The imprecise theory of evolution

I came across an article on Live Science titled, Reptiles evolved earlier than we thought, newly discovered claw-mark fossils suggest.  Here’s a quote from the article:

Based on the fossil record, amniotes were thought to have evolved around 320 million years ago. However, this new discovery of clawed amniote footprints in Australia from 350 million years ago throws these estimations hugely off…  “I'm stunned,” study co-author Per Ahlberg, a professor of paleontology at Uppsala University, said in a statement.  “A single track-bearing slab, which one person can lift, calls into question everything we thought we knew about when modern tetrapods evolved.”

You can read the whole article for itself but here's the gist of it. Evolutionists believe they know when reptiles evolved. However, two amateur palaeontologists found a fossilized track left by a lizard supposedly walking around 30 million years earlier than they had believed.

I read articles like this all the time.  Some new fossil is found that changes everything evolutionists thought they already knew about their theory.  It’s rather hilarious because it points out the flimsy foundation on which they’ve built their models.  How can anything in science be so imprecise and still be considered a "well tested" theory? There are so many things I could say about this article that I’m not sure where to start.  Here are just a few thoughts.

DAWKINS’ “WRONG DATE ORDER” TEST

Richard Dawkins, a rabid atheist and evolutionary apologist, once spoke a terrible lie saying, “Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.”  Dawkins tells this lie to make it sound like evolution is a very robust theory that is tested every time a new fossil is found.  Evolutionists make this claim all the time.  Biologist, J. B. S. Haldane famously quipped that if we ever found “fossil rabbits in the Precambrian,” that would disprove evolution.  

Yet in spite of all their hubris, these quotes and every quote like them are all bluff.  Radically out of order dates assigned to fossils will never disprove their theory.  Rather, they merely “correct” their theory.  Just google the term “evolved earlier than thought” or “fossil rewrites evolution” and see how many hits you find.  Go ahead, I dare you!  They say a fossil in the “wrong date order” will disprove evolution but we find examples by the dozen and nothing changes.  Well, Mr. Dawkins, here’s a fossil in the wrong date order.  Are you going to denounce your theory?  I didn’t think so.  

They’re all liars!

NYE ON EDUCATION

There’s an oft repeated claim that, if kids are taught creation, they won’t be able to understand science.  Bill Nye has made this very point. In his own words, he claimed the following (source):

[T]here are more people in the world — another billion people all trying to use the world’s resources. And the threat and consequences of climate change are more serious than ever, so we need as many people engaged in how we’re going to deal with that as possible. And we have an increasingly technologically sophisticated society. We are able to feed these 7.2 billion people because of our extraordinary agricultural technology. If we have a society that’s increasingly dependent on these technologies, with a smaller and smaller fraction of that society who actually understands how any of it works, that is a formula for disaster.... My biggest concern about creationist kids is that they’re compelled to suppress their common sense, to suppress their critical thinking skills at a time in human history when we need them more than ever.... There are just things about evolution that we should all be aware of, the way we’re aware of where electricity comes from.

Life improving technologies - made by real scientists - are made every day without a single thought being given to evolution.  Nye thinks we need to understand evolution just like we understand electricity.  Really, Nye? You want us to think we can understand evolution the way we understand electricity? Finds like this highlight exactly how unsure “scientists” really are about evolution.  Remember the quote from the Live Science article, “[This] single track-bearing slab, which one person can lift, calls into question everything we thought we knew about when modern tetrapods evolved.”  If we had this same lack of precision in how we understand electricity, we'd still be reading by candlelight.  Yet they still insist that kids are taught evolution as though it somehow will help them understand “science.”  

I’ve seen videos where kids can't answer basic questions about science or politics or geography or history. If evolutionists were truly worried about preparing kids for the future, they would be alarmed that young people don’t know how many dimes make a dollar!  But no, they think we need to devote more energy and resources to teaching them evolution! I truly believe they are more interested in indoctrinating kids rather than educating them.

EVOLUTION IS NOT IMPORTANT ANYWAY

In 1977, construction on the Citigroup Center in New York was completed.  Because of a building restriction, the 59-story building was built on 4 stilts, positioned in the middle of each side of the building, rather than at the 4 corners.  In the following year, a young, architectural student was asking the building’s structural engineer, William LeMessurier, a question about wind shear for the building when LeMessurier realized a terrible error had been made in the planning.  The stresses put on the building due to wind were much higher than the design had anticipated and the building would almost certainly collapse eventually.

In real sciences, like engineering, being wrong could have terrible consequences.  Fortunately, evolutionary biology isn’t really a science.  So what happened when these tracks were discovered?  I’ll tell you: a bunch of biologists probably started running around, redrawing their cherished, nested hierarchy. In the meantime, the rest of science continued its work improving people's lives. The average person didn’t even notice. Evolution is just that unimportant.

Jerry Bergman, Ph.D., tackled the myth that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. He noted that a survey of college textbooks showed that most rarely discuss evolution. The anatomy and physiology text books examined didn't mention evolution at all. Of the colleges surveyed in Ohio and Michigan, biology majors were required to only take one class in evolution.

From a Bergman article, we read this:

National Academy of Science Member and renown carbene chemist, Professor emeritus Dr. Philip Skell of Pennsylvania State University (see Lewis, 1992), did a survey of his colleagues that were “engaged in non-historical biology research, related to their ongoing research projects.” He found that the “Darwinist researchers” he interviewed, in answer to the question, “Would you have done the work any differently if you believed Darwin's theory was wrong?” that “for the large number” of persons he questioned, “differing only in the amount of hemming and hawing” was “in my work it would have made no difference.”

Evolution is the trivial pursuit branch of science.  If you were to google, “how evolution helps research,” you'll find plenty of articles by people trying to convince you that understanding evolution is critical to scientific research. Here's another exercise to try: see if you can find any invention, scientific advancement, or life improving technology whose discovery hinged upon evolution being true.  Maybe you can find one, but it is dwarfed by the explosion of improvements in medicine, computers, and technology that had nothing to do with understanding evolution.  If you ask me, I think it's a shame that we waste resources studying the theory.

Why theistic evolution is “sleeping with the enemy.”

Ray Comfort posted a video on his YouTube channel, Living Waters, about 12 years ago titled, Evolution vs. God: Watch Darwin Get Destroyed.  As I write this, the video has garnered more than 4 million views.  It’s about 38 minutes long which is longer than a lot of people like to watch but I recommend it to anyone who wants to invest the time.  For the sake of this post, though, I will just sum up what the video is about and everyone can watch it later at his leisure.

Comfort is on a college campus interviewing older and younger people (presumably professors and students) about their views on atheism, theism, and evolution.  Comfort challenges them on what they believe, what evidence have they considered, and asks them to consider arguments for God.  

After listening to Ray, several of the younger people softened their views about atheism and considered his points about God.  The older people, though, were thoroughly entrenched in their godless dogma and closed-minded to any of his arguments.  All things considered, I applaud Comfort’s efforts in the video and pray that the students later went on to accept Christ.

Progressive “Christian,” Tyler Franke, hosted a website called, God of Evolution where he attempted to use Scripture to support typical leftist causes like homosexuality.  Many of his posts discussed evolution.  In a since deleted article titled, “THE TOP 10 SIGNS THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION AT ALL”, (the original title was in all caps, sorry), he tried to explain why creationists were wrong about evolution and how they were misreading the Bible.  Here is what he had to say about Ray Comfort’s video:

Another one that you may have heard from our friend, Banana Ray. In his film “EvG” (which is subtitled, “Shaking the Foundations of Faith”), he underscores this supposed parallel by asking his victims — oh, I mean, “interview subjects” — ridiculous questions like “Are you a strong believer in evolution?” and “When did you first start believing in evolution?” His point, as he goes on to explain, is that anyone who accepts the truth of evolution based on the testimony of expert scientists is relying on “blind faith” in the same way atheists accuse religious people of doing.

Franke seems to be making a straw man of Comfort in the video.  To me, it sounds like Franke is accusing Comfort of saying something to the students like, “See, you have blind faith in evolution - so just have blind faith in God instead.”  That’s not what Comfort is doing but you’ll have to watch the video for yourself because that’s not really the point I mean to discuss.  It’s what Franke said next that really had me alarmed.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m a big supporter of critical thought — and of an engaged populace that rationally considers the information it receives before accepting it. But there are far worse people one could open one’s mind to than those who are sharing their expertise within the fields they have risen to the top of — especially when their conclusions are based on mountains of hard evidence that are available to anyone who doesn’t willfully choose to ignore it.

Do I need to remind Franke that everyone in the video who professed to believe in evolution also claimed to be an atheist?  Isn’t it weird that Franke seems to defend the evolutionists, claiming they are the experts whose conclusions are based on mountains of evidence?  At the same time, he holds contempt for Ray Comfort, calling him, “Banana Ray.”  Franke goes so far as to portray Comfort as a predator and even describes the people to whom he witnesses as “victims.”  

The first person who appears in the video is P.Z. Myers; Is he the kind of person Franke believes these students should open their minds to?  Myers is an outspoken, militant atheist. And when I say outspoke, I mean he goes out of his way to attack Christianity.  Consider this quote:

FAITH. No one word personifies the absolute worst and most wicked properties of religion better than that. Faith is mind-rot. It’s the poison that destroys critical thinking, undermines evidence, and leads people into lives dedicated to absurdity. It’s a parasite regarded as a virtue. I speak as a representative of the scientific faction of atheism: it’s one thing we simply cannot compromise on. Faith is wrong.

Myers zealously preaches atheism and attacks Christianity – young earth creationists in particular. You see, the young people in the video have been sold a bill of goods. They have been taught that atheism is the default position of intellectuals. The students were quick to admit their atheism. Some seemed very smug, even proud of it. So I'm going to have to disagree with Franke’s comment above and say, no, there is nothing worse than rejecting the truth of Jesus. Romans 1 talks about people who reject the truth of God and willingly believe a lie. Romans 1:22 says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”

I remember myself at their age. I thought I knew everything. These students were so smug and boldly touted their atheism as though they were enlightened. When challenged by Ray Comfort on what they believed, they began to soften their position and rethink what they had been taught. If any of them came to Christ as a result, Francke should be glad! Instead, he ridicules Comfort and defends rabid theophobes. This is why I cannot tolerate the false gospel of theistic evolution. I see far too many evolutionists who claim to be Christians, condemning brothers in Christ while praising unbelievers like Myers. Incredible!

Matthew 7:15-16, Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.

Evolutionists are lying about nothing

Genesis 1:1, In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis 1:1 is perhaps the most terse statement ever made on the issue of origins.  Here we see that “in the beginning” (time), God created heaven (space) and the earth (matter).  Time, matter, and space all came into existence suddenly and simultaneously at the command of God.  The full extent of this act is reiterated in other passages.  Psalm 146:6 proclaims that God, “made heaven, and earth, the sea and all that therein is.”  In other words, everything that exists was created by God.  John 1:3 explicitly says, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”  Are you picking up what I’m putting down?  God made literally everything.  We might rearrange things into new ways, like building a castle out of sand, but God made the things.  

But what was there before anything?  What existed before God made all the things?  Creationists sometimes use the fancy, Latin term, Creatio ex nihilo.  When translated, this simply means, “Creation out of nothing.”  God has always existed, of course, but before He made anything, there was nothing.  

The term “nothing” is self explanatory - “no thing.”  Not only was there no matter, there was no space and no time.  There was nothing!  It’s a concept that is hard to grasp, I admit.  How can there be no space?  It sort of makes my head hurt just thinking about it.  Aristotle is alleged to have said, “nothing is what rocks dream about.”  That’s about as succinct a definition as I’ve ever heard.  However, even this very clever definition doesn’t quite work because it starts by saying, “nothing is….”  Philosophers have struggled defining nothing because when you attempt to describe nothing, you start making it sound like it’s something.  

Now, I would never claim to be in the same league as Aristotle, Plato, or even Vizzini, so I’m not going to claim to have THE definition of what nothing is (er,... isn’t?).  I’m just going to say that we all sort of have an idea of what nothing means.  Right?  Maybe not.

In the debate on origins, evolutionists consistently lie about what they mean when they say the universe came from nothing.  Let me give you an example used by the late Stephen Hawking:

Because gravity shapes space and time, it allows space time to be locally stable but globally unstable. On the scale of the entire universe, the positive energy of the matter can be balanced by the negative gravitational energy, and so there is no restriction on the creation of whole universes. Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.  

Do you see what I mean?  He said, “Because there is a law like gravity…”  Am I wrong but isn’t gravity something?  How can the universe create itself from nothing if there is already something like gravity?!  

But Hawking isn’t alone when he redefines nothing to include something.  It is the normal practice of virtually every evolutionist.  When they say “nothing,” they always mean “something.”  Always!  It’s yet another example of evolutionists redefining words in the same way they redefine “evolution,” “science,” “theory,” or even “faith.” (I’ve written about this before, here).  It’s equivocation at its worst.

King Crocoduck is a militant evolutionist that I’ve written about before.  Some years back, he made a video series on YouTube explaining how he believed creationists were arrogant.  Nevermind the irony in his premise, in his first video, he attempted to address the problem of the universe coming from nothing.  Here’s how he described it:

It is useful to define what “nothing” is.  While the philosophical definition might be easy to come up with, we’re dealing with the physical world.  So our definition of nothing has to be concordant with physical reality.  If you have a system to remove all the matter and all the energy, you’ve essentially removed everything that physically exists….  What you’re left with is a vacuum, which is as close to the philosophical definition of nothing as you can get.

King Crocoduck is cheating.  He isn’t starting with nothing; he’s starting with a vacuum.  Time still exists in a vacuum.  Space, physical laws, and even energy still exist in a vacuum.  The only thing really missing from a vacuum is matter so there’s a whole lot of things in KC’s definition of nothing!  But he doesn’t stop there.  He rattles on for about 3 minutes describing the supposed events surrounding the alleged Big Bang, and how energy became hydrogen atoms, which became stars, blah, blah, blah.  Then he concludes his fanciful story with this very telling admission:

“So, in summary, all matter comes from energy and energy – in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics – is eternal.”

Think about what KC has said.  According to him, “nothing” includes space, time, physical laws, and all the energy in the universe!!  It isn’t at all what you, I, or any sane person would consider nothing.  It reminds me of the comedian, Steve Martin's, investment strategy: “OK, you start with $1,000,000....”

In one sense, it’s encouraging that they do this.  It tells me that - deep down - they really know that you can’t start with nothing and get everything.  As a matter of fact, you can’t start with nothing and get anything - not even a single electron.  So, instead, the “scientific” atheists invent exotic theories to explain to the lay public how everything can come from nothing, knowing all along that they don’t really mean “nothing.”  

But I expect unbelievers to lie.  To me, what is more sad, is that people who claim to be Christians, will still believe in evolution.  These compromisers willingly believe the lies spoken by people who proudly admit they exclude God from their theories.  It doesn’t make any sense.

In a previous series on my blog, I addressed 10 points made in a video by a Christian YouTuber called, Inspiring Philosophy.  It was attempting to use Scriptures to claim there were biblical problems for young earth creationists.  One criticism was over the use of the Hebrew word, bara (בָּרָא, Strong's word 1254).  Read this transcript excerpted from the video:

Number 2 is not so much a passage but the use of a Hebrew word, bara. Many young earth creationists believe this word refers to God creating out of nothing and it is used frequently throughout Genesis 1. But looking at how the word is used outside of Genesis 1, implies bara doesn't necessarily mean creation out of nothing. It might not even refer to material creation at all. John Walton has done a full semantic analysis on the word and he points out the word never necessarily means creation out of nothing and there are several times it cannot mean that at all.

Inspiring Philosophy wants to give the impression that God didn't speak everything into existence but, rather, that He shaped and formed an already existing earth. This begs the question: where did the formless, shapeless earth come from? Unless IP is invoking an infinite regress, then at some point in the past, there had to be a creation out of nothing.  The video seems to leave open the possibility that Elohim is not the Creator of the universe. IP only portrays God as continuously shaping already existing matter but never seems to definitively attribute the creation of matter to God.  This is one of the reasons I think theistic evolution borders on heresy!

For whatever reason, evolutionists think it’s more “scientific” to believe nothing created everything than to believe God created everything.  I say it’s foolishness.  To make me believe their theory, they would first have to show me how nothing could create anything.  Next they would have to convince me that nothing creating everything is more reasonable than believing God made everything.  Good luck with that.

Natural laws are properties of the universe. We use them to describe how the universe behaves.  But, if natural laws are properties of the universe, we can't really use them to explain the origin of the universe. Logically speaking, it’s impossible for something to create itself; rather, everything that begins to exist is caused by something outside of itself. To invoke natural laws as some natural explanation for the universe, is like saying nature created nature, which is absurd. So the cause of the universe must be something outside of the universe, something “supernatural” by definition.

Unbelievers are in denial about the religious nature of their beliefs about origins. They are trying to posit a creator with similar attributes that we normally associate with God - like King Crocoduck saying energy is eternal. In other words, they want us to believe there is a supernatural, eternal, uncaused cause for the universe – but it's still not God!  They call this cause, “nothing” but they really mean something.  Evolutionists are lying about nothing!!

We know what a day is!

One tactic employed by old earth compromisers who try to reconcile their bankrupt theories with the clear words of Scripture is to haggle over the meaning of the word, “day.”  It’s weird, too, because the meaning of that simple word is not debated anywhere it appears in Scripture except for Genesis 1.  When Joshua marched around Jericho for 7 days, how long did he march around Jericho?  When Jonah was in the belly of the whale for 3 days, how long was he in the belly of the whale?  These sound like trick questions because the answers seem so obvious.  Yet when you ask a theistic evolutionist or old earth creationist how long it took God to create the heavens and the earth, suddenly they don’t know what a day is.  Excuse me while I roll my eyes.

Now, I’m the first to admit that words can have a range of meanings.  Even the word “day” can have multiple meanings.  If I were to say, “I have trouble seeing at night so I only drive during the day,” would you know what I mean?  Of course you would.

What if I were to say something like, “Back in my day, kids walked to school”?  Yes, I don’t think you’d have any trouble understanding that either.

If someone said I might win a Nobel Prize for my blog, I would probably answer, “That’ll be the day.”  In this case, “day” means a time that’s never going to happen - yet even then, no one struggles to understand the word.  

When God commanded His people to work six days and rest on the seventh (Exodus 20:11), do you think any of them stopped to ask, “I wonder what God means by six days?”  Hardly!  It seems like the word is easily understood everywhere it is used - in or out of the Bible - except in Genesis 1.  How strange!

So if the word “day” can mean so many different things, how can we know what it means in Genesis 1?  If only there were a definition given in the text //RKBentley stares off in the distance in deep thought//.  Oh wait - there is!!  

Genesis 1:1-5, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Oh, I see it now.  When God made the world, it was dark.  Then He made the light.  He called the light day, and the dark and light periods together (evening and morning) were also a day.  Duh!

“Day” can mean many things, but it can also mean a single rotation of the earth - the day/light cycle - of about 24 hours.  In fact, it usually means a 24-hour period.  So when the Bible provides a definition right in the text, why do people grope around for some other meaning?  

A while back, I wrote a series (here) rebutting a video by Inspiring Philosophy who claimed 10 scriptural problems with young earth creationism.  In the introduction to the video, the narrator said the following:

If you haven't heard, there are millions of people today who believe the earth is only about 6,000 years old and, about 4,000 years ago, there was a worldwide flood that destroyed all life on land except for a few people and two of every animal that survived in an ark. The basis of this theory comes from many who say that we ought to take a literal or a plain reading of the Bible, the Holy Book of Christianity.

The rational behind this young earth view, is that they are just taking the plain reading of the text and that Christians, who believe the earth is old, have to misconstrue or reinterpret passages to make the Bible fit with an ancient earth and the theory of evolution. 

Um… yes.  In order to make the Bible fit with an old earth and the theory of evolution, evolutionists have to make the clear words of the Bible mean something other than what the words ordinarily mean.  That’s exactly what Inspiring Philosophy does.  It’s what every evolutionist who claims to believe the Bible does.  The word day, to them, can’t mean “evening and morning” so they muddy the waters with a bunch of gobbledygook about how day could mean a bunch of other things too.  Meanwhile, they ignore the most ordinary meaning.

2 Peter 1:20 says, “no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”  Yet in the case of Genesis 1, the word day means an undefined period of time that includes millions or even billions of years.  Exactly how does that fit the definition of “evening and morning” given in the text?  It’s the epitome of a private interpretation.  I can only think of 2 reasons they do this: they either are intentionally twisting the meaning of the word day in order to make the Bible fit their godless theory (which they deny) or they can't read.  

I think we all know which it is.