arboreal [tree] movement. No evolutionist has signed up yet for the obvious, that humans made the prints but whoever made them, it was not Lucy and her friends. 23. Scientific American, 1 August 2005, that calls into question the standard explanation concerning whether a creature like Lucy made the Laetoli prints. The prints show that whoever made them had a humanlike foot arch the ancient footprints were left by individuals who had a striding bipedal gait very much like that of people today.. the A. afarensis bone resembled that of the flat-footed apes, making it improbable that its foot had an arch like our own. As such, the researchers report, A. afarensis almost certainly did not walk like us or, by extension, like the hominids at Laetoli. Kate Wong, FOOTPRINTS TO FILL, Flat feet and doubts about makers of the Laetoli tracks, Scientific American, In Focus, August 1, A missing link is an organism that according to evolution theory is in transition from one species to another (macroevolution). An example would be a fossil that is an intermediate between reptiles and birds. 25. Archaeopteryx and other feathered dinosaurs have appeared in numerous publications and textbooks as proof of evolution, the supposed missing link. The fact is that these are assumptions, and the fossil may, in fact, be only an extinct bird or a fraud. One feathered birdlike dinosaur appearing in National Geographic was later found to be a fraud. a. Since ancient modern bird fossils that pre-date Archaeopteryx have been found, Archaeopteryx cannot be considered a transitional form between reptiles and birds. 26. We should see many transitional, or intermediate, forms in the fossil record if evolution is true. If evolution is not true, and each kind of creature was created separately, then the fossil record should show creatures appearing abruptly and fully formed. This is exactly what we do find. 27. All 32 mammal orders appear abruptly and fully formed in the fossil record. 6

7 THE ETERNAL CONVERSATION - THE SEARCH FOR ADAM AND EVE Genesis 1: "And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." a. Notice the plural form of Elohim (God) depicted by the plural pronouns " us" and "our" in verse 1, yet the singleness of Elohim is depicted in the singular "his" of verse 27. b. The Trinity is again suggested. 29. God (Elohim) was having a conversation with Himself regarding His eternal purpose. (See: Joh 17:24; 1Pet 1:19-20; Rev 17:8; 2Ti 1:9; Eph 3:8-11; Ecc 3:14-15) 30. Man would be formed of the ground, and would have a soul (nephesh sherets) like the animals, but in man's case he would be given an eternal spirit, the Image of God. (See Ecc 3:18-21) a. Man would be capable of moral consciousness, be able to reason abstractly, understand beauty and emotion, and have a capacity to worship and love God. b. Both man and woman were "created" in God's image. We were created in the image of the Son of God, Himself the express image of the Father. (See: Heb1:1-3; Col 1:15; 2Co 4:3-4; Col 3:1-4; 3:10). We have Christ's image. c. Man s body must also be in God s image capable of expression, emotion and communication. d. Man s threefold nature of spirit, soul and body reflect the threefold image of the Creator. 31. Man (Adamah) = Of the ground or taken out of red earth. a. Both man and woman were created in God s image. b. Both were capable of a personal fellowship with God. 32. We were to be above and were intended to have dominion over the earth, and all its creatures (Psa 8:4-8). 33. DNA studies have traced Eve to Africa no more than 140,000 to 280,000 years ago. Recent evidence shows that mitochondrial DNA mutates much faster than previously thought, meaning that Eve may have lived only 6,000 to 6,500 years ago. Adam, using Y-chromosome studies, has been traced back to about 200,000 years ago. Evolutionists are alarmed with any of these dates, and have attempted to discredit them, since they require millions of years for their precious theory. Generally evolutionists believe that man and ape evolved from a common ancestor about million years ago. 7

8 34. According to Dr. Jonathan Sarfati: Recent evidence shows that mitochondrial DNA mutates much faster than previously thought. If this new evidence is applied to mitochrondrial Eve, it indicates that she would have lived only 6,000-6,500 years ago. 35. Ann Gibbons, in her article for Science, 2 January 1998, Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock, writes: Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated that mitochondrial Eve the woman whose mtdna was ancestral to all living people lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old. 36. Statistical population studies reported by The Associated Press, Fox News, USA Today, and Anthropology.net (all reporting between 1 and 5 July 2006) indicate that all humans living on earth came from a common ancestor about 5,000 7,000 years ago. 8