Evolution vs. Creation
Speechless.
As always, I'm in awe with God's work.
Recently, upon general interests and realizing that I'm actually going to graduate from a science degree, I ponder on the question of Evolution vs. Creation. Actually not really ponder, because I absolutely have faith in Creation... but more like want to understand more on the topic. After all, it is written:
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
So, I wanted to make it more clear, not only to myself, but also to other people. Drown in the whole scientific community, people around will definitely challenge me on this topic... and how great it is, to be able to use those opportunities to share the Gospel?
So ever since the little interview/debate on Times magazine on evolution and creation, and Jeff's question on if microevolution implies macroevolution... I have been wanting to hear more on this.
And our God is a good God. Because when you seek, you will find. Today, we were blessed by Dr. William Ho for ministering His Words. Wow~ As he spoke, you could see the audience so drawn into each word. In fact, even though he went an hour overtime on his lecture, no one really wanted to leave. Moreover, he said that his actual lecture on this topic could even last for 14 hours, and I had the urge to just ask him to come over anytime to share that 14 hour lecture.
So here's a little glimpse of what he said, definitely not as well put as his slides.. Hopefully one of these days, I will be blessed to hear more from him.
Evolution: no creator, no design, chance
Creation: creator, design, intelligence
Evolution: It is still in progress... that it is trying to increase in complexity and organization for the better.
Creation: It is complete... any change is harmful because it is away from origin design.
Evolution: There are transition kinds from one species to another
Creation: No transition kinds (kinds meaning boundary)
Evolution: Uniformitarianism... meaning evolution occurs in constant rate
Creation: Catastrophism... meaning violent cataclysm occurs
Is evolution scientific?
It is often said that people believe in evolution because it's scientific. If it's scientific, then we should be able to prove is using the scientific method. According to the scientific method, the important part in proving a hypothesis is the testable experiments! Now, is it possible to repeat evolution? That is, is it possible to repeat how humans evolved from a single cell organism? I believe not. Of course, at the same time, you can't prove Creation scientificially.. because God won't repeat his creation again. Then what?
Evidential science
Another way is to use evidential science, which is looking at things of the world to prove something. Like you can prove the existance of electricity by seeing light. So people look at things on the Earth and how certain things changed, and say that the same thing must have happened to how we came about. But as I quoted from Romans 1:20... the Bible actually says that God intended that there are all these invisible things, but they can be clearly seen as His power from all that's been made.
For example, one key idea in biology is the whole evolution's tree of life. With certain calculations, people have form theories that everything came from a single cell. The fact is, yes you see all these different species now, but the process in which these species are formed doesn't have any evidence. Are they just opinion? If evolution is true, there should be transition kinds of animals around - like something between an ape and human (if we were to evolved from it). But do we see them? No. In fact, we have clear boundaries between the species, a fish is a fish, an elephant is an elephant, and etc.
Of course, you could argue that these transition species must have died off, so they don't appear now. But there are actually absense of fossil evidence fo these intermediary stages! As some might have heard, these are the "gaps" in evolution. Then just like many scientific processes, someone comes along and come up with something else - punctuated equilibrium. This is just to say that evolution is not a constant process (note how this already is against the defining characteristic of evolution). In other words, the intermediate stages are missing because (let's use an example of an elephant) the elephant just suddently felt like changing, and became a cow. Then it got tired. So the evolution process slowed down. Then suddently it gained some energy and boom, becomes a whale. So that's why there are no intermediate stages (actually there is a theory about how whales are actually from cows... lol). But according to the Bible, we don't see these transition kinds because God created the creatures each according to its kind!
Then there's the whole talk on how dinosaurs extincted 65 million years ago, and humans began around 4 million years ago. What happened to the 61 million years in between? If it's true that humans evolved some there, you should be able to find fossil records of the in betweens. You can't say oh - it just happened too quickly - as I'm sure 61 million years is a long time. Actual evidence actually shows (from the Cambrian explosion or something like thatl; I didn't catch that part too clearly) that dinosaurs are present together with humans. Footprints of a T-rex and a human have been found together, side by side. Now the only way this can happen is they were both walking on mud, which lay down their footprints, and then a volcanic eruption occured and perserved these footprints until now. But if one were to occur before the other, especially for 61 million years, I'm sure the rain and many other processes will wash away one footprint before the other.
Surprisingly though, these footprints of humans, found both with the dinosaurs and elsewhere, were a lot bigger than what we would have expected today. Plus they did find skeletons of human bones that translate back to 7 feet people. So what's possible is that the condition back then were different from now, and enabled people to grow that big (in fact if you look at the Bible, there are incidences where giants have be recorded in the OT). So as much as we might be scared from the size of dinosaures now, it could be possible that humans back then are actually much bigger than we would have thought.
Now that, my friend, are some of the points Dr. Ho pointed out. I'm sure I missed a lot, and I'm sure he had more in mind to say to us! Probably no one will read up to this point, but if you have, I hope it gives you a new insight into the debate between evolution and creation. Either way, it was a good learning experience for myself =)
Before I end off... Just want to say something else:
Life is about changes. Sometimes it's painful, sometimes it's beautiful. But most of the time... it's both. (A quote I wrote for my highschool yearbook graduation message; and I believe it's something Lana said in Smallville).
Farewell Bonnie (TCCF), Gim (TCCF), & Jeff (NTCBC)
Best of luck for the future, and continue to put your faith in Him!