1st

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

D   How the heavens and earth came into being is not addressed.

E   Everything started with a Big Bang. [2]

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V

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N

M

E

N

T

B  The earth’s environment was specifically created to be very habitable by organic life. [3]

D   Does not address the earth’s original environment.

E   The earth’s original environment contained little, or no oxygen and the atmosphere consisted of poisonous gases. [4][5][6]  

T

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M

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B   Everything was created by God in short periods of time. [7] 

D   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]

E   Everything came about by natural materialistic processes over billions of years. [9] [10]

D

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B  Top-down account

All kinds of organic life were originally created perfect, fully developed, distinct and to reproduce after their specific kind only.  [11]  

D   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]  

E   Bottom-up theory

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

O

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D

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F

F

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B  Life on earth was created on creation days as follows:

3rd day - All kinds of vegetation

5th day - All kinds of sea creatures and all kinds of birds

6th day - All kinds of land animals and man in the image of God: both male and female. [15] 

D  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)

E  1. Life on earth began in a prebiotic soup, then evolved into 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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A

N

D

D

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N

O

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C

H

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G

E

B  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 because of the corruption of the creation. [22]

D   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]

E   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] 

O

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G

I

N

O

F

M

A

N

B  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]

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

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

E

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S

E

N

C

E

O

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M

A

N

B    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]   

D   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] 

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