This is our last time in this cycle of acts, and then I'm going to India next week, and then we're starting the summer act cycle after that. So we have to get through this 18-page outline in now 55 minutes, and that's just impossible. So I want to do some triage here and try to get through as much as we can as we talk about the issue of creation and evolution, and specifically what I want to do tonight as I just do that triage and try to find out what's the best way for us to spend our time. I want to zero in on a part of the outline. The whole outline's useful, I think, and helpful, but in which I talk about things that I consider to be very significant problems for the evolutionists to address. Problems with evolution. In other words, simply put, why evolution is bad science. That's what I want to do tonight. And then we'll look at that. There are three problems in particular I want to zero in on, and then if we have any extra time, which we won't, then I'll do other parts of the outline. So, you know, we'll just do that. So let's open in prayer. Lord, thank you for this evening that we have to be together. Thank you for those that are here to study with us. And Lord, I pray that you would make the most of this time that we have together. Thank you for your word, which sheds light where there's darkness and brings clarity and understanding in every way. Father, help us to be very courageous as we face our culture and as people are so intimidating. when it comes to this particular issue of creation and evolution as they waive their scientific credentials and they use intimidation techniques. Lord, help us to believe your word and what it says and to know that in the end your truth will be vindicated. I pray that tonight you would give me aid and assistance as I teach and all of us as we seek to learn how we can give an answer for the hope that's in us. In Jesus' name, amen. So just take your outline and just skip on ahead. We're going to go right to, you know, there's all kinds of good things in here about dating techniques and God of the gaps and all kinds of stuff, but I want to go right to page eight. And I want to talk to you about what I consider to be problems for evolution and just how difficult it is really for the evolutionists to answer some of these. In my opinion, the hardest problem for the evolutionist scheme, especially the atheistic evolutionist scheme, is how you get life from non-life. That's the weak link in the entire chain. The weak link is not the missing link from primate to human. That's where they're strongest. That's where they put all their research dollars. That's where it actually seems the most plausible. But where it's the least plausible is where in the world did the first living cell come from? And frankly, as you look at that, no one has an answer for it. I don't care how erudite, I don't care how much of a genius they are. Nobody knows. And it's one of the principles of modern biology that every cell comes from another cell. That's just a basic principle. All cells come from other cells. Now, that obviously leads to a problem. Where did that whole thing start? But cells come from cells. That's where they come from. And so, you know, they would say that is the basic rule of thumb for modern biology, but it's not for primordial biology. But what evidence they have to support that, I have no idea. There's no evidence whatsoever giving us any indication of where it is that that first living cell come from. Think of that moment. Think of it. You know, in one instant, nothing anywhere in the universe is alive by whatever definition. And then suddenly you have a living cell. I mean, that's a weak link, friends. And they'll admit that it's weak, and we're going to see just how weak it is. So if you forget anything else, I've got three things I want to give you tonight. But where that first living cell came from, that's the problem. And all they're going to tell you is, we don't know, but it happened. That's what they're going to tell you. And I'll say, well, then it's a religion for you. It's a faith. It's something you accept by faith. They don't want to say that, but that's the fact. No, I don't know that anybody's saying that. Not even Carl Sagan said that. He will say there's always been a cosmos, but he won't say there's always been life or living cells. That evolved. And if it evolved, then you've got to go from non-life to life. It's just that simple. You've got to go from chemicals to living things. Now life itself is very complex to define, but biologists, that's their science. That's what they do, is defining it. So what's the difference between something that's alive and something that's not alive? There are definitions. There are certain functions of living cells that non-living things don't have. There's a difference between a piece of granite and an organ, or a living entity. There's just a difference. So let's first look at the scope of the problem. On page eight, I gave you what I considered to be the evolutionary scheme, the inverted pyramid of cards. What's missing in the picture here is a very good strong fan, an electric fan blowing on it while you're trying to build the inverted pyramid of cards. In other words, all the laws of physics and nature are against ever-increasing complexity, just naturally happening. Everything's against it and yet they say it happens. So there's your inverted pyramid of cards. And so you're going from non-living chemicals to amino acids, from amino acids, all of them left-handed, to proteins. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, Will Burkhart's not here, but only left-handed amino acids are biologically active. And in nature, they always are 50-50. They're always mixed together. But in a lab, a biochemist's lab, then they are separated out by very complex processes where then you get amino acids that can start to become biologically active. So when they tell you that they have created life in a test tube and all that, don't you believe it? There's just no way that it happens except from intelligence being put into these things. Because once you have right-handed amino acids mixed in with left-handed, then the whole thing becomes inactive biologically. But at any rate, you're going, this is the pyramid. You're going from non-limbing chemicals to amino acids, which is a higher level of order. You see that, right? You're going from amino acids, all of them left-handed, to proteins. From proteins to RNA, RNA to DNA, DNA to single-celled organisms. There it is. That's the first step. There's your first living cell. From single-celled organisms, you're going to multi-cell organisms. And again, there's a complexity there in which there's a differentiation of cells and they start to have different functions. And those different functions, all of them beneficial for the species. Do you see how difficult this is to believe? How does anyone believe this? Remember, I told you the reason they believe it is because creation and evolution exhaust the logical possibilities of how we came to be. These are the two options you have. And because one of those is just simply untenable, they have to go in this direction. But look at the journey they're traveling here. Single-celled organisms to multi-cell organisms. Multi-cell organisms to invertebrate marine life. I mean, each of these are just these quantum leaps of complexity. Invertebrates then to vertebrate marine life, vertebrates to amphibious animals. You've seen all this, this kind of lineage, how it goes. Amphibious to reptiles, reptiles to mammals, mammals to primates and primates to man. Finally, here we are. Now, every step increasing complexity, every single one. Don't underestimate if you ever look at one of these like creepy trilobites these things that you know became extinct You know millions and billions of years ago, whatever. I can't make a trilobite. Can you I mean, are you able to do that? Is there any chemist? Is there any biologist that's able to put a multi-celled kind of complex creature with antennae and and Legs and all that. Can you put one of those together? That's incredibly complex. I And the amazing thing, I'm getting already into one of my arguments, there's no fossil record for the development of that. I'm just saying, just note the complexity. That's a complex thing. And so every step in the way, you're going from less complex to more complex. It's an inverted pyramid of cards in a windstorm, friends. And how it happened, I don't know. Their answer is, we don't know, but it happened. So, et cetera. I'd rather just believe what the scripture says. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. If you're going to just believe something, believe that. All right, now the problem in hands. Let's talk about these left-handed proteins and right-handed sugars. Let's define the problem. Many important molecules are required for life to exist in two forms. These forms are non-superimposable mirror images of each other. In other words, they're related like our left and right hands. So look at your hand. Do you see your left hand and your right hand? Okay, they're mirror images of each other. Nearly all biological polymers must be homochiral, and that is all same-handed to function. All amino acids and proteins are left-handed, while all sugars in DNA and RNA in the metabolic pathways are right-handed. A 50-50 mixture of left and right-handed forms is called racemate, or racemic mixture. So it's 50-50. These polypeptides could not form the specific shapes required for enzymes. DNA could not be established in a helix if even a single wrong-handed monomer were present. So it could not form long chains. This means it could not store much information, so it could not support life. Now what are we doing? Basically we're accepting the evolutionist idea that in some kind of warm pocket at the bottom of the ocean near some volcanic vent where the temperature was just right, that's the modern theory, there's a bunch of these amino acids floating around there and then they just started to form together, you see. They just started to assemble themselves together. The thing is, they naturally, are in a 50-50 mixture and that the game's up. The game is up. And so basically you have to have some kind of a selection where all of the right-handed ones go over to one side and then they kind of all get together. And that's where things start to happen. How did that occur? There is no mechanism that you can describe where that would kind of happen. Well, we don't know how it happened, but clearly it happened. Again, the faith it takes to believe this kind of stuff. Alright, 50-50. Ordinary chemistry produces an equal 50-50 mixture. The origin of this handedness is a complete mystery to evolutionists. In other words, the left-hand, right-hand molecule thing. Complete mystery. The probability of forming even a small protein of 100 amino acids is 10 to the minus 30. In other words, it's just a number so huge, that's basically effectively zero. So, if you get into probabilities, you know, that never works for the evolutionists. without even dealing with the sequence needed for life. So in other words, if you're even going to have a protein of 100 amino acids just forming without it being intelligent, with a certain order to these things, the chances of that are zero. The chance formation is not an option. Bottom line is you've got to have it in perfect order for anything to happen. Well, along comes pseudoscience to the rescue. What do I mean by that? Well, the actual origin of life is more problematical. If you stick some ammonia, methane, and a few other simple chemicals into a jar, and subject them to ultraviolet light, then after a week or so, you get a mixture of organic molecules, including some amino acids, the basic building blocks of protein. So current theories propose a primordial soup of dilute organic chemicals. Somewhere, a molecule happened to form, which could make copies of itself out of other molecules floating around in the soup, and the rest is history. That's how it works. So when they say, hey, they've done it in a lab, what they did is they they they put everything together with a little trap that holds what they need in one place. And then they add just the right amount of energy and poof, you get a molecule. That's how it works. That is so bizarre and so apart from what possibly could have happened that it's a ridiculous thing to even present it as science. But they are desperate to come up with an answer at this end. And so Stanley Miller. Formed apparently amino acids created an artificial atmosphere of methane with no oxygen Now why is it important that there be no oxygen? Well because oxygen to put it frankly burns things and If the oxygen is there it just can't survive. It's very very fragile So they got rid of all the oxygen and so you have an atmosphere of nothing but methane Well, that's very helpful for doing what they want to do. The problem is there's zero evidence that there's ever been an atmospheric condition on Earth in which there was no oxygen. He also, as I said, created a trap to isolate the product or else it'd be destroyed and put in just the right amount of energy. So where does that energy come from? Well, he did a little electric thing and then he said it could have been, I love this, it could have been a lightning bolt, okay? Well, he's got this little thing going that puts in just the right amount of energy. Do you know the difference between that and a lightning bolt? But just the right amount of energy comes in and you get a molecule or two forming. Along comes this man, Sidney Fox, and he forms proteins. He started with pure homochiral amino acids. In other words, he got just the proper handed ones off to the side. There's a very complex process by which they can get what they need. He heated it up to 240 degrees C, a temperature found nowhere on Earth except in an active volcano. So that's where the first life happened. Do you see the problem, of course? He left it in for only six hours or else the proteins would be destroyed. So it's in the active volcano for six hours, then something gets it out of there. And that's where you have a protein. We're still a long way away from a living cell, mind you. But that's where the first kind of protein comes from. By the way, do you realize just in terms of concentration how much of the stuff you'd need to have mixed up so that you could get your first cell? It's ridiculous. Maybe there are some meteors with lipids and nitrogenous bases. They're looking for something. Actually, there was one of them that came up with a panspermia theory that he said life formed somewhere else in the universe and was brought here by an asteroid. I love that one. That's, I mean, if they don't acknowledge they're waving the white flag at that point, I don't know what. But it came, you know, and these are intelligent men. These are Nobel scientists with this idea that it formed the panspermia theory, that it formed some other place in the universe. We don't know what happened, but surely it came here by that means, all right? Now, I give you, if you want to earn some money here, the $1.35 million prize for the origin of life. A plausible theory is all you need to come up with. You don't have to prove through archaeology or through any kind of work on topology or rocks or whatever that any of this stuff ever happened. You just have to come up with a notebook and a pad of paper and a pen and write out a way that the first cell could have come into existence, and you'll win the prize. And I think that's a lot of money. I mean, I wouldn't sneeze at 1.35 million dollars. So go home and work on it tonight, although I would urge you as your pastor, don't work too hard, because it can't be done, all right? This is a problem beyond anybody, all right? You have to come up with basically a plausible theory for the origin of life that answers each of the following issues. Number one, anticipation of biological ends, metabolic and structural. What does that mean? Well, it has to have a metabolism and it's got to have certain structure, cell structure. Secondly, it has to be able to convey its information and deliver orders and produce needed biological end products. In other words, it simply has to reproduce. It's not going to be around forever. Cells die, right? So it has to be able to transmit itself to the next generation. Thirdly, you have to have an explanation of how the recipe for life was assembled chemically in non-living substances to be passed on to future living ones. An explanation of how the non-living substance assembled itself to meet the nine conditions of life listed below. We'll get to that in a moment. So you have to explain how all this came from a non-living pool of chemicals. Fourthly, you have to explain how a pure concentration of left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars arose out of a mixed chemical environment in which reactions give rise to each type equally. How did they get separated so that they could start getting active? You have to do those four things. And by the way, that list came from an evolutionist. This isn't like some creationist that's saying this is something you have to do. This is basically what they think you have to do to explain where the first living cell came from. Now, what is a living cell? What are we looking for? Well, they have to be counted as alive. The substance has to deal with the following. First, there has to be a cell wall. Cell wall is basically like a balloon. It's like the boundary, the border of the cell. Everything inside it, that's the cell. Everything outside is not the cell. And so that's basically the wall or the barrier between the cell and the rest of the universe. So it's a membrane and this membrane, this cell wall has to be basically probably it says a rudimentary or quasi active transport membrane necessary for selective absorption of nutrients, excretion of waste and overcoming of osmotic and toxic gradients. All right. So basically that's what a cell wall is. You have lots of cell walls inside you, billions of them. And what it does is basically protects the cell from its surrounding environment and accepts from the surrounding environment what it needs to live. Secondly, information for reproduction. The cell has to write, store, and pass along to progeny prescriptive information, instruction needed for organization. Your cells, your liver cells, for example, replace themselves, right? And so, basically, the cell passes itself on to the next generation, and then it dies. So this living cell has to be able to do that. It has to symbolically encode and communicate functional messages through a transmission channel to the receiver decoder destination effector mechanism. It has to integrate past, present, and future time into its biological prescriptive information or instruction content. It has to reproduce and put that information in a way that the next cell can receive it. Makes sense to me. Number three. It has to go from information to chemicals. It has to bring to pass the above recipe instructions into the production or acquisition of actual catalysts, coenzymes, cofactors, et cetera, physically orchestrate the biochemical processes, pathways of metabolic reality, manufacture and maintain physical cellular architecture. It has to establish and operate semiotic system using signal molecules. So this is what it has to do. It has to number four, eat. It has to capture, transduce, store, and call up energy for utilization. All cells have to eat, so it has to take in stuff and survive. That way it has to reproduce, as we've already talked about, actively self-replicate and eventually reproduce, not just passively, but it has to pass on to the next generation, the progeny. Number six, it has to be able to heal, to self-monitor and repair its constantly deteriorating physical matrix of bio-instruction, retention, transmission, and of architecture. Now think, by the way, of what it would have been like in the primordial soup, what it would have been like in the world for that first cell. How long do you think it would have lived? It's all by itself, the little guy. It's surrounded by who knows what. It's in the bubbling kind of cauldron of some kind of lava vent down in the bottom of the ocean floor. What's it going to eat? I don't know. But there was something to keep it alive long enough for it to do what? It has to do at least one thing. reproduced. Very good. So at least it has to do that. And so let's say it reproduces one cell or even two. I mean, it's tough. It's a long journey, by the way, from that to the first ape, by the way. But at any rate, that first cell has a very, very tough job. It's got to be able to heal. It's got to be able to grow. It's got to be able to deal with the environment and it's got to be stable and yet adaptable. Those nine things. Friends, if you can do that, you can win for yourself one point three five million dollars. If you're interested in this, ask me later. I'll tell you the website to go to and submit whatever it is you think can do all this. All right. The bottom line is I don't have any idea where the first cell came from by that mechanism. Do you? Yes, sir. Why don't they just go to the Bible and believe what's the truth? Because they just don't believe. Has anybody ever proposed this to somebody? These things are proposed by non-Christian biologists. It wasn't a Christian that wrote this. This is a biologist saying, help me, please, I'm drowning. Will somebody please tell me where the first cell came from? No, no, they don't admit that. They're asking for help. They want brilliant people to come along and science to solve this problem where the first cell came from. Stephen Jay Gould and others, these expert evolutionists are saying, we don't know. We don't have any idea where the first cell came from. Please help us. And if you can help them, then do so, okay? Tell them where the first cell came from. I think it's a waste of time, in my opinion. I agree with you. I don't know how in the world they can come up with that. All right, the proposal must be published in a reputable technical journal of peer-judged materials. So basically, it has to make it in academia. It has to be accepted and made. As far as I know, that award has not been collected on yet, okay? Well, Fred Hoyle put it this way. A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747 dismembered and disarray, a whirlwind happens to blow through the yard, what is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747 ready to fly will be found standing there? By the way, if you're just curious about a cell, I gave you a picture of one back on page 9. You might think that the 747 analogy isn't a very good one, but I'm thinking that cell looks pretty complicated. I mean, look at all those component parts. Each of those little squiggly things has some kind of a function in the cell that enables it to live and to do whatever it needs to do. There's a cell. So, I mean, the complexity is astonishing, actually. And remember, I told you that these evolutionist biologists say the thing you have to constantly keep in mind is that you're studying things that seem to have been created for a purpose. You have to constantly keep that in mind, but we all know they weren't. That's called suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. That's exactly what these guys are doing. OK, Boeing 747 has about six million parts. However, the probability of the spontaneous origin of 2000 proteins of 200 aminos each is 10 to the minus 40000. That's an exponent, by the way. If you know anything about math, that is as close to zero as you'll ever find, except that that number got bigger. All right. That is as zero as it gets. This is so remarkable that Stephen Jay Gould says if we started all over again, we would not have ended with life. Alright, so that's devastating problem number one. In my opinion, it's unanswerable. Alright, so if you ever talk to some smug evolutionist, just say, can you please tell me where the first living cell came from and see what they say. It would be fun to watch them squirm. I have no idea what they're going to say. Problem number two, the fossil record. Charles Darwin assessed his own theory in this way. His theory was based on uniformitarian theories of the geologist Charles Lyell. Uniformitarianism, by the way, is that whatever you see around us today is the way it has always been. And so that's basically the present is the key to the past. And what that assumes is that everything that we see around us is the way it has always been. We believe that the flood of Noah is a very significant event in the history of the world. We don't look on it as a tranquil thing. We think that the earth was significantly changed at that point. But we can talk about that. Charles Lyell, by the way, never accepted Darwinism. Why? Simple. The fossil record. Darwin himself acknowledged the problem. Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not see everywhere or everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? If you have a pen, circle the word everywhere and also the word innumerable. Why is not nature in all confusion instead of the species being as we see them well defined? It's an interesting thing. Why do I want you to circle the word everywhere and innumerable? We shouldn't be searching for missing links. They should be everywhere. Forget one species. Go and find another one. Find the fossil, you know, the fossil record that leads up to a horse or find the fossil record that leads up to a eucalyptus plant, something. Let's try to find some evolutionary train. It shouldn't be like one thing, the Archaeopteryx or some one thing that might be a half link between a reptile and a bird. I'm not talking about one thing. I'm talking about seeing everywhere innumerable transitional forms. They're saying this is how everything came to be. So shouldn't there be in the fossil record tons and tons and tons of transitional stories of how you ended up with a three-toed sloth or how you ended up with a bat? Where is that? You're not going to find it. except in the mind of the artist that the evolutionists hire at natural science museums to paint the picture for you. That's where the transitional forms are going to be. They're in the imagination of human artists who are filling in the gaps for us. Well, they can do that there, but we need evidence in the fossil record. The quote continues, I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor a record of the mutations of life the best preserved geological section presented had not the difficulty of our not discovering innumerable transitional links between the species which appeared at the commencement and close of each formation pressed so hardly on my theory." That's from Darwin. In other words, he said, gee, I didn't realize that the fossil record was going to hurt me so much. What was he hoping for? That in the future, over the next dozens of years or more, maybe next century, that archaeologists would find these innumerable transitional forms. that there have been. They have not found them. Over the last century and a half since Darwin lived, they have not found these missing links. So the essence of the issue then is abrupt appearance without transitional forms. 150 years of fossil research has actually made the problem worse, and by millions and millions of years. Scientific theory is testable by predictions it makes. There should be billions and billions of transitional forms. There are one quarter of a million fossil species, tens of millions of catalogued forms, and yet there are no transitional forms that clearly exist in the fossil record. There shouldn't be like one or two, there should be tons of them everywhere. Do you guys agree? Do you not see why this is the case? This is the explanation that Darwinists give for how everything came to be. So where are all the transitional forms? Douglas Futuima, who was an artist, evolutionist, put it this way, it is considered likely that all the animal phyla became distinct before or during the Cambrian period, for they all appear fully formed without intermediates connecting one form to another." That's an incredible statement. He's saying, I don't know what happened, but they all came fully formed in the fossil record. So we have fossil evidence of the extinction of certain creatures, but we don't have the fossil evidence of the evolution of those figures before they became extinct. Like I said, we should see not just extinct creatures like the trilobites that are just so creepy and that prove that the Earth has been around for millions and millions of years. We see that they became extinct. The thing that we don't see is like 95% of a trilobite or 90% of a trilobite or 82% of it or whatever, the fossil story leading up to where we got that thing that eventually became extinct. There is no record of it, okay? Not one transitional form from multi-celled creatures to marine invertebrates. Duane Gish put it this way, nowhere on the face of the Earth Have we found a single ancestor for these complicated invertebrates? Soft-bodied microscopic bacteria have been found, but not a single transitional form. I mentioned the trilobites. They entered the fossil record totally formed with all kinds of complexities, but there's not a single transitional form leading up to the trilobite. Not one transitional form from marine invertebrates to marine vertebrates. Again, the experts tell us this evolution took 100 million years, and yet there's not one single transitional form from invertebrate marine invertebrate to marine vertebrate, not one. Do you see that they need the hundred million years to tell the story? You need that long time. I'm saying, okay, then there's a hundred million years of fossils, right? I would think so. Is that too much to ask? They say, we've got to have the time for evolution to happen. Fine, we'll give you the time. Give us the fossils. There aren't any. So where are they? Where are the fossils for these transitional forms? How about from fish to amphibian? Again, there are some so-called transitional figures, but they're all questionable. For example, the coelacanth. was thought by paleontologists to have been an immediate ancestor of amphibians and was assumed to have been extinct for 70 million years. But in 1938, one was found in the Indian Ocean and carefully examined. Sadly for evolutionists, its internal organs showed no signs whatsoever of being adapted to life on land. It's just a separate creature. It didn't evolve then eventually into something else. It's still around, or at least it was in 1938. There are no clear transitions from fins to feet, with leg. Spinal columns stayed distinct between marine vertebrates and amphibians. To walk a species needs a strong pelvis and other skeletal structures in place. There are no transitional forms clearly showing this development. Again, Dwayne Gish pointed to an example of a transitional figure from fish to amphibian in the University of Chicago's Museum of Natural History. It showed a curious looking half fish, half reptile with a label saying conquest of land. Their legs evolved from fish fins. But the fine print at the bottom said inferred intermediate. Do you know what inferred means? It's an artist's rendition. That's an artist's conception. They have no fossils. It's a clear admission of failure. How about from amphibian to reptile? No satisfactory candidates. Admittedly difficult to document this in the fossil record since the skeletal structure is so similar. Johnson points out problems with the transition that amphibians lay soft-shelled eggs in water, whereas reptiles lay hard-shelled eggs on land. So he's being compassionate, basically saying we're not surprised we don't see a lot of fossils there. But from reptiles to mammal, here's where the Darwinists think at last that they shine. Darwinists point to therapsids as transitional forms from reptile to mammal. The definition has to do with skull structure and jawbone design, and Stephen Jay Gould and others claim intermediate designs. But the modern mammals include such a diverse group of creatures such as whales, porpoises, seals, polar bears, bats, cattle, monkeys, cats, pigs, and opossums. If Darwin is true, then all of these species would have evolved from one single land animal, leaving a massive trail of fossils showing intermediate forms. That's precisely what's missing. I mean, listen, you don't need to understand all these details. Bottom line is the fossil record does not show evolution. It didn't when Darwin came up with the theory. It still doesn't. And the problem's worse now than it was in his day. So, now, skip down on page 14 to Stephen Jay Gould's white flag on the fossil record. He came up with a theory. Now, he's since deceased. But he was probably in his time. He was a Harvard paleontologist and a big Red Sox baseball fan. So we at least have that in common. But we don't have evolution in common. Bottom line is he was probably the most popular defender of evolution in magazines like Time Magazine or Newsweek, whatever. Whenever they wanted a quote from the evolutionist point of view, they'd go to Stephen Jay Gould. He came up with a very controversial and somewhat rejected theory among his fellow paleontologists of something called punctuated equilibrium. What is he saying? He's saying the fossil record does not show evolution, so what happened is evolution happened in the white spaces between the fossils. So basically, evolution would happen in some crisis mode. something would happen like a meteor hitting the earth or whatever and then a lot of evolution would happen but it would happen so quickly it wouldn't be captured in the fossil record. This is Stephen Jay Gould coming up with this, punctuated equilibrium. Do you understand what it is that a paleontologist, that's an expert in fossils by the way, would come up with a theory like punctuated equilibrium saying this is why we don't see evolution in the fossil record. What is that admission of? What is he saying by coming up with that theory? there's no proof of evolution in the fossil record. That's what he's saying. And by the way, punctuated equilibrium, which is where everything... You understand what I mean by this. Basically, the whole world travels along like this, stasis, everything the same, and then suddenly evolution happens so quickly that you can't capture it in the fossil record, and then it goes along that way for a long time, and then suddenly it jumps up again. And you just never seem to be able to capture it in the fossil record. But that's not evolution, by the way. I don't know what that is. All right? I mean, what happens in here? What happens in here? I don't know. Tell me about the meteorite that strikes and then all of a sudden all the invertebrate or all the reptiles become mammals. How does that even happen? What happens? A lightning strike? What? I mean, I don't understand what this is and there's no record of this. It's just a theory trying to explain how it happened. Evolution to me is this, right? A continuous change. Fossils captured like snapshots throughout should show that continuous change. Why doesn't it show it? Any thoughts on why it doesn't show it? You have any idea why the fossil record might not show evolution? Rick, do you have any theories on why it might not show? I do not and I'm not offering it. for a plausible explanation of why the fossil record does not show evolution? Does anyone here, is anyone here willing to offer 1.35 million dollars for a plausible theory on why the fossil record does not show evolution? You're willing to offer the money? He doesn't have it, alright. Well, I'd be the first. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna take teacher privilege. I'll collect the money. I'll give you a plausible theory, because evolution didn't happen. That's the plausible theory I would give. It didn't occur. Plausible to me. It's not plausible to an atheist, however. It just cannot, it doesn't fit his worldview. This must have happened. And so he's got to come up with some explanation of why the fossil record does not show evolution. So if you want to read about punctuated equilibrium, basically this is what it is. That everything goes on as it does ordinarily and then suddenly something happens. and you're not going to see any transitional fossils, all right? I found this in a secular textbook of biology, and this is what the textbook said on top of page 15. Punctuated equilibria theory, which has generated much debate, is still controversial among biologists today. But whatever the pace of change may have been, it is clear that organisms have evolved over time. Do you see that statement? It's pathetic. Whatever the pace, it is clear that evolution occurred. It is. Well, it happened. That's it. There is no proof. But, you know, there it is. In other words, please don't confuse me with the evidence. Bottom line. All right. Fossil record, the great evidence that Evolution is a faith. This is too clever for me to come up with, but I read about it, and I think it's funny, so I'll give it to you. Hebrews 11.1, now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. So therefore, evolution is the assurance of fossils hoped for and the conviction of transitional forms not seen. So there it is. There's your faith. We don't see the fossils. We don't see the transitional forms. We just hope that they're out there somewhere. But even if they're not, I'm still going to believe in evolution. All right, so you now have two devastating problems for evolution. Do you see it? Do you see the two? Where did the first cell come from? From non-life to life. And why does the fossil record not show any transitional forms or hardly any? And again, if they produce one or two or three, understand that is woefully inadequate for what they're claiming. That is that every living thing on Earth evolved over millions and millions of years. Therefore, as I said, you would not be able to drive home tonight because you'd be bumping into transitional fossils everywhere. Where are these transitional forms? There shouldn't be just one or two. There shouldn't be some debated ones. They should be everywhere. Where are they? OK? Devastating problem number three, and this is Michael Veehe's theory, irreducible complexity. And this is pretty significant. Irreducible complexity, bottom line is, What does the existence of irreducibly complex systems mean and how does their existence impact neo-Darwinian theory? The origin and the origin of species, Darwin stated this, if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formulated by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. Well, thank you for telling us how to break down your theory. Many such complex organs exist. What is he saying? All right, basically, here's the thing. There are complex structures that have to be pieced together, all of them. And when all of the pieces are put in place, then the whole thing works and helps the animal. You see what I'm saying? So if you have anything less than that or anything that's not in place, none of it works and none of it is helpful, then evolution can't be true. Because how would those things have evolved up when they were useless to the species until finally everything was in place? Let me just make it simple. Let's think, for example, of the wings of a bird. The wings of a bird must have evolved, according to that theory. You know what I'm saying? Wings are complicated. They're not easy to imitate. The feathers have a certain strength-to-weight ratio. They're very complicated things. Yeah, I don't have anything. Just listen to what I have to say about it. I looked at this. A feather, for example, you look at it, its tubular structure, its strength, and all that, and its sleek design, it is actually very, very difficult to imitate, okay? According to the evolutionists, the wings of a bird with all the feathers must have evolved, okay? Can you imagine a time in which the wings were in the process of evolving? Now, you have to understand, they're always going to tell you millions and millions of years, right? So, the process of evolving is over millions and millions of years. That means that the winged bird's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had wings that didn't work. I mean, don't you understand that logically they had wings that didn't work? My question is why did they pass those forms on to their children? The idea of natural selection is they will pass on what gives the species an advantage to survive. What good is 70% of a wing? It actually, you could argue, would hinder the species from surviving. It would make it harder for the species to survive. But my question is, why does it pass the genetic information on to its children? And not only that, of course, 70% of a wing isn't there yet. How do you go from 70% to 71% of a wing? That's the inverted pyramid of cards. You've got to get closer and closer until, at last, the wing functions. It's finally there. Evolution, nature, put the wing together over millions of years, and now, at last, it's a great advantage to the species. Well, I would think flight is a tremendous advantage to the eagle. It enables it to fly. The thing is, what about the eagle's great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, which couldn't fly? What advantage did it have? I actually watched some time ago a very fascinating program on predator and prey. It was on, I think, a natural, it was on a station that we got. We don't watch the commercials when we watch the basketball games. So we flicked over and actually that started being more interesting than the NCAA basketball game we were watching. So I watched that for a while, much to the chagrin of my kids. I put it back. It's like, no, this is interesting. So at any rate, so they would have different like predator prey matchups. And one of them was an eagle versus a rabbit. And it was really, really interesting because it said basically the eagle has all the advantage while it's flying. But once it's on the ground, the rabbit has all the advantage. OK. I mean, it's obvious. Basically, the eagle has to kill the rabbit while still flying. If it misses and hits the ground and the both of them are running, it's comic, actually, to watch the eagle try to run and keep up with the rabbit. The rabbit wins. Why? Because it's agile and quick and runs for its living, basically. And eagles don't. OK, now let's take the eagle's great, great, great, great, great grandfather, which has wings that don't fly. Picture that. How is it doing? How's it going for you, Mr. Eagle Ancestor? How are you doing? How are you? What's that? It ate turtles. OK. Well, the turtle's shell isn't formed yet either. So, you know, it's fine. You know, it's it's a soft shell turtle and it's working on a hard shell, but it's not quite there yet. And so, yeah, I mean, the whole theory is implausible for me because you have to go to ever increasing complexity. And I tell you that evolution argues that every stage must make sense. Every stage must give its owner an advantage to survive. Every stage must. That's a burden. I wouldn't want to argue this position. This is a hard position to argue. How does 70% of a wing help anybody? And if you say that's not how it happened, well, how did it happen? How is it that you have like Eagle Ancestor with literally zero wings, and then in one generation, poof, That's God creating wings pretty much at that point. There is no explanation for how that could happen. So you've got to have at some point some eagle ancestor that has 70% of wings that don't fly. How did it make it? How did it have a genetic advantage so that its population pool survived and the ones that didn't have 70% of a wing didn't? I can't explain it. And again, it's another plausibility issue. I can't even think of a way that that winged poor eagle running around with his wings dragging has an advantage over one that doesn't have wings quite as formed. Yes. Were his claws formed immediately too? Yes. I believe that his claws were formed at the exact same time as his wings and his beak and all that because I believe God made them all at the same time and figured the whole thing. Go ahead. But running around without fuzz, he wouldn't be able to do anything with the rabbit anyhow. That's true. That's true. Friends, I told you, I don't, I mean, I'm playing a game here. I don't want to argue this position. It's a loser position. All right. Because I chose 70 percent, 30 percent of a wing, 5 percent of a wing. The wings just starting to bud and push out. Right. I mean, it's just getting going. It's going to be 15 million years before you even see anything that looks like a wing. And yet it's holding on to that little nub of a wing and passing it on to its descendants. It doesn't make any sense to me. My mind just breaks as I think about this. All right? These are complex organisms that don't give any advantage to the species until they are all fully formed. And once they're all fully formed, then, you know, you have an advantage. And then survival of the fittest can kick in. It makes sense why a winged eagle will do better than one that doesn't fly. And I can understand very much why a 100% wing does better than a 99% wing. I don't have any idea why a 70% wing does better than a 69% wing. I have no idea. Please explain that to me, because I don't see any advantage. It's got to give the species an advantage to keep making progress. That's how natural selection works. I don't see it. And you know what they say? We don't know, but it happened. And then the evolution process stopped. It stopped, yeah. The eagles' wings aren't getting larger, more streamlined. Yeah, it stopped. But they don't worry about that too much, because evolution happens over millions and millions of years, and we've only seen these eagles over the last short period of time. They would say evolution is going on, but it's going on so slowly we can't see it. So there are better eagles than others. You know, I don't know. I just, after a while, I tire of playing games and I say, this whole thing isn't true. That's why I'm saying my whole goal tonight was to show you that evolution is bad science. Now, I'm not saying that they couldn't get up and give you 15 things that would make evolution seem overwhelmingly true. But I'd like, before they do that, to have the honesty of answering these three things. Where did the first cell come from? Why does the fossil record not show innumerable transitional states? And how do you explain the development of complex organisms that don't do, organs, sorry, organs, that don't give any advantage to the species until they're fully formed. Those three things explain those things. And they're trying. Believe me, they're trying. They've been working on Michael Behe's stuff for a while. This is my Shonies illustration. This is the best I can do for you guys. Turn on page 16. I thought about this. This is the only word I could think of to display the ever-increasing complexity where every stage made sense. This is a little word game I was playing. I was sitting at a Shonies one day and I started playing with the words. This is how evolution works. This is the only string of letters that makes sense. Every one of these is a word. O, to on, to one, to hone, to honey. And then, frankly, here in Durham, we have Honey's restaurant. So there you go. And then, Shoney's. I can't go any higher than Shoney's. You know, that's the end of the line for me. But if you can come up, I probably would pay $10 to anybody who could give a trail longer than the seven words I've given you here. All right, I'll give you $10 if you can come up with one that works like this. Do you see how every stage makes sense? What about Shoney's-ish? Shoney's-ish? I don't know, brother. Are you that desperate for $10? Because if you are, I'll just go ahead and loan you the $10 or even give it to you. Shoney's-ish. See if I can use that in a sermon. Shoney's-ish. Basically, the bottom line is every stage has to be advantageous. Every stage has to make sense. And if it doesn't, then natural selection doesn't kick in. OK, so there it is. All right. So I gave you my three things. We still have nine minutes. Any questions about what I've given? I wanted to give you that's the beating heart of this 18 page thing. I wanted to give you that. But it's less it was less than the time I had. Any questions about these three things? Can I quiz you? Who'd like to be quizzed? Andy Nguyen? Hi, how are you? I'm just training you guys, okay? What are the three things? The three tough answers, difficult questions for evolutionists to answer, just topically. In my opinion, impossible, yes, but difficult at least. Why aren't there innumerable transition fossil records? Number two, how do you explain the development of the first single cell? I'm sorry, say that again? You're challenging yourself by going in a different order than I did and that's fine. Go ahead. Number three. Number three is, well, irreducible complexity, but you just explained it a little clearer than that just a moment ago, so I was trying to remember how you just, irreducible complexity, which means how can you have every, how can every, oh, no, no, no, how can a valuable organ that we currently have exist at a time before it was fully formed? Please explain. Very good. Well done. All right. Yeah. How complex organisms can evolve and be useless to the species and still be some advantage so that natural selection takes place. That's it's a lot of words, but you have to get into the mindset of what they're explaining by natural selection. Natural selection is the mode, the so-called survival of the fittest. That's the way that they explain that evolution occurs. That plus genetic freaks. weird stuff that happens that makes something a little different than all of the other genetic pool and gives it an advantage. And then it reproduces and that pool grows and then eventually wins out compared to the others. That's how it works. That's the mechanism. That's what they think is the beauty of atheistic natural selection. It's beautiful because some genetic thing, mechanism comes in and you get some new feature. How that happens, no one ever knows. A genetic mutation? They don't need to explain it. They just say what? I've said it to you five times. What do they say? We don't know, but it just happened. So that's how those genetic mutations happen. What we do say is that there are genetic mutations that happen all the time these days, but they're always detrimental and cause devolution. That's where cancer and other things, it never is an increase or improvement. It's always something degenerating from something good. But they say, no, we've got some mutations that go up. Yes, sir. One of the things that they talk about that makes evolution phony is the defense mechanisms. If the puff blowfish, if it developed over a long period of time, it wouldn't have survived. It has no natural defense. It would have been eaten by something. Yeah. I mean, there's so many arguments just like that. Thank you. Without its odor, it's defenseless. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah. Sheep, I don't know what advantage they had at all. I mean, they're slow, they're stupid, and they're delicious. I mean, how in the world did they survive? Yes, Ted? There's also the underlying problem, too, that you have to have eternal matter so that you don't have to explain where the stuff comes from that you start with. Or you have to explain where the stuff comes from that you start with. Well, Carl Sagan just dispenses with that and shows that atheism is for him a religion. And he says the cosmos is all there ever has been, is, or will be. So the cosmos is his God. And so he says, I don't need to explain where this stuff came from. It's always been here. Just like you apparently don't need to explain where your God came from. He's always been here. So it's a little hard to argue against that view. But this view here, the plausibility, the thing that they love about Darwinism is that it gives a plausible explanation of how this might have happened. I'm telling you it's not very plausible. And you're really basically left with saying, I just don't believe in God. And actually, oddly enough, this is amazing, but more and more biologists and scientists are saying, I don't believe in Darwinism and I don't believe in God. Because they're just saying, this is bad science and there's no evidence for it, but I don't believe the Bible either. And so, you know, you're left saying, they basically are challenging that these are the two ways of explaining the existence. Or they say, I don't really know where it all came from. I'm just living my life. And I'm not trying to figure out these complex problems, etc. It's really kind of sad at that point. Any other questions or comments? It is. It is. But I want you to know, if you leave this room and you go, you would be... I mean, the atmosphere here tonight, creation of an atmosphere through my skill as a speaker and all that was somewhat mocking. The shoes on the other foot out there, friends, they will mock our views, and they will bring forward such a bewildering plethora of evidence that makes you feel like a total idiot. And so all I'm saying is, look, I don't know that I can answer all of their questions. I mean, there's some high-level science that I don't have, and they can bewilder us with that. I just would like them to be honest enough to answer these three. That's all. Were you going to say something else? I was just going to say, it's evidence, but it's not evidence. So the truth, they can't come up with the truth, so I choose not to worry about it. Yeah, there really isn't any evidence of evolution. It's a plausible theory, and then they go on from there. You know, there is evidence that the Earth is old. There's stuff about the dating technique in the pages I skipped, somewhere around page 5, 6, or 7, somewhere in there. If there are questions about the dating technique, you can deal with all that. For me, I would say this. I don't think that God was trying to deceive us when he created the world as it is. And it could very well be that the world appears old and God was not trying to make it appear old. But for his own purposes, you know, I've said this before, Adam, I believe God created fully lingual with a full vocabulary ability to communicate verbally without having to learn the language. You know, he didn't have a mother to teach him. He didn't go through inarticulate babyhood. and whatever. He and Eve as well created fully lingual, able to communicate. And is God trying thereby to deceive us? No. It just was best for His purposes to create a fully grown man and a fully grown woman ready to go. It seemed to be best for His purposes. So also rocks with a certain amount of potassium and a certain amount of argon and all that that seemed to have been around for 3.1 billion years or whatever. And again, not that God was trying to deceive, but just for His own purposes that mixture seems best. All I'm saying is you can't prove one way or the other with the dating technique because no one was here a million or a billion years ago, so we don't know how much the mixture was. They're just extrapolating back to get the age. Long story short, there's a lot of stuff we can study about this. Do not be ashamed of your faith. Do not be ashamed of the Bible. The Bible's answer for these things is far more plausible for me than this bad science that we have here. Andy, would you close us in prayer?