Okay today we’re tackling supposed proofs
for evolution, similar designs in living things,
vestigial organs, transitional fossils, ape-men
and a few more.
We’ll also answer some of those ‘What
about’ questions about the age of the earth
like distant starlight and radiometric dating,
this week on Creation Magazine LIVE!
Welcome to Creation Magazine LIVE!
I’m Richard Fangrad.
and I’m Thomas Bailey.
Today, we’ll address some of the questions
that some people feel are proofs for evolution
and deep time.
And some of you might be thinking, why would
we do that?
What possible value does this next half hour
of debunking evolution and deep time, what
value does this have for Christianity and
my personal walk with Jesus Christ?
So glad you asked!
Well, the topics we’re covering today are
being used by evolutionists right now to lead
people away from Christ.
Church surveys repeatedly show large percentages
of people, mostly young people, who grow up
in Christians homes will leave the church
in their early 20’s.
The good news is that interviews with university
students who have a church background and
were equipped to refute the skeptics attacks
on Scripture as they grew up don’t leave
the church.
Here’s a couple of conclusions: number one
is that there actually are logical, scientific
refutations of evolution.
Number two, that learning about how and why
evolution is wrong and that science supports
Scripture is a effective faith-strengthening
exercise that has long-term benefits.
So, that’s why we’re going to expose the
faulty logic and poor science behind these
“evidences” for evolution and deep time
in a way that your faith can be strengthened.
Let’s start with vestigial organs.
You’ll find these in old church buildings,
but most of them broke down years ago and
are no longer playable.
Very funny.
Actually, this refers to body parts that appear
to have no function, like wings on an ostrich,
or the human appendix.
At one time, there were over a hundred of
these in humans alone, and evolutionists claimed
they were ‘leftovers’ or ‘vestiges’
of evolution back when we were fish or amphibians,
or something else, but they lost their purpose
as we evolved.
They cite these as ‘proof’ of evolution.
This is circular reasoning, because evolution
was first assumed before making this claim.
Also, no one can really say if an organ is
useless.
Wings on an ostrich aren’t for flying, but
they may be used for things like balance while
running, mating rituals, or scaring off predators.
Actually, most organs that were once labelled
‘vestigial’ have since been found to have
a purpose.
The human appendix used to be considered unnecessary
because it can be removed when it gets inflamed.
As late as 1997, Encyclopedia Britannica claimed,
“The appendix does not serve any useful
purpose as a digestive organ in humans, and
it is believed to be gradually disappearing
in the human species over evolutionary time.”
Meanwhile, a 1995 textbook read, “The mucosa
and submucosa of the appendix are dominated
by lymphoid nodules, and its primary function
is as an organ of the lymphatic system.”
In other words, it’s part of your immune
system.
A diseased appendix can be removed because
God designed several other organs that perform
the same function.
So there are backups in place?
That’s right.
God’s a pretty smart designer.
Then there’s the coccyx, also known as the
‘tailbone’.
Evolutionists have claimed it was a leftover
from a time when we had tails.
But the tailbone has nothing to do with tails.
The coccyx serves as an important anchor point
for several muscles, tendons, and ligaments
needed for things like childbirth and bladder
control, not tails.
Sounds pretty useful to me.
The whole ‘vestigial organ’ idea actually
hindered research because no one wanted to
study something that was considered useless.
The same thing happened with so-called “junk”
DNA, a term that became popular in the 1960’s.
Studies back then suggested that less than
3 percent of DNA codes for proteins while
the other 97 percent doesn’t and was labelled
‘junk’.
Circular reasoning again; because its purpose
hadn’t yet been discovered, it was assumed
to be leftovers from our evolutionary past.
Except it isn’t.
New discoveries show the DNA that doesn’t
code for proteins serves many functions, like
regulating the timing of protein production,
for example.
By 2012, the ENCODE project had found that
at least 80 percent of supposed junk DNA has
a function, and the project’s Lead Analysis
Coordinator, Ewan Birney, said “It’s likely
that 80 percent will go to 100 percent,…We
don’t really have any large chunks of redundant
DNA.
This metaphor of junk isn’t that useful.”
Many illnesses are linked to mutations in
the non-protein-coding DNA.
This has huge implications for health care
costs and understanding disease mechanisms.
The whole junk DNA diversion sabotaged medical
research for over 40 years!
So much for junk DNA, what about the 99 percent
myth?
It was once thought human and chimp DNA were
97 to 99 percent similar because we evolved
from a common ancestor.
But that was based on early research that
only compared small parts of the genetic code.
Since then, more thorough techniques show
the similarity is no more than 87 percent.
But even if the difference was only 1 percent
that would amount to 30 million base pairs.
That’s about 10 books the size of the Bible
difference between ape and humans.
There hasn’t been enough time for random
mutations to cause that much change, even
in 6-7 million years back to our supposed
common ancestor.
Another evolutionary fail.
And we’ll be back with more in just a minute.
If Arnold Schwarzenegger had a pet cow, I
can almost guarantee it would be a Belgian
Blue.
These cows are incredibly muscled and have
very little fat.
Many people think of this breed as evolution
in action—because a mutation in its DNA
has brought about a supposed improvement.
But if microbes really did turn into Belgian
Blue cows—which is what evolution teaches—this
would require the addition of lots of new
DNA information to turn the relatively simple
genome of a bacteria into the vastly more
complicated genome of a cow.
However, in the case of Belgian Blue cows,
we see the opposite, because no new information
has been added.
In fact, a mutation has corrupted the myostatin
gene, which normally stops muscles growing
too big—so information has been lost.
The cows have lost control over muscle growth.
So Belgian Blue cows have devolved, not evolved!
To find out more from Creation Ministries
International visit our website creation.com
Welcome back.
Today, we’re talking about some supposed
proofs for evolution and deep time.
A big evidence promoted by evolutionists is
homology.
Various animals have similar features, like
two eyes, a heart, four legs, etc.
Evolutionists claim this proves we had a common
ancestor.
But the other explanation for similarities
is rarely discussed.
Consider that the original Porsche and Volkswagen
‘Beetle’ cars had a lot of similar features:
air-cooled 4-cylinder engine in the back,
two doors, trunk in the front, etc.
So does that mean they both evolved from some
ancestral car?
No.
It means they had the same designer, who used
some of the same features in both designs.
Of course, they have several differences as
well, and not just the price.
You may have seen diagrams like these in a
textbook, showing similarities in the structure
of a human arm and a frog’s arm, or the
wing of a bird and the flipper of a seal.
What’s the best explanation: common ancestor
or common Designer?
Humans and frogs both have digits, or fingers
and toes.
But those digits form differently.
Humans start with a spade-like structure and
the digits form as the material between them
dissolves away.
So material is removed.
In frogs, the digits grow outwardly and independently
from buds.
Material is added.
So that means these structures could not have
evolved from a common ancestor.
Evolutionists admit this, because apparently,
it happens quite often.
In 1894, embryologist Edmund Wilson wrote
“It is a familiar fact that parts which
… are undoubtedly homologous, often differ
widely … in [their] mode of formation.”
So it was admitted back in the 1800's.
Almost a hundred years later, Professor Gunter
Wagner wrote, “The disturbingly many and
deep problems associated with any attempt
to identify the biological basis of homology
have been presented repeatedly.”
So how do evolutionists explain that?
They call it ‘convergent evolution’, meaning
similar features evolved independently in
creatures not closely related on the evolutionary
tree.
In other words, the same random chance processes
happened at different times in different species
for different reasons?
Right.
Doesn’t it make more sense that a common
Designer used similar features in different
creatures?
Of course!
I mean, why wouldn’t God use something like
an arm or two eyes more than once?
Right, yes.
If living things were completely different
from one another we might conclude that there
were many creators.
Similarities in living things is evidence
for a single Creator.
Okay, next one: What about human embryos?
Don’t they go through evolutionary stages?
This idea was popularized by Ernst Haeckel
in 1868.
It’s been called the biogenetic law, embryonic
recapitulation, and ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny.
Say what?
A human embryo retraces its evolutionary history
by going through a fish stage, an amphibian
stage, etc., until it eventually becomes human.
Really?
Where’d they get that idea?
Haeckel's drawings.
Haeckel produced drawings of various embryos,
including a fish, a chicken, and a human.
You can see here how similar they look.
The idea is they all start out the same and
gradually diverge as they develop.
Just one problem: these drawings are frauds.
Yup.
It’s fake news.
That’s right.
Shortly after they were published, other embryologists
realized Haeckel had deliberately modified
the drawings to make them look similar.
This has been confirmed several times since
then.
Professor Keith Thompson wrote, “Surely
the biogenetic law is as dead as a doornail.
It was finally exorcized from biology textbooks
in the fifties.
[He says the fifties] As a topic of serious
theoretical inquiry, it was extinct in the
twenties.”
Way back in the twenty's, and out of the textbooks
in the fifties.
He said it was out of the textbooks but as
late as the 1990’s, some textbooks were
still using these drawings as evidence for
evolution.
It's still there.
You might still see this idea circulating
online.
But it’s wrong.
In 1997, embryologist Michael Richardson published
these pictures of the actual embryos.
As you can see, Haeckel’s drawings are almost
nothing like the real thing.
Whoa!
Unfortunately, abortion clinics used this
logic as a way to comfort their clients fooling
them into thinking the unborn child really
wasn't human.
Really?
But a human embryo is human.
It has unique DNA from the very first cell.
It’s the same for a fish, a salamander,
and a condor, or whatever...
Each has DNA to code for what it’s designed
to be.
So, it’s just like the Bible says in Psalm
139 “For you formed my inward parts; you
knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made.”
Aaaaand another evidence for evolution evidence
bites the dust.
We’ll look at transitional fossils and ape-men
when we come back.
Creation Ministries International staff, many
from a wide variety of scientific disciplines,
have produced thousands of articles now available
in a massive online database.
Some of the topics covered include: The feasibility
of Noah’s Ark and evidence for a global
flood Scientific arguments that explain observations
in astronomy within a ‘young earth’ time
frame.
Recent discoveries that support dinosaurs
fitting with Biblical history.
Evidence from biology that shows that the
type of change that is observed in living
things has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.
Got questions?
Get answers at creation.com
So far, we’ve discussed vestigial organs,
homology, and DNA.
Let’s move on; what about transitional fossils?
Evolution predicts there must have been billions
of creatures that were transitions from one
form of organism to another.
If the fossils are a record of deep time,
there should be millions of indisputable transitional
fossils.
In 1859, Charles Darwin wrote, “… the
number of intermediate varieties, which have
formerly existed on the earth, [must] be truly
enormous.
Why then is not every geological formation
and every stratum full of such intermediate
links?...”
Darwin saw the problem and believed the fossil
record had not yet been thoroughly explored
and it was only a matter of time before the
transitions would be discovered.
Since then, there have never been more than
a few disputable candidates even though there
are currently about a billion fossils in museums
and billions more have been examined.
The so-called ‘missing links’ are still
missing.
Stephen J Gould acknowledged this when he
wrote, “The absence of fossil evidence for
intermediary stages between major transitions
in organic design, indeed our inability, even
in our imagination, to construct functional
intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent
and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts
of evolution.”
Gould still believed evolution.
He was one of two paleontologists who proposed
something called ‘punctuated equilibrium’;
suggesting transitions came and went so quickly
that none were preserved as fossils.
Hmm.
It seems strange there’d be so many fossils
of fully formed creatures, but not the ‘in-betweens’.
Here’s yet another observation that’s
hard to fit with evolution and deep time but
fits the biblical history.
Noah’s flood is a great explanation for
the fossil record.
Most fossil animals are missing large percentages
of their skeletons, so paleontologists have
to speculate about what the creature looked
like.
This happened in the early 1980’s, Pakicetus
was put forward as a transition between some
sort of land mammal and whales.
The first reconstruction of Pakicetus looked
like this.
But what was actually found was this.
That’s some imagination right there.
Once more remains of Pakicetus were found,
it looked like this and the reconstruction
now looks like this.
Not transitional at all.
Mind you, the corrected version seldom gets
as much publicity as the initial discovery.
And that's the problem.
Then there’s Tiktaalik, same type of thing,
thought to be a 379 million-year-old fish
with a fin researchers thought was on its
way to becoming the limb of a tetrapod; a
four-legged animal that can walk on land.
Though the back part of the fossil is missing,
representations at the time looked like this.
But further research suggests that because
its fin was not connected to the main skeleton,
Tiktaalik wouldn’t have been able to support
itself walking on land.
Also, in 2010, tetrapod footprints were discovered
in Poland, dated by evolutionists at 397 million
years old; 18 million years older than Tiktaalik.
That makes Tiktaalik a little late to the
party, so not transitional.
Tiktaalik was another highly publicised evidence
for evolution that, after more research has
been done, it falls away.
This happens over and over.
But the public is left with the impression
that there’s all this evidence out there
that supports evolution.
By the way, were just summarizing these points
very quickly, for more information just search
on these things at creation.com Then there
are the ape-men, also known as hominins.
Same as before, they’re based on fragmentary
evidence, and further research and discoveries
tend to show they’re either human or ape.
Neanderthal was once thought to be very apelike,
possibly looking like this.
The latest research shows that Neanderthal
was actually human; capable of speech, creating
art, and using burial rituals.
DNA studies show they interbred with humans,
so they weren’t a different species.
Neanderthal is now pictured more like this.
Homo Erectus appears very similar to Homo
Sapiens and a number of paleontologists believe
it actually was human.
Australopithecus Afarensis, best known by
the specimen ‘Lucy’, was thought be an
ape who walked upright, an ape-man based on
speculation about the hipbones and some human-like
footprints found 1000 miles away dated at
3.2 million years old.
The evolutionary history says humans weren’t
around then, so the footprints must have been
made by a creature like Lucy, an ape that
walked like a human.
Here’s one of the early reconstructions
of Lucy.
By the way, Lucy’s feet were never found.
Yeah, that’s another story!
But again, further research indicates Afarensis
was most likely an extinct ape.
Evolutionist anatomist Charles Oxnard wrote,
“The various australopithecines are, indeed,
more different from both African apes and
humans in most features than these latter
are from each other.”, so they can't possibly
be human ancestors.
Again, we’re moving very quickly through
these topics.
If you or your friends or relatives are struggling
with some of these evolution evidences, or
you’ve never heard the biblical perspective
on them, go to creation.com and you’ll see
the other side of the story that normally
doesn’t get out into the public.
When we come back, we’ll look at evidence
put forward to attempt to prove deep time
of billions of years.
Many people are under the mistaken impression
that people from different racial backgrounds
have big differences in their DNA instructions.
But this is not the case.
The entire human race has an incredibly low
level of genetic variety.
Some biologists have remarked that if you
sequenced the DNA instruction of two humans
on opposite sides of the globe they’d have
less change in their DNA than two chimps on
the same mountain in Africa.
These discoveries have profound implications.
Since the human race has relatively low genetic
variety that means it must have originated
recently.
The racial groups have not therefore evolved
independently over long periods of time.
These discoveries are consistent with the
bible’s version of history, whereby the
human race originated from a single set of
parents, only thousands of years ago and the
people groups have originated since then.
To find out more from Creation Ministries
International visit our website creation.com.
We’ve seen how various ‘proofs’ for
evolution fall short.
But what about deep time?
The age of the earth is vital to evolution,
because evolution goes so slowly it needs
millions of years.
It gets fun when you consider that evidence
for a recent creation is actually evidence
against evolution, and there’s lot’s of
evidence for a recent creation.
And we explored what the Bible says about
the age of the earth and why we can’t add
millions of years to biblical history in episode
4 a few weeks ago.
Now, let’s look at an evidence often used
for deep time: radiometric dating.
We’ll start with Carbon 14 dating, which
is used to date things that were once living.
Carbon 14 forms in the atmosphere.
It’s radioactive so it loses particles,
or decays, over time.
Carbon 12—the normal carbon—is found in
all living things and doesn’t decay.
C14 gets absorbed by plants and animals through
photosynthesis, and when they die, they, obviously,
stop absorbing it.
At that point the amount of C14 in the dead
tissue begins to decrease to the point where
after 100,000 years at most it’s undetectable.
To ‘date’ a fossil, the amount of C14
and C12 is measured and, given the ratio of
the two and decay rate of C14 the time since
death is calculated.
That's how it works.
But various things can affect the ratio of
C12 to C14 in the atmosphere, which then affects
the apparent age of a fossil: things like
the industrial revolution, or earth’s magnetic
field.
One huge factor is Noah’s Flood.
It’s the key to understanding the age of
the earth!
The Flood buried a massive amount of carbon.
After the flood, C14 would have been produced
faster than Carbon 12, altering the post-flood
C12/C14 ratio in the atmosphere and thus in
living things after the flood.
That means things that lived then would date
older than they really are.
It’s been suggested that fossils and archaeological
artifacts dated 35-45,000 years old should
be recalibrated to the biblical date for the
Flood.
Here’s the best part.
Because C14 decays so quickly there shouldn’t
be any left after millions of years.
Yet, C14 has been found in dinosaur fossils,
coal, and even diamonds; clear evidence these
things are not millions of years old.
Carbon dating doesn’t work for rocks that
are supposed to be millions of years old.
So evolutionists use other radiometric dating
methods involving radioactive isotopes with
a much longer decay time—a longer half-life.
Any scientific method used to estimate the
age of the earth requires making assumptions.
And that includes radiometric dating.
To illustrate the assumptions, let’s imagine
something simpler.
Suppose you walk into a room and see a flask
with 300ml of water in it sitting under a
dripping tap.
If the tap is dripping at 50ml per hour, how
long has water been dripping into the flask?
We don’t know without making assumptions.
It would be 6 hours, assuming the flask was
empty when it was put under the tap, that
the tap has been dripping at a constant rate
the whole time, and that the flask had not
been moved or tipped over.
If we don’t know those things, we can’t
be sure how long the water’s been dripping
into the flask.
It’s the same for radiometric dating.
We have to assume we know the amount of each
isotope present when the rock cooled, and
we don’t.
We have to assume the decay rate has been
constant, but there are processes that can
affect decay rates.
And we have to assume nothing has been added
or taken away from either isotope.
Bottom line is: the dating methods don’t
work because we can’t be sure if the calculated
date is accurate.
Yikes!
You know, there’s a simple way to check
if it works.
Just test a rock of known age and see if the
dating method gets the right age.
This has been done many times.
In 1992, samples of the lava dome that formed
at Mt St Helens in the early 1980s were tested
by two reputable labs.
Results came back at between 340,000 to 2.8
million years, for rocks that were no more
than ten years old.
So that’s a fail!
Also, using isotopes with different decay
rates from the same rock should yield the
same results.
But when basalt from Grand Canyon was tested
using four different isotopes, each one gave
a different ‘age’.
You may have noticed a range of dates for
each sample.
This is not unusual.
So how do we know which date, if any, is the
right one?
We don’t.
Most scientific methods of estimating the
age of the earth give dates far younger than
the popular 4.6 billion years, so no wonder
evolutionists like radiometric dating and
downplay the others.
A more reliable method is to read God’s
Word, a historical account of the history
of the universe, which includes a Global Flood,
which would have drastically affected various
processes; possibly even decay rates.
Before we wrap up we’ll tackle what is perceived
to be a huge problem for a recent creation.
Are you skeptical about Christianity?
Perhaps you’re a Christian, but know someone
who won’t consider Christianity.
Christianity for Skeptics is one of CMI’s
most popular books.
Written by Drs Steve Kumar and Jonathan Sarfati,
this powerful resource refutes many attacks
on the Christian faith.
It contains cutting edge research, solid theology
and a summary of the Christian roots of science.
Questions about Islam, atheism, suffering,
evidence for God and more are answered.
Full of bright, catchy illustrations and a
sleek, modern style, this book draws in any
reader.
Purchase this resource, and many others at
CREATION.com
Welcome back!
We’ve been summarizing and refuting popular
evidences for evolution and deep time.
Here’s one that’s a bit different.
It’s a challenge raised against a recent
creation.
A question we often hear is, ‘How can we
see light from distant galaxies in a young
universe?
Some galaxies are billions of light-years
away.
A light-year is the distance that light travels,
at 300,000km/second, for a year.
That’s a long way.
It is.
If we assume that there haven’t been large
scale changes to the universe since creation,
the light from those galaxies took billions
of years to get to earth.
Since we can deduce from the Bible that God
created everything about 6000 years ago, how
can we see that light?
That's the question.
I met a man a few years ago who thought that
this question is insurmountable so the Bible
must be wrong, and he rejected Christ because
of it.
But when he told me this he was a Christian.
Someone had showed him that there are biblically-based
models that can answer this challenge.
Some have suggested God created light ‘in
transit’.
But that would mean things we see billions
of light years away, like a supernova, never
actually happened.
It makes God into some kind of trickster,
giving us illusions instead of reality.
Now ,there are better explanations and some
use Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
Oh no.
Don’t worry.
We can summarize without the need to understand
all of Einstein’s equations.
He said that gravity distorts time.
Where there’s weaker gravity, like at the
top of a mountain or on the International
Space Station, further away from the center
of the earth, time moves faster than where
gravity is stronger.
Now take that bizarre, but scientifically
verified principle to Scripture.
The Bible hints that the earth is somewhere
near the centre of the universe and that the
universe is not infinite.
About a dozen verses in Scripture indicate
God stretched out the heavens.
So before that stretching—let’s say that
happened on Day 4 when God created the sun,
moon and stars—before the stretching everything
in the universe was closer together than it
is now.
So if there have been changes to the large
scale structure of the universe.
What are the relativistic effects of that?
Well, if all the matter was closer together
and the earth is in there near the centre,
then gravity around the earth would be high
while far away from the earth, at the edge
of the universe, gravity would be low.
And if there’s a big difference in gravity,
there’s a big difference in the rate at
which time flows.
So it’s possible that while billions of
years elapsed at the edge of the universe
only hours ticked by on earth allowing enough
time for light to get to earth from distant
galaxies.
Different clocks in the universe at the time
might have looked something like this.
So it’s not light moving faster, it’s
time!
That’s right.
Starlight created on Day Four would have had
plenty of time to travel to earth and be visible
to Adam and Eve on Day Six.
No need for billions of years.
We'll see you next week.
And remember, Christianity is an evidence-based
faith.
And science supports Scripture.
