Accidents of Evolution or Acts of Creation?

A HOT QUESTION BECOMING HOTTER

SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM wants to go to school. It wants equal time with evolution in the science classes of the public schools in the United States. To a lesser extent, it is also an issue in Canada.

EVOLUTIONISTS oppose its entry into the classroom. They say it is not a science, doesn’t belong in science classes, and would violate the principle of separation of Church and State.

THE CONTROVERSY has made headlines in newspapers across the United States. It has been debated in state legislatures and has been the issue in court trials.

Even the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science railed against creation at its meeting this year and announced tentatively that at next year’s meeting it will discuss ways of combating creation.

The controversy started by Darwin more than 100 years ago is still raging. But without getting involved in the political issues: THIS SPECIAL “AWAKE!” considers some basic questions:

Is evolution a fact established by the scientific method? Or is evolution unproved theory?

Is the Bible doctrine of creation scientific?

Can evolutionists show how nonliving chemicals turned into the first living, reproducing simple cell?

Does the fossil record tell how this first cell evolved into all living things on earth, including mankind?

Can random mutations produce the intricate designs and amazing instincts found in living creatures?

Let’s start our investigation with a look at the incredible cell itself. It’s not as simple as once thought!

The Incredible Cell

A LOOK INSIDE

DID YOUR 100,000,000,000,000 JUST HAPPEN?

When the theory of evolution was proposed in Charles Darwin’s day, scientists had no idea of the fantastic complexity that would be discovered in the cell. Most of the parts of an average cell can be clearly seen only with powerful electron microscopes. Here are a few of the parts of a typical animal cell​—all packed into a container only 1/1000th of an inch (.0025 cm) across:

[Diagram]

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CELL MEMBRANE

GOLGI COMPLEX

MITOCHONDRIA

ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM

CENTRIOLE

RIBOSOMES

LYSOSOME

MITOCHONDRIA​—These little sausages are production centers for a special molecule called ATP. The cell uses ATP molecules for energy. Inside the complex membranes of the mitochondria, ATP production may proceed at a furious rate. Over a dozen distinct chemical reactions are needed to make each ATP molecule, and all your cells together make many trillions of them every second.

RIBOSOMES​—These tiny particles can barely be seen, even by powerful electron microscopes, and most of your cells contain thousands of them. Ribosomes read instructions from other molecules and build proteins your body needs, doing so to precise specifications. Ribosomes are very complex, being made of no less than 55 separate protein molecules.

MICROTUBULES​—Cells can change shape by constructing or dissolving these structural elements, giving the cells a flexible “skeleton.” In very long nerve cells, microtubules form an internal “rapid transit” system.

LYSOSOMES​—As little sacs containing enzymes that can destroy the cell, these serve as the cell’s stomach, breaking down substances for the cell’s use. White blood cells attack harmful bacteria with the enzymes in their lysosomes.

ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM​—This seems to serve as a cellular warehouse of proteins and other molecules, which are stored separately for later use in the cell or shipment to the outside.

GOLGI APPARATUS​—It seems to help package newly synthesized protein from the endoplasmic reticulum so that the cell can use it.

NUCLEAR ENVELOPE​—To protect the cell’s DNA, the nuclear envelope is made of two membranes, containing pores that are not mere holes, but complex gates, sometimes open, sometimes not.

CHROMOSOMES​—Located inside the nucleus, they contain the cell’s DNA, its genetic master plan. The DNA is packaged around special proteins called histones, which may help regulate it.

CENTRIOLES​—These cylinders are made of nine sets of three microtubules each. When cells divide, centrioles apparently control the tiny fibers that separate the chromosomes from each other so that each new cell gets the right genetic information.

CELL MEMBRANE​—More than just a wall, the membrane must control what goes into the cell and what comes out of it. Too much fluid could rupture the cell, while not enough fluid would shut down the cell’s chemical reactions. Food must be carefully screened for dangerous substances and is admitted to the cell only after being safely wrapped up in a bit of the membrane for transport to a waiting lysosome.

Of course, the above listing merely scratches the surface. A single cell is vastly more complex than anything man has ever made. Really, could it have happened by chance?

Could Chance Create Bacteria?

THE COMPLEXITY OF THE SIMPLEST

SIMPLE? THEY HAVE THE LARGEST MOLECULES KNOWN!

MOST evolutionists will readily admit that animal cells, such as the one depicted on page 4, are marvels of biological complexity. ‘But the first living organisms were not so complicated,’ they will quickly add. “The first living organisms on the earth . . . were presumably one-celled entities resembling modern fermenting bacteria,” according to chemistry professor Richard E. Dickerson, writing in Scientific American magazine.

Very well, then. Consider the lowly bacterium and decide for yourself if it could have come into existence without a Creator.

Perhaps you would expect the cell walls of bacteria to be more primitive than the cell walls of higher organisms. The opposite is true. Higher plant cells have a wall of cellulose consisting of a string of sugar molecules. Bacterial cell walls also begin with strings of sugar molecules, but those strings are then intricately woven together with short chains of amino acids. The entire cell wall, as one scientist put it, “can be conceived of in a general way as a gigantic bag-shaped molecule.”

This bag is extremely strong. Bacterial cell walls withstand internal pressures of 300 pounds per square inch without bursting. Try that with your automobile tire!

It is true that bacteria do not have a nucleus, as do the cells of higher organisms. But even the simplest bacteria contain quite a bit of DNA, the universal genetic material. Instead of being enclosed by a nuclear membrane, bacterial DNA generally forms a single long loop inside the bacterium. The common E. coli bacterium has in its giant loop of DNA “by far the largest molecule known to occur in a biological system,” according to scientist Dr. John Cairns.

Does all of that sound like something that could have just washed up on some primeval beach? Could “the largest molecule” be an accidental combination of inert chemicals?

E. coli duplicates its DNA in preparation for the next division. In order for this to take place, the DNA molecule, which is designed something like a great twisted zipper, must be “unzipped” so that each half can form its complementary half. Sections of the DNA molecule called base pairs correspond to the teeth of a zipper. In the humble E. coli bacterium those base pairs are being duplicated, with scrupulous accuracy, at the rate of 150,000 per minute!

What happens when E. coli needs to travel? It literally sprouts a propeller. According to biology professor Howard Berg, six filaments arise on the sides of the cell and come together to form a bundle. These filaments rotate, something that requires “the structural equivalents of a rotor, a stator, and rotary bearings,” says Dr. Berg. Not bad for such a “primitive” form of life!

There is more. Like all living things, E. coli uses its DNA to direct the synthesis of chemicals it needs to live. The lowly bacterium controls its DNA through elaborate feedback mechanisms that activate or shut down sections of DNA according to need. “One must pause to remark on the extraordinary economy and efficiency of this control system,” says biochemist Jean-Pierre Changeux, who marvels that “the control costs the cell no expenditure of energy whatever. . . . A factory with control relays that require no energy for their operation would be the ultimate in industrial efficiency!”

The complexity of bacteria is not alone in arguing against their evolution. The very proteins that help make up bacteria, and other living things, show evolution to be hopelessly improbable. Why is that?

Evolutionists make much of a 1952 experiment in which scientists ran a spark through a mixture of gases and synthesized numerous chemicals, including some amino acids. This is considered significant, since amino acids, when properly linked together, form proteins, the basic building blocks of all living things.

Now, depending on how an amino acid is put together, it can be “left-handed” or “right-handed.” The amino acids created by various gas and spark experiments include equal numbers of the left- and right-handed models. However, as evolutionist Richard Dickerson admits, “except for certain special adaptations . . . all living organisms today incorporate only L [left-handed] amino acids.”

If a typical protein has 400 amino acids, the odds that all of them will be left-handed would be comparable to the odds against flipping a coin and getting heads 400 times in a row. There is less than one chance in one followed by over 100 zeros​—a number many times as great as all the atoms in all the galaxies of the known universe! Yet even if an impossible random protein of 400 left-handed amino acids were to coalesce spontaneously, it would have only the slightest chance of being formed of the proper left-handed amino acids​—there are 20 kinds—​and in the proper order.

The spontaneous generation of proteins by chance might be illustrated this way: Suppose you had a box containing equal amounts of letters and numbers on little squares of wood, identical to the touch. Now, blindfolded, you are told to choose 400 of these little squares. The odds against your choosing letters only and no numbers are high enough. But that is not all. The 400 blocks with letters that you have chosen must spell out a meaningful, grammatically correct paragraph when laid side by side in the order you chose them.

The complex systems of E. coli demonstrate another problem with the notion that evolution could be responsible for life, even primitive life. DNA molecules are necessary for life, but they are not enough for life. Other very complicated molecules such as enzymes are needed to direct and cooperate with the activities of the DNA.

Thus, life can exist only when several very complex systems come into existence at the same time and operate together in perfect harmony. None of the complex systems can ever lead to even primitive life without the other systems in place.

Evolutionists face this dilemma by simply asserting their “faith” in evolution.

[Blurb on page 6]

Bacterial cell walls withstand internal pressures of 300 pounds per square inch

[Blurb on page 7]

The base pairs of the E. coli bacterium are being duplicated 150,000 per minute

The Fossil Record​—Their Best Proof

THEIR CLAIMS, THEIR FACTS

WHAT THE EVOLUTIONISTS THEMSELVES SAY ABOUT THE FOSSIL RECORD

THEIR STAR WITNESS

“Fossils constitute the best evidence of evolution.”​—Introduction to Protozoology, page 36, by Reginald Manwell.

“By the aid of fossils paleontologists can now give us an excellent picture of the life of past ages.”​—A Guide to Earth History, page 48, by Richard Carrington.

“The truth of evolution was proved conclusively by paleontology.”​—Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution, page 87, by D. D. Davies (book edited by Jepson, Mayr and Simpson).

THEIR STAR WITNESS SAYS

On origin of life

“Geology tells us nothing of the origin of life.”​—Plant Life Through the Ages, by A. C. Seward.

On microscopic life

“We still know little of protozoan evolution.”​—Introduction to Protozoology, page 42, Manwell.

On plant life

“The theoretically primitive type eludes our grasp; our faith postulates its existence but the type fails to materialize.”​—Plant Life Through the Ages, Seward.

On insects

“There are no fossils known that show what the primitive ancestral insects looked like.”​—Life Nature Library, The Insects, page 14.

On fishes

“The first fish evolved. . . . To our knowledge, no ‘link’ connected this new beast to any previous form of life. The fish just appeared, with that structure which divides all animals into higher and lower life: the backbone.”​—Marvels and Mysteries of Our Animal World, page 25, by Jean George (a Reader’s Digest book).

On fish becoming amphibians

“Only a few remains of this presumed transitional stage have been found.”​—Life Nature Library, The Fishes, page 64.

On amphibians becoming reptiles

“One of the frustrating features of the fossil record of vertebrate history is that it shows so little about the evolution of reptiles during their earliest days, when the shelled egg was developing.”​—Life Nature Library, The Reptiles, page 37.

On reptiles becoming mammals

“Fossils, unfortunately, reveal very little about the creatures which we consider the first true mammals.”​—Life Nature Library, The Mammals, page 37.

“There is no missing link [that connects] mammals and reptiles.”​—Life Nature Library, The Reptiles, page 41.

On reptiles becoming birds

“There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved.”​—Biology and Comparative Physiology, W. E. Swinton, Vol. 1, p. 1.

On Apes

“For the whole Tertiary period, which involves something like 60 to 80 million years we have to read the history of primate evolution from a few handfuls of broken bones and teeth.”​—June 1956, Scientific American, page 98, by Eiseley.

“Unfortunately, the fossil record which would enable us to trace the emergence of the apes is still hopelessly incomplete.”​—Life Nature Library, The Primates, page 15.

From ape to man

“Unfortunately, the early stages of man’s evolutionary progress along his own individual line remain a total mystery.”​—Life Nature Library, The Primates, page 177.

“Even this relatively recent history is shot through with uncertainties; authorities are often at odds, both about fundamentals and about details.”​—Mankind Evolving, page 168, by Theodosius Dobzhansky.

OUR CONCLUSION:

We have followed a procedure Jesus once indicated: “Out of your own mouth I judge you.” (Luke 19:22) Evolutionists say that fossils give the best evidence of evolution, provide an excellent picture of it, prove it conclusively. Then they say:

‘No fossils on how life began, none on how microscopic life began, none on how plant life began, none on how insects began, none on how fishes began, none on how amphibians began, none on how reptiles began, none on how mammals began, none on how birds began, none on how apes began, and none on how man began.’

Their “best evidence” is no evidence. Their “excellent picture” is a total blank. Their ‘conclusive proof’ proves nothing. How do they escape this unsatisfactory testimony by their star witness? The following article reveals their revised tactics.

Evolution’s Revolution

WANTED: A REPLACEMENT FOR DARWIN

THE SCRAMBLE IS ON FOR NEW ANSWERS

EVOLUTION “is undergoing its broadest and deepest revolution in nearly 50 years.” So said a report on a meeting held in Chicago last October. Some 150 specialists in evolution held a four-day conference on the subject “Macroevolution.”

Science, the official journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reported the mood: “Clashes of personality and academic sniping created palpable tension . . . the proceedings were at times unruly and even acrimonious.” Many frustrated scientists complained that “a large proportion of the contributions were characterized more by description and assertion than by the presentation of data.” However, has not assertion instead of data long been the tactic of evolutionists?

Darwin had said that life evolved very slowly by small changes from a single-celled organism into all life on earth, including man. The fossil record should show these transitions, but he admitted it doesn’t. One hundred and twenty years ago, he said the record was incomplete, but he felt that more fossils would be discovered in time to fill in the gaps.

“The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist,” declared Niles Eldridge, paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He believes new species arise, not from gradual changes, but in sudden bursts of evolution. The many transitional forms needed for Darwinian evolution never existed​—no fossils will ever bridge the gaps.

Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard agrees with Eldridge. At the Chicago meeting he declared: “Certainly the record is poor, but the jerkiness you see is not the result of gaps, it is the consequence of the jerky mode of evolutionary change.” Everett Olson, UCLA paleontologist, said: “I take a dim view of the fossil record as a source of data.” Francisco Ayala, a former major advocate of Darwin’s slow changes, added this comment: “I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate.”

Science summed up the controversy: “The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution [small changes within the species] can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution [big jumps across species boundaries]. . . . the answer can be given as a clear, No.”

This revised view of evolution is called “punctuated equilibrium,” meaning one species remains for millions of years in the fossil record, suddenly disappears and a new species just as suddenly appears in the record. This, however, is not really a new proposal. Richard Goldschmidt advanced it in the 1930’s, called it the “hopeful monsters” hypothesis, and was much maligned for it then. “Punctuated equilibrium” is a much more impressive designation.

This theory is somewhat of a boon to evolutionists, for it does away with the need to come up with transitional forms. It makes changes happen too fast, the evolutionists contend, for fossils to record the events​—but not fast enough for us to see them happening. However, it is also a liability. When creationists pointed to the intricate designs in nature that required a designer, evolutionists enthroned natural selection as the designer. Now the role of natural selection has been eroded, and chance is ensconced in its place​—creationists have long held that evolutionists must depend on chance.

Gould recognizes that natural selection has lost ground to chance: “Substantial amounts of genetic change may not be subject to natural selection and may spread through populations at random.”

David Raup, curator of geology, writes in the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin for January 1979, on “Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology.” Raup says the fossil record shows change, but not “as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection. . . . it goes on in nature although good examples are surprisingly rare. . . . A currently important alternative to natural selection has to do with the effects of pure chance. . . . We are thus talking about the survival of the lucky as well as the survival of the fittest.” He thinks perhaps that “the mammals were not better than the dinosaurs but just luckier,” and concludes his article by saying of Darwin: “The part he missed was the simple element of chance!”

With chance in the dominant role guiding evolution, the thorny question of design returns: How can chance accomplish the intricate and amazing designs that are everywhere? The eye, Darwin said, made him shudder. Moreover, it is not just once that such miracles of design by chance have to occur, but they must happen again and again in unrelated species.

For example, the octopus is no relative of ours, but his eye is amazingly “human.” Unrelated fish and eels have electrical shocking equipment. Unrelated insects, worms, bacteria and fishes have luminous organs giving off cold light. Unrelated lampreys, mosquitoes and leeches have anticoagulants to keep their victims’ blood from clotting. Unrelated porcupines, echidnas and hedgehogs are said to have independently evolved quills. Unrelated dolphins and bats have sonar systems. Unrelated fish and insects have bifocal eyes for vision in air and under water. In many unrelated animals​—crustaceans, fishes, eels, insects, birds, mammals—​there are amazing abilities for migration.

Even more than all of this, evolutionists would have us believe that three different times warm-blooded animals developed from cold-blooded reptiles; three times color vision developed independently; five times wings and flight developed in unrelated fish, insects, pterodactyls, birds and mammals.

Could chance repeat these feats over and over again? The mathematics of probability shouts, No! Evolution’s revolution may have helped it live with the gappy fossil record, but it has handed chance a role to play that is far beyond its powers to perform.

[Blurb on page 10]

The “hopeful monsters” hypothesis reappears as “punctuated equilibrium”

[Blurb on page 11]

Before you can have survival of the fittest, chance must bring about arrival of the fittest

HUMANS ARE COPYCATS

THEY GIVE NO CREDIT TO GOD FOR HIS INVENTIONS, BUT THEY TAKE OUT PATENTS FOR THEIRS

THERMOMETERS

Man has made very sensitive thermometers and other heat gauges, but they are crude compared to the built-in abilities certain snakes have exercised for thousands of years. A rattlesnake, for example, can detect a heat change of one-thousandth of one degree Celsius. A boa constrictor responds to a heat change in 35 milliseconds, whereas a sensitive man-made instrument takes a minute to make the same measurement. Such snakes use this heat-sensing ability to search out and capture warm-bodied prey in the dark. The heat sensors also indicate the direction of the heat source.

HYPOTHERMIA

Surgeons now lower body temperature and slow heartbeat and breathing for certain operations, but long before this, animal hibernators practiced hypothermia. The tiny thirteen-lined ground squirrel, for example, during summer activity has a heartbeat and breathing rate of a few hundred times a minute. During winter sleep, however, its heart slows to one or two beats a minute and it takes a slow breath every five minutes. Body temperature drops to within a few degrees of the winter cold outside. Yet through it all the blood circulates, pressure remains normal, oxygen is supplied, and muscle tone is maintained.

ELECTRICITY

Prompted by Luigi Galvani’s treatise on animal electricity, the Italian physicist-chemist Volta made the first artificial constant-current electric battery. Millenniums before, however, some 500 varieties of electric fish had batteries. The African catfish can produce 350 volts, the giant electric ray of the North Atlantic puts out 50-ampere pulses of 60 volts, and the South American electric eel’s shocks have been measured as high as 886 volts. The currents are produced by banks of electroplaques​—in effect, voltaic cells. Each electroplaque is an individual electrochemical cell producing only a small fraction of a volt. But when thousands and sometimes millions of them are connected variously in series and in parallel in God’s creations, a natural electric battery is the result.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

Nerve-gas shells have two canisters of relatively nontoxic chemicals, but when the shell is fired the chemicals mix and upon explosion the deadly nerve gas is released. Long before this, and strictly for defensive purposes, the bombardier beetle had used chemical repellants. Glands produce two different chemicals, stored in separate chambers closed off by muscular valves. When it is attacked, the valves open and the two chemicals flow into a third heavily walled chamber. There an enzyme causes an explosive reaction, with an audible pop, and a noxious mist shoots out of a turret that the beetle can aim in any direction. The bombardier beetle can fire repeatedly, dozens of times in minutes, and ants, spiders, praying mantises, birds or snakes retreat gasping.

COMPUTERS

Computers do fantastic things, but they do not compare with human brains. The human brain​—three pounds of mystery, 2 percent of the body weight, uses 20 percent of the blood and 25 percent of the oxygen supply. Estimates of the number of its neurons range from 10 billion to 100 billion, and from 100 trillion to 500 trillion neuronal connections (synapses). A hundred million bits of information pour in every second, and the brain scans itself every one tenth of a second, operating on 20 watts of power. It receives, processes and evaluates information, makes decisions, sets goals, initiates actions, creates music and art. Only in the human brain are there systems programmed for speech. And only in the human brain is there an innate need to believe and to worship a higher power.

As one scientist said: “Anyone who speaks of a computer as an ‘electronic brain’ has never seen a brain.” Little wonder that Dr. Richard Restak says that the human brain is “immeasurably more complicated than anything else in the known universe.” And anthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn once declared: “To my mind, the human brain is the most marvelous and mysterious object in the whole universe.”

GOD’S FIRSTS ARE ENDLESS

Bats and dolphins use sonar; octopuses use jet propulsion; mosquitoes use hypodermic needles; wasps make paper; beavers build dams; ants make bridges; bees and termites use air conditioning; fish, worms and insects make cold light; birds weave, tie knots, construct incubators, do masonry, build apartment houses, desalinate seawater, have compasses and internal clocks, and navigate; beetles use aqualungs; spiders use diving bells, make doors, are balloonists; some fish and beetles have bifocals; snapping turtles and water scorpions use snorkels; animal eyes, like man’s solar cells, turn light into electricity; ants do gardening and tend livestock; a beetle prunes trees​—on and on could go the listing of creation’s mechanisms that human inventors copy. Men’s works are said to be due to their genius; God’s are dismissed as blind chance​—at least, by the evolutionist. Incredible!

Design Requires A Designer

“YES,” AND “NO,” SAY EVOLUTIONISTS

“EVERY HOUSE IS CONSTRUCTED BY SOMEONE, BUT HE THAT CONSTRUCTED ALL THINGS IS GOD.”​—HEBREWS 3:4

NO EVOLUTIONIST would contend that an inanimate house could build itself. But he is dogmatic that an inanimate universe did​—a universe with unknown millions of galaxies, each galaxy with unknown millions of stars, and all moving in awesome grandeur with split-second timing.

And much more than that. On earth, say the evolutionists, all the myriads of living organisms constructed themselves out of their ancestors, this continuing all the way back to an original first parent of everything, which spontaneously constructed itself out of nonliving chemicals. Neither is the evolutionist deterred from this course by the appalling complexity and the intricate and purposeful design found in all these living things.

We marvel at the ingenious inventions of human designers, but the greatest of their works is insignificant in comparison with the simplest living organism. With all their 20th-century scientific technology, they cannot even begin to construct a little single-celled amoeba. Yet they have no difficulty in assigning to blind chance​—random mutations with questionable help from natural selection—​the power to construct all life on the earth.

In this there is a glaring inconsistency. Evolutionists can blithely assign to chance the power to design all complex living creatures, and at the same time insist that extremely simple objects require the existence of an intelligent designer.

For example, a scientist digs in some ancient rubble, finds an oblong stone that has a groove circling its middle and confidently announces that it was bound to a stick and used as a hammer or weapon by primitive man. It was designed for a purpose by an intelligent creature. Not so, however, the feather of a bird. A flight feather may have thousands of barbs growing out of the shaft, hundreds of thousands of barbules out of the barbs, and millions of barbicels, or hooklets, to hold all these parts together for flying. If barbs get separated, they can be zipped together again by the bird’s beak. Zippers​—long before man “invented” them!

The product of an intelligent designer? Not to the evolutionist, who says: “How did this structural marvel evolve? It takes no great stretch of imagination to envisage a feather as a modified scale, basically like that of a reptile​—a longish scale loosely attached, whose outer edges frayed and spread out until it evolved into the highly complex structure that it is today.”​—Life Nature Library, The Birds, p. 34.

Another example of the evolutionist’s arbitrariness: The evolutionist finds a flat stone with a sharp edge, and he is sure this was designed by an intelligent Stone Age man as a knife or scraper. However, no designer is needed, the evolutionist tells us, for the little beetle called “mimosa girdler.” The female climbs up the mimosa tree, crawls out to the end of a limb, cuts a slit in the bark and lays her eggs there. Then she crawls back to the middle of the limb, gnaws a circle around the branch deep enough to cut through the cambium layer, and the end of the branch dies and falls off. The beetle’s eggs scatter and hatch, and the cycle begins again. The mimosa tree, in turn, benefits. It is pruned, and because of this lives twice as long​—40 or 50 years—​as it would otherwise. In fact, the mimosa tree puts out a scent to attract the mimosa girdler, and this little beetle can reproduce in no other tree. The flat, sharp stone required a designer; the mimosa girdler just happened. Or so we are told.

Another comparison: A small piece of sharp flint shaped like an arrowhead convinces the evolutionist that it was designed by man to use on the tip of an arrow or a spear. Such purposeful, designed things, he concludes, cannot happen by chance. But spiders are another matter, he says. Consider the spider Aranea. It has six teats, each having some 100 taps, each tap connected by an individual tube to a separate gland inside the spider. It can make separate threads or join them to produce a broad band of silk. Spiders manufacture seven kinds of silk. No species makes all seven, all have at least three, and Aranea makes five. Its 600 pipes do not all make silk; some extrude glue to make some of the web sticky. Aranea, however, oils her feet and never gets stuck. The source of these spinnerets? Legs became spinnerets, evolutionists say.

Reflect: The spider has the chemical lab to make the silk, the physical mechanisms to spin it, and the instinctive know-how to make the web. Any one of these is useless without the other two. They must all evolve by chance, at the same time, in the same spider. Evolutionists believe they did. Do you? Which could more easily just happen​—the sharp bit of flint, or the spider?

Let’s enter the space age to listen to Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University. “It is easy to create an interstellar radio message,” he says, “which can be recognized as emanating unambiguously from intelligent beings.” He believes that “by far the most promising method is to send pictures.” One suggested picture to send would show a man, woman, child, the solar system and several atoms​—all accomplished by sending a series of dots and dashes, each one called a “bit” of information, and requiring 1,271 bits in all.

Please reason on this. If 1,271 bits of information in a certain sequence suggested order and design and “unambiguously” proved it was “from intelligent beings,” what about the some 10 thousand million bits of information encoded in the chromosomes of every living cell? Evolutionists say the 1,271 bits of information ‘unambiguously prove an intelligent designer,’ but dismiss 10 thousand million bits of information as needing no designer, as just happening.

Do you not find such reasoning illogical, arbitrary, even prejudiced? If simple designs require a designer, would not extremely complex ones make a far stronger demand for an even greater designer? British theorist Edward Milne, when considering the origin of the universe, wisely concluded: “Our picture is incomplete without Him.”

[Picture on page 15]

THE ARROWHEAD REQUIRES A DESIGNER, BUT DNA DOESN’T?

Instinct​—Wisdom Programmed Before Birth

TINY BRAINS, COLOSSAL FEATS

“THEY ARE INSTINCTIVELY WISE.”​—PROVERBS 30:24

THE UNBELIEVABLE JOURNEY

The little blackpoll warbler is an unlikely candidate to ‘take on’ the evolutionary establishment​—but it does. This North American songbird weighs only 20 grams, less than three fourths of an ounce, and is but five inches (13 cm) long. Nevertheless, its migratory feats are colossal.

When fall approaches, it leaves its summer home in Alaska and flies southeast across the North American continent to the Atlantic coast, eating voraciously along the way, because the warbler’s journey has just begun.

Along the coast of New England, the blackpoll warbler waits and watches the weather. It somehow knows exactly what weather it wants​—a strong cold front that will pass southeast over the coast and out into the Atlantic.

When the cold front arrives, the little warbler sets off, helped by the favorable winds as it flies southeast​—out to sea. The cold front also means that there will probably not be any tropical storms to contend with en route​—a wise choice of weather!

Flying southeast puts the tiny bird on course for Africa, hopelessly distant and not its destination. But the blackpoll warbler doesn’t change direction. It flies nonstop past Bermuda, climbing to altitudes of 21,000 feet as it nears Antigua. It is cold and the oxygen is scarce at that altitude. Why is the little warbler up there? Because there it finds the prevailing winds that blow it west to its real destination, South America. After a nonstop flight of over 2,400 miles in more than three days and nights the warbler arrives on another continent, right on target!

Scientists marvel at the feat performed every year by this little bird. How does it know exactly what weather conditions to look for? How does it know just when to change altitude to find the winds that will take it to South America? How does it know to select exactly the proper navigational heading that will allow it to intersect with those winds at the right spot over the ocean? Scientists cannot explain it. Certainly the theory of evolution cannot.

There is, however, a good reason for the blackpoll’s unusual route. Its sea route to South America is much shorter than an “island hopping” trip would be, and there are few predators to worry about. The blackpoll warbler can make the nonstop flight, equivalent to a race horse running consecutive two-minute miles for 80 hours, because of its specially designed metabolism. “If a blackpoll warbler were burning gasoline instead of its reserves of body fat,” notes one scientist, “it could boast of getting 720,000 miles to the gallon!”

TERMITES​—AIR-CONDITIONING ENGINEERS

If you have termites, likely you have little sympathy for their physical weaknesses. They tend to be soft and weak, needing carefully controlled temperature and moisture. It would seem that such insects could never survive in the harsh climate of the tropics. Yet they thrive there. How?

The answer is termite architecture and engineering skills. Tropical termite nests are mounds of hardened mud that will make sparks fly from a hatchet. Some Australian termites build a long, narrow, wedge-shaped mound that always points north-south, apparently giving protection against the hot midday sun. Other species build mounds that look like human huts from a distance.

While the outside of a termite mound might be too hot to touch, inside it is a comfortable 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius). How is the temperature controlled? Thick walls help, but more is involved. Some termites dig tunnels 130 feet (40 m) into the ground below the nest to obtain water, which they use both to cool the nest by evaporation and to maintain proper humidity, even in the dry, hot desert air! Others build nests with a “cellar” and an “attic.” For air exchange, the outside of the mound contains hollow channels that regulate the temperature and make sure there is plenty of fresh air inside the nest. The termites are observed to be constantly at work on these channels, and by opening and closing them the air conditioning can be adjusted to perfection.

Who taught the termites their skills in architecture and engineering? Blind evolution? Or a discerning Master Designer?

THE DANCING BEES THAT VOTE

Perhaps you have heard of the instinctive feats of honeybees. These small creatures often have many jobs during their short lives, beginning as nurses to the queen and larvae, then graduating to become honeycomb builders, hive guards and janitors. But it is the older bees that have the risky assignment of foraging for nectar and other needed substances, and whose instinctive powers excite the most admiration.

When a foraging bee finds a new source of nectar it returns to the hive to share the good news. This is done by means of a dance. The speed of the dance and its pattern (whether a circle or a figure eight), as well as the amount of abdomen wagging done by the dancing bee, informs other bees of the distance to the nectar source. The direction to the nectar relative to the sun is indicated by the dance as well. “The language of bees seems unbelievable,” admits the book “The Insects,” “yet it has been confirmed by countless experiments.”

When the hive is overcrowded some of the bees follow the old queen to a new home. How do they know where to go? Scouts from the new swarm fly out in all directions. Now, however, they are not looking for flowers. They are looking for hollows in trees, cracks in walls​—sites for a new home. Upon return, the scouts dance to indicate the location of these new sites, much as they would dance to indicate the location of a flower. Scouts that have found good sites dance very enthusiastically, sometimes keeping at it for hours, while many other bees are stimulated by the energetic dance to have a look. Scouts that have found less desirable sites don’t dance as long or as enthusiastically, and fewer bees are stimulated to check them out.

Gradually the bees narrow down their choices to a few locations, and finally, to just one, as enthusiastic dances by follow-up scouts attract more and more support for the best site. In effect, the swarm is looking at several prospective sites and voting on the one they like best. The whole process may take five days, after which, with unanimous agreement, the swarm flies off to its new home!

Could accidental mutations and random events produce such marvelous communicative feats and social harmony? Do accidents and chaos produce harmony in any other society?

[Picture on page 16]

THE BLACKPOLL WARBLER​—GIFTED OCEAN MIGRANT

[Pictures on page 17]

A TERMITE HOME WITH AIR-CONDITIONED COMFORT

BEES GO TO THE POLLS

Is It a Fact?

WHAT SAYS THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD?

MANY EVOLUTIONISTS ARE DOGMATIC, BUT IS THERE ROOM FOR REASONABLE DOUBT?

IS EVOLUTION a scientific fact? Smithsonian Institution scientist Porter Kier is very dogmatic. At the last annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he said: “There are a hundred million fossils, all catalogued and identified, in museums around the world. That’s a hundred million facts for evolution.” How 100,000,000 fossils, admittedly not the transitional ones the theory demands, constitute 100,000,000 facts proving evolution, is not at all clear. Kier then adds that, while evolutionists may argue over details, “they agree that evolution is a fact and should be so labeled.”

Famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky is not so dogmatic. In the book Evolution, Dobzhansky and his coworkers described it as a hypothesis or theory and made this admission: “Scientific hypotheses can only be accepted provisionally, since their truth can never be conclusively established.” Using Dr. Karl Popper as authority, the book also states: “A hypothesis that is not subject, at least in principle, to the possibility of empirical [experimental] falsification does not belong in the realm of science.” Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard also refers to Popper and says: “A set of ideas that cannot, in principle, be falsified is not science.”

Why is all of this relevant to our discussion? Because it is on this basis that Gould and others eliminate creation as a science and therefore say it should not be included in science classes. Creation is not testable, not falsifiable by scientific experimentation. Creationists say ‘God did it’ and there’s no way to test that or prove it false. “‘Scientific creationism’ is a self-contradictory phrase,” Gould says, “precisely because it cannot be falsified.” But he is adamant that evolution is a fact.

Very interestingly, however, Dr. Popper applies this same criterion to evolution. He says: “I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.” Since it is not testable, the evolutionary theory is not science, according to these definitions. Not observable, not demonstratable by experiment, supported only by dogmatic assertions, it is not verifiable by the scientific method. Dr. Popper is highly respected for his study of the scientific method, and based on this method he finds evolution wanting as a legitimate scientific theory. Rather, he finds it to be, not science, but suitable for metaphysical research.

Norman Cousins gives a definition of the scientific method that not only describes it but also shows its value: “The most important thing about science is the scientific method​—a way of thinking systematically, a way of assembling evidence and appraising it, a way of conducting experiments so as to predict accurately what will happen under given circumstances, a way of ascertaining and recognizing one’s own errors, a way of finding the fallacies of long-held ideas. Science itself is constantly changing, largely as a result of the scientific method.”​—Anatomy of an Illness, pp. 120, 121.

Both evolution and creation describe events that happened, or allegedly happened, in the past. No human observers were there to witness them. They cannot be recreated in a laboratory. No scientific experiment could prove or disprove either evolution or creation. According to this reasoning, if the Bible account of creation is unscientific, by the same premises evolution also must be unscientific.

Why, then, do so many scientists believe evolution? “The reason why Darwinism has been almost universally accepted,” writes Dr. Popper, is that “its theory of adaptation was the first nontheistic one that was convincing; and theism was worse than an open admission of failure, for it created the impression that an ultimate explanation has been reached.” As evolutionist Peter Medawar puts it: “For a biologist the alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not to think at all.”

The acceptance of evolution by scientists has largely been due to their dislike of the alternative​—theism, a belief in God. But is it scientific to accept a theory simply because you do not like the alternative? What may rankle scientists like Medawar is that acknowledging God as Creator means they would be glorifying Him when they discovered amazing new facts about His creation. Would that be too much for their pride? Atheist Aldous Huxley’s admission reveals another possibility, when he says: “We objected to the morality [of the Bible] because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”

Is evolution a scientific fact? No.

Is it a testable scientific theory? No.

Does it adhere to the scientific method? No.

Really, then, just what is the theory of evolution, and why do so many believe it?

Please see the following article.

[Blurb on page 18]

“Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program”

[Box on page 19]

IS THERE CAUSE FOR REASONABLE DOUBT?

Is it reasonable to doubt that amoebas became fish? or fish, lizards? or that lizards turned into robins and wolves?

The book “Evolution,” by Dobzhansky, said that while the truth of evolution could never be established, it was a hypothesis “corroborated beyond reasonable doubt.” “Reasonable doubt” is legally defined as “such a doubt as would cause a reasonable and prudent man in the graver and more important affairs of life to pause and hesitate to act upon the truth of the matter charged [or, claimed].” One judicial decision ruled: “A ‘reasonable doubt’ is such a doubt as an upright man might entertain in an honest investigation after truth.”​—“Black’s Law Dictionary,” p. 580.

In court if there is reason to doubt a crucial piece of evidence, no conviction follows. Is it reasonable to have doubts that life spontaneously generated by chance? Reasonable to doubt that amoebas became fish? or fish lizards? or lizards turned into robins and wolves? Is doubting evolution reasonable doubt or unreasonable doubt?

If you believe evolution, when alone in your own bedroom in front of your mirror, where you will not lose face before anyone, ask yourself: Why do I believe evolution? Can I cite the evidence for it? Can I prove it to my own satisfaction? Or do I believe it only because others have told me I should? Is it really true, “corroborated beyond reasonable doubt”?

If Not a Fact, What Is It?

A RELIGIOUS “FAITH”? A PHILOSOPHY?

EVOLUTION “IS ALSO BEING QUESTIONED BY REPUTABLE SCIENTISTS”

‘UNBELIEVERS are uninformed, unreasonable, irresponsible, incompetent, ignorant, dogmatic, enslaved by old illusions and prejudices.’ In these ways leading evolutionists describe those who do not accept evolution as a fact. However, cool, logical, scientific reasoning, backed by observational and experimental evidence, need not resort to such personal invective.

The position of the evolutionists is more characteristic of religious dogmatism. When the chief priests and Pharisees saw the crowds accepting Jesus, they sent officers to arrest him, with this result: “The Temple police who had been sent to arrest him returned to the chief priests and Pharisees. ‘Why didn’t you bring him in?’ they demanded. ‘He says such wonderful things!’ they mumbled. ‘We’ve never heard anything like it.’ ‘So you also have been led astray?’ the Pharisees mocked. ‘Is there a single one of us Jewish rulers or Pharisees who believes he is the Messiah? These stupid crowds do, yes; but what do they know about it? A curse upon them anyway!”’​—John 7:32, 45-49, The Living Bible.

They were wrong, for evidence proves that many of the rulers were being affected by Jesus’ teaching. Even individual priests became his followers. (John 12:42; Acts 6:7; 15:5) Unable to refute Jesus, the Pharisees as a group resorted to tyranny of authority. Today evolutionists adopt the same tactics: ‘Stupid crowds, what do they know? All reputable scientists accept evolution!’ Not so. As Discover magazine said: “Now that hallowed theory is not only under attack by fundamentalist Christians, but is also being questioned by reputable scientists.”​—October 1980.

Writing in Science, R. E. Gibson said that Galileo possessed “a passionate antagonism to any kind of dogma based on human authority.” It was his intellectual integrity that got him into trouble with the Inquisition. But such integrity, Gibson asserts, “is not fashionable now; the present tendency is for the scientific community, now grown powerful, to behave much as the church did in Galileo’s time.” Is modern science handling power and prestige any better than the Catholic Church did? Einstein once remarked that we are not as far removed from Galileo’s time as we would like to think.​—Science, September 18, 1964, pp. 1271-1276.

Robert Jastrow refers to “the religious faith of the scientist” and his irritation when the evidence doesn’t match his beliefs. J. N. W. Sullivan calls belief in spontaneous generation “an article of faith,” and T. H. Huxley said it was “an act of philosophical faith.” Sullivan said that to believe that evolution made all life on earth was “an extraordinary act of faith.” Dr. J. R. Durant points out that “many scientists succumb to the temptation to be dogmatic, seizing upon new ideas with almost missionary zeal . . . In the case of the theory of evolution, the missionary spirit seems to have prevailed.” Physicist H. S. Lipson says that after Darwin “evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it.”

Proving the above, U.S. News & World Report (March 2, 1981) told of scandals in science labs. A researcher at Yale said: “It’s the Watergate of science.” The article concluded: “‘It’s shocking,’ acknowledges Dr. Arnold Relman, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. ‘It strikes yet another idol. Everyone turns out to have clay feet​—even some research scientists.”’ Simpson, in The Meaning of Evolution, said evolutionists “may use the same data to ‘prove’ diametrically opposed theories” and each one “puts his particular theory into the data.” (Pp. 137-9) Sullivan said that scientists do not “invariably tell the truth, or try to, even about their science. They have been known to lie, but they did not lie in order to serve science but, usually, religious or anti-religious prejudices.”​—Limitations of Science, pp. 173-5.

The original quest for truth is often forgotten as each one gleans for ideas to bolster his own emotional conviction, whether it be scientific dogma or religious creed. Evolution is not the caliber of the science that sends men to the moon or cracks the genetic code. It is more like religion​—priestlike authorities that speak ex cathedra, sectarian squabbles, unexplainable mysteries, faith in missing links and missing mutations, a laity that blindly follows, wresting evidence to fit their creed, and denouncing nonbelievers as stupid. And their god? The same one the ancients sacrificed to, preparing “a table for the god of Good Luck.”​—Isa. 65:11.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s famous tale of the emperor’s new clothes, it took a small child to tell the emperor that he was naked. Evolution now parades as fully clothed fact. We need childlike honesty to tell it that it’s naked. And we need courageous scientists like Professor Lipson, who said: “We must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.”

What evidence is there for belief in creation? See the following article.

[Box on page 21]

THE “TYRANNY OF AUTHORITY” USED BY EVOLUTIONISTS

“When he [Darwin] finished, the fact of evolution could be denied only by an abandonment of reason.”​—Life Nature Library, “Evolution,” p. 10.

“It is not a matter of personal taste whether or not we believe in evolution. The evidence for evolution is compelling.”​—“Evolution, Genetics, and Man,” p. 319, Dobzhansky.

“Its essential truth is now universally accepted by scientists competent to judge.”​—“Nature and Man’s Fate,” p. v, Hardin.

“The establishment of life’s family tree by the evolutionary process is now universally recognized by all responsible scientists.”​—“A Guide to Earth History,” p. 82, Carrington.

“No informed mind today denies that man is descended by slow process from the world of the fish and the frog.”​—“Life” magazine, August 26, 1966, Ardrey.

“It has become almost self-evident and requires no further proof to anyone reasonably free of old illusions and prejudices.”​—“The Meaning of Evolution,” p. 338, Simpson.

“There is no rival hypothesis except the outworn and completely refuted one of special creation, now retained only by the ignorant, the dogmatic, and the prejudiced.”​—“Outlines of General Zoology,” p. 407, Newman.

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.