Thanks Wife... I just wish you had posted that an hour earlier!! Thanks anyway though.
I got through it. You can read if you want. Try not to puke. - Oh, nice comic strip Gary!
No.4: Evolution—A Scientific Dilemma (rs pp. 121-3 1)
“EVOLUTION is as much a fact as the heat of the sun,” This statement was made by the prominent evolutionary scientist Professor Richard Dawkins in his article “The Illusion of Design”.
Of course, experiments and direct observations prove that the sun is hot. But do experiments and direct observations provide the teaching of evolution with the same undisputed support?
Many scientists have noted that over time, the descendants of living things do (WT said may - I said "do") change slightly. Charles Darwin called this process “descent with subsequent modification.
These changes have been observed and recorded, and of course employed by plant and animal breeders for example. Hence these changes can be considered facts.
However, scientists attach to these slight changes the term “microevolution.” The name however implies what many scientists assert—that these minute changes furnish the proof for a phenomenon that no one has observed, this they call macroevolution.
The teaching of macroevolution rests on three main assumptions:
1. Mutations provide the raw materials needed to create new species.
2. Natural selection leads to the production of new species.
3. The fossil record documents macroevolutionary changes in plants and animals.
The question is: Is the evidence for macroevolution so strong that it should be considered a fact?
A “scientific method” of determining facts can be explained this way:
1. Observe what happens
2. Based on those observations, form a theory as to what may be true;
3. Test the theory by further observations and by experiments
4. Watch to see if the predictions based on the theory are fulfilled.
But can this the method be followed by those who believe in and teach evolution?
Turn with me please to Job 38:4-7 and we’ll read this together - Where did you happen to be when I founded the earth? Tell [me], if you do know understanding. 5 Who set its measurements, in case you know, Or who stretched out upon it the measuring line? 6 Into what have its socket pedestals been sunk down, Or who laid its cornerstone, 7 When the morning stars joyfully cried out together, And all the sons of God began shouting in applause?
****No doubt all of us here have no problem with the words we have just read, we know that it was possibly billions of years in the past the Jehovah created the earth, even the universe! But what of scientists? How can these “observe” the creation of the universe?
Interestingly evolutionist Loren Eiseley acknowledged: “After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.”
These words were spoken over 50 years ago, and they still ring true today don’t they?
Yet some persons endeavor to blend belief in God with evolution, or theistic evolution, saying that God created life by means of evolution, that he brought into existence the first primitive life forms and that then higher life forms, including man, were produced by means of evolution.
Well what does the bible say about this? Let’s read together Genesis 1:20-21
And God went on to say: “Let the waters swarm forth a swarm of living souls and let flying creatures fly over the earth upon the face of the expanse of the heavens.” 21 And God proceeded to create the great sea monsters and every living soul that moves about, which the waters swarmed forth according to their kinds, and every winged flying creature according to its kind
****This statement here, implies that there is a limit to the amount of variation that can occur within a “kind.” Both the fossil record and modern research support the idea that the fundamental categories of plants and animals have changed little over vast periods of time.
Genesis does not teach that the universe, earth and life were created in a short period of time in the relatively recent past. Rather, the description in Genesis of the creation of the universe and the appearance of life on earth harmonizes with many recent scientific discoveries.
Yet due to their philosophical beliefs, many scientists reject the Bible’s declaration that God created all things. The Bible book of Genesis however, deomonstrates Moses wrote that the universe had a beginning and that life appeared in stages, progressively, over periods of time. We could ask ourselves: How could Moses gain access to such scientifically accurate information some 3,500 years ago? Well there is one logical explanation isn’t there?
Indeed we can be confident it was the creator of the universe Himself, Jehovah God, that these things were written down and like Moses we too can have faith in our creator.
