Good morning. We are continuing our discussion of Christian apologetics this morning. And after spending a couple of weeks looking at scientific naturalism, we are now going to turn our attention today to spend a little time talking specifically about evolution or Darwinism. So that will be our topic of discussion for today. Let me begin with a word of prayer. Father, we're grateful that you set aside this time for us each week to be together as your covenant people, to be challenged by the word, to be thoughtful in the way that we understand our faith and how we defend our faith, and ask that you would bless our time together this morning as we look at the subject of evolution. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. So really the starting point for our discussion of evolution and the reason I spent so much time talking about naturalism is because that's really where it starts. For a quick review, what is naturalism? I believe that everything that we have is created in nature by nature and that's the only process. Okay, so the idea in naturalism is that there are certain natural laws that are used to explain everything. How we got here, how things change, so on and so forth. Natural laws have to explain everything and that necessarily excludes what? Anything supernatural. Another similar philosophy that goes right along with that is the philosophy of materialism, which is the idea that the material world is all there is. Matter. That's it. He who dies with the most toys, still dies. Yeah, and so... Logically, if that's our worldview, if that's our philosophy, then how is that going to affect our choices? There's no eternity. There's no standard of right and wrong. It's just grab whatever you can get and have as much fun as you can because this is it. But really, those kinds of things are philosophies of despair. But the point was that we wanted to establish that what passes for science today is actually this idea of naturalism. It's a philosophy. And it's a starting point. And it has some very important assumptions that are generally overlooked. namely that it necessarily excludes the possibility of God, the possibility of any supernatural explanation for anything. So it's very biased in the way it even begins. So we come to the subject of Darwinism then. Reviewing Darwinism as a simple matter, once we've established that its starting point is naturalism. So if we stop and think about it for a moment, if we're operating out of a naturalistic framework, what is it that we're going to come up with to explain the diversity, the complexity of life that we see around us? Yeah, it ends up being a combination of the two critical elements, chance and time. Time and chance. Now I've used this terminology a few different times for you as we've looked at the topic up to this point. And here I'll use it again. Evolution is a rescuing device. It's a rescuing device to explain the complexity of life in the absence of any guiding intelligence. And that's a term that Greg Bonson uses and it's meant to convey what? We've got to come up with some kind of an explanation, right? But we've already excluded the possibility of any supernatural kind of explanation, so we have to come up with some other kind of explanation and it ends up being something that is generally very contorted. We're having to do contortions to try to explain what we're seeing. Now another thing I'll borrow from Bonson here is that he says what we should be doing is teaching more about evolution and not less. So that's what we're going to do today is spend a little time teaching more about evolution because the way it works is if you know very little about evolution it's frankly a lot easier to believe. And if it's kind of couched in a scientific way, with scientific authority behind it, scientists say this is how things work, and we've got evidence for it and so forth. If we don't know very much about it, it's easier, frankly, to take the bait. But isn't that... You're talking about rank and file. Surely, in the academic community, they know a great deal about... I mean, I know some people committed to at least theistic evolution over the academy. And they are well informed. It's just their commitment is not rational, but it's... I mean, I just don't think that's a fair statement to make unless you're talking about rank-and-file, average, everyday Americans. Because the biological community is committed to it, and they're not stupid. Yeah, and I'm speaking from a layman's standpoint. That those of us who are not, you know, evolutionary biologists or what have you, that the more we know about evolution, the better. From the standpoint that we can begin to see some of the things that are obviously questionable about the theory. That's about a lot of things that are unbiblical. If we don't know the other side, We can't defend it. We can't defend our side. We know where they are. And so that's part of what we're trying to do this summer is bring some of those topics to the discussion and put ourselves in a position where we understand those things to an extent that we're better able to defend the biblical worldview. I did see a film one time with Michael B. He's a biologist. Darwin's Black Box is the book he wrote. And he said that the whole time he was going through school, all the way through graduate school, and I think even into his early professor years, he said that he did not, no one gave him an alternative opinion or an alternative theory, or look, or whatever. And it wasn't until he was challenged by a graduate student, I think, that he really began to look at the other side of the issue. So I think they're steeped in their biological training, which is very, very one-sided. And if they knew more from another perspective, perhaps they would change their thoughts. Yeah, and that kind of ties in with what Jim was saying a minute ago. Really, you're committed to that belief system. And it may be all you've ever been exposed to if you are in the scientific community. Because, contrary to what's often suggested, there's not that much open-mindedness, is there? It's you either believe this, or there's something wrong with you. So it's very dogmatic in the way that it's presented, and if evolution is grounded in the philosophy of naturalism, then we have excluded already the possibility of anything supernatural coming into play. And somehow or another, there's this idea that the discussion about God is not scientific. I haven't figured that one out. Art. That is partly based on an assumption that is drilled in science. First of all, there is only one way of gaining any truth, and that's through sense experience. And then, the step from there is that if you can't find out about it, it doesn't exist. That's, of course, totally irrational, but that's the movement, in a very crude way. So, science, as most people see it, has to be based totally on an empirical approach, and therefore naturalism is the only option. And that's what they're committed to, as you were saying, totally committed to naturalism, on that kind of an epistemological base. And once you're there... That's all you've got. The other options are all out. One of the things we've talked a little about is this idea of empiricism. It's the idea that whatever we know, we have to learn from our sense experience. But there are limitations to that because we can't learn everything we need to know just from sense experience. Chris. For years I struggled with and was always surprised by how intelligent people in my mind, by many measures, could be so deceived, I guess would be the word that I would use. And I think it's important to come back to Romans 1 and also 1 Thessalonians. It's not just people choosing. There is a hardening of a heart. And verse 21 says, For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. professing to be wise and become fools, and exchange the glory of an incorruptible God for an image in the form of a corruptible man. And there is a hardening of heart, bent towards our fallen nature, that progresses people much further than what we might rationally think was possible. men and women, how could they ignore the evidence? How could they believe the stuff in spite of alternative? And one of the good biblical examples of that is the case of Pharaoh and the plagues against Egypt, right? All the plagues that God brought against Egypt were not enough to convince Pharaoh to change his mind, was it? Bill, were you going to say something? I think you were talking about the importance of religion and those who aren't We don't have the background in the sciences that several scientists do. And I've looked at the church as a whole. For generations, we've fallen under the spell of the Catholic Institute. I like the way that you word that. We have kind of fallen under the spell, haven't we? I think that's the point you were trying to make. There are those who are committed just because that's what they want to do. But statistically, anti-American people, the majority, have not accepted religion. Yeah, even after a couple of generations of non-stop indoctrination, there's still a majority of people in the country who are skeptical about evolution. Why is there secretism going on though? Because that's how we end up in positions like theistic evolution and stuff like that. So we try to rationalize two things. I'm really interested in what we've grown up in the public education system from grade school on. That's what you've been exposed to. That's all you get. Unless you've been, yeah, unless you've... Christians, we kind of dabble with more in terms of your little bit here and a little bit there. I'm not the same. It's got a few things, but you really don't understand what they're teaching. And when you do, the fallacies start Yeah, it's time to take a closer look at it. There's another passage, Chris mentioned a couple a moment ago, but there's another one that I think also comes to bear on this and that's 1 Corinthians 1. where Paul is kind of mockingly saying, where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world does not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe, and so on. And the idea is what? It's not a matter of how smart you are, or how well educated you are. That's not the issue. It's a spiritual issue. And as Chris said, there's a hardening of the heart, but there's also a depravity of the mind that goes along with that, isn't there? So it makes it possible for someone to accept a whole lot of contradictions in their worldview, because they're committed to a worldview that has excluded the possibility of God's existence. They have shut Him out. Now I'm inclined to ask, kind of as a starting point, what is the compelling evidence for evolution? I mean, you hear in the news all the time that there's all this evidence for evolution. What is it? Or they found a missing link. Yeah, the missing link, as if there's just one, right? As if you wouldn't have literally billions and billions and billions of missing links over the periods of time that they say evolution has taken place. I think many would argue that the diversity and how related everything is is suspicion, if not evidence, of evolution, even though there's a lack of evidence prior. Today, they would look at it and say, all these things are related, there's common Okay, so like for example, maybe you've heard a number that says something like, when we compare our DNA to a chimpanzee's DNA, it's 98% match or something like that. I don't know what the number is. Is that proof that we're somehow related to monkeys? Arguments from morphology. Well, we look a lot like them, or a lot of the animals look a lot alike. They've got two eyes and two ears and maybe hind legs and four legs. There are all kinds of similarities between creatures. You use those kinds of arguments for common descent, but is that proof? There was a link, I didn't read it yesterday, I can't remember if it was a chimp or a gorilla or what. Committed suicide. He must have been an existentialist. It was probably reading too much Nietzsche. Well, the popular press is pretty monolithic. Everything that's discovered, everything that's experimented on, everything that's done anything with science is all interpreted under the naturalism perspective. And so that makes, quote unquote, the evidence to most people compelling. What we do see, and we've talked about this too, that the argument is not over the facts, because we're looking at the same dinosaur bones and the same whatever. The argument is over how do we interpret those facts. We look at morphology and say, well, a lot of animals look very similar in the way that their bodies are put together. So if you're an evolutionist, that becomes a proof for common descent or common ancestry, If you're a creationist, what is that proof of? Common designer, right? So there's more than one way to interpret the data. And the question is, what is your philosophical starting point for interpreting the data? Frankly, there really is no evidence that directly proves or supports evolution. There's a lot of evidence that's presented, but as Dale says, It's interpreted in a way that seems to favor evolution, but that's not the only way that it can be interpreted. I'd like to spend some time looking at some of the assumptions that Darwinism rests on. One that we've already mentioned is that the universe is really old. I mean, talk about something that is treated as settled science. The universe is 15 billion years old, and we hear that all the time. And it's stated as an incontrovertible fact. Yeah, carbon dating or radiometric dating, there are a number of different ways that we try to estimate the age of fossils, for example, or rocks. And all of those kinds of things depend upon a number of assumptions that are never really examined. So for example, where do we get the idea that the universe is 15 billion years old? And why does that change so much? You know, most of you have been around long enough, you've probably heard that it was less than that, like 10 billion, maybe 20 billion. The number has been all over the place, just within the last 20 years or so. How is it that we've kind of settled in on 15 billion as the number? Yeah, we look at the most distant object we can see and based on the speed of light, which we treat as a fixed constant, we say that it took at least 15 billion years for the light to get from that object to Earth. Therefore, the universe must be at least that old. And again, there are assumptions that are built into that How do we know those are true? How do we know the speed of light has always been constant? Actually, I think there's a passage in Genesis 1 that suggests that it's not always been constant. Because when God creates the sun and the moon and the stars, it just parenthetically says, and the stars also, when he's talking about the greater and the lesser lights. And doesn't it make sense that if he created the stars on day 4, that from that moment the stars were visible from Earth. Otherwise, it would have been at least four years before the first star started to twinkle, Alpha Centaurius, four light years away. So Adam and Eve wouldn't have seen any stars unless God made them visible at the moment that he created them. That doesn't line up with modern cosmology. Are they assuming that somehow the Earth is the center of the whole thing? No, because we don't know what the center of the universe is. You have to have some point from which it begins. Yeah, a reference point. So, even then, and like I said, that number has changed over the years. If we discover a more distant object tomorrow, then we'll revise that number. So even something like that, the age of the universe, is a subject of a great deal of debate even among those who believe that the universe is very old. How do we know exactly how old it is? 4.55 is what the internet says. How much, Kelly? 4.55 billion. Is that referring to the age of the earth? Yes. Okay. So there you go. I mean we have it down to So on the internet, it's a fact. Is that Wikipedia? No, I just searched on that phrase. See, I just looked at Wikipedia and this is $14 billion, give or take $3 billion. What? And then you go to another site and it's the same. The light could already have been in the tree that was already halfway there or something. Yeah, I mean, God can do what he wants to, right? And there's a way for us to explain what we see in terms other than the universe being 14 or 15 billion years old. Is it Einstein that won the day with the speed of light being constant? I mean, that doesn't make any sense. The speed of light in water is the same as it is in outer space. Well, it's a constant in vacuum. There's a maximum, and that's what it's referred to. In a vacuum, the speed of light in a vacuum is treated as a constant. Is there a naturally created vacuum in the universe? See, when Penny was out there, he had the speed of light. When he first started mapping, the Voyager 1 and 2 go outside the solar system, but they're really outside Our solar system is vacuum-less, but it's not a vacuum. Then they were calculating how long messages back and forth would go, and when it started getting further outside of our solar system, the time that the messages were coming back were reducing instead of getting longer. There are a lot of calculations out there that, if we were smart enough to read them, we'd find that there are statement in those calculations for the variation in the speed of light. And I think it was David Pliny who said that Einstein was the poster child for the theories that were out there. He happened to be able to put the mathematic formula to them. And of course, everybody said it was irrelevant. But it was. Yes, it went out in the Maxwell Precinct, outside of Maxwell. Yeah, sure. And he pretty well laid that out on a slide for us. But that's tough to explain to a physicist. Anybody. They haven't read up on it. Yeah, I don't want to believe it. So you could probably get an evolutionist to admit that the kinds of events that are necessary to get us to where we are today are very unlikely events. But what's the rescuing device? Lots and lots of time. If we have enough time, then in here in your notes, an event that's highly unlikely becomes almost inevitable given enough time. If you have monkeys typing on computers long enough they would be able to handle it. Yeah, you'd basically have all the works of Shakespeare from a totally random process. But if you stop and think about, I mean, if we use that analogy, one of the consequences of that is that you realize that if that's how things really happen, then there must have been a lot of mistakes. Right? There were a lot of typos. And so one of the questions should be, if we're scientific, if we're looking for things in the natural world, where are they? Where are all those mistakes? Because there should be a lot more of those than there should be of a complete manuscript that's coherent and tells a coherent story. Well, in that scenario, you're presupposing that nature knows what Hamlet looks like. But if it's just inanimate objects forming, then how does nature know it's written Hamlet? We're going to talk about the problem of information. And it is a huge problem from an evolutionary worldview. They've also come up with a new rescuing device. of multiple universes. I love that one. That's a great one. Which, even if there's not enough time, let's say, in another universe, this one just happens to be, I mean, there's a bazillion universes, which we can't find, of course, but this one just happened to be the one that... Everything came together just right. All the physical constants, you know, all the electromagnetic constants, gravitational laws, everything come together just perfectly in this universe. What a coincidence. Did you happen to listen to the KOA drive-in today? That was a topic. Stumped the professor. Alright, so those two ideas go together very closely. The idea that, first of all, you have very unlikely events, but if you've given enough time, you can explain why those events happen. And statistically, that's nonsense, by the way. You don't improve the probability of an unlikely event occurring by waiting longer. It doesn't happen. Another one, and this is something that was very true from Darwin's standpoint, that the first form of life was simple. The idea was that there was this kind of blob of protoplasm, and so we could have a very simple form of life that started out as one cell and eventually became something else. The problem is, over the last 100 years, how has our understanding of cellular biology advanced? By light years, right? I mean, it was almost 100 years after Darwin published Origin of Species that DNA was discovered. And DNA should be a death knell for evolution. Because there is no way you can explain that by any random process. But if you study a little bit about molecular biology, it's fascinating because there's this complex world at the cellular level where you have these molecular machines that are taking instructions from the DNA and building proteins and putting these things together and doing this all in response to what's going on in the environment, what's needed by the cell. You just stop and think about the complexity of something being able to reproduce itself. It's staggering. How do you explain these things? There's no such thing as simple life. That's what it boils down to. There is no such thing as simple life. Life is incomprehensibly complex. We're only now beginning to unlock some of its mysteries at the molecular level. One of the big leaps that the theory of evolution is based on is this one here. That's the variation that we see within kinds is how we eventually get speciation. In other words, we look at the variation we see in different kinds of dogs. We've got big dogs, we've got little dogs, we've got nice dogs, we've got mean dogs, and so on. And so eventually all that variation adds up over a period of time, long time, and eventually a dog becomes something else. I don't know, a giraffe. So here's a big leap that evolution takes, and we differentiate between what's called microevolution, which is the variation within species, and macroevolution, which is the formation of new species. And to go from microevolution into infer, macroevolution is a huge leap, and there's no evidence to support that leap. So we have lots of variation within kinds. You can look around the room and see that. We're all humans, but there's a lot of variation when we look around the room. And all that variation was coded into our DNA. In fact, if you really want to go back, all the variation we see in the room today was coded into the DNA that God placed in Adam and Eve. And it's been passed down to us through generations. So there's incredible variety that is coded into our DNA. I saw somewhere that one couple could have billions of children and no two of those children would be alike. There's so much variation within DNA. That doesn't serve to explain evolution because part of the problem is when you have hybridization, when you're selecting for certain characteristics, like you want a Chihuahua. So you select the characteristics for a Chihuahua. That Chihuahua doesn't become something else. Actually, when you compare that Chihuahua to the original dog, that Chihuahua has less genetic information. In order to become something else, he's got to have more genetic information come from somewhere to go from being a Chihuahua to a giraffe. So there's a big leap that takes place there and there's no scientific proof at all that that can occur. Another assumption is that evolution proceeds by natural selection, which favors the best adapted specimens and eliminates the least adapted specimens. And if that's the way things got to be the way they are today, then logically extinction was part of that process. The weaker were eliminated, right? They're no longer with us. How do you falsify a natural selection of a survival phrase? It's a tautological statement. Because the most fit survive. Why do the very same people protect the public animals? Why do they protect these endangered species if they believe this theory? That's where I was going with that. I added that note in there to point out the absurdity of conservationism. Oh, we've got to protect the spotted owl or whatever the latest endangered thing is. You can't procreate. Well, and you can make an argument against homosexuality from Darwinism because if you cannot reproduce, you cannot pass on whatever your particular genes are to the next generation. World Magazine had a one-pager from some academic source arguing for rape. Yeah, why not? He's wanting to perpetuate the species. You end up with some really... You can go a lot of different places with this. What is, is what is right. Yeah. We talked early on about something called the reductio ad absurdum argument, where you take the belief of the worldview and you drive it to its logical conclusion and see what you end up with. We're going to create a master race. So all we're doing, all Hitler was doing from his world view was trying to give a helping hand to evolution. Just trying to push it along a little faster. That's it. And how do you defend against that if that's the world view that you live in? because there's nothing sacred about human life in that world. Well, with naturalism you can have no values. That's right. So, all of that sort of stuff. Anything goes. But they're constantly using it at every turn. So what they're using, that value judgment, is illegitimate money. That's the presuppositional argument against that. If that's your worldview, if you believe in naturalism, then you have absolutely no basis for arguing for morality. Peter Singer, the supposed ethicist at Princeton tries to put a human face on evolution. He tries, and it's just utterly unsuccessful. If survival of the fittest is the morality by which we understand the way the world works, why do we care about the homeless the infirm or the insane. It's the same thing. I mean, it really... And what's interesting is he's a... His parents were refugees from the Third Reich. And they fled to Australia. And he sounds like a Nazi. He really does. Well, at this point, in my classes, I like to use the atheistic view. who points out that you judge a person's true beliefs by what he does, not by what he says. And you don't find these people acting consistently with their theory. You can't, because there's nothing consistent about the worldview. No, nothing consistent about the worldview, but nothing consistent about their personal behavior. Don't do as I do, do as I say. Well, and again, what Bronson argues from a presuppositional standpoint is that all these other worldviews have to borrow capital from Christianity. They're having to steal capital from Christianity in order to have any legitimacy as a worldview. And so part of our job is to point that out. Okay, here's another interesting one. The first form of life sprang from non-living chemicals in an otherwise sterile world. Stop and think about that for a second. The world at one time, according to this idea, was sterile. There was no life whatsoever, just chemicals. And then that first life popped into existence. And somehow or another, I'm sure evolutionists know the answer to this, but somehow or another that first form of life was able to survive and to reproduce. It was an electric charge. Where did that come from? Where did that electric charge come from? Yeah, just atoms bumping into each other, Jim. Just keep repeating that. Also, we know from this belief that the first form of life was the source of all plant and animal life that we see today. that everything got to be the way it is today based on the descent from this original, whatever this simple form of life was that just popped into existence. And here's one we've mentioned already, that when mutation occurs, it's got to produce new genetic information. In order for us to have speciation, new species from existing species, there has to be new information coming from somewhere. It's all driven by information at the cellular level. Another one is that mutant life forms are able to reproduce and pass on their mutations. It's interesting today if you notice the irony of how much time and effort and money we spend in order to combat mutations. Cancer is a mutation. Yeah, why are we fighting cancer? If you get a brain tumor, how do we know that's not evolving into some new organ that's going to advance the intelligence of the race? But again, when we put it like that, it sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Because we know from our own experience that those things are bad. That mutations are generally deleterious and not advantageous. Do we know any advantageous mutations? Once again, it's the second law of thermodynamics. Everything tends toward chaos. Look at how torn mutations can be. If you're not careful, you can define it in such a way that certain changes are mutations and other equal changes are not mutations. I'm just suggesting that's something to watch all the way through these kinds of arguments. How do we define the terms? The definition becomes absolutely essential. How do we define the terms? Another assumption that evolution hinges on is the idea that all the intermediate stages of complex biological systems had to be both functional and advantageous. Functional and advantageous. So it had to do something and it had to do something advantageous in order for it to be passed on. If it was a disadvantageous or non-functional change, then what would natural selection do? Flush it out of the system. Really, it had to be functionally advantageous the very first time it happened. With the very first incremental change, yeah. And so, if you make an argument, for example, about the development of the eye, how did the eye develop the way it did? And evolution would say, well, initially it was just a light sensitive spot. So some cells mutated and it became a light sensitive spot and that provided an advantage to the creature because he could either move in the direction of or away from the light. Put another name for that skin cancer. On the micro-evolutionary, aren't there advantageous adaptations. One of the examples that was persuasive to Darwin was the adaptation of the size of finch beaks in the Galapagos Islands. And how the size of the finch beaks changed according to how wet or how dry it was, which is to say according to how difficult or easy it was for the finches to crack the nuts that they used as their food. But the problem with that kind of argument is that when you watch that long enough, what you see is that yes, at times the beaks will get larger, but then at other times they'll get smaller. So you're going around in a circle. There's not a sense in which the finch is becoming a flamingo. It's still a finch, it's just that the different generations are adapting somewhat to their environment according to information that's already coded in their DNA. So again, that becomes a dead-end argument from the standpoint of evolution. Another one, adaptive developments include things like gender, intelligence, Consciousness. And what's the last one? Morality. You know, how is it that we just happen to be more intelligent than a tree? Well, that's just an evolutionary adaptation. Everything has to be explained by evolution. We've touched on the next one. All forms of life are related by descent to a so-called tree of life. Maybe you've been exposed to Darwin's tree of life in biology or somewhere. That's pure fiction. It doesn't line up with reality at all. Say that sentence again, Robert. All forms of life are related by descent through a so-called tree of life. But I'm sure you've all seen the tree. You know, you've got the single-celled organisms down here at the trunk and then it branches out into all the different phyla. And eventually, mankind is out there on the end of one of those branches. The one that's got monkeys on it. If evolution is true, then the nature of man is no different from any of the rest of the animal kingdom. And again, that has huge consequences, doesn't it? Why should we do anything to protect human life? There's nothing particularly sacred about human life compared to anything else. And that's Peter Singer's point, too. There are non-human persons and there are human non-persons. It's all the same. We dispose of non-persons Yeah, so Peter Singer argues why shouldn't we have a six month grace period after the birth of a child where parents decide they don't want the baby, they can just kill the baby. I mean, why stop at killing the child in the womb? There's no reason to logically stop at that point. Yeah, at least extend that into the teenage years, right? But that points out, that points out how that is an arbitrary stopping point, isn't it? It's completely arbitrary to say six months. Why stop there? There's absolutely no reason to stop there. Peter Sander couldn't even live by his own principles because he insists on taking good care of his aging, invalid mother, who is one of those non-persons, not contributing, etc. etc. etc. Yeah, it's the quality of life. Her quality of life is no good anymore, so why should we keep her around? And that is a dangerous, it's one of those arguments that sounds It's sort of credible, but it's really a code word for something malevolent. Evolution is sociological as well as intellectual. And we see that, for example, in the idea that those of us who cling to our religion, we're clinging to these ancient superstitions rather than embracing the enlightened rationality of the 20th and the 21st century. So evolution becomes an explanation for everything, including our sociological progress and the idea that we can build some kind of a social system that is the perfect society. We're trying to build that utopian society. And that's a dangerous thing given man's fallen nature. Whether you approach evolution from the standpoint of scripture or science, It's easily refuted. As the name implies, Darwinism is a philosophy. And it's been cloaked in scientific garb. So you can approach it more than one way. If you stand with both you and science and say, okay, let's look at the theory of evolution as a scientific theory and see how well it stands up, it doesn't stand up very well. If you start with scripture, it also doesn't stand up very well. Now, what does scripture have to say? From the standpoint of the scripture, there is nothing in the creation account that suggests or requires any evolutionary process whatsoever. And remember that evolution is a process. It never stops. It started when that first simple form of life popped into existence out of nothing, and it continues to the present day and will continue as long as the earth remains. The idea is that it never stops. But when we look at the Scripture, God very clearly says that He created things, and He created animals, and He created man. And when He created them, what? It was good. It was done, in other words. There was nothing else to do. There was no process to it. So all plants and animals were created according to their kinds, including mankind. And all plants and animals reproduce only according to their And we can look at a couple of verses in Genesis 1 that make that point for us. For example, verses 11 and 12. And God said, Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit, and which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth. And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. So everything reproduces according to kind. Plants and animals. Look down at verses 21. So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Verse 24, God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so. And then of course, the ultimate point of creation was what? Yeah, creation of man. So 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 birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So man was a unique creation, and like the rest of creation, man reproduces after his kind. Now, in order for the whole creation to be declared very good at the end of the sixth day, it had to be complete and without the competition and death required by evolutionary progress. And this was the point that fully and finally convinced me that there was no way to reconcile evolution to the Scripture. Because the creation could not have been finished and it could not have been very good if you had all this competition and death that was going on for billions of years before eventually Adam and Eve came out of something. And obviously it does a great deal of damage to the question of who were Adam and Eve? What were Adam and Eve? Were they human or were they something else? So there's no way to reconcile that. What happens is that when we try to reconcile the Bible with Darwinism, these are really just vain attempts to accommodate an unbelieving worldview. I don't know how to make that point more strongly. When we try to accommodate evolution with creation, we are trying to accommodate an unbelieving worldview. I've listed a few things there for you on the second page that evolution doesn't give us an explanation for. I've also included a few quotes by those who believe in evolution Let me look down at those first of all. Richard Dawkins, we know, he said, biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of being designed for a purpose. But don't be fooled. Life is meaningless. He also said, even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories. Don't spear your copy, Jim. Again, this is a philosophical commitment. And this is what's important for this evening. Stephen Jay Gould said, the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record is the trade secret of paleontology. You know, we're supposed to believe that the fossil record provides compelling evidence in support of evolution. It actually does just the opposite. It actually destroys the theory of evolution. A couple more quotes. George Gaylord Simpson, it remains true as every paleontologist knows that most new species genera and families appear in the fossil record suddenly and are not led up to by known gradual completely continuous transitional sequences. That's actually a little bit of an understatement. Gould's theory, Gould's rescuing device is called punctuated equilibrium. What we're referring to here is called the Cambrian Explosion. When you look in the fossil record, or the geological record, you see that prior to the Cambrian level in the fossil record, you have only very simple single-cell kind of life forms. And then suddenly in the Cambrian record, all the animal groups appear all at once, together, with no evolutionary history. That's a huge problem for evolutionists. and they fall over themselves trying to explain that. Lewis T. Moore, the more one studies paleontology the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone. Does that sound like science or does that sound like a religion? Sir Arthur Keith, evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it because the only alternative is special creation which is unthinkable. And Thomas Huxley, the primary direct evidence in favor of evolution can be furnished only by paleontology. If evolution has taken place, its marks will be left. If it has not taken place, there will be its reputation. And Darwin knew the problem when he proposed his theory in the mid-19th century. What was Darwin's rescuing device when he wrote The Origin of Species? We just haven't discovered those transitional forms yet. And so he assumed that future generations would discover those transitional forms. Okay, 150 years later, where are they? They're not there. So what's today's rescuing device? RY already said. You already named it. Oh, punctuated equilibrium. Yeah, Gould came up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which is this idea, instead of Darwin's theory, that change happens very, very gradually over a long period of time. Gould said, well, no, actually change may have occurred very rapidly in a very short period of time, and so we have these periods where we have basically stasis, where animals stay the same, and then suddenly they become something else. And it happens so fast, This is what's great about his theory. It happens so fast that there's no record of it in the geological record. It's great, isn't it? The stronger the theory, there you go. It shows how ridiculous we can be when it comes to trying to explain it. Let's take a look at at least a couple of the points here that evolution doesn't explain. We've already mentioned information. That's a big problem. Because information always precedes form. If you want to build a house, you first have to have plans before you actually start putting the house together, don't you? You want to build a car or anything. Anything in our experience has to have its origin in an idea before it can become reality. Unless you're an artist. Well then you can just take a can of paint and throw it against the wall. There's an example, I want to give you an example where scientists are very selective in their application of this rational principle. How many of you have heard of something called setting? What does that stand for? The search for extraterrestrial intelligence. And how do we go about that? We've got antennas, we're picking up radio waves from outer space, and what are we looking for? What's going to be the proof that there is life out there? Not necessarily a pattern, but information. By itself. But we know that information doesn't happen by itself, right? Otherwise, if we get some information from outer space, how do we know that it's actually proof of extraterrestrial intelligence? So the point is that they know that a signal with information content has to have an intelligent origin. It's not just background noise. But they look in the mirror and they see evolution. that all the information that's contained in themselves and in every other biological system just happened accidentally. There's no explanation for where matter and energy came from. In other words, they rely on the explanation that the universe created itself. How rational is that? What is nothing able to produce? Well, it's alright because I know that. There's a quote from Richard Dawkins. He says, the fact that life evolved out of nothing, some time a million years after the universe evolved out of nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. So he admits that. Yeah, he admits that it's inexplicable, but they believe it anyway. Because what else are they going to believe? Look at the quote down there. We can't believe in a supernatural origin. We've already excluded that possibility. How did complex molecules organize themselves? How did life come out of non-life? How did the first life survive in an otherwise sterile world? How did it reproduce itself? How did single cell life become multi-cell life? And here's a key, not just multi-cell life, not just a clump of algae, but an organism with highly differentiated cells. How did asexual creatures first develop male and female sexuality and how did they reproduce? How did that happen by some incremental process? Yeah, and in such a way that each new generation still had the ability to reproduce. We talked a little bit about how all the major animal groups appeared at one time in the fossil record. Where are all the intermediate forms? If evolution is true, then when we look at the fossil record, in fact when we look at life around us, what we should see is primarily forms in transition, not static forms. Where are all those transitional forms? Where are all the mistakes? Another one that's pretty perplexing is how did the fossil record preserve soft-bodied creatures? So ask yourself the question, does the fossil record give us a better, does it line up more closely with the biblical record of a global flood or does it line up better with the uniformitarian view of geology where stuff just happens by very gradual processes over millions of years? Gradual burial, gradual sedimentation. The fossil record itself points to the fact that the creatures that we find there were buried catastrophically, not gradually. They were buried alive to put it another way. How is it that we have animals that we find in the fossil record that we say are tens of millions of years old and yet they look just like the creatures that live today? The coelacanth? Yeah, we talked about the coelacanth. And how they assumed that the coelacanth had been extinct for millions and millions of years until they caught one back in the early part of the 20th century. And then they caught a few more. Oops. How did biological and ecological systems evolve? And how did the ecosystem evolve? You know, which came first? the flower or the bumblebee, because they're depending upon each other. And here's another interesting one that I learned just this past week watching a video called Darwin's Dilemma, which specifically talked about the Cambrian Explosion and how that was problematical. And that is that while genetic information is coded within the DNA, we don't know where body plan is coded. In other words, the fact that we have two eyes and two ears and two arms and two legs, we don't even know where that information comes from. So there are so many difficulties when you start to look at evolution as a theory. But if you start from the recognition that evolution is a philosophical worldview, it is an atheistic worldview, it becomes even easier for us to refute it with a Christian worldview. Questions or comments before we finish up? Yes, ma'am. They're assuming that at some point we found it selectively advantageous to adopt some kind of a moral framework. That's how they try to explain that. How else can you explain it? Only humans have done it. So why hasn't the animal world done it? See, that's exactly what's breaking down with moral values. It's now up to each person to decide for himself. And right only means that which I prefer. So my students are telling me this constantly. prefer something quite similar than why I prefer to be in a certain way, even though I may prefer to treat you in a different way. But that is breaking down. So is that part of the evolutionary process that we are now hopping into? Well, the point is that, again, to fall back on the naturalism, there is no such thing as value. Therefore, there is no such thing as right and wrong. We've suddenly gotten to the point where we're saying, OK, I believe in naturalism, and this necessarily results from it, so I'm going to begin acting this way. And I think we're at a very crucial place in our history where finally this kind of thing is going to start acting out more and more. The thing that happened in Denver the other day doesn't surprise me. It said, we see the consequences of abandoning our historical moral roots. And we see more of that every day. Any other comments or questions before we wrap up? Okay, let's pray. Father, we pray for your wisdom as we consider how we are to be witnesses in a fallen world, how we can even use tragedies like the shooting in Aurora as an opportunity to witness to the truth of your word and of your law. Help us in these things and help us to be vigorous defenders of the faith and help us to stand firm in the truth of your word. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.