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In the beginning God created
The True Origin of Species
Genesis 1
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
The True Origin of Species
• The Bible presents a consistent message
• That God created the world and all life
– Moses – Exodus 20:11
– David – Psalm 8:3-6
– Isaiah – Isaiah 45:12,18
– Jesus – Matthew 19:4
– Paul – Acts 17:14-16
The True Origin of Species
• Genesis 1:1-5
• The earth was initially dark and covered in water
• The bible records how
“God said”“and God made”
• This was achieved by God’s
power – his “holy spirit”
• The earth was changed into
a planet that was uniquely
capable of supporting life
• “It was very good”
The True Origin of Species
Planet Atmosphere Surface Temperature Other
Mercury None Cratered -180 to 500 C Waterless
Venus Sulphuric acid and
carbon dioxide
Cratered Ave 464 C Atmospheric
pressure over 90
times that of earth
Earth Oxygen and
nitrogen
Water and land -40 to 50 C
Mars Carbon Dioxide Cratered and rocky
desert
Ave -63 C Very low atmospheric
pressure
Jupiter Hydrogen, Helium
and Ammonia
Liquid hydrogen and
helium
Ave -144 C
Saturn Hydrogen, Helium
and Ammonia
Liquid hydrogen and
helium
Ave -176 C
Uranus Methane, Hydrogen
and Helium
Ice, Methane and
Ammonia
Ave -215 C
Neptune Thin temporary
atmosphere when
closest to sun
Ice, Methane and
Ammonia
-235 C
Pluto Thin temporary
atmosphere when
closest to the sun
Frozen Methane Ave -223 C Very low atmospheric
pressure
The True Origin of Species
Isaiah 45:12, 18
The Origin of Species
• Written by Charles Darwin – published 1859
• Theory of evolution
• Natural selection;
– favoured survival of those individuals with
advantageous characteristics
– elimination of those less favoured
“Survival of the fittest”
• Process would occur gradually
• Over long periods accumulation of small
favourable variations would lead to origin of
new species
• Over millions of years this process would
account for the whole variety of plants and
animals on earth
• “Micro evolution” has been evidenced on a molecular level
– Viruses (e.g. AIDS) which mutate in order to evade the human
immune system
– Disease causing bacteria have made a comeback as strains
have developed the ability to resist antibiotics
• BUT Evolution at the macro level has not been evidenced
• The progression that Darwin saw as small steps at a biochemical
level are huge chasms
The Origin of Species
The Origin of Species
• Variation within a species is a well known phenomenon
• “After his kind”Genesis 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25
• The main obstacle for evolution is how major changes occurred
• How did a vertebrate come from an
invertebrate?
• No evidence that this occurred – evolution remains a theory
• Darwin expected the fossil record to
fill this gap – the missing links remain
Spontaneous generation
• Louis Pasteur• 1859 experiment
• Boiled meat broth in a flask that had a long neck which curved downward, like a goose.
• The flask remained free of growth for an extended period.
• When the flask was turned so that particles could fall down the bends, the broth became quickly clouded.
• Disproved the theory of spontaneous generation
The Origin of Species
• Question – How did life originate?
• Darwin suggested that the original spark of life
may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes".
The life and letters of Charles Darwin
Soup Theory
1. The earth had a chemically reducing atmosphere
2. The atmosphere exposed to energy in various forms produced simple organic compounds (monomers)
3. These accumulated in a “soup”
4. By further transformation more complex organic polymers – and ultimately life developed in the soup
Miller – Urey sought to establish point 2 with experiment in 1953 formed simple organic
compounds
Mathematical improbability
• “The chances that life just occurred on earth are about as
unlikely as a typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747”
C Wickramasinghe
– Evolution from Space 1981
Mathematical improbability
• H J Muller Estimated on % of mutations which are beneficial – based on chance excluding natural selection
• Number of mutations to convert Amoeba into a horse – 1,000 raised to the power of million
• “this impossible and meaningless figure serves to illustrate the power of natural selection in collecting favourable mutations and minimising waste of variation, for horses do exist and they have evolved.”
• Sir Gavin de Beer, A Handbook of Evolution 1970
The True Origin of Species
Genesis 1:20-28
The Eye
• “How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life originated”Charles Darwin – The Origin of species
Cat Flea head
- small round ocellus (simple eye)
The Eye
• “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely breakdown”
• Charles Darwin – The Origin of species – Organs of extreme perfection and
complication
The Eye
• “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”Charles Darwin – The Origin of species - Organs of extreme perfection and complication
The Eye
The Eye
The Eye
Irreducible Complexity
• “ .. a single system composed of well matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”
• Michael Behe – Darwin’s Black Box, The Biochemical challenge to Evolution 1996
The True Origin of Species
Psalm 139:13-16
In the beginning God created
Acts 17:22-31
The True Origin of Species
Ida (Darwinius masillae): the Missing Link at Last?
• Is it a sensational find?
– “a direct connection between
humans and the rest of the
animal kingdom”?
• Or an underwhelming find?
– a well preserved fossil lemur
– opposable thumbs and nails
– Ankle bone formation
purportedly similar to humans –
but many differences
– Lacks grooming claw – variation
within species