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The Logic Of Biblical Creation
Supplemental Reading | |
Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.
IMPACT
No. 205, July 1990
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The Biblical account of creation is ridiculed by atheists, patronized byliberals, and often allegorized even by conservatives. The fact is, however,that it is God's own account of creation, corroborated by Jesus Christ (Mark10:6-8, etc.), who was there!
We are well advised to take it seriously and literally, for God is able tosay what He means, and will someday hold us accountable for believing whatHe says! Furthermore, the account is reasonable and logical, fully in accordwith all true science and history. The following chain of logic, while notcompelling belief on the part of those who refuse to believe, at leastdemonstrates the reasonableness of Biblical creation.
It is axiomatic that there are only two possible basic models oforigins—that is, of the origin of the universe, of the earth, of life, ofhuman life, and of all the basic systems of the cosmos. These are, insimplest terms, evolution or creation. Either the origin of things can beunderstood in terms of continuing natural processes, or they cannot—one orthe other. If they cannot, then we must resort to completed supernaturalprocesses to explain the origin of at least the basic symptoms of thecosmos. Evolution and creation thus exhaust the possibilities, as far asorigins are concerned.
This necessarily means that if we can "falsify" (that is, demonstrated to befalse) either model of origins, then the other must be true. There is noother option. By definition, evolution should still be occurring now, sinceit is to be explained by present processes.
Present Processes
If there is anything certain in this world, however, it is that there is noevidence whatever that evolution is occurring today—that is, true verticalevolution, from some simpler kind to a more complex kind. No one has everobserved a star evolve from hydrogen, life evolve from chemicals, a higherspecies evolve from a lower species, a man from an ape, or anything else ofthis sort. Not only has no one ever observed true evolution in action, noone knows how evolution works, or even how it might work. Since no one hasever seen it happen (despite thousands of experiments that have tried toproduce it), and no one yet has come up with a workable mechanism to explainit, it would seem that it has been falsified, at least as far as the presentworld is concerned. This does not prove it did not happen in the past, ofcourse, but the evolutionist should recognize that this means it is notscience, since it is not observable. Evolution must be accepted on faith.
What About The Past?
Actually, there is no evidence at all that evolution ever took place in thepast either. In all recorded history, extending back nearly five thousandyears, no one has ever recorded the natural evolution of any kind ofcreature (living or non-living) into a more complex kind. Furthermore, allknown vertical changes seem to go in the wrong direction. An average of atleast one species has become extinct every day since records have been kept,but no new species have evolved during that time. Stars explode, comets andmeteorites disintegrate, the biosphere deteriorates, and everythingeventually dies, so far as all historical observations go, but nothing hasever evolved into higher complexity.
But how about prehistoric changes? The only real records we have of thisperiod are presumably to be found in the sedimentary rocks of the earth'scrust, where billions of fossil remains of formerly living creatures havebeen preserved for our observation. Again, however, the story is one ofextinction, not evolution. Numerous kinds of extinct animals are found(e.g., dinosaurs), but never, in all of these billions of fossils, is atruly incipient or transitional form found. No fossil has ever been foundwith half scales/half feathers, half legs/half wings, half-developed heart,half-developed eye, or any other such thing.
If evolution were true, there should be millions of transitional types amongthese multiplied billions of fossils—in fact, everything should showtransitional features. But they do not! If one were to rely strictly on theobserved evidence, he would have to agree that past evolution has also beenfalsified.
The Necessity Of Creation
If evolution did not occur in the past, and does not occur at present, thenit is entirely imaginary—not a part of the real world at all. This leavescreation as the necessary explanation of origins.
This fact is also confirmed by the best-proved laws of science—the law of conservation in quantity and the law of decay in complexity, or the famous First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.
The First Law notes that, in all real processes, the total quantity ofmatter and/or energy stays constant, even though it frequently changes form.A parallel principle in biology notes that "like begets like"—dogs arealways dogs, for example, though they occur in many varieties. The SecondLaw notes that the quality of any system—its usefulness, its complexity, itsinformation value—always tends to decrease. In living organisms, truevertical changes go down, not up—mutations cause deterioration, individualsdie, species become extinct. In fact, everything in the universe seems to beheaded downhill toward ultimate cosmic death.
The First Law notes that nothing is being either "created" or "evolved" bypresent processes. The Second Law notes that there is, instead, a universaltendency for everything to disintegrate to run down, and finally, to "die."The whole universe is growing old, wearing out, headed toward ultimatestillness and death. This universal "increase in entropy" leads directly tothe conclusion that there must have been a creation of things in the past;otherwise, everything would now be dead (since they are universally dying inthe present).
Again, we are driven to the logical necessity of a primal creation—acreation, that was accomplished not by present natural processes, but bypast supernatural processes. This means, however, that we cannot deduceanything about that creation except just the fact of creation. The processesof creation, the duration of the period of creation, the order of events—allare hidden from us by virtue of the fact that our present observed processesdo not create—they only conserve and deteriorate!
Nevertheless, there must have been a creation and, therefore, a Creator!Being the Creator of the infinitely complex, highly energized cosmos, thatCreator necessarily must be omniscient and omnipotent. Having created life,as well as human personalities, He must also be a living Person. No effectcan be greater than its cause.
Therefore, He is fully capable of revealing to us knowledge about Hiscreation—knowledge which could never be learned through studying presentprocesses. It almost seems that He must do this, in fact, since He surely isnot capricious. He would not create men and women who long to know themeaning of their lives, yet neglect or refuse to tell them anything aboutit.
Assuming, then, that He has revealed this information to His creatures, justwhere is His revelation to be found? There are numerous books of religion,ancient and modern, but their cosmogonies do not contain any account at all of the creation of the universe.
The answer, therefore, has to be in His record of creation in the book ofGenesis, for there is no alternative. There are only three creationist"religions" in the world—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—and all three basetheir belief in creation on the record of Genesis. Without exception, allthe other religions and philosophies of the world have based their beliefsconcerning origins on some form of evolutionism. That is, they all beginwith the universe (space, time, matter) already in existence, then speculatehow the forces of nature (often personified as various gods and goddesses)may have generated all the systems and living creatures of the world out ofsome primordial watery chaos. Only Genesis even attempts to tell how theuniverse itself came to be.
Whether most people believe it or not, therefore, the creation account inGenesis is God's record of His creation. Jesus Christ also taught thistruth, so surely any true Christian should believe it. This account does notallow even the possibility of evolution, since everything was created "afterits kind" (Genesis 1:24), and since, after six days of creating and makingthings, God "rested from all His work" (Genesis 2:3), and so is no longerusing processes which "create" things, as theistic evolutionists believe.Instead, He now is "upholding things" (Hebrews 1:3) through His law ofconservation—the "First Law."
The entrance of sin into the world brought a disordering principle into theCreator's perfect creation, in the form of God's "curse" on the "wholecreation"—the principle of decay and death—the "Second Law." Thus, the natural laws now governing the processes of the universe are not laws oforigin and development, as evolution requires, but of conservation anddecay, in accordance with the truth of primeval special creation.
If we now wish to know how long it took for God to make all things, we canlearn this from His Genesis record—and only there—since we cannotlegitimately project present processes back into the creation period. Thataccount says He did it in just six days of work followed by a day of rest,thus providing the pattern by which men and women were to order their dailylives throughout history. Ever since that first week, people have actuallydone this—even those who reject His account of creation!
"But how long were those days?" someone may still ask. Only God can answerthat question, and He does define His terms! "God called the light Day,"says the account, in the very first use of the word "day" in the Bible(Genesis 1:5). The "day" thus is the light-period in the diurnallight/darkness cycle, which began on "the first day," and has continuedevery day since.
"But what about the evidences for the earth's great age?" others will ask.The answer is that there are no such evidences! All calculations thatpurport to give this kind of evidence are based on present naturalprocesses, and, as we have seen, it is not legitimate to project these intothe creation period. Furthermore, all such processes invariably involve theprinciple of decay, and these can never be assumed to have operateduniformly in the past. Although thermodynamics specifies that all processesmust be decay processes, the rate of decay depends on the science ofkinetics—not thermodynamics. Every process functions at its own rate, whichmay, and does vary widely with time, depending on how the many "variables"which control it happen to vary. If one allows for the tremendousacceleration of most processes at the time of the global hydraulic cataclysmdescribed in Genesis, he will conclude that these processes, instead ofpointing to the earth's great age, really point to the earth's great Flood!
Space does not allow documentation and further discussion here, but eventhis brief summary demonstrates the logic of Biblical creationism. Althoughone may escape from this chain of logic if he wishes, the fact remains thatthe chain is logical and reasonable. When mixed with faith, there is peaceand joy in believing God's straightforward, rational, simple, satisfying,and truly scientific account of creation in Genesis. |
"Vital Articles on Science/Creation"
July 1990
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