Creation Science Winter 2008

An Amino Acid has a structure and shape that obeys well defined laws of chemical bonding causing it to layout precisely in according to specific angles and distances between the various atoms.

Some of the bonds act like a hinge allowing the molecule to swivel on a "ball bearing."

When these molecules chain together,these hinges allow the entire chain to fold up into super structures that take on quite complex forms which allow the structure to perform certain functions in accordance with its form.

Some of the proteins become transport vehicles, others become robotic machines, while still others become "keys" that can unlock other structures. The combination of various super structures of proteins eventually becomes the various tissues such as hair, muscle, skin, etc. uniquely performing their designed function.

It all starts with the geometry and arrangement of the amino acids in a specific sequence which allows the proteins to fold into particular shapes.

The following video shows a simple explanation of the translation process which is used to construct proteins from amino acids as specified by the RNA.

We are headed towards computing a probability of life coming about by random chance. But before we do that, we have been looking at the complexity of what goes on at the most fundamental levels of the cell, the smallest complete unit of life. If we are going to compute the odds like a bookie would, we must properly handicap the "teams playing the game". So, we continue this study of what it takes to make a single protein in this post.

Proteins are made inside the cell with an amazing array of robotic machines. The first process is called transcription which starts inside the nucleus of the cell where the DNA is located. A pair of fancy protein robotic machines called helicase and polymerase unwind a section of the DNA for a particular gene and create a strand of messenger RNA (mRNA in blue) utilizing spare RNA nucleotides floating around in the nucleus. An RNA molecule is essentially one half of a section of the DNA strand. This mRNA is what specifies the code for a single protein. RNA is like a copy made for temporary use, much like a contractor makes a copy of the blueprint for use in the field on a building project. Now that the mRNA is made, it moves from inside the nuclear membrane through a gateway into the cytoplasm of the cell. At the same time, two other strands of RNA are made via a similar transcription process from the DNA. These strands of RNA are folded up into a machines called transfer RNA (tRNA) and ribosomal RNA (rRNA). Together they make up another molecular device called a ribosome (green) which is responsible for building the protein.

Now that all the parts are outside the nucleus but still inside the cell proper, the process of Translation begins. The mRNA strand is divided into sets of three nucleotides called codons. The ribosome is like a reading head on a tape player and is able to feel the shape of the codons by using the anticodons of the tRNA molecules. An anticodon contains the sequence of the complementary pairs of nucleotides corresponding to the codon. Each tRNA molecule is able to carry a particular one of twenty different amino acids (in pink). One tRNA molecule is responsible for selecting the next amino acid in sequence and the second tRNA molecule is responsible for hooking the amino acid to end of the resulting polypeptide chain which becomes a protein. The rRna molecule becomes the fixed part of the ribosomal unit which slides along the entire length of the mRNA molecule stopping at the end where it completes building the protein.

The protein is then able to fold up into its functional form to begin its role in making up the parts of the body such as skin, muscle, hair or other tissues. By the way, the inside of the cell is filled with a gelatinous fluid called cytoplasm. This process would not function in water. This makes the need for a cell membrane to protect the entire process from the outside environment a critical part for the entire system to operate.

Since creation, no living cell has ever appeared anywhere on this earth that was not the product of a previous cell division. This is how life reproduces and how living organisms grow and repair themselves. In order for a cell to divide, the DNA itself must be copied. The following video shows how the complementary pairs work to make an exact duplicate of a strip of DNA. It is first split and then the corresponding nucleotide is placed on each half.

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The rails of ladder are not show in the video but they are made of sugar phosphate molecules.

The next narrated video is a computer simulated of the replication and shows some of the amazing inter-cellular machines acting as robots to unwind then rebuild each strand of DNA. Watch for how one strand must be built in a reverse direction and how the machines handle that by pulling out a loop and working backwards.

DNA is designed in such a way as to be intrinsically self-replicating. The rungs of double helix ladder are made of pairs of molecules called nucleotides. There are only four types of nucleotides and they are known by the letters A, T, G and C. There are only two possible ways one nucleotide can bond with another to make a rung. An A (adenine) can only fit with a T (thymine) and a G (guanine) can only fit with a C (cytosine). This is because of the shape of the molecules as depicted by the colored symbols on the right. The way these molecules bond is not by sharing valence electrons the way normal chemical bonding between atoms works. Rather, in organic chemistry (the chemistry of life), the shape of a molecule is the determining factor for whether bonding can occur or not. The entire pharmaceutical industry depends on this principle of organic chemistry where shape is most important.

The DNA is like a blueprint specifying how proteins are to be made. A protein is made of amino acids of which there are twenty occurring in living organisms. A protein is made by stringing together many hundreds of amino acids in what is called a polypeptide chain. The specific sequence of amino acids is what determines how the protein chain will fold up into a useful part for it destined purpose, like muscle or hair or bone. The sequence of amino acids is so important that any misplaced amino acid will render the protein ineffective. Since the DNA is the language that instructs the building of the protein, a mistake in the DNA is known as a mutation.

The language of the DNA is made up of words called codons which are a sequence of three nucleotides. This chart (click it for full size) shows how one or more codons translates to a specific amino acid. Since there are four possible nucleotides taken three at a time, that gives 3^4 or 64 possible combinations. Note that for reasons beyond the scope of this article, the U in the chart is equivalent to a T in the Nucleic alphabet. Note also that there are some codons which specify start and stop codes. Punctuation is part of the syntax of the DNA language! So a string of codons separated by start and stop codes represents a sentence in the language which specifies a single enzyme or protein. There is redundancy built into the language since in most cases more than one codon can specify a single amino acid. Perhaps this is because there is more going on here than what we understand. There is evidence that there may be multiple sets of information overlaid on top of the DNA than just protein building.

It would be like me asking you to stuff 125 miles of fishing line into a basketball without getting it tangled up. Watch the video (just over one minute, you may need to click the play button twice)

Exodus 3:13-15 (NKJV)

Then Moses said to God, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?"

And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.' " Moreover God said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: 'The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.'

"I AM" is a strange name isn't it? It is the name we transliterate into Yahweh or anglicize into Jehovah. Why would God pick a name such as "I AM"? I am glad he did not say that His name is "I WAS" or even "I WILL BE." You get a glimpse of the idea that God is timeless. It is as if He is saying "I always was, I always am, I always will be...I AM". Eternity is always in the present. I have thought a lot about the physics of Eternity if such a thing can even be comprehended.

I heard one preacher say that we can think of God's name as I AM _________ where you fill in the blank for whatever you need right now. That is certainly true because God can supply all of our needs. But I think this name must be far more profound. It not only speaks of His timelessness but also of his supreme power in the sense that everything derives from Him. Nothing exists without Him.

Jesus replied to the soldiers who were looking to arrest him saying, "I am He." In my Bible, the He is italicized meaning that that word is not in the original Greek. He was speaking his eternal name. The Jesus of the New Testament is the I AM of the Old Testament. By the way, notice what happened to the soldiers when Jesus spoke his name, they fell backward to the ground. The force of that name spoken by God Himself must be awesome!

John 18:4-6 (NKJV)

Jesus therefore, knowing all things that would come upon Him, went forward and said to them, "Whom are you seeking?" They answered Him, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus said to them, "I am He" And Judas, who betrayed Him, also stood with them. Now when He said to them, "I am He, " they drew back and fell to the ground.

Not to be found. That does not mean they aren't looking...desperately. In his book, The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin said:

“The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graded organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”

Darwin knew about this problem but assumed things were still early in the search for such evidence. He assumed that they would indeed find them as the hunt progressed. Well, it's been 150 years since he wrote these words and they still haven't found any.

This problem is so well known that in 1972, Stephen Jay Gould co-authored a paper called "Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism". In this paper, Gould appealed to the idea that evolution must not have progressed gradually but rather in a pattern of punctuated spurts of large scale changes. This idea explains the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record by suggesting there was not enough time for such a fossil layer to be produced given such a short period of time during which the species was changing. There were long periods of time in which few changes occurred and then you have these relativity short periods of time in which large scale changes occur. Evolutionists coined the term "hopeful monster" to describe what Gould called "major structural transitions [which] can occur rapidly without a smooth series of intermediate stages."

So what is the primary evidence for Gould's idea of punctuated equilibrium?

Well, his evidence is...are you ready?...the lack of evidence.

Natural selection does not produce any new information, it only allows for beneficial information that already exists in a species to survive or to be preserved. So the question is, can natural selection working on mutations produce new complex structures.

Evolutionists believe that reptiles evolved into birds. According to Darwinism, the forelimbs of some ancient reptiles gradually evolved into the wing of a bird. The process took millions and millions of years. Allow me to illustrate the process with a story.

Once upon a time, hundreds of millions of years ago, there was a reptile running around that had some mutations which caused it to have offspring to have scales which were elongated on the forelimbs. Those reptiles in turn had baby reptiles which had more mutations that caused the scales to get longer and longer. Those scales were beginning to evolve into early feathers. Over a period of millions of years and tens of thousands of generations this kept occurring further lengthening these scales and eventually becoming a wing.

There is a problem with this story. Can you see it? As these scales were gradually getting longer and longer within a population, pretty soon you've got these scales hanging down several inches off the forearm of the lizard. It cannot yet fly, but now it has a problem because it can't run very well either. So natural selection now prefers the ones without the longer scales and these long scale guys get wiped out. The lizard is not a more fit organism because it has no advantages like flying but it does have many disadvantages. Because it cannot run, it cannot compete against the other animals for food and other resources. Furthermore, it cannot successfully evade its predators.

The wing fails to evolve because its transitional forms were non-viable. A transitional stage is not more fit that what it came from.

It is not just wings and feathers that have to form for flight either. The dense bones of a reptile must reform themselves into lightweight versions for flight too. All these changes are not trivial. Vast amounts of new information in the DNA must come from somewhere.

W.E. Swinton, in Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds said:

"The origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved."

Some deduction, with no fossil evidence to show for it. Remarkable change indeed. No, make that remarkable God!

Next time you meet an evolutionist ask this question:

Would you please explain how random mutations over a long period of time could produce the visual system when the mutations that are supposed to give rise to it do not increase the survivability of the organism?

If you came to my garage when I was a teenager and found that I was rebuilding the engine on my car with the parts all over the floor, you might ask "let's take it out for a spin." I would have to say that I was not finished yet. Until everything was put together, the car is useless as are the individual parts. Lying all over the garage floor, they just get in my way. The only benefit they serve is that I know what purpose they will eventually serve once I get it all put back together. But in evolution, they cannot possibly know what direction they are heading. The random chance mutations have no direction or design. It is impossible for a transitional form on its way to being part of an irreducibly complex system to be of any benefit in an unguided, purposeless, material process.

This is what is know as the non-viability of transitional forms.

Perhaps you have used digital cameras and have had the wherewithal to use a photo editing program to remove red eye or change the color cast in a photo. It is amazing what you can do with programs like Photoshop. If fact it has become part of the news in the last few years how can you trust what is printed in the media since it is so convenient to be able to "photoshop" a picture. Such image processing tools are very sophisticated and have taken engineers years to understand how images are interpreted by the viewer and how colors and pixels work together to give us the illusion of seeing an image that looks so real.

What is really fascinating is that our brains and the eye must do similar things in real time! We know that the eye sends signals to the brain from each rod or cone which are the individual pixels of the image we see in our brain. And the cones have the ability to detect red, green or blue wavelengths of light. This is the exact same thing a digital camera does! But furthermore our brains must then take millions of these signals and put them together into an integrated image and then do pattern recognition so that we know what it is we are seeing and can compare it with our image memory. Once you see an image it becomes a permanent part of our memory. Perhaps a bit fuzzy as time goes on, but we still can immediately recognize the house we grew up in after many years away, or of a friend's face we haven't seen in years.

The significance of this is that not only must there be a way to capture photons of light, focus them, detect them, and then send an electrical signal down the optic nerve to the brain, but there must also be a way to process that information to form a mental picture. Furthermore do this so fast that a baseball player can see the stitches on a fast ball coming at him at 90+ miles an hour and coordinate all this information into a split second muscular response strike the ball with a bat.

Praise God for the miracle of our eyesight!

The eye's retina is located in the back of the eye and is responsible for receiving the focused light and generating signals to send to the brain. The rods and cones are packed side by side and have their nerve endings exiting out the front of the retina. These individual nerves are then routed to a central location where nerves exit out the back of the eye forming the optical nerve, a thick cord which carries the signals to the brain. (that's where your blind spot is). This means the light has to pass through this web of nerves before it reaches the light sensing rods and cones. Well the evolutionists say this represents a bad design and point to this as evidence for their theory since no good creator would ever use such a poor design. Such a creator would obviously turn the rods and cones around so that the nerve endings exited through the rear of the eye. This way, the light would not have any interference in reaching the light sensitive cells.

But is it really bad design? Turns out, the rods and cones are attached to the Retinal Pigment Epithelium (RPE), a blood engorged membrane which is responsible for delivering nutrients to the rods and cones. What benefits are their to having the rods attached in a reverse orientation to the RPE?

1. The light sensitive end of the rod which is closest to to the RPE at the rear has a huge demand for nutrients since these cells are so active. Furthermore, their is much damage to these cells from the light which strikes them. Have you ever noticed how a car's paint begins to fade and peel if left outside in the sun for long periods of time? It is the energetic rays of the sun which does this damage. Same thing with the eye. So not only do these cells need nutrients to supply the energy needed for their activity, but also for the constant rebuilding necessary due to damage. The rods are place in an inverted position so that the most needed area of the cell is closed to the blood supply.
   
2. Also you know how light can warm things up, even your skin can get hot and needs to sweat to carry away the excess heat build up. Same thing again with the rods of the eye which are cooled by the blood flow away from the RPE which acts as a radiator.
   
3. Finally, the RPE is very dark in color. If it were to be placed on the inside of the eye in front of the rods so the they could be turned in the "right" direction, no light could pass through at all since the RPE is opaque. This dark color at the back of the eye serves a good purpose too. It acts as a light absorber so that no stray photons of light bounce around like they would off a lighter surface. Our camera lenses are all painted flat black on the inside surfaces to accomplish the same thing.

So it turns out that this is not such a bad design after all. In fact the so called "good design" the scientists argue for would indeed be a very poor design. Of course the final point is that this so called "bad design" works marvelously well!

We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made, and that we should know very well. [Psalm 139]

Darwin said:

“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 breakdown"

Darwin thought about the eye a lot. He came up with a scenario illustrating how the eye socket could have formed. The diagram shows on the left side a light sensitive spot (purple) on the skin of an animal. You can see that as oblique light rays shine on the spot, all areas of the spot are struck equally consequently the spot has no way to determine the direction of the light. But suppose the animal's light sensitive spot began to mutate into a cavity. Then the angled light would not strike all parts of the light sensitive spot. One side would be in shadow. This way the spot could deliver enough information to the animal's brain such that it could interpolate which direction the light is coming from. While the light sensitive spot capable of sensing light and darkness is beneficial, this directional capability would be even more so. Darwin then imagined the cavity getting larger, forming into a socket, eventually capturing a gel like substance which eventually becomes an eyeball complete with a lens. Now I know I went fast on that last one but that was left up to our imagination to figure how that happened.

Also notice how Darwin started with a light sensitive spot. Easy to say but would it be easy to do with random mutations and natural selection? Take a look at the five minute video of how a photon of light is captured by a rod in the retina of the eye and turned into a nerve signal to the brain.

Some light sensitive spot, huh? Have we sufficiently demonstrated such a complex organ for Darwin's challenge? Well of course Darwin did know know what we know today but he did say:

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”

If we stopped there, you might think that Darwin was stumped. But he is really just setting up a strawman to knock down so that he can praise his own theory. So Darwin does not admit he is stumped; he goes on to say:

“In living bodies, variations will cause the slight modifications, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years; and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to those of man?"

"May we not believe...", that's pretty bold. If only he could see how the eye really works. Oh yeah, that's right, now he knows the truth.

The idea of irreducible complexity as described by Michael Behe in his book Darwin's Black Box is that there are complex systems "composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning". This lack of a functioning precursor to a complex system means the individual parts must have arisen without the benefit foreseen in the final component. But natural selection requires each tiny step of change to be beneficial along the way.

We understand the benefit of the integrated complex systems which perform some amazing functions like vision or hearing or respiration. But how can the parts which make up this system be of any benefit by themselves? What good is a light sensitive spot (an early retina) without the nerve to carry the signal or without the brain function to interpret the signal as vision? Just as the individual parts of an airplane are all non-flying parts until they come together in an organized and specified complexity, the parts of a integrated system also perform no worthwhile function without the other parts.

The famous example Behe gives to illustrate this concept is the mousetrap. As simple as it is, the mousetrap is highly effective but irreducibly complex. The mousetrap is made up of five major parts as illustrated in the diagram.

How effective would this mousetrap be if it were missing any one of the parts? Would it be able to catch any mice without the holding bar for example? Of course the answer is that any missing part would render the mousetrap useless and essentially broken. Any precursor to an irreducibly complex system is by definition useless. All parts must come together at same time, and along the way, each separate part has to be beneficial to survival. If a part is not yet integral to the complete system, it must play some other beneficial function in the meantime (millions of years).

People have often talked about building a better mousetrap. Well, the "mousetraps" we have in our bodies such as the eye are models of perfection so the question is not how to make it better but how to make it at all.

According to Neo-Darwinian Evolution I am. Let me explain.

Natural selection does not create anything new. It is just the idea that when something new comes along it may or may not be beneficial but if it is, it will be favored within the population and will have a better chance to succeed in the struggle for life. So how does something new come about? Darwin just called these changes "modifications" and really did not understand much more that the fact he observed differences among offspring and assumed these sorts of changes were a fact of life. But modern science now understands how the modifications or changes occur and that is through mutations.

A mutation can either be harmful, lethal, neutral or beneficial. A mutation might be something as simple and benign as a patch of discolored skin or it could result in a dramatic increase in the length of some bones. These mutations might even be beneficial and could be inherited by offspring which would then benefit as well. But how often do you think of a mutation as beneficial? First of all mutations are rare, thank God. But when they do occur, we normally recoil a them because they mostly have deleterious consequences. But the idea of a beneficial mutation is unheard of. Supposedly beneficial mutations are preserved and concentrated in the population while all the others are weeded out.

A mutation is a mistake in the cell division process. Cell division requires that the DNA strand be duplicated. An error in this copying process is a mutation. I am a software developer and suppose I write a computer program that I want to market and so I finish my work and I am ready to make the CD's to package and sell my product. I take my original program, which is nothing more than a organized sequence of bits and bytes, to a CD duplicator and lets suppose that a mistake occurs while copying the bits over to another CD. Is there any chance my program will improve? What do you suppose will happen when the instructions at the location of the mistake are executed? The program will not be any better, rather it will crash or at best give an incorrect response.

Mutations are the engine of evolution. Theodosius Dobzhansky, in the American Scientist Journal said:

“The process of mutation is the only known source of the raw materials of genetic variability, and hence of evolution ... The mutants which arise are, with rare exceptions, deleterious to their carriers, at least in the environments which the species normally encounters.”

And Ernst Mayr said "Ultimately, all variation is, of course, due to mutation.” Think about the consequences of this. The DNA molecule specifies a living organism's entire structure, it's size, shape, color, and function. The words and language of the DNA molecule are found in the arrangement of nucleotide base pairs which make up the "rungs" of the DNA ladder. For the singled celled amoeba, there are about two million of these instructions. For the human, there are about six billion. That's a 3,000 times increase in information content.

To tell you how to build a cool paper airplane, I can write the instructions for how to fold it on an index card easily. But can you imagine the number of books, blueprints and manuals it would take to specify the construction of the space shuttle? The reason it requires more instructions is intuitive; a space shuttle is far more complex than a paper airplane. This is true of the difference between a human and an amoeba. But we are supposed to believe that we all came from a single celled life form arising from the primordial goo. The point is, that is an astonishing increase in perfectly organized information content due entirely to beneficial mutations. And the motivation for believing such an absurd thing in the presence of all the evidence to the contrary is to avoid any mention of God.

Am I a mutant? Certainly not!

Genesis 1:27 (NKJV)

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

This diagram shows a very simple version of the evolutionary tree of life. Life begins a the bottom and evolves by branching off into the various major types ending with humans. Notice how we did not evolve from apes (primates) but where those two branches tie together is supposed to be our common ancestor. The reason there's no label there is that they haven't found it yet! But boy are they looking for it. There are candidates proposed all the time but they never seem to work out enough to fill in the the missing label. In fact, notice the absence of labels at all of the branching points. None, nada, zip. Could it be because that's not the way it happened?

There is another tree of life spoken of in the Bible.

Genesis 2:8-9 (NKJV)

The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Revelation 22:14 (NKJV)

Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.

Below is the second part ten-minute video on The Design Inference.

Evolutionists always point out the ability for a species to change over generations as evidence of evolution. As we have discovered in the previous articles, to the extent that such change is limited by the genetic variability built in to the genome, this is unmistakable and is demonstrated every day by the actions of breeders. But you see, they get you nodding your head about how such changes are so easily explained by natural selection and have no need for some outside influence. Then they make the simple suggestion that such small changes continuing to occur over millions of years could produce the incredible variety of life we see today. Yet no examples of this newly proposed phenomenon are given, just the simple examples already given. This is called a bait and switch. The bait is micro evolution and the switch is macro evolution; small change becomes all change.

The whole point too is to appeal to the ability of natural selection. This carries the idea that there is no need for anything supernatural to make it work. I could argue the same way about the heating and cooling system in my house. Once everything is set up, I can go away for weeks at a time and even years and no matter what the weather does, hot or cold, the system will change it's behavior to preserve the temperature I have set for it. It is completely understandable that all these changes going on in my house A/C system need no input from an outside agent to keep it going. That's an amazing thing but have I really demonstrated no need for an outside intelligent agent? No not at all; in fact think of the incredible invention, design and building process that went on for years to make it possible for my house to work this way. There was most definitely a design and a designer. But is there no need for any outside agent after everything gets started? If I go away for months at a time, I still need to pay my utility bill. But the "scientist" trying to observe whether any outside agent were fiddling with things at my house would never know about this.

Speaking of bait and switch which I have just accused the evolutionist of, I was reading an article just now accusing the Intelligent Design movement of the same thing. The article's argues that the ID proponents such as Behe and Dembski insist that their criticism of Darwinism is not religiously motivated, that they are simply pointing out the flaws in the evolutionary science. It quotes Dembksi as saying "Design requires neither magic nor miracles nor a creator." And the article quotes Behe--"Inferences to design do not require that we have a candidate for the role of designer." But the article then claims that although they claim no need for a particular designer they obviously are implying God. Inference of Design is the bait, God is the switch.

This is an interesting argument because it recognizes the obvious that if there is a design in nature there must be a God. And this from an atheist! He assumes that if God is the conclusion of these men's scientific pursuit then it must be invalid science. How absurd is that?! Truth is disallowed if truth leads us to God.

Actually, I am inclined to agree with the article about Behe and Dembski. They are useful to me because they have made some wonderful arguments against Darwinism. But I too think it is clearly a copout to say that that their conclusion of the need for a designer need not be God. And their motive is obviously the desire avoid the label of a creationist so as to give their science credence within academic circles. But they fail to do that. They are excoriated by the mainstream scientific community anyway. The have fooled no one and they have been ashamed of God in the process. I understand what they are trying to do and I am glad they are honest scientists but they might as well go ahead and say the obvious.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Take varieties of rabbits, gray, white and black, then put them in a snow covered environment. Which variety is going to predominate over many generations? That's easy, the white rabbit because they will blend in with the snow and not be seen by their predators as easily. The genes of the white rabbits will tend to be inherited by more and more offspring as they survive to the age of reproductively and mate with other white rabbits who also survive. This will continue until there are very few darker rabbits which is to say very little genetic material that creates the darker fur. This is know as adaptation. Really it is a form of mimicry. It is beneficial for the white rabbits to be able to "mimic" the white snow. The rabbits did not plan it this way, natural selection just favors them.

One wild example of mimicry is the Polyphemus Moth. This moth's coloring and patterns on its wings has an uncanny resemblance to an owl's head and face. Apparently the owl, who likes to eat moths will be fooled by the disguise and not eat the moth thinking it is actually another owl. Certainly this will benefit the moth, at least from the danger of being eaten by owls and other prey who might want to avoid tangling with an owl. Again, this moth knows nothing about it's ability to protect itself mimicking a moth; it benefits nevertheless.

The most famous example of adaptation given as a textbook example of evolution at work is the story of the Peppered Moth. There are light colored, dark colored and speckled varieties of these moths in the natural population. Evidently, these moths would hang out on the bark of trees most of which in their habitat had light colored bark. Consequently the lighter moths predominated in the same way as the white snow rabbits do. This was before the industrial revolution in England. When the factories produced enough soot over the years to turn the bark a dark color, it was noted that the darker moths began to predominate. And finally when environmentally conscious modern factories began to clean their act up, the dark bark became light again and logically the lighter moths are now predominate again. This story demonstrates the ability of a population of a certain species to genetically adapt and change their make up over many generations due to changing environmental conditions.

Does this adaptability of a species demonstrate evolution? It depends on you idea of evolution. If you mean the ability of a species to shift their gene pool over time to favor one trait over another, then yes. No problem with that. But if you mean the ability for a species to gradually become something completely different and higher in sophistication and complexity then absolutely not.

Notice that in the stories given, no moth changed it's own color, nor did any new rabbit become something other than a rabbit. Nor did any new colors turn up. The genetic variability built-in to the gene pool allowed for all the variability at the beginning of the story. No new information in the genes was produced. Instead, if anything, the gene pool tended to loose information. If all you had was white moths with no recessive genes for producing dark moths, then the dark moths would have become extinct. The fact that the pepper moths were able to shift their demographics from mostly white to mostly dark and finally mostly white again demonstrates the ability for the species to preserve themselves, not to become something other than what they were.

So adaptation is a nice feature of genetics. Is it perhaps a feature that has been designed to preserve the species during hard times? That would be what we would expect of an all-wise and gracious God.

One of the primary evidences given for evolution is homology--the observation that different species have similarities. For example, the vast majority of animals have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two ears and four limbs. This supposedly indicates that somewhere, far back in the history of life many hundreds of millions of years ago, there was a common ancestor who had these traits and the descendants eventually split off into a variety of species.

The bone structure of many skeletal reptiles and mammals are similar. Notice for example the picture on the right. This cartoon depiction of an x-ray of an alligator's front limb, a human arm and a bird's wing respectively. You can see that the bone structure of all three share some similarities. All three have two bones in the "forearm" part of their limbs. The radius and ulna, as these bones are called, allow the end of the limb (our hand) to rotate about 200 degrees. This benefits us as well as the alligator and the bird. Other similarities are the five digits on both the alligator and human. In Darwinian evolution, these benefits were selected in the original ancestor because of it's ability to compete and survive over it's less endowed siblings and cousins who did not have such features. And then of course these traits were passed down to their descendants and continued to be preserved even in widely divergent species.

You can see that there has been an observation and then a hypothesis proposed but never tested. Such a test is impossible to make because of the extremely slow pace of the process. There is a test however. If the evolution hypothesis is true, there should be evidence in both the fossil record and in some species of life today of transitional forms. This we do not see. Stephen Jay Gould in a moment of honest reflection admitted:

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils… We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.”

There is another hypothesis. Perhaps this benefit of having two bones in the forearms of so many creatures is a design feature which was used by a wise Designer who efficiently used the same excellent design on many different kinds.

Darwin was the naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle for a trip to the Galapagos islands of the South American coast in the Pacific ocean. The basic elements of his logical argument for evolution was as follows:

Observation:

• He saw large populations of birds and other species.
• He noticed there were limited resources of food and shelter.

Conclusion:

• There would be a struggle for existence within a given species.

Observation:

• He saw a variation among individuals within a species.
• For example, finches beaks varied long, short, thin, stout, straight and curved.
• He noticed that some of these variations were heritable from parent to offspring.

Conclusion:

• Some of these variations were beneficial; others were detrimental. Long, curved beaks were well suited to get insects out of holes in the rocks. Short, stout beaks were better suited for defense against a predator.
• As such there would be a differential in the reproductive success between them depending upon the surroundings.
• The fittest will be more likely to have offspring.
• Populations will evolve over time.

There is really nothing wrong with Darwin's logic based on his observations. But notice what he did not observe: that there were limits to which variations can occur. The reason he did not notice it was because he was not looking for it.

How do we know there are limits? Darwin was noticing what he called "natural selection" which works very slowly and consequently it is impossible to see the limitations since one would have to wait many thousands of generations to see it. But what about unnatural selection? I am talking about "intelligent breeding." This is where a farmer breeds his corn crops for the largest, sweetest and most yellow corn. Or where a rancher breeds for the largest steer or fattest cows or the meatiest hog. Because they use intelligent breeding, they speed up the process of genetic variation by many times. What these farmers and ranchers know through experience is that you can only get an ear of corn so big and so sweet and so juicy before you reach a limit. And they never see corn becoming something other than corn. Furthermore, they notice that as you continue to selectively breed, weaknesses sometimes result. The corn may be sweeter, but it becomes more susceptible to insects.

Another limitation is when trying to cross breed species, different kinds of animals and plants are not able to breed with each other to produce offspring. Dogs and cats cannot have offspring. Interestingly you can breed a horse and a donkey to get a mule but what is the problem with the mule? Mules are infertile.

If Darwin had combined his observations with the practical knowledge of the rest of the world, he might not have been as far-reaching in his ideas about evolution. The migration of a population progressing from one kind to another kind was all imagination and not observation. What he did observe is explained by the well-known ability of the gene pool of dogs for example to produce a fantastic variety of poodles to Great Danes, all dogs mind you. But Darwin was driven by a desire to find an explanation apart from what God had said:

Genesis 1:24 (NKJV)

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so.

Normally when we think of evolution, we think of biological evolution. We think about man evolving from monkeys and birds evolving from reptiles. The typical progression is given from bacteria to fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal to man. As far-reaching as that is, the grand scope of evolution is even wider.

First we have stellar evolution which says everything started about 15 billion years ago with a singularity (nothing) exploding in a big-bang and producing all matter. The sub-atomic particles became hydrogen atoms which then gathered into clouds of gas due to the forces of gravity. Then by virtue of the heat of gravitational friction these increasingly dense clouds ignited on fire and coalesced into giant stars while grouping themselves into galaxies. The stars lasted for billions of years and finally burned out, collapsed in on themselves and exploded producing the heavier elements such as carbon, oxygen and iron. The particles resulting from the explosive death of stars went through similar gravitational coalescing and formed into planets, moons and eventually new stars.

Next we have chemical evolution. Some of the planets formed during stellar evolution had sufficient amounts of water and atmospheres capable of supporting life. After millions of years of rain falling on the rocks created warm ponds of water, ammonia, methane and other chemicals. This primordial soup was struck by lighting creating amino acids. These amino acids formed chains of proteins which finally organized themselves into a self-reproducing bacterium, the first life.

So now we have something Darwin can work with, biological evolution. Life can now grow in to populations which can create offspring which may be slightly modified from their progenitors due to random mutations.

I hope you noticed the two biggest leaps in this story of evolution. The first jump was from nothing to everything. The second jump was from non-life to life. There other big jumps as well such as between the major kinds of life. It's one thing to consider evolution of a dog population into the various species. But it is a very different thing to imagine evolution between reptiles and birds or between amphibians and mammals. The most interesting things always seem to happen at the major boundaries of things. I find it easy to believe God is in these places.

This post was supposed to go to David's Bible Blog (where I write something daily about what I am reading) but I posted it here by mistake, but enjoy it anyway!

Matthew 11:28-30 (NKJV)

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Jesus is amazing, on the one hand he says that He is the only way, the only solution. If someone were to say the kinds of things Jesus said about himself today you would say he was an egotistical maniac. But then Jesus says that he is gentle and lowly in heart, and somehow you agree with this statement too. He is at once mighty and humble. That is because he is both God and man. He is the God-man, Emanuel, God with us.

Jesus just says, "Come to Me." He doesn't speak of any difficult requirements to find the rest he speaks of. No doubt we are to serve Him but He says that His burden is easy and light. Notice that it is His yoke and not yours. He is carrying it. We are like the little child who wants to help his father carry the heavy load. The father picks it up in the middle bearing most of the weight and allows the child to "carry" one end. If you find it difficult then something is wrong. Could it be that you are carrying a yoke of your own choosing rather than the one Jesus is asking you to carry?

Language is a code which allows information to be stored and communicated. The words I am writing now are very specific and irregular but they are recognizable. No one would ever think these words were the result of my randomly striking keys on my computer. They are designed, and I am the designer.

DNA is a code which specifies how proteins are to be constructed from amino acids. DNA is a language which stores and communicates information. The arrangements of the base pairs of the DNA helix are irregular but very specific and are recognizable to the machinery of the living cell. DNA is designed and God is the Designer.

I have tons of information stored on my computer's hard drive. The individual bits of information in my computer are coded by orienting tiny magnetic particles on the surface of a disc. Emails, programs, pictures, music and videos are all stored in the specific arrangements of these little magnetic bits spread out in rings on the disc. A reading head is able to move across these rings and decode this arrangement of magnetic orientations and deliver to the central processor the specifications for how to display the text or picture or how to play the musical recording. This is a fascinating technology that we hardly think about anymore. A similar but vastly more complex orchestra is occurring in our own bodies every moment of every day allowing us to experience life. And we hardly give a thought to that either.

This information stored on my hard drive--does it depend on the computer or on any part of the computer? If I could weigh the disk containing the information very precisely then I could compare the weight of the information on the disk with the same disk before I put the information on there. I would discover that the weight was unchanged. No new particles were added to the disk to store the information. In fact I could print the information out on to ink and paper or burn it to a CD or even send it via wireless radio waves somewhere else and it would not affect the information.

Information has no mass and does not depend on energy, space or matter. That is to say it has zero mass, zero energy and zero space. We can infer from this that information is also timeless. Note Einstein's famous equation relating the four aspects of our universe that came about at creation: Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. The speed of light component there is how time enters the equation.

Remember the movie Jurassic Park? The premise was that the dinosaurs could be brought back because they found a mosquito buried in a piece of amber (hardened sap) and there was dinosaur blood still in the mosquito. From this blood they were able to get the DNA to clone the dinosaurs. Now even though the movie was purely fiction, it has an element of truth to it that makes sense and lends the feeble feasibility necessary that allows us to suspend our disbelief for a couple of hours of entertainment.

My body is specified by the code written in the language of my DNA. It does not matter whether I am cremated or spread out over the sea when I die since God does not need to use the same atoms that are in my body today. The atoms are fungible like the letters on the sign used to spell out the shopkeeper's specials of the day--"Milk 4.50 / Gallon". He does not need a particular "M", he can reach in to the pile of letters and pick up any old "M".

So if information does not depend on any of the four fundamental aspects of our universe then information must exist outside of the confines of our universe and as such it exists in the realm of eternity. The consequences of this are mind bending. The real you and the real me is software not hardware. Everything we are can just be specified by information, stored no doubt in the mind of God.

We are eternal whether we like it or not. That means that we will spend eternity somewhere. The question is where? Find out more here.

Below is an informative ten-minute video on The Design Inference.

According to William Dembski, there are three ways a particular phenomenon can have occurred.

1. Chance
   The numbers that come up when you roll the dice. The arrangement of letters that occur when you spill a bowl of scrabble letters out on the floor. The features of a thing produced by chance are irregularity or non-patterned result. So this fall if I walk outside and my driveway is covered in leaves, I would never suspect that someone had come over and carefully placed each leaf in its position on my driveway.
2. Necessity
   The ripples in the sand on the beach. The angular shape of crystals. The perfect roundness of a bubble floating in the air. The features of a thing produced by necessity i.e. by some law of physics or chemistry are regularity and patterns. So when I see a whirlpool in the water of my bathtub as it drains, I know that there are the laws of physics at work. The perfect funnel shape is a result of the vortex of spinning water.
3. Design
   A watch, a car, a portrait, a choral symphony, a poem, a blog post are all examples of design. When something is obviously designed and made, it has complexity and is not necessarily regular. The complexity that results from design is not the kind of complexity that results from chance. A design is specific. Specified complexity is the hallmark of design. So when I see a completed game of scrabble, I know that those letters did not simply fall into their arrangement because they all spell words very precisely (the opponent made sure of that!).

This seems so obvious that it is odd that anyone would argue with it. But argue they do. Now, the above description of the design inference is not yet science. To be science, this idea much be measurable and quantifiable. And it must be falsifiable and repeatable. To this end, Dembski and his colleagues have gone much further in their attempt to establish the design inference as science. You can see more of his work at http://www.designinference.com/.

Anyway, why would anyone argue with such research? Because the motive for undertaking it was to give an honest critique of Darwinian Natural Selection as the explanation of all the variety of life we see. There are a number of scientists and physicians who seriously question Darwin. They have said:

"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/

These honest scientists and physicians are treated with disdain by those who are committed to atheistic materialism. There commitment is so deep that they will not tolerate any investigation or examination of contrary ideas or evidence. Talk about intolerance!

Couple of reasons. First of all, because Darwinian Evolution is atheistic to the core, it is the faith of those whom we wish to reach who don't believe in God. How can you tell someone "Heaven is a free gift" when they don't believe in God or heaven? So we study the belief system of those to whom we would like to speak of Jesus to. But before we speak of Jesus, we have to tell the story of creation. Part of that story telling is knowing how to give a defense of the reasons why belief in God is necessary to satisfactorily explain the universe and life.

Hebrews 11:6 tells us that before one can come to God, he must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. So belief in the necessity of God is a starting point for evangelizing an atheist.

Consider Peter, when he was preaching to the Jews, how he began his sermon by quoting scripture from the prophet Joel and then said:

Acts 2:22-23

“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death.

So for those who already believe in God, they can be taken directly to the Bible and immediately be told about Jesus. There was no need for an apologetic about Creation, they already believed that.

Now consider the apostle Paul when he spoke to the Greeks at Mars Hill. Before he speaks of Jesus and of sin and of salvation, he starts with an apologetic about the true creator God.

Acts 17:24-25

"God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things."

There is a second reason to study Creation Science--that is to build up our own faith. Yes, I know you believe but none of us are immune to the fiery darts of the wicked one. We must defend against them with the shield of faith. You can strengthen that shield by learning good reasons why what is being taught in our schools about science should not cause us to doubt. And it is not a blind faith we have. Rather it is based on good science starting from a different perspective.

Our children are being challenged every day by teachers and professors who do not believe in God and have the support of the scientific establishment for such a belief. They offer up scientific dogma which seems to go against a belief in the necessity of Creation. It is hard to withstand this bombardment without hearing from other, God honoring, Bible believing scientists who see through the logic and arguments and are able to interpret the facts in a way that will build up our faith and give us confidence that the Bible is supported by what we observe in the real world.

You may not understand everything these respected scientists who believe in creation are saying but even so, it is good to know someone who is smarter than me has thoroughly investigated the science and has concluded that the Bible is true based upon his own research. God is not afraid of our questions, in fact he commanded us to "subdue the earth" and that's what we are going to do in this course.

There are many different viewpoints with widely different ideas about how this world came to be. I'll try to organize them in order from the most conservative to the most liberal (biblically speaking).

Young Earth Creationist

This is the position that God created the earth in six days about six thousand years ago.

The young earth creationist (YEC) believes this because it is the conclusion you come to with a plain reading of the Bible. The first 11 chapters of Genesis are considered to be a true and accurate history of the world and not just an allegorical story. Biblical inerrancy is the hallmark of the Young Earth Creationist. This viewpoint, however, does not mean that the YEC is disinclined to ignore science, on the contrary, God gave us science and knowledge and told us to "subdue the earth". The Bible is the authority and any apparent discrepancies between the Bible and what we see in nature can be explained by properly interpreting the facts.

Old Earth re-Creationist (Gap theory)

This is the idea that God created an original perfect world according to Genesis 1:1 and then something went wrong, probably rebellion of Satan and angels in heaven and then there was a Divine Judgment on the earth which caused the world to become formless and void in Genesis 1:2.

This idea hinges on whether the verse should read "The earth was formless and void" or "The earth became formless and void". There is some additional obscure support for this in Isaiah 45:18.

The Gap Theory is also known as the Ruin/Recreation theory. Supposedly God had to recreate everything about six thousand years ago after some indefinite period of time which occurred between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. It is this period of time which explains the motivation for believing this theory. About 130 years ago, it had recently become common knowledge, at least within the scientific circles, that the geology of the earth proved that it must be billions of years old. What was a theologian to do with this? Where would he fit this billions of years into a Biblical model of creation and time? The answer was "in the gap between Gen 1:1 and 1:2". This became a very popular explanation as a result over the next century. In the last thirty years, it has fallen out of favor when consideration is given to how catastrophic events such as Noah's flood could explain the geological strata in the earth.

Progressive Creationist

The progressive creationist pretty much accepts all standard models of how the universe and earth came to be including the Big Bang, stellar evolution, and planet formation over billions of years. The one thing they are against however is evolution. Instead, they believe that God performed special creative insertions of life into the world at various stages which explains all the species. These episodes of creative activity explain the word progressive.

The first chapter of Genesis is simply an long age framework divided into six "days", each one lasting millions or billions of years. Life shows up billions of years ago.

To hold this position, You have to be somewhat liberal in your interpretation of Gen 1-11 and on some theological issues. Hugh Ross, a brilliant man and charismatic speaker, is the main proponent of this view, and believes in pre-Adamic hominids (ape-men) with no souls, death before sin, no world-wide flood. These ideas have huge theological impact and so why does he believe these things? Because he believes Adam showed up about six thousand years and all of the geology and fossils were already in the ground. So you must have life and death before Adam. And you can't explain the layers of rock we see over the whole world by appealing to a world-wide catastrophic flood because Noah came after Adam and after the rocks were already laid down in layers by other naturalistic processes that he wants to preserve in his belief system.

Intelligent Design Movement

These are honest scientists who have no religious or biblical agenda but are simply bothered by the inability of Darwin's natural selection to explain the origin of complex systems of biological life. The specific complexity and appearance of design we see in life is better explained by appealing to an intelligent designer.

The proponents of the ID movement are agnostic about any particular designer and are not interested in appealing to the God of the Bible or to the Bible as any kind of authoritative book. Most of what they do is to critic the model of evolution by pointing out its weaknesses.

Because they are accredited, real working scientists, they are able to gain a lot more traction within the scientific community than a Creationist would be able to. Still, the ID movement is vigorously opposed by most mainstream scientists.

Theological Evolutionist

This group is typically quite liberal regarding the authority of the Bible and wants no part of being labeled a "foolish" creationist. Basically, they have no problem saying that God used evolution as his means to create life. Certainly an all-powerful, sovereign God could create life anyway he so chooses. The only problem is how to reconcile the meaning of the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

More importantly, Darwinism (random chance mutation acting through natural selection) is an unguided, purposeless material process with no room or need for God.

Atheistic Evolutionist

It used to be that an atheist was an eccentric. They had no plausible story for how we came to be. So they needed a plausible creation story and Darwin provided one. For the Atheist, naturalism must explain everything. In fact, science has now been defined to exclude any appeal to the supernatural.

Now, to be an atheist is mainstream. And Post-modernism is adding to its ranks daily.

Origin/Development of Life – First Three Weeks

1. Introduction, Intelligent Design, the Design Inference
2. Darwinism, Irreducible Complexity, The Eye
3. DNA details, Probability of Life

Age of the Earth – Second Three Weeks

1. Evidence for a Young Earth
2. Starlight and Time, Relativity
3. Radiometric Dating, Dating Dead Things and Rocks

Flood, Fossils and Fakery – Two Weeks

1. Noah’s Ark, Geology, Grand Canyon
2. Dinosaurs, Ice Age, Ape Men