What Does Fit the Facts?

READ AND JUDGE FOR YOURSELF

AS KNOWLEDGE ADVANCES EVOLUTION RETREATS

ANCIENT Egyptians saw scarab beetles suddenly appear out of the ground, and believed they were self-produced. But female beetles had laid eggs in balls of dung and buried them, and the offspring later emerged. Spontaneous generation? In the fifth century B.C.E. the Greek philosophers Anaxagoras and Empedocles taught it, and a century later Aristotle thought that worms and snails were products of putrefaction. As late as the 17th century C.E. scientists Francis Bacon and William Harvey taught spontaneous generation.

Advancing knowledge changed all of that. In that same 17th century, Redi showed that maggots appeared in meat only after flies laid eggs on it. Bacteria were discovered and hailed as examples of spontaneous generation of life, but a century later Spallanzani punctured that balloon. In the century after that Pasteur settled it that “life comes only from life.” This is now axiomatic. Even Darwin accepted this, saying in the closing sentence of The Origin of Species that life originated by “having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.”​—Page 450, Mentor edition.

Creation fits the fact that “life comes only from life.” Of Jehovah God, it is written: “With you is the source of life.”​—Ps. 36:9.

Next, fossils say creation. Simpson writes in The Meaning of Evolution: “Early Cambrian rocks, laid down about 500,000,000 years ago, are crowded with fossils. One place or another on earth there are also rich fossil deposits of almost all ages since the early Cambrian. But in rocks earlier than the Cambrian, representing the great span of 1,500,000,000 years, fossils are generally rare and usually dubious and disputed.” This abrupt bursting into the fossil record of fossils of all the major groups or phyla, except vertebrates, Simpson called “this major mystery of the history of life.”​—Pages 16-19.

Harvard’s professor Romer quoted Darwin’s comment on this mystery, “I can give no satisfactory answer”​—and Romer added, “Nor can we today.” Significantly, he then observed: “The general picture could reasonably be said to be consistent with the idea of a special creation at the beginning of Cambrian times.” However, now that the fossil record is superabundant since Cambrian times, does it show the beginnings of vertebrate or backboned life? No. Zoology professor Goldschmidt said, in The Material Basis of Evolution: “The facts fail to give any information regarding the origin of actual species, not to mention the higher categories.” (Page 165) Among fossil experts today this is a generally accepted fact.

Interestingly, evolutionists are aware that the fossil record is more compatible with creation than with evolution, even as they vehemently reject creation. Years ago several acknowledged this: “The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion. . . . The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but is irrational.” (L. T. More) “Evolution itself is accepted by zoologists, not because it . . . can be proved by logical coherent evidence, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.” (D. Watson) “Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.”​—Sir Arthur Keith.

Today some still see creation as fitting the facts. J. H. Corner, Cambridge University botanist and evolutionist, stated: “I still think, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.” (Contemporary Botanical Thought, 1961, p. 97) In the Physics Bulletin, May 1980, Professor Lipson reluctantly said: “We must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation.”

The fossil record does not support the theory of evolution. Creation fits its facts.

Even mutations fail evolution. Mutations are changes in the genetic material and produce new inheritable characteristics in the organism. The vast majority of the small ones are harmful; the big ones are crippling or lethal. They are believed to contribute to the degeneration of organisms and are responsible for many diseases and malformations. Nevertheless, evolutionists place hope in them as mechanisms of evolution. But they are found to be inadequate to produce new family kinds. Evolutionist Bengelsdorf said: “Mutations, involving base changes in genes, can account for differences between two men . . . But, for various reasons, they cannot account for overall evolution​—why there are fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals.”

Creationists have always acknowledged variation within the family kinds of Genesis chapter one​—the degree of variation attested to by the magazine Science for November 21, 1980: “Species do indeed have a capacity to undergo minor modifications in their physical and other characteristics, but this is limited and with a longer perspective it is reflected in an oscillation about a mean.” Verifying this experimentally, geneticists have induced floods of mutations in rapidly reproducing creatures, yet, “after 40 years of manipulating the evolution of fruit flies, which spawn generations in days, many bizarre changes have been seen, but fruit flies always remain fruit flies.”

The fossil record shows species breeding true for millions of years, according to evolutionists. Mutations, through both observation and experimentation, show constancy of species. When Genesis 1:12, 21, 24 says life would bring forth “according to its kind,” it fits the scientific facts.

Finally, the greatest gap of all. There is a tremendous gulf between man and the animal evolutionists consider closest to him. “Even this relatively recent history,” says Dobzhansky, “is shot through with uncertainties; authorities are often at odds, both about fundamentals and about details.” (Mankind Evolving, p. 168) Anthropologists make excited claims for their finds of bits of bones and teeth, then discard them as missing links when they find other similar scraps and enthrone them as the missing link between ape and man​—and squabble with other evolutionists who push their finds as the real link.

Man’s gifts of language, logic, creative thinking, music and art, his awareness of time past, present and future, his need for accomplishment and meaning and purpose in his life, his capacities for the qualities of justice, kindness, compassion and love​—these set man far beyond any animal. This is not explainable on the basis of evolution, but is attributable to the creation of man ‘in the image and likeness of God.’ (Gen. 1:26, 27) Once again it is creation that fits the facts.

Incidentally, many modernist religionists embrace evolution by saying that God created man, but used evolution to do it. The Genesis record does not allow for this. Our Creator did not evolve man from some animal, but “Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground.”​—Gen. 2:7.

Life’s origin says, Creation! Fossils say, Creation! Mutations say, Creation! The gulf between man and the closest animal cries out, Creation! It is creation, not evolution, that fits the scientific facts!

[Blurb on page 24]

“To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation”

[Box on page 23]

THE LENGTH OF THE CREATIVE DAYS

While shrouding their theory in mystic billions of years, evolutionists have often derided the six creative “days” of the Bible. But, interestingly, the Bible itself shows that these days were not 24-hour time periods. The Hebrew word “yohm,” translated “day” in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, may have various meanings, as follows:

1. The period of light, daylight.​—Prov. 4:18.

2. The 24-hour period, day and night.​—Gen. 7:17.

3. A period of time characterized by certain events, as defined in William Wilson’s “Old Testament Word Studies”: “A day; it is frequently put for time in general, or for a long time; a whole period under consideration . . . Day is also put for a particular season or time when any extraordinary event happens.”​—Page 109. Examples from the Bible of number 3:

“Day” can include summer and winter, the passing of seasons.​—Zech. 14:8.

A certain “day” later shown to be many days.​—Ezek. 38:14, 16; compare Proverbs 25:13 and Genesis 30:14.

A thousand years likened to a day, and also to a night watch of four hours: “A thousand years are in your eyes but as yesterday . . . and as a watch during the night.”​—Ps. 90:4; also see 2 Peter 3:8, 10.

The “day of salvation” spans thousands of years.​—Isa. 49:8.

“Judgment Day” covers many years​—Matt. 10:15; 11:22-24.

A man’s lifetime referred to as his day: “Noah’s day” “Lot’s day.” Even now we may speak of “my father’s day.” We may even divide up that day, saying “in the morning or dawn of his life” or “in the evening or sunset of his life.”​—Luke 17:26, 28, “The Jerusalem Bible.”

The days of creation:

How do we know that the creative days of Genesis are not 24-hour days? Because all six of those days are called one day, at Genesis 2:4: “This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time [six days] of their being created, in the day [one day] that Jehovah God made earth and heaven.” Also, the seventh day of the creative week was Jehovah’s rest day, or sabbath, from earthly creating, which the Bible indicates is still continuing.​—Heb. 4:3-11.

The six days of creation marked periods when certain work was accomplished. The Hebrew word “yohm,” translated “day,” allows for these long time periods.​—See “Aid to Bible Understanding,” page 1427, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.