By Aimee Folmer StLCP Contributor
I recently
had the privilege of being a guest speaker on creation and evolution at the
Christian Family Night at the St. Louis Science Center. Although some of you may
have been there, I wanted to recap one of my points of the night for those of
you who didn’t get to make it. I do presentations dealing with several aspects
of this issue, but the topic that night was The Complexity of Design. I spoke
about things such as the encyclopedic information in the DNA in just one human
cell, the incredible evidence for the special creation of animals and plants
because even the “simplest” of animals cries design, and the preciseness of the
Earth and its
attributes that make it the only planet suitable for life. But, what I want to
reiterate here are how four well known laws of science, the first and second law
of thermodynamics, the law of cause and effect and the law of biogenesis, are
completely compatible with the Bible and are completely contradictory to
“molecules to man” evolution.
First, let’s
look at the first law of thermodynamics. This natural law says that matter and
energy are constant; they are neither created nor destroyed. Right away this
poses a problem for evolution. Since evolution is supposed to be a completely
naturalistic process, where did the original matter and energy that makes
up the universe and everything in it come from? As Christians, we believe, on
faith that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis
1:1) This does take faith to believe, but Christianity is a we believe God
created this original matter and energy. The bible says he spoke it into
existence. However, the purely
natural creation of original matter and energy also requires a miracle, but
without the miracle maker. Therefore that makes evolution a blind faith when
dealing with this natural law of science.
Secondly,
let’s look at the second law of thermodynamics, or the law of entropy. Albert
Einstein called this well-known natural law the its available energy for doing
work. In other words, things are becoming increasingly less complex or going
from order to disorder. Again, this poses a problem for the evolutionary
model, which states that over time things are going from simple to incredibly
complex Evolution’s “chaos to cosmos” explanation flies directly in the face of
this well known law of science. However, the bible once again makes sense of the
evidence we see. It tells us in Romans 8:22 that all of creation is groaning and
in decay. Now, I don’t believe that this second law started at “the fall.” I
believe that God would have originally set up all of the natural laws of physics
as ways for the universe to run and operate. However, I do believe that because
of sin, humans were no longer in perfect fellowship with God and as a result He
would have lifted
some of his sustaining and protective power. Therefore, we now see what Romans
8:22 talks about. We are now reaping the consequences of sin, death and
destruction in the world.
Let’s now
look at the law of cause and effect, which states that for every effect there
has to be a cause. So, for example, textbooks tell us that billions of years ago
there was a “big bang” that set every thing in motion. The big bang is an
effect, but what is the cause? As I said earlier, as Christians we believe that
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” therefore God was the
cause. But, evolution being a purely materialistic explanation for origins can
provide no cause. Again, there is a miracle, but without a miracle maker.
Last, let’s
look at the law of
biogenesis. This law of science states that life only comes from life. That’s
all we’ve ever observed with no known exceptions.
But, biology textbooks teach that billions of years ago non-living chemicals
evolved into a living cell. Once again, evolution clearly contradicts this
natural law.
I want to
wrap up by discussing for a moment the issue of “Science verses the Bible.” This
is how the Creation/Evolution debate is generally portrayed in the media and the
classroom. But, when you really look at the evidence, this is clearly not the
case. God created the natural world and all of the laws that operate it and God
is clearly not in a battle with himself. The battle is not between science and
the Bible; real, operational science always confirms the Bible. So, what is the
real battle? It is the battle of one worldview verses another worldview. Not a
single one of us were there “in the beginning,” so we cannot put God or
evolution in a test tube and empirically prove either one. But, we can look at
the evidence all around us and use the brain that God gave us to determine which
model is the most credible. Both creation and evolution models rely on faith—one
is based on faith in God’s Word and the other is based on blind faith in
materialism.
(This part of the presentation was adapted from a talk by Mike Riddle called
Creation and Evolution: Does it matter what we believe?)
In
addition to her role as a wife and full-time mother of two, Aimee is involved in
women’s and children’s ministries at Metro Community
Church in Edwardsville, IL. She has a Master’s degree in Early Childhood
Education and had taught for seven years before becoming
a full time home-maker. Being faced with questions about Creation and Evolution
stemming from some of the things she was teaching as a public school teacher,
Aimee became interested in this topic. After reading about and researching this
topic for almost seven years she has more faith now than ever before that the
Bible is true and can be trusted completely. She has a deep desire to share this
life changing information with others!