Creation and Science

1
Creation and Science

• Friends or enemies?

2
The big issues

• Evolution
• Dating methods
• Fossils
• Flood
• Dinosaurs
• Starlight and time
• Irreducible complexity
• Information theory

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Authority of scripture

• All Scripture is given by inspiration of God
• 2 Tim 316

4
Evolution
5
Evolution

• Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in
  our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of
  the sea and the birds of the air, over the
  livestock, over all the earth, and over all the
  creatures that move along the ground."
• Genesis 126
• By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food
  until you return to the ground, since from it you
  were taken for dust you are and to dust you will
  return."
• Genesis 319

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Evolution

• Let the land produce vegetation seed-bearing
  plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with
  seed in it, according to their various kinds
  plants bearing seed according to their kinds and
  trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to
  their kinds.
• Genesis 111-12
• Let the land produce living creatures according
  to their kinds livestock, creatures that move
  along the ground, and wild animals, each
  according to its kind.
• Genesis 124

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Evolution

• Let the land produce vegetation seed-bearing
  plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with
  seed in it, according to their various kinds
  plants bearing seed according to their kinds and
  trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to
  their kinds.
• Genesis 111-12
• Let the land produce living creatures according
  to their kinds livestock, creatures that move
  along the ground, and wild animals, each
  according to its kind.
• Genesis 124

8
Evolution

• Evolution is a belief system (that claims to be
  a science) that says that all life on earth
  ultimately derives from a single original life
  form, and those life forms have been
  progressively changing (evolving) over millions
  of years into the complex forms of life
  (including human life) we see today
• Evolutionary effects are often classified into
  one of two categories

• Microevolution changes within a kind
• Macroevolution changes between kinds

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Evolution

• There are two views
• Evolution from non-living elements, up through
  endless. development, through ape-like creatures,
  till finally human existence became different to
  ape existence. This is the atheistic evolutionist
  position.
• God set evolution in progress and guided progress
  and guided the development, and so, in effect,
  created man. Therefore man is still responsible
  to his Creator, and the evolutionary scientist is
  also seen to be credible. This view is known as
  theistic evolution.

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Biblical model for change in animals

• God commanded the living things He created to
  multiply after their kindan expression
  repeated 10 times in Genesis 1 (v 11, 12, 21, 22,
  24, 25, 26, 28)
• Adams sin brought a curse on the entire
  creation one consequence was that mutations
  began to accumulate in DNA.
• Noah had 2 of each kind (seven of the clean) of
  air-breathing land animal (probably around 16,000
  individual animals) with him on the Ark. After
  the animals disembarked and began to multiply,
  they would have migrated to various areas and
  adapted to the area they settled in.
• We observe reproduction only within the created
  kinds today, e.g. dogs breed other dogs,
  weasels breed other weasels, etc.
• Great amounts of information variability still
  exist today in the animal, plant and human
  genomes. This means that many varieties can arise
  within each kind by sorting out already
  existing information. The number of different
  offspring that could theoretically be produced
  from two people is 102017 (compare to the number
  of atoms in the known universe 1080).

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Evolutionary model for change in animals

• Violence and bloodshed are a required part of
  evolutionary theory
• Animals are improved through the process of
  natural selection and genetic mutation
• The informational effect of natural selection and
  genetic mutation is positive and over time
  improved versions of the original animal will
  appear
• These changes made to animal offspring can be so
  severe that they can change the type of animal
  from one to another (amphibian to reptile for
  example)

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Suggested mechanisms for molecules-to-man
evolution

• Natural Selection
• Thirteen species of finches live on the
  Galápagos, the famous island group visited by
  Charles Darwin in the 1830s. The finches have a
  variety of bill shapes and sizes, all suited to
  their varying diets and lifestyles. The
  explanation given by Darwin was that they are all
  the offspring of an original pair of finches, and
  that natural selection is responsible for the
  differences. Say some finches ended up on islands
  in which there was a shortage of seeds, but many
  grubs were living under tree bark. In a
  population with much variation, some will have
  longer, some shorter, beaks than average. Those
  birds carrying more of the long-beak
  information could survive on those grubs, and
  thus would be more likely to pass the information
  on to their descendants, while the others would
  die out. In this way, with selection acting on
  other characters as well, a woodpecker finch
  could arise. The same thing is seen in artificial
  selection, with all the various modern breeds of
  dogs being more specialized than the parent
  (mongrel) population, but carrying less
  informationand thus less potential for further
  selection (you cant breed Great Danes from
  Chihuahuas). In all these sorts of changes,
  finches are still finches and dogs are dogs. The
  limits to change are set by the amount of
  information originally present from which to
  select.
• Carl Wieland, Darwins Finches

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Suggested mechanisms for molecules-to-man
evolution

• Natural Selection
• Living things are culled based on environmental
  pressures or changes.

• This involves a loss or redistribution of genetic
  information as animals become unable to
  interbreed, so cannot be a mechanism for
  evolution.

• Natural selection is basically a conservative
  force, which supports the Biblical teaching that
  all things were created to reproduce after their
  kind.

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Suggested mechanisms for molecules-to-man
evolution

• Mutations
• Mutations are copying mistakes as genetic
  information is passed from parent to child.

• This also involves a loss or corruption of the
  original genetic content, not a net gain, as is
  required by fish-to-philosopher evolution.

• This is explained by the Biblical teaching that
  all things are suffering from the curse God
  placed on His creation because of Adams sin
  (Genesis 31719, Romans 820-22)

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Suggested mechanisms for molecules-to-man
evolution

• With this array of human diseases that are
  caused by mutations, what of positive effects?
  With thousands of examples of harmful mutations
  readily available, surely it should be possible
  to describe some positive mutations if
  macroevolution is true. These would be needed not
  only for evolution to greater complexity, but
  also to offset the downward pull of the many
  harmful mutations. But, when it comes to
  identifying positive mutations, evolutionary
  scientists are strangely silent. The mutation
  responsible for sickle cell anaemia has been put
  forward as an example of evolution. The problems
  with this is obvious, as the sickle cell
  mutation, like the many other described
  haemoglobin mutations, clearly impairs the
  function of the otherwise marvellously
  well-designed haemoglobin molecule. It can in no
  way be regarded as an improvement in our species,
  even though its incidence is enhanced in
  malaria-endemic parts of central Africa by
  natural selection.
• The blind gunman, Institute for Creation research

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Evolution where is the evidence?

• There are no transitional links and intermediate
  forms in either the fossil record or the modern
  world. Therefore, there is no actual evidence
  that evolution has occurred either in the past or
  the present.

Absolutely no transitional forms either in the
fossil record or in modern animal and plant life
have been found. All appear fully formed and
complete. The fossil record amply supplies us
with representation of almost all species of
animals and plants but none of the supposed links
of plant to animal, fish to amphibian, amphibian
to reptile, or reptile to birds and mammals are
represented nor any transitional forms at all.
There are essentially the same gaps between all
the basic kinds in the fossil record as exists in
plant and animal life today. There are literally
a host of missing links in the fossil record and
the modern world.
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Dating methods
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Dating methods Carbon-14

• Carbon-14 is made when cosmic rays knock neutrons
  out of atomic nuclei in the upper atmosphere.
  These displaced neutrons, now moving fast, hit
  ordinary nitrogen (14N) at lower altitudes,
  converting it into 14C. Unlike common carbon
  (12C), 14C is unstable and slowly decays,
  changing it back to nitrogen and releasing
  energy. This instability makes it radioactive.
• Ordinary carbon (12C) is found in the carbon
  dioxide (CO2) in the air, which is taken up by
  plants, which in turn are eaten by animals. So a
  bone, or a leaf or a tree, or even a piece of
  wooden furniture, contains carbon. When the 14C
  has been formed, like ordinary carbon (12C), it
  combines with oxygen to give carbon dioxide
  (14CO2), and so it also gets cycled through the
  cells of plants and animals.
• We can take a sample of air, count how many 12C
  atoms there are for every 14C atom, and calculate
  the 14C/12C ratio. Because 14C is so well mixed
  up with 12C, we expect to find that this ratio is
  the same if we sample a leaf from a tree, or a
  part of your body.
• In living things, although 14C atoms are
  constantly changing back to 14N, they are still
  exchanging carbon with their surroundings, so the
  mixture remains about the same as in the
  atmosphere. However, as soon as a plant or animal
  dies, the 14C atoms which decay are no longer
  replaced, so the amount of 14C in that
  once-living thing decreases as time goes on. In
  other words, the 14C/12C ratio gets smaller. So,
  we have a clock which starts ticking the moment
  something dies.

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Dating methods Carbon-14

• Limitations
• Only works for living things (that take in 14C)
• Has a half life of 11,460 years
• Plants discriminate against 14C
• The ratio of 14C/12C in the atmosphere is not
  constant
• No. 4 means 14C dates are adjusted based on
  historically dated objects
• No. 5 means 14C dating can only be used for dates
  on historical record

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Dating methods Carbon-14

• More Limitations
• Cosmic rays affect the amount of 14C in our
  atmosphere based on the suns activity (which we
  cannot predict)
• The earths magnetic field affects the cosmic rays
  entering the atmosphere
• The flood buried the 12C producing animals and
  plants, but the 14C production would have
  remained constant upsetting the 14C/12C ratio

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Dating methods Carbon-14

• How reliable / useful is 14C dating?
• Within certain known parameters it is useful but
  there are so many effects that alter the dates
  you get out of it that the results are likely to
  be incorrect.

22
Dating methods other radiometric dating

• There are various other radiometric dating
  methods used today to give ages of millions or
  billions of years for rocks. These techniques,
  unlike carbon dating, mostly use the relative
  concentrations of parent and daughter products in
  radioactive decay chains. For example,
  potassium-40 decays to argon-40 uranium-238
  decays to lead-206 via other elements like
  radium uranium-235 decays to lead-207
  rubidium-87 decays to strontium-87 etc. These
  techniques are applied to igneous rocks, and are
  normally seen as giving the time since
  solidification.
• The isotope concentrations can be measured very
  accurately, but isotope concentrations are not
  dates. To derive ages from such measurements,
  unprovable assumptions have to be made such as
• The starting conditions are known (for example,
  that there was no daughter isotope present at the
  start, or that we know how much was there).
• Decay rates have always been constant.
• Systems were closed or isolated so that no parent
  or daughter isotopes were lost or added.

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Dating methods other radiometric dating

• When a date differs from that expected,
  researchers readily invent excuses for rejecting
  the result. The common application of such
  posterior reasoning shows that radiometric dating
  has serious problems. Woodmorappe cites hundreds
  of examples of excuses used to explain "bad"
  dates.
• For example, researchers applied posterior
  reasoning to the dating of Australopithecus
  ramidus fossils. Most samples of basalt closest
  to the fossil-bearing strata give dates of about
  23 Ma (Mega annum, million years) by the
  argon-argon method. The authors decided that was
  too old, according to their beliefs about the
  place of the fossils in the evolutionary grand
  scheme of things. So they looked at some basalt
  further removed from the fossils and selected 17
  of 26 samples to get an acceptable maximum age of
  4.4 Ma. The other nine samples again gave much
  older dates but the authors decided they must be
  contaminated and discarded them. That is how
  radiometric dating works. It is very much driven
  by the existing long-age world view that pervades
  academia today.
• The forms issued by radioisotope laboratories for
  submission with samples to be dated commonly ask
  how old the sample is expected to be. Why? If the
  techniques were absolutely objective and
  reliable, such information would not be
  necessary. Presumably, the laboratories know that
  anomalous dates are common, so they need some
  check on whether they have obtained a good
  date.

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Dating methods physical evidences

• Evidence for a rapid formation of geological
  strata, as in the biblical flood. Some of the
  evidences are lack of erosion between rock
  layers supposedly separated in age by many
  millions of years lack of disturbance of rock
  strata by biological activity (worms, roots,
  etc.) lack of soil layers polystrate fossils
  (which traverse several rock layers
  verticallythese could not have stood vertically
  for eons of time while they slowly got buried)
  thick layers of rock bent without fracturing,
  indicating that the rock was all soft when bent
  and more. For more, see books by geologists
  Morris and Austin.
• Red blood cells and haemoglobin have been found
  in some (unfossilized!) dinosaur bone. But these
  could not last more than a few thousand
  yearscertainly not the 65 Ma since the last
  dinosaurs lived, according to evolutionists
• The earths magnetic field has been decaying so
  fast that it looks like it is less than 10,000
  years old. Rapid reversals during the flood year
  and fluctuations shortly after would have caused
  the field energy to drop even faster.
• Radioactive decay releases helium into the
  atmosphere, but not much is escaping. The total
  amount in the atmosphere is 1/2000th of that
  expected if the universe is really billions of
  years old. This helium originally escaped from
  rocks. This happens quite fast, yet so much
  helium is still in some rocks that it has not had
  time to escapecertainly not billions of years.

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Dating methods physical evidences

• A supernova is an explosion of a massive starthe
  explosion is so bright that it briefly outshines
  the rest of the galaxy. The supernova remnants
  (SNRs) should keep expanding for hundreds of
  thousands of years, according to physical
  equations. Yet there are no very old, widely
  expanded (Stage 3) SNRs, and few moderately old
  (Stage 1) ones in our galaxy, the Milky Way, or
  in its satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds.
  This is just what we would expect for young
  galaxies that have not existed long enough for
  wide expansion.
• The moon is slowly receding for the earth at
  about 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) per year, and
  this rate would have been greater in the past.
  But even if the moon had started receding from
  being in contact with the earth, it would have
  taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its
  present distance from the earth. This gives a
  maximum age of the moon, not the actual age. This
  is far too young for evolutionists who claim the
  moon is 4.6 billion years old. It is also much
  younger than the radiometric dates assigned to
  moon rocks.
• Salt is entering the sea much faster than it is
  escaping. The sea is not nearly salty enough for
  this to have been happening for billions of
  years. Even granting generous assumptions to
  evolutionists, the sea could not be more than 62
  Ma years oldfar younger than the billions of
  years believed by the evolutionists. Again, this
  indicates a maximum age, not the actual age.

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Dating methods how do we date?

• Creationists understand the limitations of dating
  methods better than evolutionists who claim that
  they can use processes observed in the present to
  prove that the earth is billions of years old.
  In reality, all dating methods, including those
  that point to a young earth, rely on unprovable
  assumptions.
• Creationists ultimately date the earth
  historically using the chronology of the Bible.
  This is because they believe that this is an
  accurate eyewitness account of world history,
  which bears the evidence within it that it is the
  Word of God, and therefore totally reliable and
  error-free.

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Fossils
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Fossils Humanist view

• Over millions of years animals and plants have
  slowly become fossilised leaving us evidence that
  evolution is true that there has been a gradual
  upward progression in the animal kingdom.

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Fossils Humanist attacks

• There are millions of dead fossilised things
  which are millions of years old all over the
  earth we can date these and prove that there
  have been millions of years.
• The fossils are in layers which prove they
  occurred at particular time periods.
• The fossil record proves that evolution is true
  it is a historic record of the progression of
  evolving life on earth.

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Fossils Christian view

• God judged the earth because of the sinfulness of
  man with a global flood from which only Noah, his
  family, and some of each of the animal types were
  saved. During the flood millions of animals and
  plants were killed, these would have been
  fossilised by the sudden catastrophic influx of
  water, leaving us with the fossil record we see
  today.

31
Fossils Christian counter attacks

• This is just a dating argument, so we can refer
  to the things said previously about dating.
• We would expect fossils to be in layers because
  of the separating effect the flood waters would
  have based on animal size / mass, also the more
  intelligent and mobile animals would have escaped
  to higher ground and so therefore been buried
  later. This fits well with what we find.
• We know that fossils need to be formed through
  sudden catastrophic events because otherwise the
  body of the animal would not be fossilised it
  would be eaten, float away, etc so this closely
  fits a global flood scenario.
• There is no evidence of transitional forms in the
  fossil record see evolution
• We know that rock layers can be formed suddenly
  Mt St. Helens it doesnt require millions of
  years.
• The earth has billions of dead things buried in
  rock layers laid down by water all over the
  earth. This is stunning proof of the truth of the
  flood, it is exactly the kind of evidence we
  would expect!

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Fossils quotes

• A thin slice of T. rex bone glowed amber
  beneath the lens of my microscope. Blood vessel
  channels snaked through a bone matrix, and tiny
  chambers known as lacunae, which house
  bone-forming cells, appeared as small ovals. The
  lab filled with murmurs of amazement, for I had
  focused on something inside the vessels that none
  of us had ever noticed before tiny round
  objects, translucent red with a dark center.
  Then a colleague took one look at them and
  shouted, Youve got red blood cells. Youve got
  red blood cells!Finding remains of dinosaur
  blood cells would have astounding implications.
• Mary Schweitzer Tracy Staedter,
• The Real Jurassic Park, Earth

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Fossils quotes

• One of the things that we have is a part of the
  hip bone or pelvis. Now this specimen actually
  looks like it had come from an animal that looks
  like it died two or three hundred years ago. All
  dry, chalky, this sort of thing. Doesnt actually
  mean it died two or three hundred years ago. In
  Montana, Ive seen dinosaur bones that look like
  theyve come from animals that died two or three
  hundred years ago, and I know very well that they
  died much longer than that. It gives the
  suggestion that Megalania may have been alive
  fairly recently.
• Dr Ralph Molnar, Into the Unknown,

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If the evidence for the flood is so compelling
why dont scientists agree?

• 5But they deliberately forget that long ago by
  God's word the heavens existed and the earth was
  formed out of water and by water. 6By these
  waters also the world of that time was deluged
  and destroyed.
• 2 Peter 35-6

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Dinosaurs
36

• Dinosaurs the big mystery the Bible cant answer

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Dinosaurs

• According to evolutionists
• Dinosaurs evolved 235 million years ago long
  before man
• Humans never lived at the same time as dinosaurs
• 65 million years ago the dinosaurs all
  disappeared, probably due to an asteroid
• Some believe some dinosaurs survived and became
  the birds

38
Dinosaurs

• According to the Bible
• Dinosaurs first existed 6,000 years ago
• God made the dinosaurs along with the other land
  animals on day six
• Adam and Eve were made on day six so they lived
  at the same time as dinosaurs
• Dinosaurs could not have died out before people
  because death did not exist before the fall
• Some of the kind of dinosaurs would have been
  on the ark (possibly as eggs / infants)
• Due to post-flood climactic change, lack of food,
  disease, and mans activities many animals became
  extinct (possibly some or all dinosaurs)

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Dinosaurs

• 15"Look now at the behemoth
• which I made along with you He eats grass like
  an ox. 16See now, his strength is in his hips,
  And his power is in his stomach muscles. 17He
  moves his tail like a cedar The sinews of his
  thighs are tightly knit. 18His bones are like
  beams of bronze, His ribs like bars of iron.
  19He is the first of the ways of God Only He
  who made him can bring near His sword.
• Job 4015-19
• The phrase first of the ways of God suggests
  that this was the biggest animal God had made
  (note the elephants and hippos dont fit this
  bill)

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Dinosaurs

• Some interesting facts
• There is no mystery if you accept what the Bible
  says
• Many (recent) dragon legends fit dinosaur
  descriptions

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Starlight and time
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Starlight and Time

• Solving the puzzle of distant starlight in a
  young universe
• These are attempts to solve some unsolved
  astrophysics questions in particular
• The Bible says the universe is just thousands of
  years old, and yet we can see starts that are
  billions of light-years away. How can see those
  stars? How did the light get here?
• Recommended book Starlight and Time, D
  Humphreys Ph.D

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Irreducible complexity
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Irreducible complexity

• Irreducible complexity is the idea that a system
  cannot be reduced any more, nothing more can be
  removed if the system is to continue to function.
  If true this suggests the system could not have
  evolved in a stepwise manner.
• Examples are cillium, blood clotting, AMP and
• production in cells.
• There are some issues with this approach
• Recommended book Darwins black box, M. Behe

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Information theory
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Information theory

• A type of modern scientific design argument based
  on information theory
• Very complex and esoteric!
• Fun to read if you enjoy those things though!
• Recommended book In the beginning was
  Information, Werner Gitt

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Questions

• Please be kind!