This article, Refuting Evolution from creation.com, is a free mp3 audio resource produced by Stillwaters Revival Books. SWRB is online at puritandownloads.com. This article is copyrighted by Creation Ministries International, CMI, and is read by permission. The author of this article is Jonathan Sarfati, and the reader is Bob Faulkner. Visit Creation Ministries International at creation.com for a massive collection of outstanding free online creationist resources such as videos and articles and so on. At Stillwaters Revival Books we also highly recommend CMI's professionally produced magazines, The Creation Magazine and The Journal of Creation. CMI speakers also visit churches all over the United States and the world to communicate the importance of the creation issue and the overall authority of scripture at a lay level. And CMI does not charge a set speaking fee. If you're interested in having a CMI speaker at your church, please visit the Contact Us page on creation.com for details of your local office. We at Stillwaters Revival Books also make thousands of free Christian resources available online at puritandownloads.com. At puritandownloads.com you'll also find our complete online catalog containing classic and contemporary Christian books, digital downloads, mp3s, videos, books, and the Puritan hard drive at great discounts. And now to SWRB's reading of Refuting Evolution by Jonathan Sarfati. Remembering that God teaches us in the Bible that 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. Romans 1.20 from the KJV. Refuting Evolution. Evolution and Creation, Science and Religion, Facts and Bias is the first topic. This was first published in the book Refuting Evolution in Chapter 1. Many evolutionary books, including teaching about evolution and the nature of science, contrast religion creation opinions with evolution science facts. It's important to realize that this is a misleading contrast. Creationists often appeal to the facts of science to support their view, and evolutionists often appeal to philosophical assumptions from outside science. While creationists are often criticized for starting with a bias, evolutionists also start with a bias, as many of them admit. The debate between creation and evolution is primarily a dispute between two worldviews, with mutually incompatible underlying assumptions. This chapter takes a critical look at the definitions of science and the roles that biases and assumptions play in the interpretations by scientists. First, the bias of evolutionary leaders. It's a fallacy to believe that facts speak for themselves. They're always interpreted according to a framework. The framework behind the evolutionist interpretation is naturalism. It is assumed that things made themselves. that no divine intervention has happened, and that God has not revealed to us knowledge about the past. Evolution is a deduction from this assumption, and it is essentially the idea that things made themselves. It includes these unproved ideas. Nothing gave rise to something at an alleged Big Bang. Non-living matter gave rise to life. Single-celled organisms gave rise to many-celled organisms. Invertebrates gave rise to vertebrates, ape-like creatures gave rise to man, non-intelligent and amoral matter gave rise to intelligence and morality, man's yearnings gave rise to religion and so forth. Professor D.M.S. Watson, one of the leading biologists and science writers of his day, demonstrated the atheistic bias behind much evolutionary thinking when he wrote, quote, evolution is a theory universally accepted, not because it can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible, end of quote. So it's not a question of biased religious creationists versus objective scientific evolutionists. Rather, it's the biases of the Christian religion versus the biases of the religion of secular humanism, resulting in different interpretations of the same scientific data. As the anti-creationist science writer, Boyce Rendsberger admits, quote, at this point, it is necessary to reveal a little inside information about how scientists work. something the textbooks don't usually tell you. The fact is that scientists are not really as objective and dispassionate in their work as they would like you to think. Most scientists first get their ideas about how the world works, not through rigorously logical processes, but through hunches and wild guesses. As individuals, they often come to believe something to be true long before they assemble the hard evidence that will convince somebody else that it is. motivated by faith in his own ideas and a desire for acceptance by his peers, a scientist will labor for years knowing in his heart that his theory is correct, but devising experiment after experiment whose results he hopes will support his position." End of quote. It's not really a question of who is biased, but which bias is the correct bias with which to be biased. Actually, teaching about evolution admits in the dialogue on pages 22 to 25 that science isn't just about facts and it is tentative, not dogmatic. But the rest of the book is dogmatic that evolution is a fact. Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist and self-proclaimed Marxist, is a renowned champion of neo-Darwinism and certainly one of the world's leaders in promoting evolutionary biology. He recently wrote this very revealing comment, the italics were in the original, it illustrates the implicit philosophical bias against Genesis creation regardless of whether or not the facts support it. Quote, we take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failures to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It's not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door." Many evolutionists chide creationists, not because of the facts, but because creationists refuse to play by the current rules of the game that excludes supernatural creation a priori. That it is indeed a game was proclaimed by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dickerson, quote, science is fundamentally a game. It's a game with one overriding and defining rule. Rule one, let us see how far and to what extent we can explain the behavior of the physical and material universe in terms of purely physical and material causes without invoking the supernatural." End of quote. In practice, the game is extended to trying to explain not just the behavior, but the origin of everything without the supernatural. Actually, evolutionists are often not consistent with their own rules against invoking an intelligent designer. For example, when archaeologists find an arrowhead, they can tell it must have been designed even though they haven't seen the designer. And the whole basis of the SETI program is that a signal from outer space carrying specific information must have an intelligent source. Yet the materialistic bias of many evolutionists means that they reject an intelligent source for the literary encyclopedic information carried in every living cell. It's no accident that the leaders of evolutionary thought were and are ardently opposed to the notion of the Christian God as revealed in the Bible. Stephen Jay Gould and others have shown that Darwin's purpose was to destroy the idea of a divine designer. Richard Dawkins applauds evolution because he claims that before Darwin it was impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, as he says he is. Many atheists have claimed to be atheists precisely because of evolution. For example, the evolutionary entomologist and sociobiologist E.O. Wilson who has an article in Teaching About Evolution on page 15, said, quote, as were many persons from Alabama, I was a born-again Christian. When I was 15, I entered the Southern Baptist Church with great fervor and interest in the fundamentalist religion. I left at 17 when I got to the University of Alabama and heard about evolutionist theory. end of quote, many people do not realize that the teaching of evolution propagates an anti-biblical religion. The first two tenets of Humanist Manifesto 1933, signed by many prominent evolutionists, are number one, religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created. And number two, humanism believes that man is a part of nature and has emerged as a result of a continuous process. Well, this is exactly what evolution teaches. Many humanist leaders are quite open about using the public schools to proselytize their faith. This might surprise some parents who think the schools are supposed to be free of religious indoctrination. But this quote makes it clear, quote, I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom. by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith, a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach. regardless of the educational level, preschool, daycare, or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new, the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism. It will undoubtedly be a long, arduous, painful struggle, replete with much sorrow and many tears, but humanism will emerge triumphant. It must, if the family of humankind is to survive." End of quote. Teaching about evolution, the book, while claiming to be about science and neutral on religion, has some religious statements of its own. For example, on page six, quote, to accept the probability of change and to see change as an agent of opportunity rather than as a threat is a silent message and challenge in the lesson of evolution. End of quote. However, as it admits that evolution is unpredictable and natural and has no specific direction or goal, page 127, this message is incoherent. The authors of teaching about evolution may realize that the rank atheism of most evolutionary leaders would be repugnant to most American parents if they knew. More recently, the agnostic anti-creationist philosopher Rousset admitted Evolution as a scientific theory makes a commitment to a kind of naturalism, but this may not be a good thing to admit in a court of law." End of quote. Teaching about evolution tries to sanitize evolution by claiming that it is compatible with many religions. It even recruits many religious leaders in support. One of the dialogues portrays a teacher having much success defusing opposition by asking the students to ask their pastor, coming back with, hey, evolution is okay. Although the dialogues are fictional, the situation is realistic. It might surprise many people to realize that many church leaders do not believe their own book, the Bible. This plainly teaches that God created recently in six consecutive normal days, made things to reproduce after their kind, and that death and suffering resulted from Adam's sin. This is one reason why many Christians regard evolution as incompatible with Christianity. On page 58, teaching about evolution points out that many religious people believe that God used evolution, theistic evolution. But theistic evolution teaches that God used struggle. for survival and death, the last enemy, 1 Corinthians 15.26, as his means of achieving a very good Genesis 1.31 creation. Biblical creationists find this objectionable. See the article, The Fall, A Cosmic Catastrophe, Hugh Ross's blunders on planet death, or plant death, in the Bible. The only way to assert that evolution and religion are compatible is to regard religion as having nothing to do with the real world and being just subjective. A God who created by evolution is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from no God at all. Perhaps teaching about evolution is letting its guard down sometimes, the book. For example, on page 11, It refers to the explanation provided in Genesis that God created everything in its present form over the course of six days. That is, Genesis really does teach six-day creation of basic kinds, which contradicts evolution. Therefore, teaching about evolution is indeed claiming that evolution conflicts with Genesis, and thus with biblical Christianity, although they usually deny that they are attacking religion. Teaching about evolution often sets up straw men, misrepresenting what creationists really do believe. Creationists do not claim that everything was created in exactly the same form as today's creatures. Creationists believe in variation within a kind, which is totally different from the information gaining variation required for particles to people evolution. This is discussed further in the next chapter. More blatantly, teaching about evolution recommends many books that are very openly atheistic. like those by Richard Dawkins, page 131. On page 129 it says, statements about creation should not be regarded as reasonable alternatives to scientific explanations for the origin and evolution of life. Since anything not reasonable is unreasonable, teaching about evolution is in effect saying that believers in creation are really unreasonable and irrational. This is hardly religiously neutral, but is regarded by many religious people as an attack. A recent survey published in the leading science journal Nature, conclusively showed that the National Academy of Sciences, the producers of teaching about evolution, is heavily biased against God, rather than religiously unbiased. A survey of all 517 NAS members in biological and physical sciences resulted in just over half responding. Of those, 72.2% were overtly atheistic, 20.8% agnostic, and only 7% believed in a personal God. Belief in God and immortality was lowest among biologists. It is likely that those who didn't respond were unbelievers underestimates the level of anti-God belief in the NAS. The percentage of unbelief is far higher than the percentage among U.S. scientists in general, or in the whole U.S. population. Commenting on the professed religious neutrality of teaching about evolution, the surveyors comment, quote, NAS president Bruce Albert said, there are very many outstanding members of this academy who are very religious people. people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists. Our research suggests otherwise." End of quote. The basis of modern science. Many historians of many different religious persuasions, including atheistic, have shown that modern science started to flourish only in largely Christian Europe. For example, Dr. Stanley Jacqui has documented how the scientific method was still born in all cultures apart from the Judeo-Christian culture of Europe. These historians point out that the basis of modern science depends on the assumption that the universe was made by a rational creator. An orderly universe makes perfect sense only if it were made by an orderly creator. But if there is no creator, or if Zeus and his gang were in charge, why should there be any order at all? So not only is a strong Christian belief not an obstacle to science, such a belief was its very foundation. It is therefore fallacious to claim, as many evolutionists do, that believing in miracles means that laboratory science would be impossible. Loren Eiseley stated, quote, the philosophy of experimental science began its discoveries and made use of its methods in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a creator who did not act upon whim or interfere with the forces he had set in operation. It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith. that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption." Evolutionists, including Eisley himself, have thus abandoned the only rational justification for science, but Christians can still claim to have such a justification. It should thus not be surprising, although it is for many people, that most branches of modern science were founded by believers in creation. The list of creationist scientists is impressive. A sample. Physics. Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, and Kelvin. Chemistry. Boyle, Dalton, and Ramsey. Biology. Ray, Linnaeus, Mendel, Pasteur, Virchow, and Agassiz. Geology. Steno, Woodward, Brewster, Buckland, and Cuvier. Astrology. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Herschel, and Mander. Mathematics. Pascal, Labnitz, and Euler. Even today, many scientists reject particles-to-people evolution, that is, everything made itself. The Creation Ministries International of Australia staff scientists have published many scientific papers in their own fields. Dr. Russell Humphreys, a nuclear physicist working with Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has had over 20 articles published in physics journals, while Dr. John Baumgardner's catastrophic plate tectonics theory was reported in Nature. Dr. Edward Boudreau of the University of New Orleans has published 26 articles and four books in physical chemistry. Dr. Maciej Gierczyk head of the Department of Genetics at the Institute of Dendrology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, has published 90 papers in scientific journals. Dr. Raymond Damadian invented the life-saving medical advance of magnetic resonance imaging MRI. Dr. Raymond Jones was described as one of Australia's top scientists for his discoveries about the legume leucina and bacterial a symbiosis with grazing animals, worth millions of dollars per year to Australia. Dr. Brian Stone has won a record number of awards for excellence in engineering teaching at Australian universities. An evolutionist opponent admitted the following about a leading creationist biochemist and debater, Dr. Duane Gish. Dwayne Gish has very strong scientific credentials. As a biochemist, he has synthesized peptides, compounds intermediate between amino acids and proteins. He has been co-author of a number of outstanding publications in peptide chemistry." End of quote. A number of highly qualified living creationist scientists can be found on the Creation Ministries International website. So an oft-repeated charge that no real scientist rejects evolution is completely without foundation. Nevertheless, teaching about evolution claims in this question and answer section on page 56 question, don't many scientists reject evolution? Answer, no. The scientific consensus around evolution is overwhelming. It's regrettable that teaching about evolution is not really answering its own question. The actual question should be truthfully answered, yes, even though evolution-rejecting scientists are in a minority. The explanation for the answer given would be appropriate, even if highly debatable, if the question were, is it true that there is no scientific consensus around evolution? But truth is not decided by majority vote. C.S. Lewis also pointed out that even our ability to reason would be called into question if atheistic evolution were true. Quote, if the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of man was an accident too. If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents, the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's thoughts. But if their thoughts, that is, of materialism and astronomy are merely accidental by-products, Why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents." The limits of science. Scientists and science does have its limits. Normal operational science deals only with repeatable, observable processes in the present. This has indeed been very successful in understanding the world and has led to many improvements in the quality of life. In contrast, evolution is a speculation about the unobservable and unrepeatable past. Thus, the comparison in teaching about evolution of disbelief in evolution with disbelief in gravity and heliocentrism is highly misleading. It's also wrong to claim that denying evolution is rejecting the type of science that put men on the moon, although many evolutionary propagandists make such claims. Actually, the man behind the Apollo moon mission was the creationist rocket scientist Werner Von Braun. In dealing with the past, Origins science can enable us to make educated guesses about origins. It uses the principles of causality, everything that has a beginning has a cause, and analogy. For example, we observe that intelligence is needed to generate complex coded information in the present, so we can reasonably assume the same for the past. But the only way we can be really sure about the past is if we have a reliable eyewitness account. Evolutionists claim there is no such account. so their ideas are derived from assumptions about the past. The biblical creationists believe that Genesis is an eyewitness account of the origin of the universe and living organisms. They also believe that there is good evidence for this claim, so they reject the claim that theirs is a blind faith. Creationists don't pretend that any knowledge, science included, can be pursued without presuppositions, that is, prior religious philosophical beliefs. Creationists affirm that creation cannot ultimately be divorced from the Bible any more than evolution can ultimately be divorced from its naturalistic starting point that excludes divine creation a priori. For related articles, copyright notice http://creation-our-copyright-policy. Still Waters Revival Books is now located at PuritanDownloads.com. It's your worldwide, online Reformation home for the very best in free and discounted classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books, MP3s, and videos. For much more information on the Puritans and Reformers, including the best free and discounted classic and contemporary books, mp3s, digital downloads and videos, please visit Still Waters Revival Books at PuritanDownloads.com. Stillwater's Revival Books also publishes The Puritan Hard Drive, the most powerful and practical Christian study tool ever produced. 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