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Why Was
Lucy Buried First?
God commanded humans and
animals leaving Noah’s Ark to reproduce and multiply and
fill the earth. According
to the Bible, humans disobeyed God’s command and settled
at Babel. In contrast,
if biblical geologists are right about which rocks were
formed after the Flood, animals quickly spread over the
earth as God had commanded.
Dotted around the world,
sitting
on top of rocks we think date from the
end of the Flood, are
piles of sediment thousands of feet thick.
We presume, then, that
these are
post-Flood sediments, leaving a record of
conditions on the earth for the centuries immediately
following the Flood.
The nature and thickness
of the sediment suggests that centuries of catastrophes
continued to occur while the unstable earth was
recovering from the violence of the Flood.
Some of these
catastrophes, such as super
volcanoes, created excellent conditions for preserving
fossils. These fossils
show animals appearing on each continent,
being buried in local catastrophes,
long before humans are found on that same
continent.
Most
mammal “kinds,” such as horses and dogs, left the Ark by
family. Biology research
suggests that each kind expanded
into scores of species and varieties before humans ever
left Babel. Most of the
assortment of animals died out quickly, leaving fossils
of many extinct species but just a few species surviving
in the present. As we can see
in Genesis 12:16, by Abraham’s day, sheep, oxen,
camels, and donkeys were already similar to the ones we
see today.
And
he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had
sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and
maidservants, and she asses, and camels.
Genesis 12:16 KJVER
Apes follow this same
pattern. Before humans
left Babel, it appears that apes had already spread over
much of the Old World and had
expanded into a large array of species.
“Lucy” is one of the
more famous specimens of one of these ape species...
Australopithecus afarensis.
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How Much Dirt Can Be Made
In A Day?
What
may come as a surprise to some people is that
not all rock layers were laid down during Noah’s Flood.
In fact, evidence indicates that more
geologic layers may have been formed during Day Three of Creation Week
than during the Flood.
The opening verses of Genesis 1 tell us
that at the beginning, on the first day, God created the earth with
water on its surface. We are not told
what was under the surface water. Perhaps
God had created the earth’s internal structure of core, mantle, and
crust, which were located under the water. What
we do know is that on the second day God placed some of the waters of
the earth above “the firmament.” Then on
the third day God commanded the earth’s surface waters to be gathered
into seas and the dry land to appear.
This statement in
Genesis 1:9 is simple yet geologically profound:
And God said,
Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together to one
place, and let dry land appear: and it was so. KJVER
Although the verse indicates that the
waters moved, it does not indicate exactly
how the land came to be above
sea level. Keep
in mind that the firmament is not ground. The firmament is the
air. How do we know this? From Scripture. In Genesis
1:14 (KJVER), we are told:
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to
divide the day from the night;
And then on the
fifth day God tells us, in
Genesis 1:20b (KJVER):
... and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament
of heaven.
Note: Birds do not fly through the ground... more than one time.
One possibility is that God used
catastrophic earth movements to almost instantaneously raise and lower
blocks of the earth’s Day One crust to form dry land and sea basins.
If that were so, as the crustal blocks were raised, the
surface waters that had been covering them would have drained rapidly
off the land. Rapidly moving water
catastrophically erodes, so massive erosion must have occurred.
Thus laden with sediments, these waters
would have drained into the ocean basins, where the sediments would have
been deposited rapidly. Because neither
plant nor animal life had yet been created, the resultant sedimentary
rocks would be devoid of animal or plant fossils.
When most people visit Grand Canyon in northern
Arizona, their eyes are riveted on the spectacular walls, which display
about 4,000 feet of flat-lying sedimentary rock layers
made up of limestone, sandstone, and shale. Filled
with the buried remains of plants and animals, these layers must have
been deposited during the Flood, which God sent to destroy every living
substance on the face of the earth, as shown to us in
Genesis 7:23:
And every
living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the
ground, both man, and cattle, and creeping things, and the fowl
of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah
only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
KJVER
Underneath these layers,
near the bottom of the canyon, are many
other layers that do not contain plant or animal fossils.
Violent processes, including volcanoes
and rapidly moving mud and sand, must have created these layers. Many
tilted sedimentary and volcanic rock layers (about 13,000 feet thick)
sit on top of other folded and metamorphosed layers of both sedimentary
and volcanic rocks that are estimated to have
been originally about 40,000 feet thick. After
these metamorphic rocks formed, hot granites from deeper in the earth
must have intruded into them. |
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Why Did
God Create Viruses?
There are some fundamental differences in
how creationists and evolutionists view life. Biblical
creationists believe that God created life according to their kinds with
the ability to reproduce and fill the earth. This
view includes the concepts that God had purpose in what He created,
and that His creation was very good...
originally.
In contrast, evolutionists view life as
all descending from a single common ancestor by
natural chance processes. Evolutionary arguments tend to imply
that life is not really very complex or well
designed. For example, 100 years ago a
cell was promoted as being nothing more than a blob of protoplasm,
implying that it would not be difficult for it
to arise by chance. This proved to be
wrong; cells are incredibly complex structures. At
one time evolutionists argued that organs or structures with no known
function actually had no function; at the time this included hundreds of
organs and structures in the human body. Instead
these were believed to be vestiges of evolution. This
argument has become rather vestigial itself, as these organs have been
found to have function.
Yet, this argument reappeared in
genetics. Most of the DNA in our bodies
does not code for proteins, so it has been
labeled “junk DNA” by evolutionists who have
assumed it has no function. As research
continues it is becoming clear that this DNA has numerous essential
functions. The evolutionary worldview
has a dismal track record for anticipating the astounding complexity in
life uncovered by empirical scientific
research.
If God created everything good and with a
purpose, why are there disease-causing bacteria and viruses in the
world? It is true that we first learned about bacteria and viruses
because of the problems they cause. Bacteria
have been studied in considerable detail and are now recognized to be
mainly helpful and absolutely essential for life on earth; bacteria that
cause disease, which occurred as a result of
the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden, are
the exceptions, not the rule. But what
about viruses: what purpose could they possibly have?
Dr.
Jean K. Lightner answers this question very eloquently for us:
Viruses are a
bit of an enigma. They contain
DNA or RNA which are found in all living things.
This is packaged in a protein
coat. Despite this, viruses are
not usually considered living because they are not made up of
cells and cannot reproduce by themselves.
Instead, the virus will inject the DNA or RNA into
a living cell, and the cell will make copies of the virus and
assemble them so they can spread.
Viruses vary considerably in
their ability to cause disease. Many
known viruses are not associated with disease at all.
Others cause mild symptoms that
may often go undetected. Some, like the HIV virus that causes
AIDS in people, appear to have come from another species where
they do not cause disease. Given
our current knowledge of viruses, it is quite reasonable to
believe that disease-causing viruses are descended from viruses
that were once not harmful.
It has been suggested that they
have played an important role in maintaining life on
earth—somewhat similar to the way bacteria do.
In
fact, they may play a role in solving an intriguing
puzzle that faces creationists.
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Evolutionist Quote of the
Month
"There are only two
possibilities as to how life arose; one is spontaneous generation
arising to evolution, the other is a supernatural creative act of God,
there is no third possibility. Spontaneous
generation that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically
disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That
leaves us with only one possible conclusion, that life arose as a
creative act of God. I will not accept
that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God, therefore
I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible,
spontaneous generation arising to evolution."
Dr. George Wald, evolutionist,
Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University at Harvard, Nobel Prize
winner in Biology.
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Until
the next time! Enjoy
every second that
God has given you.
For indeed it is a blessing. |