Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Evolution debunked in slam dunk


David Reid is the preacher at Columbus Bible Church (Columbus, Ohio) and a lawyer with degrees from Yale University and Duke University. At our church’s summer Bible conference last year, he gave what I thought was the best-laid argument against evolution I’ve ever heard.

I was reminded of the study just last month as he preached at a Bible conference near Berlin, Ohio, saying as part of his opener to a sermon entitled, “The Uniqueness of Christianity” (available to hear at www.ohiograceministries.org), “People don’t believe evolution because it’s convincing; they believe evolution because it’s the wishful thinking of the guilty. If you’re guilty, do you want judgment? Do you want an all-powerful, all-knowing judge who knows everything about you and has wrath against your sin and is ready to execute judgment? No, you don’t want that; you want to have evolved from slime. Because slime poses no threat to you.”

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Here is his evolution study, entitled “Science in a Broken World” (available to view on You Tube), in its entirety with some editing on my part:

“It’s just a flat-out myth that the Bible is opposed to knowledge; the Bible is in favor of knowledge. Proverbs 18:15 says, ‘The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.’

“The word ‘science’ appears twice in Scripture. One is in Daniel 1:4, where it’s spoken of favorably, and the other is I Timothy 6:20, which says, ‘O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.’

“The Bible’s against things that purport or pretend to be knowledge but really are not. Verse 21 continues, ‘Which some professing have erred concerning the faith.’

“The Bible’s against ‘science falsely so-called’ because it causes people to err from the faith. Science that is focused on understanding how the universe operates is a good thing, because after all, who created the universe? God did.

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“False science is the result of man’s desire not to retain God in his knowledge. Romans 1:18 says, ‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.’

“Here’s what is commonly thought: Man likes to pretend that the truth is hard to find; that it’s elusive. People say, ‘Well, the reason I don’t believe is because the evidence is so confusing; it’s so hard to figure out.’

“But what does Romans 1 say? Verses 19-20: ‘Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
[20] For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.’

“Is the truth hard to find or is it actually within man’s grasp? The problem is men hold that truth in unrighteousness. While they hold it they are yet unrighteous.

“Don’t people say all the time, ‘Well, I’d just believe if I saw a sign. How do you know God exists? I mean, you’ve never seen Him.’

“It is clearly seen. Notice the verse says, ‘Being understood by the things that are made.’ That’s interesting because what people pretend all the time is that they don’t understand. It says ‘even his eternal power and Godhead,’ and this is the part they detest above all else--‘so that they are without excuse.’

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“Have you ever witnessed to somebody and they say, ‘Well, what about those who haven’t heard?’ That is an intellectual evasion. You know why? You’re trying to tell them!

“Whatever happens to those who haven’t heard is totally irrelevant to their situation because you’re telling them. You know why they raise that? They want the answer to be that those who haven’t heard get a free pass, in which case, ‘Shut up!’

“You see, what man wants is there to be an excuse. What Romans 1: 18-20 does is it says, ‘Look, guys, you know, you know, you know.’

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“Romans 1:22 says, ‘Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.’

“It’s fascinating to me that if you attain a PhD and then you obtain a full-time appointment with a university, what is your title? Professor. And the idea is you PROFESS; you assert to know something.

“Well, Romans 1:22 is exactly how men operate. He declares himself to be wise, and yet for the vast majority of mankind, they have rejected truth and, in the process, become fools.

“What man does is he refuses to retain God in his knowledge and then constructs a false wisdom to make it appear that his refusal is wise. They don’t want to think they’re doing something dumb, so they invent all sorts of false things like science to claim they’re being wise.

“I Corinthians 1:20 says, ‘Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?’

“Notice verse 21: ‘For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.’

“Is that God’s wisdom or man’s wisdom? For in the wisdom of God, men decided to create their own wisdom to defend their not knowing God. What that tells you is man has all sorts of false things that he believes; that he constructs for the purpose of excusing, defending or rationalizing why he’s rejected the knowledge of God.

“When man rejects God, he rejects true knowledge; he rejects true science because science is knowledge. But what happens is nature abhors a vacuum, so when man rejects truth, what’s he left with? He’s only left with worshipping something that’s false. Man’s going to worship something.

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“You may think this is an exaggeration, but I would say to you that men worship science. I came across the following quote from a professor in a college alumni magazine I was reading recently: ‘Many people believe we will never bridge the moral and, thus, political divide in the United States. I’m a little more optimistic. You see, I believe in a higher power that does have the ability to provide this country with answers. Some may even say it speaks to me directly; it’s called science.’

“That’s where a lot of mankind is. They are looking for the answers to life—‘It can bridge the world divide in our country! It can solve the problems of life!’ And what it is, 'It speaks to us! It’s science!' And what they mean by that is ‘man’s science.’

“The professor’s not referring to studying the Scriptures and getting a better understanding of God’s science; it’s a reference to man’s wisdom solving the issues of life.

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 “If you study the history of evolution at all, you know it’s a history of hoaxes where they have believed that, ‘Oh, this proves something,’ and then years later they find out it’s a hoax.

“Let me suggest this, evolution is a faith. Some dictionaries will define faith as ‘something that is believed in the absence of proof.’ That’s not faith. That’s silliness. That’s superstition. If you believe things in the absence of proof, that’s just conjecture or being naïve.

“If you have faith in the Word of God, you’re believing something because there is abundant proof that the Scriptures are true.

“When you read the Old Testament, there are all these specific prophecies that are then fulfilled in the New Testament that could not have happened by chance. When you believe the Word of God is true, it’s not a belief in the absence of proof; it’s a belief supported by proof.

“The correct definition of faith is it’s something you did not see. Why do I say that? Get II Cor. 5:7: ‘For we walk by faith, not by sight.’ So faith and sight are what? They’re opposites. Hebrew 11:1 says, ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’

“Faith and sight are opposites. If you didn’t see something happen, then you believe it by faith. So for example, you take it by faith that George Washington was the first president of the U.S. The point is, if you didn’t SEE it, it’s faith.

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“I tell you all that to say this: Evolution is a faith. Evolution is the belief that all life arises from a single common ancestor; a one-celled organism. So evolution is a belief about the origin of life; how it all started.

“Think through this with me: How many people, including scientists, were there to observe, to witness the origin of life? If you believe evolution, by definition there couldn’t have been anybody because nobody was there! It took billions of years for man to even arrive! So for him to say, ‘Yes, evolution is a fact,’ you never witnessed it and no man EVER did.

“So evolution is a faith, and evolutionists will just freak out about that, but that is true. No one witnessed evolution in the past, and can I tell you, no one observes it today. If anyone thought they could observe evolution today, they would record it and put it on You Tube and say, ‘The creationists are idiots; just watch this video.’

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“The first step of the Scientific Method is, make an observation, which in a word is ‘sight.’ The way the Scientific Method works is it observes some physical phenomenon and it tries to measure and evaluate it, but the point is it’s based upon observation, yet no one has observed the origin of life.

“May I suggest to you, evolution itself is not science according to the Scientific Method because the Scientific Method is based upon observation, and there was no one here to observe it! It’s all just guesswork and speculation to try and apply it.

“The origin of life is not something that can be studied using the Scientific Method and therefore evolution is unscientific. The bottom line is, God created the universe and He has said what happened and He didn’t say evolution happened.

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“There are no observed instances of species-to-species evolution. When we define evolution, it’s the belief all life arises from a common ancestor, meaning there was a one-celled organism in the past that went to a two-celled organism to a four to an eight to a cat, dog, wolverine, etc.

“What science talks about all the time is they’re trying to find the ‘missing link.’ But if you think about that for even 12 seconds, you realize the problem is not a missing link; the problem is THOUSANDS upon thousands of missing links, where it goes from cat to dog to platypus to bear to horse to pig to monkey. That’s a big problem.

“Here’s the second problem. There are no observed, naturally occurring favorable mutations. What does that mean? What evolution presupposes is organisms reproduce and there will be a genetic mutation, and the organism that has that mutation will then be better adapted to its environment; it will live longer and reproduce more.

“The whole crux of that is then there have to be mutations that are actually favorable. The problem is when they look at mutations (deviations from the correct genetic code), they invariably make the organism less well-suited to survive.

“So if evolution is true, evolutionists ought to be able to give us a list of 25 naturally occurring favorable mutations, because to go from a one-celled organism to mankind, you need hundreds of millions. So asking for 25 doesn’t seem like much. I’d be happy with 10. They don’t have 5. Truth be told, they don’t have any.

“You know why there’s none? Because God, when He created dogs, He created the perfect dog. When He created cats, He created the perfect cat. There was no mutation; there was no deviation from what God did that could possibly be an improvement.

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“Evolution is the idea that you go from the one-celled organism to the highly specialized and functioning man.

“Think about this: Your body tends to live to 80 years old despite what you eat. Your body does such a good job repairing itself because the Creator designed it that way.

“Well, what evolution then believes is you went from this one-celled organism to this extremely, well-functioning, specialized, complex organism. Let me just tell you, life doesn’t work that way.

“How about this: Your child comes to you and says ‘Hey, dad, I’ve got this one-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. Can you help me out?’ and you say, ‘Sure, son, here’s what you do. Take all the pieces, throw them in the dryer and put them on the spin cycle and just leave them for an hour. And what they’ll do is they’ll assemble themselves together.’

“What evolution believes is that order emerges from chaos by chance. They don’t believe there’s the application of external intelligence; they believe it’s by chance. So you put the puzzle on for an hour and what happens? Nothing! So run it again!

“The point is, if your philosophy for trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together is to use the dryer, you will be frustrated in life. Well, that’s what evolution believes.

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“Entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. To make it simple, entropy is disorder. It’s lack of organization; it’s chaos.

“The California Poly Technical State University at San Luis Obispo has an article on the second law of thermodynamics that states, ‘Entropy is the measure of a disorder of a system. That disorder can be represented in terms of energy that is not available to be used. Natural processes will always proceed in the direction that increases the disorder of a system. All natural processes tend toward increasing disorder.’

“Did you get that? I call that the ‘law of the garage.’ What happens to your garage? Every six months or longer you have to restore it to a state of order. Because naturally it does what? It declines into chaos.

“What my children do, for example, is they follow my wife around, and as soon as she gets something done, they help her by ‘fixing it.’ What happens? Every progress you make is immediately undone. That’s life in a universe where there is entropy.

“All natural processes move in the direction of increasing disorder. Evolution doesn’t say you went from a one-celled organism to man in a week. It says there were billions and billions of years, so that by chance there was enough time, and given long enough they would eventually assemble themselves into the right shapes and order and so on.

“But you have to understand, the longer you make that period of time, what is the direction of the universe? Is it toward order or disorder? Making the period of time longer does not solve your problem. If anything, it makes it worse.

“No one believes in evolution because it’s compelling. It’s contrary to common sense. Do you go camping and take a nature hike and find an IPhone and say, ‘Wow, how did this assemble itself out in the woods?’

“Or do you assume some intelligent person left it there? That there was a designer who created it? You see, the design testifies to a designer.

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“Some people claim that evolution can be reconciled with a literal belief in Scripture. Not so. God simply doesn't give you that option.

“First, God created all animal life in two days. That’s Genesis 1: 20-30.

“One of the common things people do to make Genesis 1 not say what it says is when they see the word ‘day,’ they say, ‘Oh, well, a day means a lengthy period of time. It’s not just a normal day.’

“Genesis 1:5 says, ‘And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.’

“So this day has an evening and a morning.  If you go through all the days, it says that each time. It’s almost as if God knew the nonsense people would say and just put little things in there to disprove them.

“Genesis 2:2 says, ‘And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.’

“Do you say you did something ON a millennium? Or ON an eon? You do something IN a millennium, but you do something ON a day.

“Exodus 20:11 says, ‘For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.’

“Think through this with me. If you say in Genesis 1 that when it says ‘day’ it really means this huge period of indeterminate time, then what that means is we are still in the seventh day, a huge period of indeterminate time, and none of you should be working. (Exodus 20:8)

“The reason why the Sabbath was hallowed is because God Himself rested on that day.

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“The question’s often asked of a pregnant woman, ‘Do you know what you’re having?’ and there are only two answers. I’ve never had anyone say, ‘Well, we’re having a dog.’

“Genesis 1:24 says, ‘And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.’

“It says ‘after his kind’ 23 times in the Old Testament. Here’s the point. Crazy people say things like, ‘Oh, well those are textural emendations. The ‘his kind’ and ‘their kind’ was copied over and over and it was a copyist’s error and it wasn’t in the original.’ Nonsense.

“If God had the power to create the universe, He had the power to preserve His Word for six thousand years so you have it as He wants. If the Holy Spirit said ‘his kind, his kind, their kind, their kind,’ it was because He was making a point He didn’t want you to miss!

“The point in Genesis 1 is that what animals do today is what they have always done since the beginning of time and that is they reproduce after their kind. The reason you can’t go from a one-celled organism to two, to four, to dog to cat to bear to horse, is the simple fact bears have bears and horses have horses and it will always be that way.

“Gen. 1:31 says, ‘And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.’

“If you believe evolution and want to reconcile that with Scripture, what that means is this:  By the end of Genesis 1 man is created, which means there’s been billions of years and trillions of deaths. Because all those inferior organisms had to live and die and live and die and live and die, and there had to be genetic mutation after genetic mutation, so in Genesis 1, God looks at an earth that has billions of carcasses and dead forms of life and says, ‘That’s very good.’ Nonsense.

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“People don’t believe evolution because it’s intellectually satisfying. There’s the thousands upon thousands of missing links. They can’t find any favorable genetic mutations. The very concept of disorder randomly assembling itself into order without any intelligence violates everything you’ve ever experienced in life.

“No one believes it because it makes sense. The reason they believe it is what we read about in Romans 1. God has revealed the fact that He has wrath against man’s unrighteousness. Not only has He revealed that, He’s revealed His eternal power. He has anger against man’s sin and the ability to do something about it and that offends man.

“The reason why people believe evolution is the old ‘any port in the storm,’ because they want to avoid the judgment of God and want to believe there’s a way out, and want to believe it’s okay. If it was okay Jesus Christ didn’t have to go to the Cross. He went to the Cross because there was no other way to deal with man’s sin.

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“The engine that drives evolution is natural selection; survival of the fittest. In other words, there are these organisms that reproduce and the ones that have the favorable genetics--those are the ones who live longer and reproduce more.

“The reason for that is death catches the other ones. What underpins ‘survival of the fittest and natural selection’ is death. What evolution is really saying is life, where it really originated from, was death.

“Notice Proverbs 8:36: ‘But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.’

“When men hate God they love death. What I think of when I read that verse is Halloween. It’s skeletons, zombies, graveyards, vampires, spooky things, haunted houses, and all sorts of things that are all about death.

“When you see that obsession with death, the thing you should think of from Proverbs 8:36 is, ‘When I see that, what am I actually observing?’ The hatred of God.

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“Evolution is the belief that it was the death of trillions of prior organisms over billions of years that gave man life.

“John 1:4 says, ‘In him was life; and the life was the light of men.’ Life is inseparably connected to Jesus Christ, the Creator. What Romans 1 describes is when men reject the knowledge of God, they are rejecting the source of life itself, and so the explanation they are left with as to how life came about is death.
“Let me put it this way, if you’re trying to grow your church, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time looking for new converts in graveyards, right? I’m a huge believer myself in, look in the nursery.

“Evolution is an irrational, crazy philosophy where it views the origin of life as arising from death itself.

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“Man’s science correctly perceives that the universe is falling apart, but has no answers because God hid all the answers in Jesus Christ.

“What the second law of thermodynamics tells you is that the universe is falling apart. Entropy is always increasing; in other words, order is just decreasing, and the longer the universe is around the more disorder there is. Thermodynamics, as best I can tell, is true and what that means is science has an understanding that the universe is falling apart. It’s descending into chaos, but science can’t do anything about it.

“Now, by the way, the Bible explained the deterioration of the universe a long time ago. Thermodynamics came along in the 1800s. So what science views as this great advance, read Genesis 3. Can you get an inkling from Genesis 3 that now that sin has entered into the universe, the universe is going to decay?

“Romans 8:19 says, ‘For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.’

“What your physical being is subject to and can’t get out of is the bondage of corruption and that’s why the older you get, you don’t necessarily always start to look pretty. Verse 22 says, ‘For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.’

“Do you ever have those moments where you sort of exhale in exasperation at the insanity that’s going on in the world? I just think, ‘Wow, I’m a mess, the world’s a mess, it doesn’t seem like anything is getting better,’ and that’s because you live in a universe that’s under this bondage of corruption and man has this naïve view that if he just would create new and better laws, or just elect the right people, or just do something earthly, that things would then be better.

“ It’s this naïve, vain hope that, ‘Yeah, man’s going to get it right. Just give us more time and we’re going to get it right.’ No, the universe is falling apart!

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“Ecclesiastes 1:18 says, ‘For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’

“What the writer’s lament is, ‘The more you learn about this earth, is that going to cheer you up?’ You realize there are more wars going on then you thought. There’s more slavery still in the world. There’s more human trafficking. There’s real, real persecution against Christians going on.

“Science can observe some of these phenomena that the world is falling apart but it can’t do anything to fix it.

“Proverbs 1:7 says, ‘The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.’ Proverbs 9:10: ‘The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.’

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“When man rejects God, how much wisdom do they have? They haven’t even started! Proverbs 15:33 is the best definition of what the fear of the Lord is that I've seen: ‘The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility.’

“What we know from Colossians 2 is God took ‘all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,’ the things that would give life meaning and purpose and understanding--and give you comfort as to what’s going on in the universe--and put them in Jesus Christ and hid them there.

“And you know what the vast majority of mankind is doing? They reject Jesus Christ, and while they don’t perceive it at the time, you know what they’re also doing? They just rejected all wisdom and knowledge, because God put it all in Him.

“God gave man a perfect map to allow him to navigate through life, but man hates the mapmaker so much he’d rather stumble around lost and in the dark, bumping into things, then read the map. That’s what Romans 1 says.

“Let me conclude with this: All truth is God’s truth. Science that is true is God-honoring, because the universe was created by God and it belongs to Him. But man creates ‘science falsely so-called’ because they want to get rid of the Creator, and evolution is just one example of that.

“Science falsely so-called is completely unable to address the real issues of life. It can’t give you peace or contentment or help you understand your eternal destiny, and it can’t help you resolve it because what God did is, all that wisdom that you need, He hid it in Jesus Christ. The answer to all the questions in life that really matter is the Lord Jesus Christ.”

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