Is evolution a fact of science? The way it is taught in our schools and promoted in the media, one would think that it was proven beyond all doubt. In Genesis 1:1 the Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." But many people do not believe the Bible record. Since many reject the Bible, let's compare evolution with creation from a scientific standpoint. Will the theory of evolution stand the scrutiny of true science? Does it bear up under the weight of the evidence? Large volumes have been written by qualified scientists that thoroughly discredit evolution. In the short space allowed, we will examine just a portion of the evidence. The results may surprise you. Evolution is not a proven fact of science. In fact, the evidence in nature more strongly supports creation! Let's start out by comparing the respective stories of creation and evolution.
First, look at the Bible record of creation. In Genesis 1:1 the Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Genesis 1:11 "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind..." Genesis 1:21 "And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind..." Genesis 1:24 "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so." Genesis 1:26 "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." This is the origin of life as told in God s word. To many, this is unbelievable. They feel only the ignorant and superstitious accept the Bible story. Well, let's look at the alternative, the story of evolution.
Once, some inert matter in a pool of water was struck by an energy source such as lightening, and amino acids formed. Without any help of a designer or a creator, these developed into a living single cell. The cell began to multiply. It divided into two cells, then four, then eight, then sixteen. Without any designer to guide it, it eventually developed into some small water type animals such as jelly fish and other animals of this nature. These continued to change until they developed into fish. Some of them began to flop out on the shore. This continued until they developed lungs, their fins turned into feet, they dropped their scales and turned into amphibians like frogs and salamanders. These gradually changed into reptiles like alligators and snakes. Then the reptiles began to change in two different directions. Some developed long front feet and toes which changed into wings. They grew feathers and flew away. Others grew hair on their bodies and became mammals like bears and cows and similar types of animals. Eventually some of these mammals turned into a half monkey-half man. Some of these began to rear up on their back feet and walk around. Most of their hair fell of as they grew more manlike. Eventually there appeared modern man. All this happened by pure chance, without any design.
What do you think of that story? Doesn't it sound more fantastic that the creation story? It sounds more like fairy tale than science. Some may protest, "But the evolutionary process took millions of years." Whether one day or a million years, the story is still the same. As children we heard the story of how a beautiful young lady kissed a frog and the frog turned into a prince. We understand that is just a fairy tale. Evolution removes the kiss, adds a few million years and calls it science. And we are supposed to be fools for not believing this story?!
Let's take a closer look at creation and evolution, to see which the evidence best supports. We will begin this section by defining what we mean by evolution. The word "evolution" just means change. We might say that a lot of things evolve as far as change is concerned. But this is not what we mean when we are discussing the theory of evolution. We are talking about the change of one kind of animal into another: the change of a single cell into a fish, of a fish into a frog, frogs into alligators, alligators into birds and monkeys, and monkeys into men. This is the kind of change involved in the evolutionary theory.
Furthermore, by evolution, we are not talking about variation within a certain kind of animal such as the cross-breeding of cattle to develop different kinds of cattle; nor the cross-pollination of corn to produce hybrid corn. There is certainly variation within a certain kind of animal or plant. We are not talking about variation within corn, but the changing of corn into okra, okra into spinach, and spinach into the pine tree. We are not talking about variation within cows; but we are talking about the changing of cows into bears, bears into monkeys, and monkeys into men. We are not talking about variation within kinds, but the changing of one kind into another kind. There has never been observed an instance of variation within a kind that has produced a different kind. Neither has man by experimentation been able to produce a different kind. All we have seen is that each kind produces only its own kind as the Bible says in Genesis 1:11, 12, 21, 24. What we see in nature is totally consistent with the creation account and contradictory to the evolutionary theory.
Some object to creation because they say it is not scientific. Neither creation nor evolution are subject to scientific investigation. Sir Francis Bacon defined the scientific process as follows:
1. State the problem or question.
2. Form a hypothesis or possible solution to the problem.
3. Experiment and observe along the lines of this hypothesis and record the results.
4. Interpret the data.
5. Draw conclusions based on the data from your observations.
Let's compare creation and evolution to the scientific process, Step 1: The question is easily stated: Where did life come from? Where did this universe come from? Step 2: The Bible puts forth the idea that God, an intelligent being, created all the different kinds of life and the universe as we have it today. The evolutionists put forth the hypothesis that life started from lifeless matter and evolved into higher life forms. These two steps are as far as the scientific process can be taken with either the creation hypothesis or the evolutionary hypothesis. In step 3, as far as observing the evolution or the origin of life, the development of the first cell, as far as experimenting with the evolution of life, man has been completely unsuccessful. The same can be said of creation. No one has ever observed the creation of life. We cannot go back and see God create life or see it evolve. So for step three, we have nothing to observe and no data to record. In step 4 we have no data to interpret. In step 5 we can draw no conclusions because we have no data upon which to base those conclusions. Evolution is no more scientific than creation. It does not belong in the field of observable science because it has never been and cannot be observed. If evolutionary thought has any place today, it's place is in the field of philosophy.
Some will argue there is scientific data available that proves evolution. Let's consider what creation and evolution predict and compare that with the available data. Then we will see which one fits the facts better with the least amount of secondary assumptions or explanations.
First, consider animals as we see them today. How do they fit the two stories? Evolution would most obviously predict that there would not be distinct kinds of animals but there would be a number of transitional forms between the different kinds of animals. There should be hundreds of thousands of these transitional forms. There would not be the ape, ape-man, and then man. There would be thousands of different steps or transitional forms between monkey and man. These kinds of transitional forms should exist along all points of the evolutionary scale. Conversely, creation predicts that there should be distinct, different kinds of animals that have remained basically the same over the years.
Now which story fits the facts of living animals today? Creation fits exactly without the need of secondary assumptions and explanations. Creation predicts no transitional forms, and this is exactly the case. But evolution does not fit because we see no transitional forms alive today. Consequently, evolution has to make some secondary assumptions.
Evolution's secondary assumption is that evolution moves too slow to be observed today and that some kind of natural phenomenon or process destroyed the transitional forms. Creation needs no such assumptions.
Now let's compare creation and evolution with the fossil record. The creation story predicts that fossils should be only of distinct kinds of animals, just like what we see among living animals. There should be no transitional forms, according to creation. On the other hand, evolution again predicts that hundreds of thousands of transitional forms should be in the fossil record. This should especially be true because evolution maintains all the living transitional forms have been killed off by natural processes. The fossil beds should be rich with these transitional forms.
Which idea fits the facts of the fossil record? The fossil record contains the same gaps between different kinds of animals just as we find among living animals. Even evolutionists admit that the fossil record is a problem for their theory. Transitional forms between the frog and the turtle are not in the fossil record! Transitional forms between single cell creatures and the first complex creatures are not in the fossils! The Cambrian period, which evolutionists date back about six-hundred million years ago, is the first sign of any kind of fossils at all. Fossils appear there as complex creatures such as jelly fish, worms and trilobites. There are no transitional forms between invertebrates and the vertebrates. There are no transitional forms between fish and amphibians, amphibians and reptiles, etc. The fossil record does not favor evolution! It greatly favors the creation model.
With these kinds of problems associated with evolutionary theory, why do scientists believe it. Actually, some do not. Many outstanding scientists of the past believed in creation such as, Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Lord Kelvin, Gregor Mendel, Leonardo Da Vinci, Samuel F. B. Morse, Francis Bacon, and others. Additionally, many scientists today do not believe in evolution. Still, others stubbornly hold on to this unproven theory. One evolutionist explained it this way. "The scientific difficulties with evolution are many and great, but the only alternative is creation and to me this is incredible." Do you want to believe a theory that rests on that kind of ground? Why not accept the story of creation as God revealed it in the Bible? "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."