Insight on the News
Evolution’s Probability: Zero
● In a recent letter to “Chemical & Engineering News,” Edward A. Boudreaux, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of New Orleans, pointed out that “there are a number of scientists who do indeed take issue with the evolution of man from apes, precisely because of what is stated in [the Bible book of] Genesis.” Prof. Boudreaux also wrote: “It is particularly pertinent to point out that the eminent theoretical physicist, Eugene P. Wigner, . . . gave an elegant and rigorous proof from group theory, that the probability for spontaneous existence of a self-reproducing unit of any kind is zero.”
“While this is not at odds with the Genesis account of creation,” said Boudreaux, “it certainly deals a severe blow to the uniformitarian evolutionary hypothesis of life—be it from apes to man or otherwise.”
Proponents of the evolution theory unscientifically grasp at one hypothetical possibility after another—all in an effort to prove the unprovable. But no such dilemma faces the realistic person who accepts as truth the Bible’s statement: “God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.”—Gen. 1:27; 2:7, 22.
Part of the Bible?
● An international group of 40 scholars is now preparing for publication, in English, a number of works never accepted as part of the Bible. Called the pseudepigrapha (meaning “false writings”), these include such books as “The Assumption of Moses,” “The Apocalypse of Ezra” and the “Book of Jubilees.” Some 47 works in all, these books reportedly were written between 200 B.C.E. and 200 C.E.
According to “Newsweek” magazine, the project’s director, Prof. James H. Charlesworth of Duke University, believes that when the ten-year undertaking is finished in 1980 “the public will have a dramatically new understanding of Christianity’s origins in Judaism.” The journal also states: “Among the more striking discoveries [in the pseudepigrapha] are a pronounced belief in astrology and a luxuriant angel worship which, in the view of some scholars, borders on polytheism.”
All of this may seem quite intriguing. But true Christianity was not a normal development of Jewish religious thought. And the fact that these uncanonical writings reveal “a pronounced belief in astrology and a luxuriant angel worship” clearly excludes them from “all Scripture [that] is inspired of God.” (2 Tim. 3:16) This is so because the Sacred Scriptures condemn astrology. (Isa. 47:12-15) Also, when the Christian apostle John spoke of falling down before the feet of an angel “to worship him,” he was told: “Be careful! Do not do that! . . . Worship God.”—Rev. 19:9, 10.
When Warnings Go Unheeded
● It has been estimated that over 15,000 people died and more than 100,000 were left homeless in the wake of a cyclone that ravaged the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on November 23, 1977. According to Chief Minister J. Vangal Rao, government officials took all “necessary prompt, appropriate and adequate action.” So, he contends, the populace had been given sufficient advance warning. Why, then, the great death toll?
A United Press International dispatch from the state capital of Hyderabad quotes Rao as saying that if the villagers “could have been persuaded to move, the local authorities could have done this.” But he added: “The fact was that they were very reluctant to move out.”
Often, perhaps because of apathy, disbelief or a reluctance to abandon material things, many persons have failed to heed warnings and have died needlessly in disasters. But they could have saved their lives by taking appropriate action. Similarly, many today ignore the Bible’s warning that the present system of things shortly will come to an end at God’s hand. Wise, indeed, are those who take lifesaving action, ‘doing their utmost to be found finally by God spotless, unblemished and in peace.’—2 Pet. 3:10-14.