Seeing Through Evolutionary Storytelling - Tetrapod Evolution (Tiktaalik)

Seeing Through Evolutionary Storytelling

Hi there, this is Caleb from Genesis Apologetics. In this video, I'm going to share with you five simple questions that you as a Christian high school or college student can use to see through evolutionary storytelling in your biology classes.

In this video, I'm going to use a familiar example presented in most textbooks, and that example is the supposed evolutionary transition of fish to tetrapods, organisms with four.

Feet.

The first question we want to ask is, what was actually observed? This enables you to determine what the actual data collected really were. In this case, the data collected are a series of fossils of lobefin fish and tetrapods, organisms with four feet.

The next question we want to ask is, what is simply storytelling? This enables you to determine what the story being told about the evidence is, and to distinguish it from the actual data. In this case, the story being told about these fossils is that they represent a transition from lobefin fish, fish with bony fins, to tetrapods, organisms with four feet.

The next question we want to ask is, what assumptions is the story based on? This enables us to determine what the unproven assumptions are behind the story. The first assumption being made in this particular story is that all living things evolved from a common ancestor.

The second assumption is that we can tell how closely related two organisms are by how similar they are to each other. In this example, we see the evolutionists compare the bones of bony fish, like Panderichthys and Tiktaalik, to the bones found in the forelimbs of tetrapods, and declare that they are all related.

The fourth question you want to ask is, what worldview are these assumptions based on? This enables you to determine what the worldview is behind the assumptions underlying the story. The worldview that evolutionists are committed to is the worldview of naturalism.

This worldview says that the natural world is all that exists, there is no god, angels, demons, soul, etc. Instead, they say that life evolved naturalistically from a simple common ancestor. The last question you want to ask is, how do you know that that worldview is correct?

It's a really important question to ask, and I suspect that probably most teachers, and even scientists, have not really thought through this question. The first problem with the worldview of naturalism is that it is unprovable.

Naturalism cannot be scientifically proven, because how could you prove that nature is all that exists? Or how could you prove that God doesn't exist? Rather, naturalism is a philosophical system of belief, a worldview, something that people accept before they even look at the evidence.

Second, the reality of divine revelation trumps naturalism. The reality of divine revelation, including the numerous, specific, fulfilled biblical prophecies, miracles, and most of all, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, show definitively that naturalism is false.

If you're interested in learning about any of these topics, check out some of our videos on our YouTube page. Third, naturalism takes for granted many things it cannot explain apart from a biblical worldview.

Naturalists assume the existence of certain logical rules, like the law of non-contradiction, the uniformity of nature, which is the foundation of science, and certain moral and ethical codes, that it cannot explain where these came from, or why they should even exist.

For example, why should the law of non-contradiction exist? It's not physical, it's not material, you can't put it in a test tube or measure it on a scale, yet naturalists accept the law of non-contradiction.

Why is this? Well, it's because they're people created in the image of God, even though they don't believe that. Well, a naturalist might say, well, we accept it because it works, but in reality, they can't explain why it works.

After all, it's non-physical. Now, someone might say, well, it's just a description of the way things are, but why are those things the way they are? Why should there be certain logical rules, or the uniformity of nature, or moral and ethical codes, in a universe in which there is no creator?

These things don't make sense. However, a Christian armed with a biblical worldview can give an explanation as to why logical rules, uniformity, and morality exist, because they come from an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent creator, God.

That's why the law of non-contradiction applies everywhere in the physical universe. Because there's a single creator God, who knows everything, who is holding everything together by his power, everywhere.

So now that we've gone through these five questions, you can see that evolutionary stories are built on certain unprovable assumptions that are based in their worldview. And when we really dig deep, we find that the naturalistic worldview that the evolutionary stories are based on is not true.

So therefore, the assumptions that the stories are based on are not true, and the story itself is not true. Now we're left with just the raw data, which we can then look at through a biblical worldview, and determine what the truth is about these things.

I hope this has been beneficial to you and encouraging. This is something that I use in my own studies in biology to help discern what is fact from.

What is fiction.

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