Articles like this one may not have interest of all our readers, but they meet a very special need of young Christians.
Last September the writer gave a talk in Garnavillo Iowa on “Creation versus Evolution” for the benefit of high school and college students from a number of assemblies in the area. This article is based on that talk. Students are constantly being deluged with statements in lectures, text books and the press indicating that evolution is a proven scientific fact. Hitler said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it. The Theory of evolution has been one of Satan’s most successful lies in destroying people’s confidence in the Word of God.
Neither creation nor evolution can be proven by science. The scientific method involves observation and then proof by experimentation. Neither creation nor evolution can be observed and neither can be duplicated in the laboratory. Either one or the other must be accepted by faith. You can believe God or the theories of men, but not both. However, science does offer abundant evidence of a young universe created less than 7000 years ago. There is no scientific evidence to support either a 16 billion years old universe, Coyle’s Big Bang theory, the LaPlace Condensation theory or the theory of evolution, absolutely none, in spite of what the press and many educators may say.
If the earth is young, evolution must be false, for evolution cannot survive apart from its counterpart in geology, Uniformitarianism. A young earth is just what the creationist would expect. By supporting the idea of a young earth, science supports creation and not evolution.
We will look first at what the Bible teaches about creation, then evidences of a young universe from various fields of science.
What the Bible Teaches about Creation: (Heb 11:3; Heb l-3; Col 1:4-17; Exod 20:11; Gen 1:1-31; 2:13). Genesis 1 teaches creation in six, 24 hour days, not billions of years. Each of the six days consisted of an evening and a morning. Exodus 20:11 tells us that in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. “Heavens” is in the dual number which includes the aerial heaven where the birds fly and the celestial heaven where the sun, moon and stars are, but not the third heaven where God dwells (2 Cor 12:2).
Two suggestions were made in the early 1800’s to accommodate evolution:
(1) that there might have been a vast time lapse between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1, and that a great judgment may have fallen upon a previous creation resulting from Satan’s fall, leaving “a waste.” Isaiah 44:18 says, “He created it not in vain” (tohu), which some have interpreted “a waste,” the same word used in Genesis 1:2, is translated “without form.”
(2) that the “days” of creation might have been long lapses (geological ages) .
We cannot agree with these proposals for a number of reasons:
(1) No other scripture supports “the gap theory.”
(2) “Without form (tohu) can mean “without geographical features,” that is, a spherical earth covered with water.
(3) God did not finish creating until the end of Day Six (Gen 2:1-3), therefore He did not create a waste. When He had finished creating, He pronounced “very good” on all He had created and made.
(4) Satan had been in the garden of Eden before. He fell (Ezek 28:11-17). 1 Timothy 3:6 implies that he was a novice, newly created, when pride brought his fall, shortly before the temptation of Eve.
(5) God states in 1 Cor 15:21-22, “By man came death…in Adam all die.” In Romans 5:12,17, He clearly states the reason: “Wherefore, as by one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by sin by one man’s offence death reigned.” At the close of each day of creation God had pronounced “good” what He created. At the end of the sixth day (v 31). He pronounced all that He had created and made, “very good”. How could there have been at the same time, great masses of fossilized carcasses, the evidence of death and destruction, such as has been found in many places in the earth? We believe that those millions of animals were destroyed 1600 years later during the Flood.
Were The Days of Genesis 1 Vast Geological Ages?
(1) Trees, plants and grass were created by Day Three, but the sun was not created until Day Four. All Plant life would have died without sunlight.
(2) Adam lived a part of Day Six and all of Day Seven, but his total life was only 930 years.
Therefore the creation days could not have been long geological ages.
The Six Days of Creation
Day One (vs 1-5)
The beginning — time; the heavens — space; the earth — matter; light — energy. The light that we can observe with our eyes is only a tiny fraction of the total spectrum of radiant energy. The light was divided from the darkness (separation). The earth was still formless, (without geographical features) and empty.
Day Two (vs 6-8, separation)
The firmament (singular) – the expanse of the atmosphere separated a lower layer of liquid water from an upper layer of water, probably vapor, which, until after the Flood, filtered out most of the actinic radiation, which accelerates aging. The collapse of the upper layer produced the 40 days and nights of rain during the Flood.
Day Three (vs 9-13)
The separation of land and sea; the filling of the land with trees, plants and grass.
Day Four (vs 14-19)
Creation of the sun, moon and stars, the filling of space. The creation of the earth on Day One and the vast number of the other heavenly bodies on Day Four suggests that God’s purpose in creating centered on the earth, where He planned to send His Son to display His grace in the work of Redemption.
Day Five (vs 20-23)
Creatures of the sea, fowls of the air.
Day Six (vs 24-30)
Land animals. Man created in God’s own image and likeness. God then pronounced the whole, finished creation “very good” (v 31).
Who achieved this great work of creation? Hebrews 1:2-3, teaches that the Son of God was appointed heir of all things, by Him the universe was made; He upholds all things by the power of His spoken word. In Colossians 1:16-17 we read,”By Him were all things created that are in Heaven and earth, visible and invisible – principalities and powers (the hierarchy of angelic hosts); all things were created by Him and for Him, and by Him all things consist (are held together.)
It was the same Person the Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for us at Calvary to put away our sin, who is the mighty Creator and Sustainer of the universe! Evolution is an attempt to push God out of His universe. Julian Huxley said, “I know that you cannot prove evolution by science, but the alternative is unthinkable” What is the alternative? God! John 3:18-20 says, “He that believeth not is condemned already …This is the condemnation, that men love darkness rather then light because their deeds are evil.”
Evidences of the Creation of a Young Universe
4000 years ago the Psalmist stated, “The heavens declare the Glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” Nearly 2000 years ago the apostle Peter wrote, “There shall come in the last days scoffers…walking after their own lusts saying…all things are as they were from the beginning…for this they are willingly ignorant” (2 Pet 3:3-6) . There were those who rejected the deity and preaching of the Lord Jesus when He was here on earth to their everlasting destruction, in spite of all the clear evidences. Today, there are many who reject the Word of God regarding creation, in spite of all the clear evidence. We trust there will be none like that among our readers.
For time’s sake, we will discuss just a few of the evidences from various fields.
Astronomy and the Age of the Universe
Before discussing the age of the universe, we should note that the Big Bang and the LaPlace Condensation theories of origin both have unanswerable questions and violate known physical laws that have been proven in nuclear laboratories.
We will mention three:
(1) Where did the first matter, energy come from 15-20 billion years ago? The only answer that proponents can provide is, “We don’t know.”
(2) In an open system, the pressure that would develop as gravity attracted hydrogen molecules together, would exceed the gravitational attraction and prevent them from coming closer long before they were dense enough to form stars.
(3) The law of conservation of angular momentum requires that all the planets and moons rotate clockwise like the sun, as viewed from the North Star. However, Venus and Uranus and 11 of the 60 moons spin counterclockwise and two of the moons even orbit their planets counterclockwise. Why? Likely God created them that way to disprove man’s theories of the origin of the universe.
The Royal English Observatory has been measuring the diameter of the sun for 300 years and found it to be shrinking an average of 5 feet per hour (8.3 miles per year) due to the nuclear conversion of hydrogen to radiant energy. If the sun existed 24 million years ago, it would have been so vast, it would have been touching the earth!
Space dust is so plentiful that it sandblasts the windows of space vehicles. A 3-5 billion year old earth would have swept up most of the dust like a vacuum cleaner as the dust burned up in the atmosphere during the earth’s billions?? of orbits. Also the Poynting Robertson Effect of the pressure of the sun’s radiation would long ago have pushed the space dust out of the solar system if it were so old. Because the moon has no atmosphere, dust on its surface was calculated to be at least 75 feet deep; so the lunar lander was designed with huge “snowshoes” to Prevent it from sinking below the surface. Neil Armstrong found that the dust was only 1/3 of an inch deep, equivalent to less than 10,000 years. The moon is young!
The rotation of the earth has been slowing at a rate of 1 second every 2.5 years. One million years ago the earth would have been rotating once every 9 seconds and would have been the shape of a pancake.
Geology and Paleontology
During the 19th century, geologists compiled the geologic column, based on the theory of unformitarianism, which they use to determine the age of rock strata. It was based purely on assumption. No place on earth has ever been found where the order of the layers of strata match it. In developing the column, geologists dated the strata by the fossils and paleontologist date the fossils by the strata – circular reasoning.
In the Biloxy River valley in Texas, thousands of dinosaur and human tracks crisscrossed one another in the same layer of strata. Evolution separates them by 100’s of thousands of years. This is clear evidence that men and dinosaurs lived at the same time.
In many places fossils of trees and large animals are in a vertical position and protrude through many layers of strata that have been dated at 100’s of thousands of years old. How could this happen? The strata must have formed very rapidly, before the animals or trees could decompose.
University studies in the Bay of Naples have shown that layers of strata are laid down horizontally, instead of vertically , from the settling of silt from various kinds of ground-up rock carried in moving water. The process has been duplicated in laboratories. During the eruption of Mt. St.Helens, strata 600 feet deep were laid down within hours, extending a number of miles from the base of the mountain, and a canyon hundreds of feed deep was gouged out by mud flows in a matter of weeks. The appearance of the any layers of strata exposed is identical to strata in similar canyons elsewhere such as in Yellowstone Park. Geologists have dated such strata as being 100’s of thousands of years old.
Radiometric dating using the current ratio of radioactive parent to daughter elements has been based on three fallacious assumptions;
(1) that only the parent elements and no daughter elements are assumed to have existed in the original sample, yet these elements are all prolific in rocks and soil throughout the world;
(2) that all of the undecayed parent element is assumed to have remained in the sample, yet water is constantly diffusing through rock and leaching minerals from it;
(3) that the rate of radioactive conversion is assumed to have been constant, yet it is known that deluges of neutrons from the sun spots greatly accelerate radioactive decay.
Samples of known age, such as five year old lava from Hawaii, have been misdated at 100’s of thousands of years old. Radiometric dating has been proven to be unreliable.
The oldest known living tree on earth is just 4300 years old. It would have sprouted about 200 years after the food.
Genetics
The fossil record only shows the sudden appearance of advanced forms of life. Missing links between species have never been found. All but one of the supposed missing links have proven to be hoaxes: Nebraska Man, Tava Ape man, Piltdown Man, Lucy, etc. The first Neanderthal Man found was wrongly classified as pre-Homo Sapien, but later was Proven to have had osteo-arthritis and rickets, it and later skeletons found in the same place have been classified as Homo Sapiens, modern man.
The complexity of DNA. The human DNA which is at the center of every cell in our bodies, carries the design of every organ, muscle, bone, nerve, the circulating system of the blood, how they function and interact. The DNA contains more than 100,000 genes, and each gene has a tremendously complex structure. Many genetic diseases are caused by a slight defect in gene. The possibility of the DNA being the result of an accident is far beyond all mathematical probability.
For example, the probability of assembling by accident only 200 simple components in the correct order (far simpler than a living cell is factorial 200, that is, one chance in 10^375. In comparison, it has been estimated that there are about l0^80 electrons in the whole universe. Obviously, life could not have evolved by chance.
Other Evidences
Earth’s population growth rate has been exponential: 1085 – 5 billion, 1977 – 4 billion, 1962 – 3 billion, 1930 – 2 billion, 1800 – 1 billion, 1 AD – 250 million. Continue to extrapolate backwards and this exponential population curve tends toward 0 at 2400 BC, about the time of the flood. Population growth this century has been largely in undeveloped countries where medical services are negligible. If the human race were a million years old there would not be standing room on the earth!
The second Law of Thermodynamics states that all natural processes move toward greater disorder. Evolution completely violates this universal, physical law.
You have been reading indisputable evidences that support the Word of God, that He created the universe about 6000 years ago and none supporting the theories of evolution or of an ancient universe. Which will you choose to believe, man’s unprovable theories or the infallible Word of God? “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater…he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar” (1 John 5:9-10).
Suggested books on this subject:
It’s a Young World After All – Paul D. Ackerman (Baker)
The Collapse of Evolution – Scott M. Huse (Baker)
In a succeeding article we will try to answer a number of questions that young people have asked about creation and evolution.
