Before I start, I confess that as recently as 1995 I still believed the world had been here for millions of years. I did believe God placed Adam and Eve in the garden some 6,000 years ago, but didn't realise the implications of the long ages viewpoint on the Gospel message. I knew nothing about biochemistry and was uncommitted on the creation versus evolution debate. I am extremely grateful to the ‘Answers in Genesis’ Ministry and their wonderful Creation magazine for showing me the truth. And not only the truth, but the importance of that truth to the whole of my Christian walk and faith. I recommend their ministry and publications without reservation or qualification. Their website is well worth a visit.
DNA
There has been a concerted effort since Darwin to brainwash the entire world population that man evolved from something akin to a chimpanzee and that all animal life evolved from a single-cell amoeba. At the time Darwin published his 'Origin of the Species' mid 1800's, nothing was known of the now famous double helix which holds the blueprint of life. Almost one hundred years later, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the DNA molecule. At that time, the entire theory of evolution should, by rights, have been thrown into the dust bin.
Now a 'single cell amoeba' may sound simple, and many people imagine that a multitude of chemicals mixed in the right environment could have spontaneously generated this simplest of life forms. The truth is that a single cell amoeba is far from simple! Inside that single cell is the most mind-blowing complexity and organisation you could imagine. There are communication systems, duplicating systems, quality control systems, self-correcting mechanisms, energy producing plants and reproductive facilities, just to name a few. Right in the centre of the cell is what looks, through the electron microscope, like a ball of discarded fishing line, the DNA genome, containing all the instructions for this life form to continue being. Yet, this seemingly chaotic ball of DNA can twist itself up tightly into chromosomes, without ever getting tangled!
Believing that this amoeba somehow put itself together through sheer chance interactions of lifeless chemicals is just putting your head in the sand. It reminds me of the man stumbling through the jungle, totally lost, who suddenly comes across a sky-scraper, fully functioning with lights and lifts and lavatories. He looks up at this edifice, scratches the back of his head and says: 'Wow, what a freak of nature!'
I am not sure just how many DNA instructions it takes to make up the genome of an amoeba, but it would be millions upon millions. To take the next step toward the evolution of a new species, it is necessary for millions more to be added. All must be in exactly the correct order, to code for proteins and tell the life form how to put itself together and how to make more copies of itself to ensure survival. Each step along the evolutionary path requires more DNA to be added, coding for additional features. By the time it gets to the human being, 3 billion are needed. Again, all must be exactly right, because one DNA letter wrong spells disaster, DNA being read exclusively in three letter words, made up of the now famous four letter genetic alphabet, A,T,C,G . Imagine for a moment me telling you that: ‘the cat and the dog you can pat’ If I take away one letter (say 'c'), it now reads: ‘the ata ndt hed ogy ouc anp at’ which means nothing at all. Genetically speaking, even if I change, (as opposed to taking away), just one letter to another, it results either in no protein being formed or a different protein, which folds in a way that just doesn't do the job required. Recently I saw a documentary on TV where a whole family had stumpy fingers. The second and third digits were all missing. Finally they discovered why: one letter in their genetic make-up was incorrect!
Evolution depends on a constant process of genetic mistakes, which finally stumble by sheer chance on the combination of hundreds of thousands of A,T,C,& G's that codes for something. If that really were happening, for every person who looked reasonably 'normal' by our standards, there would be a million 'freaks'. Not just people with stumpy fingers, but ones with eyes in the back of their heads or at the tip of their elbows! Ones with legs coming out of their stomachs and hands where their knees should be. The truth is this: in the whole of history, the whole of the fossil record and anywhere in nature as observed today, there is no example of spontaneously self-generating meaningful DNA. It just doesn't happen. Mathematically, the odds are so great, it is impossible. All we can observe is DNA deteriorating - loss of genetic information. Darwin himself said that if his theory was true, the fossil record should reveal the transitory stages, (the half formed eyes and the half developed lungs). The millions of transitory 'missing links' are still missing. Even in the favourite example - the 'evolution' of super bugs resistant to antibiotics - their resistance is achieved through loss of genetic information, not gain! Total absence of spontaneously arising new DNA is probably the strongest argument against evolution.
NATURAL SELECTION
Then there is the dependence of the evolutionary process on the principle known as 'survival of the fittest'. Imagine for a moment two blind creatures walking through the jungle, constantly bumping into things, trees and bushes and stinging plants. Imagine the dialogue.
One says to the other: 'Hey man, I got an idea: what about we develop some eye sight, so we can see where we're goin'?'
The mate replies: ' What?'
'What I mean is, we grow a gadget in our head which can tell us what's around us so we don't bump into them anymore.'
'Tell me more. It sounds good! I'm bruised all over!'
'Well, I reckon this gadget should have an adjustable lens so we can focus, a photo-sensitive plate, muscles and lubrication so we can aim, a cable to the brain and a new lump of brain to interpret the signals. In fact, while we're at it, let have two of them so we can judge distances better!'
I would grow wings if I could make it happen by sheer strength of will. Unfortunately for our two friends, evolution is not driven by imagination and will power! The instructions needed to develop all this would amount to hundreds of millions of genetic letters, taking billions of years of chance mutations to accumulate. Unfortunately for the evolutionary argument, partially developed eye sight makes the species less fit to survive than the one with no sight at all. Imagine the pain of constantly getting splinters in an eye that has not yet developed a lens! This principle is called 'irreducible complexity'. A great book expounding this principle is 'Darwin's Black Box' by Michael J. Behe. The 'simple' amoeba missing just one of its many complex features is no longer a viable life form. And unfortunately again for the evolutionary argument, it is also not possible for the incomplete amoeba to lie around for hundreds of thousands of years while it accumulates all its essential features. The DNA molecule is one of the least stable molecules known to man. As soon as life departs from the creature, the DNA begins to break down. Not even freezing temperatures can preserve this molecule for extensive periods, and even if it could, no features could be added while it was lying around, frozen.
Irreducible complexity is probably the second strongest argument against evolution.
CHEMICALS IN A PRIMORDIAL SOUP
Add to DNA development and irreducible complexity the problems of chirality and polymerisation, and the entire evolutionary framework starts to look like a big joke. Johnathan Sarfati addresses these two issues in the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 12 (3) 1998. He explains that, when chemicals form, they make equal quantities of mirror images of each other, referred to as left and right-handed versions, or 'chirality'. To create life, only one version can be used (homochirality). When the two versions meet, they cancel each other out and they are unable to support life. Even in the laboratory, it is extremely difficult to separate the two. In a primordial soup, without specific intelligent direction towards that end, it would be impossible. The problem with polymerisation is closely related. The chemicals that make up life are very complex polymers, which are water soluble. In a primordial soup it would be impossible for them to form. Even in controlled laboratory conditions, scientists have been unable to succeed even marginally in creating them, without destroying their homochirality.
THE FOSSIL RECORD
Then there is the glaring anomaly of the fossil record itself. Evolutionists claim fossils were covered over with thousands of years of gradual deposits of sand and silt. But animals that die are soon devoured by other creatures and decompose in a very short time. Dead fish float and are picked up by birds. The fossil record could only form through catastrophic circumstances such as a huge mudslide, (as might happen during a world-wide flood), which would ensure the creatures were buried instantly and intact. We find fossils of sea creatures on some of the highest mountain peaks! This could only be accounted for by the enormous seismic upheaval which would result from such a flood, and indicates the mountain was totally submerged at some stage. Many fossils are found collectively, as if an entire herd of the species was running away from something!
THE REAL EVIDENCE
I guess at this point, we should consider what the evidence is pointing to. All around us we see it happening constantly. Devolution! All the evidence points to the fact that 6,000 years ago the genetic database was much larger than it is now, even though the variety of species was probably smaller. The original created bear, for instance, would have had the genes to become both a brown bear or a polar bear. Depending on the environment they found themselves in, they would have passed on genes that suited either the warm climate or the cold. Brown bears in the ice would have died out, taking the genes that coded for short fur with them. The same with polar bears in a warm climate - overheating would have killed them, taking out genes for long fur. Adaptation is not evolution. Adaptation is a fantastic genetic feature, designed by an all-knowing Creator, Who foresaw the need and built a safeguard into His creatures. Similarities in genomes, ranging from vegetation to animals and humans, point to the fact they had the same Creator, not to evolution. All around us, extinction of species and genetic deterioration point to the fact that we are losing DNA, not gaining it.
The reason for this devolution is that Man is living under the curse of sin and death. Yet the sheer wonder and evidence of design in everything around us, even more so now that we can appreciate it at a molecular level, ought to make us drop to our knees in awed reverence for the One Who created it all.
THE FRAUD - EVOLUTION
So, in order to accommodate the theory of evolution, scientists actually have to deny several scientific principles, showing just how unscientific it is. The first principle is that for anything to be classed 'scientific' it must be able to be demonstrated repeatedly under controlled, preferably laboratory conditions. Evolution has never been observed under such conditions, in fact the opposite is observed - devolution. The second principle is that information can only be the product of intelligence. That one went down reasonably well until they discovered the encyclopeadic DNA information contained in every living cell. The third scientific principle involves the laws of Thermodynamics, which declare that everything left only in nature will break down and deteriorate (entrope). Evolution requires things to improve, and without outside interference at that.
There are so many unexplainable exhibits in the case for evolution, it is impossible to address them all in one short essay. I can only say, we've been 'had'. The theory of evolution is just that: a theory. The evidence isn't there to support it. The theory of evolution has proven to be one of the greatest con-jobs of all time. But it raises another, and very important question: 'why?' Why are there still masses of people, including the majority of scientists, pushing the evolutionary barrow?
Maybe for the scientists it is a matter of credibility and enormous peer pressure. It is hard to admit you've been wrong so long on such a basic paradigm. Probably, most of their research and application has been based on this falsehood. So to avoid embarrassment, it is easier to perpetuate the myth. They keep pushing the theory to the point where students can't pass their courses unless they support it - one of the greatest impositions on free thought and free expression ever. They've banned the teaching of Creation in the classroom. They keep up the brain washing techniques, mentioning evolution in every documentary, nature article, biology textbook, research paper, zoological signpost, and what-have-you. But more likely than embarrassment, it is the absence of a scientifically acceptable alternative theory (other than Creation) that makes them hang on to this lie.
For the man in the street, who has been made indifferent by wealth and comfort, it is probably a combination of ignorance and a desire to be able to explain life without acknowledging a divine Creator. Life is easier in this western society if you don't have to grapple with the 'big questions'.
But most likely it shows that Satan, though technically defeated on the cross, still is functioning as prince of this world. He still has control over those who have not handed over their lives to Jesus. And he can still attack Christians in those areas of their lives they have not totally surrendered to Him.
We should probably consider here the fruit of the evolutionary thought (besides undermining God's word). Directly or indirectly it has been responsible for some of the greatest crimes against humanity this world has ever seen. Believing different races were at different evolutionary stages of development led to the conclusion that some people are more evolved, and therefore better, than others. This in turn led to the justification of slavery, attempts at genocide, xenophobia and racial discrimination, to name just a few. The holocaust was justified in the Nazi mind by evolutionary indoctrination. So was the 'stolen generation' and other mistreatment of Aboriginals of Australia.
SUMMARY
A friend asked me what I believe as a Christian about evolution. I told her I thought it was the greatest con-job of all time. I pointed out the evil it had produced and she confessed she thought they (the scientists) had made a mistake thinking some ‘races’ were less evolved. Well, just recently they discovered another huge mistake. When the human genome project was finished around 2001, they discovered there were only 30,000 odd genes, not the 100,000 they had expected. There should have been red faces all round, accompanied by sincere apologies. But no one was brave enough to point out the full implications. It meant that the 90% of the human genome that they had written off as ‘evolutionary junk’, wasn’t junk at all! They had assumed there was one gene for each of the 100,000 proteins needed to make a human. Now, it is obvious the ‘junk’ has a role in making 100,000 proteins out of 30,000 genes. Exactly the way they now know the appendix has a function, the 90% of DNA they had written off has a function. When they used to compare the DNA of a chimp with that of a human, and stated emphatically they were 98% the same, they were only comparing the 10% they said was ‘meaningful’!
The theory of evolution is based on scientific assumptions made by people who are opposed to the concept of God. This makes them as biased towards evolution as the bias creationists show towards Creation. There are more things in heaven and earth than we will ever understand. But the idea that there exists some law of nature that causes the spontaneous generation of information (DNA) goes against every scientific principle ever laid down.
CONCLUSION
For Satan, the theory of evolution, next to the temptation of wealth, has probably been one of the most successful strategies for sowing doubt into people's lives and keeping them away from Jesus. We never realised how important and foundational the literal six-day creation account is to the Gospel message. Jesus certainly believed it. So did Paul. If there were millions of years before Adam, during which animals died, had disease and ate each other, then the curse of sin and death did not enter the world through one man's disobedience. It then follows, that one man's sacrifice (Jesus, the 'second Adam') would not be able to restore things by lifting that curse. If each of the ‘days’ of creation was millions of years long, Adam, created on day six, would have been millions of years old by the time he sinned. Once we question part of the Word of God, we don't know where we should start believing. Once we are no longer confident that the Bible is God's Word, and true from cover to cover, we find our faith crumbling. Inevitably from there it is a downward spiral for whatever theological dilemmas we encounter.
You would think we knew Satan's tactics well enough by now.