Ken Marrocco – December, 1999
The question that we are trying to answer is whether the origin of mankind and the universe can be explained by the theory of evolution or by an intelligent designer, God. We look towards science and their teachers, scientists, to gather our facts to support one or the other. There are many scientists that have accepted Evolutionism, in part or in whole, and there are a significant number who have not. Many intelligent and experienced scientists either openly or secretly dismiss Evolution as highly unlikely or impossible. As reported in Science Digest Special (Winter 1979), pp. 94-96, entitled “Educators Against Darwin”, “Scientists who utterly reject Evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities… Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science.” One example is Dr. Arthur E. Wilder-Smith, an honored scientist with three earned doctorates and a former Evolutionist. He holds the opinion that the Evolution model does not fit as well with the established facts of science as does the Creation model of intelligent design. “The Evolutionary model says that it is not necessary to assume the existence of anything, besides matter and energy, to produce life. That proposition is unscientific. We know perfectly well that if you leave matter to itself, it does not organize itself – in spite of all the efforts in recent years to prove that it does.”
There is no unique human species called Homo scientificus. Scientists are not a class of superior beings with super-human abilities to know the ancient past; they are just people. None of them are all-knowing. All people hold biases toward particular viewpoints. Because scientists are human they are subject to self-deception, pride, and self-interest which means that they do not always practice good science. Whether a scientist is on the Evolutionist side or the Creationist side, they are not infallible or above all question.
There are hundreds and thousands of volumes available to present a one-sided promotion of evolutionary theories and ideology. The focus of this discussion is to reveal interesting new evidences and legitimate, alternative interpretations of the data used to support the evolutionary theory. The rest is up to you.
Many Evolutionists believe that the stars and Earth owe their existence to a gigantic explosion called the “Big Bang” Theory. The theory says that all of the matter and energy in the universe were once concentrated in a single spot. This spot, or object, sat in the void of space for an unknown length of time and then suddenly exploded for no known reason. From this the stars, galaxies and planets eventually developed.
How did this happen? The content of this object was hurled with great force and enormous speed in all directions. As it cooled, some simple atoms supposedly began to form, mainly hydrogen. The entire universe then consisted primarily of hydrogen gas. Next, the gas collected in local areas and super-concentrated itself into stars. Throughout the universe, trillions upon trillions of stars were supposedly thus produced. The stars are presumed to have created other essential atoms, such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, metals and others. As a result of star explosions and gravitational attraction, sufficient matter is supposed to have concentrated near a particular star in the Milky Way galaxy, our sun. From this material, the Earth and other planets in our solar system are supposed to have been produced.
The main evidence used in support of the “big bang” is the so-called “red-shift” of light coming from stars as viewed from the perspective of Earth. This is called the Doppler effect on light. Light waves from a very fast moving object can become slightly stretched if moving away from the viewer, or compressed if coming toward the viewer. Light waves that are stretched appear to be slightly more red and those that are compressed appear to be slightly more blue. Some scientists believe that because there are astronomical measurements of many galaxies showing their light as shifted towards the red side, that this supports their view that this is evidence that the galaxies are rushing outward from some center point (the source of the “big bang”). One problem with this is that there has been a discovery of several different red shifts in the same object. This would mean that the object is moving at several different speeds at once. Another problem is that not all galaxies have red shifts; some have blue shifts. Lastly, other forces can cause light waves to be stretched out and reddened. Gravity, the attractive force between all matter, can cause light to redden. This was predicted by Einstein.
The “big bang” is in big trouble because there are scientific problems for this theory. For example, a “big bang” explosion would produce a generally uniform distribution of matter and galaxies in all directions. Scientists have found that the real universe is not at all uniform. Recent discoveries have revealed that there are vast spaces of emptiness, huge supercluster ribbons and great sheets of galaxies stretch millions of light years across the universe separated by enormous voids. The real question is: what do explosions really make? Explosions may produce many things but nowhere in the universe has science observed explosions producing such complex, ordered arrangements as Evolutionist require. Explosions destroy complexity and produce disorder. For example, imagine witnessing a massive volcanic explosion of a great mountain. As tons of flying rock and dust settled, what are the odds that the settling debris would land to produce an entire city of well-formed buildings?
One major problem with Evolution is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is defined as the study of heat power; a branch of physics which studies the efficiency of energy transfer and exchange. The second law observes the fact that the useable energy in the universe is becoming less and less. Ultimately there would be no available energy left. From this we can say that the most probable state for any natural system is one of disorder because all natural systems degenerate when left to themselves. In simpler terms, it is the universal law of decay; the ultimate cause of why everything ultimately falls apart and disintegrates over time. Nothing stays as fresh as the day you buy it; clothing becomes faded and everything ages and wears out. It is well known that chemical compounds ultimately break apart into simpler materials; they do not ultimately become more complex. Evolutionism requires that physical laws and atoms organize themselves into increasingly complex and beneficial, ordered arrangements. Over eons of time, billions of things are supposed to have developed upward, becoming more orderly and complex. However, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says the exact opposite. Complex, ordered arrangements actually tend to become simpler and more disorderly with time. A number of scientists believe that when properly understood, the 2nd Law is enough to refute the theory of Evolution.
The Earth, A Young Planet?
The most common view is that Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. The lowest age defended on a scientific basis is in the 6 to 10 thousand year range. Evolutionism requires billions of years to support the plausibility of life’s emergence and of the evolution from “amoeba” to man. Scientists have proposed many methods to estimate age and most systems promoted by evolutionists involve radioactivity. Some of the radioactive elements include Carbon-14, Uranium-238, Thorium-232, and Potassium-40.
The Carbon-14 age estimating method can only be used to date organic materials; things which were once alive. In simplified terms, here is how the system works: Carbon-12 is carbon in its natural, stable form. It is not radioactive. All living things depend on it to survive. Plants get it from carbon dioxide in the air. This carbon is passed on to animals through the carbohydrates which plants produce and animals eat. Carbon-14 is a radioactive form of carbon produced when cosmic rays strike Earth’s atmosphere. Carbon-14 is absorbed by living plants and animals the same way as Carbon-12. The normal ratio between Carbon-12 and Carbon-14 in living things has been calculated. When an animal or plant dies, Carbon-14 ceases to be absorbed and the ratio begins to change. The Carbon-14 decays gradually and disappears by decomposing back into nitrogen. Dr. Willard Libby developed a method to compare the amount of Carbon-14 in something with the presumed original level, to attempt to calculate the elapsed time since death. Both Creationists and Evolutionists agree Carbon-14 would be useless for estimating the age of anything that is supposed to be millions of years old. Carbon-14 has a relatively short life, and there would be no useful measurable amount left in 30 to 100 thousand years. Conventional Carbon-14 techniques appear to produce fairly accurate age estimates from about 1,000 B.C. to the present. There appears to be some problems dating something much older than this.
The Carbon-14 age estimating method does not work on rocks
or mineralized fossils. Other methods
such as potassium-argon and uranium-lead are used. They work pretty much like Carbon-14 dating
by measuring the speed of disintegration.
A portion of the material is ground up and a measurement is made of the
ratio of radioactive atoms to the decomposition products. There have been many erroneous age estimates
by using this method. For example, new
rock in the form of hardened lava flows produced estimated ages as great as 3
billion to 10.5 billion years, when they were actually less than 200 years
old. A popular and supposedly foolproof
method was used on two lava flows in the
The result of dating using these methods have caused leading
scientists to think twice. Evolutionist
William Stansfield, Ph.D.,
“It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological ‘clock’.”
Evolutionist Frederick B. Jueneman candidly summarizes the situation:
“The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on radio-decay rates of uranium and thorium. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio-decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather, within the age and memory of man.”
Earth is surrounded by an invisible magnetic force which aligns near the North and South Poles. The needle of a compass points to the North Magnetic Pole. The energy in this magnetic field is decaying (decreasing in strength) which supports the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The strength has dropped 6% since the measurements began in 1835. Dr. Thomas Barnes is a physicist who has studied this in great detail and has concluded that the half-life of this magnetic field is approximately 830 to 1400 years. This means that 830 to 1400 years ago the magnetic field would have been twice as strong as it is today. Another 830 to 1400 years before that it would have been 4 times as strong. According to Dr. Barnes:
“If we went back about 10 thousand years, the Earth’s magnetic field would have been as strong as the field in a magnetic star. A magnetic star is like our Sun; it has a nuclear power source. Surely our Earth never had a magnetic field stronger than that of a star. That would limit the age of the Earth to 10 thousand years.”
As comets orbit our Sun, they disintegrate due to the Sun’s powerful gravity, the solar “wind,” and internal explosions. If our solar system is billions of years old, then why are there any short-period comets left? According to leading astronomical researchers, the maximum lifetime of most short-period comets is calculated to be about 10 thousand years. This presents a problem for evolutionary astronomers because they believe these comets came into existence at the same at the same time as the solar system itself.
The orbiting Moon exerts a decelerating torque on planet Earth and vice versa. This braking effect is due to the gravitational pull between the two and Earth’s rotation speed is greater than the Moon’s orbit speed. The result is that the Earth’s rotational speed is constantly slowing. The slowing Earth transfers its energy to the Moon. This results in a constant yearly increase in the distance between the Earth and Moon. Calculating back in time brings the Moon in contact with Earth in a relatively short period of time (compared to the “Evolutionary age” of the Earth). There is no evidence that the Moon was ever extremely close to our planet. Any distance closer than 11,500 miles and the Earth’s powerful tidal forces would break the Moon into small pieces that would orbit Earth much like the rings of Saturn.
Former Nobel Prize nominee Dr. Melvin Cook has studied Earth’s natural helium supplies extensively. He has become convinced that the reason there is so little of this gas in the atmosphere is because the planet is relatively young. When radioactive elements such as uranium decomposes, the gas helium is released from the rock into Earth’s atmosphere. Radioactive deposits throughout the world are steadily producing helium. Additional helium enters our atmosphere due to the Sun and due to helium leaking from the Earth’s core through the crust. If Earth was actually billions of years old, Dr. Cook believes the atmosphere should now contain a much larger amount of helium, up to a million times more than currently exists. Dr. Cook and other physicists have said to believe the atmospheric helium indicates Earth’s age could be as little as 10 to 15 thousand years and no more than 1.8 million years.
Conservative figures suggest the Sun’s diameter is decreasing 1 mile per year (overall, long-term average). These figures would make the Sun twice its present radius only 1 million years ago. 210 million years ago the Sun would have been large enough to touch Earth. Even only 10 million years ago, the Sun could have been too large for life on the planet.
It has been estimated that the average world population growth over the centuries has been about 2% per year. At a more generous rate of 0.5% per year, it would take only 4,000 years to produce today’s population beginning from a single original couple. If life on Earth is as ancient as Evolutionists claim, humans here for more than a million years, Earth could potentially have been overpopulated long ago. If we assume the population to have grown at an almost zero rate and that humans have been here for a million years, there would have been at least 3,000 billion people that have lived on this planet. The question is – where is the fossil or cultural evidence for such massive numbers?
During the Middle Ages some people thought non-living matter often gave birth to living things. This is called spontaneous generation. Evolutionists assume life arose spontaneously somewhere in ancient Earth’s water supply – water which contained absolutely no life, just minerals and chemical substances used by living things. They also assumed that the Earth’s atmosphere contained certain necessary ingredients including ammonia, nitrogen, hydrogen, water vapor and methane. It is well known however that mixing these ingredients does not create life so it was theorized that something else must be needed such as a bolt of energy. Dr. Stanley Miller and Dr. Sidney Fox were two of the first scientists to attempt to create life in the laboratory. They designed a Pyrex apparatus containing all the necessary elements and passed electric sparks to simulate lightning strikes. No life was produced but the electricity combined atoms to form amino acids. The fact is that all known life uses amino acids which are exclusively of the “left-handed” form. The problem is that when amino acids are synthesized in the laboratory, there is always a 50% mixture of the “right-handed” and “left-handed” forms. To add to the impossibility, life requires much more than amino acids – it needs proteins and DNA code.
One chemist has calculated the odds against amino acids ever combining to form the necessary proteins by indirected means. He estimated the probability to be more than 1067 to 1 against even a small protein forming by time and chance in an ideal mixture of chemicals, in an ideal atmosphere, and given up to 100 billion years. Mathematicians generally agree that any odds beyond 1 in 1050 have a zero probability of ever happening. DNA is a super-molecule which stores coded hereditary information. It consists of two long chains of chemical “building blocks” paired together. In humans, the strands of DNA are almost 2 yards long and less than a trillionth of an inch thick. It stores and transfers encoded information and instructions. DNA of a human stores enough information code to fill 1,000 books – each with 500 pages of very small, closely-printed type.
Has Man Always Been Man? What About Apes?
Scientists acknowledge that the “origin of man” reconstructions commonly shown in books and museums are based upon very little evidence and a large amount of imagination. Despite millions of dollars in research, it is said that all the bones of the most important supposed ape links could be placed on a single table or in a single coffin. Not only have heads and bodies often been reconstructed on the basis of just a few bone fragments or teeth, but human-like faces have been added to ape bodies and vice versa without sufficient scientific proof for such reconstructions. It is impossible to tell how much hair a person had by looking at bones but almost all illustrations of Neanderthals have shown them as covered in long thick body hair. Even a complete skull cannot tell the artist how much fat was under the skin nor can it provide evidence of the exact shape of the nose, the eyes, the lips, or the ears.
Not only is there no evidence that man is evolving, but there is increasing fossil and archaeological evidence which suggests that human beings and all of the extinct apes could have lived at the same time – side by side. A well-known professor, Dr. Wilbert Rusch, has studied this for many years and comments:
“As we find more fossils, we find man consistently appearing PARALLEL with all of his supposed ancestors. The concept of man developing from these animals is simply very dubious and cannot be held. Instead, we have parallel development – a record of man consistently existing as far back as we go in the fossil record.”
In our present world, fossilization is an extremely rare occurrence. It requires highly unusual circumstances such as being buried relatively quickly and deeply in materials and conditions ideal for the preservation process. For this reason, we could say that no fossilization is known to be occurring today. The usual animal or plant that dies in a forest does not become a fossil and neither does the average creature that dies in a sea or lake. Under most normal conditions, a dead creature in water floats and disintegrates. The body is destroyed by predators, bacteria and the elements.
What conditions would truly be necessary to form the gigantic fossil deposits found in Earth’s sediments? A very massive flood catastrophe that would deposit enormous quantities of sediments and leave them percolating with mineral-rich groundwater for many years before fully drying. Traditionally Evolutionists have claimed that most of Earth’s strata were laid down slowly over millions of years. The fossils contained within these sediments clearly speak of rapid burial. Enormous deposits of intact fossil fish can be found buried suddenly by overwhelming quantities of mud and sand. Whole dinosaurs have been found quickly buried in sediments and preserved for examination. Some sites contain huge deposits of many different kinds of animals. All were evidently swept together by masses of water and mud.
Throughout the world, fossil trees are found buried in sediment. As at Mt. Saint Helens, the trees appear to have sunk to the bottom of floodwaters and been buried. Fossil trees are found at various angles in the sediment, or they may be standing upright with the heavy bottom of the tree down.
How do Evolutionists estimate the age of most fossils? For example, how do they determine the age of a dinosaur bone? Creationists suspect that most dinosaurs did not become extinct until about 3 or 4 thousand years ago. Evolutionists claim extinction was complete some 60 or 70 million years ago. The age estimate is assigned by Evolutionists by using the “index fossil” method. It is not uncommon for paleontologists who believe in Evolutionism to date the fossils by the rock layer in which they are found – and the rock layer by the fossil. To assign a date to a dinosaur bone, they would first determine what layer of rock the fossil was found in. Next, they would look up the layer in a geology book or chart. The paleontologist would then say the bone was, for instance, 100 million years old, based on the assigned 100 million year old age of the rock. How did the geologists come up with that age? The rock must be at least 100 million years old, because it contains this type of dinosaur. An Evolutionist, Tom Kemp, noted that a circular argument arises: "Interpret the fossil record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?”
- Neither Evolutionism or Creationism can be totally proved or disproved using pure science, since both deal with remote past events which cannot be experienced or examined.
- There are serious scientific problems with the “big bang” theory.
- The powerful 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is a serious obstacle for Evolutionism.
- Ultimately, every age estimation method suffers from similar difficulties – extrapolation over the unknown past, questionable or unprovable assumptions.
- There is no scientific method that can positively prove Earth is very old or relatively young. Absolute proof of an old Earth would require billions of years of on-site measurements and observations.
- During all recorded human history, there has never been a substantiated case of a living thing being produced from anything other than another living thing.
- It is highly unacceptable for Evolutionists to claim that all living things evolved into existence, when science has yet to discover how even one protein molecule could actually have come into existence by natural processes.
- There is no scientific proof that modern man is evolving.
- There is no scientific proof that man evolved from ape-like ancestors, or from any other animal.
- All the different kinds of animals appear abruptly and fully functional in the Earth’s layers with no proof of macroevolutionary ancestors. At the very least, this is a strong indication that not all life evolved from a common ancestor.
- Most fossil animals and plants were buried in water-laid sediments quickly and abruptly.
- There is increasing evidence that many sedimentary rocks, which some thought took thousands or millions of years to accumulate, almost certainly were deposited in only months, days, or hours.
- In almost all cases, the very existence of the fossils, in the types and numbers discovered, strongly indicates catastrophic conditions were involved in the burial and preservation of these animal and plant remains. Without such conditions, there seems to be no plausible way to explain their existence.