Rev. David Holwick Big Questions sermon series
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
November 17, 1996
Genesis 1:20-26
CREATION OR EVOLUTION?
I. Did God really create everything?
A. Growing up believing in naturalism.
1) Enjoyed science.
2) (Fossil-hunting as a family... trilobites in Illinois)
3) And then I became a Christian.
a) Taught about Creation and Adam and Noah.
b) Yet still had a high respect for science.
B. Great issue of faith.
1) Martin Ling writes, "More cases of loss of religious faith
are to be traced to the theory of evolution than to
anything else."
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a) Battles in school classrooms, especially in Arkansas,
not to mention the infamous Scopes Trial in 1920's.
b) Comment by Pope John Paul II on evolution - "It is an
established fact."
2) Media frenzy over recent discoveries.
a) Discovery of other planets.
b) SETI - search for intelligent life by telescopes.
c) Martian meteorite with fossils? #3924, 3906
3) Basic question:
a) Did God make us, and we have a purpose and a goal?
b) Or are we a chance grouping of chemicals and energy
with no ultimate meaning or destiny?
II. Inner tensions.
A. Truth of Bible - but Science also tries to establish truth.
B. Some Christians have made dumb statements concerning science.
1) Augustine found it absurd that the earth could be round,
and people were standing upside down on the other side.
2) Martin Luther thought Copernicus was wrong for saying
the earth revolves around the sun, basing his opposition
on Joshua and sun standing still.
C. Faith and facts.
1) Be careful not to oppose good science with incorrect
deductions from the Bible.
a) Our interpretation of Bible could be wrong.
b) Science must not be believed blindly, either.
2) Wisdom is balancing it all in spirit of discovery,
and humility.
III. A theory that has changed the world.
A. Began with Darwin's voyage of the "Beagle" in 1859.
1) Study of island birds and plants led him to theory that
diversity in life is due to response to environment.
2) Life is constantly changing, and good changes are
preserved.
3) Events are guided by chance alone.
a) There is no "grand plan" or "progress."
b) Early in life Darwin was very religious, but as he
matured he abandoned his faith.
B. Theory took society by storm.
1) Even conservative Christians readily accepted it.
2) Considered a very successful scientific theory.
3) Today Darwinism is a conviction that borders on religion
among biologists and others.
C. Unintended consequences.
1) Theory is mechanistic - no room for God.
a) Survival of fittest.
2) Social Darwinism of cutthroat monopolies.
3) Justification for adultery and unsavory ethics.
IV. Problems with Darwinism.
A. Improbability of random mutations.
1) Most are harmful.
2) Bacteria mutate quickly, but are unchanged over millions of
years.
Professor H. S. Lipson is a distinguished member of the
Institute of Physics.
He studied the mathematical probability that Darwinian
evolution has occurred.
He has been driven - most reluctantly, he says - to the
conclusion that it has not.
He concluded that many organs in nature simply could not
have evolved.
He went on to write in the PHYSICS BULLETIN in 1989:
"We must go further than this and admit that the only
acceptable alternative is creation.
I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is
to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not
like if the experimental evidence supports it."
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B. The "missing links" are still missing.
1) Has led to development of "punctuated equilibrium" by
Stephen Jay Gould.
a) Things stay the same for long periods, then change
abruptly.
b) Therefore few fossils of change are found.
2) Example of Reptiles to mammals.
Francis Hitching is a science writer who is a convinced
evolutionist.
He thinks creationism is wrong.
He also thinks Darwinism is just as wrong.
It is a common belief among Darwinian evolutionists that
reptiles evolved into mammals.
There is a total lack of intermediate fossils.
Even more than this, it is hard to see how it could possibly
have happened.
How, he asks, did mammals evolve their jaw and their ear?
All reptiles have a lower jaw made up of at least four
separate bones on each side, and a single bone in each ear.
But every known mammal, alive and extinct, is the opposite:
it has a one-piece jawbone, and three bones in the ear.
All these bones fossilize readily, yet there is not a single
fossil species with two bones in the ear or with two or
three bones in the jaw.
Nor has any Darwinist offered a plausible explanation
WHY these changes should have occurred,
or HOW they might have happened.
If these intermediates ever existed, how did they survive
with jaws and ears that were neither one thing nor the
other?
And they certainly would not have worked well even if they
worked at all.
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3) Feathers - would have to evolve before they could be used.
4) Contrary to Daily Record letter-writer Jeff Brutman,
English moths are not proof of evolution.
a) Predominance of dark moths is a shift in ratio, but
each type pre-existed.
C. Cladistics - follow facts, not theory. (Natural History Mus)
1) Not really a rejection of Darwinism, but highlights one
of its weaknesses.
2) More and more mainstream scientists and philosophers are
expressing doubts about Darwinism, or rejecting it
outright.
D. Macro or micro?
1) Christians can accept some aspects of evolution.
a) Species can be altered over time - horses.
2) But diversity of life is too vast to be explained by
one mechanism.
V. Varieties of Creationism.
A. Theistic evolution.
1) Evolution happened much like Darwin said, but God has
guided it. [what Pope John Paul II really said...]
2) But since Darwinism is essentially mechanistic, God is
pushed out into the margins of life.
3) Results of science are often preferred over teachings
of Bible.
B. Young earth creationism.
1) Fossils are animals buried in Noah's Flood.
a) Massive flood evidence in Washington state.
b) But rock layers too complex to explain with single event.
2) Scientific evidence for young earth.
a) Sun shrinking.
b) Moon is drifting away, and would have been too close.
c) Irreliability of radioactive isotopes.
3) Evidence of age is misinterpreted or a special creation.
a) (Bob Lorenc, Bible professor at Judson College)
b) Adam created with appearance of age.
4) Popular with Christians, hotly rejected by scientists.
a) Main weakness in society's debate (schools).
C. Ancient earth creationism. [my view]
1) Earth is old.
a) Scientific findings are accurate.
1> Idea of ancient earth (geologists) predates Darwin.
2> In agreement with geology, astronomy, astrophysics,
nuclear physics and host of other sciences.
3> Human societies are ancient.
b) Sun is not shrinking, but slowly pulsing.
2) Bible allows for ancient earth.
a) Genesis doesn't say earth is young or old.
b) God's plans are ancient. Psalm 90:2-6, Proverbs 8:22-31,
Ecclesiastes 1:3-11, Micah 6:2
c) The mountains are ancient and age-old. Habakkuk 3:6
d) The heavens existed "long ago." 2 Peter 3:5
3) Many genealogies in the Bible are proven to have gaps.
a) Compare 1 Chronicles 3:11-12 and Matthew 1:9.
b) Matthew deletes three kings (Joash, Amaziah, Azariah).
4) Days of creation have a variety of interpretations.
VI. People are special.
A. Darwinianism and the human animal.
1) Fossil evidence for early humans could fit on single table.
2) Are we just highly developed animals?
a) Note controversy over using pig heart valves in humans.
b) "Speciesism."
B. Bible is adamant that humans are special.
1) Not intelligence, or tool making, or language, but
possession of God's "image."
2) Jesus taught that Adam and Eve were historical.
a) Because they disobeyed, spiritual disaster came to world.
b) Jesus died on cross to make it right.
3) We are here for a reason.
C. Astronomer Paul Davies, though an unbeliever, has recently
said this:
The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of
some sort of DESIGN, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic
and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming.
The belief that there is 'something behind it all' is one that
I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.
This rather diffuse feeling could, I suppose, be termed theism
in its widest sense.
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