None:
Polyps:
Strongs:

Objections To Evolution

The creation account shows us that the universe was created the way it was so it could exist contingently upon its past, with its apparent "beginning" located in a single place, or a small highly energetic (chaotic) region. The world is created the way it is with the mechanism of natural selection, even plausibly with a fossil record that indicates some form of evolution: However the creatures even in the fossil record were created by God in situ.

The creation account states that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth", The account is such that the meaning of "earth" may be a more general concept, allowing other planets (also comprised of "matter" or "dry land" as the text puts it.) that also have life. The account clearly indicates the presence of "heaven" singular and not plural, (to indicate one observable universe only) and the "earth" is indicated to be the location of God's intent for creation (at the very least) - the account shows that God created all life (whether on this planet or elsewhere) and in a manner where we could assume an "apparent past" complete with a fossil record.

So if the first cause of life is actually God Himself but the observable record would seem to be against anything but purely natural causes, what possible objections could there be to evolution? Clearly we must examine the first cause - or at least an early one, we turn to the formation of a single celled organism.


The idea of a primordial soup of chemicals within which the building blocks of simple life came together to form self replicating molecules leading to life is a familiar scientific tale, but it is not "cut and dried". There is immediately the problem of toxicity. If glucose or some other life supporting chemical were to form, so could one presume chemicals such as methane and any number of alkanes and alkenes. Chlorine, sulphur, nitrogen, all common elements when thrown into the mix, may make our soup acidic or alkaline and bond to form many poisons.

There is also the problem of "chiral" molecules. A simple molecule may form in equal amounts to its mirror image, both of which are equally likely but only one form preferable to form proteins - It is a mystery why on earth such molecules occur in over-abundance of one kind, without its mirror image. It has been suggested that a meteor brought only the "left" handed type after being acted upon by light from neutron stars,.. reaching very far indeed for an external cause other than the divine.

More complex life has been shown to use both left and right handed molecules in certain cases, but life predominantly finds the "right" handed molecules to be unsuitable for life - and even in some cases such molecules are toxic. If there was a primordial soup the "correct chemistry" would be found only in a soup of many other chemicals all competing for similar reactions but which poison the soup for those chemicals we see in cellular life today.

Clearly with such building blocks, one "correct" left handed molecule (comprised of 24 smaller left handed molecules) could conceivably be one part in 16,777,216 possible molecules (in an extreme case) the others of which are unsuitable to life and possibly toxic (whether they have formed larger molecules themselves or not! - The proportions are still the same if this is not true).


So we can at least admit the possibility that the environment may be toxic to early life on a cellular scale,.. but the real stickler for the creationist is the concept of the creation of the cell. Clearly there is some philosophical objection for any cause other than the divine, but is there some simple paradox which clouds the thinking of evolutionists? Can a cellular organism itself be a contradiction if it formed "on its own"?

This is an interesting quandary.

i) The cell exists to build its own structure
ii) The structures in the cell exist to protect the function of the cell from the outside environment
iii) The structures of the cell manufacture the building blocks to renew the cell's structure and to reproduce.
iv) The environment outside the cell provides the nutrients for this

v) The DNA provides the information for the cell to perform these (we are taught).

Clearly if the environment is toxic then causally (ii) must exist in place before (iv), at some point (If the cell has DNA) we admit that (i) and (v) are interchangeable. (However if the cell evolved then (iv) comes before (v).

Also we can only admit that (iii) comes before (iv) in the sense that a food chain is required, whether or not the food chain is anything more than a source of glucose etc. We also state that (v) comes before (iii) causally.

So if (i) and (v) are interchangeable since (v) must precede (iii) then we actually have to switch (i) and (v), so how did DNA form?

Clearly then if this is a contradiction, (iii) must precede (v), yet again this is contradictory unless the cell is not "a cell" as we are taught and DNA itself here is actually some smaller or simpler molecule.

Clearly then we may reduce back to some simplest molecule which for all intents and purposes gives a first cause for evolution. We could consider "water" and or "glucose" for example.

With an infinite regress, the anti-theist complains of "whom created God" if there is intelligent design in creation,.. likewise the evolutionist regresses with evolution to its simplest for,,. but this is not an infinite regress. (Although it is a similar thinking.)


Of course after such a regress, (i) is questionable but (ii) rests in the basis that molecules are relatively stable in their compounds, elementary particles do not ensure (iii) in the case of the "simplest molecules" but we may assume the presence of some enzyme in a specific "soup" that may permit (ii) inside it. (iv) could be described by the presence of any number of compounds, but (v) is not there for ensuring (i) yet.

How is it then that we have not managed to find life without DNA,.. but with some other earlier precursor to DNA? Has life ever evolved on earth with molecules simpler than DNA? Is it prevalent but we do not simply call it "life", or is it true that such intermediate life was annihilated in the time of early evolution as a food source? Again we reach too far, there is not the evidence in the fossil record or even the world today that "life" is only a chemical reaction - that oxidising iron is "life" - In that sense we argue that ALL life on earth has DNA, so therefore where is the evidence for evolution?

We appear to have reduced ourselves to the matters of toxicity, chirality etc. that plague both the evolutionist and the creationist's arguments with a lack of anything but "It is" or "God said". Well, God did say! God did not create life in the fossil record - He kept it lifeless. The problem of evolution may not be an infinite descent as would be "the argument against intelligent design" (although that could be finite also), but the presence of life itself is not a matter of evolution at all, rather the bible states creation as fact.

The biblical account has God blessing the living creations to fill the waters (consequent futures) of the "seas" (the first causes of life). If "seas" represent a chaotic state then we could argue the bible shows some chaotic first cause for life, or in some sense a primordial soup. Yet, this soup was not instantiated,.. so we arrive at an impasse.

If there is any ground left for the creationist to object to evolution it would be the universality of life with DNA and not some other molecule. Differences in chromosomes aside, It makes sense to define what is meant by life. If the "seas" of the creation account were the first causes of life in the analogous sense of a "thin waist" of "events" as we had with the gathering together of the "past", we may assume God inserted a plethora of life in basic forms in the apparently extreme past, rather than the appearance of the evolution of life with DNA from simpler molecules. If we regard the "seas" as analogous to one singular cartesian point as with the possible "big bang", then we could say the bible leaves latitude for the appearance that life evolved from simpler molecules.

I, and every other creationist I have met would prefer a thin waist!


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