- Mar 16, 2004
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You can't have it both ways and there are ample reason why:
The Bible is a book of history and our true lineage is found there, not in the modern mythology of Darwinian evolution. Essential doctrine is at stake and while you can accept evolution as natural history in part rejecting the creation of Adam and original sin runs contrary to Christian Orthodoxy. Accepting human evolution is not a rejection of orthodoxy but the rejection of the special creation of Adam and original sin definitely is. Believing that land dwelling creatures became amphibians, transposed into whale and dolphins are certainly interesting ideas but would have no bearing on doctrinal issues. The doctrine of justification by faith has a central focus, the sin of Adam and it's inextricably linked to special creation. Darwinism knows no bounds, it is actively seeking inroads to Christian conviction.
The New Testament traces back to Adam and no further. Examples of how original sin is tied to justification are numerous, this is just one of many:
Accepting human evolution from that of apes is not only a rejection of the Pauline doctrine of original sin, it's a myth of human ancestry. When the New Testament writers mention Adam they speak of him as the first man and the reason why all of us are under the curse of sin and death. Paul tells us that
Paul ties Adam directly to the need for justification and grace in his exposition of the Gospel in his letter to the Romans. Luke lists Adam in his genealogy calling him 'son of God' indicating he had no human parents but rather was created (Luke 3:23-28). The Apostle Peter writing on the subject of false teachers mentions Paul:
A Brief History of a Fraud:
My concern is simply this, the myth of human lineage linked to ape ancestry contradicts the clear testimony of Scripture and essential doctrine, specifically justification by faith. Paul is clear that all have sinned in Adam and that is the reason that we cannot keep the Mosaic law. Charles Darwin in the preface to On the Origin of Species credits Jean-Baptiste Lamarck with being the first man to propose that the doctrine that species, including man, are descended from other species. This, Darwin argues, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. This is what I have come to recognize as an a priori assumption of exclusively naturalistic explanations for the lineage of all living things. For years I focused exclusively on the Scientific literature regarding Chimpanzee and Human common ancestry and found that the human brain had neither the time nor the means to have evolved from that of apes
The painstaking process of critical peer review and the demand for direct observation and demonstrative proof are supposed to avoid discrepancies in scientific reporting. In the case of Piltdown Man we are looking at a fraud that perpetuated itself in the corridors of academia for nearly half a century. Neither our political systems, sacred theologies, meticulous histories or critical inquires into natural history are immune to our own willful self deception. The Piltdown scandal is a warning to all who would know our history, you are more easily mislead then you would like to believe.
With that in mind lets explore some of the many offerings laid on the altar of natural history today. Evolution as it applies to natural history is a twisting turning road that is not easily navigated. The discerning traveler will have to keep both an open mind and critically examine the evidence modern science has put before us. The first order of business is to see how this fraudulent fossil evidence was received at the Smithsonian Institute.
It fit the hypothesis of many scientists so no one really looked that critically at it, with an occasional exception. The attitude of many evolutionists I encounter is that all of the evidence is pointing toward common ancestry of man and chimpanzee. As an amateur science buff (some would say rank amateur) I am curious how the evidence is put together to confirm or falsify the various aspects of evolutionary theory. On the other hand as a Creationist the Scriptures are sacred history so I ask you to take a little journey with me. Human evolution as it relates to the transition from apes to human beings cover some 5 to 7 million years.
Sin and death had it's origin (genesis) in Adam, that is how and why 'all' have sinned. Don't get this twisted, Paul is clear that when Adam sinned we did not fast. What my ambiguous opponent is trying to do is to is to distract you from the clear meaning of the text. The Protestant understanding of the text is that we both sinned in Adam and continue to in ourselves because of our fallen nature. The fall itself is an historical account and the conflict between evolution and creation are not about natural science, it's about natural history. What they have done with Darwinism is rewrite human history:
Am I to conclude that Scofield, Wesley and Paul are all mistaken that sin and death entered through Adam. Is there some reason I could logically conclude that the meaning is not both literal and explicit with regards to the sin of Adam?
The modern mystics who imagine life emerging from the Darwinian warm little pond are nothing new under the sun. Mythographers have been attributing to primordial elementals what is rightfully attributed to God since the dawn of time:
The Mesopotamian mythographers took their inspiration from thier own country...When nothing yet had a name, that is to say when nothing had yet been created, they wrote, Apsu (the fresh waters) Tiamat (the salt waters) and Mummu (the clouds) formed together one single confused body:
The elemental muse was greater in pagan myths then the gods, they in fact gave rise to them. These naturalistic mechanisms are the creator in the mind of the mythographers of ancient and modern times.
Ok, maybe you are thinking that even though Piltdown was a monumental fraud it can't happen now. You would be wrong, they are fraudulently misrepresenting the genetic evidence on an epic scale.
If we are looking at a gene that is identical in two species both closely and distantly related to other species with the exact same gene with the exact same mutation in the exact same place. That is a pretty compelling argument for common ancestry. In this case I don't think you have anything like that since it works in most mammals and probably is either function on some human populations or repairable in some way. The human being is unique among living systems and diverges from the chimpanzee right down to the sequences of the DNA. For years geneticists have been claiming that we are 99% identical to apes in our DNA.
Time Cover Story: What Makes us Different? Not very much, when you look at our DNA. But those few tiny changes made all the difference in the world
They claim we are 98% the same as chimpanzees in our DNA and they know that this is not true. Why would they lie? Because the mutation rate for hominids does not account for the divergence between chimpanzees and humans. Nature did the exact same thing when announcing the Chimpanzee Genome. They claimed that in our DNA we are 98% the same as chimpanzees and they know this is not true. Type 'chimpanzee genome' into you google search engine and you will find this at the top:
What makes us human? We share more than 98% of our DNA and almost all of our genes with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. .
Nature Web Focus: The chimpanzee genome
The study they are announcing clearly indicates that the two geneome diverge by at least 100,000,000 more base pairs then Time or Nature are telling you.
Don't believe me? Do the math:
That includes 5 previous studies that puts divergence at close to 5% but they still say it's 98% and no one calls them on it. Did you ever notice that there are no chimpanzee ancestors represented in the fossil record going back at least 25 million years? Want to know why, every time a chimpanzee ancestor is dug up in Africa it automatically becomes one of our ancestors.
I mean seriously, I could go on and on. The ERVs are supposed to be so close that it's a smoking gun but the largest and most abundant ERVs in the Chimpanzee genome are not present in the human genome. Chromosomal rearrangements would have had to happen on a massive scale leaving both genome riddled with genetic flip flops all over the place. The Taung fossil, thought for half a century to be a chimpanzee is now the Piltdown of our age. It's a chimpanzee size skull being passed off as one of our ancestors and the list goes on.
Christians who are getting taken in by this myth should be more discerning about what they mix with their Christian convictions. So what do you say we do the math, actually look at the evidence and consider who is telling the truth about human history.
Grace and peace,
Mark
Darwinism destroyed the dogma of the Fall upon which the whole intellectual fabric of Christianity rests. For without a Fall there is no redemption, and the whole theory and meaning of the Pauline system is vain. (Wells, H.G., Anticipations of the Reactions of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought)
The Bible is a book of history and our true lineage is found there, not in the modern mythology of Darwinian evolution. Essential doctrine is at stake and while you can accept evolution as natural history in part rejecting the creation of Adam and original sin runs contrary to Christian Orthodoxy. Accepting human evolution is not a rejection of orthodoxy but the rejection of the special creation of Adam and original sin definitely is. Believing that land dwelling creatures became amphibians, transposed into whale and dolphins are certainly interesting ideas but would have no bearing on doctrinal issues. The doctrine of justification by faith has a central focus, the sin of Adam and it's inextricably linked to special creation. Darwinism knows no bounds, it is actively seeking inroads to Christian conviction.
The New Testament traces back to Adam and no further. Examples of how original sin is tied to justification are numerous, this is just one of many:
Justification by the righteousness and obedience of Christ, is a doctrine that the Scripture teaches in very full terms, Rom. 5:18, 19, By the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one mans disobedience many were made sinners, so, by the obedience of one, shall all be made righteous. Here in one verse we are told that we have justification by Christs righteousness, and that there might be no room to understand the righteousness spoken of, merely of Christs atonement by his suffering the penalty. In the next verse it is put in other terms, and asserted that it is by Christs obedience we are made righteous. (Justification by Faith Alone by Jonathan Edwards. 1703-1758)
Accepting human evolution from that of apes is not only a rejection of the Pauline doctrine of original sin, it's a myth of human ancestry. When the New Testament writers mention Adam they speak of him as the first man and the reason why all of us are under the curse of sin and death. Paul tells us that
'by one man sin entered the world' and 'by one man's offense death reigned'. (Rom 5:12-19).
Paul ties Adam directly to the need for justification and grace in his exposition of the Gospel in his letter to the Romans. Luke lists Adam in his genealogy calling him 'son of God' indicating he had no human parents but rather was created (Luke 3:23-28). The Apostle Peter writing on the subject of false teachers mentions Paul:
Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15-16)
A Brief History of a Fraud:
My concern is simply this, the myth of human lineage linked to ape ancestry contradicts the clear testimony of Scripture and essential doctrine, specifically justification by faith. Paul is clear that all have sinned in Adam and that is the reason that we cannot keep the Mosaic law. Charles Darwin in the preface to On the Origin of Species credits Jean-Baptiste Lamarck with being the first man to propose that the doctrine that species, including man, are descended from other species. This, Darwin argues, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. This is what I have come to recognize as an a priori assumption of exclusively naturalistic explanations for the lineage of all living things. For years I focused exclusively on the Scientific literature regarding Chimpanzee and Human common ancestry and found that the human brain had neither the time nor the means to have evolved from that of apes
Piltdown England was the site of a mass grave during the during the great plague of AD 1348-49. Among the finds at the site were fossil bones of elephant, mastodon, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, beaver, and deer. Piltdown is 20 miles west of Hastings in a tiny hamlet in east Sussex. In a gravel pit used for the repair of roads, Charles Dawson 'discovered' Piltdown Man. It was a fully human cranium with the jaw of an orangutan that convinced mainstream science that Piltdown was a transitional from ape to man. The fossils were discovered between 1908 and 1915 and it was not until 1953, 38-45 years later that Piltdown Man was discovered to be a fraud. (paraphrased from, Bones of Contention, Lebenow, 2004).
The painstaking process of critical peer review and the demand for direct observation and demonstrative proof are supposed to avoid discrepancies in scientific reporting. In the case of Piltdown Man we are looking at a fraud that perpetuated itself in the corridors of academia for nearly half a century. Neither our political systems, sacred theologies, meticulous histories or critical inquires into natural history are immune to our own willful self deception. The Piltdown scandal is a warning to all who would know our history, you are more easily mislead then you would like to believe.
With that in mind lets explore some of the many offerings laid on the altar of natural history today. Evolution as it applies to natural history is a twisting turning road that is not easily navigated. The discerning traveler will have to keep both an open mind and critically examine the evidence modern science has put before us. The first order of business is to see how this fraudulent fossil evidence was received at the Smithsonian Institute.
"The evidence was there the entire time. Any researcher could have looked at the teeth with a microscope and noticed an artificial wear pattern, or the fact that one tooth had a coat of paint on it. But why didn't anyone recognize this forgery? One reason is that because Piltdown affirmed many scientists' hypotheses, they were reluctant to put it under scientific scrutiny that might have proved it wrong. Museums prominently displayed casts of Piltdown as scientific fact. Ales Hrdlicka, a leading anthropologist here at the Smithsonian, was one of the few scientists to question whether the jaw and cranium went together. But even here in our museum there was an exhibit on display: "Evolution of the Bony Chin" -- from chimpanzee through Piltdown Man to modern humans! "
It fit the hypothesis of many scientists so no one really looked that critically at it, with an occasional exception. The attitude of many evolutionists I encounter is that all of the evidence is pointing toward common ancestry of man and chimpanzee. As an amateur science buff (some would say rank amateur) I am curious how the evidence is put together to confirm or falsify the various aspects of evolutionary theory. On the other hand as a Creationist the Scriptures are sacred history so I ask you to take a little journey with me. Human evolution as it relates to the transition from apes to human beings cover some 5 to 7 million years.
Sin and death had it's origin (genesis) in Adam, that is how and why 'all' have sinned. Don't get this twisted, Paul is clear that when Adam sinned we did not fast. What my ambiguous opponent is trying to do is to is to distract you from the clear meaning of the text. The Protestant understanding of the text is that we both sinned in Adam and continue to in ourselves because of our fallen nature. The fall itself is an historical account and the conflict between evolution and creation are not about natural science, it's about natural history. What they have done with Darwinism is rewrite human history:
For all have sinned - In Adam, and in their own persons; by a sinful nature, sinful tempers, and sinful actions. And are fallen short of the glory of God - The supreme end of man; short of his image on earth, and the enjoyment of him in heaven. (John Wesley's Notes)
Sin originated with Satan Isaiah 14:12-14, entered the world through Adam Romans 5:12, was, and is, universal, Christ alone excepted ; Romans 3:23; 1 Peter 2:22, incurs the penalties of spiritual and physical death ; Genesis 2:17; 3:19; Ezekiel 18:4,20; Romans 6:23 and has no remedy but in the sacrificial death of Christ ; Hebrews 9:26; Acts 4:12 availed of by faith Acts 13:38,39. Sin may be summarized as threefold: An act, the violation of, or want of obedience to the revealed will of God; a state, absence of righteousness; a nature, enmity toward God. (Scofield Commentary)
Sin originated with Satan Isaiah 14:12-14, entered the world through Adam Romans 5:12, was, and is, universal, Christ alone excepted ; Romans 3:23; 1 Peter 2:22, incurs the penalties of spiritual and physical death ; Genesis 2:17; 3:19; Ezekiel 18:4,20; Romans 6:23 and has no remedy but in the sacrificial death of Christ ; Hebrews 9:26; Acts 4:12 availed of by faith Acts 13:38,39. Sin may be summarized as threefold: An act, the violation of, or want of obedience to the revealed will of God; a state, absence of righteousness; a nature, enmity toward God. (Scofield Commentary)
Am I to conclude that Scofield, Wesley and Paul are all mistaken that sin and death entered through Adam. Is there some reason I could logically conclude that the meaning is not both literal and explicit with regards to the sin of Adam?
The modern mystics who imagine life emerging from the Darwinian warm little pond are nothing new under the sun. Mythographers have been attributing to primordial elementals what is rightfully attributed to God since the dawn of time:
The Mesopotamian mythographers took their inspiration from thier own country...When nothing yet had a name, that is to say when nothing had yet been created, they wrote, Apsu (the fresh waters) Tiamat (the salt waters) and Mummu (the clouds) formed together one single confused body:
"When on high the heaven had not been named, Firm ground below had not been called by name, Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter, and Mummu and Tiamat she who born them all. No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared, when no gods whatever had been brought into being. Uncalled by name their destinies undetermined. Then it was that the gods were formed withing them." (Ancient Iraq, Georges Roux)
The elemental muse was greater in pagan myths then the gods, they in fact gave rise to them. These naturalistic mechanisms are the creator in the mind of the mythographers of ancient and modern times.
Ok, maybe you are thinking that even though Piltdown was a monumental fraud it can't happen now. You would be wrong, they are fraudulently misrepresenting the genetic evidence on an epic scale.
If we are looking at a gene that is identical in two species both closely and distantly related to other species with the exact same gene with the exact same mutation in the exact same place. That is a pretty compelling argument for common ancestry. In this case I don't think you have anything like that since it works in most mammals and probably is either function on some human populations or repairable in some way. The human being is unique among living systems and diverges from the chimpanzee right down to the sequences of the DNA. For years geneticists have been claiming that we are 99% identical to apes in our DNA.
Time Cover Story: What Makes us Different? Not very much, when you look at our DNA. But those few tiny changes made all the difference in the world
They claim we are 98% the same as chimpanzees in our DNA and they know that this is not true. Why would they lie? Because the mutation rate for hominids does not account for the divergence between chimpanzees and humans. Nature did the exact same thing when announcing the Chimpanzee Genome. They claimed that in our DNA we are 98% the same as chimpanzees and they know this is not true. Type 'chimpanzee genome' into you google search engine and you will find this at the top:
What makes us human? We share more than 98% of our DNA and almost all of our genes with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. .
Nature Web Focus: The chimpanzee genome
The study they are announcing clearly indicates that the two geneome diverge by at least 100,000,000 more base pairs then Time or Nature are telling you.
Don't believe me? Do the math:
Single-nucleotide substitutions occur at a mean rate of 1.23% between copies of the human and chimpanzee genome, with 1.06% or less corresponding to fixed divergence between the species...On the basis of this analysis, we estimate that the human and chimpanzee genomes each contain 4045 Mb of species-specific euchromatic sequence, and the indel differences between the genomes thus total 90 Mb. This difference corresponds to 3% of both genomes and dwarfs the 1.23% difference resulting from nucleotide substitutions; this confirms and extends several recent studies 63, 64, 65, 66, 67. (Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome, Nature Sept 2005)
That includes 5 previous studies that puts divergence at close to 5% but they still say it's 98% and no one calls them on it. Did you ever notice that there are no chimpanzee ancestors represented in the fossil record going back at least 25 million years? Want to know why, every time a chimpanzee ancestor is dug up in Africa it automatically becomes one of our ancestors.
I mean seriously, I could go on and on. The ERVs are supposed to be so close that it's a smoking gun but the largest and most abundant ERVs in the Chimpanzee genome are not present in the human genome. Chromosomal rearrangements would have had to happen on a massive scale leaving both genome riddled with genetic flip flops all over the place. The Taung fossil, thought for half a century to be a chimpanzee is now the Piltdown of our age. It's a chimpanzee size skull being passed off as one of our ancestors and the list goes on.
Christians who are getting taken in by this myth should be more discerning about what they mix with their Christian convictions. So what do you say we do the math, actually look at the evidence and consider who is telling the truth about human history.
Grace and peace,
Mark
