BIBLICAL CREATION

DARWIN’S “DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION” THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION

EVOLUTIONISTS’

GENERALLY HELD POPULAR VIEWS

1st

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“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." [1]

How the heavens and earth came into being

is not addressed.

Everything started with a Big Bang. [2]

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The earth’s environment  was specifically created

to be very habitable

by organic life. [3]

Does not address the earth’s original environment.

The earth’s original environment contained little or no oxygen and the atmosphere consisted of poisonous gases.

[4]  [5] [6]   

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Everything was created by God in

 short periods of time. [7]

Descent with modification is a very slow process taking perhaps ten thousand successive generations to produce several forms “that differ largely, but perhaps unequally, from each other and from their common parent.” [8]  

Everything came about

by natural materialistic processes over

 billions of years. [9]  [10]

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 Top down account

All kinds of organic life were originally created perfect,

 fully developed,

  distinct and

to reproduce after their specific kind only.  [11] 

Bottom up theory

“I believe that all animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors and plants from an equal or lesser number.” [12] 

Bottom up theory

Life evolved from a

very simple cell or molecule to a multitude of more complex plants and  animals. [13]  [14] 

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Life on earth was created on creation days as follows:

3^rd day   

All kinds of vegetation

5^th day

All kinds of sea creatures and all kinds of birds

6^th day

All kinds of land animals

and

man in the image of God: both male and female. [15] 

Darwin’s tree of life [16] 

Base of Trunk:

 the original ancestors

Along Branches:

innumerable

 transitional forms

Branching points: common ancestors

End of Dead Branches:

extinctions

End of Living Branches:

perfected organisms

(Simplified)

1. Life on earth began

in a prebiotic soup, then evolved into the various species.  [17]

Theoretical examples:

Fish evolved to

amphibians

 that evolved to

reptiles

that evolved to

mammals [18]

2. Panspermia: The    various species were exported from

another world. [19] 

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Changes occur only  within kinds

Certain variations within each kind are necessary for adaptation to different environments and/or performs other functions in accordance with their purpose as designed by God.  Although changes occur within the kind, the offspring do not become another kind.  [20]

Move towards imperfection within kinds

Original Man, male and female,  revolted against the Creator resulting in corruption: increased birth pains, weeds, wickedness, violence including murder, reduced life spans, physical imperfections, disease, etc… [21]

Extinctions occur by catastrophic, over hunting, disease, and other means as a result of  the corruption

of the creation. [22]

Changes occur within and above species level

“As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable modifications, each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to take the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved parent or other less-favored forms with which it comes into competition… Hence, if we look at each species as descended from some other unknown form, both the parent and all the transitional varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very process of formation and perfection of the new form.” [23]

Changes occur within and above species level

1.  Modern Synthesis

“At the heart of the modern synthesis is the view that evolution is gradual and can be explained by small genetic changes in populations over time, due to the impact of natural selection on the phenotypic variation among individuals in the population.” [24]

2. Punctuated Equilibrium

 The belief “that the fossil record at any one site does not show gradual change but instead long periods of stasis followed by rapid speciation.” [25] 

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Man:

 First male, Adam, was formed from the dust of the ground and God breathed into his nostrils

the breath of life.

  First female, Eve, was formed from

 a rib of Adam. [26]

“(M)an is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.” [27]

Man descended from some ape-like common ancestors. [28]

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Man was created a spiritual and physical being.  From the beginning, man possessed intelligence, a spoken language,  knowledge (except good and evil), a free will, intents and emotion. [29]

Man is just an animal.   “(T)he difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and

 not of kind.” [30]

Man began with ape intelligence and spoke with grunts and evolved into a more advanced form.  [31]