Re: Celebrate Evolution! today

On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:31:40 -0800 (PST), Mark
<blueriverday@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Okay, prove it's the word of God without referring to the Bible. I've asked
you to do this before and you've always dodged the question.

While Ernie wrote this and I have kill filed him long ago
since he really does not want to hear the answers, I will answer this
one.

When I first started to sturdy the Bible, I didn't even belive
in God at that time of life, after studying many other relgions pryer
to that time.

What surprise me about the Bible was where it dealt with
science, while it's NOT a science book, when it does touch on aspect
of science I was surprice by what I found.

That it tells the earth was round and hangs surpended in
space, that it goes into the whole water cycle, and how the plsenta
protects the baby in the wome from the mother's blood.

All things that man did NOT know at the time they were written
in the Bible.

Now if you wish to really find out if the Bible is the word of
God, then read either "The Bible God's Word or Man's.

Here are the things dealing with Science that proved it for
me:

*** gm chap. 8 pp. 98-116 Science: Has It Proved the Bible Wrong? ***

Chapter 8

Science: Has It Proved the Bible Wrong?

In 1613 the Italian scientist Galileo published a work known as
?Letters on Sunspots.? In it, he presented evidence that the earth
rotates around the sun, rather than the sun around the earth. By so
doing, he set in motion a series of events that finally brought him
before the Roman Catholic Inquisition under ?vehement suspicion of
heresy.? Eventually, he was forced to ?recant.? Why was the idea that
the earth moves around the sun viewed as heresy? Because Galileo?s
accusers claimed that it was contrary to what the Bible says.

IT IS widely held today that the Bible is unscientific, and some point
to Galileo?s experiences to prove it. But is this the case? When
answering that question, we have to remember that the Bible is a book
of prophecy, history, prayer, law, counsel, and knowledge about God.
It does not claim to be a scientific textbook. Nevertheless, when the
Bible does touch on scientific matters, what it says is completely
accurate.

Our Planet Earth

2 Consider, for example, what the Bible says about our planet, the
earth. In the book of Job, we read: ?[God] is stretching out the north
over the empty place, hanging the earth upon nothing.? (Job 26:7)
Compare this with Isaiah?s statement, when he says: ?There is One who
is dwelling above the circle of the earth.? (Isaiah 40:22) The picture
conveyed of a round earth ?hanging upon nothing? in ?the empty place?
reminds us strongly of the photographs taken by astronauts of the
sphere of the earth floating in empty space.

3 Consider, too, the earth?s amazing water cycle. Here is how
Compton?s Encyclopedia describes what happens: ?Water . . . evaporates
from the surface of the oceans into the atmosphere . . . Steadily
moving air currents in the earth?s atmosphere carry the moist air
inland. When the air cools, the vapor condenses to form water
droplets. These are seen most commonly as clouds. Often the droplets
come together to form raindrops. If the atmosphere is cold enough,
snowflakes form instead of raindrops. In either case, water that has
traveled from an ocean hundreds or even thousands of miles away falls
to the earth?s surface. There it gathers into streams or soaks into
the ground and begins its journey back to the sea.?1

4 This remarkable process, which makes life on dry land possible, was
well described about 3,000 years ago in simple, straightforward terms
in the Bible: ?All streams run into the sea, yet the sea never
overflows; back to the place from which the streams ran they return to
run again.??Ecclesiastes 1:7, The New English Bible.

5 Perhaps even more remarkable is the Bible?s insight into the history
of mountains. Here is what a textbook on geology says: ?From
Pre-Cambrian times down to the present, the perpetual process of
building and destroying mountains has continued. . . . Not only have
mountains originated from the bottom of vanished seas, but they have
often been submerged long after their formation, and then
re-elevated.?2 Compare this with the poetic language of the psalmist:
?With a watery deep just like a garment you covered [the earth]. The
waters were standing above the very mountains. Mountains proceeded to
ascend, valley plains proceeded to descend?to the place that you have
founded for them.??Psalm 104:6, 8.

?In the Beginning?

6 The very first verse of the Bible states: ?In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth.? (Genesis 1:1) Observations have
led scientists to theorize that the material universe did indeed have
a beginning. It has not existed for all time. Astronomer Robert
Jastrow, an agnostic in religious matters, wrote: ?The details differ,
but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts
of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced
suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light
and energy.?3

7 True, many scientists, while believing that the universe had a
beginning, do not accept the statement that ?God created.?
Nevertheless, some now admit that it is difficult to ignore the
evidence of some kind of intelligence behind everything. Physics
professor Freeman Dyson comments: ?The more I examine the universe and
study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that
the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.?

8 Dyson goes on to admit: ?Being a scientist, trained in the habits of
thought and language of the twentieth century rather than the
eighteenth, I do not claim that the architecture of the universe
proves the existence of God. I claim only that the architecture of the
universe is consistent with the hypothesis that mind plays an
essential role in its functioning.?4 His comment certainly betrays the
skeptical attitude of our time. But putting that skepticism aside, one
notes there is a remarkable harmony between modern science and the
Bible?s statement that ?in the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth.??Genesis 1:1.

Health and Sanitation

9 Consider the Bible?s coverage of another field: health and
sanitation. If an Israelite had a skin blemish suspected of being
leprosy, he was put in isolation. ?All the days that the plague is in
him he will be unclean. He is unclean. He should dwell isolated.
Outside the camp is his dwelling place.? (Leviticus 13:46) Even
infected garments were burned. (Leviticus 13:52) In those days, this
was an effective way of preventing the spread of the infection.

10 Another important law had to do with the disposal of human
excrement, which had to be buried outside the camp. (Deuteronomy
23:12, 13) This law no doubt saved Israel from many sicknesses. Even
today, severe health problems are caused in some lands by the improper
disposal of human wastes. If people in those lands would only follow
the law written down thousands of years ago in the Bible, they would
be much healthier.

11 The Bible?s high standard of hygiene even involved mental health. A
Bible proverb said: ?A calm heart is the life of the fleshly organism,
but jealousy is rottenness to the bones.? (Proverbs 14:30) In recent
years, medical research has demonstrated that our physical health is
indeed affected by our mental attitude. For example, Doctor
C. B. Thomas of Johns Hopkins University studied more than a thousand
graduates over a period of 16 years, matching their psychological
characteristics with their vulnerability to diseases. One thing she
noted: The graduates most vulnerable to disease were those who were
angrier and more anxious under stress.5

What Does the Bible Say?

12 If the Bible is so accurate in scientific fields, why did the
Catholic Church say that Galileo?s teaching that the earth moved
around the sun was unscriptural? Because of the way the authorities
interpreted certain Bible verses.6 Were they correct? Let us read two
of the passages they quoted and see.

13 One passage says: ?The sun rises, the sun sets; then to its place
it speeds and there it rises.? (Ecclesiastes 1:5, The Jerusalem Bible)
According to the Church?s argument, expressions such as ?the sun
rises? and ?the sun sets? mean that the sun, not the earth, is moving.
But even today we say that the sun rises and sets, and most of us know
that it is the earth that moves, not the sun. When we use expressions
like these, we are merely describing the apparent motion of the sun as
it appears to a human observer. The Bible writer was doing exactly the
same.

14 The other passage says: ?You fixed the earth on its foundations,
unshakeable for ever and ever.? (Psalm 104:5, The Jerusalem Bible)
This was interpreted to mean that after its creation the earth could
never move. In fact, though, the verse stresses the permanence of the
earth, not its immobility. The earth will never be ?shaken? out of
existence, or destroyed, as other Bible verses confirm. (Psalm 37:29;
Ecclesiastes 1:4) This scripture, too, has nothing to do with the
relative motion of the earth and the sun. In Galileo?s time, it was
the Church, not the Bible, that hindered free scientific discussion.

Evolution and Creation

15 There is, however, an area where many would say that modern science
and the Bible are hopelessly at odds. Most scientists believe the
theory of evolution, which teaches that all living things evolved from
a simple form of life that came into existence millions of years ago.
The Bible, on the other hand, teaches that each major group of living
things was specially created and reproduces only ?according to its
kind.? Man, it says, was created ?out of dust from the ground.?
(Genesis 1:21; 2:7) Is this a glaring scientific error in the Bible?
Before deciding, let us look more closely at what science knows, as
opposed to what it theorizes.

16 The theory of evolution was popularized during the last century by
Charles Darwin. When he was on the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific,
Darwin was strongly impressed by the different species of finches on
the different islands, which, he deduced, must all have descended from
just one ancestral species. Partly because of this observation, he
promoted the theory that all living things come from one original,
simple form. The driving force behind the evolution of higher
creatures from lower, he asserted, was natural selection, the survival
of the fittest. Thanks to evolution, he claimed, land animals
developed from fish, birds from reptiles, and so forth.

17 As a matter of fact, what Darwin observed in those isolated islands
was not out of harmony with the Bible, which allows for variation
within a major living kind. All the races of mankind, for example,
came from just one original human pair. (Genesis 2:7, 22-24) So it is
nothing strange that those different species of finches would spring
from a common ancestral species. But they did remain finches. They did
not evolve into hawks or eagles.

18 Neither the various species of finches nor anything else Darwin saw
proved that all living things, whether they be sharks or sea gulls,
elephants or earthworms, have a common ancestor. Nevertheless, many
scientists assert that evolution is no longer just a theory but that
it is a fact. Others, while recognizing the theory?s problems, say
that they believe it anyway. It is popular to do so. We, however, need
to know whether evolution has been proved to such an extent that the
Bible must be wrong.

Is It Proved?

19 How can the theory of evolution be tested? The most obvious way is
to examine the fossil record to see if a gradual change from one kind
to another really happened. Did it? No, as a number of scientists
honestly admit. One, Francis Hitching, writes: ?When you look for
links between major groups of animals, they simply aren?t there.?7 So
obvious is this lack of evidence in the fossil record that
evolutionists have come up with alternatives to Darwin?s theory of
gradual change. The truth is, though, that the sudden appearance of
animal kinds in the fossil record supports special creation much more
than it does evolution.

20 Moreover, Hitching shows that living creatures are programmed to
reproduce themselves exactly rather than evolve into something else.
He says: ?Living cells duplicate themselves with near-total fidelity.
The degree of error is so tiny that no man-made machine can approach
it. There are also built-in constraints. Plants reach a certain size
and refuse to grow any larger. Fruit flies refuse to become anything
but fruit flies under any circumstances yet devised.?8 Mutations
induced by scientists in fruit flies over many decades failed to force
these to evolve into something else.

The Origin of Life

21 Another thorny question that evolutionists have failed to answer
is: What was the origin of life? How did the first simple form of
life?from which we are all supposed to have descended?come into
existence? Centuries ago, this would not have appeared to be a
problem. Most people then thought that flies could develop from
decaying meat and that a pile of old rags could spontaneously produce
mice. But, more than a hundred years ago, the French chemist Louis
Pasteur clearly demonstrated that life can come only from preexisting
life.

22 So how do evolutionists explain the source of life? According to
the most popular theory, a chance combination of chemicals and energy
sparked a spontaneous generation of life millions of years ago. What
about the principle that Pasteur proved? The World Book Encyclopedia
explains: ?Pasteur showed that life cannot arise spontaneously under
the chemical and physical conditions present on the earth today.
Billions of years ago, however, the chemical and physical conditions
on the earth were far different?!9

23 Even under far different conditions, though, there is a huge gap
between nonliving matter and the simplest living thing. Michael
Denton, in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, says: ?Between a
living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as
a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it
is possible to conceive.?10 The idea that nonliving material could
come to life by some haphazard chance is so remote as to be
impossible. The Bible?s explanation, that ?life came from life? in
that life was created by God, is convincingly in harmony with the
facts.

Why Not Creation

24 Despite the problems inherent in the theory of evolution, belief in
creation is viewed today as unscientific, even eccentric. Why is this?
Why does even an authority such as Francis Hitching, who honestly
points up the weaknesses of evolution, reject the idea of creation?11
Michael Denton explains that evolution, with all its failings, will
continue to be taught because theories related to creation ?invoke
frankly supernatural causes.?12 In other words, the fact that creation
involves a Creator makes it unacceptable. Surely, this is the same
kind of circular reasoning that we met up with in the case of
miracles: Miracles are impossible because they are miraculous!

25 Besides, the theory of evolution itself is deeply suspect from a
scientific viewpoint. Michael Denton goes on to say: ?Being basically
a theory of historical reconstruction, [Darwin?s theory of evolution]
is impossible to verify by experiment or direct observation as is
normal in science. . . . Moreover, the theory of evolution deals with
a series of unique events, the origin of life, the origin of
intelligence and so on. Unique events are unrepeatable and cannot be
subjected to any sort of experimental investigation.?13 The truth is
that the theory of evolution, despite its popularity, is full of gaps
and problems. It gives no good reason to reject the Bible?s account of
the origin of life. The first chapter of Genesis provides a completely
reasonable account of how these ?unrepeatable? ?unique events? came
about during creative ?days? that stretched through millenniums of
time.

What About the Flood?

26 Many point to another supposed contradiction between the Bible and
modern science. In the book of Genesis, we read that thousands of
years ago the wickedness of men was so great that God determined to
destroy them. However, he instructed the righteous man Noah to build a
large wooden vessel, an ark. Then God brought a flood upon mankind.
Only Noah and his family survived, together with representatives of
all the animal species. The Flood was so great that ?all the tall
mountains that were under the whole heavens came to be
covered.??Genesis 7:19.

27 Where did all the water come from to cover the whole earth? The
Bible itself answers. Early in the creation process, when the expanse
of the atmosphere began to take shape, there came to be ?waters . . .
beneath the expanse? and ?waters . . . above the expanse.? (Genesis
1:7; 2 Peter 3:5) When the Flood came, the Bible says: ?The floodgates
of the heavens were opened.? (Genesis 7:11) Evidently, the ?waters
.. . . above the expanse? fell and provided much of the water for the
inundation.

28 Modern textbooks are inclined to discount a universal flood. So we
have to ask: Is the Flood just a myth, or did it really happen? Before
answering that, we should note that later worshipers of Jehovah
accepted the Flood as genuine history; they did not regard it as a
myth. Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, and Peter were among those who referred to
it as something that really happened. (Isaiah 54:9; Matthew 24:37-39;
Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20, 21; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:5-7) But there are
questions that have to be answered about this universal Deluge.

The Floodwaters

29 First, is not the idea of the whole earth?s being flooded too
farfetched? Not really. Indeed, to some extent the earth is still
flooded. Seventy percent of it is covered by water and only 30 percent
is dry land. Moreover, 75 percent of the earth?s fresh water is locked
up in glaciers and polar ice caps. If all this ice were to melt, the
sea level would rise much higher. Cities like New York and Tokyo would
disappear.

30 Further, The New Encyclopædia Britannica says: ?The average depth
of all the seas has been estimated at 3,790 metres (12,430 feet), a
figure considerably larger than that of the average elevation of the
land above the sea level, which is 840 metres (2,760 feet). If the
average depth is multiplied by its respective surface area, the volume
of the World Ocean is 11 times the volume of the land above sea
level.?14 So, if everything were leveled out?if the mountains were
flattened and the deep sea basins filled in?the sea would cover the
whole earth to a depth of thousands of meters.

31 For the Flood to have happened, the pre-Flood sea basins would have
to have been shallower, and the mountains lower than they are now. Is
this possible? Well, one textbook says: ?Where the mountains of the
world now tower to dizzy heights, oceans and plains once, millions of
years ago, stretched out in flat monotony. . . . The movements of the
continental plates cause the land both to rear up to heights where
only the hardiest of animals and plants can survive and, at the other
extreme, to plunge and lie in hidden splendor deep beneath the surface
of the sea.?15 Since the mountains and sea basins rise and fall, it is
apparent that at one time the mountains were not as high as they are
now and the great sea basins were not as deep.

32 What happened to the floodwaters after the Flood? They must have
drained into the sea basins. How? Scientists believe that the
continents rest on huge plates. Movement of these plates can cause
changes in the level of the earth?s surface. In some places today,
there are great underwater abysses more than six miles [more than
10 km] deep at the plate boundaries.16 It is quite likely that?perhaps
triggered by the Flood itself?the plates moved, the sea bottom sank,
and the great trenches opened, allowing the water to drain off the
land.

Traces of the Flood?

33 If we grant that a great flood could have happened, why have
scientists found no trace of it? Perhaps they have, but they interpret
the evidence some other way. For example, orthodox science teaches
that the surface of the earth has been shaped in many places by
powerful glaciers during a series of ice ages. But apparent evidence
of glacial activity can sometimes be the result of water action. Very
likely, then, some of the evidence for the Flood is being misread as
evidence of an ice age.

34 Similar mistakes have been made. Concerning the time when
scientists were developing their theory of ice ages, we read: ?They
were finding ice ages at every stage of the geologic history, in
keeping with the philosophy of uniformity. Careful reexamination of
the evidence in recent years, however, has rejected many of these ice
ages; formations once identified as glacial moraines have been
reinterpreted as beds laid down by mudflows, submarine landslides and
turbidity currents: avalanches of turbid water that carry silt, sand
and gravel out over the deep-ocean floor.?18

35 Another evidence for the Flood appears to exist in the fossil
record. At one time, according to this record, great saber-toothed
tigers stalked their prey in Europe, horses larger than any now living
roamed North America, and mammoths foraged in Siberia. Then, all
around the world, species of mammals became extinct. At the same time,
there was a sudden change of climate. Tens of thousands of mammoths
were killed and quick-frozen in Siberia. Alfred Wallace, the
well-known contemporary of Charles Darwin, considered that such a
widespread destruction must have been caused by some exceptional
worldwide event.19 Many have argued that this event was the Flood.

36 An editorial in the magazine Biblical Archaeologist observed: ?It
is important to remember that the story of a great flood is one of the
most widespread traditions in human culture . . . Nevertheless behind
the oldest traditions found in Near Eastern sources, there may well be
an actual flood of gigantic proportions dating from one of the pluvial
periods . . . many thousands of years ago.?20 The pluvial periods were
times when the surface of the earth was much wetter than now.
Freshwater lakes around the world were much larger. It is theorized
that the wetness was caused by heavy rains associated with the end of
the ice ages. But some have suggested that on one occasion the extreme
wetness of the earth?s surface was a result of the Flood.

Mankind Did Not Forget

37 Geology professor John McCampbell once wrote: ?The essential
differences between Biblical catastrophism [the Flood] and
evolutionary uniformitarianism are not over the factual data of
geology but over the interpretations of those data. The interpretation
preferred will depend largely upon the background and presuppositions
of the individual student.?21

38 That the Flood did happen is seen in the fact that mankind never
forgot it. All around the world, in locations as far apart as Alaska
and the South Sea Islands, there are ancient stories about it. Native,
pre-Columbian civilizations of America, as well as Aborigines of
Australia, all have stories about the Flood. While some of the
accounts differ in detail, the basic fact that the earth was flooded
and only a few humans were saved in a man-made vessel comes through in
nearly all versions. The only explanation for such a widespread
acceptance is that the Flood was a historical event.

39 Thus, in essential features the Bible is in harmony with modern
science. Where there is a conflict between the two, the scientists?
evidence is questionable. Where they agree, the Bible is often so
accurate that we have to believe it got its information from a
superhuman intelligence. Indeed, the Bible?s agreement with proved
science provides further evidence that it is God?s word, not man?s.
--
Women, never trust anything that bleeds for 5 days and doesn't die.
.

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