Evolution or Intelligent Design?
This is my final project of composition, what cha think?! (yea I know it’s long… people refused to proof read because of it!! lol)
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Over the years, science has come a long way to help explain many things about life on Earth. It has studied deep into many things that explain how life is possible, it has come to understand much about the human cell and its role in our lives. With science, we’ve been able to learn and create spectacular things no person thought possible. With our inventions of the telescope and microscope, we’ve unlocked information from the size and composition of the planets and stars in our sky to the tiniest structure of single celled organisms deep into our soil. Science has helped us create things which have benefited us greatly like medicines and vaccines. Our understanding of life itself has grown greatly over time. We now understand how our body works together and how each of our organs have a specific function and purpose to keep us alive and healthy. But does all this information support the beginnings of life to be something as random and coincidental as evolution, or does it suggest something far more intentional and fully planned? When studied closely, science does a better job at supporting the theory of intelligent design rather than the theory of evolution. Scientists have learned a lot, yet there is an endless realm of information no human has been able to fully understand and remain labeled as “mysteries”. The human brain, the size of the universe, the causes of gravity, and how life originally arose on Earth are all questions that are difficult to comprehended by the human mind; these things are far more complicated than anything any human has created. Even the complicated system of a computer does not come close to the complexity of the human brain. Thus, does it really make sense that something endlessly more intricate than anything a human mind has ever been able to create has resulted out of random and brainless chance? It is not rational to believe so. To begin, evolution claims that life began from a single cell.
Scientists say that life began out of single celled organisms, which in time began to become more and more complex and eventually turn into us. If this was so, the obvious question is inevitable, how did that first single celled organism come into existence? Even if the right elements were around to create it, how did they manage to come together so perfectly? William Paley used this an analogy that says this: if one leaves all the necessary parts to make a watch in a box and leaves it for millions of years, would it eventually jump around and make itself a watch? No, someone would have to go and put the pieces together to make a fully functioning watch. Anyone who finds a watch laying around doesn’t have to wonder how it came into existence, it is common sense to believe that there was someone who designed it and put it together to do exactly what it’s meant to do(1). In the same way, if life did start from single celled organisms, there must have been an intelligence who put it together for it to function properly. Many years ago, Aristotle strongly believed in his theory of spontaneous generation. His theory suggested that non-living objects could give rise to living organisms. His conclusions were things like raw meat gives rise to maggots and flies and garbage and moldy food gives rise to rats. His observations were treated as facts and remained unchallenged for many, many years. Now a day, that idea is obsolete, absurd and disproved by scientists(3). Yet evolution is just another form of spontaneous generation and it is gratefully accepted. With evolutionized thinking, it is nothing less but obvious that nothing gives rise to…something? In this case, life. No scientist believes that nothing produces something, yet that seems to be the foundation of evolution. They continue to search for an answer for this question and yet have found none to explain the phenomena. In fact, Harold Morowitz, a physicist from Yale University and author of Origin of Cellular Life, found that the odds of any type of spontaneous generation to occur are one in 10100,000,000,000. 3 that’s like asking a blind man to find a single painted grain of sand! But then let’s take it that life was this one in a 10100,000,000,000. 3 chance, (4) the theory of evolution still faces many dead ends. One of them is the idea of new information in cellular structures.
To this day, there is no known evidence that new information arises out of no where. Most scientists agree that all types of information come from an intelligence. Jason Lisle, author of The Ultimate Proof of Creation, discusses this topic extensively. In order for a lizard to turn into a bird it needs to gain information for wings and feathers. In other words, the lizard’s DNA needs to learn how to make wings and feathers. The lizard’s DNA has information to make a tail and, rough leathery skin, not wings. Scientists are astounded by DNA’s complex language, this knowledge has impacted some so deeply that they have come to the conclusion that there must be a Creator. DNA contains amino acids that are arranged in a twisted shaped molecule, these arrangements are like instructions for the DNA to make something. The sequences of the amino acids mean something, they are not random. Just as the words on this page are not a result of constant typos, I typed them to send a specific message to the reader. DNA reads its instruction and interprets it into something producing the finished product, like a tail. Just as a musician reads music and therefore produces a song(5). The sound of the song and the written notes are the same, the only difference is that they are represented differently. To many, the word “manzana” means nothing. In any case it could just be random letters put together. But to Spanish speakers, we know the word manzana means apple. Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean anything. Scientists could not understand DNA language at first, but everyday they are learning that the arrangement of amino acids are not random. Heart cells make more heart cells and brain cells make more brain cells, its what they know how to do. So where is the cell learning its language? Some describe DNA to be the language of God, and I agree, but that is for every individual to decide by looking at the evidence. What about mutations? There is yet a mutation to be discovered that causes a gain in information. All known mutations in existence are caused by loss of information, never a gain (2). How could a lizard’s DNA molecule gain information to make wings to change into a bird? Scientifically, it’s impossible! Scientists use bacteria and viruses as their refutation to this argument, yet it still does not show that mutations in any of these result in a gain of information. Many then ask, how do viruses mutate and become resistant to vaccines and medicines then? DNA is constantly making copies of itself, so there are some copies with errors. Those errors may be the salvation of some cells when attacked by an antibody. The normal cells die when in attack because the antibody was designed to kill those types of cells, but do not effect those that don’t fit the description of those they are suppose to attack. Those surviving mutant cells then duplicate themselves and therefore gain a resistance, but never gain information. This does not mean that Creationists don’t believe that animals and other life forms change; of course they change. All the different dog species come from two original dogs, the different breeds are simply a result of mutations. None the less, they do not stop being dogs and suddenly become cats. Evolution claims that at one point animals could change into another, like the earlier example of a lizard turning into a bird. Darwin observed finches and realized that they all had some common features; everyone can see resemblances in all birds (6). It’s a lot easier and logical to believe that animals change to make different species in their own kind rather than something as dramatic as a lizard turning into a bird. Lisle also poses the following question, “ Evolution is supposed to happen in a gradual stepwise fashion. One by one, mutations are supposed to gradually change one kind of organism to another. So we must ask the question: Which evolved first: hearts, kidneys, or lungs? Each is useless without the other two.” (Lisle 20) Hearts, lungs and kidneys require different information to form, so if evolution took millions of years, were organisms once consistent of only a heart? It wouldn’t make sense, because a heart does not function without all the other parts of the body. For this to gain a bit more credibility, evolution must have not been such a slow process. Then is the Earth really millions of years old?
It’s incredible that the majorities of dating methods scientists use contradict each other or, more commonly, show a much younger Earth. It is only a small percentage that suggests the Earth to be millions of years old. The main method used to calculate the age of fossils and Earth rocks is by measuring the amount of carbon-14 inside the object(7). Carbon-14 is constantly flowing out of rocks and fossils over time. To say that Earth is millions of years old is to suggest that fossils have an almost infinite amount of carbon-14. Scientists do not believe so, but say that fossils take millions of years to form. A recent discovery proves this idea erroneous. On June 10, 1886, a volcano in New Zealand erupted and sent lava, rocks and ashes all throughout nearby villages. Some time later, fossilized man made objects were found(8). Among these were a fossilized hat, a petrified ham and a fossilized coil of wires. Unless one believes that hats have been around millions of years, then it is obvious that fossils really don’t require so much time to form. Interestingly enough, a group of researchers took a sample of Mt. St Helen’s lava dome which resulted from an eruption only ten years earlier. They took it to Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, MA, a high quality, professional radioisotope dating laboratory and asked to estimate the age (11). The results where a shocking 0.35-2.8 million years! The hardened lava rock had only existed for 10 years, something must have been terribly wrong with the dating method. Also, scientists are still trying to figure out a time period called the Cambrian Explosion (9). During this time, thousands of different creatures were fossilized in a short time. The fact that there was so many different animals in such a fast time makes some question if it would really take millions of years for evolution. This serves as evidence for the record of Noah and the flood from the Bible. These may be problems to evolutionists, but not for the biblical God that claims that He created everything in six days. Then what about dinosaurs? We are taught that they were meat eaters, how we came to this conclusion was on the simple fact that they have sharp teeth. Sharp teeth do not necessarily indicate that an animal is a meat eater; several animals today serve as examples: Pandas, fruit bats and gorillas (12). Genesis 1:29-20 states that God gave green plants for all his creatures to eat, including dinosaurs. For some reason people find it impossible that dinosaurs could have lived amongst humans. I believe they did and still do today! To start, the word dinosaur means terrible lizard in Greek (13). We still have lizards today, some of which are pretty terrible indeed. Also many ancient drawings found in caves have pictures of creatures that strongly resemble dinosaurs. If dinosaurs and humans never lived amongst each other and never even knew about each other until later, how did they get such an accurate drawing of them? Did they have super senses letting them know they existed and exactly what they looked like? If they did, what told them their senses were reliable?
Ultimately, the biggest questions of life always lay outside of science, things that science can’t explain or make sense of. Morality and purpose of life are some. At one point in everyone’s life, we ask questions such as, why am I here? Who am I? If evolution were true, there would be no reason to be here other than to simply survive; everyone would merely be an accident, a sac of randomly arranged cells. Yet the majority of evolutionists are fortunately not that shallow, most are deep thinkers and have families they claim to “love”. But how would an accident know what love is? Why would they feel the need to love at all? In a creationists point of view, it is easily explained in the Bible. God has demonstrated love by his life, death, and resurrection for us and we love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). Evolutionists can claim to love and feel the need to be loved, but most don’t have a good reason to believe they should. In addition, mostly everyone (even evolutionists) believes in right and wrong. They believe that things like stealing, murder and lying are wrong and are punishable. This leads back to the original problem, why would we believe anything to be right or wrong if our brains and hearts are a result of an accident? How could we trust ourselves to know the difference? There seems to be no clear foundation for these beliefs. A creationist perspective does, on the other hand. We know right and wrong because God said so in the Bible. He defined right and wrong by his laws and says to have written them on our hearts so we all can tell them apart. (Romans 14-15) Unless the person is a relativist and believes truth is relative to everyone, then they are bound to believe there are absolute rights and wrongs. Yet these relativists become upset when someone claims that there is absolute right and wrong, most will passionately claim that, that particular claim is wrong; which is silly because if he were right, why would they be arguing in the first place and call the position wrong when all truth is relative to the individual! That is a self-destructive claim. Plus, how would they know? How is it possible for anyone to know anything for sure? Why does everyone seems to trust their senses and memories to provide them with accurate information? How are they so sure that they remember what happened the day before? or that their ears are not lying to them saying that what they hear is a dog and not a cat? Evolution is said to be possible because of mutations, which are mistakes. So if we are mistakes, how could we trust anything with our senses? We both agree that our senses and memory are for the most part reliable, but how did the non-believer come to that conclusion? Creationists have their means of getting there, the Bible. The Bible says that we have the mind of Christ; (1 Corinthians 2:16) humans are made in His image by Him. (Genesis 1:27) He wants us to care for his creation (Genesis 1:28) if He wants us to care for his creation, then it makes sense that our senses are reliable.
Most people believe that Christians or creationists don’t accept science, but that is incorrect. It’s true that many do refuse it, but it’s their own loss because science can be used as very powerful evidence. Science is not just evolution! Both creationists and evolutionists use science to support their beliefs. As it was pointed out many times they use the same evidence; the only difference is the interpretation. Whichever make more sense is up to every individual to decide.
