The Verdict of Reason
Last week Jerry The Science Guy took a look at the age of the earth. In today’s installment He’ll be looking at the biological evidence.
BIOLOGY QUESTIONS
Jerry Zeis
Last week we covered carbon dating. Depending on worldview, and the fact that this science is practically immutable, you get two answers to how old something is. It is either nearly what you expect, or it is thrown away saying that it was contaminated somewhere along the way. It might be present day bacteria at the time of excavation, or pollen. The bottom line is if it is not as old as you need it to be. Don’t rock the boat with consensus. I will lose my reputation and grants, and then I will need to look for a job. For those scientists that do believe in a literal 6,000 year history, there are three web sites that I recommend that will analyze the facts that they get from science in light of the truth of the Bible. These people are looked down upon by traditional scientists as ‘flat earthers’. They cannot interpret any data without God being involved. The three web sites are ICR.org, creation.com, and answersingenisis.org. This week I will ask several questions that most evolutionists / cosmologists / geologists don’t have good answers to. When viewed from a biblical standpoint, there is very little inconsistency. The majority of these questions came from Don Batten at creation.com1.
When you hear people try to explain these answers, listen for key words such as “just so”, “over enough time”, “The probability or possibility is there”, “odds are”. Any phrase that adds to the chance. Why are there theories about life coming from space? Billions of more planets! Why billions of years? Because we can see back and calculate odds. Why extra dimensions? Same reasons.
- How did life originate? Evolutionist Professor Paul Davies admitted, “Nobody knows how a mixture of lifeless chemicals spontaneously organized themselves into the first living cell.”1 Andrew Knoll, professor of biology, Harvard, said, “We don’t really know how life originated on this planet”.2 A minimal cell needs several hundred proteins. Even if every atom in the universe were an experiment with all the correct amino acids present for every possible molecular vibration in the supposed evolutionary age of the universe, not even one average-sized functional protein would form. So how did life with hundreds of proteins originate just by chemistry without intelligent design? Every one of these proteins must be present at the same place and same time to do what each step is expected to do. A car at the gas stations is useless unless there is a person to pump the gas. Just as useless without cash or credit, still pointless without a key and so on. Evolution never did explain origin, just change.
- How did the DNA code originate? The code is a sophisticated language system with letters and words where the meaning of the words is unrelated to the chemical properties of the letters—just as the information on this page is not a product of the chemical properties of the ink (or pixels on a screen). What other coding system has existed without intelligent design? How did the DNA coding system arise without it being created? DNA (which has millions to billions of atoms arranged just so) is built by several to many proteins that are thousands of atoms long just so. Proteins need RNA (similar to DNA) to be built. RNA comes from DNA. See some circles coming that make the chicken and the egg a simple solution? How did lucky accidents create even one of the components, let alone 10 or 20 or 30 at the same time, often in a necessary programmed sequence. Evolutionary biochemist Franklin Harold wrote, “We must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”3
- How could mutations—accidental copying mistakes (DNA ‘letters’ exchanged, deleted or added, genes duplicated, chromosome inversions, etc.)—create the huge volumes of information in the DNA of living things? How could such errors create 3 billion letters of DNA information to change a microbe into a microbiologist? There is information for how to make proteins but also for controlling their use—much like a cookbook contains the ingredients as well as the instructions for how and when to use them. One without the other is useless. See: Meta-information: An impossible conundrum for evolution. Mutations are known for their destructive effects, including over 1,000 human diseases such as hemophilia. Rarely are they even helpful. But how can scrambling existing DNA information create a new biochemical pathway or nano-machines with many components, to make ‘goo-to-you’ evolution possible?
- Why is natural selection, a principle recognized by creationists, taught as ‘evolution’, as if it explains the origin of the diversity of life? By definition it is a selective process (selecting from already existing information), so is not a creative process. It might explain the survival of the fittest (why certain genes benefit creatures more in certain environments), but not the arrival of the fittest (where the genes and creatures came from in the first place). The death of individuals not adapted to an environment and the survival of those that are suited does not explain the origin of the traits that make an organism adapted to an environment.g., how do minor back-and-forth variations in finch beaks explain the origin of beaks or finches? How does natural selection explain goo-to-you evolution?
- How did sex originate? Asexual reproduction gives up to twice as much reproductive success (‘fitness’) for the same resources as sexual reproduction, so how could the latter ever gain enough advantage to be selected? And how could mere physics and chemistry invent the complementary apparatuses needed at the same time (non-intelligent processes cannot plan for future coordination of male and female organs).
- Why are the (expected) countless millions of transitional fossils missing? Darwin noted the problem and it still remains. The evolutionary family trees in textbooks are based on imagination, not fossil evidence. Famous Harvard paleontologist (and evolutionist), Stephen Jay Gould, wrote, “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.”[i] Other evolutionist fossil experts also acknowledge the problem. Evolutionists came up with the theory of punctuated evolution, the idea that many changes take place ‘all of a sudden’ then a million years of no change. So can they explain that an amphibian turned into a reptile in one generation which really means a three chambered heart becomes a four chambered heart with new blood vessels valves, and plumbing by a simple few beneficial mutations? Then throw in other changes such as skin moisture for exta air, and no longer need metamorphosis (tad-poles etc.)
- How do ‘living fossils’ remain unchanged over supposed hundreds of millions of years, if evolution has changed worms into humans in the same time frame? Professor Gould wrote, “The maintenance of stability within species must be considered as a major evolutionary problem.”[ii] Simply put, a human was an ape 5 million years ago, and has passed through 10 known steps, but a turtle is still a turtle after 200 million years?
- How did blind chemistry create mind/ intelligence, meaning, altruism and morality? If everything evolved, and we invented God, as per evolutionary teaching, what purpose or meaning is there to human life? Should students be learning nihilism (life is meaningless) in science classes? What is the point of laws? It just bypasses survival of the fittest? A core tenet of Darwinism.
Again, I will state that I can not prove that God exists, but here are the Bible’s answers to those eight questions. When God gets eliminated from the equation, the answers start becoming less and less believable after each step.
1+2) How did life originate, DNA code? See Genesis 1, we all know the story!
3) Mutations are errors, nearly all are detrimental. Genetic diseases are on the rise. If we were alive for billions of years, life should have gone extinct already.2
4) Natural selection can cause variations. Dog breeds are a great example. In a period of 100 years can you make a new dog breed? No problem! Is it still a dog? Yes. Its snout is easily changed by selective breeding, just as a finches beak changes. Would a paleontologist say that a mastiff and a yorkie are separate species if found as fossils? But they are still the same animal, a dog, a domesticated wolf / coyote / fox etc. 100 years is not an issue to a biblical worldview.
5) How did sex originate? End of Genesis 1, or chapter 2
6+7) transitional fossils? DNA doesn’t change into new creatures. God made it good, and it stayed that way.
- Morality? We were made in God’s image, he is our Father in Heaven, a role model on how to be. Again, the answer was on page one of the bible!
Next week onto the world of geology and a global flood!
[i] Don Batten, 15 Questions for Evolutionists, Creation.com, http://creation.com/15-questions
[ii] Bodie Hodge, Are Mutations Part of the “Engine” of Evolution?, Answers in Genesis, February 18, 2010,
https://answersingenesis.org/genetics/mutations/are-mutations-part-of-the-engine-of-evolution/
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