By Ken Henderson
It was sort of strange the way God triggered my years of creation vs. evolution research. While in college I was a writer for Standard Publishing (“Straight from Ken” for the weekly Straight magazine.) The national circulation became a springboard for the last 50 years of traveling youth ministry, including speaking for thousands of churches, schools, colleges, conventions, and so on.
After public school or college presentations, students would often ask about the validity of the Bible. They asked, “What about evolution?” and “What about dinosaurs? Don’t they disprove the Bible?” My answer was always rather feeble, saying something like, “Even if evolution is true, the Bible is true, too, and dinosaurs do not disprove the Bible.”
Looking for a Better Answer
I felt so bad about my pathetic comments I started my own search for a better answer. I believed the Bible to be totally true, but I figured God may have used evolution to create. The bottom line had to be one of three conclusions: (1) godless evolution is true and there is no God; (2) God created everything a few thousand years ago; or (3) the answer is a combination of the two.
My thinking leaned toward a combination of evolution and creation because scientists had pretty well “proven” that the world is vastly old. Does the Bible agree or conflict with evolutionary time and order? I wanted answers for the students, but just as much, I wanted answers for myself.
I searched for established statements or principles that virtually all evolutionists would consider absolutes. I hoped to show that the Bible was not in conflict with these concepts. To my amazement, my whole premise was shot down with my first finding.
Sun and Earth
Evolutionists seem to agree that the sun existed many millions of years before the earth formed itself out of dust and gases orbiting the sun.1 But Genesis 1:1-3, 16 says God created the earth on Day 1, and it wasn’t until Day 4 that God made the sun, moon, and the stars. Either the sun was first or the earth was first, but both statements cannot possibly be true. The evolution view seems logical from a natural view, while the Genesis view had to be supernatural.
With this one finding it was obvious I must decide where I would place my faith—in an all-powerful God who created in the order he describes in his book or in smart men who believe that such amazing design and order evolved through unintelligent chance.
I could only conclude that a Creator was essential for the incredible design and order we see. I also had to conclude that a God big enough to make this place could surely get his writers to get the story right—that would be the small end of the task. But that was only the first of a dozen or more conflicts I perceived in Genesis 1.
Dust and Gas
Virtually all evolutionists agree that the early earth was “dusty” and “gaseous.”2 And yet, Genesis 1:1-9 says the earth was covered with water. Then, on Day 3, God put waters “to one side” and made dry land appear. One of those conclusions has to be false.
How Life Began
Evolutionists teach that life began in the shallow seas as single-celled life forms (plant form or animal form).3 Genesis 1:11 says life began on the land with vegetation from the least complex form to the “fruit tree,” which is the highest plant form. That conflicts with the shallow sea theory and also means the entire world of plants came into existence before God made any animals. Both ideas are impossible to evolutionists, but obviously, God could have created on literal days.
Insects and Birds
Evolutionists believe insects evolved before birds, evolving from less complex to complex.4 Genesis 1:20-25 says God made birds on Day 5 and things that “creep along the ground” on Day 6.
Dinosaurs
Evolutionists believe dinosaurs evolved into birds.5 Genesis 1:20-25 says God made birds on Day 5 and dinosaurs on Day 6 among the “creatures that move along the ground.”
On and on it goes. God made man before he made woman, he has each kind producing its own kind. He created order and design in everything, from the single cell to the cosmos.
Science and Scripture
At this point I had to keep in mind that the Bible does not need to line up with “mindless chance” theories. But other than God’s supernatural work, the Bible should agree with facts of nature and natural evidences.
There are hundreds, even thousands of scientific evidences that the earth is quite young (six to eight thousand years), directly conflicting with vast ages of time. I’ll provide a few examples, but for further study, visit the website of the Creation Museum (www.creationmuseum.org), the Institute for Creation Research (www.icr.org), or other “young earth” websites.
Ocean Sediment Buildup
Evolutionists claim that billions of tons of sediment are added to the oceans each year.6 If this has been going on for billions of years, the continents would have eroded away hundreds of times and the ocean floor would be covered with layers of sediment many miles thick. Yet there is no evidence that the continents have been eroded away even once.
Earth Spin Is Slowing
The rotation of the earth is gradually slowing down.7 Gravitational drag is one reason for this, and if the slowing has been uniform over billions of years, the present speed of rotation would be 0 mph. But taking the present-day speed and figuring backwards, the earth’s speed billions of years ago would have been so great that the centrifugal force would have pulled the land masses out at the equator, flattened the polar regions, and the present-day earth would be like a fat pancake.8
Backing earth spin up 6,000 years would not affect its shape or operation, but would have made a “good starting speed.”
Earth Is Cooling
The earth’s crust and core are slowly cooling. This cooling proceeds inward from the surface. Scientific calculations indicate the earth cannot be billions of years old.9 Calculating earth heat from present cooling rates only allows for a few thousand years.
Delta Filling
The Mississippi River dumps about 300 million cubic yards of sediment into the Gulf of Mexico each year. If the Gulf of Mexico were only a million years old, it would be completely filled. By measuring the rate of growth of the delta (about 250 feet per year), its age calculates to be about 4,000 years. This roughly corresponds to the biblical dating of the worldwide flood.
Meteorites
Virtually all meteorites that have bombarded the earth are found in surface rocks. If rock layers built up over millions of years, there should be many meteor craters on many lower layers, but that isn’t so. 10
A Firm Conclusion
Without apology, I firmly believe the earth to be as young as 6,000 to 8,000 years and the Bible to be accurate as written. Having traveled all of the states and much of the world as a speaker in thousands of public settings for so many years now, I’ve met the Bible critics. Many believe in evolution as sincerely as I believe in God’s creation. They even come up with rebuttals to most everything I’ve stated here.
Some rebuttals seem sensible. But truly, evolution is their religion. They place their faith in it. Creation is my religious view. I have faith in God and his Word. I cannot prove creation any more than evolutionists can prove evolution. But common sense, logic, and excellent scientific information support the biblical account of creation.
Evolutionists have amassed a great supply of arguments and theories, but none is stronger than the common sense and logic that says, “It couldn’t have happened by chance no matter how much time you add.”
I pray I can continue to share his Word and the fascinating scientific and logical evidences that brought many evolutionists to be creationist believers too. In many cases, faith in the Creator has led to faith in Jesus.
Ken Henderson, Bible and science researcher for seminars on creation vs. evolution, is founder and director of Teen Mission, USA and Mission Journeys.
NOTES
1 Tega Jessa, Earth Formation, March 1, 2010, www.universetoday.com. [Theories vary, but all have the sun much older than earth.]
2 Edgar Winston Spencer, “Origin of Life,” Geology/ A Survey of Earth Science, (New York: Thomas J. Crowell Co., 1965). 34.537.
3 Dave Mosher, New Fossils Support Deep-Sea Origin of Life, August 3, 2007, www.livescience.com.
4 Jef Akst, From Simple to Complex, January 1, 2011, www.the-scientist.com.
5 Gareth Huw Davies, Evolution: Birds Arrived Comparitively Late, posted 2013, www.pbs.com.
6 R.M. Garrels & F.T. MacKenzie, Evolution of the Sedimentary Rocks (New York: W.W. Norton, 1971), 102-111.
7 A. Fisher, “The Riddle of the Leap Second,” Popular Science, 202, 1973: 110; see also “Towards a Longer Day,” Time, 87, Febrary 25, 1966, 102.
8 T.G. Barnes, “Physics: A Challenge to Geologic Time,” Acts & Facts, 3, July-August, 1974.
9 Lord Kelvin, “On The Age of the Sun’s Heat,” in Popular Lectures and Addresses (London: MacMillan, 1889), 415.
10 P. Stevenson, “Meteoric Evidence for a Young Earth,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 12, June 1975.
Nature Affirms God
Jerry Bergman, PhD, examines nature to find evidence of God’s hand in his academic paper “Affirmations of God’s Existence from Design in Nature.” You can read the abstract below and the entire paper.
This paper reviews several examples where humans have copied designs and innovations found in nature. The examples illustrate the fact that a fertile source of ideas for human innovations is the natural world. It also illustrates the fact that one of the major reasons for belief in God is the beauty, design, and ingenuity found everywhere in the natural world.
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