The Dying Theory of Evolution - Part 2

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We're examining, these last couple of weeks, last week and this week, the reality of the bankrupt system or the dying theory of evolution. We started last week to see the first half of a video presentation put together by a couple of thinkers in our time, a man by the name of Philip Johnson, as well as Michael Behe and some others produced by the folks that used to do the Moody Science Videos.

And when I came across this a couple of years ago, it was so well done and so compelling in its arguments that I decided if I ever came to, as we have now, to the issue of creation that we would watch it together, and I showed it (part of it) to the elders, and they agreed that we would do that here with you, and so I want you to remember where we left off last time. Essentially, they looked at irreducible complexity, and that is particularly at the bacterium flagellum. You remember that the little hair on a single-cell bacteria that moves at one hundred thousand rpms. and it can change directions on a quarter turn just the unbelievable complexity. At the smallest possible level four billion, I believe they said, of those bacteria would fit in a thimble, and yet each one of them has that incredible motor that propels them.

Well tonight, they're going to pick up where they left off last time and go beyond the bacteria into the human body. So, I think you'll enjoy this, and then when the video's done, I'll come up, and we'll look at sort of some overview problems. The Achilles heels if you will with the theory of evolution, so let's begin now. In the time that we have remaining, let's just sort of step back and look at some of the foundational problems with evolution. You've seen one of them in this video, but there are actually several, and for a summary of these foundational problems, let me recommend a couple of books to you.

I can't obviously in a few minutes, answer all the questions or give you all the ammunition you need. But for the scientific flaws of evolution, I would encourage you to buy two books if you're interested in reading more about it. One of them is Darwin on Trial by Philip Johnson, one of the men on the video.

Here he is a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, and he simply looks at the case for Darwinian evolution, and it's very clear that there is no substantive case that will stand up in a court of law to defend Darwinianism.

Another book similarly will answer or deal with the scientific flaws. It's one I'm in the middle of now by Michael Behe, one of the men you also saw here, a microbiologist. It's called Darwin's Black Box, fascinating look at the complexity of the created world around us for a great summary of the biblical defense of creationism I encourage you to get a recent book that John MacArthur wrote, called The Battle for the Beginning very well done and a look at the biblical data which we're going to take tonight and look at the sort of the problems, the flaws with evolution.

And then two weeks from tonight I want us to come back and go to the first chapters of Genesis and look at the biblical record and the data. There it is very clear what it sets forth for us to believe and to embrace. We'll look at what the biblical record has to say, regarding issues like theistic evolution and other information like that or other theories like that. But tonight, I want us to take just a moment and look at the dying theory of evolution. Let me summarize for you, in just a few moments, the key problems with evolution. And again, I'll touch on these. These are developed in the books I've suggested.

First of all, when we look at the Achilles heels of evolution, first of all, it is based on the improbable or improvable I should say theory of uniformitarianism. There's a definition of uniformitarianism in your Bible.

In 2 Peter 3, where Peter writes, the people who believe this say all continues just as it was from the beginning. Essentially, they say, and this is what evolution says is, we've built our system on the reality that there have been no catastrophic events in the world. Instead, everything has continued as it did from the beginning, and as it does today, so all the dating in evolutionary theory is based on everything functioning exactly as it does today.

It ignores the possibility of catastrophic events like, for example, a worldwide flood and how such events would change their conclusions. Take, for a moment, Mount St. Helens. All of us, or most of us, were alive when Mount St. Helens erupted back in the last part of the last century.

If you didn't know about the volcanic eruption, you might conclude when you look at the devastation that was left, that all of that was left there by millions of years, a slow trickle of water and sand and volcanic ash etcetera across those planes.

Instead, we know by looking at them, that a serious catastrophe happened, and all of that occurred in just a few hours. But if you approach it with a uniformitarian mindset, then you come to the wrong conclusion, and that's what evolution does. It starts with this assumption.

Secondly, it doesn't resolve the question of primary origins as you saw in the video. In the end, it doesn't answer the question of origins. It merely pushes it back further into history.

Louis Berkoff, in his Systematic Theology, says the theory of evolution is sometimes spoken of as if it could be a substitute for the doctrine of creation. But this is clearly a mistake. It certainly cannot be a substitute for creation in the sense of absolute origination, since it presupposes something that evolves, and this must in the last resort be, either this thing that evolved must either be eternal or created, so that after all, the evolutionists must choose between the theory of the eternity of matter or the doctrine of creation.

Because of this problem, some evolutionists have kind of redirected things, and they've said well, no we're going to embrace a kind of exilo origin of matter out of nothing matter. The universe just happened. I read you a quote last week. Let me reread it to you because this is what is happening now because of this problem. Alan Goth and Mit cosmologist says that the universe came from nothing. Listen to this quote, "There was nothing not God, not energy, not matter, simply nothing all there was possibility, and then suddenly and spontaneously the void of nothing decayed into all the matter and energy the universe now has.

He contends that the universe not with a bang so much as a ballooned accidentally out of the endless void of eternity from a stillness so deep that there was no there no then only possibility. It's ridiculous. And yet this is what they're left with because evolution doesn't answer the question of origins, all it does is postpone it.

Evolution doesn't account for the complexity of life. That's the argument you've seen on the video by the way. In Michael Behe's book, there's several other arguments that are really profound. One of the ones that I came across, and you'll enjoy reading, if you read the book, is the clotting of blood. Think about the complexity of the blood clotting system.

That's a part of your body. If it misfunctions, your blood congeals in your veins. But if it fails to find exactly the right spot at the time you're bleeding, you bleed to death if it fails to cover all of the wound, you bleed to death. If when it's covered that wound, it doesn't stop, then your blood congeals. It's an incredibly complex system.

And evolution doesn't account for these complexities, and again you can read more about this as you've heard on the video. This one's very basic evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. You've been in school. You've heard of the second law of thermodynamics. Essentially, it states this: the energy in the cosmos, the energy in the universe remains constant, but the amount of that energy that is available for useful work is constantly declining. That means entropy. That is, the measure of unusable energy is constantly increasing. What does this mean practically? It means that everything in the universe is moving toward greater chaos and less order and less usability. That is absolutely contrary to the whole basis of evolution. This is a proven scientific law that runs absolutely contrary to the theory of evolution, and it's fascinating to read how some evolutionists tried to dance around this issue. But evolution absolutely violates this basic law of science.

Another is that time does not, in fact, cannot make the impossible more likely. I read to you last week, the famous quote by Fred Hoyle. I love this. "That a living organism emerged by chance from a prebiotic soup is about as likely as that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing seven forty-seven."

Let me just give you an example. Take a look for a moment at my watch, Let me ask you a question. How many of you believe that if I took this watch apart into its component, all of its component parts, and I put those parts in a washing machine, how many of you believe in five minutes, in some five-minute period in history, this watch could assemble into the working watch that it is today.

No one believes that, no one. Now let me ask you another question. How many of you believe that if we took these same parts, the constituent parts of this watch, we put it in a washing machine and turned the washing machine on, and we gave it a million years. How many of you believe that this watch could form out of those constituent parts by chance. Well, some of you now are sitting there thinking well, you know. I mean maybe that could happen. Listen, time doesn't make the impossible possible.

In fact, what happens, there's only one period of time in that million years when these parts will fit together because over time what happens? Those parts wear down, they don't fit together. Anymore parts break in the movement of the washing machine and in beating against one another. No, time doesn't make things more possible.

Mathematics deals with the laws of probabilities. When you look at the odds of evolution occurring, they are astronomical. For one usable protein, you saw that an individual cell may have many different proteins. It does have many different proteins. For one usable protein to have developed by chance. In the history of the universe, one mathematician has estimated it to be ten to the one hundred and sixty first power. French scientist Dunnoy says no, it's ten to the two hundred and forty third power. Swift mathematician, Guy, says it's ten to the one hundred and sixtieth power, and Murray Eden of MIT used his digital computer to figure the probabilities and concluded that evolution is impossible. So, could have one protein formed by chance.

Now there's one. To that number one, followed by two hundred and forty-three zeros. That's the chance that one protein could have formed by chance, but the smallest cell requires two hundred and thirty-nine protein molecules that include at least one hundred and twenty-four different species. It's ridiculous. Time does not make the impossible more likely.

There is no evidence. Here's another major flaw with evolution. There is no evidence in the fossil record. The fossil record was a problem for Darwin back in 1859 when he wrote his book, and it continues to be one of evolution's greatest problems.

Darwin assumed, as you heard on the video last week, that it was just a matter of time, the problem was there hadn't been enough. Fossil evidence uncovered that once the plausible evidence was uncovered, then there would be clear indication that evolution was true.

The reality is today even the brightest evolutionists. I have some great quotes in my notes from Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard evolutionist whom many of you have read about or read things he has written. But let me just give you the bottom line. Even evolutionists have to admit several things about the fossil record.

Number one there are, the fossil record discovered there are no transitional fossils. That is, there are no fossils that illustrate natural selection, changing one species into another. It's just not there. The fossil record also shows not a gradual extinction as evolution would call for but catastrophic extinctions of certain species. HMM sounds almost biblical, doesn't it?

The fossil record shows fixed boundaries between species. Oh, sure you get what we called last week Microevolution that is slight variations in certain species, but the fossil record shows fixed boundaries between the species.

The fossil record also shows a sudden explosion of life forms during the Cambrian period while no fossils appear in the pre-Cambrian rocks. Why is this important? Because it undermines uniformitarianism. Remember? They said this process has been going on exactly the same for millions of years, and yet the fossil record says no, that's not true. So, the fossil record, while you might have heard in school that this is evolution's greatest evidence. The truth is the brightest evolutionists have to admit. The fossil record does not substantiate the claims that they make. So, time doesn't make the impossible more likely. There is no evidence in the fossil record and most importantly, evolution contradicts biblical data.

Take matter, for example, matter is not eternal. Genesis 1:1 says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That expression is taken to mean everything. In fact, next week or two weeks from tonight, we'll look at Nehemiah 9, where everything that has been made is grouped together under that beginning, matter included, was created by God in the beginning.

Evolution says that life just happened as you saw in the video tonight through some chemical reaction. Genesis 1 says no. God created life. Evolution says that human life was sort of the end of a process of simpler organisms evolving through a very natural selection into a complex organism. That is, man. Genesis 2:7 says, in fact, let's look at it. Genesis 2:7 says, Then the LORD God formed man of [the] dust [of] … the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. God formed the body of man, and He breathed into him, and he became a soul.

A living soul, both parts of us that is our material part, and our immaterial part of the first man was created by God, and God continues to use the process of life to generate that life in others, but God created human life.

What about different species? Evolution says, well, it happens as one species that's simple evolves into more complex species as you saw in Darwin's tree there. But what does the Bible say Genesis1:11-12?

… God said, Let the earth sprout vegetation plants … [bearing] seed and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind … [and] seed in them; and it was so. The Earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, … trees bearing fruit with seed in them

after their kind…. Verse 21, God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. Verse 24,

… God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"…. Verse 25, God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after it's kind; [of me, folks talk about contradicting evolution.]

The early chapters of Genesis. This first chapter of Genesis absolutely, is in diametric opposition to the fundamental principles of evolution. Now I don't know what after its kind means, but I do know that there are boundaries within the species. That's what this is saying one species cannot evolve into another.

Evolution also contradicts the timing and origination of death. Theistic evolutionists, that is those who believe God sort of started the evolutionary chain (and some believe He sort of intervenes at key moments). They argue that the key passage is only referring to human death. Turn to Romans, and that should be verse 12. My computer is doing it again. Romans 5:12, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men."

Here's why this is important. What does the fossil record contain? You dig up fossils, and what does it show? Death, you don't get a fossil without somebody dying or without something dying. Here, Paul says that there was man and then there was sin, and then there was death.

Now theistic evolutionists will say well yeah, but that's only referring to human death. Animals could have died before, so evolution still works. You can still have fossils that date back millions of years before man was on the earth because this is just talking about human death.

Well, Paul must have anticipated that Romans 8 or at least the Holy Spirit did Romans 8. Notice verse 18. Paul says,

… I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory … [which] is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the Sons of God. Verse 20 For the creation….[That is, everything that was created, including animals,] was subjected to futility, not willing [not willingly], but because of him who subjected it, in hope [verse 21] that the creation itself will be set free from its slavery to corruption….

The entire created world, including the animals, have been subjected to corruption. Now this isn't speaking about moral corruption. Animals aren't moral, and then I'm a moral sense. This is talking about what kind of corruption, physical corruption, and what's the end result of physical corruption? Death.

We're all facing that every day we look in the mirror. Corruption is proceeding. and someday it'll issue in our death, so the creation was subjected to corruption that ultimately led to death. At the same time that man was. Well, this is crucial.

That means that with Adam's sin, physical death became a reality not only for humans, but also for animals, so that means follow the order. There was intelligent man, Adam. Then there was sin, and then there was death.

That means the fossils that are dug up by paleontologists must come after man and his sin. Those fossils did not exist millions of years before there was intelligent man on the earth. Evolution contradicts the teaching of Scripture about death and its origin.

And finally, it not only contradicts that, but it contradicts, as we'll see two weeks from tonight, the entire Genesis record as God unfolds His creative plan in Genesis 1.

These problems that I've outlined here have rocked the worlds of many secular evolutionists, so much so that they're now proposing strange theories. Francis Crick, whom you saw quoted on the screen tonight, won a Nobel Prize for helping to discover the structure of DNA molecules. He suggested in a Time magazine article that life may have been sent here by a spaceship from a distant planet. This is a theory Crick calls directed panspermia.

Philip Johnson says the real power of the theory of evolution is not in the evidence, listen carefully to this. The real power of the theory of evolution is not in the evidence, but in the fact that it is the only viable alternative to theism. That's why it's embraced.

Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology, puts it this way, listen carefully.

Why will otherwise intelligent people commit themselves to beliefs that seem so irrational. It seems as though they will believe anything so long as it is not belief in the personal God of Scripture, who calls us to forsake our pride, humble ourselves before Him, ask for His forgiveness for failure to obey His moral standards, and submit ourselves to His moral commands for the rest of our lives.

To refuse to do, this is irrational. Brute writes, but all sin is ultimately irrational at its root. Why can intelligent man come to these conclusions? Paul says in Romans 1, … professing themselves to be wise they became what? Fools.

There is intelligent design, and it's in the person of our great eternal God.

Let's pray together.

Father thank you for the time we've had together tonight. Thank you for your great creation, Lord,

Forgive us as believers for ever looking at all that You've made and failing to give You glory.

Lord, open our eyes tonight on the drive home as we see the stars; as we look at our own bodies; as we look at the plants and the beauty of the spring; as we look at the intricacy of a flower; as we contemplate the cells that make up our bodies. Lord, as we see all of these things, may we do what You intended them to do, and that is bring You praise and glory and thanksgiving for the great God that You are.

I pray it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom all of these things were made. Amen.