An Argument for Special Creation

1. An Argument forSpecial Creation John Oakes Christian Evidences Conference June 12, 2009

2. Natural Creation Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s “bulldog” “We are as much the product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to earth, or the ebb and flow of the tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a series of singularly beneficial accidents.”

3. Special Creation: Homo sapiens or Homo divinus?

4. What are the limits of science? What are the limits of scripture? • Science and religion • Science and religion • Science and religion • Science and religion • Science and Religion

5. Science The use of experiment to test theories about the laws of nature.

6. Science • Scientific knowledge is a relationship between observations • Scientific knowledge is quantitative • The observations are subject to refinement • Scientific knowledge is progressive and tentative • Scientific knowledge is neither true nor false, but rather consistent with the observations and consistent with prior knowledge

7. Religion • Religion is a belief in something • The belief is not necessarily substantiated by physical or material evidence • Religious knowledge obtained through holy writings, authority, revelations and religious experiences • Believers have faith or trust in such knowledge

8. Religion • Religious knowledge is qualitative not quantitative. • Religious knowledge is not gotten through measurement • In religion knowledge is taken as either true or false. • Religious knowledge is neither progressive, nor tentative.

9. Questions Science Can Answer • When? • What? • Where? • How many? • By what means?

10. Questions Science Cannot Answer:(That Religion Does Answer) • Why am I here? • Is that the right thing to do? • How valuable am I? • Does God exist? Does God act (theism)? • Will that God respond if I pray? • Do supernatural events (miracles) happen?

11. Is prayer simply chemicals moving around in the brain? If “God is love,” then is God just the firing of particular neurons?

12. Science, being incapable of answering the question of meaning, will always give the impression of meaninglessness, even though such a conclusion requires metaphysics. As Torrance notes, “patterns may be created [by science] but not meaning...” Naturally, science should not be forced into answering this question – it should be allowed to perform its task under the guise of materialism, even if this results in meaninglessness. Science can never be permitted to insert supernatural or metaphysical explanations into its theories:

13. What you see depends on your “world view.” • The Christian world view predicts that a human brain will be designed so that those made in God’s image can experience love, joy, anger, compassion, spirituality, jealousy, empathy, oneness and other feelings, some of which have an extremely dubious evolutionary advantage.

14. A statement a scientist should not make (if he or she is well trained and is not manipulating you): • Evolution is true. • The Big Bang happened. • Better statements: • The theory of evolution is by far the best model we have to explain both the fossil evidence and the genetic evidence with regard to the origin of all species. • The Big Bang model is in dramatic agreement will all known facts about the origin and history of the universe. • Science seeks consistency, not “truth.” What is the simplest and most consistent explanation of the observation.

15. Assumptions of Science • There exists a single, unchanging set of laws which govern all events in the physical universe. • Human beings are able to understand the workings of the physical universe. • The laws which govern the universe are describable by mathematics.

16. Predictions Based on Christian Theology: • The universe will follow a single, unchanging set of laws. • The universe will be understandable to human beings. • The universe will be describable by mathematics. • The universe will be designed so that we can observe it • - (“The Priveleged Planet” Gonzalez and Richards)

17. Basic Assumptions of Science • Assumptions are accepted without proof • Form the basis of all scientific thinking • In other words, the basic assumptions of science are accepted on faith.

18. Conclusions about Science and Religion • Religion and science ask different kinds of questions and define words differently • Religion and science appear as if they were two incommensurate paradigms addressing the identical information area • Are they “Non-Overlapping Magisteria? (NOMA) as Stephen Jay Gould suggests? No! They inform one another to an important extent.

19. Unanswered questions which seem to relate to science • Origin of life • Origin of the universe. Why is there anything (as opposed to nothing)? • Why is this a Goldilocks Universe? • Consciousness • What is a person? Am I a body or do I have a body? Am I a brain or do I have a brain?

20. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) “The Bible was written to tell us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go” “In discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages, but from the sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations.”

21. Galileo on Revelation • “For the Holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word, the former as the dictate of the Holy Spirit and the latter as the observant executor of God’s commands.” (the debate over this view rages even today) • Is there such a thing as Natural Revelation/General Revelation? (as opposed to special revelation) In other words, can we gather genuine knowledge of God from looking at his creation?

22. Evolution and the Bible • What does the Bible say? Not much! • What does the physical evidence say? • Fossil evidence • Biogeography • Genetic/DNA evidence • “Irreducible Complexity?” • Human evolution? The Wallace Line

24. Finches discovered And drawn by Charles Darwin Evidence of Evolution?

25. Evolution of whales over time?

26. Fossil evidence for elephant evolution

27. Horse ancestry

28. But……….. • The Cambrian Explosion • “Punctuated Equilibrium?” • Theistic Evolution?

29. Fossils from creatures which appeared in the “Cambrian Explosion”

32. Human chromosome #2 and Great Ape chromosome #2 a, 2b: evidence for common descent.

33. More Genetic Evidence for Common Descent • Pseudogenes • Vitamin C Pseudogene in great apes and humans • Retroposons, SINEs (short interspersed elements), etc. • Viral insertions

34. Typical random point mutation rates are about 1x10-5 – 1x10-7 mutations/generation. 5 million years = 250,000 generations. Sufficient for random mutations to explain the change without the intervention of a guiding hand?

35. Some Tentative Conclusions • Evolution has happened. Microevolution has been observed. • Fossil evidence strongly supports the idea of change over time, but that change often happens in surprisingly sudden bursts (punctuated equilibrium). The Cambrian explosion raises real questions. • Genetic evidence gives very strong support to the idea of common descent. • Like it or not, this is true of humans as well. • Statistical and other arguments give support for evolution being theistic, rather than deistic, but this is not a scientific argument. • God invented evolution; let us give him credit for a great idea.

36. Here is the big question: • Is the nearly overwhelming evidence in support of common descent strong evidence against special creation of; • Life itself • Adam and Eve • My answer: No! Science literally cannot answer the question of special creation.

37. Warning! • My arguments for special creation are not scientific (although they use science at some points).

38. Why I believe in special creation • Because it is biblical. • Because life itself almost without doubt was a special creation. • I do not buy the God-of-no-gaps argument. • Theism vs Deism: consistent theology • Because miracles have happened. • I am cautious about the metaphorical interpretation of Genesis. • New Testament writers believed in special creation of Adam and Eve and their descendents. • Because I am biased.

39. I. Because it is biblical • Luke 3:8 • John 2:1-11 • John 6:1-15 • The virgin birth of Jesus

40. II. Life itself is a special creation • Warning! This is a God-of-the-gaps argument! • Evolution and the creation of life are completely separate issues • As a chemist and as a physicist, I am thoroughly convinced that life is a special creation. • This argument is about as strong as the Anthropic Argument itself.

41. “It is mere rubbish to think at this point of the origin of life. One might as well think of the origin of matter.” Charles Darwin

42. DNA a) b)

43. Protein

44. Simplest life form: break it down • E. coli: about 1 trillion bits of information. • E. coli have 3000-4000 different proteins. • DNA and RNA to make and be made by these proteins. • Lipids (membrane), Carbohydrates, etc. • The simplest living cell is an unimaginably complex self-regulating nano factory

45. Fred Hoyle on Living Things “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged [by chance] is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

46. The Teleological Argument Boeing 747 Design or Accident?

47. Nature creates order, but not information

48. A House of Cards: Order and Information. A much better analogy for living things.

49. III. I do not buy the God-of-no-gaps argument • Francis Collins: In the physical realm, a God of no gaps is to be preferred on theological grounds. • Question: Can science answer the question of whether there are in fact gaps? • Is the Christian wise or well-justified scientifically to make a naturalistic assumption with regard to the creation of life, evolution and the creation of human beings? • I say no!!!

50. A gap argument: Intelligent Design • Irreducible Complexity Does this “disprove evolution?” • Beware of “God of the Gaps” arguments. • Is ID “scientific”? Do they do experiments? Are their conclusions refutable by an experiment?