ITB: Fossils, Dinosaurs and DNA
Resource: Lead Pastor Justin Dosch
Topic: Evolution and the Facts of Creation
So one time a young daughter came up to her mom and was like, “Mommy, can you tell me, how did the human race come about and how did we get here?” The mom looked at her and said, “well honey, a few thousand years ago God created the world and human beings. He did it in six days and then on the last day he created man and woman and that's how we got here.” She thought about that a little bit longer and decided to ask her dad a couple days later. “Daddy can you tell me how human beings came to be?” Her dad looked at her and said, “well honey a few billion years ago an amoeba kind of grew into a fish and then that became cats and then that became monkeys and then we eventually evolved from monkeys.” So you can imagine in this little girl's mind she's wondering, “how can mommy be saying one way and daddy be saying the other? So she goes back to her mom and she says, “Mommy I went and I talked to Daddy and he said we came from monkeys but you're telling me that God created us.” The mom looked at her daughter and said, “well honey, I told you about my lineage and your dad told you about his.”
While that story may be funny, it illustrates the truth about our world. When it comes to evolution vs creation it can be very polarizing. A large majority would say to believe God created the universe is irrational. If you believe in God you better check your brains at the door. Well, we want to change that.
Theologian Phil Johnson said this, “whether you believe in evolution, that everything came from nothing, or you believe that God created it, both of those things require us believing in a miracle.” Think about that. Both of those are truly miraculous. Johnson said that the likelihood of the universe just happening by chance is the same as a tornado whipping through a junkyard and on the other side creating a Boeing 747 with the random parts. That really isn’t rational at all. Why? Because things that are unordered, that don’t exist, don’t create things that are ordered.
Last week we began a series that we're calling In the Beginning, where we're looking at the creation story and what God's word says about it. More importantly we're looking at some of the actual evidence that there is an intelligent designer to the universe. We left off making this statement; either everything came from nothing or;
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Genesis 1:1
Today let’s look at some of the evidence and answer some of the biggest questions surrounding this topic.
Is the world old(billions of years) or young(thousands of years)?
At the heart of evolution is the idea of “uniformitarianism” which says the earth has always changed consistently and constantly in the same way;
For instance, the Grand Canyon was formed over millions of years from water eroding rock.
Opposite view is “catastrophism” which says the earth changes through sudden catastrophic events, greatly reducing the amount of time needed for changes to occur. Some examples;
“Little Grand Canyon” in Georgia which formed over 150 years as trees were removed and erosion occurred
Its features are indistinguishable from canyons that geologists claim took millions of years
Mt. St. Helens left formations similar to the Grand Canyon
If we hadn’t seen it ourselves we’d be saying it took millions of years to form just like the Grand Canyon
Evolutionists explain it by continually increasing their estimate of the age of the earth to keep up their theory, but it's just as likely that cataclysmic events have shaped the earth
What about fossils?
Evolutionists greatest “evidence” is the existence of fossils which they claim formed over millions of years
Do you know how fossils are actually formed?
For a living organism to become fossilized it must be buried quickly under a mass of sediment usually caused by flooding, otherwise decay happens too quickly
Apart from a cataclysmic event, like a flood, how do we explain fossil beds like the Karoo fossil field in South Africa where there are some 800 billion fossils? There's no way there could be that many concentrated in one area if there wasn’t a catastrophic event burying them at once
Every continent has fossil beds like this as if they were all buried in one massive event. There are fossils of sea creatures that have been found on the highest mountaintops. How else do you explain this other than a cataclysmic event like say, a worldwide flood?
The Great Flood explains A LOT
"In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights." Genesis 7:11-12
The flood also explains how there was a supercontinent that split apart due to the “fountains of the deep” being broken up.
Earthquakes and tectonic plates moved, pushed up mountains that used to be on the bottom of the sea
The fossils we find are the result of the flood, not millions of years of evolution
What about dinosaurs?
Kids love dinosaurs, so when they hear that they were alive 65 million years ago it creates a major conflict
First, I want to make sure I don’t crush anyone’s dreams, dinosaurs were 100% a real thing! BUT, they did not live 65m years ago.
Again the evidence is in THE FLOOD. The flood account says the animals were brought aboard the ark by, “two of each kind;”
In the same way there were only a small number of “kinds” of canines, birds, etc., there were only about 55 “kinds” of dinosaurs
Canines would eventually “mutate” into all the breeds we see today but on the ark there were TWO (more on this in a bit)
Without getting into the math, the ark was 300x50x30 or 2.2 million cubic feet, there were approximately 8000 “kinds” including dinosaurs meaning only about half the ark would have been filled
What about the huge dinosaurs? Well shockingly, most dinosaurs were only about the size of a bison AND most likely the largest creatures were brought on as infants.
So why don’t we have dinosaurs today? Well that goes along with why we don't have African Black Rhinos or Tasmanian Tigers. EXTINCTION.
The Creator’s Fingerprint; DNA
Darwin had NO CLUE about DNA
They didn't have the technology or the science to understand this and I would argue if Darwin was alive today and he had come up with this theory that most scientists would have laughed him out of the room because of this one thing, this tiny amazing miracle that is DNA.
Every single living thing has a code and that code is so complex (a thousand million bits of info in one strand of DNA) that it’s not just “matter,” it is something different
The code determines the nature, growth, development of the organism and it is infinitely complex. Where did this information come from? There is no known observable process by which new genetic information can be added to an organism’s genetic code, let alone how that information could arise from random chemicals in the first place.
A horse has a horse code, a monkey the same, a daffodil the same and that code is what it is, there’s no code to turn a monkey into a man.
The code for a man is not found in a one celled amoeba, what is found in a one celled amoeba is the code for a one celled amoeba
This is damning evidence against evolution
This is not to say mutations don’t happen. Mutations happen, but they can only cause changes in existing info, they can’t add information. A cell cannot increase its complexity.
Things never mutate UP, only across and down, things can be removed but they can’t be added. Back to canines. They have mutated into different breeds over thousands of years BUT at the end of the day, through their DNA, they are still canines; dogs.
It’s also not to say species can’t adapt. Like Darwin’s finches that grew longer or shorter beaks due to environmental factors, but they can’t completely change into something new… they are STILL finches. Microevolution doesn’t lead to macroevolution
Law of biogenesis; living things can only come from other living things; this has never been seen in any way > scientists have tried and failed over and over
Evolutionists mostly ignore this and instead focus on natural selection, but this challenges evolution at its most foundational level
BOTTOM LINE:
Only an intelligent creator could develop this code
DNA changes everything. Evolutionists would argue that there isn’t much difference between the DNA of a monkey and a human being. In fact they share 98% of the same code. They argue that 2% percent is evidence of the fact that we came from the same lineage, but I would argue it's actually evidence for an intelligent creator. Think about it this way, I have a buddy who builds homes, amazing homes, and his homes have a very distinct look. All of them are different, very different, no two of these homes are ever the same BUT they all have this style. I can look at his homes and know it’s one of his. In the same way, whether you're building homes or you're the God of the universe and you're creating the world, it's got his fingerprints on it, it's got his style on it. God's got a style he used this thing called DNA to show it. The fact that everything is so similar but so different is actually evidence for an intelligent designer not the opposite
The “teleological argument” for the existence of God says because the universe shows order and intelligence there must be an ordered intelligence that created the universe.
The universe that we live in, think about the place we live in, the complexity of it all. Even just the complexity of the human body. The universe shows this order and this intelligence and it only makes sense that something that understands order and has Intelligence created it. I look at the world and go, “how could this NOT have been created by someone who has intellect beyond what we can fully understand.”
What do I want you to know?
God and science are not at odds, quite the opposite. Science is on the side of a creator. We have been told our whole lives that the two are at odds and that you have to believe in one or the other. I consider myself a Christian who believes in God and believes in the creation of the world by the God of the universe, but I also believe in science and I do believe in experimentation and looking at things and rationalizing it. My faith in God is not blind, it comes from what I believe is really powerful evidence combined with faith, and my prayer is that you would take that same view.
Evolutionary theories fail to explain in any truly logical way the origin of life or the universe. Genesis 1:1 does it in one sentence – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1
Does this still require faith? Absolutely. But it is faith backed up with logical evidence.
I look at the; human body, vastness of space, perfect conditions necessary for life on this planet, the relational capacity we have to love and feel and it is undeniable.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth." Psalm 19:1-6
Once again we have two choices - You’re either a speck of worthless dust or you are a prized creation, made in the image of our Creator. Which would you rather be?
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Resources
The Bible
Answers In Genesis - www.answersingenesis.org
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