unPHILtered: The Way I See It (15 page)

The fossil evidence shows that hexagonal structures have always been used for honeycombs. Honeybees arrived on earth knowing they had to build their honeycombs into hexagons. People call it “instinct” when an insect or fish or animal does something naturally that it obviously cannot think through or reason out. I call that internal design—and it’s everywhere. The Creator put it in them; it’s not there by “chance.”

Back when I was attending college at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, during the late 1960s, my college professors told me that in the beginning humankind “crawled out of the ocean.” I was only eighteen years old, but I scratched my head and thought,
Hmmm, I don’t know about that
. The evolutionists deliberately forget that long ago, according to Scripture, the heavens existed and the earth was formed “out of water and by water” (2 Peter 3:5). The evolutionists at least
know there was a lot of water here, but unfortunately for them, they don’t include God in the mix. To this day, there’s no known process, working model, or theory on
how
living things can be created from only water. There has to be a Designer. “Chance” simply cannot make something as complex as a living cell with its untold tens of thousands of coordinated chemical reactions, including the construction of its DNA. Every biochemist knows this. Yes, they theorize that “given enough time, everything is possible.” I say that’s not very satisfying science.

When I look at our galaxy, our solar system, and Earth, the sun, and the moon—and all their interaction with and dependence on each other—it’s impossible for me to believe this all happened by chance. I have to believe there’s intelligent design behind it all. Billions of galaxies fill the universe, and those galaxies contain billions of stars rotating around an axis. It’s really overwhelming when you look at the nighttime sky and ponder it all. And then on the opposite end of the scale, you have watermelon seeds, acorns, and honeycombs. Wow! There’s a great power on display, and that power should be honored.

It’s all from either total chance or purposeful design. Think about it. Putting an oak tree inside an acorn? With all the life cycle built in, the design for leaves, the DNA to direct the photosynthetic process, and the vascular tissue to transport fluids
throughout the tree? Then there’s the fact that trees give off oxygen for us to breathe, and they provide us with wood. Are you kidding?

Some have argued that it’s “unscientific” to suggest that intelligent design is present. Really? So what’s so “scientific” about saying it all happened by chance? In all of human history we’ve never seen any complex functioning entity that was created by swishing water or a windstorm. A house has a complex design. A TV has a complex design. A saltshaker or duck call has a design. Even something as simple as a golf tee was designed! Look at the spiral helix construction of a DNA molecule and tell me that’s not design! Look at your eye! Good grief, Jack! It screams design! Design by definition is the result of planning—the opposite of chance. And I see design in every aspect of creation, right down to the atom, for crying out loud!

The first words of the Bible in Genesis 1:1–2 are as follows:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
That’s the first statement in Scripture. It’s either true or false. I believe it to be true. I believe the Bible is a historical narrative given by the infallible Creator to humanity. In many ways, the Bible is a love letter to humankind, and it explains the reality in which we live. The answer to every question in life is found in the Bible.

And then there’s the question of how much time passed in verses one and two. It says “created” and “was hovering.” Those
words indicate action and time but don’t say how much. Was it an instant? Maybe. Or was the amount of time much longer? Possibly. I think people make a mistake when they make the Bible say things it doesn’t say. We do not know how much time the process of the creation of matter took in verse one. The Bible doesn’t say. Genesis 1:1–2 is not dated. The days of Genesis 1, whatever they were, had not yet started. So I’m leaving it at that. Time means nothing to an infinite God who is not constrained by time. We’ve made many assumptions about the amount of time the creation took, but we don’t know for sure, so let’s not yell at each other about it. The primary message of Genesis chapter 1 is not “how long” or “when.” It’s
“what”
and
“Who.”
“What” is that this all has a beginning, and “Who” is God, the Creator.

The opening statement in the Bible is about the creation of matter. That’s the first big problem the atheists and secularists have. They can’t explain the origin of matter. There is no physical cause to explain it. Yet, we know that something does not come from nothing. (And don’t jump into quantum mechanics or strings or other dimensions. Those are all still a something.)

Secular scientists pretty much assert that the universe is fourteen or fifteen billion years old. They say this because the universe is observed to be rapidly moving apart. Envision a ripple on a pond. When you see the ever-widening circles from a ripple, you know that moments before some event caused the ripple. Based on the distance of the ripples and the rate of their expansion,
you can approximate when the event happened. That’s what the “Big Bang” theory is all about. Matter—the galaxies—is moving apart at a very rapid speed. So some time in the past, something very dramatic happened. Boom! A couple of questions are obvious. What blew up? And where did it come from? Science can’t answer that. But it is obvious there was a “First Cause.”

Here’s the catch. Matter cannot make itself from nothing. You can throw out theories all day, but in the end the bottom line is that there is no physical process by which matter can come from absolutely nothing. That would violate the laws of physics we use every day. The infinitely teeny speck of a proton or singularity that expanded (causing the Big Bang) is still something. The Big Bang does not explain the First Cause. Who or what made it? The laws of physics do not preclude a nonphysical entity—an entity not bound by the laws of physics—from operating. That, my friend, is God—a spiritual, nonphysical entity not bound by the laws of physics, Who operates in ways we cannot comprehend—the Creator.

On the first day, God created light. Scholars will tell you that the Hebrew word for
day
that was used in the original text means a period of time. It can mean a day as we know it or it can mean an indefinite period of time. That’s not the issue I’m discussing. I’m discussing a chronological order that we observe in the record of the earth. And it was very orderly and logical.

Genesis 1:3–5 says,
“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated
the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”
God called the light “day,” and we still call it that, and He called the darkness “night,” and we still call it that. We still refer to the start of light each day as “morning” and the beginning of darkness each day as “evening.”

On the second day, God created the sky. According to Genesis 1:6–8,
“God said, ‘Let there be a vault [expanse] between the waters to separate water from water.’ So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault ‘sky.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.”

On the third day, according to Genesis 1:9–10, God said,
“ ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry ground ‘land,’ and the gathered waters he called ‘seas.’ And God saw that it was good.”

So in the beginning Earth was a big ball of water, and then here comes the ground. The land comes out of the water, and the sky is lifted above the seas. For my money, it could not have happened without a Guiding Hand!

There is an extreme amount of scientific evidence to indicate that water covered Earth several billion years ago (as scientists date it). The continents didn’t exist, and scientists say there was a big mass of water that covered the surface of the Earth. When you’re flying in a jet over Arizona, you can look down out your window and see evidence that water covered
the desert a long time ago. There are sediment layers visible on the walls of canyons and deep trenches that were caused by the presence of a sea that was there at one time. We’ve discovered fossils of fish and other sea creatures in the rocks of the Grand Canyon and other locations. It’s a desert now, but there’s plenty of evidence that there was a lot of water there at one time.

The Spirit of God was hovering, and He waited until the planet was right to introduce life. He waited for the correct rotation of Earth, the correct distance of Earth from the sun and moon. We all know that the distance of Earth from the sun just “happens” to be the right distance for water to remain a liquid as needed and for our climate to be livable. If the sun were too close, we’d burn up; a little farther out, and we’d freeze. It’s just right. Not only is the distance precise, but the ratio of land to water is critical for the planet’s temperature balance to work (land and water absorb and release heat at different rates, so the ratio of land to water is extremely important). And there’s more. Where the continents are located is also critical. The Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern Hemisphere, and that is important to the global temperature. And then there’s the spin rate—critical again. Oh yeah, there’s the tilt of our axis at 23.5 degrees off the vertical. Critical. So you see, there are many design features that have to all happen on the right planet at the right distance from the sun for our temperatures and weather to balance. I see a lot of design! Don’t you?

When the time was right, God introduced plants and animals to Earth and then humans—in that order. Genesis 1:11–13 says,
“Then God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.’ And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.”
God created the vegetation because the animals and humans were to follow and would need something to eat. I guess that’s something the evolutionists forgot. They believe everything came from water, and that’s why they’re looking for water on Mars. What it boils down to is that they believe elephants came out of water. They think trees came out of water. They contend bugs did, too. They believe you and I emerged from the water—everything made via chemical reactions by blind chance. Blind is right!

Well, let me ask you something: By what process can human flesh come out of salt water? We just crawled out of the salt water? Oh, really? Now, I’m not a rocket scientist. I’m more of a C+ man. Half of the American population is smarter than I am (at least I’m smarter than the other half), but I don’t think water can pull it off. Raccoons and ducks and palm trees from blind chance working with salt water to make all this? Not hardly!

Where did apples come from? Plums? Did corn, wheat, barley, cucumbers, persimmons, tomatoes, nuts—each with their
own DNA codes—all come from salt water? Don’t put your faith in that! The narrative of the Bible is that God prepared the planet for animal and human life, and then salad (vegetation) was the first item on the menu to sustain them. Logical. Exactly what you would expect from an intelligent Being.

Evolutionists propose, basically, that before we were humans, we were apes; and before that, rats; and before that, lizards; and before that, salamanders; and before that, fish; and so on, all the way back to the protozoans. Give me a break! So they’re saying that now we’re catching, battering, frying, and eating what we used to be? I don’t think so.

Before a cell divides, DNA determines what it’s going to be. The DNA code is very stable. DNA is not random. I have my DNA, and you have yours. Dogs have theirs, and cats have theirs, toads have theirs, and it’s stable in kind after kind. Every living kind of plant and animal has its own distinctive, stable DNA code. The blind-chance-one-cell-mutation-eventually-to-man theory doesn’t work. It’s a theory with large assumptions and missing tens of millions of “intermediate” forms in the fossil record (a problem Darwin recognized). That dog won’t hunt.

Evolutionists tell us that every single living thing on Earth came from the same bowl of soup. But the hard science, the fossil record of all those intermediates mutating and changing, is just not there. Every class of animal,
bird, reptile, fish, invertebrate, and so on that we find in the fossil record is fully formed with its characteristics the first time it appears in the fossil record. (Evolutionists know this, by the way.)

Certainly, there has been adaptation and limited evolution, or change, among the various types of living organisms through time. Noah did not have four hundred different species of dogs on the ark. He had representatives of different kinds of animals—not each individual species. There are breeds of dogs, hogs, various crops, etc., living today that did not exist even one hundred years ago. Living things are adaptable—and they change—but it’s “kind after kind” (Bible terminology). Living organisms can adapt as the climate or conditions change. Look at Darwin’s finches for example—different kinds of beaks. But they were all finches, and they never became another kind of organism! Horses have evolved from smaller forms in their early history to larger animals today. But they were all the same kind of creature—horses. They did not become hippos, giraffes, or lions.

Over the years, evolutionists have taken a lot of liberties with their theories, and they can always find a way to get theoretical assertions printed in various magazines and schoolbooks, on TV, and so on. They would have the public believe it’s all been worked out as established science. Hogwash! Never has so much theory been sold as so much fact with so little real evidence as in the case of the evolution-as-explanation-for-all-life idea. It simply
does not account for all the diverse, highly complex, and unique forms of life that have lived. Bottom line, the intermediates theorized are not there.