(Part 2)
The fourth in a series of apologetics-based columns, and the second specifically on Creation, to help Christians better understand the evidence for their faith. Read the introduction to the series in the Saturday, April 2, News-Banner.
Scientists faced a dilemma: They had discovered fossilized footprints that essentially resembled modern human footprints, but whoever made them supposedly lived before modern humans and their feet evolved.
Furthermore, the prints’ most likely suspect, an ape-like creature whose fossils lay nearby, couldn’t have physically made the footprints, they said. Its fossilized bones, when assembled, almost exactly mimicked a modern chimpanzee’s pelvis, which couldn’t leave footprints like those found.
“The evidence wasn’t quite adding up,” a narrator in a documentary lamented.
Fortunately, scientists discovered the perfect solution: Someone suggested a deer perhaps stepped on the pelvis after the creature died, and when it did, it broke the human-shaped pelvis so that it instead looked like a chimpanzee-shaped pelvis. Hurrah!
A scientist then used a power saw to shape a cast of the fossils to more closely resemble its “original,” human-like shape, and when he finished, they celebrated this flawless evidence of evolution.
“It all fit together perfectly,” the narrator concluded after video of buzzing, grinding, and saw dust.
Despite what skeptics say, fossil remains and similar evidence do not … shape … conclusions. Everyone, including Christians, interprets their facts through presuppositions, those core or basic assumptions about reality that people trust with little question. Because the scientists assumed mankind evolved, for instance, they concluded a human couldn’t create the human-shaped footprints, and because scientists assumed the creature had a human-like hip, they concluded an outside force, such as the deer, somehow created the chimpanzee-like fossil fragments.
Because the facts don’t speak for themselves, let alone testify against Creation, Christians don’t need to fearfully worry if evolution’s facts outweigh Creation’s, for both worldviews interpret the same facts. They also shouldn’t tremble when scientists supposedly find some new, conclusive proof of evolution.
Instead God calls Christians to learn to prayerfully discern through the power of the Spirit — to differentiate the observable, measurable facts and evidence, such as the shape of the footprint, from the presupposition-based assumptions and conclusions.
For instance, once, an evangelist interviewed four experts in evolution and asked for specific examples, and they basically cited two: bacteria and finches.
Due to mutations in their genetics, the experts further said, some bacteria now resist antibiotics that once basically killed them. Scientists can observe this, and they can accurately compare and contrast the genetics of the resistant bacteria with the susceptible and identify the differences. Similarly, Charles Darwin, considered the father of evolution, noticed some finches with larger beaks thrived better than those with smaller beaks.
However, evolutionists then conclude from this limited change that bacteria could change into all other biology. They’ve never observed such change happening, though. Through natural selection, bacteria changed into different types of bacteria, but they remained bacteria. Finches remained finches. None broke the barriers of their created kind.
Furthermore, the mutations that lead to observable changes observe only reduces or shifts existing genetic information; they don’t introduce new genetics that unlock “new” functional traits, such as genes for eyes, legs, and human organs.
Imagine a mechanic wanted to turn a school bus into a car. To do so, he removed some parts, such as the most of the seats, and perhaps modified other parts, such as the doors, to work differently. Essentially, he mimicked the process of natural selection.
Evolution, however, insists he could also turn the bus into an airplane using only the parts originally available to him.
People don’t just interpret evidence, however. They also interpret text, filtering it through their presuppositions as well.
Based off the textual evidence alone, however, God intends readers to interpret Genesis literally — to accept it as an accurate historical account. Furthermore, Paul defended the literal Adam. Moses interpreted the Genesis account literally when he and the Israelites worked six days and rested on the seventh, just as God literally commanded them (Exodus 31:15-17).
More importantly, when believers cram evolution and billions of years into the first two chapters of Genesis, they must then cram billions of years of death and suffering into it as well, and by implication, they must claim God called this world bloated with corpses “very good.”
They must claim God used billions of years of cyclical death to finally create Adam, and then Christ died to free men from the very method God used to create them instead of dying to free men from the death they earned through their sin.
(Note: Most of the material for this column was created as part of a curriculum, still in development, for the publishing company Christian Light. Learn more about their resources at www.christianlight.org. Also learn more about creation at www.answersingenesis.org.)
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