Society's Dramatic Shift

Why has evolution become so widely accepted, and why has the Bible come to be viewed with such hostility? What has changed?

Only a few generations ago laws prevented the teaching of the theory of evolution in some communities and regions in the United States. The Bible was commonly accepted as true and as a reliable account of our origins. But now almost the opposite is true. The Bible is banned from classrooms in American schools, and serious discussion of the biblical view of the creation of our universe and our human origins is forbidden. At the same time, criticism of the theory of evolution is at times ruthlessly suppressed in academic and scientific circles.

But more and more critics of evolution are speaking out.

Creation without a Creator?

Certainly, as the current intelligent design debate reveals, not all scientists agree that a Creator doesn't exist and that we as human beings are the product of random chance. In 1972 the California State Board of Education asked NASA director Wernher von Braun, who has been called the father of the American space program, for his thoughts on the origin of the universe, life and the human race. Here's how he responded:

"For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. In the world around us, we can behold the obvious manifestations of an ordered, structured plan or design . . .

"And we are humbled by the powerful forces at work on a galactic scale, and the purposeful orderliness of nature that endows a tiny and ungainly seed with the ability to develop into a beautiful flower. The better we understand the intricacies of the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based . . .

"To be forced to believe only one conclusion—that everything in the universe happened by chance—would violate the very objectivity of science itself. Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?

"Some people say that science has been unable to prove the existence of a Designer. They admit that many of the miracles in the world around us are hard to understand, and they do not deny that the universe, as modern science sees it, is indeed a far more wondrous thing than the creation medieval man could perceive. But they still maintain that since science has provided us with so many answers the day will soon arrive when we will be able to understand even the fundamental laws of nature without a Divine intent. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun? . . .

"What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electron as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive of Him?" (quoted by Scott Huse, The Collapse of Evolution, 1997, pp. 159-160).

Human reproduction argues against evolution

Many educated people accept the theory of evolution. But is it true? Curiously enough, our existence as human beings is one of the best arguments against it. According to evolutionary theory, the traits that offer the greatest advantage for survival are passed from generation to generation. Yet human reproduction itself argues powerfully against this fundamental premise of evolution.

If human beings are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, how is it that we have the disadvantage of requiring a member of the opposite sex to reproduce, when lower forms of life—such as bacteria, viruses and protozoa—are sexless and far more prolific? If they can reproduce by far simpler methods, why can't we? If evolution is true, what went wrong?

Let's take it a step further. If human beings are the result of evolution continually reinforcing characteristics that offer a survival advantage while eliminating those that hinder perpetuation, how can we explain a human infant?

Among thousands of species the newly born (or newly hatched) are capable of survival within a matter of days or, in some cases, only minutes. Many never even see their parents. Yet a human infant is utterly helpless—not for days but for up to several years after birth.

A human baby is reliant on adults for the nourishment, shelter and care he or she needs to survive. Meanwhile, caring for that helpless infant is a distinct survival disadvantage for adults, since giving of their time and energy lessens their own prospects for survival.

If evolution is true and humanity is the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, why does a process as basic as human reproduction fly in the face of everything that evolution holds true?

Regrettably, such obvious flaws in the theory are too often overlooked.

A worldview with far-reaching implications

Even Charles Darwin, whose theories about evolution took the world by storm, seems to have had second thoughts in some respects. According to one report, in his later years he reflected on what he had started this way: "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them" (quoted by William Federer, America's God and Country, 1996, p. 199, emphasis added).

Now, almost a century and a half after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, we can see where his thinking has led. In Europe in particular, belief in a personal God has plummeted. In the United States, court decisions have interpreted constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion as freedom from religion—effectively banning public expression of religious beliefs and denying the country's rich religious heritage.

Meanwhile, the world languishes in the sorrow and suffering that results from rejecting absolute moral standards. With no absolute standards, we have no reason to care about what happens to our fellow man. We might as well seek only our personal gain regardless of the cost to others—acting exactly as evolutionary theory expects.

Could man create a religion with no god? The widespread acceptance of evolution shows that we have done just that. The Bible teaches us that God created man. Evolution teaches us that man created God.

If God created man, we have no right to ignore Him. If man created God, we can easily ignore Him. What man has made he can do away with. In that case we are free to act as though God doesn't exist, free to dismiss the Bible, free to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong and how we will choose to live.

Which is the myth—God or evolution? Louis Bounoure, director of France's Strasbourg Zoological Museum and professor of biology at the University of Strasbourg, stated: "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless" (quoted by Federer, p. 61).

Professor Bounoure, though right about evolution, was wrong about one thing. Rather than being useless, evolution is quite useful if one wants to reject the idea of God. As Dr. Thomas Woodward states, "Many scholars working in the ID [intelligent design] community have pointed out a key fact: Darwinism may not entail atheism, but it appears certain that to some extent, atheism entails Darwinism" (Darwin Strikes Back, 2006, p. 186).

In this booklet we examine the foundational premises of evolution. We consider the evidence evolutionists cite to support the theory. Perhaps most important, we look at the scientific facts evolutionists don't discuss in public—for reasons that will become clear.

You can know whether evolution is true. We hope you'll examine the evidence carefully. What you believe does matter.

Science, the Bible and Wrong Assumptions

The theory of evolution, long taught in schools and assumed to be true by many in the scientific community, is increasingly questioned by scientists and university professors in various fields. Why do questions arise? It is because as scientific knowledge has increased, researchers have not been able to confirm basic assumptions of the evolutionary theory—and, in fact, some have been outright refuted.

As more scientists and educators become aware of flaws in the theory, they are more carefully assessing it. In the United States some states' educational boards have become aware of the mounting scientific evidence against evolution and have begun to insist the theory be emphasized less or treated more evenhandedly in the classroom.

Yet there is a powerful insistence by many in the scientific community that the theory not be questioned, for much is at stake.

Phillip Johnson, law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has written several books about the evolution debate. He approaches the evidence for and against evolution as though evaluating a legal case. He notes the strong vested interests involved in the debate: "Naturalistic evolution is not merely a scientific theory; it is the official creation story of modern culture. The scientific priesthood that has authority to interpret the official creation story gains immense cultural influence thereby, which it might lose if the story were called into question. The experts therefore have a vested interest in protecting the story . . ." (Darwin on Trial, 1993, p. 159).

Professor Johnson critically examines the logic and reasoning evolutionists use in the debate. He likens the carefully protected theory to a warship that has sprung a leak: "Darwinian evolution . . . makes me think of a great battleship on the ocean of reality. Its sides are heavily armored with philosophical barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked with big rhetorical guns ready to intimidate any would-be attackers.

"In appearance, it is as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed to be only a few years ago. But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak, and the more perceptive of the ship's officers have begun to sense that all the ship's firepower cannot save it if the leak is not plugged. There will be heroic efforts to save the ship, of course . . . The spectacle will be fascinating, and the battle will go on for a long time. But in the end reality will win" (pp. 169-170).

But what is behind the debate? How did an unproven theory gain such wide acceptance? How did alternate theories come to be summarily dismissed without a hearing? How did the biblical account of the origin of the universe and man lose so much credibility?

The roots of the battle between evolution and the Bible go back centuries.

Differing interpretations of the Bible

It is a shame that scientists and religious figures alike have perpetuated many myths about creation and nature. In the past few centuries, science has refuted some religious notions about nature and the universe that religious leaders mistakenly attributed to the Bible. Sadly, this has caused some religious leaders and institutions to take unnecessarily dogmatic stands that were only harmful in the long run.

At the same time, misunderstandings about what the Bible does and does not say have led some on all sides of the debate to accept wrong conclusions.

For example, in late 1996 Pope John Paul II shocked both Catholics and non-Catholics when he mused that the theory of evolution seemed valid for the physical evolution of man and other species through natural selection and hereditary adaptations. How did this startling declaration come about? What factors led to this far-reaching conclusion?

Time magazine commented on the pope's statement: "[Pope] Pius [in 1950] was skeptical of evolution but tolerated study and discussion of it; the statement by John Paul reflects the church's acceptance of evolution. He did not, however, diverge at all from Pius on the question of the origin of man's soul: that comes from God, even if 'the human body is sought in living material which existed before it.'

"The statement is unlikely to influence the curriculum of Catholic schools, where students have studied evolution since the 1950s. Indeed, taking the Bible literally has not been a hallmark among Catholics through much of the 20th century. Asked about the pope's statement, Peter Stravinskas, editor of the 1991 Catholic Encyclopedia, said: 'It's essentially what Augustine was writing. He tells us that we should not interpret Genesis literally, and that it is poetic and theological language'" (Nov. 4, 1996, p. 59).

The Catholic theologian Augustine lived A.D. 354-430. The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes him as "the dominant personality of the Western Church of his time, generally recognized as the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity." It adds, "He fused the religion of the New Testament with the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy" (15th edition, 1975, Micropaedia, Vol. 1, "Augustine of Hippo, Saint," pp. 649-650).

Little did Augustine realize he was doing his followers a grave disservice by viewing parts of the Bible as allegorical while simultaneously incorporating into his teaching the views of the Greek philosophers. For the next 1,300 years, covering roughly the medieval age, the view of those pagan philosophers became the standard for the Roman church's explanation of the universe.

Furthermore, ecclesiastical leaders adopted the earth-centered view of the universe held by Ptolemy, an Egyptian-born astronomer of the second century. "It was . . . from the work of previous [Greek] astronomers," says The Encyclopaedia Britannica, "that Ptolemy evolved his detailed description of an Earth-centered (geocentric) universe, a revolutionary but erroneous idea that governed astronomical thinking for over 1,300 years . . .

"In essence, it is a synthesis of the results obtained by Greek astronomy . . . On the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets, Ptolemy again extended the observations and conclusions of Hipparchus—this time to formulate his geocentric theory, which is popularly known as the Ptolemaic system" (15th edition, 1975, Macropaedia, Vol. 15, "Ptolemy," p. 179).

The Bible and the universe

Thus it was not the biblical perspective but the Greek view of the cosmos—in which everything revolved around a stationary earth—that was to guide man's concept of the universe for many centuries. The Roman Catholic Church made the mistake of tying its concept of the universe to that of earlier pagan philosophers and astronomers, then enforced that erroneous view.

Although the Greeks thought the god Atlas held up first the heavens and later the earth, and the Hindus believed the earth rested atop four gigantic elephants, the Bible long revealed the true explanation. We read in Job 26:7 an astonishingly modern scientific concept, that God "hangs the earth on nothing." Science has demonstrated that this "nothing" is the invisible force of gravity that holds the planet in its orbit.

Centuries passed before Nicolaus Copernicus in the 1500s calculated that the earth was not the center of the universe. However, he was cautious about challenging the Roman church on this belief.

In the 1600s, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei observed through a telescope the moons orbiting Jupiter—clear evidence against the idea that the heavenly bodies all revolve around the earth. After further observation of the planets, he came to agree with Copernicus' view that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa. Catholic authorities considered this idea heretical, and Galileo was threatened with death if he did not recant. Finally he did, although legend has it that, as he left the presence of the pope, he muttered under his breath regarding the earth, "And yet it moves."

"When the Roman church attacked Copernicus and Galileo," says Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer, "it was not because their teaching actually contained anything contrary to the Bible. The church authorities thought it did, but that was because Aristotelian elements had become part of church orthodoxy, and Galileo's notions clearly conflicted with them. In fact, Galileo defended the compatibility of Copernicus and the Bible, and this was one of the factors which brought about his trial" (How Should We Then Live? 1976, p. 131).

Ironically, these first battles between scientists and the Bible pitted scientists against biblical misinterpretations, not against what the Bible actually says.

The Bible and scientific advancement

Several centuries later, a better biblical understanding actually furthered scientific advancements and achievements. The English scholar Robert Merton maintains that the values promoted by Puritanism in 17th-century England encouraged scientific endeavors. A Christian was to glorify God and serve Him through participating in activities of practical value to his community. He wasn't to withdraw into the contemplative life of monasteries and convents.

Christians were to choose a vocation that best made use of their talents. Reason and education were praised in the context of educating people with practical knowledge, not the highly literary classics of pagan antiquity, that they might better do their life's work. Puritanism also encouraged literacy, because each believer had to be able to read the Bible for himself and not depend on what others said it meant.

Historians note that the invention of the printing press and subsequent broader distribution of the Bible in the 1500s played a large role in the emergence of modern science. "The rise of modern science," says Francis Schaeffer, "did not conflict with what the Bible teaches; indeed, at a crucial point the Scientific Revolution rested upon what the Bible teaches.

"Both Alfred North Whitehead and J. Robert Oppenheimer have stressed that modern science was born out of the Christian world view . . . As far as I know, neither of the two men were Christians . . . Because the early scientists believed that the world was created by a reasonable God, they were not surprised to discover that people could find out something true about nature and the universe on the basis of reason" (pp. 132-133).

As this more biblically based science expanded, ecclesiastical leaders had to admit that some long-held positions were wrong. With the esteemed position that the earth was at the center of the universe proven false, the church lost both prestige and credibility to emerging science. As time went on, scientific study grew increasingly apart from the dominant religion, which was mired in its Greek and medieval thought.

Evolution's early roots

Although evolution wasn't popularized until 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, the roots of the idea go much further back in history.

"The early Greek philosophers," explains British physicist Alan Hayward, "were probably the first thinkers to toy with the notion of evolution. Along with many other ideas from ancient Greece it reappeared in western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries . . . But one great difficulty stood in the way. Nobody . . . could explain convincingly how evolution could have taken place. Each species seemed to be fixed. There seemed no way in which one species could give rise to another . . .

"Darwin changed all that with his theory that the way evolution worked was by 'natural selection.' He proposed that small variations in each generation—the kind of natural variations that enable breeders to produce new varieties of dogs and cows and apples and roses—would eventually add up to very big differences, and thus, over hundreds of millions of years, could account for every species on earth" (Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence From Science and the Bible, 1985, pp. 4-5).

Thus, in the late 19th century, scientists and educators were sidetracked from discovering the truth about the origin and meaning of life when they adopted Darwin's reasoning. Their widespread acceptance of an alternative explanation for the existence and diversity of life on earth that discounted the account in Genesis soon led to a general distrust of the Bible. This massive shift of thought has had far-reaching consequences. "Darwinism," says Dr. Hayward, "begins to look more like a huge maze without an exit, where the world has wandered aimlessly for a century and a half" (p. 58).

Meanwhile the churches, having centuries earlier incorporated unscientific, unbiblical Greek philosophical concepts into their views, could not adequately explain and defend aspects of their teachings. They, too, were ultimately sidetracked by their mixing of pagan philosophy with the Bible. Both science and religion built their explanations on wrong foundations.

Acceptance of evolution

Some of the reasons for the acceptance of Darwin's theory involved conditions of the time. The 19th century was an era of social and religious unrest. Science was riding a crest of popularity. Impressive discoveries and inventions appeared constantly. This climate was conducive to people embracing revolutionary concepts.

Furthermore, Darwin himself had an impeccable reputation as a dedicated naturalist. And though his theory contained many obvious weaknesses, these were hidden by the length and tediousness of his book. (He described his book as "one long argument.")

At the same time, the Roman church was being affected by its own cumulative mistakes about science as well as the critics' onslaughts against its teachings and the Bible. The church itself began to accept supposedly scientific explanations over divine ones. A bias against the supernatural slowly crept in.

The momentum grew in the 20th century until many Protestants and Catholics turned to theistic evolution. This is the belief that God occasionally intervenes in a largely evolutionary process through such steps as creating the first cell and then permitting the whole process of evolution to take place or by simply waiting for the first man to appear from the gradual chain of life and then providing him with a soul.

"Darwinian evolution to them," says Dr. Hayward, "is merely the method by which God, keeping discreetly in the background, created every living thing . . . The majority of theistic evolutionists have a somewhat liberal view of the Bible, and often regard the early chapters of Genesis as a collection of Hebrew myths" (p. 8).

Darwinism and morality

The implications for the trustworthiness of the Bible are enormous. Is it the inspired and infallible Word of God, or are parts of it merely well-intentioned myths? Are sections of it simply inaccurate and unreliable? Were Jesus Christ and the apostles wrong when they affirmed that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, created directly
by God (Matthew 19:4; 1 Corinthians 15:45)?

Was Christ mistaken, and did He mislead others? Is 2 Timothy 3:16 true in stating that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine [teaching] . . ."? Clearly, the implications for Christian faith and teaching are profound (see "The Testimony of the New Testament").

Perhaps the effects of his theory on Darwin's own faith can illustrate the damage it can do to religious convictions. Darwin started as a theology student and a staunch respecter of the Bible. But as he formulated his theories, he lost faith in the Old Testament. Later he could no longer believe in the miracles of the New Testament.

There is great danger in following in Darwin's footsteps. We should remember the old saying: If you teach a child that he is only an animal, don't complain when he behaves like one. Can we not lay part of the blame for rampant immorality and crime on society's prevalent values and beliefs—derived to a great extent from evolutionary theory?

Without the belief in a just God who will judge the actions of men, isn't it easier for people to do as they please? Aldous Huxley, a fervent advocate of evolution, admitted why many quickly embraced evolution with such fervor: "I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning . . . The liberation we desired was . . . from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom" (Ends and Means, 1946, p. 70).

Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous Huxley and also a leading proponent of evolution, later wrote, "The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a super-human being is enormous" (Essays of a Humanist, 1966, p. 223).

Could this kind of thinking have something to do with the immorality rampant in so many schools and universities where God is banned from the classroom and evolutionary theory is taught as fact?

It's time to gain some proper perspective. Is the Bible a reliable guide for understanding? If so, then how can the Genesis account be reconciled with the idea of an ancient earth? What about evolution? How strong is its case? Let's carefully weigh the evidence.

The Testimony of the New Testament

Many passages show us that Jesus Christ and His apostles fully accepted the Genesis account of the creation. Jesus talked about "the beginning of the creation which God created" (Mark 13:19; see also Matthew 24:21).

He once asked some who questioned Him: "Have you not read that He who made them [Adam and Eve] at the beginning "made them male and female'?" (Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6). Later the resurrected Christ referred to Himself as "the Originator of God's creation" (Revelation 3:14, Holman Christian Standard Bible).

Many are surprised to learn that the Bible reveals Christ as the Creator! The apostle John stated at the beginning of His Gospel that the divine Word by whom everything exists was the One who became Jesus Christ (John 1:1-3, 14). More than once the apostle Paul explained to early Christians that God created all things by Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:9; Colossians 1:16). Hebrews 1:2 tells us that God "has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, . . . through whom also He made the worlds."

Paul also told the Athenians that God made all nations "from one blood" (Acts 17:26)—all are descendants of Adam and Eve. Paul believed all that was written in the Law and the Prophets (Acts 24:14), including the creation accounts.

Finally, both the specifics and the tenor of Peter's last letter tell us that he, too, believed in biblical creation (see 2 Peter 3:4-7 in particular).

Scientists, Creation and Evolution

No one should assume that scientists uniformly agree that there is no God and that the world around us is the product of a mindless evolutionary process. Consider what some luminaries in science have said about creation and evolution:

"For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume [The Origin of Species] on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived."

— Charles Darwin (1809-1882), British naturalist who popularized the theory of evolution through natural selection

"The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Into his tiniest creatures, God has placed extraordinary properties that turn them into agents of destruction of dead matter."

"A bit of science distances one from God, but much science nears one to Him."

— Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), French scientist, developer of the pasteurization process for milk and of vaccines for anthrax, chicken cholera and rabies

"The theories of evolution, with which our studious youth have been deceived, constitute actually a dogma that all the world continues to teach: but each, in his specialty, the zoologist or the botanist, ascertains that none of the explanations furnished is adequate."

"The theory of evolution is impossible. At base, in spite of appearances, no one any longer believes in it . . . Evolution is a kind of dogma which the priests no longer believe, but which they maintain for their people."

— Paul Lemoine (1878-1940), director of the Paris Natural History Museum, president of the Geological Society of France and editor of Encyclopedie Francaise

"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over-simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest."

— Sir Ernst Chain (1906-1979), coholder of the 1945 Nobel Prize for isolating and purifying penicillin, director of Rome's International Research Center for Chemical Microbiology, professor of biochemistry at Imperial College, University of London

"Manned space flight is an amazing achievement, but it has opened for mankind thus far only a tiny door for viewing the awesome reaches of space. An outlook through this peephole at the vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator."

"It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance."

"Atheists all over the world have . . . called upon science as their crown witness against the existence of God. But as they try, with arrogant abuse of scientific reasoning, to render proof there is no God, the simple and enlightening truth is that their arguments boomerang. For one of the most fundamental laws of natural science is that nothing in the physical world ever happens without a cause. There simply cannot be a creation without some kind of Spiritual Creator . . . In the world around us we can behold the obvious manifestations of the Divine plan of the Creator."

— Dr. Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), NASA director and father of the American space program

"For me the fundamental answers about the meaning of life come not from science, but from a consideration of the origins of our uniquely human sense of right and wrong and from the historical record of Christ's life on earth."

— Francis Collins, former atheist and currently director of the National Human Genome Research Institute

"I have been persuaded that it is simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter and then developed into an extraordinary creature."

— Antony Flew, emeritus professor of philosophy at Reading University, formerly one of the world's leading proponents of atheism

Ancient Near Eastern Concepts of Creation

Is the Genesis account only an ancient myth, no better than tales originating in other cultures over the millennia? Many people obviously think so. Notice what Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University and professed atheist, has to say about the biblical account:

"Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story is just the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants" (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, 1986, p. 316).

But is Professor Dawkins' assumption true? Is the Genesis record a fairy tale little different from those of other ancient cultures?

Some 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia left accounts of their creation myths inscribed on cuneiform tablets. The Sumerians conceived of the earth as flat and the sky as a canopy of clouds and stars. They believed earth and sky were created by two gods: An, the male sky god, and Ki, the female earth god.

These two gave birth to a multitude of other gods, each with a particular power and responsibility over some aspect of the created realm (such as lightning, trees, mountains, illness, etc.). They lived in a kingly court in heaven, with An, the supreme god, surrounded by four subordinate creator gods. Below them were a council of seven gods and, finally, the 50 remaining minor gods.

All physical occurrences could be interpreted by the priests as the result of the particular mood or whim of one of these gods. They could be placated by offerings and sacrifices. Although these deities were considered immortal, their supposed conduct was anything but divine. They were depicted as often fighting among themselves, full of petty envies and lusts and subject to hunger and even death.

A few centuries later the Babylonians conquered the Sumerians and modified these myths to exalt their own civilization. Now it was the Babylonian god Marduk who was in charge; he formed the heavens and earth by slaying a sea monster goddess, Tiamat. According to the Babylonian creation account:

"The god Apsu and the goddess Tiamat made other gods. Later Apsu became distressed with these gods and tried to kill them, but instead he was killed by the god Ea. Tiamat sought revenge and tried to kill Ea, but instead she was killed by Ea's son Marduk. Marduk split her body in half, and from one half he made the sky and from the other half he made the earth. Then Marduk, with Ea's aid, made mankind from the blood of another god, Kingu" (Life: How Did It Get Here? 1985, p. 35).

Does this kind of bizarre tale bear any resemblance to the biblical account of creation? Not at all. The first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent had similar creation accounts, but the only one free of outrageous myth and with a moral and perfect God is the biblical version.

In contrast to the crude polytheistic struggles found in such ancient myths, the Genesis account is smooth, systematic, rational and—yes—scientific.

Notice astrophysicist Hugh Ross' reaction on first reading the biblical account of creation: "The [Bible's] distinctives struck me immediately. It was simple, direct, and specific. I was amazed with the quantity of historical and scientific references and with the detail in them.

"It took me a whole evening just to investigate the first chapter. Instead of another bizarre creation myth, here was a journal-like record of the earth's initial conditions—correctly described from the standpoint of astrophysics and geophysics—followed by a summary of the sequence of changes through which Earth came to be inhabited by living things and ultimately by humans.

"The account was simple, elegant, and scientifically accurate. From what I understood to be the stated viewpoint of an observer on Earth's surface, both the order and the description of creation events perfectly matched the established record of nature. I was amazed" (The Creator and the Cosmos, 1993, p. 15).

Consider an admission from The Columbia History of the World: "Indeed, our best current knowledge, lacking the poetic magic of scripture, seems in a way less believable than the account in the Bible" (John Garraty and Peter Gay, editors, 1972, p. 3).

It is natural to conclude, as nations gradually distanced themselves from the true Creator God and sank into immorality and polytheism, that their understanding of the creation became corrupted and eventually was used to prop up their political, social, philosophical and religious outlooks.

Vernon Blackmore and Andrew Page write: "Today the difference between Genesis and the Babylonian account is evident. The first speaks of one God creating the world and mankind by his own command; the other describes chaos and war among many gods, after which one god, Marduk, fashions humanity from clay and blood. The spiritual depth and dignity of Genesis far surpasses the polytheistic ideas of Babylon. Yet until the complete story had been reconstructed, incautious scholars talked of the Bible account being a copy of that from Babylonia. Certainly, they argued, Genesis should be consigned to the category of legend, and its writing was dated long after Moses to the time Israel was held captive in Babylon.

"Much of nineteenth-century liberalism has now been shown as excessive. The Old Testament is not a poor reflection of more ancient Babylonian or Canaanite tales. There are more differences than similarities between the texts. The opening chapters of Genesis stand unique. Nevertheless, many scholars still use the category of myth in relation to some of the biblical material" (Evolution: The Great Debate, 1989, p. 130).

The Greek Concept of Creation

The ancient Greeks had no shortage of creation myths, with many elements taken from the Babylonian model. Two poets, Homer and Hesiod, described the Greek religious system, with its national gods in charge, while living in a royal court full of intrigues and lusts.

In his version Hesiod saw the origin of the universe as deriving from the chaos, the vastness, of space that produced the first goddess, Gaea (earth). She created Uranus (heaven), who became her husband, and they produced many lesser gods. The division between heaven and earth occurred when one of their sons, Cronus, in a fit of jealousy attacked his father Uranus. Zeus, the one who became the chief god, was born from the irate Cronus and his wife Rhea.

Sadly, the only surviving writings about Christianity from the first centuries after the apostles come mainly from men steeped in Greek thought and philosophy. These were Justin Martyr (110-165), Clement (160-220), Origen (185-254) and Augustine (354-430), all former disciples of the thinking of Plato and Aristotle. In this way Greek philosophy entered the Roman church and formed much of its theology.

"The problem with Gentile Christians," notes church historian Samuele Bacchiocchi, "was not only their lack of familiarity with Scripture, but also their excessive fascination with their Greek philosophical speculations, which conditioned their understanding of Biblical truths. While Jewish Christians often erred in the direction of legalism, Gentile Christians often erred in the direction of philosophical speculations which sundered Christianity from its historical roots" (God's Festivals in Scripture and History, 1995, pp. 102-103).

In particular, Origen and Augustine began to interpret much of the book of Genesis as allegory. They viewed the Genesis account as filled with symbolic fictional figures representing truth, human conduct or experience. Gradually, this allegorical method became the norm in the Catholic understanding of much of Genesis. These misconceptions were to heavily influence church authorities down through the years.

What Does the Fossil Record Show?

Can the theory of evolution be proven? After all, it is called the theory of evolution in acknowledgment of the fact that it is not a confirmed scientific law.

Where can we find evidence supporting evolution as an explanation for the teeming variety of life on earth?

Since evolutionists claim that the transition from one species to a new one takes place in tiny, incremental changes over millions of years, they acknowledge that we cannot observe the process taking place today. Our lifespans simply are too short to directly observe such a change. Instead, they say, we have to look at the past—the fossil record that shows the many life-forms that have existed over earth's history—to find transitions from one species to another.

Darwin's greatest challenge

When Charles Darwin proposed his theory in the mid-19th century, he was confident that fossil discoveries would provide clear and convincing evidence that his conjectures were correct. His theory predicted that countless transitional forms must have existed, all gradually blending almost imperceptibly from one tiny step to the next, as species progressively evolved to higher, better-adapted forms.

Indeed that would have to be the case. Well in excess of a million species are alive today. For all those to have evolved from common ancestors, we should be able to find millions, if not hundreds of millions, of intermediate forms gradually evolving into other species.

It was not only fossils of transitional species between apes and human beings that would have to be discovered to prove Darwin's theory. The gaps were enormous. Science writer Richard Milton notes that the missing links "included every part of the animal kingdom: from whelks to whales and from bacteria to bactrian camels. Darwin and his successors envisaged a process that would begin with simple marine organisms living in ancient seas, progressing through fishes, to amphibians—living partly in the sea and partly on land—and hence on to reptiles, mammals, and eventually the primates, including humans" (Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1997, p. 253).

However, even Darwin himself struggled with the fact that the fossil record failed to support his conclusions. "Why," he asked, "if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? . . . Why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (The Origin of Species, 1859, Masterpieces of Science edition, 1958, pp. 136-137).

"The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, [must] be truly enormous," he wrote. "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory" (Darwin, pp. 260-261).

Darwin acknowledged that the fossil record failed to support his conclusions. But, since he thought his theory obviously was the correct explanation for the earth's many and varied forms of life, he and others thought it only a matter of time before fossilized missing links would be found to fill in the many gaps. His answer for the lack of fossil evidence to support his theory was that scientists hadn't looked long enough and hadn't looked in the right places. Eventually they would find the predicted fossil remains that would prove his view. "The explanation lies, I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record," he wrote (p. 261).

He was convinced that later explorations and discoveries would fill in the abundant gaps where the transitional species on which his theory was based were missing. But now, a century and a half later, after literally hundreds of thousands of fossil plants and animals have been discovered and cataloged and with few corners of the globe unexplored, what does the fossil record show?

What the record reveals

David Raup is a firm believer in evolution and a respected paleontologist (a scientist who studies fossils) at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum. However, he admits that the fossil record has been misinterpreted if not outright mischaracterized, stating: "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found— yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks" (Science, Vol. 213, July 1981, p. 289, emphasis added).

Niles Eldredge, curator in the department of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History and adjunct professor at the City University of New York, is another vigorous supporter of evolution. But he finds himself forced to admit that the fossil record fails to support the traditional evolutionary view.

"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long," he writes. "It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change—over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history.

"When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution" (Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory, 1995, p. 95, emphasis added).

After an immense worldwide search by geologists and paleontologists, the "missing links" Darwin predicted would be found to bolster his theory are still missing.

The late Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould is perhaps today's best-known popular writer on evolution. An ardent evolutionist, he collaborated with Professor Eldredge in proposing alternatives to the traditional view of Darwinism. Like Eldredge, he recognized that the fossil record fundamentally conflicted with Darwin's idea of gradualism.

"The history of most fossil species," he wrote, "includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism [gradual evolution from one species to another]:

"[1] Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional [evolutionary] change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking pretty much the same as when they disappear; morphological [anatomical or structural] change is usually limited and directionless.

"[2] Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors: it appears all at once and 'fully formed'" ("Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, May 1977, pp. 13-14, emphasis added).

Fossils missing in crucial places

Francis Hitching, member of the Prehistoric Society and the Society for Physical Research, also sees problems in using the fossil record to support Darwinism.

"There are about 250,000 different species of fossil plants and animals in the world's museums," he writes. "This compares with about 1.5 million species known to be alive on Earth today. Given the known rates of evolutionary turnover, it has been estimated that at least 100 times more fossil species have lived than have been discovered . . . But the curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fossils go missing in all the important places.

"When you look for links between major groups of animals, they simply aren't there; at least, not in enough numbers to put their status beyond doubt. Either they don't exist at all, or they are so rare that endless argument goes on about whether a particular fossil is, or isn't, or might be, transitional between this group and that . . .

"There ought to be cabinets full of intermediates—indeed, one would expect the fossils to blend so gently into one another that it would be difficult to tell where the invertebrates ended and the vertebrates began. But this isn't the case. Instead, groups of well-defined, easily classifiable fish jump into the fossil record seemingly from nowhere: mysteriously, suddenly, full-formed, and in a most un-Darwinian way. And before them are maddening, illogical gaps where their ancestors should be" (The Neck of the Giraffe: Darwin, Evolution and the New Biology, 1982, pp. 9-10, emphasis added).

Acknowledging that the fossil record contradicts rather than supports Darwinism, professors Eldredge and Gould have proposed a radically different theory they call "punctuated equilibrium," maintaining that bursts of evolution occurred in small, isolated populations that then became dominant and showed no change over millions and millions of years. This, they say, is the only way to explain the lack of evidence for evolution in the fossil record.

As Newsweek explains: "In 1972 Gould and Niles Eldredge collaborated on a paper intended at the time merely to resolve a professional embarrassment for paleontologists: their inability to find the fossils of transitional forms between species, the so-called 'missing links.' Darwin, and most of those who followed him, believed that the work of evolution was slow, gradual and continuous and that a complete lineage of ancestors, shading imperceptibly one into the next, could in theory be reconstructed for all living animals . . . But a century of digging since then has only made their absence more glaring . . . It was Eldredge and Gould's notion to call off the search and accept the evidence of the fossil record on its own terms" ("Enigmas of Evolution," March 29, 1982, p. 39, emphasis added).

As some observers point out, this is an inherently unprovable theory for which the primary evidence to support it is lack of evidence in the fossil record to support transitional forms between species.

Fossil record no longer incomplete

The fossil record has been thoroughly explored and documented. Darwin's excuse of "extreme imperfection of the geological record" is no longer credible.

How complete is the fossil record? Michael Denton, a medical doctor and biological researcher, writes that "when estimates are made of the percentage of [now-] living forms found as fossils, the percentage turns out to be surprisingly high, suggesting that the fossil record may not be as bad as is often maintained" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985, p. 189).

He explains that "of the 329 living families of terrestrial vertebrates [mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians] 261 or 79.1 percent have been found as fossils and, when birds (which are poorly fossilized) are excluded, the percentage rises to 87.8 percent" (Denton, p. 189).

In other words, almost 88 percent of the varieties of mammals, reptiles and amphibians populating earth have been found in the fossil record. How many transitional forms, then, have been found? ". . . Although each of these classes [fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and primates] is well represented in the fossil record, as of yet no one has discovered a fossil creature that is indisputably transitional between one species and another species.Not a single undisputed 'missing link' has been found in all the exposed rocks of the Earth's crust despite the most careful and extensive searches" (Milton, pp. 253-254, emphasis added).

If Darwin's theory were true, transitional creatures such as invertebrates with partially developed backbones, fish with rudimentary legs, reptiles with primitive wings and innumerable creatures with semievolved anatomical features should be the rule, scattered throughout the fossil strata. But they are nonexistent.

What about fossil proofs?

At times various fossil species have been presented as firm proof of evolution at work. Perhaps the most famous is the supposed evolution of the horse as presented in many biology textbooks. But is this portrayal really what it is claimed to be?

Notice what Professor Eldredge has to say about this classic "proof" of evolution: "George Gaylord Simpson spent a considerable segment of his career on horse evolution. His overall conclusion: Horse evolution was by no means the simple, linear and straightforward affair it was made out to be . . . Horse evolution did not proceed in one single series, from step A to step B and so forth, culminating in modern, single-toed large horses. Horse evolution, to Simpson, seemed much more bushy, with lots of species alive at any one time—species that differed quite a bit from one another, and which had variable numbers of toes, size of teeth, and so forth.

"In other words, it is easy, and all too tempting, to survey the fossil history of a group and select examples that seem best to exemplify linear change through time . . . But picking out just those species that exemplify intermediate stages along a trend, while ignoring all other species that don't seem to fit in as well, is something else again. The picture is distorted. The actual evolutionary pattern isn't fully represented" (p. 131).

Eldredge in effect admits that paleontologists picked and chose which species they thought fit best with their theory and ignored the rest. George Gaylord Simpson himself was more blunt: "The uniform continuous transformation of Hyracotherium [a fossil species thought to be the ancestor of the horse] into Equus [the modern horse], so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature" (Life of the Past, 1953, p. 119).

Professor Raup elaborates on the problem paleontologists face in trying to demonstrate evolution from the fossil record: "We are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time.

"By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information—what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic [evolutionary]" ("Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin 50, January 1979, pp. 22-25, emphasis added).

Paleontology's well-kept secret

What does all this mean? In plain language, if evolution means the gradual change of one kind of organism into another kind, the outstanding characteristic of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution—and abundant evidence to the contrary. The only logical place to find proof for evolutionary theory is in the fossil record. But, rather than showing slow, gradual change over eons, with new species continually emerging, the fossils show the opposite.

Professor Eldredge touched on the magnitude of the problem when he admitted that Darwin "essentially invented a new field of scientific inquiry—what is now called 'taphonomy'—to explain why the fossil record is so deficient, so full of gaps, that the predicted patterns of gradual change simply do not emerge" (Reinventing Darwin, pp. 95-96, emphasis added).

Professor Gould similarly admitted that the "extreme rarity" of evidence for evolution in the fossil record is "the trade secret of paleontology." He went on to acknowledge that "the evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils" (Gould, p. 14, emphasis added).

But do paleontologists share this trade secret with others? Hardly. "Reading popular or even textbook introductions to evolution, . . . you might hardly guess that they [fossil gaps] exist, so glibly and confidently do most authors slide through them. In the absence of fossil evidence, they write what have been termed 'just so' stories. A suitable mutation just happened to take place at the crucial moment, and hey presto, a new stage of evolution was reached" (Hitching, pp. 12-13).

Regarding this misrepresentation of the evidence, Phillip Johnson writes: "Just about everyone who took a college biology course during the last sixty years or so has been led to believe that the fossil record was a bulwark of support for the classic Darwinian thesis, not a liability that had to be explained away . . .

"The fossil record shows a consistent pattern of sudden appearance followed by a stasis, that life's history is more a story of variation around a set of basic designs than one of accumulating improvement, that extinction has been predominantly by catastrophe rather than gradual obsolescence, and that orthodox interpretations of the fossil record often owe more to Darwinist preconception than to the evidence itself. Paleontologists seem to have thought it their duty to protect the rest of us from the erroneous conclusions we might have drawn if we had known the actual state of the evidence" (Darwin on Trial, pp. 58-59).

The secret that evolutionists don't want revealed is that, even by their own interpretations, the fossil record shows fully formed species appearing for a time and then disappearing with no change. Other species appeared at other times before they, too, disappeared with little or no change. The fossil record simply does not support the central thesis of Darwinism, that species slowly and gradually evolved from one form to another.

Fact or interesting speculation?

Professor Johnson notes that "Darwinists consider evolution to be a fact, not just a theory, because it provides a satisfying explanation for the pattern of relationship linking all living creatures—a pattern so identified in their minds with what they consider to be the necessary cause of the pattern—descent with modification—that, to them, biological relationship means evolutionary relationship" (p. 63, emphasis in original).

The deceptive, smoke-and-mirror language of evolution revolves largely around the classification of living species. Darwinists attempt to explain natural relationships they observe in the animal and plant world by categorizing animal and plant life according to physical similarities. It could be said that Darwin's theory is nothing more than educated observance of the obvious; that is, the conclusion that most animals appear to be related to one another because most animals have one or more characteristics in common.

For instance, you might have a superficial classification of whales, penguins and sharks in a group classified as aquatic
animals. You might also have birds, bats and bees grouped as flying creatures. These are not the final classifications because there are many other obvious differences. The Darwinist approach, however, is to use the obvious general similarities to show, not that animals were merely alike in many ways, but that they were related to each other by descent from common ancestors.

Professor Johnson expresses it this way: "Darwin proposed a naturalistic explanation for the essentialist features of the living world that was so stunning in its logical appeal that it conquered the scientific world even while doubts remained about some important parts of his theory. He theorized that the discontinuous groups of the living world were the descendants of long-extinct common ancestors. Relatively closely related groups (like reptiles, birds, and mammals) shared a relatively recent common ancestor; all vertebrates shared a more ancient common ancestor; and all animals shared a still more ancient common ancestor. He then proposed that the ancestors must have been linked to their descendants by long chains of transitional intermediates, also extinct" (p. 64).

Evolutionists exercise selective perception when looking at the evidence—rather like deciding whether to view half a glass of water as half empty or half full. They choose to dwell on similarities rather than differences. By doing so they lead you away from the truth of the matter: that similarities are evidence of a common Designer behind the structure and function of the life-forms. Each species of animal was created and designed to exist and thrive in a particular way. Darwin and the subsequent proponents of the evolutionary view of life focused on similarities within the major classifications of animals and drew the assumption that those similarities prove that all animals are related to one another through common ancestors.

However, there are major differences in the life-forms on earth. If, as evolution supposes, all life-forms had common ancestors and chains of intermediates linking those ancestors, the fossil record should overflow with many such intermediate forms between species. But as we have already seen, paleontologists themselves admit it shows no such thing.

Simple life-forms?

Since the fossil record does not support the traditional evolutionary view, what does it show?

We have already seen how several well-known paleontologists admit that the fossil record shows the sudden appearance of life-forms. As Stephen Jay Gould puts it, "In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors: it appears all at once and 'fully formed'" (Gould, pp. 13-14).

When we sweep away the evolutionary bias inherent in most presentations of the fossil record, we find that the record does not show a gradual ascent from simple to complex. Consider some of the earliest fossils found, those of bacteria. What is interesting about bacteria is that they are not simple organisms at all.

In reality there are no simple life-forms. Modern technology has shown that even a single cell is extraordinarily complex.

Michael Behe is associate professor of biochemistry at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University. Noting scientists' changing perceptions of the most elementary forms of life, he writes: "We humans tend to have a rather exalted opinion of ourselves, and that attitude can color our perception of the biological world. In particular, our attitude about what is higher and lower in biology, what is an advanced organism and what is a primitive organism, starts with the presumption that the pinnacle of nature is ourselves . . . Nonetheless, other organisms, if they could talk, could argue strongly for their own superiority. This includes bacteria, which we often think of as the rudest forms of life" (Darwin's Black Box, 1996, pp. 69-70).

When Darwin wrote The Origin of Species about a century and a half ago, scientists did not know nearly as much about the cell (and single-celled organisms) as we do today. Darwin thought that single-celled organisms were quite primitive. In fact, at that time many still thought that life could arise naturally from nonliving matter—for example, that decaying meat spontaneously produced flies.

Years passed before French scientist Louis Pasteur demonstrated, through a series of meticulous experiments, the impossibility of the notion. Yet even Pasteur had quite a battle with scientists of his day in convincing them that life came only from preexisting life-forms.

So Darwin's idea—that single-celled meant simple—was not questioned at the time. Later discoveries have shown that even the single-celled organisms found early in the fossil record are far more complex than Darwin and others could have imagined.

An explosion of life-forms

Paleontologists widely consider the Cambrian Period, one of the oldest in their view, to be the earliest in which extensive life-forms are preserved. Since only the remains of marine life are found in Cambrian strata, paleontologists interpret these deposits as dating to a time before land animals had evolved.

The Encarta Encyclopedia says of this time: "By the beginning of the Paleozoic Era, the steadily increasing oxygen content of the atmosphere and oceans . . . had made it possible for the marine environment to support new forms of life that could derive energy from respiration. Although life had not yet invaded dry land or the air, the seas of the Cambrian Period teemed with a great variety of marine invertebrates, including sponges, worms, bryozoans ('moss animals'), hydrozoans, brachiopods, mollusks (among them the gastropods and species ancestral to the nautilus), primitive arthropods such as the
trilobite, and a few species of stalked echinoderms.

"The only plant life of the time consisted of marine algae. Because many of these new organisms were relatively large, complex marine invertebrates with hard shells and skeletons of chitin or lime, they had a far better chance of fossil preservation than the soft-bodied creatures of the previous Precambrian Era" (1997, "Cambrian Period," emphasis added).

Notice that complex marine invertebrates are found in fossil deposits from the Cambrian Period. Many don't realize it, but even paleontologists acknowledge that life does not start with only a few simple creatures. At the lowest levels of the geologic strata, the fossil record consists of complex creatures such as trilobites.

Time magazine said in a lengthy cover story describing fossilized creatures found in Cambrian strata: "In a burst of creativity like nothing before or since, nature appears to have sketched out the blueprints for virtually the whole of the animal kingdom. This explosion of biological diversity is described by scientists as biology's Big Bang" (Madeleine Nash, "When Life Exploded," Dec. 4, 1995, p. 68).

Contrary to the assumptions of early evolutionists, life does not start with only a few rudimentary species. Even those who hold to the traditional interpretation of the fossil record admit that it begins with many life-forms similar to those we find today. At the same time, they cannot explain such a vast "explosion" of life-forms in such a short amount of geologic time, which evolutionary theory predicts would take far longer.

Unanswered questions

Supporters of evolution have had to back down from the claims of Darwin and others. "Over the decades, evolutionary theorists beginning with Charles Darwin have tried to argue that the appearance of multicelled animals during the Cambrian merely seemed sudden, and in fact had been preceded by a lengthy period of evolution for which the geological record was missing. But this explanation, while it patched over a hole in an otherwise masterly theory, now seems increasingly unsatisfactory" (ibid.).

Again, the facts etched in stone do not match the assumptions and predictions of evolutionary thought. Even if we accept the evolutionists' interpretation of the fossil record, we see life beginning at the lowest levels with complex creatures, with elaborate organs and other features—but with no known ancestors. Life does not start as predicted by evolution, with simple forms gradually changing into more-complex species.

Although toeing the evolutionary line, the Time magazine article admits: "Of course, understanding what made the Cambrian explosion possible doesn't address the larger question of what made it happen so fast. Here scientists delicately slide across data-thin ice, suggesting scenarios that are based on intuition rather than solid evidence" (Time, p. 73).

Evolutionists have been known to pointedly criticize Christians because they don't have scientific proof of miracles recorded in the Bible. Yet here is a supremely important geological event with far-reaching implications for the theory of evolution—but one for which scientists have no explanation. Of course, they must assume that life came from nonlife—in violation of the laws of biogenesis. Don't their fundamental assumptions, then, also amount to faith?

A reasonable explanation is that the life-forms found in the Cambrian strata were created by God, who did not work by chance but by design.

The fossil record is the only objective evidence we can examine to see whether evolution is true. But, rather than supporting Darwinism, it shows exceedingly complex organisms in what evolutionists interpret as the oldest fossil strata, no intermediate forms between species, little if any change in species over their entire span in the fossil record, and the sudden appearance of new life-forms rather than the gradual change expected by Darwin and his followers.

If we look at the evidence objectively, we realize that the creation story in Genesis 1—describing the sudden appearance of life-forms—is a credible explanation.

The Problem of "Living Fossils"

The geologic column depicted in many science textbooks and museums supposedly shows which life-forms existed at any particular time in the history of our planet. Trilobites, for example, are thought to have lived during the Cambrian Period and later became extinct.

Dinosaurs walked the earth during what are called the Jurassic and Triassic periods and likewise later became extinct.

According to traditional scientific thinking, such creatures should not be found on earth today because the geologic column shows they fell victim to extinction many millions of years ago. However, several discoveries of "living fossils" have cast doubt on this long-accepted interpretation of the fossil record.

An astounding catch

Perhaps the most stunning—and famous—of these living fossils is the coelacanth. Fossils of this unusual fish first appear in strata from the Devonian period, with an estimated age of 350 million years.

For years paleontologists thought the coelacanth became extinct about 70 million years ago, since they found no fossil remains of the fish in deposits formed later than the Cretaceous period. But things changed dramatically in December 1938, when a fishing trawler captured a living coelacanth off the eastern coast of South Africa. Scientists were stunned.

After all, the discovery was akin to finding a living dinosaur in a remote patch of jungle!

Since that first shocking discovery, fishermen and scientists obtained more specimens.

Researchers were dismayed to find that the inhabitants of the Comoro Islands, near the initial find, had used coelacanths as food for years, drying and salting the rare fish's meat.

The discovery of living coelacanths proved to be a profound embarrassment for those trying to use evolution to interpret the geologic record.

It was especially embarrassing for those who, based on fossilized specimens, had earlier proposed the coelacanth as a prime candidate for the kind of fish that would have first crawled out of the oceans to dwell on land. Yet the discovery of a fish that was supposed to have been extinct for millions of years, one that some paleontologists had hoped was a vital missing link in the supposed evolutionary chain, hasn't led many to question their assumptions regarding the supposed evolutionary timetable.

If coelacanths were the only creatures found alive that were supposed to have been long extinct, then we might accept their discovery as an oddity that proved little or nothing.

But the list of such living fossils has grown considerably in recent years.

Jurassic forest found alive

Another such living fossil is a pine tree that, according to the traditional interpretation of the geologic column, was supposed to have been extinct for more than 100 million years. But that changed with a remarkable 1994 discovery:

"Venturing into an isolated grove in a rain-forest preserve 125 miles from Sydney, the Parks and Wildlife Service officer [David Noble] suddenly found himself in a real-life 'Jurassic Park'—standing amid trees thought to have disappeared 150 million years ago . . . 'The discovery is the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur still alive on Earth,' said Carrick Chambers, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens . . . The closest relatives of the Wollemi Pines died out in the Jurassic Period, 190 million to 135 million years ago, and the Cretaceous Period, 140 million to 65 million years ago" (Salt Lake City Tribune, Dec. 15, 1994, p. A10).

Similarly, the dawn redwood (species Metasequoia glyptostroboides) was discovered in China in 1941. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "Discovered first as fossils in Miocene (23.7 to 5.3 million years ago) deposits, it was assumed to have become extinct until it was discovered growing in Szechwan province in China. Its distribution in the late Mesozoic and Tertiary (66.4 to 1.6 million years ago) was throughout the Northern Hemisphere" (Internet version, 2000, "Gymnosperm").

Evolution stopped in its tracks?

Another living fossil is the tuatara, a lizardlike animal found only on several islands off the coast of New Zealand. According to The Encyclopaedia Britannica, this strange creature "has two pairs of well-developed limbs and a scaly crest down the neck and back. Unlike lizards, it has a third eyelid, the nictitating membrane, which closes horizontally, and a pineal eye, an organ of doubtful function between the two normal eyes. The tuatara also has a bony arch, low on the skull behind the eyes, that is formed by the presence of two large openings . . . in the region of the temple.

"It is this bony arch, which is not found in lizards, that has been cited as evidence that tuataras are survivors of the otherwise extinct order Rhynchocephalia and are not lizards.

And indeed, tuataras differ little from the closely related form Homeosaurus, which lived 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period" (Internet version, "Tuatara").

The Encyclopaedia Britannica adds that the tuatara is "a reptile that has shown little morphological evolution for nearly 200,000,000 years since the early Mesozoic" ("Evolution").

Another example is a marine mollusk that goes by the scientific name Monoplacophoran.

"In 1952 several live monoplacophorans were dredged from a depth of 3,570m (about 11,700 feet) off the coast of Costa Rica. Until then it was thought that they had become extinct 400,000,000 years ago" (Britannica, "Monoplacophoran").

By no means are these the only examples of living fossils. These are simply examples of animals and plants that, based on where they were found in the fossil record, scientists had assumed had died out millions of years ago.

Other creatures, such as the nautilus, brachiopod, horseshoe crab and even the ubiquitous cockroach, are virtually unchanged from fossils paleontologists date to hundreds of millions of years ago.

In spite of much wishful thinking on the part of evolutionists, the fossil record does not and cannot be made to agree with Darwinism.

The Fossil Record: Expectation vs. Fact

Traditional evolutionary theory predicts a fossil record that would contain:

• Simple life-forms gradually appearing with similar predecessors.

• Simple life-forms gradually changing over time into more complex forms.

• Countless transitional links between kinds of creatures.

• Beginnings of and partially completed features such as new limbs, bones and organs.

The biblical account of creation predicts a fossil record that would contain:

• Complex life-forms suddenly appearing with no evolutionary predecessors.

• Complex life-forms multiplying "after their kinds" (Genesis 1:21; 6:20), but with limited variety within those kinds.

• No transitional links between different kinds of creatures.

• No partial features such as new limbs, bones and organs.

After years of study and research, what does the fossil record show?

• Complex life-forms suddenly appearing with no evolutionary predecessors.

• Complex life-forms multiplying "after their kinds," but with limited variety within each species.

• No transitional links between different kinds of creatures.

• No partial features such as new limbs, bones and organs.

The Case Against Evolution

Many excellent books detail scientific findings and conclusions that compellingly demonstrate the impossibility of evolution as an explanation for the variety of life on earth. It's also helpful to remember that evolution cannot offer an explanation for the origin of our magnificent universe; evolution seeks to explain only how life proliferated in a universe that already existed.

If you would like to dig more deeply into the case against evolution, we recommend the following books, many written by people with science backgrounds:

• Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
Michael Behe, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, 1996. Demonstrates that the minute building blocks of life—cells and their myriad components—are far too complex for their codependent parts and processes to have evolved without an outside, intelligent design at work.

• Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life
Alister McGrath, professor of historical theology, Oxford University, 2005. Professor McGrath, a former atheist himself who holds a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics, takes on the assumptions of popular evolutionary proponent Richard Dawkins and the atheistic worldview he promotes.

• The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World
Alister McGrath, 2004. Professor McGrath traces the history and rise of modern atheism, fueled in large part by Darwin's theory of evolution, and how it has influenced the world.

• What Darwin Didn't Know
Geoffrey Simmons, M.D., 2004. Dr. Simmons dissects the theory of evolution from the perspective of a medical doctor, giving compelling reasons why evolution cannot explain many aspects of the human body. As he notes in the introduction, if Darwin's Origin of Species were submitted to a scientific publisher today, it would likely be rejected due to the author's woefully incomplete understanding of cellular biochemistry, physiology, genetics and other branches of science that deal with the human body.

• Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing
Edited by William Dembski, 2004. Dembski, who holds Ph.D.s in mathematics and philosophy, brings together essays from intellectuals of various fields who not only explain the scientific weaknesses of Darwinism, but contend that the best scientific evidence actually argues against Darwinian evolution.

• Mere Creation: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design
Edited by William Dembski, 1998. A collection of academic writings from the fields of physics, astrophysics, biology, anthropology, mechanical engineering and mathematics that challenge Darwinism and offer evidence supporting intelligent design in the universe.

• Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
Michael Denton, M.D., Ph.D., senior research fellow, University of Otago, New Zealand, 1996. A molecular biologist, Denton examines features of the natural world that mutation and natural selection cannot explain and shows the impossibility of transitional forms required for Darwinian evolution to have taken place.

• Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence From Science and the Bible
Alan Hayward, Ph.D., 1985. Written by a British physicist, an insightful book on the pros and cons of the evolution-vs.-science controversy.

• The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong
Francis Hitching, 1982. Points out many of the problems in the traditional view of evolution.

• Darwin on Trial
Phillip Johnson, professor of law, University of California, Berkeley, 1993. Shows that the weight of scientific evidence argues convincingly against the theory of evolution.

•Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education
Phillip Johnson, 1995. Discusses the cultural implications of belief in evolution—that is, that the philosophy behind Darwinian evolution has become in effect the dominant established religion in many societies.

• Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds
Phillip Johnson, 1997. Written specifically for older students and their parents and teachers to prepare them for the antireligion bias inherent in most advanced education.

• Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law & Culture
Phillip Johnson, 1998. Compilation of essays ranging from evolution and culture to law and religion.

• Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of the Human Fossils
Marvin Lubenow, 1992. Documents the serious problems with the supposed links between man and apes.

• Shattering the Myths of Darwinism
Richard Milton, 1997. A science journalist and noncreationist, Milton reveals the circular reasoning Darwinists must rely on for their arguments while discussing data widely acknowledged in scientific circles.

• Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism
James Perloff, 1999. A self-professed former atheist offers an easy-to-read view of evidence contradicting Darwinism, including many quotations from evolutionists and creationists. (The title is taken from a British astronomer's assessment that the likelihood of higher life-forms emerging through random mutation is comparable to saying a tornado sweeping through a junkyard could build a Boeing 747 airliner.)

• Not by Chance: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution
Lee Spetner, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998. Demonstrates that a fundamental premise of neo-Darwinism—that random mutation created the kinds of variations that allowed macroevolution to take place—is fatally flawed and could never have happened as Darwinists claim.

• Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?
Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., Yale University and University of California, Berkeley, 2000. A post-doctoral biologist documents that the most-used examples Darwinists call on to support evolution are fraudulent or misleading.

• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design
Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., 2006. Dr. Wells shows that the best scientific evidence, far from supporting Darwinism, actually supports intelligent design.

Although the publishers of this booklet do not agree with every conclusion presented in these books, we think they present a persuasive and compelling case that the theory of evolution is fundamentally and fatally flawed.

Can Evolution Explain Life's Complexity?

What have we learned since Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution, The Origin of Species, was first published in 1859? Science has advanced greatly since those horse-and-buggy days. In addition to a thorough exploration of the fossil record, a vast amount of other information is readily available.

As we saw in considering the fossil record, the controversy about evolution is increasing. Thomas Woodward chronicles the latest round of the intelligent design vs. evolution debate: "It was painfully real, and when the seething controversy exploded in August 2005—triggered by an offhand comment at the White House—millions of Americans shook their heads, either in disbelief or in anger, as it was discussed in headline news and network newscasts.

"Blamed for the growing crisis was an unlikely group of troublemakers, most with Ph.D.s after their names. This scattered group in recent years had grown into a network of several hundred scientists and other scholars . . . In case you hadn't guessed it, the group bore a name: the Intelligent Design Movement" (Darwin Strikes Back, pp. 19-20). The heated controversy quickly spread beyond the United States to most of the world.

Why the confusion and contention? Simply put, as we saw with the fossil record, the increasing scientific evidence doesn't fit the Darwinian model—and evolutionists increasingly are finding themselves on the defensive.

Why has this happened? Mainly because the primary supposed proofs of evolutionary theory have not held up to further discovery and scrutiny.

What about natural selection?

After the fossil record, the second supporting pillar of evolution offered by Darwinists is natural selection, which they hoped biologists would confirm. "Just as the breeders selected those individuals best suited to the breeder's needs to be the parents of the next generation," explained British philosopher Tom Bethell, "so, Darwin argued, nature selected those organisms that were best fitted to survive the struggle for existence. In that way evolution would inevitably occur. And so there it was: a sort of improving machine inevitably at work in nature, 'daily and hourly scrutinizing,' Darwin wrote, 'silently and insensibly working . . . at the improvement of each organic being.'

"In this way, Darwin thought, one type of organism could be transformed into another—for instance, he suggested, bears into whales. So that was how we came to have horses and tigers and things—by natural selection" ("Darwin's Mistake,"The Craft of Prose, Robert Woodward and Wendell Smith, editors, 1977, p. 309).

Darwin saw natural selection as the major factor driving evolutionary change. But how has this second pillar of evolutionary theory fared since Darwin's day? In truth, it has been quietly discarded by an increasing number of theorists among the scientific community.

Darwin's idea that the survival of the fittest would explain how species evolved has been relegated to a redundant, self-evident statement. Geneticist Conrad Waddington of Edinburgh University defines the fundamental problem of advocating natural selection as a proof of Darwinism: "Natural selection . . . turns out on closer inspection to be a tautology, a statement of an inevitable although previously unrecognized relation. It states that the fittest individuals in a population . . . will leave most offspring" (p. 310).

In other words, the answer to the question of which are the fittest are those that survive, of course. And which ones survive? Why, naturally, the fittest. The problem is that circular reasoning doesn't point to any independent criteria that can evaluate whether the theory is true.

Selection doesn't change species

Darwin cited an example of the way natural selection was supposed to work: A wolf that had inherited the ability to run especially fast was better equipped to survive. His advantage in outrunning others in the pack when food was scarce meant he could eat better and thus survive longer.

Yet the very changes that enabled the wolf to run faster could easily become a hindrance if other modifications of the body did not accompany the increased speed. For example, the additional exertion required to run faster would naturally place an added strain on the animal's heart, and eventually it could drop dead from a heart attack. The survival of the fittest would require that any biological or anatomical alterations would have to be in harmony and synchronized with other bodily modifications, or the changes would be of no benefit.

Natural selection, scientists have found, in reality deals only with the number of a species, not the change of the species to another. It has to do with the survival and not the arrival of the species. Natural selection only preserves existing genetic information (DNA); it doesn't create genetic material that would allow an animal's offspring to sprout a new organ, limb or other anatomical feature.

"Natural selection," said Professor Waddington, "is that some things leave more offspring than others; and you ask, which leave more offspring than others? And it is those that leave more offspring; and there is nothing more to it than that. The whole guts of evolution —which is, how do you come to have horses and tigers and things—is outside the mathematical theory [of neo-Darwinism]" (Wistar Symposium, Moorehead and Kaplan, 1967, p. 14).

Tom Bethell gets to the heart of the problem with natural selection as the foundation of evolution: "This was no good at all. As T.H. Morgan [1933 Nobel Prize winner in medicine for his experiments with the Drosophila fruit fly] had remarked, with great clarity: 'Selection, then, has not produced anything new, but only more of certain kinds of individuals. Evolution, however, means producing new things, not more of what already exists'" (Bethell, pp. 311-312, emphasis added).

Bethell concludes: "Darwin's theory, I believe, is on the verge of collapse. In his famous book, [The Origin of Species], Darwin made a mistake sufficiently serious to undermine his theory. And that mistake has only recently been recognized as such . . . I have not been surprised to read . . . that in some of the latest evolutionary theories 'natural selection plays no role at all.' Darwin, I suggest, is in the process of being discarded, but perhaps in deference to the venerable old gentleman, . . . it is being done as discreetly and gently as possible, with a minimum of publicity" (pp. 308, 313-314).

Sadly, the critical examination of natural selection has been undertaken so discreetly that most people are unaware of it—so the pervasive deception that began a century and a half ago continues.

Yet more scientists are becoming vocal. Writing in the June 26, 2007, New York Times, Douglas Erwin, a senior scientist at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, dared to admit the present confusion about the role of natural selection in evolution:

"Is Darwin due for an upgrade? There are growing calls among some evolutionary biologists for just such a revision, although they differ about what form this might take . . . In the past few years every element of this [evolutionary] paradigm has been attacked. Concerns about the sources of evolutionary innovation and discoveries about how DNA evolves have led some to propose that mutations, not selection, drive much of evolution, or at least the main episodes of innovation, like the origin of major animal groups, including vertebrates" ("Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift").

A look at random mutation

If natural selection is not the answer, what about the third supporting pillar of evolution, random mutation?

Curiously enough, Darwin himself was one of the first to discount beneficial effects from rare changes he noted in species. He did not even include them in his theory. "He did not consider them important," says Maurice Caullery in his book Genetics and Heredity, "because they nearly always represented an obvious disadvantage from the point of view of the struggle for existence; consequently they would most likely be rapidly eliminated in the wild state by the operation of natural selection" (1964, p. 10, emphasis added).

In Darwin's lifetime the principles of genetics were not clearly understood. Gregor Mendel had published his findings on genetic principles in 1866, but his work was overlooked at the time. Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, Hugo De Vries rediscovered these principles, which evolutionists quickly seized on to support evolution. Sir Julian Huxley, one of the principal spokesmen for evolutionary theory in the 20th century, commented on the unpredictability of mutations: "Mutation . . . provides the raw material of evolution; it is a random affair and takes place in all directions" (Evolution in Action,1953, p. 38).

So, "shortly after the turn of the [19th to the 20th] century, Darwin's theory suddenly seemed plausible again," writes Francis Hitching. "It was found that once in a while, absolutely at random (about once in ten million times during cell division, we now know) the genes make a copying mistake. These mistakes are known as mutations, and are mostly harmful. They lead to a weakened plant, or a sick or deformed creature. They do not persist within the species, because they are eliminated by natural selection . . .

"However, followers of Darwin have come to believe that it is the occasional beneficial mutation, rarely though it happens, which is what counts in evolution. They say these favorable mutations, together with sexual mixing, are sufficient to explain how the whole bewildering variety of life on Earth today originated from a common genetic source" (The Neck of the Giraffe, p. 49, emphasis added).

Mutations: liability, not benefit

What has almost a century of research discovered? That mutations are pathological mistakes and not helpful changes in the genetic code.

C.P. Martin of McGill University in Montreal wrote, "Mutation is a pathological process which has had little or nothing to do with evolution" ("A Non-Geneticist Looks at Evolution," American Scientist, January 1953, p. 100). Professor Martin's investigations revealed that mutations are overwhelmingly negative and never creative. He observed that an apparently beneficial mutation was likely only a correction of a previously deleterious one, similar to punching a man with a dislocated shoulder and inadvertently putting it back into place.

Science writer Richard Milton explains the problem: "The results of such copying errors are tragically familiar. In body cells, faulty replication shows itself as cancer. Sunlight's mutagenic [mutation-inducing] power causes skin cancer; the cigarette's mutagenic power causes lung cancer. In sexual cells, faulty reproduction of whole chromosome number 21 results in a child with Down's syndrome" (Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, p. 156). Yet evolutionists would have us believe that such genetic mistakes are not only not harmful to the afflicted creature but are helpful in the long run.

Professor Phillip Johnson observes, "To suppose that such a random event could reconstruct even a single complex organ like a liver or kidney is about as reasonable as to suppose that an improved watch can be designed by throwing an old one against a wall" (Darwin on Trial, p. 37).

We can be thankful that mutations are extremely rare. An average of one mistake per 10 million correct copies occurs in the genetic code. Whoever or whatever types 10 million letters with only one mistake would easily be the world's best typist and probably would not be human. Yet this is the astounding accuracy of our supposedly blind genetic code when it replicates itself.

If, however, these copying errors were to accumulate, a species, instead of improving, would eventually degenerate and perish. But geneticists have discovered a self-correcting system.

"The genetic code in each living thing has its own built-in limitations," says Hitching. "It seems designed to stop a plant or creature stepping too far away from the average . . . Every series of breeding experiments that has ever taken place has established a finite limit to breeding possibilities. Genes are a strong influence for conservatism, and allow only modest change. Left to their own devices, artificially bred species usually die out (because they are sterile or less robust)
or quickly revert to the norm" (pp. 54-55).

Writing about zoologist Pierre-Paul Grassé, Alan Hayward says: "In 1973 he published a major book on evolution . . . First and foremost, the book aims to expose Darwinism as a theory that does not work, because it clashes with so many experimental findings.

"As Grassé says in his introduction: 'Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution . . . Some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs' . . .

"Take mutation first. Grassé has studied this extensively, both inside his laboratory and in nature. In all sorts of living things, from bacteria to plants and animals, he has observed that mutations do not take succeeding generations further and further from their starting point. Instead, the changes are like the flight of a butterfly in a green house, which travels for miles without moving more than a few feet from its starting point. There are invisible but firmly fixed boundaries that mutations can never cross . . . He insists that mutations are only trivial changes; they are merely the result of slightly altered genes, whereas 'creative evolution . . . demands the genesis of new ones'" (Creation and Evolution, p. 25).

Embarrassingly for evolutionists, mutation is also not the answer. If anything, the self-correcting system to eliminate mutations shows that a great intelligence was at work when the overall genetic system was designed so that random mutations would not destroy the beneficial genes. Ironically, mutation shows the opposite of what evolutionism teaches: In real life, random mutation is the villain and not the hero.

This takes us to one last point on mutations: the inability of evolution to explain the appearance of simple life and intricate organs.

The wondrous cell

Cells are marvelous and incredibly complicated living things. They are self-sufficient and function like miniature chemical factories. The closer we look at cells, the more we realize their incredible complexity.

For example, the cell membrane is a wonder in itself. If it were too porous, harmful solutions would enter and cause the cell to burst. On the other hand, if the membrane were too impervious, nourishment could not come in and waste products could not go out, and the cell would quickly die.

Dr. Michael Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, summarizes one of the fundamental flaws of evolution as an explanation for any form of life: "Darwin's theory encounters its greatest difficulties when it comes to explaining the development of the cell. Many cellular systems are what I term 'irreducibly complex.' That means the system needs several components before it can work properly.

"An everyday example of irreducible complexity is a mousetrap, built of several pieces (platform, hammer, spring and so on). Such a system probably cannot be put together in a Darwinian manner, gradually improving its function. You can't catch a mouse with just the platform and then catch a few more by adding the spring. All the pieces have to be in place before you catch any mice."

Professor Behe's point is that a cell missing a tenth of its parts doesn't function only one tenth less as well as a complete cell; it doesn't function at all. He concludes: "The bottom line is that the cell—the very basis of life—is staggeringly complex. But doesn't science already have answers, or partial answers, for how these systems originated? No" ("Darwin Under the Microscope," New York Times, Oct. 29, 1996, p. A25).

Miniature technological marvel

Michael Denton, the molecular biologist and senior research fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand, contrasts how the cell was viewed in Darwin's day with what today's researchers can see. In Darwin's time the cell could be viewed at best at a magnification of several hundred times. Using the best technology of their day, when scientists viewed the cell they saw "a relatively disappointing spectacle appearing only as an ever-changing and apparently disordered pattern of blobs and particles which, under the influence of unseen turbulent forces, [were] continually tossed haphazardly in all directions" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 328).

The years since then have brought astounding technological advancements. Now researchers can peer into the tiniest parts of cells. Do they still see only formless blobs, or do they witness something far more astounding?

"To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology," writes Dr. Denton, "we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design.

"On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units.

"The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometre in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules . . .

"We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines. We would notice that the simplest of the functional components of the cell, the protein molecules, were astonishingly complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial conformation.

"We would wonder even more as we watched the strangely purposeful activities of these weird molecular machines, particularly when we realized that, despite all our accumulated knowledge of physics and chemistry, the task of designing one such molecular machine—that is one single functional protein molecule—would be beyond our capacity . . . Yet the life of the cell depends on the integrated activities of thousands, certainly tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of different protein molecules" (pp. 328-329).

This is a molecular biologist's description of one cell. The human body contains about 10 trillion (10,000,000,000,000) brain, nerve, muscle and other types of cells.

Did this come about by chance?

Yet as complex as cells are, the smallest living things are even far more intricate. Sir James Gray, a Cambridge University professor of zoology, states: "Bacteria [are] far more complex than any inanimate system known to man. There is not a laboratory in the world which can compete with the biochemical activity of the smallest living organism" (quoted by Marshall and Sandra Hall,The Truth: God or Evolution? 1974, p. 89).

How complex are the tiniest living things? Even the simplest must possess a staggering amount of genetic information to function. For instance, the bacterium R. coli is one of the tiniest unicellular creatures in nature. Scientists calculate that it has some 2,000 genes, each with around 1,000 enzymes (organic catalysts, chemicals that speed up other chemical reactions). An enzyme is made up of a billion nucleotides, each of which amounts to a letter in the chemical alphabet, comparable to a byte in computer language. These enzymes instruct the organism how to function and reproduce. The DNA information in just this single tiny cell is "the approximate equivalent of 100 million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica" (John Whitcomb, The Early Earth, 1972, p. 79).

What are the odds that the enzymes needed to produce the simplest living creature—with each enzyme performing a specific chemical function—could come together by chance? Astrophysicists Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe calculated the odds at one chance in 10 40,000 (that is, 10 to the 40,000th power: mathematical shorthand for a 10 followed by 40,000 zeros, a number long enough to fill about a dozen pages of this publication).

Note that a probability of less than 1 in 10 50 is considered by mathematicians to be a complete impossibility (Hayward, pp. 35-37). By comparison, Sir Arthur Eddington, another mathematician, estimates there are no more than 10 80 atoms in the universe! (Hitching, p. 70).

As long as evolutionists keep their conceptions as vague abstractions, they can sound plausible. But when rigorous mathematics are applied to their generalities, and their assertions are specifically quantified, the underpinnings of Darwinian evolution are exposed as so implausible and unrealistic as to be impossible.

Scientists' revealing reaction

Professor Behe comments on the curious academic and scientific reaction to discoveries about the intricacy of the cell: "Over the past four decades modern biochemistry has uncovered the secrets of the cell. The progress has been hard won. It has required tens of thousands of people to dedicate the better parts of their lives to the tedious work of the laboratory . . .

"The results of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell—to investigate life at the molecular level—is a loud, clear, piercing cry of 'design!' The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun or that disease is caused by bacteria or that radiation is emitted in quanta.

"The magnitude of the victory, gained at such great cost through sustained effort over the course of decades, would be expected to send champagne corks flying in labs around the world. This triumph of science should evoke cries of 'Eureka!' from ten thousand throats, should occasion much hand-slapping and high-fiving, and perhaps even be an excuse to take the day off.

"But no bottles have been uncorked, no hands slapped. Instead a curious, embarrassed silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell. When the subject comes up in public, feet start to shuffle, and breathing gets a bit labored. In private people are a bit more relaxed; many explicitly admit the obvious but then stare at the ground, shake their heads, and let it go at that.

"Why does the scientific community not greedily embrace its startling discovery? Why is the observation of design handled with intellectual gloves? The dilemma is that while one side of the elephant is labeled intelligent design, the other side might be labeled God" (pp. 232-233, original emphasis).

These discoveries reveal that the simplest living cell is so intricate and complex in its design that even the possibility of its coming into existence accidentally is unthinkable. It is clear that evolutionists don't have a rational answer to how the first cells were formed. This is just one of their many problems in trying to explain a wondrous creation that they argue had to come together by chance.

Darwinism Is Not the Same as Evolution

A word of caution on the use of the term evolution: It can mean different things to different people. The dictionary first defines evolution as a process of change from a lower to a higher state and, second, as the theory Darwin advocated. But they are not the same. Evolution literally means simply the successive appearances of perfectly formed life without regard to how it got there. It does not have to refer to Darwinism, which is the doctrine that gradual change led to one species becoming another through the process of natural selection.

A species is generally defined as a living thing that can reproduce only after its own kind. So, although most scientists mean Darwinism when they use the term, the two definitions of the term are not synonymous and should be carefully defined by the context.

"Why is it," asks physicist Alan Hayward, "that the terms 'Darwinism' and 'evolution' are so often used (wrongly) as if they meant the same thing? Simply because it was Darwin who put the old idea of evolution on its feet. Before Darwin, evolution was regarded by most people as a wild, unbelievable notion. After Darwin, evolution seemed such a reasonable idea that the general public soon took it for granted.

"Many people since Darwin's day have tried to find an alternative explanation of evolution, but none has succeeded. Just as when he first proposed it, Darwin's appears the only conceivable method of evolution. It still seems that Darwinism and evolution must stand or fall together" (Creation and Evolution, 1985, p. 5).

This is a reason many Darwinists are so adamant about their theory. They know the implications if they fail: The alternative explanation for life on earth is a Creator God. Professor L.T. More has candidly admitted in his book The Dogma of Evolution: "Our faith in the doctrine of Evolution depends upon our reluctance to accept the antagonistic doctrine of special creation [by God]" (quoted by Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe, 1982, p. 109).

Microevolution Doesn't Prove Macroevolution

Studies that find small variations within a species over time, such as in the size of finch beaks or the coloration of moths, are sometimes used to try to prove Darwinian evolution. But such studies are sometimes flawed. And even if valid, they provide no such proof.

Adaptation within a species is called microevolution. It is the same phenomenon at work when the average height of men and women increased by several inches in the Western world over the course of the 1900s. Better health and nutrition played a large part in producing larger-sized people. In the same way, microevolution is at work when breeders produce varieties ranging from Chihuahuas to Great Danes within the one species Canis familiaris —the domestic dog.

These examples show, as in the rest of nature, that all species do have a margin of change available within their genetic pool to adapt to conditions. This trait is found in man, who can adapt to freezing weather, as the Eskimos do, or to the broiling sun in the desert, as bedouins have done. But bedouins and Eskimos are still human beings, and if they changed environments again, eventually their offspring would also go through minor changes to better adapt to their new environment.

What has never been scientifically demonstrated—in spite of many examples of wishful thinking—is macroevolution, or the change from one distinct species to another. Dogs have never evolved into birds or human beings.

Phillip Johnson goes to the heart of the matter: "Critics of evolutionary theory are well aware of the standard examples of microevolution, including dog breeding and the cyclical variations that have been seen in things like finch beaks and moth populations. The difference is that we interpret these observations as examples of the capacity of dogs and finches to vary within limits, not of a process capable of creating dogs and finches, much less the main groups of plants and animals, in the first place . . .

"As any creationist (and many evolutionists) would see the matter, making the case for 'evolution' as a general theory of life's history requires a lot more than merely citing examples of small-scale variation. It requires showing how extremely complex biological structures can be built up from simple beginnings by natural processes, without the need for input or guidance from a supernatural Creator" (Reason in the Balance, 1995, p. 74).

Thus some cited examples of evolution at work are really no proof at all of anything —much less how any of these creatures—moths, dogs, finches or human beings—came to exist.

The Miracle of the Eye

Charles Darwin described the eye as one of the greatest challenges to his theory. How could he explain it? The eye, after all, is simply incompatible with evolution. "To suppose," he admitted, "that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances . . . could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree" (The Origin of Species, 1859, Masterpieces of Science Edition, 1958, p. 146).

Jesus said that "the lamp of the body is the eye" (Matthew 6:22).

The human eye possesses 130 million light-sensitive rods and cones that convert light into chemical impulses. These signals travel at a rate of a billion per second to the brain.

The essential problem for Darwinists is how so many intricate components could have independently evolved to work together perfectly when, if a single component didn't function perfectly, nothing would work at all.

Think about it. Partial transitional structures are no aid to a creature's survival and may even be a hindrance. If they are a hindrance, no further gradual development would occur because the creature would, according to advocates of natural selection, be less apt to survive than the other creatures around him. What good is half a wing or an eye without a retina? Consequently, either such structures as feathered wings must have appeared all at once, either by absurdly implausible massive mutations ("hopeful monsters," as scientists refer to such hypothetical creatures) or by creation.

"Now it is quite evident," says Francis Hitching, "that if the slightest thing goes wrong en route—if the cornea is fuzzy, or the pupil fails to dilate, or the lens becomes opaque, or the focusing goes wrong—then a recognizable image is not formed. The eye either functions as a whole, or not at all.

"So how did it come to evolve by slow, steady, infinitesimally small Darwinian improvements? Is it really possible that thousands upon thousands of lucky chance mutations happened coincidentally so that the lens and the retina, which cannot work without each other, evolved in synchrony? What survival value can there be in an eye that doesn't see?

"Small wonder that it troubled Darwin. 'To this day the eye makes me shudder,' [Darwin] wrote to his botanist friend Asa Gray in February, 1860" (The Neck of the Giraffe, 1982, p. 86).

Incredible as the eye is, consider that we have not one but two of them. This matched pair, coupled with an interpretive center in the brain, allows us to determine distances to the objects we see. Our eyes also have the ability to focus automatically by elongating or compressing themselves. They are also inset beneath a bony brow that, along with automatic shutters in the form of eyelids, provide protection for these intricate and delicate organs.

Darwin should have considered two passages in the Bible. "The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both," wrote King Solomon (Proverbs 20:12). And Psalm 94:9 asks: "He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?"

The same can be said of the brain, nose, palate and dozens of other complex and highly developed organs in any human being or animal. It would take a quantum leap of faith to think all this just evolved. Yet that is commonly taught and accepted.

After reviewing the improbability of such organs arising in nature from an evolutionary process, Professor H.S. Lipson, a member of the British Institute of Physics, wrote in 1980: "We must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it" (Physics Bulletin, Vol. 30, p. 140).

Blood Clotting: A Biological Miracle

One relatively simple process necessary for animal life is the ability for blood to clot to seal a wound and prevent an injured animal (or person) from bleeding to death. Yet the only way this intricate system works is when many complicated chemical substances interact. If only one ingredient is missing or doesn't function in the right way—as in the genetic blood disorder hemophilia—the process fails, and the victim bleeds to death.

How can complex substances appear at just the right time in the right proportions and mix properly to clot blood and prevent death? Either they function flawlessly or clotting doesn't work at all.

At the same time, medical science is aware of clotting at the wrong time. Blood clots that cut off the flow of oxygen to the brain are a leading cause of strokes and often result in paralysis or death. When blood clots, either everything works perfectly or the likely outcome is death.

For evolution to have led to this astounding phenomenon, multiple mutations of just the right kind had to converge simultaneously or the mutations would be useless. Evolutionists can offer no realistic explanation of how this is possible.

Oddities in Nature That Defy Evolution

When Darwin proposed his famous theory back in 1859, he was aware that one of the glaring weaknesses of his speculations was how to explain complex features in animals by small and gradual evolutionary steps. He admitted, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down" (The Origin of Species, Masterpieces of Science edition, p. 149).

About 150 years later, research has provided numerous examples in nature in which complex organs in animals could not have developed by small, successive steps. From molecular science on up, many complex systems had to appear simultaneously, with all their components intact, or they would not function, thus offering no survival advantage.

Professor Michael Behe explains: "It was once expected that the basis of life would be exceedingly simple. That expectation has been smashed. Vision, motion, and other biological functions have proven to be no less sophisticated than television cameras and automobiles. Science has made enormous progress in understanding how the chemistry of life works, but the elegance and complexity of biological systems at the molecular level have paralyzed science's attempt to explain their origins" (Darwin's Black Box, 1998, p. x).

Indeed, at every level, the complexity of life and its stunning array of functionality defies evolution.

The bombardier beetle's chemical weapon

One example of this kind of biological complexity is the bombardier beetle's defense system. It has so many essential parts and chemicals that if any are missing, the whole system will not work. Moreover, if everything did not work just right, the deadly chemical mixture inside the beetle would prove fatal rather than favorable.

The tiny beetle, less than an inch long, appears as a tasty morsel for many types of animals. But as they near the beetle to gobble it up, they suddenly find themselves sprayed with a scalding and noxious solution that forces them to beat a fast retreat. How can this unassuming insect produce such a complex and effective defense system?

The components making up the beetle's effective chemical warfare have been analyzed by chemists and biologists down to the molecular level. When the beetle senses danger, it secretes two chemicals, hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, that end up in a storage chamber inside its body. By tensing certain muscles, it moves the chemicals to another compartment, called the explosion chamber.

But, just as a loaded cannon will not go off without some sort of ignition device, so these two chemicals will not explode without the right catalyst being added. Inside the beetle's body, this catalyst is injected into the explosion chamber. As a result, a boiling hot and toxic liquid is spewed out of the beetle's rear toward the threatening predator's face. All three chemical elements and chambers have to exist for this powerful defense system to work.

How could such a complex system evolve by gradual steps? With only the two chemicals mixing, nothing happens. But when the catalyst is added in the proper amount and at the right time, the beetle is equipped with an amazing chemical cannon. Could all these components appear by a gradual, step-by-step process?

Francis Hitching comments on the bombardier beetle's defense system: "The chain of events that could have led to the evolution of such a complex, coordinated and subtle process is beyond biological explanation on a simple step-by-step basis. The slightest alteration in the chemical balance would result immediately in a race of exploded beetles. The problem of evolutionary novelties is quite widely accepted among biologists . . . In every case, the difficulty is compounded by the lack of fossil evidence. The first time that the plant, creature, or organ appears, it is in its finished state, so to speak" (The Neck of the Giraffe, p. 68).

Nevertheless, evolutionist Richard Dawkins tries to dismiss the complex features of the bombardier beetle by simply saying: "As for the evolutionary precursors of the system, both hydrogen peroxide and various kinds of quinones are used for other purposes in body chemistry. The bombardier beetle's ancestors simply pressed into different service chemicals that already happened to be around. That's often how evolution works" (The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p. 87).

This is not a convincing explanation at all for Dr. Behe, who has studied this beetle's components down to their molecular level. "Dawkins' explanation for the evolution of the system," he says, "rests on the fact that the system's elements 'happened to be around' . . . But Dawkins has not explained how hydrogen peroxide and quinones came to be secreted together at very high concentration into one compartment that is connected . . . to a second compartment that contains enzymes necessary for the rapid reaction of the chemicals" (Behe, p. 34).

Now that the whole defense system of the beetle has been thoroughly studied, even if the chemicals "happened to be around," this elaborate chemical cannon would not work without everything from the molecular level up working together and at exactly the right time. Dawkins' argument is as absurd as saying that if gunpowder, a fuse, a barrel and a cannonball "happened to be around," eventually they would assemble themselves, with the ingredients carefully loaded in the right sizes and proportions, and then go off at the right direction without blowing themselves up somewhere along the way. No, all the components had to be carefully and intelligently arranged in order to function.

Professor Behe notes: "Some evolutionary biologists—like Richard Dawkins—have fertile imaginations. Given a starting point, they almost always can spin a story to get to any biological structure you wish . . . Science, however, cannot ultimately ignore relevant details, and at the molecular level all the 'details' become critical. If a molecular nut or bolt is missing, then the whole system can crash" (p. 65).

Astounding bird migrations

Consider another enormous biological complexity—how birds, such as certain storks, ducks, geese and robins, gained the ability to navigate accurately across thousands of miles of previously unknown territory and land in exactly the right zone and at the right time of year to feed and breed. Then, when winter ends in the northern hemisphere, they fly thousands of miles back and arrive safely in their same nesting grounds.

Homing experiments have revealed that these birds have inherited the ability to map their location using the stars by night and the sun by day. They subconsciously process astronomical data and gauge the altitude, latitude and longitude to fly unerringly to a predetermined place. They have an internal clock and calendar to let them know when to start and finish their migrations. Perhaps what is most surprising is that they are able to reach their distant destiny even on their first trip—without any experience!

For instance, the white-throated warbler migrates every year from Germany to Africa. Remarkably, when the adult birds migrate, they leave their offspring behind. Several weeks later, when the young birds are strong enough, they instinctively fly across thousands of miles of unknown land and sea to arrive at the same spot where their parents are waiting! How can these inexperienced birds navigate with such accuracy across thousands of miles and arrive safely to be reunited with their parents?

From North America the golden plover circumnavigates around most of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in its migrations. After nesting in Canada and Alaska, plovers begin their trip from the northeastern tip of Canada and fly across the ocean down to Brazil and Argentina, a trip of more than 2,400 miles. When the season is over they travel back north, taking a different route through South and Central America, then up the Mississippi basin all the way to their nesting grounds. They do this flawlessly year after year.

Dr. Scott Huse comments: "The causes of migrations and the incredible sense of direction shown by these animals presents the evolutionist with one of the most baffling problems of science. Evolutionists are indeed hard-pressed to explain how these remarkable abilities evolved piecemeal through mere chance processes apart from any directing intelligence. The piecemeal development of such an instinct seems highly improbable because migratory instincts are useless unless perfect. Obviously, it is of no benefit to be able to navigate perfectly across only half of an ocean" (The Collapse of Evolution, 1998, p. 34).

The salmon's amazing cycle

Some species of salmon exhibit amazingly complex migrations. Hatching from eggs in streams, they spend the first few years of life in freshwater lakes and rivers. After growing to several inches they swim downstream to the ocean, where they adapt to a completely different chemical environment—saltwater—and spend the next few years.

In the process they often migrate for thousands of miles as they feed and grow. Eventually, toward the end of their lives, they leave the ocean environment and swim upriver and upstream against the current until they reach the very stretch of stream where they were hatched years earlier. There they spawn and die, with their decaying bodies providing nutrients for the newly laid eggs. The eggs then hatch to start a new generation, repeating the amazing cycle.

These many adaptations go against the supposed "numerous, successive, slight modifications" of evolutionary theory as well as plain common sense. If species are well adapted to live in freshwater, why undergo the physiological changes necessary to live in saltwater? And why the enormous and exhausting trip back to their original birthplace only to face certain death?

How do these fish, after traveling up to several thousand miles, manage to find the very streams in which they were first spawned several years earlier? No plausible evolutionary explanation has been offered.

The decoy fish

In Hawaiian waters swims the astounding decoy fish. When hunting for other fish to eat, it raises its dorsal fin, which appears as a small, helpless fish, complete with an apparent mouth and eye.

It then stays motionless except for the dorsal fin, which it moves from side to side to make the decoy appear to open and close its mouth. The fin itself becomes transparent except for its upper part, which looks like a separate fish. It turns a bright red, enhancing the illusion of a smaller fish. This unassuming creature thereby creates an optical illusion that even a Hollywood special-effects artist would envy. To an incoming fish the decoy looks like an easy meal, and as it moves in for the kill it suddenly finds itself inside the jaws of the decoy fish.

As Dr. Huse points out: "The decoy-fish clearly exhibits great ingenuity, attention to biological details, and a sense of purposefulness. No matter how one contorts one's reasoning, one cannot explain such a marvel in terms of the evolutionary theory. Such clear design does not result from mere chance but rather requires careful and deliberate blueprint encoding within the DNA of the decoy-fish by a highly capable molecular programmer" (p. 36).

And there are other fish species that use similar deceptions to snare a meal. "One type of anglerfish has a 'fishing rod' coming out of its back with a luminescent 'bulb' at the end of it. Another, the deep-sea angler, has a 'light bulb' hanging from the roof of its mouth. It just swims around with an open mouth, dangling the lure from side to side. Small fish, attracted by the display, swim to their death right into the angler's mouth!" (ibid.).

Dr. Huse also notes that anglerfish have the ability to move their "bait" in a manner that mimics the real thing; an anglerfish with a fishlike bait will move it in a swimming motion while one with an appendage resembling a shrimp will move it with a shrimp's backward-darting motion. On those occasions when the anglerfish's "bait" is nipped off—as could be expected to happen under the circumstances—the anglerfish can fully regrow it within two weeks (ibid.).

Denying undeniable evidence

By now you've probably realized that evolution as an explanation for the teeming varieties of life on earth—not to mention your existence as a thinking, rational human being—simply doesn't add up. Furthermore, we've only scratched the surface (see "The Case Against Evolution" for suggestions on books that examine the subject in far greater detail).

So why, then, do so many people cling so tightly to a belief with so many deficiencies?

The apostle Paul's comments about the philosophers of his day certainly apply to our day:

"For all that can be known of God lies plain before their eyes; indeed God himself has disclosed it to them. Ever since the world began his invisible attributes, that is to say his everlasting power and deity, have been visible to the eye of reason, in the things he has made. Their conduct, therefore, is indefensible; knowing God, they have refused to honour him as God, or to render him thanks. Hence all their thinking has ended in futility, and their misguided minds are plunged in darkness. They boast of their wisdom, but they have made fools of themselves, exchanging the glory of the immortal God for an image shaped like mortal man, even for images like birds, beasts, and reptiles.

"For this reason God has given them up to their own vile desires, and the consequent degradation of their bodies. They have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and have offered reverence and worship to created things instead of to the Creator . . ." (Romans 1:19-25, Revised English Bible, emphasis added).

Rampant unbelief and immorality have a great deal to do with denying and refusing to obey a Creator God.

But changes are afoot in the face of overwhelming evidence.

"It is obvious that Darwin's theory no longer has the standing it had a few years ago," says Dr. Alan Hayward. "A small but significant minority of biologists have rejected it entirely, and are looking for a better theory to put in its place. So far, though, they have failed to find one . . . On the other hand, the case for the existence of the Creator is stronger today than it has ever been. In every branch of science there is a growing body of evidence that the universe and its contents have been designed— that things just could not be the way they are as the result of chance.

"This evidence has so much weight that even some eminent scientists who are unbelievers have had the courage to face it . . . The most reasonable answer to the question: Creation? is surely: Yes—creation of some sort" (Creation and Evolution, 1985, p. 65, emphasis added).

Now, with our greater understanding of enormously complex and integrated systems that rule all living systems, many scientists are coming to see that Darwin's theory that all life evolved through a gradual system of adaptations can be easily and satisfactorily refuted.

Professor Behe sums up the results of many years of working in molecular biochemistry: "The simplicity that was once expected to be the foundation of life has proven to be a phantom; instead, systems of horrendous, irreducible complexity inhabit the cell. The resulting realization that life was designed by an intelligence is a shock to us in the twentieth century who have gotten used to thinking of life as the result of simple natural laws" (p. 252).

And the vast complexity of not just the basis of life but all of its systems and interrelationships diminishes the likelihood of evolution as an explanation for life on earth into utter impossibility.

Not surprisingly, conclusions such as these have not received much publicity. Most people are unaware of Darwinism's many flaws and voluminous scientific findings and conclusions that contradict evolutionary theory. But recognition of the obvious fact that life was the product not of random forces but of intelligent design is gaining ground. And eventually, everyone will know.

Swedish zoo-physiologist Soren Lovtrup sums up: "I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science" (Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, 1987, p. 422). What a remarkable day that will be!

Competition or Cooperation: How Symbiosis Defies Darwin

A serious obstacle to evolutionary theory is the interdependent relationships between living things, called symbiosis, in which completely different forms of life depend on each other to exist.

Darwin's theory of biological change was based on competition, or survival of the fittest, among the individuals making up a species. He admitted: "If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection" (The Origin of Species, 1859, Masterpieces of Science edition, 1958, p. 164).

Symbiotic relationships pose such a challenge to Darwin's theory, since they have animals and plants of different species cooperating for the benefit of both. Evolutionists call this coadaptation, but they have yet to come up with a plausible explanation of how such relationships could have evolved in stages.

How can plants that need certain animals to survive have existed before those animals appeared in the first place? And how do animals that need other animals to survive arrive without their partners arriving at the exact same moment?

Symbiosis among lower forms of life

One example of beneficial symbiosis (called mutualism) is that found between algae and the fungus of lichens. While fungi provide vital protection and moisture to algae, the algae nourish the fungi with photosynthetic nutrients that keep them alive. As a biology textbook puts it: "Neither population could exist without the other, and hence the size of each is determined by that of the other" (Mary Clark, Contemporary Biology, 1973, p. 519).

So which came first, the alga or the fungus? Since neither could exist without the other, according to evolution for both to survive they had to evolve independently of each other, yet appear at exactly the same time and with precisely the right functions.

How could two completely different species evolve separately from distinct ancestors, yet depend on each other to exist? Frankly, the idea that this relationship evolved is utterly beyond reason.

Symbiosis between plants and animals

Consider next the relationship between bees and plants.

While collecting the precious nectar that provides their hives with food, bees pollinate dozens of species of flowers and agricultural crops. Without this vital pollination, orchards could produce little if any fruit, and fruit trees would not survive for long. How can these plants exist without first being pollinated by bees? On the other hand, how could bees exist without first being provided with the necessary nectar as food?

In addition, the bee has to carry out pollination in a precisely specific way for the process to work. If the bee visited other species of flowers at random, pollination could not occur, since the pollen of one species of flower does not fertilize another species. Somehow the bee knows to visit only one plant species at a time and at the right season.

One of the most amazing examples of symbiosis is that between the yucca plant and the yucca moth. The yucca plant is incapable of pollinating itself to grow more seeds and perpetuate. The yucca moth (Tegeticula, formerly Pronuba) pollinates the yucca plant while laying its eggs inside the plant.

After hatching, the moth larvae feed on the seeds of the yucca. Remarkably, the moth carefully calibrates the number of its larvae growing inside each flower so the larvae will not consume all the seeds of the yucca—because if they ate all the seeds the yucca plants would stop reproducing, thus eventually dooming the yucca moths as well!

By pollinating the plant, the moth develops food (yucca seeds) for its larvae while ensuring that the plant can perpetuate its own kind as well.

But that's not all. The life cycle of the yucca moth is timed so the adult moths emerge in early summer—exactly when the yucca plants are in flower.

How could this remarkable relationship have developed by random minor changes in both plant and insect over eons? It is obvious that it appeared abruptly or it never could have developed at all.

Symbiosis among animals

All animal life is equipped with some sort of survival instinct. Each knows what kind of food it needs and a means to avoid or defend itself against any predators. Yet some creatures allow other species they would otherwise eat to carry out cleaning and hygiene tasks without threat or harm. Scientists call this phenomenon "cleaning symbiosis."

It is common for large fish such as sharks, after consuming smaller fish, to have food remains and parasites imbedded around their teeth. Eventually these particles can produce disease or a dangerous build-up of matter that can hinder eating. But certain types of small fish exist that function as biological toothbrushes, safely cleaning the teeth of the larger predators.

The cleaning fish fearlessly swim inside the open mouth of the larger fish and carefully eat the debris and parasites from the teeth. How can a predator fish restrain his instincts of getting a free meal by just closing his mouth and chewing, or avoid lashing out because of the irritating cleaning process? These actions go directly against the self-preservation instincts of both animals, yet they methodically carry out this sanitizing procedure. Some species even set up the equivalent of cleaning stations, where the larger fish patiently wait for their turn while others ahead of them have their mouths cleaned.

Such cleaning symbiosis is also found among a species of bird and a reptile. In Egypt the Egyptian plover hops right into the open mouth of the Nile crocodile to remove parasites. After the job is done, whether the crocodile is hungry or not the bird always leaves unscathed.

How could such diverse animals, which normally have a predator-victim relationship, become partners in a cleanup operation? If these procedures evolved, as evolutionists contend must have happened, how many birds would have been eaten alive before the crocodile decided it was in his interest to let one clean its mouth, then proceed to let it escape? In contrast, how many birds would have continued picking crocodile teeth when they saw some of their feathery cousins eaten alive by crocodiles? They certainly are instinctively aware that better and safer ways of getting a meal are available to them.

Such sophisticated relationships among diverse creatures show an underlying intelligent design and forethought at work. Symbiotic relationships are clearly a great challenge to Darwinism, providing solid evidence of a Designer and Creator.

The Scientific Evidence: In the Eye of the Beholder

The world around us provides compelling evidence of God's handiwork and even glimpses of his nature and character. As the apostle Paul wrote: "Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made" (Romans 1:20, New Revised Standard Version throughout this sidebar). Yet many remain blind to this fact.

Let's consider what a famous writer in the field of science said about two particular flowers, both orchids. Although his language is a little technical, it's important to read the account in the author's own words as he describes his findings and those of another scientist, a Dr. Cruger. The incredible story is well worth reading.

A built-in bee-bath bucket

Regarding what is called the bucket orchid (Coryanthes) he stated:

"This orchid has part of its labellum or lower lip hollowed out into a great bucket, into which drops of almost pure water continually fall from two secreting horns which stand above it; and when the bucket is half full, the water overflows by a spout on one side. The basal part of the labellum stands over the bucket, and is itself hollowed out into a sort of chamber with two lateral entrances; within this chamber there are curious fleshly ridges. The most ingenious man, if he had not witnessed what takes place, could never have imagined what purpose all these parts serve [emphasis added throughout].

"But Dr. Cruger saw crowds of large humble-bees [bumblebees] visiting the gigantic flowers of this orchid, not in order to suck nectar, but to gnaw off the ridges within the chamber above the bucket; in doing this they frequently pushed each other into the bucket, and their wings being thus wetted they could not fly away, but were compelled to crawl out through the passage formed by the spout or overflow.

"Dr. Cruger saw a 'continual procession' of bees thus crawling out of their involuntary bath. The passage is narrow, and is roofed over by the column, so that a bee, in forcing its way out, first rubs its back against the viscid stigma [the sticky part of the flower that receives pollen] and then against the viscid glands of the pollen-masses. The pollen-masses are thus glued to the back of the bee which first happens to crawl out through the passage of the lately expanded flower, and are thus carried away...

"When the bee, thus provided, flies to another flower, or to the same flower a second time, and is pushed by its comrades into the bucket and then crawls out by the passage, the pollen-mass necessarily comes first into contact with the viscid stigma, and adheres to it, and the flower is fertilised. Now at last we see the full use of every part of the flower, of the water-secreting horns, of the bucket half full of water, which prevents the bees from flying away, and forces them to crawl out through the spout, and rub against the properly placed viscid pollen-masses and the viscid stigma."

These fascinating design details show us the complexity, variety and even a touch of humor in the world around us. Several scriptures acknowledge that we can learn of God through His creation.

A flower that shoots straight

The same writer then describes the other orchid, giving yet another remarkable example of carefully planned design in the natural world:

"The construction of the flower in another closely allied orchid, namely the Catasetum, is widely different, though serving the same end; and is equally curious. Bees visit these flowers, like those of the Coryanthes, in order to gnaw the labellum [lip]; in doing this they inevitably touch a long, tapering, sensitive projection, or, as I have called it, the antenna.

"This antenna, when touched, transmits a sensation or vibration to a certain membrane which is instantly ruptured; this sets free a spring by which the pollen-mass is shot forth, like an arrow, in the right direction, and adheres by its viscid [sticky] extremity to the back of the bee. The pollen-mass of the male plant (for the sexes are separate in this orchid) is thus carried to the flower of the female plant where it is brought into contact with the stigma, which is viscid enough to break certain elastic threads, and retaining the pollen, fertilisation is effected."

So here we see another marvelous illustration of God's handiwork. Yet, as mentioned up front, not everyone sees the evidence of creation in the same way. The author who penned these observations of the wonders of the world around him was none other than Charles Darwin, and the quotations are from his book The Origin of Species (1859, Masterpieces of Science edition, 1958, pp. 156-157).

Divergent views of evidence

Does this surprise you? It should. Darwin used these examples to show the ability of plants to adapt and to vary rather than to show the variety in God's design. And the scientific establishment has generally followed suit. So often, what is blatantly evidence of God's handiwork is presented as instead the results of blind evolution. Why don't we all see evidence the same way—especially given Paul's statement in Romans 1:20 that the natural realm provides proof of God? Indeed, those in the scientific field often see far more evidence of divine creation than the average person.

The fact is, although there is sufficient evidence for everyone, each makes a choice as to how to interpret it. Some early philosophers made a conscious choice to reject God. Scholars in various fields since have followed in their wake. As the saying goes, "There are none so blind as those who will not see."

Paul continues in Romans 1: "So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were dark-ened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools" (verses 20-23).

We have an important choice to make about the evidence for a Creator God. We must choose whether we will accept it. Our choice will have a profound effect on our lives.

If we see God in what He has made, then we have a constant reminder of His ability, concern, purpose and even His sense of humor. But, if we do not see God, then there is neither hint nor reminder of His purpose for our existence. Consequently we may imperil the normal workings of our conscience, given by God so that we would question our thoughts and actions.

God can guide and bless those who wisely choose to accept the evidence and believe in Him. Let's make the right choice.

The World Before Man: The Biblical Explanation

Earlier we examined the weaknesses of the theory of evolution as an explanation for the bewildering complexity of the forms of life we see around us. Now we turn to the Bible itself to see what the Creator God says about His creation.

Adding up the ages of the biblical patriarchs yields a date of about 6,000 years ago for the first human parents, Adam and Eve, formed by God at the end of six days of creation. What, then, are we to make of scientists determining the universe and our planet to be billions of years old? While there may be flaws in dating methods, consider that people often make wrong assumptions about what the Bible says. What does it actually reveal?

Genesis 1 clarified by other passages

Bear in mind that God does not usually explain all there is to know about a subject in one place in the Bible. Even the biblical writers He inspired did not always fully understand what they recorded (compare Daniel 12:8-9; 1 Peter 1:10-12). And He often fills in more details in other passages. So it is with Genesis 1.

Consider, for example, that Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It might seem as if this verse describes the beginning of everything, but God later reveals details of events and conditions that took place earlier.

The apostle John, writing under God's inspiration, takes us back to a time before events described in Genesis 1. "In the beginning," he states, "was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made" (John 1:1-3, emphasis added throughout).

Here the Bible reveals that, before the creation of the heavens and the earth described in Genesis 1, the divine Word (the One who became Jesus, verse 14) was with God, and God made everything through Him. None of this is revealed in the Genesis account, yet these details help us understand who God was in the beginning and at the time of the earth's creation. We see that John gives us more information that helps us understand what happened. (To better understand who and what God is, and how the creation proves His existence, read your free copy of Life's Ultimate Question: Does God Exist? )

Similarly, Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as being "without form, and void." This sketchy description offers no explanation for why the earth was in this condition. However, God reveals more details in other parts of His Word.

Though not mentioned in Genesis, God elsewhere explains that angels were present at the creation of the earth. We find this detail recorded in the book of Job, where God asks Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? . . . Who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted with joy?" (Job 38:4, 6-7). The "morning stars" and "sons of God"—the angels—exulted as they saw the earth miraculously come into being.

The angelic revolt

A key to understanding why the earth was "without form and void" involves what happened to some of these angels. Again, nothing of this angelic story is described in Genesis. But later in His Word, God reveals that there was a great angel, Lucifer, who rebelled against Him: "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: 'I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God . . . I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High'" (Isaiah 14:12-14).

Here God explains that Lucifer had a throne, representing a position of leadership and authority. He rose from somewhere below to try to overthrow God, but was "cut down to the ground."

Where was this place where Lucifer had his throne? Jesus Christ, whom we earlier saw was the "Word" alongside God at the creation, reveals more details. "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven," He said (Luke 10:18). Lucifer, who became Satan (meaning Adversary) at his rebellion, was cast down from heaven—to the earth!

The Bible explains that Satan retains his authority over this planet. Notice what Satan told Christ: "Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, 'All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish'" (Luke 4:5-6).

Jesus resisted this temptation but did not dispute the assertion of Satan's present authority, even later calling him "the ruler of this world" (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). He is elsewhere called "the god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4).

It is no accident that in Genesis 3, shortly after God created Adam and Eve, Satan appeared on the scene as the serpent in the garden. The earth was—and still is—his domain. He had been cast down to the earth before man's creation took place. As noted in the account of the temptation of Christ, Satan had received authority over the earth. He then rebelled against God in a battle in which he was cast down to the earth, as Christ recounted. (To learn more, read the booklet Is There Really a Devil? )

The earth is Satan's realm. The book of Job records God asking Satan, "From where do you come?" Satan's reply was, "From going to and fro on the earth and from walking back and forth on it" (Job 1:7).

How the earth became waste and empty

In Genesis we do not see details of the awe-inspiring initial creation, the creation well before Adam and Eve about which angels sang for joy. And we do not read how that creation came to be in chaos—"without form and void."

The text, though, does offer clues. Notice that the New International Version has a marginal notation regarding the translation of Genesis 1:2, set here within brackets: "Now the earth was [or possibly became ] formless and empty . . ."

Does God reveal elsewhere in His Word how the earth came to be in this disorderly state, "formless and empty"? He gives us some telling hints in the book of Isaiah. "For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited" (Isaiah 45:18).

The Hebrew term rendered in vain here is from the same word translated "without form" in Genesis 1:2. Yet here Isaiah records God as saying He did not originally create the earth in this condition. Other scriptures, such as Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23, describe similar devastation on the earth using the same words translated "without form, and void" in Genesis 1:2. There is no doubt that these words describe the earth as being empty, void, a wasteland.

The Genesis account simply does not provide all the details. But the Bible as a whole fills in other parts of the story. The missing pieces are given in other scriptures, which tell us of Satan's rebellion against God. They describe his attempt to overthrow God and that as a result of a great supernatural battle, he was cast back down.

We see what appears to be a parallel situation in Revelation 12:7-9, which describes an attempt by Satan to overthrow God shortly before Christ's return: "And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."

Yet God has allowed Satan to retain authority over this present world. Satan even offered Jesus the opportunity to share rulership over the earth under him.

You can see that, when we examine the whole of Scripture, we find a great deal more information that illuminates and explains the Genesis account.

Earth renewed and restored

Consider another section of Scripture in which God inspired a psalm revealing more about His creation. "O Lord," the psalmist writes, "how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions . . . You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth" (Psalm 104:24, 30).

The surface of the earth needed a renewal when God created the present life-forms we see around us. So what does the fossil record depict? It shows a series of fossilized life-forms in layered deposits scattered in the earth's crust. Man as we know him, made in God's image with enormous creative and spiritual abilities, has left written records that take us back a little more than 5,000 years.

This is a tiny span compared with what most scientists consider the age of the earth and stars to be based on their research. Man, in an incredibly short time, built the pyramids—which to this day defy imitation. Man has traveled to the moon and sent spacecraft to explore our solar system and beyond. Such achievements show the enormous difference in the earth before and after Adam.

How long did the angels exist before man was created? The Bible doesn't reveal the answer. How long did it take Lucifer to persuade as many as a third of the angels to rebel with him? (compare Revelation 12:4). Remember, angels are spirit beings for whom aging is of no consequence (Luke 20:36). Whatever length of time this might be, perhaps millions or billions of years, the angels were created and lived before the creation of Adam and Eve and the days of the renewal of the earth described in Genesis.

It does seem that Satan's rebellion happened after the earth had passed through the dinosaur age. Then, geologists agree, something dramatic occurred between the age of reptiles and the age of mammals.

As the famous paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson once remarked: "The most puzzling event in the history of life on the earth is the change from the Mesozoic Age of Reptiles, to the . . . Age of Mammals. It is as if the curtain were rung down suddenly on a stage where all the leading roles were taken by reptiles, especially dinosaurs, in great numbers and bewildering variety, and rose again immediately to reveal the same setting but an entirely new cast, a cast in which the dinosaurs do not appear at all, other reptiles are supernumeraries and the leading parts are all played by mammals of sorts barely hinted at in the previous acts" (Life Before Man, 1972, p. 42).

This apparently reflects the change from the pre-Adamic world to the world of man. Certainly there are smaller reptiles in our world, but they are insignificant in comparison to those that existed in the previous age.

This is not the only "ancient earth" explanation available, but it seems to make the most biblical sense. It accepts the literal 24-hour days of the creation (or re-creation) week and, at the same time, allows room for an indefinite period before the creation of mankind that could include the dinosaurs and previous eras.

To better comprehend the biblical explanation of an initial creation followed by destruction and a later re-creation, be sure to read "Earth's Age: Does the Bible Indicate a Time Interval Between the First and Second Verses of Genesis?" . And for even more on this period, read "Genesis 1 and the Days of Creation".

The Bible explanation

Can the Bible explain the fossil record, evidence pointing to an ancient earth and divine creation at the same time? Yes, it can. We don't know the details of what happened before man's time. But Jesus Christ has assured us that when He returns "there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light" (Mark 4:22).

Instead of wandering through the chaotic, confused maze of the theory of evolution, we should look to God's Word for assurance. It is there—directly from our Creator—that we find the truth of man's origin.

Perhaps the following quote from noted writer George Sim Johnston best sums up that truth: "The book of Genesis has held up well under the scrutiny of modern geology and archaeology. Twentieth-century physics, moreover, describes the beginning of the universe in virtually the same cosmological terms as Genesis. Space, time and matter came out of nothing in a single burst of light entirely hospitable to carbon-based life. A growing number of chemists and biologists agree that life had its origin from clay templates (see Genesis 2:7) . . . I would say all this is a curious development for Darwinists" (Reader's Digest, May 1991, p. 31).

But these things aren't a "curious development" to those who faithfully believe, as Christ did, in "every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). They know that such truths have been recorded for mankind in the Bible for thousands of years.

It is to the Bible that we should turn for our moral standards, to discover our one true source of salvation and, perhaps most of all, for our belief in the invisible Creator God. Then we should not doubt the real origin of species mentioned in the creation epic, that rock-solid book of beginnings, Genesis.

Does it really matter what you believe?

We've seen the untold story of evolution: how evolution's supporting pillars—the fossil record, natural selection and random mutation—fail to support the theory at all. We've seen that evolution cannot explain many of the facts we see in the world around us. We've seen that the book of Genesis doesn't conflict with science and that, when we consider the evidence, it actually offers an explanation far more sound than Darwinian theory.

So where do you go from here? The choice is yours as to how you view the evidence.

You can choose to hold to the view that there is no Creator and that we are simply the result of blind chance, a series of lucky accidents. You can decide for yourself how you should live and what values and principles will determine how you treat others. You can believe that man created God rather than the other way around. As Paul pointed out almost 2,000 years ago, many people are quite content to find ways to reason around the evidence of a Creator (Romans 1:20-32).

On the other hand, you can accept the evidence that there is a Creator who cares about you in ways you can't even imagine.

Some 3,000 years ago King David recorded his thoughts upon gazing at the magnificent night sky. He prayed to God, "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?" (Psalm 8:3-4, NRSV).

David understood that a Being capable of creating such perfection and splendor must have a great plan and a purpose for us. And indeed He does. God wants to reveal that purpose to you, to show you the way out of the pain and sorrow we have brought on ourselves from rejecting His ways. He offers this incredible invitation: "Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know" (Jeremiah 33:3).

We've summarized some of these "great and mighty things" in our free booklet What Is Your Destiny? It will show you from the Scriptures the future God has planned for those willing to believe Him and accept His invitation. It's a future far beyond the meaningless and purposeless moral, emotional and spiritual vacuum offered by evolution.

"I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses," He tells us. "Choose life so that you and your descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19, NRSV).

The choice is yours.

Earth's Age: Does the Bible Indicate a Time Interval Between the First and Second Verses of Genesis?

We are introduced to the account of the creation of the earth in Genesis 1:1-2:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep."

The original Hebrew wording, combined with a comparison to other passages of Scripture, has led some to conclude that a considerable time interval is indicated between these two verses. If such an interval is indeed intended, there is no discrepancy between the Bible record and scientific determinations that the earth is up to several billion years old. If, on the other hand, there is no such gap, then the earth itself must be only around 6,000 years old—which most scientists consider an impossibility.

Do other passages, as well as history, shed any light on this question?

Some scholars propose that Genesis 1:2 can or should be translated "Now the earth became without form, and void . . ." as opposed to the common rendering "The earth was without form, and void . . ." Others dismiss this idea entirely. They assume the original Hebrew word hayah must be translated "was" and then assume the earth was originally created in this disorderly way.

However, as can be seen from many Bible helps, both translations of the term are possible.

Only the context of the chapter and book can determine which one is correct. Gleason Archer, professor of biblical languages, comments:

"It should be noted in this connection that the verb was in Genesis 1:2 may quite possibly be rendered 'became' and be construed to mean: 'And the earth became formless and void.' Only a cosmic catastrophe could account for the introduction of chaotic confusion into the original perfection of God's creation. This interpretation certainly seems to be exegetically tenable . . ." (A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, 1974, p. 184).

In a footnote Archer adds, "Properly speaking, this verb hayah never has the meaning of static being like the copular verb 'to be.' Its basic notion is that of becoming or emerging as such and such, or of coming into being . . .

Sometimes a distinction is attempted along the following lines: hayah means 'become' only when it is followed by the preposition le; otherwise there is no explicit idea of becoming. But this distinction will not stand up under analysis. In Gen[esis] 3:20 the proper rendering is: 'And Adam called the name of his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all living.' No le follows the verb in this case.

So also in Gen[esis] 4:20: 'Jabal became the father of tent dwellers.' Therefore there can be no grammatical objection raised to translating Gen[esis] 1:2: 'And the earth became a wasteness and desolation'" (ibid.).

Some scholars also argue against translating hayah "became" instead of "was" in Genesis 1:2 because they assume this interpretation came about only recently, after scientists determined the earth to be very old. Thus they consider this explanation a desperate attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with modern geology. The explanation that there existed an indefinite period between the initial beautiful creation described in Genesis 1:1 and the earth becoming waste and void in verse 2 has been called, sometimes disparagingly, "the gap theory." The idea was attributed to Thomas Chalmers in the 19th century and to Cyrus Scofield in the 20th.

Yet this interpretation that the earth "became" waste and void has been discussed for close to 2,000 years, as pointed out by the late Arthur Custance in his book Without Form and Void: A Study of the Meaning of Genesis 1:2.

The earliest known recorded controversy on this point can be attributed to Jewish sages at the beginning of the second century.

The Hebrew scholars who wrote the Targum of Onkelos, the earliest of the Aramaic paraphrases of the Old Testament, rendered Genesis 1:2 with an Aramaic expression Dr. Custance translates as "and the earth was laid waste" (1988, p. 15). The original language evidently led them to understand that something had occurred which had "laid waste" the earth, and they interpreted this as a destruction.

The early Catholic theologian Origen (186-254), in his commentary De Principiis, explains regarding Genesis 1:2 that the original earth had been "cast downwards" (Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1917, p. 342).

In the Middle Ages the Flemish scholar Hugo St. Victor (1097-1141) wrote about Genesis 1:2, "Perhaps enough has already been debated about these matters thus far, if we add only this, 'how long did the world remain in this disorder before the regular re-ordering . . . of it was taken in hand?' (De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei, Book 1, part 1, chapter 6).

Other medieval scholars, such as Dionysius Peavius and Pererius, also considered that there was an interval of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.

According to The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, the Dutch scholar Simon Episcopius (1583-1643) taught that the earth had originally been created before the six days of creation described in Genesis (1952, Vol. 3, p. 302). This was roughly 200 years before geology embraced an ancient origin for the earth.

These numerous examples show us that the idea of an interval between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 has a long history. Any claim that it is of only recent origin—that it was invented simply as a desperate attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with geology—is groundless.

Perhaps the best treatment on both sides of this question is given by Dr. Custance in his book. He states: "To me, this issue is important, and after studying the problem for some thirty years and after reading everything I could lay my hands on pro and con and after accumulating in my own library some 300 commentaries on Genesis, the earliest being dated 1670, I am persuaded that there is, on the basis of the evidence, far more reason to translate Gen. 1:2 as 'But the earth had become a ruin and a desolation, etc.' than there is for any of the conventional translations in our modern versions" (p. 7).

Genesis 1 and the Days of Creation

The creation narrative in Genesis 1 hangs first on the 24-hour day, then on the seven-day week. (Genesis 1 describes the first six days of creation week; the first few verses of chapter 2 recount the seventh day.)

"And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day" (Genesis 1:4-5). We see from the account that God established the day-and-night cycle from the beginning. Day and night are functions of the rotation of the earth as it orbits the sun. Clearly the wording of Genesis describes the 24-hour period we are all familiar with. Notice further that God appointed the sun to separate light from darkness and to divide day from night (verse 14).

How long were the days of creation?

Ever since the realization by scientists that the earth's age may be measured in billions of years, well-meaning people have tried to reconcile the biblical account with such scientific findings. Some have theorized that the seven 24-hour creation days were really much longer—possibly epochs lasting thousands or millions of years. To support this idea, some have argued that the Hebrew word for "day," yom, means an unspecified measure of time in Genesis 1.

It is true that yom can mean an indefinite period, such as in the English sentence "That's how things were done in that day." But the context of each of the six days of Genesis 1 makes it clear how long each day of creation actually was. The expression "So the evening and the morning were the first day" in Genesis 1 is repeated for every one of the other five days.

Here we see "evening" equated with nighttime and "morning" equated with daylight, and the two together make up one day. The wording "the evening and the morning" shows this is clearly talking about 24-hour days.

One rotation of the earth on its axis is the unmistakable meaning of day in the creation account. Throughout the history of the Hebrew people, the evening has always signified the beginning of a new day, a specific 24 hours.

However, since that particular expression does not close the account of the seventh day (Genesis 2:1-3), some have tried to lengthen the creation Sabbath as well. They reason that the seventh day of creation has not yet ended, even after thousands of years. Thus the earlier six days of creation are thought to have lasted for thousands or even millions of years as well. But does Scripture support this view?

We should note from Genesis 1 that fruit-bearing plants were created on the third day but that the insects to pollinate such plants were not created until a few days later. If this means a few thousand or million years later, how did the plants survive without their symbiotic partners?

We need to realize that the Bible interprets the Bible. Notice Genesis 1:14-19: "Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day [yom] from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days [yom] and years . . .' Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day [yom], and the lesser light to rule the night . . . and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day [yom]." It makes no sense for the meaning of day to change from a 24-hour day or the daylight portion of a day to an indeterminate period lasting millions or billions of years within a few sentences.

The account of the giving of the Ten Commandments confirms how long each of the creation days was, including the seventh-day Sabbath. Exodus 20:8-11 summarizes their significance:

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work . . . For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth . . . and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it [declared it holy]."

In defining when we are to observe one of God's annual Sabbaths, the Day of Atonement, God tells us that, "from evening to evening [24 hours], you shall celebrate your sabbath" (Leviticus 23:32). The same principle applies to the weekly Sabbath and all of the annual feast days. (You might want to read our booklet Sunset to Sunset: God's Sabbath Rest, to better understand this biblical command.)

Understanding Genesis 1:1-2

The first two verses of the Bible are critical in this discussion. "The Genesis prologue presents those historical truths which are the necessary presuppositions for the valid pursuit of human knowledge" (The New Bible Commentary: Revised, p. 81). So let's take a fresh look at Genesis 1:1-2.

Both the New International Version and the older Scofield Reference Bible suggest that the expression "the earth was without form and void" (verse 2) can be rendered "the earth became without form and void." In other words, something spoiled the original creation described in Genesis 1:1 and made it necessary for God to restore order out of chaos—which He did during six 24-hour periods followed by a Sabbath rest.

The Companion Bible points out that, in the King James Version (and most subsequent translations), "the verb 'to be' is not distinguished from the verb 'to become,' so that the lessons conveyed" in these first few verses "are lost." It goes on to explain that "without form" (Hebrew tohu) "is used of a subsequent event which, we know not how long after the Creation, befell the primitive creation of Gen. 1.1."

(For a detailed account of the rationale and reference sources that point to the possibility of the rendering "became" instead of "was," see "Earth's Age: Does the Bible Indicate a Time Interval Between the First and Second Verses of Genesis?").

Suffice it to say here that God does not create by first making a mess (1 Corinthians 14:33). God told the cherub (angel) Lucifer, "You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity [lawlessness] was found in you" (Ezekiel 28:15). God is the God of perfection, order and beauty. It is either the angelic realm or man's world that makes the messes.

Comparing these different passages, we can infer that an original creation (Genesis 1:1) preceded the making of a gigantic waste by Satan (the former Lucifer) and a third of the angels (Revelation 12:4), who had become demons. Sometime later God accomplished a full restoration during six 24-hour days, followed by the day of rest that created the seventh-day Sabbath (Exodus 20:11).

The time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 is an unspecified period that could encompass an untold span of years, accounting for the "deep time" that geologists and other scientists have discovered in the last two centuries. So the Bible itself solves the enigma. We do not need to artificially lengthen the seven 24-hour creation days to resolve the problem.

The Reese Chronological Bible, for instance, begins Genesis with the account of John 1:1, then goes to Psalm 90:2, then goes to Genesis 1:1, and next, to the verses in the Bible describing the angelic rebellion. Only afterwards does it continue to Genesis 1:2, which mentions the devastation left from that uprising.

Then, starting in verse 3, we have the commencement of the week-long renewal of the earth. Culminating with the creation of Adam and Eve, the week described here occurred about 6,000 years ago.

The Societal Consequences of Darwinism

The consequences of accepting Darwinian theory have been profound. Enormous moral and social damage has been wrought in classrooms and to society. The theory that led Darwin to discard the Bible and reject the existence of God has had a profound effect on millions of other people.

It is no coincidence that Karl Marx, the father of communism, out of gratitude to Darwin, sent him Das Kapital, his principal book on communism. "Although developed in the crude English fashion," Marx wrote to his communist colleague Friedrich Engels, "this [Darwin's Origin of Species] is the book which in the field of natural history, provides the basis for our views." To another he wrote that Darwin's work "suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle" (Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, 2002, p. 188).

This evolutionary backing eventually helped establish the philosophical framework for the twin scourges of communism and atheism in Russia, China, Eastern Europe, Cambodia, North Korea and many other nations.

"Genocide, of course," writes Phillip Johnson, "is merely a shocking name for the process of natural selection by which one gene pool replaces another. Darwin himself explained this in The Descent of Man, when he had to deal with the absence of 'missing links' between ape and human. Such gaps were to be expected, he wrote, in view of the extinctions that necessarily accompany evolution.

"He coolly predicted that evolution would make the gaps wider in the future, because the most civilized (that is, European) humans would soon exterminate the rest of the human species and go on from there to kill off our nearest kin in the ape world. Modern Darwinists do not call attention to such passages, which make vivid how easily the picture of amoral nature inherent in evolutionary naturalism can be converted into a plan of action" (Reason in the Balance, 1995, p. 144).

Later Adolf Hitler indeed applied the Darwinian concept of the "survival of the fittest" to the human race. During World War II the Nazis forcibly sterilized more than 2 million people and began systematically exterminating people whom Hitler considered to be inferior. The Nazis justified their atrocities by rationalizing that they were doing mankind a service with "genetic cleansing" to improve the races.

As long as evolution—with its implications of amorality and the survival-of-the-fittest mentality among "superior" and "inferior" races —is accepted and believed, genocide, as sporadic ethnic cleansings in various parts of the globe show, will have a scientific justification, even though most believers in Darwinian theory would object to this conclusion.

The Bible foretells that, before Jesus Christ's return, a worldwide commercial system will include the trading of "bodies and souls of men" (Revelation 18:9-13). Could this really happen? One only has to remember the Nazi holocaust. Hundreds of thousands were pressed into slave labor. Those too weak, ill, young or old to work faced a merciless death.

Remember, such events happened barely a generation ago in what were considered to be the most advanced and enlightened nations. It could happen again, especially in a world in which so many have adopted a belief in moral relativism and a survival-of-the-fittest outlook.

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