Tag: Charles Darwin

Creation by God’s Wisdom and Power

I was recently reading an account about the earthly life of Jesus from Matthew 12:29-37. A demon-possessed man who was blind and mute was brought to Jesus, who healed him. The people were astonished when the man could both talk and see, and they began to ask if Jesus could be the Son of David. When the Pharisees heard what the people were saying, they told them that Jesus had only driven out demons by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons.

Then Jesus, knowing their thoughts, first talked briefly about how a house divided could not stand. If He was chief of the demons, He would be working against Himself.

He then went on to warn the Pharisees in the strongest terms about the danger of what they were saying. They had just seen an amazing miracle, and they gave Satan himself credit for it. Miracles and other mighty works of God were always intended to bring Him glory. Robbing God of the glory He is due is a great wickedness.

As I read these words, I realized that all of the original first living things–plants, animals, humans, and all other living things–had been created by God’s wisdom and power. But, instead of giving God glory for the incredible beauty, order, and complexity of Created things, many people believe, and even teach, that all living things evolved from one Common Ancestor by means of natural selection, other natural processes, random events, mutations, and variations in inherited traits.

It is highly likely that a large variety dogs, coyotes, wolves, and similar animals are the descendants of an ancestor pair of male and female canines. One evidence of this is that dogs and coyotes and dogs and wolves can mate and produce live puppies, although this is somewhat rare in nature. The same thing is true of felines. Lions, tigers, house cats, panthers, cheetahs, and other felines are most likely the descendants of an original ancestor pair of felines. Lions and tigers do not normally mate in the wild, but occasionally do in captivity, producing liger and tigon kittens. These kinds of changes that occur over the years, known as microevolution, do not result in dogs evolving into cats or cats evolving into dogs. They show original “kinds” (the Bible term) of living things evolving into variations of the same kind. These examples also showcase God’s glory in giving the kinds of plants and animals He created the ability to adapt and adjust to different environments.

Macroevolution is a theory proposed by Charles Darwin that every living thing–presently living or once living–evolved from one Common Ancestor. Microevolution is good science. Macroevolution is a glory thief!

Defining Racism

Some people, like Billy Graham, Florence Nightingale, and Martin Luther King, Jr. seem to be shielded from criticism and are almost never targets of protests. I used to think Charles Darwin was in this category, because his proposals and writings are almost universally accepted by science and educational leaders as enlightening and correct. Although evidence for many of his ideas is scanty, it was somewhat of a shock when I read what Phillip Johnson, a distinguished retired Berkley law professor, said about Darwinian evolution. Johnson’s specialty was logic and analyzing arguments. When he began to analyze the arguments for and against Darwinian evolution, he characterized evolution as “atheistic” and “falsified by all of the evidence” and whose “logic is terrible,” saying intelligent design is a much better way to study origins. A little additional research has easily led me to agree with Mr. Johnson. Continue reading Defining Racism

Uniformitarianism–A Game Changer!

Uniformitarianism is a philosophy. Its adherents believe that natural processes and the rates at which they have been observed to occur on earth and in space are the keys to understanding what has happened in the past. They assume that such processes as erosion, deposition, fossilization, and other natural processes occur at overall predictable rates. They are convinced that there was never a worldwide flood in which these rates would have occurred much more rapidly than what we can observe today. Continue reading Uniformitarianism–A Game Changer!