Answering Objections from Darwinian Evolution

The Christian Church has often found it necessary to refute accusations against it. Jesus, for instance, answered the objection that He was casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub by explaining that Satan would not weaken his own kingdom (Matthew 12:25-29). And Peter, at Pentecost, clarified that he and the other disciples were not drunk, as Jewish culture didn’t allow drunkenness early in the morning (Acts 2:15).
One of the most common accusations against Christianity in our time is the allegation that evolution proves the Bible to be inaccurate. Large numbers of people have been convinced that evolution is now a proven fact, and that means the Bible cannot be true. How can we respond to this attack on the Christian faith?
We can reply by pointing out, as prominent biologist Jonathan Wells has said, that we are continually being misled about the evidence for evolution.¹ An important example of our being misled involves the evolutionist’s claim that various forms of life are continually improving. Some even say that humans will soon live to be 135 or even 150 years of age. (Wishful thinking, anyone?)
In direct contrast to this evolutionary dogma of ongoing improvement, famous geneticist John Sanford has stated that the genome (the genetic structure of all forms of life) is in constant deterioration, not improvement. Since negative genetic mutations vastly outnumber the positive ones, said Sanford, the negative mutations accumulate, and for that reason the genetic information for all life-forms is in steady decline.²
Anyone can put what Sanford said to the test by doing an internet search for “positive genetic mutations” and for “negative genetic mutations.” The list of positive mutations will be short and questionable; the list of negative mutations will be long and impressive—including such common human maladies as Alzheimer’s disease and various forms of cancer. Sanford is correct in what he says: The negative mutations are far more numerous and more clearly identifiable than any positive ones.
As an illustration of how this works, I once used a photocopy machine to make 25 copies of a one-page paper. But instead of using the original to make all 25 copies, I used the first copy to make the second copy, the second copy to make the third, and so on. As you might expect, the 25th copy was so distorted as to be illegible. This is how genetics works. Each new generation possesses genetic information that has been copied and recombined from the previous generation. No copy is perfect, so errors continually creep in.
The significance of this information is enormous. It means that the central explanatory paradigm of evolution—that of progress by means of genetic mutations and natural selection—is now known to be false. Unfortunately, most members of the public have not been informed of this new information.
Another major problem for evolutionists is their flawed methods for dating the age of the earth. In his debate with Ken Ham, for instance, Bill Nye said that analysis of the ice cores on Greenland demonstrate that the Greenland ice cap is 680,000 years old—far too old for Genesis to be historically accurate.³ We now know, however, that this argument of Nye and other evolutionists is pure fantasy.
We know the above position of the evolutionists to be false because of the 1992 discovery of an airplane called Glacier Girl. During World War II, on July 15, 1942, Glacier Girl’s squadron was forced to make an emergency landing on the Greenland ice cap. All the crew members were rescued, but Glacier Girl, along with the unit’s five other P-38 fighters and two B-17 bombers, was abandoned and eventually buried beneath 264 feet of ice.⁴ In 1992, the plane was discovered and brought to the surface by members of the Greenland Expedition Society. The aircraft was then restored to flying condition.
Numerous search parties had attempted to locate one of these planes, but had failed. Why? One reason is that the world of science had advised the would-be rescuers that the plane should at most be forty feet below the surface of the ice, and probably far less than that. It turned out, however, that the supposed maximum depth of forty feet was one-sixth of its actual depth.
This means that we now know the actual rate of ice accumulation on Greenland. The plane did not sink in the ice. Doing so would have broken off its wings. All 264 feet of ice accumulated over the plane after it had been abandoned. The actual depth of the plane means that the scientific consensus regarding the rate of ice build-up on Greenland is wrong. At the known rate of ice accumulation on Greenland, as revealed by Glacier Girl, it would take about one thousand years to accumulate a mile-thick ice cap, which is what we now have. This information is consistent with reliable historical records revealing that Greenland was much warmer one thousand years ago than it is today, and that, because of the favorable climate, some five thousand Norwegian settlers lived there at the time. These colonies were successful until the climate started getting cold around 1200 AD.⁵
All this means that the Greenland ice cap could have easily accumulated during the biblical time frame as described in Genesis. An important argument used to discredit Genesis is now known to be fantasy. This same conclusion can be reached for all the dating methods that evolutionists use.
* For additional information on evolution, see the author’s book: Ten Truths About Evolution That Everyone Should Know, available at the Bethany Lutheran College Bookstore.
Mr. Allen Quist
Contributing Writer
Norseland Lutheran Church
Norseland, MN
¹Jonathan Wells, Icons of evolution: Science or Myth. Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2000, xiii.
²John Sanford, Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome, 3rd edition. Waterloo, NY: FMS Publications, 2008, 145-156.
³“Transcript of Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye Debate,” February 4, 2014, transcript by Bill Browning, February 10, 2014, Rocky Mountain Creation Fellowship, www. youngearth.org/index.php/archives/rmcf-articles/item/21-transcript-of-ken-ham-vs-bill-nye-debate.
⁴Air & Space Magazine, July 2007, http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/glacier-girl-the-back-story-19218360/?page=4
⁵“Greenland: What happened to the Greenland Norse?” http://naturalhistory.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/greenland/environment.html. Dale Mackenzie Brown and Archeology Archive, February 28, 2000, http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/