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I have just read in Christianity Today (April 28, 1997), one of the most interesting book reviews I've ever read. "Meeting Darwin's Wager" is a review of a recent book, Darwin's Black Box, by Michael J. Behe, in which the author presents a biochemical rebuttal of Darwinian evolution. It has drawn favorable reviews in many quarters (some rather unexpected), and even many Darwinians admit the strength of the argument. The following two paragraphs introduce the review:
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. - Charles Darwin, in The Origin of Species.
"To Darwin, the cell was a "black box" - its inner workings were utterly mysterious to him. Now, the black box has been opened up, and we know how it works. Applying Darwin's test to the ultra-complex world of molecular machinery and cellular systems that have bee discovered over the past 40 years, we can say that Darwin's theory has "absolutely broken down." - Michael Behe, biochemist and author of Darwin's Black Box.
The review itself clearly demonstrates the truth of Behe's premise. I'm anxious to read the book, to get the depth of the argument presented. This book adds even more weight to the growing body of research and literature refuting Darwinian evolution. Despite this, the majority of evolutionists continue to react hysterically to any challenge. It is for them a matter of faith - and for the most part, blind faith. They continue to drag out all the tired old moth and bird-beak illustrations of environmental mutations (which don't even qualify as micro-evolution, let alone the macro-evolution steps required to support Darwins hypotheses).
I am not a scientist, nor the son of a scientist (to borrow from Amos). But I have reasonable intelligence, I can read, and I can (and do) think. I have spent a fair amount of time endeavoring to understand (and to a point, do understand) the processes which evolutionists believe drive their theories.
They are in retreat, and I trust that we will see some moderation on the part of the scientific community in their effort to totally alienate those who hold to the view of an Intelligent Creator. There MUST be room for an alternative to a theory with as many holes as Darwinism, and our children deserve to know of it.
BUT - that leads me to the major point of my article. Is the only alternative to an evolutionary hypothesis to be the young-earth theories of the Creation Science wing of Evangelical Christian scientists?
Please don't run off at this point and charge me with heresy.
I believe that the Creation teachings of contemporary scientists such as Dr. Hugh Ross and others of his kind deserve an open hearing. Please give me the opportunity to explain.
When I was quite young, I was fascinated by the few books on science from a Christian perspective which were in print. I read them avidly, and always tried to accept every thing they taught, because I was raised to take the Bible literally. Basically, I was brought up on Usshers chronology - the world was about 4,000 years old. There was some of the teachings about possibly longer, but it would be maybe 6,000 years.
But even then some things puzzled me. I remember specifically taking long hikes around my home town of Dothan, situated almost 90 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, at about 300+ feet above sea level. I enjoyed searching for (and finding) Indian artifacts, especially flint arrowheads. In one particular area, I found many; from finished arrowheads to partially shaped ones, and a great deal of flinty rock which the Indians used to make arrowheads, knives and axes.
I remember rather vividly how I would find great rocks containing flint - and often, in the flint, I would find the imprint of a seashell! Just like the shells I would find on the beaches of Panama City, Florida.
These were a great puzzle to me, and I remember wondering how long it would take for the mud at the bottom of a bay to turn to flint? What possible processes could bring that about? Was there a time when this area lay at the bottom of a bay, or an ocean? The Bible didn't answer my questions, so I searched elsewhere.
Along about the same time, I became quite interested in the sky. As a Boy Scout, I learned the names of the prominent constellations. I learned about other mysterious objects in the sky, such as "nebulae", and the fantastic distances to these objects.
(Strangely enough, even in Jr. High, many of our textbooks still referred to the observable galaxies as "nebulae." Remember, it was only in 1923 that Edwin Hubble settled a long debate by demonstrating that the Andromeda "nebula" was actually a galaxy outside our own Milky Way and that many other such galaxies existed. See how old I am!)
As my area of reading and knowledge expanded, I did what many of us have done: First, I managed to hold on to a young universe and believe that somehow these objects were so far away that the light took thousands of years to reach me. Later, I found a wonderful loophole - the Gap theory! I could hold on to both worlds and still be intellectually honest. Oops - there began to be holes in that one, too, and it was discarded by serious scientists and never accepted by the Creationists. Somewhere along the way, I began to construct (almost without knowing it) a cosmology of my own. I'm sure somewhere I read of the "day-age" theory, but no one expounded it clearly to me. There were still problems no matter which way I turned.
Let me briefly list some of the problems I had with the literalist young earth view, both from a Biblical and a scientific point of view: (Let me hasten to add, not for one moment could I accept the evolutionary theories I was exposed to. They all seemed full of holes!)
I have mentioned the apparent age of geological structures. I took note of the layers of differing kinds of stone, and the distortions of these stony layers, and they told me of an earth tortured by vast cataclysms over vast eons of time. The Bible stories I read did not relate this kind of story, so I assumed they must have occurred in pre-history. The young earth theory doesn't allow for much pre-history! To attribute all of this to one flood seemed inadequate.
To this day , I have found no satisfactory answer to the problem of the speed of light and distances to the stars and galaxies. While it seems that young-earth theoreticians accept these measurements as accurate to a great degree, their theories of variations in the speed of light, etc, are inadequate to reduce the times from millions of years to thousands of years.
Some respond to these dilemmas with the "appearance of age" theory, which is the most unsatisfactory of all. The suggestion that God created the earth with this appearance of age, and that he created the galaxies full-blown with photons en route to earth suggests to me that their belief is that God was intent on deceiving mankind into mistakenly believing the universe was actually millions of years old! Why would God do that?
The scriptures teach just the opposite. Creation is to REVEAL, not conceal, God. When the Psalmist declared by inspiration that "the heavens declare the glory of God" it was meant not only for the shepherd who gazed in awe upon a mysterious sky filled with sparkling lights, but also for the scientist who gazes through the Keck telescope in Hawaii and sees vast galaxy groups at the very edge of space. Not every shepherd saw God there - and neither does every astronomer. But it is not the message that fails, but the observer.
I learned, too, that the young-earth scientists were not as literal as they would like to think. They had problems to resolve in the Biblical account in Genesis 1. Some of these explanations sound a bit weak to me - light before the sun and stars, for instance. (I don't think the Biblical writer would have been referring to some kind of 'radiation' in this instance.) Plants before sunlight - the moon described as a "light" in much the same way as the sun and stars were lights. I came to the conclusion that this passage was not an effort on God's part to give a scientific treatise on the creation process. The great message of this passage is "In the beginning GOD CREATED ..."
(Just to be very honest, I don't think that Hugh Ross or any other writer has satisfactorily explained all of the dilemmas posed by Genesis 1! God has some surprises in store for all of us some day, you can be assured.)
I have absolutely no problem believing that God COULD have done the job in six days - or in six seconds. There are other things that come into play here.
God is not "time-bound." As a matter of fact, defining time is like nailing Jello to a tree. There was no "day" until the earth had completed one revolution on it's axis. No year until the earth had move in its orbit back to its "starting point." From our point of view in linear time, we try to grasp the understanding of a God who stands outside of all time, for whom all "eternity" is now, and yesterday is as present as tomorrow. (We have a hard time talking about time without using time-worn, meaningless phrases, don't we?)
When the Psalmist declares that with God a thousand years is as one day, and one day is as a thousand years, he was not stating an algebraic equation: "x=24 hours, y= 24 hours, ergo x=y." He was saying time doesn't make any difference to God.
As a matter of fact, I'd not be surprised if when it's all over, we find that in the mysteries of something like "quantum time," the Bible's "six-day" creation sequence wasn't absolutely true, as well as the fact that the universe is billions of "years" old! (For an interesting view of this possibility, read Roy Peacock's A Brief History of Eternity, in which he discusses such issues as time dilation and relativity)
Why, you may ask, have I brought up all this creation-time controversy in respect to this book about evolution?
Somehow, every time someone opts for, argues for, talks about - a cosmological age of millions or billions of years, they are immediately assumed to be evolutionists, and are ruling God out of the equation. Or they are considered Theistic evolutionists, a breed hardly above a heathen in their eyes.
The point is - give them sixteen trillion years, and the evolutionists would not have enough time to bring about a single human cell by the processes they propose. It doesn't work. Not only does it not work on the basis of probability theory, but it does not work because the existence of component A of the human cell depends upon the existence of component B which cannot exist apart from component A - and round and round.
A simple illustration from Behe's book: a mousetrap. The base is not a partially successful mousetrap. Nor is the spring. Nor is the bait holder. It is necessary for all parts to function to catch a mouse. It is an example of what he calls "irreducible complexity." As Behe says, "all the parts must be there for it to have any function at all."
I have no problem giving the evolutionists all the time they ask for. The simple fact is that it is impossible for the theory of evolution to create!
On the young-earth vs cosmological creation, I highly recommend Dr. Hugh Ross's books, and others which appear in the bibliography below.
In conclusion I wish to appeal for a Christ-like attitude on both sides. It would be tragic if, as the evolutionists are put in retreat, those who are Bible believers spend their energies and abilities destroying each other! Frequently, I have read rather barbed remarks directed at those who espouse long-creation days, implying that they are not and cannot be "Biblical" believers. I put my evangelical credentials up against anyone, and from what I have read and seen and heard in person from Dr. Hugh Ross, he is a staunch evangelical as well. Humility demands that we treat each other with respect.
ORDER THE HIGHLIGHTED BOOKS FROM AMAZON.COM BY SIMPLY CLICKING ON THE TITLE.
Books by Dr. Ross:
The Fingerprint of God
Creation and Time
The Creator and the Cosmos
Other Books:
A New Look at at Old Earth - Don Stoner
Genesis and the Big Bang - Gerald L. Schroeder
Darwin on Trial - Philip Johnson
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds
A Brief History of Eternity - Roy E. Peacock
J. GENE ADKINS
© 1997
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