The Ken Ham/Bill Nye Debate The media got it wrong again. According to them it was the Bill Nye show, instead of the Bill Nye, Ken Ham debate. Ken Ham did a fairly decent job of holding his own in the debate. Nye made some arguments that sounded compelling but the Bible already answered; like his argument concerning kangaroos. He asked why there were no kangaroo bones found between the Middle East and Australia. The Bible makes it clear that there was once a single land mass. Of course, if Mr. Nye was Bible literate, he would know that.
The biggest problem Ken had, was in trying to defend the 6000 year age of the earth. The Bible does not teach that the earth is 6000 years old. The creation account is not meant to present all of the facts concerning the way God created the earth, nor is it a chronology of those events. Take for example, the span of time between verses one and two. Verse one says "In the beginning god created the heavens and the earth." Verse two says "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." It is apparent that verse one describes a creation of the earth which included waters and some sort of form for the earth. There is no mention of how long the earth and its waters, were in existence before God began creating light and separating light from darkness. In a real sense, time did not exist until it was identified as consisting of a morning and an evening in verse five.
Let me try to explain this a little better.
There are two different Hebrew words used in the creation and one phrase "Let there be" used in the creation.The word "bara" in verse one means create. I understand that to mean in this context, "to make something from nothing". The phrase " in verse 3 "Let there be" in Hebrew is "haya" meaning to become or to accomplish. So I understand that God is is saying in verse one that he created from nothing all the materials for the heavens and the earth, because verse two says the earth was without form and void. (Time did not exist at that point.) Verse 3 says he used the materials he created to give form and substance to the heavens and the earth. He describes this by saying He accomplished the making of light (What an understatement!) All of natural law would begin at that time...AlI matter took form. The earth and moon in there rotation and orbits, as well as the sun, all the planets and the other stars...all of God's lights were switched on and time began with the creation of light. So there is a distinction between verse one (an earth without form and void) and the things accomplished in verse 3. (An earth, moon, stars, planets, all those things implied with the creation of light; things governed by natural law)
In verse 7 He uses the Hebrew word "asah" which means to become but is translated "made" the firmament.
It is a fact that God did create natural law that governs the universe. To speculate when and how He did it is "speculation" but within the expectation of anyone examining Biblical evidence. We are told that "evidence of things not seen" is part of what supports our faith (Heb. 11:1). Paul told us in Romans 1:20 ..."the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" It is clear from that statement that God expects us to examine the evidence. The world functions as it does and is predictable enough to send a man to the moon and bring him safely home, because of God's natural law. When He created it, we are not told, but that it is what maintains all physical activity, is without question. Maybe it makes people uncomfortable to try explaining to our own satisfaction how He could have accomplished what He did but certain things are necessarily (for brevity) left out of the creation account and to some extent we "should" try to fill in the gaps. I can think of several examples about how we almost routinely do that...For example, God said he created us in His own image. We imply, though it is not stated, that God was referring to His spiritual image and that is a reasonable assumption. We are not told where Cain got his wife, so it is reasonable to conclude that other children were born to Adam and Eve (perhaps while in the garden). No record of that is provided, but it is a necessary conclusion. We are not told how long they were in the garden, but Adam and Eve's age made possible several generations of children from which Cain's wife could have been taken. My point is that since it is certain that God did create natural law and we don't know when from the record, it is reasonable to assume it occurred at the origin of light (Gen. 1:3). Nobody doubts that the creation was six 24 hour days. That is clear. Since the world was not created as we see it now in verse 1 (Verse 2 says it was without form), it is reasonable to assume it was fully formed when light and natural laws were put in place. ( I see that was most likely in verse 3). A careful reading of the Genesis account reveals the record is not sequential and there is some repetition. The same is true in the chronologies. There are gaps. All children were not recorded. So it is clear the chronologies were not intended to date the earth. Neither is the creation account useful for that purpose.
There are several points that can be made concerning the fact that the Bible does not give us a chronology of mankind. For example, we are not told how long Adam and Eve were in the garden. We are not told how long it was before Cain and Abel made their sacrifices that are recorded, and Cain's was found wanting. We are not told where Cain's wife came from but it is obvious that she was offspring of Adam and Eve, maybe generations removed. so other children were born to Adam and Eve that are not recorded. There are many such gaps in the creation record. The conclusion is that the creation account is a synopsis, not intended to reveal all the details of the beginning. The Bible does not tell us how old the earth is; so Mr. Ham was making an argument from scripture that the Bible does not make.
In so much of the debate Mr. Ham was on the defensive over this matter. Another mistake Mr. Ham made, was a failure to make a very powerful argument that the scriptures make In Romans one, vs. 19 and 20. Here and in Psalms and in Job, the case for the complexity of God's creation is clearly made. In other words, what we see in this world cannot be explained without a creator. Dead matter cannot give rise to life. Chance events cannot give rise to complex life. Intelligent design is obvious in every part of the world. The science of mathematics proves this without a doubt. Design demands a designer. The world is full of creation scientists but as Ken said, many of them do not speak out about their faith because they may be ostracized from the scientific community. Their publications are not taken seriously or are purposely shelved because of prejudice. Much of the scientific community zealously protects its faith in evolution. The famous chemist, Justis Von Liebig observed this about human propensity..."Whatever doesn't fit into the given circle of thinking doesn't exist".
An example of two such men, who changed their minds, is related below:
"Today, Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, an agnostic of Christian background, and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, an atheistic Buddhist, are changed men. They are both believers" [But not true Christian believers, so far as I know].
"'It is quite a shock,' says Wickramasinghe, Sri Lankan born Professor of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at University College, Cardiff. ‘From my earliest training as a scientist, I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has to be very painfully shed. I am quite uncomfortable in the situation, the state of mind I now find myself in. But there is no logical way out of it.'
Mathematical Proof Positive That
Evolution cannot explain our existence...
"What convinced both men were calculations they each did independently into the mathematical chances of life starting spontaneously. When each had finished, they looked at the answer almost in disbelief. Each found that the odds against the spark of life igniting accidentally on Earth were staggering - in mathematical jargon ‘10 to the power of 40,000. If you write down the figure ‘1' and add 40,000 noughts after it, you have the figure." A figure with fifteen zeros is usually considered to be very large.
NASA scientists believe that the smallest number of parts possible in an organism, considered to be living, is 400, which must be in the correct order; assuming just having these parts in the correct order constitutes life. But of course, it does not! If it were that simple, we could create life ourselves, but we cannot even create a living one celled organism! Well, for the sake of argument, lets give them the benefit of the doubt.
Of course NASA is interested in this, because they are always interested in finding life outside of "terra firma". This number is probably very much underestimated, but let's cut the number in half, so that we have just 200. Even with this very small number of parts, it would take a staggering 788,657,867,364,791x10^360 seconds (After the number 1 in 791, we must add 360 zeros) to try all of the possible combinations. We will round the above number down to 788x10^372 seconds.
The symbol ^ = exponential, 10^3 = 10x10x10 = 1,000 and 10^4 = 10x10x10x10 = 10,000. It saves writing a lot of zeros.
How many combinations can we get through in the time the universe has been in existence?
Evolutionists put the age of the universe at around 30 billion years. That is 9.46x10^17 seconds. We will round that number up to 10^18 seconds. In 30 billion years, we will get through 10^18 combinations of letters at the rate of one new combination per second. But we need to go through 788x10^372 combinations. So let's speed things up a bit.
There are 10^80 electrons in the universe - larger than the number of atoms. By way of illustration, we will use this number as the maximum number of parts to work with. Now let's divide all of the electrons in the universe into groups of 200. This will give us 5x10^77 groups to work with. This means we can get through all of the possible combinations 5x10^77 times faster. However, even with this unrealistic situation, we can only get through 10^18 x 5x10^77 = 5x10^95 combinations. Well short of the number we need to get through.
So let's speed things up further. We will increase the speed of change throughout the whole universe from one trial per second, to one billion per second. Also, we will increase our time limit from 30 billion years, to 300 billion years.
300 billion years 10^19 seconds
Trials per second 10^9
Electrons /200 5x10^77 groups of 200
Total trials 5x10^105
Even when we work at the staggering rate of one billion trials per second throughout the whole universe for a period of 300 billion years, we can only achieve 5x10^105 combinations. That is well short of the 788x10372 combinations needed to be sure that we can arrive at the correct combination to start our very simple form of life. In fact, impossibly simple at just 200 pieces.
Chance and time are the two arguments for the evolutionary explanation of origins of life. Both of these are snuffed out with this simple illustration.
Another example or different way to see the matter, is that the standard explanation of Darwinism uses mutations to create very minute beneficial changes of some animal species, over long periods of time. Then natural selection, which postulates such changes make the survival of the species more probable, inserts the better animal into the population, which then propagates and eventually becomes dominant, while the less adaptable species eventually dies out. Many favorable mutations, over eons of time, layer on one another, eventually giving rise to a creature not only superior to it's predecessors but markedly different, such as ape to man. Notice how all of the mutations used to elevate the survival of the animal have to be beneficial, not detracting or neutral. In the real world, however, mutations are always harmful, never contributing to survivability. Also, the fossil record does not support this explanation, because there should be many transitional representatives of these in-between kinds of fossils. All the appearances of the many kinds of animals in the record, beginning with the Cambrian period, are represented by fully formed, explosive appearances of all kinds of plants and animals.
If we take a look at incremental changes more closely, we can easily see survival of every creature on earth now and in the past, depends on an ability to survive and reproduce for it's very existence. If a component needed for survival was missing, it would not have survived. The animal would not be viable. It could not wait for millions of years to evolve what would be needed to survive. Take, for example, a weaver bird. The ability for it to survive depends on being able to reproduce. These birds are capable of building very complex nests that look like socks hanging from tree limbs. The ability to build these nests is essential to their survival in their environment. Consider if the bird had no innate ability to build a nest in which to raise her young. She plucks a blade of grass and manages to tie it on a tree limb. She tries sitting on it. That doesn't work, so she tries another and still can't sit on it. She has no ability to tie or weave the hundreds of blades of grass needed to make a nest to raise her young. We cannot even imagine all the incremental changes that would have to occur even for her existence, much less producing offspring.
I know Mr. Ham is aware of this very conclusive argument against evolution. It is amazing to me that he did not present it.
Mr. Nye was arrogant and condescending to Mr. Ham. The gist of his entire arguments was that if you do not believe in the general evolution theory of origins, you cannot possibly progress in science and technology. He credited all the technological progress that has ever been made to evolutionary scientists. He appealed to his audience to continue funding only those who believe as he does, that science cannot progress without evolution. I could never have maintained my composure through that debate, but Mr. Ham remained cool and quite composed throughout.
Roger Cole
The first verse of the Bible is full of implied science. For example, "In the beginning" describes a condition in which time could potentially originate. Yet we know that in the absence of time, matter cannot exist, nor can time begin itself. The arrangement that God set in order is that time is relevant to distance between all sub atomic particles and their electrical charge. Another way to put it is to say that all matter, whether it appears to us as solid, liquid or gas is full of space. We are of the understanding that even the most dense matter, such as a metal table, is full of space, because all matter, on a molecular level consists of protons, neutrons and electrons. The distance between these particles is governed by an electromagnetic field that determines how closely packed is each atom of a substance. There is what might be termed "flux" (movement) between the protons and electrons, which means time is involved, since we normally recognize a passage of time for any thing in existence that moves from one point to another. Quantum theory is the theory used to reach an understanding of atomic behavior, but we must understand that all we believe about the nature of this behavior is theoretical. Physicists busy themselves naming and describing and measuring each component, but none have ever supplied a unified law of physics that adequately explains all aspects of molecular behavior. What is well known of the structure and behavior of atoms is that some form of movement is present and thus time is involved in it's existence. So, it makes perfect sense that the first three words in Genesis offer a point of origin, but not until we provide the unifier, (God) can anything tangible even exist. Then the next word "created" verifies a creator (a force if you must have a generic term) is necessary for both the beginning of time and the creation (heavens and earth). With the creation of time and space, (including matter) God had to also provide an entire system of natural law to govern them.
It doesn't do any good to talk about any of the elements in the periodic table without laws that make possible their existence. Those who attempt to explain the origin of the universe with the "BIG BANG" always begin with a primordial soup of elements that have somehow created themselves and the extremely complex set of natural laws that govern them...you know, ...the ones we can't adequately explain. These are the same people that cannot figure out or explain in reasonable scientific terms the first three words of the Bible.
Many of the deniers of a creator God refuse to recognize the existence of a spiritual world. The evidence of an existence beyond the physical realm can easily be demonstrated. "Thought" for example is not physical, yet no one would bother to deny it's existence. If you ask one of the defenders of vertical evolution about love, he will not deny that he loves his mother or his daughter, but he can't prove it by his standard of proof.
Some, who should know better, credit extraterrestrials for many of the physically unexplainable events they see evidence of, but fail to recognize that all such explanations only complicate the question of origins. A supernatural explanation (God) is not only reasonable but demanded by the evidence.
