CREATED BY GOD'S OWN HAND
A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF ORIGINS

ROCKY MOUNTAIN CREATION FELLOWSHIP
COMPILED BY MIKE TOLER

INTRODUCTION

SECTION I WHERE THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHURCH WENT WRONG

SECTION II A CLOSER LOOK AT EVOLUTION AND ITS OFFSPRING

SECTION III WORD CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST NON-BIBLICAL CREATIONISM

SECTION IV WHAT GEOLOGY SAYS ABOUT CREATION

SECTION V WHAT PHYSICS SAYS ABOUT CREATION

SECTION VI WHAT ASTRONOMY SAYS ABOUT CREATION

SECTION VII MATHEMATICS: THE EVOLUTION KILLER

SECTION VIII GENETICS: EVOLUTION'S UNDOING

SECTION IX BIOLOGY AND ITS WONDERFUL DESIGN

SECTION X CREATION AND THE HUMAN ANCESTORS

SECTION XI THE "PROOFS" OF EVOLUTION

SECTION XII IT REALLY IS A YOUNG EARTH AFTER ALL

REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

I thought of this title as I was pondering the Ten Commandments and how they had been written down with God's own hand. The scriptures say that He used his own finger to scroll into the rock the tablets we know as the Ten Commandments. This relates directly to creation because the creation account is in the Ten Commandments. Specifically it can be found in the 11th verse of Exodus 20, where it says "for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day;" which couldn't be clearer from the literal meaning.

This booklet is primarily designed for people who are Christians and are searching for reasons to believe in the literal meaning of Scripture. It would also prove very valuable for people who are searching for God. Understandably many non-Christians get very confused with what Christians really believe as many Christians have some very inconsistent ways of looking at God's scripture. On the one hand a Christian will say to an unbeliever "you must believe what the Bible says about Jesus being the son of God, about him dying on the cross and resurrecting", and yet then turn right around and say that the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis are an allegory or story. We tell them homosexuality is a sin stated clearly in the Bible, yet make excuses for our own disbelief of the Scriptures, again specifically the first eleven chapters of Genesis. It is no wonder when the people on the street see this and call Christians hypocrites.

In this study we will give you reasons to believe that God's word is accurate in all that it says, specifically about the creation of the universe. Because of this, there is some theological content at the front, with the proofs of creation following. Christians all over should be interested in why the church so weakly defends the Genesis account of origins. I will attempt to show where and how the church tends to deviate from the literal reading of scripture. I will also give some of the evidences in science for a creator God as well as some evidence for a young earth. I have personally read more than 30 books on the subject of origins. This is a compilation of what I have found in my own personal research of creation. It is my hope that more Christians will believe the Bible from cover to cover and thereby bring the revival everyone so hopes for. I predict that there will be no revival among God's people until God's people rediscover their confidence in the whole council of God's holy Scriptures.

The lists in this book are not all of the information available on each subject or in each science field. They are merely enough evidence to convince, God willing, any skeptical Christian that perhaps he or she should repent and ask forgiveness of their unbelief in God's holy scriptures. One area I did not include information on is Information Theory. This area deals with the impossibility of all the information necessary for a living creature to be alive, to be randomly produced.

I have personally 'evolved', from a hard-core evolutionist to an evolutionist that believes in God, to a hard-core Biblical creationist. It was a hard road I freely confess and took many years to accomplish. Only with the help of my wife praying constantly for me could it have been accomplished.

Please read on and with an open mind you will see our creator perhaps a little closer than before. May God richly bless you for reading this document.

SECTION I

WHERE THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHURCH WENT WRONG

The early church started out with a very narrow view of how you were to interpret the first eleven chapters of Genesis. All early church fathers, with the possible exception of Origen, believed that you did less violence to the scriptures if you took those chapters as literally has possible. Lets take a look at some heresies that have crept into the church's theology over time. These all stem from a belief that maybe Gods word is not Gods word, but is simply a collection of allegories.

There are six basic philosophies to understanding scripture(only one of which is Biblical); rationalism, higher criticism, neoorthodoxy, modernism, evolutionary, and orthodoxy. The only one that does not do violence to the scriptures is the orthodox approach to Bible scholarship.

1. RATIONALISM: This is the assertion that human reason is sufficient in all realms of human experience. It is the view that human reason is the only source of truth, that it alone is the judge as to what can be accepted or must be rejected. A rationalist will generally have a hard time with things that are considered supernatural. At rationalism's heart is the belief that man is inherently good and rejecting that man is a sinful fallen individual. It originally had secular roots but gradually infiltrated the church of the early 1800's. It did and still does influence every area of society, but its effects were most noticeable in the church. It denies supernatural revelation, thus the Bible is reduced to just another ancient writing. It rejects the miraculous element of Christianity, regarding religion as a product of the human mind. Jesus became a mere man; His miracles were natural phenomena; the Bible is regarded as a bunch of nice stories with some history thrown in. Genesis, in particular, is rejected as being of no importance. Rationalism exalts man above God and makes human reason the measure of all things. It arrogantly denies all truth as revealed in scripture and asks "did God really say?".[1]

2. HIGHER CRITICISM: When scholarly judgment is applied to the genuineness of the biblical text, it is classified as higher or historical criticism. The subject matter of this type of scholarly judgment concerns such matters as the date of the text, its literary style and structure, its historicity and its authorship. As a result, higher criticism is not actually an integral part of of the study of the Bible. This rather than being a helpful aid to the scriptures, has actually been very destructive in all its uses.

THE OLD TESTAMENT: The late date ascribed to Old Testament documents led some scholars to attribute its supernatural elements to legend or myth. This resulted in the denial of the historicity and genuineness of much of the Old Testament by these skeptical scholars. In an attempt at mediation between traditionalism and skepticism, Julius Wellhausen proposed to date the Old Testament books in a less supernaturalistic manner. As a result they developed the JEDP Theory of the Old Testament.

This theory was based largely on the argument that Israel had no writing prior to the monarchy, and that an Elohist(E) code and a Jehovahist(J) code were based on two oral traditions about God. To these were added the Deuteronomic (D) code (documents attached to the time of Josiah) and the so-called Priestly(P) documents allied to post exile Judaism. These views were not palatable to orthodox scholars and a wave of opposition arose. The church was slow to respond to this crisis however, so most of the scholarly world followed this theory. Archeological finds have since placed this theory in a very bad light as writing has been found to go back much further than these scholars had thought. This theory still has many adherers even to this day.

THE NEW TESTAMENT: Application of similar principles to the New Testament writings appeared in the Tubingen school of theology following the lead of Heinrich Paulus and others. They developed principles to challenge the authorship, structure, style, and date of the New Testament books. The destructive criticism of modernism led to the form criticism in the gospels and to the denial of Paul's authorship of most of the Pauline epistles. This form of criticism will take a most liberal view of the virgin birth, miracles and his bodily resurrection.[2]

3. NEOORTHODOXY: At the beginning of this century the turn of world events and the influence of the Danish father of existentialism, Soren Kierkegaard, gave rise to a new reformation within European theology. Many began to turn again to the scriptures to hear the voice of God. Without giving up their critical views of the Bible as the locus of God's revelation to man. In a kind of new orthodoxy they affirmed that God speaks to them through the Bible; the Scriptures become the Word of God to them in a personal encounter. Like the other theories on the inspiration of the Bible, Neoorthodoxy developed two wings. On the more critical extreme are the demythologists who deny any religiously significant historical or factual content in the Bible and hold only to the existential religious care beneath the myths. On the other hand, the more evangelical thinkers try to preserve much of the historical and factual data of Scripture but argue that the Bible as such is not God's revelation. Rather, God reveals Himself through the Bible in personal encounter, but not in a prepositional way.[3]

4. MODERNISM: Along with the rise of German idealism and biblical criticism a new view of biblical inspiration evolved with theological modernism or liberalism. In contrast to the traditional orthodox view that the Bible is the word of God, the modernists believe it contains the words of God. Certain parts of the Bible are divine and true, but other parts are clearly human and in error. They feel the Bible is a victim of its times like any other book. They say that many of the legends, myths, and false beliefs about science were incorporated into the Bible. They argue that since these are not inspired of God they must be rejected by enlightened men as remnants of a primitive mentality unworthy of Christian belief. Only the divine truths contained within this admixture of ancient ignorance and error are truly inspired of God.

ILLUMINATION VIEW: Some argue that the inspired sections of the Bible result from a kind of divine illumination wherein God granted deep religious insight to pious men. These insights were enjoyed with varying degrees of understanding and were recorded with admixtures of erroneous religious lore and scientific belief common to their day. Hence, the Bible expresses degrees of inspiration dependent on the depth of religious illumination which the author experienced.

INTUITION VIEW: On the other end of the modernistic camp are those who deny any divine element in the Bible whatsoever. To them the Bible is merely a Jewish scrapbook of poems, legends and stories with no historical value. What others call divine inspiration is nothing but intensive human intuition. In this respect it is not much different than rationalism. These spiritual insights are nothing more than heightened moral and religious genius. In no sense are they anything more than human intuition, there is no supernatural inspiration or illumination.[4]

5. EVOLUTIONARY: In some since this is the hardest of all the false theology to pin down. This belief system is extremely flexible as it actually incorporates no actual verifiable evidence at all. In its strictest sense it denies there is a God at all. I realize for those of you that are theistic evolutionists this may sound harsh, but this is what evolution insists. That everything has come about by chance. We will delve into this area more closely in the next section, as this is the primary focus of this resource.

6. ORTHODOXY: For some eighteen centuries of church history the orthodox view of inspiration prevailed. With only minor dissenting voices, the great fathers of the church held firmly that the Bible is the word of God written down. Orthodox theologians through the centuries have agreed that the Bible is verbally inspired, That is as 2 Timothy 3 states, "God breathed". Attempts to explain just how the writers were inspired have fallen into two camps, 'verbal dictation' and 'inspired concepts'.

VERBAL DICTATION: This simply states that God dictated to the writers of the Bible exactly what He wanted for them to write down. This form further argues that God by his special province formed the very personalities that the Holy Spirit would later call upon to receive the dictation. Therefore using their own personalities as a guide, they were dictated to by the Holy Spirit.

INSPIRED CONCEPTS: In his systematic theology, A. H.. Strong takes a view which has been called conceptual inspiration. God inspired only the concepts and not the particular literary expression into which each author cast them. God gave the thoughts to the prophets who were at liberty to put them into their own terms. In this way Strong hoped to avoid any mechanical implications of verbal dictation and still preserve the divine origin of the scriptures. God provided the conceptual inspiration and the men of God gave it a verbal expression characteristic of their own styles.[5]

SECTION II

A CLOSER LOOK AT EVOLUTION AND ITS OFFSPRING

As we take a closer look at what evolution is at its base level, we will see the lengths that evolutionists will go to keep their theory in the face of all the evidence for special creation. We will give some very basic definitions to several of the current forms of evolution that are attempting to infiltrate the church.

1. EVOLUTION: The idea that all life has come from a common ancestor through a process of modification over time. Thus man and the apes are thought to have descended from an ape-like common ancestor. All vertebrates came from fish, which in turn came from an invertebrate. All life descended from a single-celled organism which arose spontaneously from non-living chemicals. Changes occurred through natural processes, including mutation, natural selection, and genetic recombination. The application of evolutionary ideas in the public arena includes concepts such as social Darwinism, man is an animal, animal rights equal to human rights, low view of human life and the rise of many human hating doctrines. When scientists talk about evolution, they are generally intermixing two very different terms, macro-evolution and micro-evolution.

MACRO-EVOLUTION: Macro-evolution is the large hypothetical changes which occur in an individual or in a population of organisms which produce an entirely new category of animal or a novel trait. These changes have never been observed to occur within living populations.

MICRO-EVOLUTION: Micro-evolution is the small adaptations within a population of organisms which allow a certain trait to be expressed to a greater or lessor degree than before; variation within a given kind. These are regularly observed to occur within living populations.[6]

2. PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM: Punctuated equilibrium is a relatively recent theory that was proposed to account for the gaps in the fossil record(we will talk about this in more detail in the geology section).This theory incorporates the long periods of time associated with regular evolution, only adding in periods of rapid evolution, basically a reptile laying an egg, and a bird hatching out. This is often used to try to explain the absence of transitional forms of life.[6]

3. CRYSTALLIZATION: Crystallization is an idea that came out of Chaos theory, which was made famous in the two Jurassic Park movies. This theory states that since crystals grow in set patterns depending on the mineral they are made out of, couldn't life have evolved that way too. That is a certain amount of minerals arranged in the proper order by chance would naturally have a propensity to become alive. This begs the question as to why we are not having minerals come alive all the time?

4. THEISTIC EVOLUTION: Essentially the same as atheistic evolution in its relation to scientific data. God may have either started the evolution process, then left it to natural processes, or may have created the world, then guided it through evolutionary processes. The premise of this belief is that God created the universe billions of years ago, and through the evolutionary process evolved all the life we see now.

A necessary part of this belief is that a gap is needed in the first sentence of the book of Genesis to account for all the time the Bible does not allow for. So we add to the scriptures to allow us to maintain our standing among the world's professionals. This belief is called the Gap theory.

GAP THEORY: This belief in its earliest form is that there is a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. That in this gap Satan fell and so God was made angry and destroyed this original creation and then God tried it all over again starting in verse 1:2. This belief system puts death before sin, makes God a liar when he says the world is very good, all the while standing atop all the death and misery the fossil record represents, and basically denying the reason for Jesus atonement. This is a poor theology model, but is well represented in the current church.

5. PROGRESSIVE CREATIONISM: As the name implies, this is perhaps the most subtle attack on biblical creationism. Sometimes called the day-age theory, its beliefs are that the days of Genesis are actually ages or eons of time. To support this viewpoint, they will distort scripture, change meanings of words, and will actually attack biblical creationism as unscientific. They will quote scriptures out of context to justify their position.

6. FRAMEWORK HYPOTHESIS: This is perhaps the most recent belief system to come out. This belief is that the Bible, when it speaks of things historic or scientific, is to be understood in a theological sense only. This assumes that God was involved in creation, but not exactly as the written word says. This is a popular view amongst theologians and most bible schools. This allows for pastors and theologians to believe God created, but to also accept evolution fully. This is a very dangerous view, whenever someone tries to reinterpret scripture.[7]

7. BIBLICAL CREATIONISM: The supernatural creation of all things in six literal days by the God of the Bible. Along with this follows that there was a worldwide flood and that this is responsible for most of the geologic features we now see. This view includes the curse on all things because of the original sin. This sin brought about the death and life struggle we now see. All creation is cursed because of mans sin. This belief system allows the most literal usage of the scripture in Genesis.[6]

SECTION III

WORD CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST NON-BIBLICAL CREATIONISM

This section of this booklet will deal with the words that are used in the Genesis account of creation. It should be fairly inclusive. Please forgive us if we have left any words out.

When Moses, under the inspiration of God, compiled the account of creation in Genesis 1, he used the Hebrew word Yom for 'day'. He combined Yom with numbers('first, second, third day', etc.) and with the words' evening and morning', setting up the word day as a 24 hour period, represents a triple bonding of the word Yom, which means the word Yom in this usage always means a literal 24 hour day. Also there are other Hebrew words that could have been used to convey a meaning of a longer period of time;

Also the word eth for time in general and moed for seasons or festivals. If it was a longer period of time here are some of the ways that the words could have been arranged. Yammin the plural of Yom, could have been used and denoted many days and nights. Qedem with Yom would have meant days of old. He could also have used several other combinations but the point is, HE DID NOT.

Another word that seems to get changed on a regular basis when dealing with non biblical creationists is the verb was which in the Hebrew is hayah. The Progressive creationists make this word out to be 'became' instead of 'was'. This is key to the whole translation of this section of scripture. The proper translation of the word became would be 'hayetah le' not hayehtah as is in the Hebrew text. The final two words under dispute is the Hebrew words 'tohu and bohu'. These are properly translated formless and empty in that God created it this way to fill it with his creation. The progressive creationists want this to be a form of Gods judgment on a previously done creation. All of these are an extremely poor exegesis of scripture going back to a higher critical view of the Bible.[8]

SECTION IV

WHAT GEOLOGY SAYS ABOUT CREATION

This section will deal with the processes of creation that God used in the building of the Earth's features. Many of these features were made during the world wide catastrophe known as Noah's Flood. This section will show many geologic evidences that will support a creation model better than an evolutionary one.

1. PARACONFORMITY: At several places in the Baltic region clays laid down in Pleistocene lakes rest directly upon Maine clays that contain Cambrian fossils. The interval of time represented by the paraconformity includes all of the Mesozoic and nearly all of the Paleozoic and Cenozoic, a gap of more than 400 million years. Yet in some places, the paraconformity can hardly be located, so similar are the Cambrian clays to those of the Pleistocene.

The Pleistocene clay is conformable to the Cambrian clay below it. The intervening layers demonstrate, by their absence, the bankruptcy of evolutionary geology. The absence of the erosive agency of water, as manifested in cutting out valleys and gorges in the under strata is fatal to the theory that each formation has been eroded before the next layer of rock is laid down.[9]

2. GEOLOGY UPSIDE DOWN: In many cases huge thickness' of rock are on top of each other, totally out of the proper geologic sequence. One such example is in Glacier National Park where there is a block of Precambrian rock on top of Cretaceous rock. A one billion year old rock on top of a 100 million year old rock. What makes this all the more amazing is that the Precambrian rock is a limestone while the Cretaceous rock is a shale, a harder rock on top of a softer rock, yet there have never been any scrape marks found on the softer rock. Also, moving something across another rock should produce a tallis pile as it moved, kind of like a bulldozer blade, yet that has not been found either. Finally, the tensile strength of rock is not sufficient for it to be moved around in many square mile pieces.

Another example of layers being the wrong order can be found in the Salt Range of Pakistan, where trilobite infested rock of Cambrian age sits atop Tertiary rock of less than 50 million years old. Another example is the Permian rock on top of the Alps in Europe, which again rests on rock supposedly much younger.[10]

3. RADIOMETRIC DATING: Radiometric dating is the use of radioactive isotopes and their decay rates into other elements. These new isotopes are commonly called daughter atoms. This decay rate between parent and daughter elements is a measurable amount of time. They use the ratio of the daughter product versus the amount of parent product still left and then figure out how many years have elapsed. These dating techniques can be called into two main categories: those whose information is limited to the last few thousand years, such as carbon-14, and those which utilize radioactive elements such as uranium-lead and potassium-argon for determining dates supposedly stretching back into the millions and billions of years.

In dating the earth, the scientists rely primarily on the uranium-lead and potassium-argon methods. Of the two the uranium-lead method is the most important because it is the one on which all the other long term dating systems are calibrated. Regardless of the method, dates obtained in this manner are based on a number of assumptions;

1. The rock contained no daughter product atoms in the beginning, only parent atoms.

2. Since then, no parent or daughter atoms were either added to, or taken from the rock.

3. The rate of radioactive decay has always been the same.

From these you can see that whenever you are dating something, you cannot be sure it is a closed system. All the radioactive elements are very water soluble and can readily be moved around by this method. Observations of contemporary lava flows have shown dates with these dating techniques that are not at all correct with their true age. If we can't date the young rocks correctly, how can these techniques be expected to date older rocks correctly?[11]

4. DISTURBING RESULTS FROM CARBON-14 DATING: In the early days of carbon-14 dating, this method of dating was used on anything containing carbon. Hundreds of fossil bones of Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon's, mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, and other extinct animals, as well as fossil trees, coal, oil, and natural gas, were all reported having ages, by the carbon-14 method, of only several thousand years. The significant point is that every biological specimen tested contained carbon-14, and all appeared to lie within a 50,000 year frame. The great number of these results, indicating a young age for material in some cases believed to be millions of years old, had a chilling effect on the geologic establishment. They stopped dating these materials and no longer printed the results that did not jive with an old earth. Here is a list of some materials and the reported dates for them.

Because it was assumed in these early datings that the carbon-14/cabon-12 ratio had reached equilibrium, which it has not, these dates can be lowered even further, thus putting them at a date consistent with a worldwide flood.[12 ]

5. POOR DATING RESULTS: In the last two decades some concern as been expressed for the usefulness of the carbon-14 test method. Techniques have improved, but still there are uncertainties and absurd results, not with old material that appears young, for which there is no proof of age, but for recent material that appears old, for which there is proof. Living mollusk shells have been dated by the carbon-14 method at up to 2,300 years, a freshly killed seal at 1,300 years, and wood from a growing tree at 10,000 years.

Also the older dating methods such as potassium-argon and uranium-lead yield very low dates for material known to be recent in age. Hawaiian lava flows known to be less than 200 years old have been dated by both methods at between 30 million and 3 billion years old. Again rocks at Mt. St. Helens were dated and were given an age of 30,000 to 750,000 years old, unfortunately for the evolutionists the lava was only 10 years old.[13]

6. SUDDEN APPEARANCE: Does the fossil record in Grand Canyon and elsewhere show evidence of slow, evolutionary process? For each fossil considered, the species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, and kingdom appear abruptly in the rocks of the Canyon. This means that whenever one type of organism is found, there is never found preceding it, a series of intermediates between that organism and any other. Each type of organism appears in the rocks as being fully formed. This pattern of abrupt appearance is a feature of the entire fossil record everywhere on earth.

Another feature of the worldwide fossil record is stasis: every species in the fossil record shows no substantive change from its deepest occurrence to its shallowest occurrence. This, on top of the nearly simultaneous abrupt appearance of a large number of different animal types in the earliest Cambrian rocks(the Cambrian Explosion), argues for the sudden, independent origin of different animal types, rather than for a common evolutionary ancestor.

Do we find the ancestors of the Cambrian fossils in Precambrian strata of Grand Canyon? Indisputable, multicellular animals have not been found in Precambrian strata of the Canyon. Plausible, ancestral forms for Grand Canyon fossils have not been found in any Precambrian strata anywhere in the world. Where are the ancestors required by organic-evolution for the trilobite, brachiopod, worm, mollusk, caral, and criniod? These ancestors may exist in the minds of evolutionists, but they have not been found in the fossil record.[14]

7. GAPS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD: It is significant that the same array of similarities and differences between organisms is found in the realm of the fossils as in the realm of the living. The same types of gaps between kinds exist in the fossil record as in the Linnaean classification system for plants and animals in the present world.

If the evolution model were valid, one would expect to find a horizontal continuum of living organisms, rather than clear-cut categories. Gaps between kinds can only be explained by a series of secondary assumptions, postulating special environments and selection histories for the various gaps.

Gaps in the fossil record require still more secondary assumptions. In this case, there must have been at least a vertical continuum between each fossil organism and its evolutionary ancestors, so that absence of such transitional fossils is certainly not a primary prediction of the evolution model, as it is for the creation model. The lack of these transitional fossils must be explained away with some far-fetched schemes one of which is the punctuated equilibrium theory, which has no basis in any factual, testable data.

If evolution were true, one would suppose that the classification system itself would evolve over the ages. If all animals and plants are randomly changing, the categories of classification should likewise be changing. The fact is, however, that it has been the same since the beginning, even assuming the geological ages are as taught in orthodox geology.

Note the following:

1. All kingdoms and subkingdoms are represented in the geologic record from the Cambrian onward.

2. All phyla of the animal kingdom are represented from the Cambrian onward.

3. All classes of the animal kingdom are represented from the Cambrian onward, except:
           a. moss-corals(Ordovician onwards)
           b. Insects(Devonian onward)
           c. Graptolites(Cambrian to Carboniferous)
           d. Trilobites(Cambrian to Permian)

4. All phyla of the plant kingdom are represented from the Triassic onward, except:
           a. Bacteria, algae, fungi(Precambrian onward)
           b. Bryophytes, pteridophytes(Silurian onward)
           c. Spermatophytes(Carboniferous onward)
           d. Diatoms(Jurassic onward)

5. All orders and families(as well as kingdoms, phyla, and classes) appear suddenly in the fossil record, with no indication of transitional forms from earlier types.

This is true even of most genera and species. Now we will discuss the major gaps that the evolutionist must explain for his theory to be true.

A. From chemicals to Protozoan life.

Despite claims to the contrary, man has never made life in the test-tube. As you will see in a later section of this booklet, a few amino acids do not constitute a living cell. If evolution were true, you should be able to build simple cells in the laboratory relatively easy, but they have been trying for the better part of 30 years and still don't have a reproducing cell to show for their efforts.

B. From Protozoa's to Metazoan Invertebrates.

One of the most important fossil gaps is that found between the unsubstantiated one-celled creatures of the Precambrian, and the amazingly complex invertebrate life of the Cambrian. As one evolutionist states, " One of the major unsolved problems of geology and evolution is the occurrence of diversified multicellular marine invertebrates in lower Cambrian rocks and their absence in rocks of older age. These early Cambrian fossils included porifera, coelenterates, brachiopods, mollusca, echiniods, and arthropods. Their high degree of organization clearly indicates that a long period of evolution preceded their appearance in the record. However, when we turn to examine the Precambrian rocks for the forerunners of these early Cambrian fossils, they are nowhere to be found".[15]

C. From Invertebrates to Vertebrates.

The evolutionary transition from invertebrates to vertebrates must have involved billions of animals, but no one ever found a fossil of one of them. Invertebrates have soft inner parts and hard outer shells; vertebrates have soft outer parts and hard inner parts-skeletons. How did the one evolve into the other? There is no evidence at all.

D. From Fishes to Amphibians.

The next major evolutionary advance must have been from fish it amphibian. Somehow the fin of the fish must have been transformed into the foot of the amphibian, not to mention the myriad of other necessary changes. To date, however, no fossil of a "fishbian", with fins partly converted into feet(or any other transitional characters) has ever been found.

The chief candidate for such a transitional form was long supposed to have been the coelacanth, a crossopterygian fish, which was supposed to have certain limb-like characters on its fins indicating initial advance toward amphibianhood. Ultimately it was destined, so it was believed, to become a primitive amphibian known as a labyrinthodont. The coelacanth was believed to have finished this transition sometime in the Mesozoic, since no fossils have been found subsequent to that era.

Evolutionists were embarrassed when it was discovered in 1938 that these fish are still alive and well, living in the waters off Madagascar! Hard to see this fish as an ancestor to the amphibians when it is the same as it was 100 million years ago.

E. From Amphibians to Reptiles to Mammals.

The fossil record throws very little light on the hypothetical evolution of amphibians to reptiles, or that of reptiles into mammals. All of them are four-legged vertebrates with similar skeletal structures and thus their fossilized remains provide little basis for distinguishing between them. Among animals living today, those of certain reptiles whose bony parts closely resemble those of certain amphibians and others that closely resemble certain mammals. The characters and appearance, as well as the physiological functions, of amphibians, reptiles and mammals, are all vastly different from each other, but these differences need not show up in the fossil record.

Of much more significance is the fact that each of the various orders of amphibians, reptiles and mammals appears suddenly in the fossil record, without incipient forms leading up to it and without forms between it and any other order.

F. From Reptiles to Birds.

Evolutionists universally maintain that reptiles are the evolutionary ancestors of birds. There is no evidence to support this notion as you will see in a later section of this booklet. The primary evidence for the evolutionist is the primitive bird Archaeopteryx. There would have had to be numerous transitional lifeforms between Archaeopteryx and its ancestors, yet we find not one fossil to provide this reptile to bird scenario. As a matter of fact, there are not even any transitional forms between the flying reptiles (pterosaurs) and their supposed non-flying reptilian ancestors.

G. Origin of Insects.

If the evolutionary origin of the higher animals is obscure, the origin of insects is completely blank. Insects occur in fantastic number and variety, but there is no fossil clue to their development from some kind of evolutionary ancestor.

Of course, it is remarkable that insect fossils are found at all. Nevertheless, they have been found fossilized in considerable numbers, preserved in amber, coal, volcanic ash, or other such materials. All such deposits must have been formed rapidly, of course, or the insect fossils could not have endured so long.

The most remarkable feature about such fossil insects as are known is that they are very similar to those living now. In many cases, however, they are much larger than their modern relatives. But their form is no different in essence from that of modern insects.

H. Origin of Plants.

The study of plants has yielded little to nothing on where the plant kingdom came from. Even now, paleobotanists cannot trace any modern plants from its beginning to the present.[16]

8. PETRIFIED LOGS: Petrified logs represent something of an enigma for evolutionary scientists in that they speak of a different type of burial not going on very often at this time. They also speak of a catastrophic event, rather than a slow burial. All have had their branches stripped off and many appear to have their bark still intact. This would indicate rapid burial. It is apparent that the original forests were uprooted by some sort of hydraulic event of enormous power, which also transported and deposited them in their present locations, sometimes many miles from where they were growing, where they became petrified under unique conditions.[17]

9. POLYSTRATIC TREES: Consider an exposed tree trunk extending thirty feet up from the bottom of an ocean. No woody tree can long survive under sea water. Some may grow with their roots in salt water, but when any tree is covered by sea water, it will die. How long would it take that dead tree trunk to rot and fall over? Could it remain upright for millions or for even hundreds of years, while the mud slowly accumulated around it? Obviously not. Some polystrate trees even intersect more than one coal layer! Did it ride the strata down and up again and then down again for millions of years? From studying these trees, we can conclude that the length of time for accumulation of the peat(which later turned to coal) and the overlying sediments was less time than it takes for wood to decay. Obviously, wood decays in an active ocean environment, standing in air, or buried in sediments.

Polystrate trees which extend through more than one layer (hence the name 'poly-strate', meaning "many strata") in effect tie the layers together into a short period of time. This period of time can't be explicitly determined from the data, but it is wholly incompatible to the long-age model normally taught.

One polystrate tree might be understood as having been deposited in a freakish scenario, but the fact is, the world contains many polystrate trees. In coal mines, they are quite common. John Morris has personally been in many underground coal mines and in every mine but one , saw polystrate trees in them. They have also found other plants going through many layers of limestone. Since these plants are very fragile, it would seem that these layers would have to be deposited very rapidly for these plants to be preserved.[18]

10. SURFACE FEATURES: One way to show that only a short time elapsed between the deposition of one bed and the deposition of an overlying bed is to show that the various surface features present on the top surface of the lower bed would not last very long if exposed.

One very common feature, seen in many rock layers in many locations, is the presence of Ripple marks, formed as water moves over a surface. These can frequently be seen on a beach after the tide has receded, and can also be seen on the ocean bottom where a particular current direction dominates. In many other situations we see what have been called raindrop impressions, although these raindrop marks may actually be blisters formed as air bubbles escaped from rapidly deposited sediments under water. Animal tracks are also common. In any case, these features, which had to be present on any surface, unconsolidated material or hard rock, will not last very long.

Keep in mind that almost every sedimentary rock layer was deposited under water. Every geologist agrees with this. Unless erosion dominates locally, sediments accumulate on an ocean bottom, lake bottom, delta, beach, lagoon, stream bank, etc., in the presence of water currents. If subsequent events lift the deposit up out of water, erosion and or non-deposition will result. But if a zone stays under water, it will continue to be subjected to water action and will likely receive more sediments. In such an active environment, ripple marks can be preserved only if they are quickly buried by overlying materials, so that they are protected and have time to turn into rock.

In many places around the world, these ocean-floor sediments have been solidified into rock, and are now uplifted onto continental surfaces. Ripple marks and similar features are readily seen in many locations, frozen in solid rock. Other features that can be preserved include animal tracks and leaf impressions as well as the soft parts of invertebrates impressed into the rock.

If such a mark is exposed on any surface, under water or above water, it will soon erode and disappear. Even on a hard rock surface, markings will erode in a few decades. There is no possibility that fragile features will last for millions of years, waiting to be re-submerged and buried, and thus protected from erosive forces. We can't determine exactly how much time passed between the deposition of two layers simply by looking at ripple marks, raindrop impressions and the like, but we can conclude that much less time passed than takes for surface features to be eroded and disappear.[19]

11. WATERFALLS: High-water marks cut into the rocky walls of the Nile river at the Semna rapids between the second and third cataracts are 24 feet higher than present high-water states. The river at this point is downcutting through relatively hard gneissic rock evidently at the rate of about 1/12 of an inch per year. By dividing 1/12 of an inch per year, into 24 feet we obtain a figure of 3,500 years as the age of the Nile at this point.

Geologists can do little better on the Mississippi River which they often point to as an example of a geologically old river that meanders back and forth on the flood plain of its own alluvium. But this flood plain is not an old worn down peneplain at all, but a built-up plain of alluvial deposit. The river is so youthful that it has not worn down St. Anthony Falls, 40 feet high, on the upper Mississippi. It has cut back 8 miles at a known rate of 6.5 feet per year. Making the mathematical calculations, the falls were found to be around 8,000 years old, not nearly enough time for the evolutionists so they event uplifts and numerous ice ages to account for this discrepancy.[20]

12. FORMATION OF SWAMPS: There is not a swamp in the world today that is producing coal, nor are todays coal mines located in swampy areas. No locality is known where a peat bed, in its lower reaches, grades into a typical coal bed, no actual evidence that peat is now being turned into coal anywhere in the world. Furthermore the theory that peat forms coal is hard to prove based on observations of peat itself. You find when you examine peat beds that the root systems of the plants overhead are all through the peat bed. When you examine coal beds you do not find roots in it, but you do find bark. It seems coal was formed another way than by peat evolving into it!21

The evolutionist's have evented a series of submergences and reemerging land from the water. In some mines,the coal lenses there show more than 85 different times that the ocean covered and uncovered the ground. A much more logical method of coal deposition was formed by Steve Austin. He postulates that after a worldwide flood had stripped the land of all vegetation, this vegetation floated in gigantic mats. As this mat floated and the sea currents moved it around, debris would gradually float down to the bottom and a peat layer would be formed. After more sedimentation, which provided both the pressure and the heat, coal was formed relatively rapidly. According to Dr. Robert Gentry, using radiohalos, the coal could have formed as quick as 20 years.[22]

13. BIOTURBATION: The deficiency of evidence of living communities within a given layer of rock, is a major problem for evolution. By this I refer to the fact that on and below any surface, whether it be on land or in the sea, life is present which will leave its mark. In the ocean bottom or near the shore, worms, clams, fish, and all sorts of plants and animals live and disturb the sediments. Many actually ingest the mud, utilizing the nutrients present.

On land, tree roots, gophers, and numerous other animals, will alter the surface layers in fairly short order. Weathering will further hasten deterioration.

Consider a recent example. In 1961, Hurricane Carla devastated the central Texas coast. As it retreated, it laid down a recognizable layer of sediments on the shore and far out into the Gulf of Mexico. These graded sediments contained within them many sedimentary structures, such as buried ripple marks and cross-bedding. These internal sedimentary structures were well studied in the years after Hurricane Carla, and were recognized as rapid deposition features.

About twenty years later, others went back to study what had happened to the stratum. Due to bioturbation, the disturbance of the geologic zone by biologic activity, the layer could hardly be found, and once located, it retained almost no evidence of sedimentary structure. Within just a couple of decades (and probably much more quickly), life at the surface of this bed, both on shore and off, had destroyed its internal character that had been formed by catastrophic processes. Indeed, in any environment, from a desert sanddune to the shallow marine, life is abundant, and continually agitates the sediments within several feet of the surface. Particularly in shallow water, where most of the sedimentation occurs, living communities of plants and animals are especially active.

Compare the layer from Hurricane Carla to sedimentary layers of rock around the world, almost all of which are full of sedimentary structure. While individual exceptions could be cited, they are exceptions. The broad trend is for each stratum to contain abundant internal structure. Evidently, the sediments were not exposed to an environment of biologic activity for any length of time before they were buried out of reach of plant and animal activity and subsequently hardened.

Perhaps the sediments continued to build up so rapidly that the structure was out of reach of burrowing animals, but this implies continual catastrophic deposition. Where fossilized bioturbation does exist, it usually looks quite different from modern habitats. It better resembles that left by burrowing animals as they escape from deepening sediments, having been buried there against their will. These escape burrows are frequently oriented upward only, not in the variety of directions employed in living communities. It's as if the organisms were digging out of a continually growing supply of sediments.

Again, we can't tell how long the lower layer existed before the overlying layer was deposited, but we can say that it was less than the time for bioturbation to destroy sedimentary structures within the lower zone. In this manner we can march up the geologic column, tying the layers together, and conclude with a relatively short time for the entire sequence.[23]

14. LACK OF SOIL LAYERS: Exactly the same logic can be applied to another obvious feature, the almost complete lack of recognizable soil layers anywhere in the geologic column. Within the standard, old-earth thinking, the continents now exposed have on numerous occasions been underwater, as evidenced by the fact that nearly all of the rocks themselves were deposited by ocean water, perhaps by offshore wave action, in deltas, in lagoons, or by major storms or mud slides. While on land, they presumably supported soil, wherein plants and animals could live. Even in near shore environments, underwater soils are needed.

Soils today, consist primarily of weathered rock, broken up by the cycle of freezing and thawing water, by chemical deterioration of rock minerals, by wind and water erosion, and due to the action of rooting plants and burrowing animals. To this is added organic debris, mostly decaying plants and animal carcasses and droppings. Without a soil, abundant life is impossible, but we know from the fossil record that abundant life has existed throughout much of this planet's history. It takes a while for soil to form, but once present, it tends to remain, barring erosion.

What happens to the soil as the land surface submerges beneath the sea? Whether the land is covered rapidly by a catastrophic process, or slowly by transgression of the sea, certainly some of the soil would be preserved.

So what do we make of the fact that soil layers, or even soil materials, are seldom found in the geologic record? A possible sill is sometimes mentioned is underclays, typically found under a coal seam and thought by some to represent a leached soil layer; but the makeup of an underclay is not what one would expect of a soil layer capable of supporting a lush swamp. And even this attempt at identifying a fossil soil is rare. The geologic record is one of rocks, with few exceptions, not soils or paleosols. And these rocks are not thought to consist of materials which have ever been soils. Standard geology tells us that land surfaces supporting lush life have been here continuously for hundreds of millions of years. Where, then, are the soils?[24]

15. SOFT SEDIMENT DEFORMATION: Once a rock becomes hard, it is extremely difficult to bend it without breaking it. Rocks would be expected to behave in what engineers call a hard, brittle fashion, and not in a soft, plastic or pliable fashion. Usually, the rock's state when it deformed can be determined by examination, especially under a microscope.

Many times a rock will appear to have deformed while in a soft, unconsolidated condition, and yet the timing of deposition and bending raises concern. According to the old-earth scenario, rocks would often have been laid down millions of years before they were deformed. Since they had plenty of time during which to harden, they should have behaved in a brittle fashion, and yet, frequently, they seem to have deformed as would an unconsolidated mud.

Many of the rock layers in the Grand Canyon area show extensive folding, in some cases almost curling back on itself. A rock that is almost one half billion years old would not be able to bend like that. Only a recently deposited layer could be bent so heavily. As we have seen in a previous section of this book, the tensile strength of rock does not, especially sandstone, would not have the strength to bend in 90 degree angles as is seen in the Grand Canyon region.[25]

16. THE HYDROPLATE THEORY: The Hydroplate Theory produced by Dr. Walt Brown is a way for creation scientists to explain proposed continental drift using under ground water as the motivating factor for the movement of the continents rapidly. There are three assumptions that underlie the theory.

1. The continents were once connected at approximately the continental shelf areas. The center point of this one continent is roughly where the Atlantic ocean is now.

2. Before the oceans bottom features were formed, the earth had a large amount of salty, subterranean water, about half of what is now in the oceans. This subterranean water was contained in interconnected chambers that collectively formed a thin, spherical shell. It averaged about 5/8 of a mile in thickness and was located 10 miles blow the earth's surface.

There is no need to assume the temperature of this water. Subsequent events, as you will see from the last assumption, Increased the temperature of the water suddenly. Mantle minerals and some gases were dissolved in this water, especially salt and carbon dioxide.

Beneath the subterranean water was a layer of basaltic rock, and beneath the basalt was the top of the earth's mantle. An important distinction between the basalt and upper mantle was discovered in 1909 by seismologist Andrija Mohorovicic. He noticed that earthquake waves passing into the mantle suddenly increased in speed. This boundary, now called the Mohorovicic discontinuity, has for obvious reasons been shortened to "The Moho".

3. The final assumption of the hydroplate theory is that the pressure in the layer of subterranean water was increasing[.26]

17. INFLUX OF MATERIALS INTO THE OCEAN: Calculations can be made for the amounts of dissolved chemicals that are currently in them and how lingo it took to get them there. That is, the amount of any given chemical in the ocean, divided by the annual increment of that chemical through water inflow, will yield the time required to accumulate the chemical, assuming none was present in the ocean to begin with and the flow rate has always been the same.

Since there are many chemicals in the ocean, a great many different calculations can be made. Many different answers will be obtained, for the reason that an unknown amount of each chemical was present in the ocean to start with, and also because in some cases mechanisms for recycling may exist to return portions back to the continents.

The significant thing to note, however, is that in every case the calculated apparent age of the ocean is vastly less than the supposed 5 billion year age of the earth. Cook has pointed out this fact in the case of uranium, stating that:" the annual uranium flux in river water is 1010 to 1011 grams per year compared with the total uranium present in the oceans (about 1015 grams)."27 In this case, the apparent age of the ocean based on this particular form of "uranium dating" is obviously calculated to be from 10,000 to 100,000 years.

This correlates approximately with the estimate made by other noted scientists in this field. These authors have made similar calculations for many other chemicals, with the following typical results.

As you can see, all of these minerals are in the ocean in far less quantities than they should be if the earth is 4.6 billion years old. This situation is difficult to understand if the earth's lithosphere and hydrosphere are indeed billions of years old, and if uniformitarianism is a valid assumption in the study of how old the earth is. The oceanographers do not find these minerals precipitating out of the ocean water on to the bottom of the ocean. Also, the amount of minerals lost through ocean spray onto the continents is minor.[16],[28],[29]

18. CLASTIC DIKES: The final argument for creation that will be made from geology is clastic dikes. A clastic rock is made up of pieces of a previously existing rock. A sandstone, for instance, is made up of sand grains, and sand grains are actually pieces of quartz, usually derived from the erosion of a previously existing granite. Thus, sandstone is a clastic rock. A dike is a vertical, wall-like feature, buried underground. Many igneous dikes can be seen surrounding volcanoes, but our interest is in clastic dikes.

There are some of these down near Rockwall, Texas, which is from where they get the town's name. These dikes are from one quarter of an inch to eighteen inches in thickness and up to several miles long. Apparently, the swarm of dikes stems from a series of related events, but all are found in the cracks of the limestone layers that are supposed to be 80 million years old.

Examination of the sandstone dike material indicates that it is essentially the same as that of a sandstone bed buried beneath the limestone. They are made of the same chemical constituents, and the same array of grain sizes. The only difference between the dikes and the mother sandstone bed is that the sand grains in the dike appear to be similarly oriented, with their long axes tending to point in the same direction. This would result if the material were squeezed upward from below, somewhat like a tube of toothpaste. This would indicate that the dike material and the limestone were pliable enough for this toothpaste action to occur. A more reasonable approach to these dikes is that during the time directly after the flood, these materials were bent and squeezed to form the layers as they now sit.[30]

SECTION V

WHAT PHYSICS SAYS ABOUT CREATION

There are several physical laws of the known universe that are in direct conflict with the evolutionary model. Each of these laws has been tested and as far as can be known by mankind are absolutely unchangeable.

1. FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS: This law states that nothing is now being either created or destroyed. It therefore teaches quite conclusively that the universe did not create itself; there is nothing in the present structure of natural law that could possibly account for its own origin.[31]

2. SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS: This law states that every system left to its own devices always tends to move from order to disorder, its energy tending to be transformed into lower levels of availability, finally reaching the state of complete randomness and unavailability for further work. When all the energy of the cosmos has been degraded to random heat energy, with random motion of molecules and uniform low-level temperature, the universe will have died a heat death. The second law of thermodynamics, sometimes called the law of entropy, has three different sub headings that need to be addressed.[32]

1. Classical Thermodynamics

In any physical change that takes place by itself the entropy always increases. Entropy is a measure of the quantity of energy not capable of conversion into work.[33]

2. Statistical Thermodynamics

The equivalence of entropy in the classical and statistical contexts is implied in the following; each quantity of energy has a characteristic quality called entropy associated with it. The entropy measures the degree of disorder associated with the energy. Energy must always flow in such a direction that the energy increases. In laymen's terms, there is always a tendency towards disorder in any energy flow.[34]

3. Informational Thermodynamics

In connection with systems for the processing and transmission of information(including computers, automation, television, newspapers), a highly sophisticated new science known as information theory has incorporated the concept of entropy as a measure of the noise, or degree of uncertainty, in the communication of the information. In effect the more information transmitted, or even the more times it is transmitted, the more likely it will be corrupted.[35]

3. BIOGENIC LAW: Until comparatively recently in history, most people believed that life had begun by divine creation, and that since then every living thing had derived from a similar living thing before it. It was said that life begets life, and todays term for this is biogenesis. The evolutionary belief is for spontaneous generation, or life from something non-living, called abiogenesis.

For those who wished to believe it, there does seem at first glance to be many examples of abiogenesis.; it was thought by a die-hard minority until just over a century ago that maggots were spontaneously created in rotting meat. The scientist Francisco Redi proved in 1668 that this was a faulty supposition. Yet for nearly 300 years some scientists still believed this. This is know coming back as this is the primary view of how life got started on the early earth. In addition to this, many scientists of the 1800's were convinced that the air was full of life, tiny microbes, and that all it took for life to occur was for these little microbes to settle somewhere and you would get life. Pasteur proved them wrong using several simple experiments.[36]

4. LAW OF ANGULAR MOMENTUM: There is a particularly thorny problem for evolutionary solar system models. Everyone has watched accomplished skaters spin on ice. As skaters pull their arms in, their radius decreases, and they accelerate in their spin. This is due to what physicists call the Conservation of Angular Momentum. In the formation of our sun from a nebula in space, the same effect would occur as the gases contracted into the center to form the Sun. This would cause the Sun to spin very rapidly as a result of this process.

Actually, our Sun is observed to spin very slowly today while the planets move very rapidly around the Sun. In point of fact, that although the Sun has over 99% of the mass of the solar system, it has only 2% of the angular momentum. This pattern is directly opposite to that expected from evolutionary reasoning. Another problem with this area of study is the formation of gaseous planets. As the gas would pull together to form planets, the Sun would go through an extreme solar wind phase, called the t-tauri phase. This would have the effect of driving most of the gases of the still forming gas giant planets clear out of the solar system. By the evolutionary model of solar system formation, we should have smaller gas giants than we currently have.[37]

SECTION VI

WHAT ASTRONOMY SAYS ABOUT CREATION

This section of science deals with known the universe and the laws that govern it. This is generally recognized by creation scientists as area most in need of sound study for them simply because we are dealing with an area that has for all purposes been dealt with by God once, at creation. This area of science also has much conjecture and guessing to it, because the distances to study it are so large. Perhaps a Biblical study of the passages of scripture that deal with spreading out of the heavens could lead to better cosmology than what is now being put forth.

1. KOSMOS: The word Kosmos in the Greek form means orderly universe. A universe that would come from the act of God would by the definition of God, be an orderly universe. The laws that describe the universe would not be able to be described in a disorderly universe. The methods of science and the very concept of science are rooted in the notion that the universe is orderly.[38]

2. THE BIG BANG: The suggestion that matter evolved into its present structure far back in non-observable time has been called the big-bang theory. That is, a primeval explosion of some kind is supposed to have converted energy into matter; the explosion itself was perhaps caused by a previous gravitational collapse into a super-dense state.

It is obvious by definition that the big-bang theory has no observational basis. In fact, this theory directly contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. Therefore the big-bang theory is more of a philosophical speculation than an actual happening.[38]

3. POYNTING-ROBERTSON EFFECT: A large disk-shaped cloud of dust particles orbits the Sun. The forces acting on these particles are so great that they should be destroyed or removed in less than 10,000 years. Since there appears to be no significant source of replenishment, the solar system is probably less than 10,000 years old.

Rain falling on a speeding car tends to strike the front of the car and slow it down slightly. Similarly, the sun's rays that strike particles orbiting the sun tend to slow them down. For particle larger than those described above, this effect is strong enough to cause them to spiral into the sun. Thus, the Sun's radiation and gravitational field act as a giant vacuum cleaner that pulls in about 100,000 tons of micrometeroids per day. The best estimates are that less than half this dust is being continuously supplied by the disintegration of comets and asteroids.

As a comet disintegrates, it becomes a cluster of particles called a meteor shower. The poynting-robertson effect causes the smaller particles in a meteor shower to spiral into the sun more rapidly than the larger particles. After 10,000 years, this segregation of orbits by particle size should be visible. Since this segregation is generally not visible, meteor showers must be recent in origin.

Huge quantities of microscopic dust particles have also been recently discovered around some stars. Yet, according to the theory of stellar evolution, those stars are many millions of years old and should have blown the dust away. Unless one can demonstrate that some vast process exists to continually supply the dust, one should consider whether the millions of years is real.[39]

4. STAR CLUSTERS: Stars moving in the same direction at significantly different speeds frequently travel in closely spaced clusters. This would not be the case if they had been traveling for billions of years because just slight differences in their velocities would disperse them after such great periods of time. Similar observations have been made of galaxy and galaxy-quasar combinations that apparently have vastly different velocities yet appear to be connected.[39]

5. SUPERNOVAS: A supernova, or violently exploding star, is one of the most brilliant and powerful objects in God's vast cosmos. On average, a galaxy like our own, the Milky Way, should produce one supernova every 25 years.

When a star exploded in this way, the huge expanding cloud of debris is called a Supernova Remnant(SNR). A well-known example is the Crab Nebula in the constellation of Taurus, produced by a supernova so bright that it could be seen during daytime for a few weeks in 1054. By applying physical laws (and using powerful computers), astronomers can predict what should happen to this cloud. This cloud will go through three stages as it ages.

According to their model, the SNR should reach a diameter of about 300 light years after 120,000 years. So if the universe was billions of years old, we should be able to observe many SNRs this size. But if the universe is 6,000-10,000 years old, no SNRs of a particular size is an excellent test of whether the universe is old or young. In fact, the results are consistent with a universe thousands of years old, but are a puzzle if the universe has existed for billions of years. As can readily be seen in the chart, a young universe model fits the data of the low number of observed SNRs. If the universe was really billions of years old, there are about 7,000 missing SNRs in our galaxy.

6. SOLAR NEUTRINOS: During the last 30 years, one of the most perplexing problems in science has been the lack of solar neutrinos. Neutrinos are extremely light subatomic particles produced in nuclear reactions inside stars, including the sun. If all the sun's heat is produced by nuclear fusion, the earth should be bathed in three times as many neutrinos as scientists have consistently measured. However, if much of the sun's heat is due to its shrinking by gravitational collapse, then the lack of solar neutrinos would be explained.[41]

7. MOON RECESSION: As tidal friction gradually slows the earth's spin, the laws of physics require the moon to recede from the earth. This recession has been observed since 1754. Even if the moon began orbiting near the earth's surface, the moon should have moved to its present distance in several billion years less time than the 4.6 billion year age that evolutionists assume for the earth and moon. Consequently, the earth-moon system must be much younger than evolutionists assume.[42]

8. EXCESS HYDROGEN: Evolutionists generally believe that stars formed by the collapse of gas clouds under gravity. This is supposed to generate the millions of degrees required for nuclear fusion. But most clouds would be so hot that outward pressure would prevent collapse. Evolutionists must find a way for the cloud to cool down. One such mechanism might be through molecules in the cloud colliding and radiating enough of the heat away.

But according to theory, the big-bang made mainly hydrogen, with a little helium, the other elements supposedly formed inside stars. Helium can't form molecules at all, so the only molecule that could be formed would be molecular hydrogen(H2). Even this is easily destroyed by ultraviolet light, and usually needs dust grains to form, and dust grains require heavier elements. So the only coolant left is atomic hydrogen, and this would leave gas clouds over a hundred times too hot to collapse.[43]

SECTION VII

MATHEMATICS: THE EVOLUTION KILLER

Mathematics is the area where the evolutionists have the most trouble and the lie most easily exposed. What the mathematics do is predict with great accuracy the odds that an event will occur. This predictive quality of mathematics is called probability statistics or statistical variance. Insurance companies and the stock market use these methods to gauge the future. It can also give you the odds that something will or will not occur. Here are some probabilities of some events that could and do occur.

Note: Number in parentheses is to that power of 10. Exp: 10 (5) is 10 to the fifth power of 10

Another area of probability that has been taken into mathematics is the field of biblical prophecy. For instance the odds that one man would fulfill 48 out of the 300 prophesies describing the coming messiah is 10180. This is a 1 followed by 180 zeros. This is a truly staggering number considering that you can only pack 10130 electrons in the known universe! Another statistical oddity is that for a 20 year old person the odds that you will be alive in the very next second is 1010. It is interesting to note that there is more a chance of Jesus being who the scriptures say he was than of a 20 year old living in the very next second. Finally, it is interesting to note that any number larger than 1050 is considered impossible or at the other extreme, absolutely a sure thing.[44]

SECTION VIII

GENETICS: EVOLUTION'S UNDOING

Genetics and evolution have been enemies from the beginning of both concepts. Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, and Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolution, were contemporaries. At the same time that Darwin was claiming that creatures could change into other creatures, Mendel was showing that even individual characteristics remain constant. While Darwin's ideas were based on erroneous and untested ideas about inheritance, Mendel's conclusions were based on careful experimentation. Only by ignoring the total implications of modern genetics has it been possible to maintain the fiction of evolution. To help us develop a new biology based on creation rather than evolution, let us sample some of the evidence from genetics, arranged under the four sources of variation; environment, recombination, mutation, and creation.

1. ENVIRONMENT: This refers to all of the external factors which influence a creature during its lifetime. For example, one person may have darker skin than another simply because she is exposed to more sunshine. Or another may have larger muscles because he exercises more. Such environmentally-caused variations generally have no importance to the history of life, because they cease to exist when their owners die; they are not passed on. In the middle 1800s, some scientists believed that variations caused by the environment could be inherited.

Charles Darwin accepted this fallacy, and it no doubt made it easier for him to believe that one creature could change into another. He thus explained the origin of the giraffe's long neck in part through 'the inherited effects of the increased use of the parts'. This quote is from Darwin's own book, Origin of the Species. In seasons of limited food supply, Darwin reasoned, giraffes would stretch their necks for the high leaves, supposedly resulting in longer necks being passed on to their offspring.

2. RECOMBINATION: This involves shuffling the genes and is the reason that children resemble their parents very closely but are not exactly like either one. The discovery of the principles of recombination was Gregor Mendel's great contribution to the science of genetics. Mendel showed that while traits might be hidden for a generation they were not usually lost, and when new traits appeared it was because their genetic factors had been there all along. Recombination makes it possible for there to be limited variation within the created kinds. But it is limited because virtually all of the variations are produced by a reshuffling of the genes that are already there.

For example, from 1800, plant breeders sought to increase the sugar content of the sugar beet. And they were very successful. Over some 75 years of selective breeding it was possible to increase the sugar content from 6% to 17%. But there the improvement stopped, and further selection did not increase the sugar content. Why? Because all of the genes for sugar production had been gathered into a single variety and no further increase was possible.

Among the creatures Darwin observed on the Galapagos islands were a group of land birds, the finches. In this single group, we can see wide variation in appearance and in lifestyle. Darwin provided what I believe to be an essentially correct interpretation of how the finches came to be the way they are. A few individuals were probably blown to the islands from the South American mainland, and today's finches are descendants of those pioneers. However, while Darwin saw the finches as an example of evolution, we can now recognize them merely as the result of recombination within a single created kind. The pioneer finches brought with them enough genetic variability to be sorted out into the varieties we see today. The different species of finches have been observed to interbreed at times, clear evidence that they belong to the same created kind.

3. MUTATION: Now to consider the third source of variation, mutation. Mutations are mistakes in the genetic copying process. Each living cell has intricate molecular machinery designed for accurately copying DNA, the genetic molecule. But as in other copying processes mistakes do occur, although not very often. Once in every 10,000-100,000 copies, a gene will contain a mistake. The cell has machinery for correcting these mistakes, but some mutations still slip through. What kinds of changes are produced by mutations? Some have no effect at all, or produce so small a change that they have no appreciable effect on the creature. But many mutations have a significant effect on their owners.

Based on the creation model, what kind of effect would we expect from random mutations, from genetic mistakes? We would expect virtually all of those which make a difference to be harmful, to make the creatures that possess them less successful than before. And this prediction is borne out most convincingly. Some examples help illustrate this.

Geneticists began breeding the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, soon after the turn of the century, and since 1910 when the first mutation was reported, some 3,000 mutations have been identified. All of the mutations are harmful or harmless; none of them produce a more successful fruit fly, exactly as predicted by the creation model.

Is there, then, no such thing as a beneficial mutation? Yes, there is. A beneficial mutation is simply one that makes it possible for its possessors to contribute more offspring to future generations than do those creatures that lack the mutation. Darwin called attention to wingless beetles on the island of Madreira. For a beetle living on a windy island, wings can be a definite disadvantage, because creatures in flight are more likely to be blown into the sea. Mutations producing the loss of flight could be helpful.

The sightless cave fish would be similar. Eyes are quite vulnerable to injury, and a creature that lives in pitch dark would benefit from mutations that would replace the eye with scar-like tissue, reducing that vulnerability. In the world of light, having no eyes would be a terrible handicap, but is no disadvantage in a dark cave. While these mutations produce a drastic and beneficial change, it is important to notice that they always involve loss of information and never gain. One never observes the reverse occurring, namely wings or eyes being produced on creatures which never had the information to produce them.

Natural selection is the obvious fact that some varieties of creatures are going to be more successful than others, and so they will contribute more offspring to future generations. A favorite example of natural selection is the peppered moth of England, Biston betularia. As far as anyone knows, this moth has always existed in two basic varieties, speckled, and solid black. In pre-industrial England, many of the tree trunks were light in color. This provided a camouflage for the speckled variety, and the birds tended to prey more heavily on the black variety. Moth collections showed many more speckled than black ones. When the Industrial Age came to England, pollution darkened the tree trunks, so the black variety was hidden, and the speckled variety was conspicuous. Soon there were many more black moths than speckled.

As populations encounter changing environments, such as that described above or as the result of migration into a new area, natural selection favors the combinations of traits which will make the creature more successful in its new environment. This might be considered as the positive role natural selection. The negative role of natural selection is seen in eliminating or minimizing harmful mutations when they occur.

4. CREATION: The first three sources of variation are woefully inadequate to account for the diversity of life we see on earth today. An essential feature of the creation model is the placement of considerable genetic variety in each created kind at the beginning. Only thus can we explain the possible origin of horses, donkeys, and zebras from the same kind; of lions, tigers, and leopards from the same kind; of some 118 varieties of the domestic dog, as well as jackals, wolves and coyotes from the same kind. As each kind obeyed the Creator's command to be fruitful and multiply, the chance processes of recombination and the more purposeful process of natural selection caused each kind to subdivide into the vast array we now see.[45]

SECTION IX

BIOLOGY AND ITS WONDERFUL DESIGN

The next area of study is biology, specifically the animals that God created. There is infinite variety that God created. From tiny invisible bacteria to the whales, the largest animal known, and even those mysterious dinosaurs, all show evidence of being designed to exist in every detail. This section will show you that there really is wonderful design in the animal kingdom.

1. THE HUMAN EYE: Evolutionists are hard-pressed to explain the step-by-step accidental development of the human eye, which is characterized by a staggering complexity. Furnished with automatic aiming, automatic focusing, and automatic aperture adjustment, the human eye can function from almost complete darkness to bright sunlight, see the object the diameter of a fine hair, and make about 100,000 separate motions in an average day, faithfully affording us a continuous series of color stereoscopic pictures. All of this is performed usually without complaint, and then while we sleep, it carries on its own maintenance work.

The human eye is so complex and sophisticated that scientists still do not fully understand how it functions. Considering the absolutely amazing, highly sophisticated synchronization of complex structures and mechanisms that work together to produce human vision, it is difficult to understand how evolutionists can insist the eye came about through random chance processes. This is especially true when you consider that the eye would be useless unless fully developed. The odds that are against this random producing of the eye is truly staggering, with one scientist putting the odds at 1 in 102,664. The inescapable conclusion is now quite evident. The eye did not just happen to develop but rather was created in the beginning by God in its complete form.[46]

2. THE TRILOBITE EYE: Although extinct now, the trilobite nevertheless speaks to us today concerning the ingenious design and purposeness in nature. Unlike the lens of a human eye, which is composed of living, organic tissues, trilobite eyes were composed of inorganic calcite. Consequently, many trilobite lenses have been preserved in the fossil record allowing paleontologists to study them. What they have discovered is truly amazing.

Unlike human eyes which are composed of a single lens, trilobite eyes have a very special double lens design with anywhere from 100 to 15,000 lenses in each eye, depending on the subspecies. This special design allowed the trilobites to see underwater perfectly, without distortion. Implicit knowledge of Abbe's Sine Law, Fermat's Principle, and various other principles of optics are inherent in the design of these lenses[.47]

3. THE SEA SLUG: One of the most intriguing mysteries among marine creatures is found in the truly remarkable sea slug. The sea slug lives along the seacoast within the tidal zone where it feeds primarily on sea anemones. Sea anemones are not exactly the most inviting of dinners as they are equipped with thousands of small stinging cells on their tentacles that explode at the slightest touch, plunging poisoned harpoons into would-be intruders. The speared intruder is paralyzed and drawn into the anemone's stomach to be digested.

Although this is an impressive defense system, the remarkable sea slug is nevertheless able to eat sea anemones without being stung, exploding the stinging cells, or digesting them. One of the most fascinating stories in nature is what the sea slug does with the poor anemone's stinging cells. The undigested stinging cells are swept along through ciliated tubes that are connected to the stomach and end in pouches. The stinging cells are arranged and stored in these pouches to be used for the sea slug's defense! And so, whenever the sea slug is attacked, it defends itself using the stinging cells that the ill-fated anemone manufactured for its own protection.

The highly complicated series of modifications that would have had to occur to produce this incredible relationship completely defies evolutionary explanation. First of all, in order to prevent the stinging cells from exploding, the sea slug would have to evolve some sort of chemical means to temporarily neutralize them. The sea slug would also have to evolve a new digestive system, which would digest the tissues of the anemone but not the stinging cells. The sea slug would also have to cleverly evolve the sophisticated ciliated tubes and pouches as well as a highly complex mechanism for arranging, storing, and maintaining the stinging cells. Finally, and contrary to evolutionary expectations, the anemone would have to endorse the sea slug's plans by refraining from evolving countermeasures.[48]

4. GARDENING ANTS: Another fascinating relationship, which has been observed in nature, concerns the Bull's Horn Acacia tree of Central and South America. This tree is furnished with large hollow thorns that are inhabited by a species of ferocious stinging ants. Consequently, the ants get food and shelter from the tree. The tree, for its part of the bargain, receives complete protection from all animal predators and plant competitors. The ants viciously attack any and all intruders. But the truly remarkable aspect of this symbiotic relationship is the fact that these ants are gardeners! They make regular raids in all directions from their home tree, nipping off every green shoot that dares to show its head near their tree. As a result, this particular tree always has plenty of sunlight and space, which is a rarity in the tropical jungle where the competition for such things is intense. Experiments have shown that when all of the ants are removed from one of these tree, the tree dies within two to fifteen months.[49]

Evolutionists casually label this type of symbiotic relationship as an example of coadaptation. Of course, they never attempt to explain just how such an intricate relationship might have developed through the evolutionary process. Hence, the evolutionary viewpoint continues to be a matter of faith or presumption, not science.[50]

5. THE CHICKEN EGG: A fertilized chicken egg is a very special creation. Before even thinking about a chick developing in an egg, it is interesting to ponder how the chicken manages to get a shell around that slippery, raw, fertilized egg. It is rare sight on the farm to see raw egg smeared on the outside of the shell.

The shell itself is highly specialized. Each egg shell has about 10,000 tiny holes or pores. How does that chicken form a shell around a soft, messy egg and design the shell to have porosity? Put a raw egg in warm water and soon you will see tiny bubbles floating up. These bubbles are escaping through the pores in the shell. The developing chick needs these pores to breathe. Evolution requires a need before an organism will change. How does a chicken know it needs to make a shell with porosity, and how can it manufacture such a shell? The chick does not know it needs the holes in the shell to breathe until it dies for lack of air. Of course, dead chicks cannot evolve.

Within the first few days after the egg is laid, blood vessels begin to grow out of the developing chick. Two of these attach to the membrane under the eggshell and two attach to the yolk. By the fifth day, the tiny heart is pumping blood through the vessels. What makes those blood vessels grow out of the chick, and how do they know where to go and to what to attach? The chick feeds from the yolk with the yolk vessels and breathes through the membrane vessels. If any of these vessels do not grow out of the chick or attach to the correct place, the chick will die.

The chick gives off carbon dioxide and water vapor as it metabolizes the yolk. If it does not get rid of the carbon dioxide and water vapor, it will die of gaseous poisoning or drown in its own waste water. These waste products are picked up by the blood vessels and leave through the pores in the eggshell.

By the nineteenth day, the chick is too big to get enough oxygen through the pores in the shell. It must do something or die. How does it know what to do next? By this time, a small tooth called the egg-tooth has grown onto its beak. It uses this little tooth to peck a hole into the air sack at the flat end of the egg. When you peel a hard-boiled egg you notice the thin membrane under the shell and the flattened end of the egg. This flattened end, which looks like the hen did not quite fill up her egg shell, is the air sack. The air sack provides only six hours of air for the chick to breathe. Instead of relaxing and breathing deeply, with this newfound supply of air, the chick keeps pecking until it breaks a small hole through the shell to gain access to outside air adequate amounts.

On the twenty-first day, the chick breaks out of the shell. If one step in the development of the chick is missing or out of order, the chick dies. Each step in the development of the chick defies evolutionary logic. The process must be orchestrated but God, or Creator. The impersonal plus time plus chance is not an adequate explanation for the incredible complexities of life as we observe it.[51]

6. THE CHUCKWALLA LIZARD: Chuckwalla lizards are large, pot-bellied lizards which wear a loose, baggy skin. Though the skin appears to be much too large, it is just exactly what this lizard needs when an enemy approaches. You see, when an enemy comes near the chuckwalla, the lizard runs very quickly to a rock crevice and hides in it. In the crack of the rock, the chuckwalla swallows air and blows up like a balloon. When the enemy arrives the chuckwalla is safely wedged in the crack. Though it is within easy reach, it is safe. Years ago, the Indians of our desert Southwest learned how to catch the chuckwalla. They pierced its body with an arrow to let out the air; then the Indians could easily remove the lizard from its haven. Man is probably the only enemy of the chuckwalla lizard from whom it is not completely safe.

Of course, the desert is very dry. Some chuckwallas live where there may be only a single rain shower in a whole year. In these arid places the chuckwalla generally lives a dormant life for most of the year. It estivates, or sleeps, for all but about five months of the year.

While living actively, the chuckwalla eats whatever juicy plants it can find. Special glands store the water from the greenery, and the chuckwalla grows fat from its food. Generally, chuckwallas are dormant from August through March. Many desert plants absorb much salt from the soil in which they grow. The Chuckwalla receives enough salt from its food to kill an ordinary animal. The salt would kill the chuckwalla, too, were it not for its special salt-removing glands. These glands are located in the nostrils of the chuckwalla, and, as the salt builds up on the glands, the lizard occasionally sneezes. The sneeze expels the crystallized salt which the glands have filtered out of the lizard's bloodstream.

The cold-blooded chuckwalla sleeps late. But when it arises, it must warm up in a hurry. Desert nights and early mornings are often very cold. Cold-blooded creatures are slow and sluggish when they are cold, and cold lizards are easy to catch. For this reason, the chuckwalla wears a dark-colored, heat-absorbing skin. The sun warms the lizard before the air warms up. Later in the day, the lizard's skin changes to a heat-reflecting light color because the chuckwalla must not get too hot either. The rationality we find when we examine the chuckwalla's body structure compels us to recognize its Designer.[52]

7. THE GIRAFFE: A mature bull giraffe grows to be about grows to be about 18 feet tall. In order to pump blood up its neck to his brain, the giraffe needs a powerful pump. His heart is about 2.5 feet long. It is so powerful that, as the animal bends down to satisfy its thirst, the blood pressure is more than enough to burst the blood vessels of the brain.

The giraffe has a protective mechanism which was designed by our Creator. As the bull bends his head down for a drink, valves in the arteries in its neck begin to close. Blood beyond the last valve continues moving toward the brain. But instead of passing at high speed and pressing into the brain and damaging or destroying it, that last pump is shunted under the brain into a group of vessels similar to a sponge. This cluster of blood vessels is called the "rete mirabile". The brain is preserved and the powerful surge of oxygenated blood gently expands this sponge beneath it.

However, from this mechanism another problem arises. A lion creeps up and prepares to kill its spotted prey. The giraffe quickly raises its head and, without something to compensate for the reduced blood flow, passes out. It got up too fast for the low pressure and diminished oxygen content to the brain. The lion eats a hearty meal, and the giraffe were it alive, would realize that it had better evolve some mechanism to re-oxygenate the oxygen-deprived brain! We all know that dead animals don't evolve anything, even though evolution demands its creatures realize they need an improvement before that improvement begins to evolve.

But the giraffe survives! The Creator designed it in such a way that as he begins to raise his head, the arterial valves open. The sponge squeezes its oxygenated blood into the brain; the veins going down the neck contain some valves which close to help level out the blood pressure, and the giraffe can quickly be erect and running without passing out and becoming lion food. All of these systems must be fully functioning or there would not be any giraffes.[53]

8. CLEANING SYMBIOSIS: An amazing relationship found in nature, which ridicules evolutionary thinking, is that of cleaning symbiosis. Fish, for example, roam about feeding on smaller fish and shrimp only to find that their mouths have become littered with debris and parasites. The solution to this problem for several types of fish is a visit by the local mouth cleaning fish.

The large fish opens its mouth and gill chambers, baring vicious looking teeth, and in swim the undaunted little cleaner fish and shrimp to do their jobs. After their chore is completed, they swim back out of the larger fish's mouth unharmed, and the big fish swims away.
It is obvious that all parties involved benefit from this relationship, but this does not explain the origin and development of this special relationship. Survival value can only be used as an argument after a relationship has been established. The picture is further complicated for the evolutionist by the fact that several species of predatory fish, cleaner fish, and shrimp are involved in this operation.

It should also be noted that cleaning symbiosis is by no means limited to fish alone. Amazingly enough, there is a bird that is willing to walk right into the mouth of the Nile crocodile to clean out parasites.[54]

9. THE BOMBARDIER BEETLE: If there is any creature on earth that could not possibly have evolved, that creature is the bombardier beetle. It needed God to create it create it with all its systems fully functional.

The bombardier beetle does appear to be unique in the animal kingdom. Its defense system is extraordinarily intricate, a cross between tear gas and a Tommy gun. When the beetle senses danger, it internally mixes enzymes contained in one body chamber with concentrated solutions of some rather harmless compounds, hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones, confined to a second chamber. This generates a noxious spray of caustic benzoquinones, which explodes from its body at a boiling 212 degrees. What is more, the fluid is pumped through twin rear nozzles, which can be rotated, like a b-17's gun turret, to hit a hungry ant of frog with bull's eye accuracy.[55]

Evolutionary theory has big problems when attempting to explain the existence and complexity of the bombardier beetle. Each stage in the evolution of its special chemicals would have led to its destruction. This one-half inch insect mixes chemicals which violently react to produce something similar to an explosion. How could the bombardier beetle have evolved this means of defense without killing itself in the process? This problem has the members of the evolutionary establishment scratching their heads.

To prevent its own destruction the little bug manufactures another chemical, called an inhibitor, and mixes it in with the explosive chemicals. But with the inhibitor, it would not be able to use the explosion of hot, burning liquid and gases to discourage its enemies. A spider would eat it because the beetle has no solution to explode to protect itself. Dead bugs cannot evolve the next chemical needed to release the protective reaction. That chemical turns out to be what is called an anti-inhibitor.

When the anti-inhibitor is added to the other chemicals, an explosive reaction does occur and the beetle is able to defend itself. There is still another problem, however: the beetle must have an especially tough combustion chamber and that chamber must have an outlet for the violent reaction to release its energy, or once again you have a dead bug. Problem solved: this unique creature has the necessary equipment, including twin-tail tubes to exhaust its defensive reaction. These tubes can be aimed at enemies in a 180 degree arc from straight to the rear to directly toward the front. It even recognizes friend from foe, never shooting another beetle.[56]

10. THE FIREFLY: A beautiful show occurs just as dusk is falling on warm summers nights. Soon many tiny lights are flickering and flashing, like brightly colored stars shining on and off in the twilight. The fireflies have begun their nightly mating ritual.

Fireflies are not really flies at all. They are beetles and like most beetles, fireflies are rather slow and clumsy fliers. The males do most of the flying. They flit about at night, signaling to the females in the grass below. Although the female firefly generally has wings, she does not fly about looking for a mate. Instead, she waits on a blade of grass, watching for a signal from a male of her species. When she sees his light, she flashes in response. With his large eyes the male can easily spot the females flash from the grass below. Once a male has flashed his light and sees an answer from a female, he flies to her to mate.

While fireflies of many species may all be flashing their