Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to some of the most common basic questions people have about creation-evolution.
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General Creation Science is the study of science with the assumptions that God exists, that He is the creator and that the history described in the Bible is true. This is how science was done up until the last two hundred years or so. It is "thinking God's thoughts after Him" as the great mathematician and astronomer JOHANNES KEPLER said.
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The Bible says that the creation, everything around us, shows that God must exist:
"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Romans 1:20)
All around us we see evidence of design and purpose. Looking in the mirror we see an exquisite machine. DNA has a vast quantity of information housing the instructions to build and maintain life, and we know that there is no natural process capable of creating information - it must always come from a mind.
Only by suppressing these obvious truths can someone deny God.
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History has shown that people and societies behave very differently if they believe that people are made in the "image of God" versus being just a higher form of animal.
Hitler believed he was simply helping evolution along by eliminating the unfit.
On the other hand, Christians have started many institutions and organizations to help those who cannot help themselves.
I will not easily hurt another person if I understand that they are special to a God who is watching me.
There are two basic answers. They explain but don't minimize the suffering in the world:
- God made us with free will, and some people will choose to do bad things like hurt others.
- The original world was created "very good" but because of the sin of the first man, Adam, God has cursed the Earth, allowing physical evils such as tornadoes and earthquakes to take place.
God is allowing this condition for only a time - He will restore things to be very good again in the future.
The creation of the universe, Earth, plants, animals and the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) are described in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. There are over 250 references to Genesis in the rest of the Bible. So if Genesis is reduced to being mythology we have no reason to trust the Bible in general and it's critical message on our need to accept God's Son Jesus as our Savior so that we may have eternal life.
This is the most important question a person can ask!
God has made it as easy as A, B, C.
A) Agree with God that you are a lost sinner unable to save yourself. “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
B) Believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and ask Him to be your Savior. “To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” (John 1:12)
C) Confess the Lord Jesus Christ before men. “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)
“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; He has crossed over from death to life.” (John 5:24)
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
We pray that you make this decision TODAY! You will not regret it!
There are Christians who hold different views on this question of the age of the Earth and universe. So it is not a "go to the wall for" question. However it is still an important question. There is no hint of long ages in the Bible. The genealogies don't support an age beyond about 6,000 years. There are many global physical processes which point to a young age for the earth (e.g. the amount of salt in the oceans). There are also creationist theories which allow for the age of the universe to be older due to relativistic time dilation. Finally, the "mature creation" concept which the Bible teaches means Earth must have an appearance of age by definition (e.g. fully grown tress, rounded river rocks, Adam was a young man not a baby), and it is this apparent age which scientists now measure.
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Yes there are! But even most Christians do not know this. In the book of Job God is speaking to a man named Job and describes the greatest creature He has made:
"Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God" (Job 40:15-19a)
Bible translators and commentators frequently say this refers to the hippopotamus or the elephant, but they have tiny tails, while the behemoth has a big fat tail like a cedar tree, as we know that the large Suaropod dinosaurs did.
The word dinosaur was not coined until the year 1841 and so did not appear in the first English Bibles.
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Someone can be a Christian and believe in evolution, but it is inconsistent and not necessary. Evolution has many scientific flaws and cannot possibly be true. If evolution is true, the "very good" original world described in Genesis never existing and the need for Christ's death to overcome the sin of the first man, Adam, is not necessary. All scientific and historical evidence can be better explained from a creation perspective without the need for any evolution to have taken place. The geologic column is explained well by Noah's flood, with the smarter, more mobile animals getting buried later as they struggle to escape the flood waters, giving the false appearance of an evolutionary progression.
Can radioisotope dating be trusted? No - it relies on three basic assumptions which are questionable:
- Scientists have found that radioisotope decay rates may not have been constant throughout history (the ICR RATE study seems to show that there may have been periods of accelerated decay in the past).
- There is no way to know for sure if parent or daughter material has been added to or taken from the specimen (e.g. the system in which the specimen exists is not closed).
- There is no way to accurately determine the initial values of the parent and daughter elements in the sample.
Also, there are many known inconsistent results.
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Didn’t the biblical author (Moses) just write Genesis from the ancient mythology of the Egyptians, Sumerians and other nations? The answer is no. Genesis is clearly distinct from the mythology of other ancient nations. The Bible’s narrative tends to be straightforward with the author attempting to provide a step by step history of the universe. The correct understanding of other nation’s mythology (that reads similar to the Bible) is that they are the history of Genesis passed down through the generations (after the tower of Babel) by word of mouth. Genesis itself has clues (internal to the document) that help in understanding that Genesis has always been written down in one form or another. Whenever Genesis has the phrase “these are the generations” that is when Moses (being led by the Holy Spirit) used a written document that he had in his possession to aid in writing Genesis.
According to the Bible the creation of man and the creation of animals were two different creation events. Men and animals need to live in the same environment and therefore share a lot of common body chemistry, but this is the result of having a common designer, not the result of evolution of animals into men. All so-called ape-men are, upon closer analysis, either apes or men.
Man is made "in the image of God" making us very important and valuable!
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All touted examples of evolution in action are really just examples of natural selection, which all creationists agree is a valid scientific concept. The creation of life from non-life has never been demonstrated in the laboratory. Minor variation (natural selection) has been demonstrated in the laboratory and in the wild, but large-scale evolution (so-called macro-evolution) remains a mystery. This is consistent with known science, as life at its core is based on information (in the DNA) and information always comes from a mind, and NEVER results from a purely physical process, which is what mutation + natural selection is. Life defies any evolutionary explanation!
Do bacteria “evolve” resistance to antibiotics? No. What happens is that in a population of bacteria some already have a resistance to the antibiotic. Those that have a resistance survive and reproduce and create other resistant bacteria so that, in time, all bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic. This is not macroevolution, however, it is considered microevolution. Both creationists and evolutionists believe in microevolution (which we better term "variation"). Evolutionists, however, will claim that microevolution over millions of years leads to macroevolution. However, this is incorrect due to their different mechanisms; microevolution does not create new genetic code, it only rearranges or degrades existing genetic code, while the macroevolution process needs to add new unique genetic code to the organism. So-called microevolution is therefore not really evolution at all as nothing new is being produced. Even evolutionists consider macroevolution as a "research topic".
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Hasn’t life been created in the laboratory? No. The Urey Miller experiment in 1953 tried to generate life from hydrogen (H), methane (H+C), ammonia (H+N), and water vapor (H+O), with no free oxygen included in the test set up. The amino acid mixture produced contained only a few of the many necessary ingredients for even "simple" life, and many not used by any life. All amino acids were of both left and right-handed varieties, while life uses only left handed. Since the spark which formed the amino acids would much more readily have destroyed them, they had to be purposely removed from the system in a trap, thus concentrated in a manner most unnatural. Furthermore, such molecules could not have been stable without an ozone shield surrounding Earth. The original thinking of the test was that the early earth had no free oxygen, however, later discoveries have shown that the early Earth's atmosphere has always had free oxygen.
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