Indeed, considering that we "evolved" from quadrupeds, one would think that "natural evolution" in its quest to perfect us, would have us flying by then, a couple of wings neatly tucked at our sides!
STAKING ETERNITY ON A WISPY HYPOTHESIS
November 17, 2010 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article)
In 1922, William Jennings Bryan warned,
“It is no light matter to impeach the veracity of the Scriptures in order to accept, not a truth--not even a theory--but a mere hypothesis” (In His Image, 1922, p. 94).
Bryan was right, and nearly a century later, evolution remains “a mere hypothesis.”
The outcome of a murder trial requires evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt,” because so much is at stake, and we should require no less on the issue of creation vs. evolution, which potentially has eternal consequences.
The Bible claims to be the revelation of God to man. It claims to reveal God, man’s beginning and fall, the way of salvation, and the future. If the Bible is true, there is a heaven and a hell, man will live forever in one place or another, and salvation is only through personal faith in Jesus Christ.
This is too grave an issue to be decided on the basis of anything other than solid proof that the Bible is not to be trusted and that evolution is an absolute science. Yet evolution provides no such proof. In fact, it’s major “evidences” are doubted and disputed even by its own adherents.
Juan Arsuaga candidly advises,
“... those seeking absolute truth or an immutable and unassailable dogma should look in a field other than science” (Neanderthal’s Necklace, p. 17)
“A 2005 poll by the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Social and Religious Research found that 60% of American medical doctors reject Darwinism, stating that they do not believe humans evolved through natural processes alone” (“Evolution,” Conservapedia).
This would not be the case if evolution were a solidly proven scientific fact.
I have many books in my library by evolutionists questioning and outright debunking the major principles of evolution. Consider a few examples:
I. L. Cohen: “… every single concept advanced by the theory of evolution (and amended thereafter) is imaginary and it is not supported by the scientifically established facts of microbiology, fossils, and mathematical probability concepts. Darwin was wrong. ... The theory of evolution may be the worst mistake made in science” (Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities, 1984, pp. 209, 210; Cohen is a mathematician and researcher, a member of the New York Academy of Sciences).
David Berlinski: “The structures of life are complex, and complex structures get made in this, the purely human world, only by a process of deliberate design. An act of intelligence is required to bring even a thimble into being; why should the artifacts of life be different? ... For many years, biologists have succeeded in keeping skepticism on the circumference of evolutionary thought, where paleontologists, taxonomists, and philosophers linger. But the burning fringe of criticism is now contracting, coming ever closer to the heart of Darwin's doctrine” (The Deniable Darwin, June 1, 1996; Berlinksi, Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton, has taught philosophy, mathematics, and English at Stanford, Rutgers, the University of Paris, and elsewhere).
Michael Denton: “My fundamental problem with the theory is that there are so many highly complicated organs, systems and structures, from the nature of the lung of a bird, to the eye of the rock lobster, for which I cannot conceive of how these things have come about in terms of a gradual accumulation of random changes. It strikes me as being a flagrant denial of common sense to swallow that all these things were built up by accumulative small random changes. This is simply a nonsensical claim, especially for the great majority of cases, where nobody can think of any credible explanation of how it came about. And this is a very profound question which everybody skirts, everybody brushes over, everybody tries to sweep under the carpet” (“An interview with Michael Denton,” Access Research Network, Vol. 15. No. 2, 1995; the interview was produced in conjunction with the University of California and was the first in a series of interviews with noted scientists and educators entitled Focus on Darwinism; Denton, Ph.D. in biochemistry from King’s College London, is Senior Research Fellow in molecular biology at the University of Otago, New Zealand).
Soren Lovtrup. “I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science” [Will a prize be awarded for such?] (Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, 1987; Lovtrup is a Swedish biologist and the author of Epigenetics: A Treatise on Theoretical Biology and The Phylogeny of Vertebrata).
Richard Milton. “I am seriously concerned, on purely rational grounds, that generations of school and university teachers have been led to accept speculation as scientific theory and faulty data as scientific fact; that this process has accumulated a mountainous catalog of mingled fact and fiction that can no longer be contained by the sparsely elegant theory; and that it is high time that the theory was taken out of its ornate Victorian glass cabinet and examined with a fresh and skeptical eye” (Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1992, p. 4; Milton is a science journalist and design engineer and a member of Mensa, the high-IQ organization. He has been a member of the Geologists’ Association for over 30 years).
Michael Pitman. “Neither observation nor controlled experiment has shown natural selection manipulating mutations so as to produce a new gene, hormone, enzyme system or organ” (Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution, 1984, pp. 67, 68; Pitman was a chemistry professor at Cambridge).
Wolfgang Smith. “The point, however, is that the doctrine of evolution has swept the world, not on the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic myth. It affirms, in effect, that living beings created themselves, which is, in essence, a metaphysical claim. ... Thus, in the final analysis, evolutionism is in truth a metaphysical doctrine decked out in scientific garb” (Teilhardism and the New Religion, p. 24; Smith, Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia University, has been a mathematics professor at MIT, UCLA, and Oregon State University).
Lee Spetner. “Despite the insistence of evolutionists that evolution is a fact, it is really no more than an improbable story. No one has ever shown that macroevolution can work. Most evolutionists assume that macroevolution is just a long sequence of microevolutionary events, but no one has ever shown it to be so” (“Lee Spetner/Edward Max Dialogue,” 2001, The True Origin Archive; Spetner, Ph.D. in physics from MIT, worked with the Applied Physics Laboratory of the John Hopkins University from 1951-70).
David Stove. “Huxley should not have needed Darwinism to tell him--since any intelligent child of about eight could have told him--that in a ‘continual free fight of each other against all’ there would soon be no children, no women, and hence, no men. In other words, that the human race could not possibly exist now, unless cooperation had always been stronger than competition, both between women and their children, and between men and the children and women whom they protect and provide for. ... Such cases, I need hardly say, never bother armor-plated neo-Darwinians. But then no cases, possible or even actual, ever do bother them. ... In neo-Darwinism’s house there are many mansions: so many, indeed, that if a certain awkward fact will not fit into one mansion, there is sure to be another one into which it will fit to admiration” (Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution, pp. 9, 39; Stove was an Australian philosopher, educator, and author who taught philosophy at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney).
William Thompson. “As we know, there is a great divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the causes of evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists because the evidence is unsatisfactory and does not permit any certain conclusion. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution. But some recent remarks of evolutionists show that they think this unreasonable. This situation, where scientific men rally to the defence of a doctrine they are unable to define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigour, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by the suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science” (Introduction to The Origin of Species, 6th Edition, 1956, p. xxii; Thompson was Entomologist and Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, Ottawa, Canada).
Colin Patterson. “The explanation value of the evolutionary hypothesis of common origin is nil! Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, it seems to convey anti-knowledge. How could I work on evolution ten years and learn nothing from it? Most of you in this room will have to admit that in the last ten years we have seen the basis of evolution go from fact to faith! It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and that’s all we know about it” (Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History, London, in an address given at the American Museum of Natural History, Nov. 5, 1981; cited from White and Comninellis, Darwin’s Demise, p. 47).
Our report “Testimonies of Scientists Who Believe the Bible” features 51 Ph.D.s who state that evolution is not scientifically proven. It is available at the Way of Life Literature web site.
There is no evidence that a self-replicating cell could arise from non life. There is no evidence that mutations and natural selection could account for the vast complexity of life. There is no evidence that man did arise from or even could have arisen from the ape kingdom. There is no evidence that gradualism could have produced the global distribution of fossils. [yet lack the "transitional," i.e, "missing link" ones!]
In spite of the lack of evidence, multitudes have gone out into eternity trusting that the Bible is wrong and that evolution is true.
Consider the sad case of Arthur Keith. He was one of the greatest anatomists of the 20th century, but he was duped by the Piltdown hoax. His book The Antiquity of Man centered on Piltdown, treating it as the missing link. In his autobiography Keith described attending evangelistic meetings and being on the verge of converting to Christ, but he rejected the gospel because he felt that the Genesis account of creation had been proven to be a myth (Lubenow, p. 59). In reality, Keith gambled his eternity on evolutionary myths. In 1953, he was informed that the Piltdown fossils were a hoax, but by then he was an old man steeped in humanistic rationalism and a “pronounced opponent of the Christian faith.” As far as we know, he went to his grave in that condition. He should have looked at the evidence for the Bible much more carefully and prayerfully. He should not have been so ready to believe what Bible critics and evolutionists taught. The stake was far too high, and the same is true today.
I, for one, refuse to stake eternity on unproven human theories that are constantly changing. I don’t care if the entire scientific world believes that evolution is true. They must provide absolute evidence to support their theory, and they have never done this.
While many in the early 20th century turned away from the Bible because of evolution’s popularity, many others were wise and refused to follow such flimsy “science.” One of these was John Mann, who was awarded the M.B.E. by the Queen of England for his work in solving the cactus problem in Australia. The cactus, which had been imported into the country in 1839, was proliferating out of control and by 1914 had taken over 60 million acres of prime farming/ranching land. Mann discovered how to mass breed the Cactoblastic cactorum, a caterpillar that is a natural enemy of the cactus. In an interview in 1982, he reminisced about the debate over evolution in the 1920s and how he decided not to accept evolution.
“[O]ne man who influenced me was the Professor of Anatomy at the University of Adelaide. He wrote the Progress Prize Memorial Lecture, ‘The Ancestry of Man.’ He wrote about the discovery of an exceedingly early fossil anthropoid in America. This fossil animal was named ‘Hesperopithecus.’ Not only was it named but its complete form, both male and female, were shown as a whole page illustration in an English illustrated Weekly, as part of an article on ‘The Early Humanoid in America’, by Professor Elliot Smith. But the anatomy professor pointed out the only evidence on which this was based, consisted of a single water-worn molar tooth, and that there were other learned authorities of the day such as Dr Smith Woodward, had suggested that it was the tooth of a bear. When I read that in 1923, I thought to myself, ‘Well, evolutionary theory appears to have been built upon 99% imagination and 1% fossils’ so I maintained that as a Christian I would believe in the Bible until somebody could come up with any definite proof that men had evolved from animals. ...
“One gentleman had built up a key for flies. It was a fine looking tree. However after he had sent it to the Linnaean Society in Sydney for publication, he found more insects which altered his whole concept, so he sent them a telegram and told them not to publish his key until further notice. Finally he almost turned it upside down with his next key. So I said to myself, ‘Well I believe God; and I believe the Bible; and these men are not producing anything concrete that would make me disbelieve. Until they do I am just going to go on as I am” (“Famous Creation Scientists: Interview with John Mann,” Answers in Genesis, October 1982).
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