How Did It All Begin?

A discussion about origins developed by Dr. Terry Dorsett.

Genesis 1:1-2 - In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

•               According to this verse, who created the heavens and the earth?

•               How does that differ than what we may have been taught in school?

•               Creationism and Evolutionary theory are two opposing philosophies.

How do we know which philosophy to believe?

•               It can be hard to know what to believe because philosophy is not always “black” and “white.”

•               Though all Christians believe that God was involved in the creation of the world, they do not always agree on how God was involved.

•               Genesis 1:3-31 describe the first week of the world’s existence and list the things that God made each day, finally ending in the creation of mankind.

•               Some Christians think the days were literal 24 hours days.

•               Other Christians think the days were “ages” of time in which those things happened.

•               Other Christians view the first two chapters of Genesis as only a metaphor about God’s involvement in creation instead literal actions that God may have taken.

•               Regardless of which viewpoint we may hold to, if we believe what the Bible says about creation, then we understand that humankind was the special creation of a mighty God, not just an accident of a muddy glob.

•               Humankind is not just a higher form of animal species.

•               We are created in the image of God. We have a spiritual dimension. We have an eternal soul.

•               People who promote evolution frequently use “scientific facts” to prove that the Bible’s version of creation cannot possibly be true.

•               However, many of the “facts” that are used to attack the Bible are nothing more than theories.

•               Some of those “facts” are not even good theories because they contradict what we KNOW to be true through use of the scientific method.

What is the scientific method?

•               The scientific method begins with research that identifies a problem, gathers relevant data, and creates a hypothesis from that data.

•               A hypothesis is basically an educated guess.

•               For an idea to move from being only a hypothesis to being accepted as FACT, the hypothesis must be provable or verifiable by repeated experiments.

•               Since the creation of the world only happened once, it is not possible to “prove” how it happened.

•               Neither the Bible’s viewpoint nor the evolutionist’s viewpoint of creation can be proved by scientific method.

•               But the evolutionist likes to pretend that science is on his side.

•               Does science really prove the world is really, really old?

How old is the earth according to scientific FACT?

•               Evolutionists have generally accepted the age of the Earth, and the rest of the solar system, as approximately 4.55 billion years.

•               Bible scholars theorize that the earth is between 6,000 and 15,000 years old.

•               Evolutionists always challenge Christians to PROVE the Bible’s version of the origin of the universe.

•               But if we turn the tables and ask the evolutionists to PROVE their version of origins, they will have to deal with some difficult facts about the age of the universe.

Here are some REAL FACTS about the age of the earth.

(Much of the following info is adapted from the article “Evidence for a Young World” by Dr. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., ICR Associate Professor of Physics, which was written June 1, 2005.)

1.     Supernova Remnants

•               According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years.

•               The gas and dust remnants from such explosions expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years.

•               Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants.

•               That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.

2.     Disintegration of Comets

•               Each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses a lot of its material.

•               Scientists use telescopes and advanced mathematical calculations to keep track of how much material has been lost.

•               Based on these observations, comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.

•               Disintegration of Comets

•               Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that comets come from an unobserved spherical “Oort cloud” well beyond the orbit of Pluto. But this assumption has never been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations.

3.     Mud on the Sea Floor

•               Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.

•               This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard rock of the ocean floor.

•               The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.

•               The main way to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is that the sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it.

•               According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year. The other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulates.

•               The mud currently on the ocean floor would have taken less than 12 million years to accumulate …….

•               ……unless a huge flood happened that washed a lot of sediment in at one time. Then it could have happened in as little as 5,000 years.

•               Hmmmm…..I seem to remember a story about a flood in the Bible. Read Genesis 6-7.

4.     Earth’s Magnetic Field

•               The total energy stored in the earth’s magnetic field is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years.

•               At that rate, the earth’s magnetic field could not be more than 20,000 years old.¹⁵

•               Evolutionists have played mental gymnastics trying to explain this one but all their theories inadequate.

•               A shorter time frame for the earth’s existence is the only theory that matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data.

5.     Biological Material

•               DNA and other biological materials decay rapidly.

•               DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years.

•               Yet intact strands of DNA have been recovered from fossils that evolutionist claim are 250 million years old.

•               Biological Material

•               Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur fossil has astonished experts.

•               These discoveries have forced researchers to revise the age of “mitochondrial Eve” from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.

6.     Helium

•               As uranium and thorium decay, they generate helium.

•               A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research revealed that newly-measured rates of helium loss show that helium has been leaking out of the earth’s uranium and thorium deposits for only 6,000 (± 2000) years.

7.     Carbon 14

•               With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years.

•               Yet there is a lot of carbon in the Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata even though it is supposed to be billions of years old.

•               Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s and are unable to account for its existence.

If all this evidence exists for a young earth, why do evolutionists keep insisting the earth is old?

•               Evolutionists want the earth to be old so that the Bible is wrong.

•               They want the Bible to be wrong so that they can ignore what it says.

•               They want to ignore what it says because it tells each of us that we are sinners in need of a Savior.

•               Realistically, we all know we are sinners already without even having to prove evolutionists wrong.

But the message of the Bible is not so much about sin as it is about the Savior!

•               Luke 19:10 - For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.

•               Acts 16:31 - So they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household."

•               Romans 10:9-10 - if we confess with our mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. With the heart one believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses, resulting in salvation.

We can trust Christ as Savior by sincerely praying a prayer like this:

•               Dear Lord, I want to stop acting like You are not real. I know I often do things that I should not do. I want to turn away from those things and start following You. I believe that You died on the cross and rose again from the dead to make my salvation possible. Please forgive me of my sin, guide me in my life and help me be a real Christian. In Jesus Name, Amen.