Part 3: The Premise For Evolution

I was sitting in my shop the other day. We had just finished relocating my office and my daughters bedroom. The child is in her second year of college and we moved into the house when she was in the first grade, and like me nothing had been thrown away. Anyway, everything that was not put in the back of my truck or in the dumpster including what we brought back from the lake, guess where all the extras had landed? You would be right. Not only had we brought in everything from the house and lake but I also had built some extra shelves for storage space in the utility room and in my shop to store the extras. To give you an idea of what size my shop is, it's dimensions are 12x24 and you would think it could hold a lot. Originally the shop had been built to not only hold all my tools that were in the garage but all the parts and paraphernalia that went along with my job. Now that I'm retired all the parts are gone and you would think there would be plenty of room. Well, as you enter the shop and to the right where the parts used to be there are now 3 large coolers, spare parts boxes (like what fishing tackle or screws and nails go into) extra water for the possibility of a hurricane, a couple of window units (in the event we loose power) extra fishing tackle I don't have room for at the lake, extra tile from a remodel 5 years ago, paint both old and new...anyway you get the picture. On the back wall are two twelve foot wire shelves that now hold all the stuff that comes from Sam's (supplies bought in bulk) and under all those shelves, boxes of Southern Living products. At the end of the shelves is a small alcove where all my lawn equipment is stored and on the far wall and the other long wall are a series of work benches. Under the benches are generators and power cables in case we loose power, extra wood from a previous project, and several tools chests. On top the benches everything I couldn't make room for, at least for the time being. Above the benches are more wire shelves and on those - you guessed it, more tools and things that don't fit under or on the bench. Oh, and I almost forgot the table saw, shop vac, the stool I was sitting on, and of course a wooden love seat with vinal covered cushions.

Something I forgot to mention, a while back one of my drawers from one of several tool chests came loose, and in that drawer were boat loads of sockets, you know the kind you use to work on anything that has a bolt or a nut in it. Now I don't have just a quarter inch set, I have everything up to and including a five eights and half inch set. Well being the organized guy that I am I put the drawer back and dumped all the sockets back in. To make matters worse they were both standard and metric. In the rest of those cabinets are pliers, screwdrivers, wrenches, etc. You name it I probably have it and over the years the collection has grown. What I'm trying to say is this, I need about a week to go in and re-organize and throw some stuff away. Now I'm sure there is another pack rat out there reading this and having a stoke over the fact I would throw away a tool, but lets face it, a pair of pliers that's rusted shut don't work to well, and a screw diver that's been used as a chisel doesn't work to well either. Then there's the drawers of nails, screws and an assortment of, (I can't throw that away because I might be able to use it some day). Now you can see why I was just sitting there.

Now I know you all are wondering, where in the world is he going with this? Its very simple really, I was hoping for an event much like the big bang theory to take place, you known blow the whole place up and then hope when all the pieces of my shop came down they fall back into place including all my tools and everything else that I had stacked in there, then I wouldn't have to mess with it. Bad grammer, yes, but you get my point.

Sounds a little ridiculous doesn't it, but it makes about as much sense as the other example used and that would be blowing up a print shop and have the complete unabridged Webster's dictionary appear after all the dust settles. But if you look at evolution you'll see these examples fit perfectly and you'll see why as we continue.

One theory states...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.

The other theory states... There is no truly "standard model" of the origin of life. But most currently accepted models build in one way or another upon a number of discoveries about the origin of molecular and cellular components for life, which are listed in a rough order of postulated emergence: and they go on with what they think may have happened.

Now I haven't proven anything, all I have done is put forth two theories. But in the next article we're going to take a closer look at what both sides have to say, and I think you will find the results very interesting. Before we close this article out we need to look at the word "premise" to see what it actually means. Here are all the words the thesaurus brought up. Premise is the basis, principle, idea, foundation, argument, hypothesis, assertion, ground, thesis, or presupposition. To some up this article we could say that we are looking for an argument that supports our theories.

Darwin's premise was - complex creatures evolve from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time

Creation's premise is - In the beginning God created.

In the next article we'll look at the two premises, but in the mean time I'd like to get back to my examples. Both of them either demonstrate chance or the lack of organization. Are we a product of chance, of a disorganised random set of circumstances, or were we part of a well organized plan? Follow along with me as we continue to examine the question, Where did we come from?

Part 2: Who to believe

In our first article we talked about theory, fact, and evidence. The next word we need to explore is perception. The dictionary describes perception as an attitude or understanding based on what is observed or thought. This week I sat in on an eighth grade science class for the purpose of observing prior to becoming a substitute teacher. Interestingly enough they were discussing sight and the ability to observe. The teacher had them do an experiment. She placed in front of each student and myself a stack of cards. On the first card was a green square. The experiment was based around the ability of the eye to detect color. Now, what is color?

If we use the color green as the teacher did we will see a wavelength of light roughly in the 520-570 nm wave length. Green is considered to be one of the additive primary colors. On the HSV Color Wheel, the complement of green is magenta; that is a color corresponding to an equal mixture of red and blue light which is one of the purples. On a color wheel based on traditional color theory, the complementary color to green is considered to be red.

Try this. Take a green magic marker and make a rectangle about one inch by three inches and color it. Then stare intently at the green square for sixty seconds. As you stare at it you’ll see a pink glow around the edges. When you see the glow, take a white sheet of paper and stare at it. What you will see is not a green square but a pink one. Now you ask the question, what does that have to do with what we’ve been discussing?”

In this experiment the teacher used different color cards. As the experiment progressed and the students wrote down what they saw it became evident that some saw different shades than others. One student’s perception of color was different than some of the other students, and according to Doctor Jeremy Walter science is the human enterprise of seeking to describe accurately and quantitatively the nature and process of our universe through observation, hypothesis, and experimental validation.

How many times have you been with a group of people and all of you observed the same event but came away with different conclusions?

Science says that the earth is billions of years old. How did they come to that conclusion? The essence of this so called scientific evidence is based on what we would call feasibility studies. Simply put, its evidence compiled to support one particular model of earths history. Now, how do I back that statement up?

There is a law called, the law of causality, or cause and effect. This law states that one cause can have many effects, but no effect can be quantitatively greater or qualitatively superior to its cause. So what does that mean? The definition of cause states,

A person or thing that makes something happen or exist or is responsible for something that happens.

The effect means, a change or changed state occurring as a direct result of action by somebody or something else.
Now, according to Wikipedia the law is stated as such.

Causality or causation denotes the relationship between one event called cause and another event called effect which is the consequence or result of the first.
This informal understanding suffices in everyday usage, however the philosophical analysis of causality or causation has proved exceedingly difficult. The work of philosophers to understand causality and how best to characterize it extends over a millennia of time. In the western philosophical tradition explicit discussion stretches back at least as far as Aristotle, and the topic remains a staple in contemporary philosophy journals. Though cause and effect are most often held to relate events, other candidates include processes, properties, variables, facts, and states of afairs; which of these comprise the correct causal relationship, and how best to characterize the nature of the relationship between them, has as yet no universally accepted answer, and remains under discussion.

According to Sowa (2000), up until the twentieth century, three assumptions described by Max Born in 1949 were dominant in the definition of causality:

The first being that, "Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect.

The second, "Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect. (which in my mind eliminates theistic evolution)

And three, "Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact." (Born, 1949, as cited in Sowa, 2000) (This in my mind eliminates evolution in general)

However, according to Sowa (2000), "relativity and quantum mechanics have forced physicists to abandon these assumptions as exact statements of what happens at the most fundamental levels, but they remain valid at the level of human experience."

So another words these laws apply to us as humans but not at the level of creation, after all relativity and quantum mechanics are the sciences used to determine the basic building blocks of creation and the big bang theory. With this statement a question arises in my mind and here again its my belief that evolutionists have had to change their line of thinking.

But I think what is more important for the common person is not so much this law but the word observation. Observation always relates to the present. As much as science would like to observe the past though technology there’s a flaw which takes us back to the experiment done in an eighth grade classroom. Just as different students saw different shades of color, observation made in a controlled environment can be flawed because of a misinterpretation by the brain because of preconception. If that can happen in a controlled environment, think about observations made where we don’t know what the outcome will be. Now, if we can observe a situation in a controlled environment and make mistakes in the here and now, what kind of mistakes will be made the further removed from the time the event took place.

So where did science come up with the age of the earth since we have no human records available. Here again its through observation. The problem with observation when there is no documented evidence we sometimes ignore evidence that is contradictory to the theory or hypothesis we’re attempting to prove because of preconceived ideas. Lets take for example the light from stars. Light travels at 186,000 mps. Using that fact which is real they calculate the time it took for the light from the star to reach earth. The math is ok, unless we figure in what it says in Genesis 1:14

And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

However, with a preconceived idea that Genesis is a myth and God doesn’t exist you have to establish a great age to develop your theory. Evolutionists theorize that places like the Grand Canyon and other geologic formations took millions of years to form and the great flood of Genesis was only a myth. After looking at all the data surrounding the eruption of Mount St. Helens it was demonstrated that a cataclysmic event could produce the same effect in a much shorter time period and the dating processes used by evolutionist require us to re-examine science as it is being taught.
So is the earth millions of years old as Darwinian evolution would have you believe, or is it about ten thousand years as the creationist believe? The only answer I can come up with is, nobody really knows. But I would ask you this. If God is who he said he is, then He is timeless. If God is who He said is and was and is to be, then he has always been in the mode of creating, and in my opinion our universe may just be a small part of an endless creation in the making.

Part 1: What to believe

As of this writing it’s been almost fifteen years now, but an idea for a Christian line of science fiction books began to form. As a science fiction fan it has always bothered me that of all the books, movies and television series, evolution was written about as fact rather than what it really is, a theory. But hold on, the story of creation is also a theory. Now before I get those of you who believe in creation upset at me and those who believe in Darwinian evolution or even theistic evolution believing I'm on your side lets look at what Webster says a theory is. From the Encarta Dictionary it says,”

“A theory is a set of facts, propositions, or principles analyzed in their relation to one another and used, especially in science, to explain phenomena.”

Now let’s look at the definition of “Fact”. Here again the Encarta Dictionary states,”

It’s the truth or actual existence of something, as opposed to the supposition of something or a belief about something. Or it’s a piece of information, e.g. a statistic or a statement of the truth such as a piece of information, e.g. a statistic or a statement of the truth.”

There is one more definition we need to look at, and that word is evidence. Here again the dictionary states,”

“It’s something that gives a sign or proof of the existence or truth of something, or that helps somebody to come to a particular conclusion.”

"But you say, "What about the Bible, it says..." and I agree, but just as it takes faith to believe in a theory, it takes faith to believe in the scriptures. Faith in the scriptures is not proof that God created, it's something you must take by faith."

I’m not a theologian nor am I a scientist, but a man who has spent more than half his life searching for answers. I know what I was taught, but there are times when we have to take what we've been taught and verify what we've learned both at home and in school to see if it meets a certain standard. Such is the case with creation. To prove either evolution or creationism we would have to produce or reference something that would substantiate with out a doubt what we believe to be the truth, and neither evolution of creation can do that.

Depending on what side of the argument you happen to be on you can bring to the table a lot of what a court might call circumstantial evidence. The Encarta Dictionary says this about circumstantial evidence.”

Its evidence containing or based on facts that allow a court to deduce that somebody is guilty without conclusive proof.”

In this case neither side can produce the evidence needed to prove the other one wrong. By this time I’m sure you’re wondering just which side am I really on? If you haven’t figured that one out go back to the beginning of this article or you can continue on because you’ll soon find out. Over the course of time I plan on giving what I believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that disproves the theory of both Darwinian and theistic evolution. When we’re through I hope that many will believe as I do, in a creation that took six days. In my first book, "The Oxbow Report", which I hope you will not only read to enjoy, but will read it with the idea that you just might change your mind, you'll find our characters like us are in search of what happened at creation and where did we come from. First of all I hope it’s a fun read. I hope you enjoy reading the books and getting into the characters and the plots as much as I’ve had in creating them. But throughout the series there is an underlining message and a plot I hope to share, and that will be for you the reader to figure out. In the coming months this blog will deal with a lot of subjects, all relating to who is right. Join me won’t you as we explore the mystery of, “Where did we come from!”

One last note, I can only write, but it is you the reader that will make this blog and the books successful