“Adaptations” are traits which develop as a result of natural selection and make an organism better fit for its environment. That means the organism becomes better and better suited to live and thrive in the environment as a result of natural selection. Over more and more time, as the various populations of organisms adapt better and better to their environments, traits change enough so that the groups of organisms, while sharing the majority of common traits, become dissimilar enough in appearance that they are referred to as “different species.” In the evolutionist’s minds, the reason that happened is due to “changes” in their DNA, which proves evolution is true.

However, there are two things to recognize about the above-described scenario:

1.    That is the perfect description of natural selection and no scientific creationist would disagree with that. That is exactly how creationists believe the various type of organisms have been formed. There was an ancestor “bat kind” that then, through the process described above, differentiated into the variety of bats we see today, and have seen in the past. This does obviously happen at the “genetic level,” but is NOT the type of “change” to the DNA that needs to occur for evolution to happen.

2.    That process DOES NOT DESCRIBE WHAT NEEDS to HAPPEN IN EVOLUTION. Note that the organisms are all still bats. None of the animals transformed into a “new previously nonexistent kind of organism.”  Evolutionists say, “Those are all different species of bats.” Creationists would say, “So what! They are all still bats with 100% bat characteristics! All that has happened is that the God-built-in-potential-diversity of bat traits encoded in their bat DNA is expressed in slightly different ways across the ‘species’ as a result of natural selection. True enough. But there is no evolution. There is no formation of any previously nonexistent type of organism. Just bats.”

So, does natural selection cause the formation of different organisms within the same kind to appear, function and behave slightly differently? Absolutely. Natural selection acting upon preordained potential trait diversity, endowed by God at creation, is why we have all of the life forms in the past and present. But natural selection cannot cause the necessary changes in DNA content – information adding mutations – in order to cause a fish to transform into an amphibian. Such an event has never been observed in nature and has never been caused to happen in the lab (and never will).

Dr. Scott Hardin

Here's why – the Bible either is the Book we claim it is, or it isn't. The Bible is either the unerring and absolutely true account of God's activity in the early history of the Israelites, or it isn't. The Bible either accurately portrays Christ's life and ministry on earth, or it doesn't.  If the Bible isn't accurate and isn't the authoritarian Word of God, then how can we know what we should "believe" and what we shouldn't?

There are Christians who believe that the Genesis account of creation is not meant to be taken literally. Why? Because for some it is too fantastic to believe. For others, "science" is not consistent with a literal interpretation of Genesis. There are other reasons, too, but the ultimate foundation is because their humanly observations and knowledge is not consistent with a literal interpretation.

Even though the language used in the earliest accounts of Genesis was written using a format that Hebrews recognize as being "historical," people choose to believe it is not meant to really mean literal days and is what God inspired Moses to write. Even though the word used in Genesis for "day" – yom – means a literal 24 hour period of time AND every other place "yom" is used in the Bible it is used to indicate a literal 24 hour period of time AND even though there are Hebrew words to mean "day" as in "back in the day" or "one day I will do that" and yet those words for the "nebulous-concept-of-the-word-day" are NOT used in Genesis when describing the "creation days," many people believe that the Genesis "day" is not a literal 24 hour period of time.

There are some very devout and knowledgable Christians who do not believe that the Noah story is literal or that the Jonah story is literal, largely because it is either "too hard to believe" or they believe that science contradicts those beliefs, or both (and other reasons, too). And yet, these same very devout Christians believe that Jesus Christ was crucified for their sins, died, was in the earth for three days and then rose again with life such that his previously dead human form was once again inhabited by His Heavenly Spirit.

Now, back to my original point. The point is, how is it that human beings, sinful, prone to making mistakes and being prideful, can believe the "Jesus Story" but not the other stuff (or selected stories of the "other stuff)? If God has the power to raise people from the dead, which He did at least 8 individual times, including Lazarus, after being dead for "four days," (John 11:39, KJV: Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days) why wouldn't He be able to create man from dirt or send a world wide flood or keep a man alive in the belly of a great fish? Either our Lord is a being with limitless power (really, only limited by our small human minds), or He isn't. Either His word is true – all of it – or it isn't. It seems like it doesn't make any kind of sense to believe the Jesus story is real but everything else (or selected bits and pieces) is just allegorical. What gives a human the ability to say,"Man, all that other Bible stuff isn't real, they are just stories, but that Jesus stuff, now that is real!"? I just don't get that.

Either the Bible is 100% truth (God can't lie and if He wrote stuff as literal history, then it is….just as it is clear that He inspired authors to write things that are clearly poetic or allegorical), or it isn't. We can't choose what we think sounds good and what we think is "real" because all that does is end up undermining the authority of Scripture, causing a person to be standing on the sand. If we choose to not believe the Genesis account (or the Noah story, or the marching-around-the-city-seven-times-and-it-fell story, etc) but do believe the Jesus story, what is the foundation for that faith?

Origin of Species was a pretty bold publication. He knew exactly what the implications of his theory was and even “planned” the best ways to ensure that his ideas were NOT dismissed. Although (as we learned with the last few blog entries) he was not on the forefront of the move to remove God from scientific endeavor that was already under way in the Victorian era, he was very aware that God was still at the center of the large majority of the population’s belief system. As such, he was exquisitely aware that his “descent with modification” discussion led to ONLY ONE logical conclusion – there is no need for God. Therefore, he sought strategic alliances with scientists of his time in order to direct the propaganda machine that he needed to have in place to ensure acceptance of his theory.  If you are at all interested in this, while I think it could have been a little better written, it is meticulously researched and referenced,  The Dark Side of Darwin does a pretty nice job of dissecting and explaining the Darwin propaganda machine of the mid 1850′s. But, it is very clear that Darwin knew full well that no matter how worded Origins, people would figure out that God was for the first time in large scale being removed from the discussion of “how we got here.” And, if He is removed from “how we got here,” you really don’t need Him at all!

So, if you profess to be a Christian and believe that somehow God used evolution to get us where we are, you are choosing to believe man over God, choosing to believe a scientific concept that was never, ever meant to explain the origin of life or its diversity with God in the picture. By the time Charles Darwin wrote Origin, he was at least agnostic, if not an atheist. But, if you are an agnostic, what is the difference – to you – of a term – either way, God does not exist. Although this is a Christian reference, it does a great job of summarizing Charles Darwin’s fall from faith and is very objective. You can also go to Darwin’s Wikipedia entry and find a discussion of his religious beliefs there.

It makes no kind of sense for a Christian to believe in something that specifically attempts to explain the origin of life based upon a “theory” that was formulated to explain same in the absence of God.

Next we will discuss evolution in the context of Biblical authority.

As knowledge has grown over the past 50 years, it has become very evident that Darwinian evolutionary concepts (and when applied in the context of genetics, referred to as the “modern synthesis”) cannot explain how fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds, insects, etc. all got here starting from a single celled organism as a result of accidental events. Since no one can “see” evolution, but everyone can see “change,” evolutionists have pulled the quintessential sleight-of-hand and equated “change” to “evolution.” “Hey, if you can see change, you can see evolution.” That is a lie because “change” is absolutely not synonymous with evolution (just as it not synonymous with “hope”).

In order for evolution to explain the huge variety of life arising from a single celled organism billions of years ago, evolutionary “change” literally has to equate to “an ancestor organism acquiring new traits over time so that it transforms into a previously non-existent type of life form.” It is NOT enough that an ancestor bird develops small changes in traits so that in one area of the world it becomes a parrot and in another area it becomes a flamingo. Both the flamingo and the parrot are birds and they share the same essential characteristics of birds – wings, hollow bones, feathers, beaks, etc. IN order for evolution to happen, a bird would need to develop something “new” to alter such that it no longer shares the common characteristics of a bird; otherwise, all we have are birds generationally reproducing to make more birds. That isn’t evolution, that is statism (this is the only situation in which I think statism is a good thing since that is how God designed everything to work).

No matter how we study the fossil record, despite what the media and evolutionary textbooks portray, there is absolutely no agreed-upon evidence that a bird has ever been anything but a bird. Yes, there are heavily disputed “intermediates” (like Archaeopteryx, which very few evolutionists consider to be anything but a bird and even world-renowned evolutionary bird paleontologist Alan Feduccia calls Archaeopteryx “a perching bird, and no amount of paleobabble will change that”) as well as intentional fakes (Archaeorapter from China), but all evidence indicates that birds have always been birds and that, as far “back into time” as one cares to look, the appearance of modern birds is exactly the same as they appeared “millions” of years ago. It is ironic that what the fossil record supports is “no change” (except for MASS extinctions…..can anyone say “flood”?).  Also, click the link for a description of the 30 million year old pelican fossil that looks exactly like present day pelicans or Google pretty much any animal’s name with present day fossil” and you are bound to find countless other examples of how the many millions of year old fossil specimen looks identical/near identical to the present day animals.

For evolution to be true, there needs to be change such that, for example,  the “dinosaur bird ancestor” slowly developed the traits of a bird, causing it to look more and more like a bird and less and less like a reptile over hundreds of thousands to millions of years (isn’t it interesting that we have literally billions of fossils and NONE of them are “intermediate forms”? I wonder why that would be when there must have been thousands of these intermediate forms as bacteria changed into eukaryotes, into swimming things, into fish, into amphibians, into reptiles, into birds and into mammals, but there IS NOT ONE!). Then, that ancestor organism would have had to have developed feathers (and no matter how much the evolutionary texts describe reptile scales transforming into feathers, there is absolutely no fossil evidence that any of that ever happened. It is pure fantasy), endothermia, a beak, etc. And, again, there is no evidence that ever happened (but it makes for great science fiction).

But, regarding “change,” what do see, though, in the fossil record and what has been observed for thousands of years of history, is that an organism ALWAYS produces offspring that look pretty much exactly like the parent. Dogs beget dogs, roses beget roses, bluegill beget bluegill, etc. Never has a fish laid amphibian eggs. Never has a hippopotamus given birth to a bottle nosed dolphin. Why? Because, as any 6 year old knows, that isn’t how it works.

Of course, there are many different types of birds, fish, mammals, etc. That is because God created all of the “kinds” (dogs, cats, fish, birds, trees, etc) and gave them an incredible built-in ability to vary. Over time – and rapidly (as evidenced by the Galapagos finch example)  - we can see population characteristics change such that the archetypal “dog type,” which many creation scientists consider to look similar to a wolf, diversified into the many wonderful varieties of dogs we see today. As a result of selective breeding, we can see how breeders take advantage of that built-in ability to vary so that new breeds are able to be developed relatively rapidly. But this is not evolution because they are still all dogs! It is just the “man made version” of natural selection that we call “artificial selection.”

So, as we can see, evolution is not change. Maybe more correctly, natural selection is change, but that change has never been directly observed or historically observed to create anything other than what came before.

Recall that last week, we learned that natural selection was not the original idea of Charles Darwin; rather, it was first described  in the way in which we understand it presently by Edward Blythe, a creationist, 24 years before Mr. Darwin published Origins. In his three separately-published papers on the topic, Mr. Blyth discussed natural selection in the context of it being a God-created process that was responsible for the created kinds developing varying features and presenting as varieties of the created kinds. We know that Charles Darwin was VERY aware of Blyth’s papers because the University of Cambridge, England, has copies of these articles with Charles Darwin’s writing in the margins AND there is wording on natural selection in Origins that is taken almost word for word from Mr. Blyth’s articles.

Today, we think of natural selection as “the strongest survive,” which is the way that Mr. Blyth described it (in the context of a fallen world) in the early 1800′s. In other words, natural selection is the observable process in nature whereby those organisms that are most fit for their environment live and reproduce, producing more organisms with those same “fit” traits, while those that are not as fit don’t. It makes inherent sense when you consider it, but evolutionists have confused the “natural selection picture” over the past 50 years.

Perhaps an example – taken from the famous “Darwin finches”- will help to illustrate natural selection. “Darwin’s finches” is the name applied to the 15 species of “finch” on the Galapagos Islands.  Peter and Rosemary Grant have studied the finches continuously for the past 25+ years and have made painstaking measurements of the traits of the different varieties of Galapagos finch. Two of the main difference between the 15 different varieties of Galapagos finch relates to their beak size and body size and many of the finch species are differentiated from another purely based upon their body and beak sizes.

During the Grants’ time studying the birds, there was a long drought the result of which was that 86% of the bird population died. The Grants found that the “average” bird within each variety that were left were slightly larger in size and had slightly larger beaks than the “average” bird of the same finch variety had for years prior to the drought. Why? Because it was advantageous for birds of all the finch varieties to have slightly larger beak and body sizes during the drought because the only food that was on the Islands were very hard seeds and the slightly bigger birds with bigger beaks within each variety could crack them open easier than the slightly smaller birds with slightly smaller beaks. Therefore, since they lived because of their advantageous body and beak size, they were able to pass their traits for larger body and beak size on to their offspring, who then passed the larger body and beak size to their offspring, etc.

After the finch populations stabilized a little following the drought, the Grants were somewhat surprised to see how fast the beak and body sizes actually changed. In fact, based on the rates of change in beak and body size the Grants saw in the birds as a result of the drought, they estimated that, if the drought conditions persisted, it would take roughly 1,200 years for the ground finch’s beak and body size to become as large as the cactus finch (remember that many of the different varieties of finch are differentiated based upon the size of their beaks and bodies).

And right there is where the evolutionary bait and switch occurs. Evolutionists have called what the Grants observed “evolution in action.” Evolutionists like to equate “change” with “evolution” – after all, the traits within the finch populations clearly “changed” as a result of the drought – and so they call this observed change in the bird’s traits as a result of the drought “evolution.” But it isn’t. It is natural selection.

Why? Because these birds are all still varieties of Galapagos finch. None of these birds “transformed” into another type of previously non-existent animal. They were Galapagos Finches before the drought and they remained Galapagos Finches after the drought. The property of “change” is NOT enough to say that evolution has occurred. If the change of one type of organism doesn’t lead to “change” that results in the formation of a previously non-existent type of organism, then evolution has not occurred.

I will leave you to ponder this some more. Part 3 will pick up from here and completely discuss why this change identified as natural selection is NOT evolution, though I hope that with the hint in the previous paragraph you will be able to formulate your own thoughts.

The idea of natural selection had already been published in print at least 20 years prior to Charles Darwin publishing Origin of Species as both Patrick Matthew and Edward Blyth had published scientific papers (roughly the same time period) that discussed clear concepts of natural selection. It is uncertain whether or not Charles Darwin knew about Edward Blyth’s work, but it is clear he was aware of Patrick Matthew’s thoughts on natural selection. In fact, Charles Darwin acknowledged more than once that he owed a debt to Patrick Matthew(discussed on the top of page 60 of this reference http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j16_3/j16_3_58-63.pdf ) and yet, Patrick Matthew’s contributions to evolutionary theory are largely ignored by mainstream science.

Interestingly, Edward Blyth was an ardent creationist and looked at natural selection as being one of the mechanisms that occurred in nature to weed out the weaker organisms, rather than a process that can create entirely new types of more complicated organisms. This is, indeed, one of the observed results of natural selection….and this is where we will leave off for the next installment in a week.

According to the official webpage, there are 12,798 Christian clergy signers of the letter. The first Evolution Weekend (2006) was actually called “Darwin Sunday,” but has since morphed to include the entire weekend. Along with signing the letter, clergy can choose to participate in official evolution teaching in their church services this Sunday. In 2006, participation was 462 congregations, which peaked at 1049 in 2009 and is now down to 554. Realize that there are at least 268,000 congregations  in the United States, so this year, about 0.17% of available congregations are participating in Evolution Weekend…. not exactly taking the US by storm.

So, a brief word on the originator of “The Clergy Letter,” because looking at his background provides a smaller scale argument for the critical understanding that evolution is absolutely antithetical to Christianity. Dr. Zimmerman is not a theologian, nor is he even “religious” (unless one considers evolution a religion, which many evolutionary scientists do). He is an atheist, and has been a key scientific leader in trying to get “religionists” to accept that evolution and the Bible are totally compatible ( but, why would an atheist even care? That is a critical question to answer.).  He lives in the interesting dichotomy – at least publicly – that he is as against “religionists” claiming that one cannot be both “religious” and believe in evolution (the position most fundamental Christians take) as he is against “proselytizing atheists,” like Richard Dawkins (who tends to make his pro-evolution points in a very negative and belittling way). To Dr. Zimmerman’s credit, he just wants us all to get along and be nice to each other, regardless of what we believe.  His message seems innocent enough and, if you read much of what he has written and said, he almost sounds like a Christian as far as the currents of his messages – getting along (“brotherly love”), acceptance, very kind messages, etc. Almost.

But, that is where the real problem of Evolution Weekend comes into play. It is not innocent. Evolution Weekend is an all out assault on the Sovereignty and Deity of God. Why? Because it is IMPOSSIBLE to reconcile the Bible and evolution and anyone – especially the clergy – that try to do so are the wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Mat 7: 15-20.   ¹⁵ “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but           inwardly they are ferocious wolves. ¹⁶ By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick            grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? ¹⁷ Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good   fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus, by                 their fruit you will recognize them.

Gosh, seems kind of harsh, doesn’t it? No, because if the universe and all that is in it can be explained without God – which is EXACTLY the cosmic conclusion of evolution – then there is no God and, subsequently, no Jesus Christ, no atonement of sins, so salvation and no resurrection.

It is a tragedy that so many Christians do not understand the history of evolution.  If they did, there would be a much grander recognition that trying to marry evolution with the Bible is not possible and all Christians would reject it. By the time Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution, he was an agnostic (and, from the perspective of an agnostic, what is the difference between an agnostic and an atheist? To both, God does not exist.). Darwin developed the theory of evolution specifically to explain the existence of life in the absence of an Almighty God. Darwin was a trained theologian who, when he was developing his theory, wrote time and again that he was extremely aware of what he was doing and of the implications (that nature doesn’t need God to explain it) his theory would have not only on science but of society in general. His own correspondences with fellow scientists, particularly his letters to Thomas Huxley (“Darwin’s Bulldog,” who was not totally on board with Darwin’s theory but WAS totally on board with eliminating God from society) indicate that the introduction of evolutionary theory was done very carefully and methodically because the logical conclusion of the theory was that God doesn’t exist (or, at the very least, God is not the Creator). Darwin was not certain that society was ready for that message and so he chose allies very carefully and developed a well-thought out publicity plan of attack. To underline his desire to eliminate God, by the time he published later versions/editions of Origins of Species, he dropped all pretence of deference to God because he felt that he could proceed full speed ahead with his atheistic theory and so removed all content that included God. Evolution was NEVER, EVER meant to be interpreted in light of the Bible. It was meant to interpret life in absence of the Bible.

Fast forward to now. Until the past 20 years, or so (when some clergy have also been duped by this non-scientific philosophy), all major proponents of evolution have been atheists. Dr. Zimmerman is an atheist and he wrote a letter to clergy encouraging them to support evolution. Why would he do that? Why would he – or any other atheist – want to try to get evolution integrated into the church?  Atheists specifically deny the existence of God. Why would clergy be willing to accept that a concept based upon a thought process that specifically denies the existence of God? Matthew 7:15-20 is the answer. God predicted things just like this would happen.

If your church is involved in Evolution Weekend, I pray that you will realize that it is against the Bible and is a theory of the origins and variety of all life forms that is not only incompatible with the Bible but is antithetical to it. As such, it is evil.

Consider the following two-pronged question (because if there is no naturalistic answer, then there is no evolution): “Where did biological information originate and how does the amount of information systematically increase in meaningful ways so that a bacterium could turn into an amoeba, which in turn changed into a fish, reptile, bird and mammal?” This is precisely the question that needs to be clearly answered in order for evolutionists to have a valid scientific argument….which they don’t because they have no scientifically provable answer.

Oh, yes, they do use really fancy concepts and words like “polyploidy,” “translocation” and “gene duplication” and others.  The problem is that none of these mechanisms – or any other known genetic process(es) – increase the amount of information within an organism. These processes may duplicate already existing genetic content, but the increase in genetic content is either not information that codes for processes/traits OR it is information that is already contained in the organism in the first place (i.e. it isn’t new). These processes may swap genetic information from one chromosome to another, but new information-containing mutation events have never been observed. It would be like taking pages from a book randomly, copying them, and then inserting them back into the book randomly along with the original pages. There would certainly be more letters and words in the “new” book, but those “new” pages do not transmit any meaningful information. It is all just mixed up gobble-ty-gook. Such is the same for all known genetic events that evolutionists rely upon to genetically explain evolution. Therefore, from an information standpoint, if there is no natural way for biological systems to acquire new genetic information, then there is no way for evolution to occur.

Well, now, here is where the biological information seminar comes into play. There are scientists – well-respected scientists – from all over the world who understand that the information encoded into all life forms cannot be explained by evolution (as I just outlined – very briefly – above). One would think that these scientists are all fundamental Christians. That is certainly what the media and the scientific establishment would have you believe because if they are “religious zealots,” then their objection to evolution as an explanatory mechanism for the diversity of life can easily be written off.

The interesting thing is, that is not the case. There were scientists at this seminar that were of all faiths, no faith and MANY are evolutionists! It was fascinating. The belief common at this seminar was not that God created the world and everything in it and is the responsible intelligent originator of all biological information, but that evolutionary mechanisms cannot explain the origin or complexity of biological information. It is an extraordinary side note that, in every other single instance where we identify the presence of “information,” we inherently know that said “information” had an intelligent originator….except if the information encodes and transmits the most complicated information to which man has been exposed. The scientists shared their research related to biological information. It was incredibly interesting and, even though the experimental designs were very intricate, they still don’t do credit to THE Originator!