The Case For A Young Earth (04/23/2000)

The Challenge of Darwinism and the Rise of Alternative Genesis Theories

Brother Otis asked me to speak today on the case for a young earth, so that's what we'll speak on this afternoon, the case for a young earth as argued by the brilliant creation research scientists of the 1970s through the 90s, is the title.

And the reason I put that is because it's important to understand that when Darwin's theory came out, it took the church many years to recover and to catch up. And what happened in the early years is that they scrambled around and they looked at what was presented and the entire scientific world was accepting it as truth and fact, and being men and women of God, they were not willing to say that the Bible was wrong in any way, so they created things to try to make it work together.

And they had not had time yet to test the theories, and it took years, it took years and years, and it really was not until 1970, somewhere in that ballpark, when several scientists who were Christian men and women had finally had time to take the data, the same data, same scientific data that anyone has, and to prove that it fits the creation model better than it fits the theory of evolution, but it took that long.

Now since that time, however, if you go back to 1970 and you come forward to the present day, there has not been one case where an evolutionist was able to defeat a creation scientist in a debate, in a public debate.

The creation scientists have won every public debate that they've ever done on television or whatever. In fact, the evolutionists will no longer do these on TV because they got their pants whipped too many times, and that's just a fact.

One thing you have to do is kind of go back in time a little bit and ask questions like why did anyone ever come up with the gap theory? How many of you use a Schofield study Bible? Let me see your hand.

You have one. Well, it's my favorite Bible, but Schofield was a man, so he could make some errors. One of the errors that he did make was he believed in the gap theory, and so in your footnotes, it'll talk about that.

Don't believe it because it ain't true. It was just a theory. I can understand why they came up with it if you go back and you kind of walk in their moccasins a little bit. If you were living in the day that they lived in and Darwin had come out with his theory and just, it hit the world and they ran with it, and it appeared to make the early portions of the book of Genesis to be in error.

So they scrambled to try to find, they knew the Bible was not in error, so they tried to figure out, well, how did these two fit together? If it's true that the earth is, you know, 54 million years old or whatever, how does that fit with six days of creation?

And so they created the gap theory and other things to try to cover it. So I want to discuss some of that history with you this afternoon, but before we start, why don't we read the scriptures? So let's look at Genesis chapter 1 and let's start with verse 2.

The Six Days of Creation in Genesis 1

The gap in the gap theory was supposed to have occurred between verse 1 and 2, but there is no gap there. If you have a Scofield Bible, there's actually a separation between verse 1 and 2 and a subtopic, earth made waste and empty by judgment.

That didn't happen. It was a nice effort, but it's not the truth. The truth is you start with verse 1 and you read right through to verse 2 and it just reads right through as it happened. In fact, we'll start with verse 1.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said, let there be light.

And there was light and God saw the light that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness and God called the day, called the light day and the darkness he called night and the evening and the morning were the first day.

Now throughout these six days of creation, you're going to see this phrase repeated and the evening and the morning were the first day, the second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day, et cetera.

And this is a phrase to look for in each passage. Now verse six, it goes on and says, God said, I want, I'm reading fast because I know I don't have a whole lot of time because even though we didn't have fried chicken, something's going to settle and you're going to get sleepy here in a minute.

So, but as we read, think about what was created on what day, because some of that's going to come into play here in a moment. God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide waters from the waters and God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from those that were above.

And it was so, and then you had the evening and the morning where the second day and then verse nine and God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place. Let the dry land appear.

And it was so, and God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters called he the seas and God saw that it was good. And God said, let the earth bring forth grass and herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit of his kind whose seed is in itself.

Now that's an important phrase whose seed is in itself upon the earth. And it was so, and the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind and the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind and God saw that it was good and the evening and the morning were the third day.

Now notice what day that these plants were formed on was the third day and then it goes on and God said in verse 14, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

And it was so, and God made two great lights, the greater light to rule by day, the lesser light to rule by night. And he made the stars also and God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth and to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness.

And God saw that it was good and on the evening and morning were the fourth day. So we see the creation of the sun on the fourth day. And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind and every winged fowl after his kind. God saw that it was good and God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply, fill the waters of the seas and let the fowl multiply in the earth and the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

And God said, let the earth bring forth living creature after his kind cattle and creeping thing and beast, um, of the earth after his kind and so, so forth. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind and the cattle after their kind and everything that creepeth.

Now that would be the insects and other thing, creeping things of the earth after his kind and God saw that it was good. And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the seas, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, over the, all the earth, every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image and the image of God created he him male and female created he them and God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth.

And God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth and every tree and which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed to you. It shall be for meat or for food and to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life.

I have given every green herb for food and it was so, and God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. And then you go on and it'll, it'll talk about the Sabbath, the seventh day.

Darwin, the Gap Theory, and the Reinterpretation of Genesis

So in the year 1859, the world of theology was hit by a powerful asteroid of atheism, sending dust in the atmosphere of which choked the faith of the very elect and plunged the theological world of that day into a deep winter darkness, very similar to what we might have if we had a nuclear explosion.

The asteroid was named the origin of species by means of natural selection by the man who first envisioned its arrival, Charles Darwin. Theologians were caught totally by surprise and were blinded by the dust and debris of the volumes of scientific data from different disciplines, from anthropology to geology, which seemed to make it impossible that the earth was created just a few thousand years ago as the Bible had always been interpreted to teach.

What's interesting to note is that until the time of Darwin, not only did universally all the theologians agree that the earth was made in six literal 24 hour days, but so did the scientific world. All the scientists believe that as well.

They believe that the earth was made in six literal days and that the earth was a few thousand years old, not the 4 .5 billion years of age proposed by evolutionists. However, with the huge amount of data from the new science of Darwinism, the men of God abandoned the eternally fixed truth of the word of God and condescended to the ways of science proposing ever-changing theories in an attempt to make the Bible acceptable by the standards of evolution.

Good men like C .I. Schofield and the rest fell to the temptation to interpret the scriptures in the light of current scientific knowledge. In addition to the time honored literal interpretation of the first four chapters of Genesis, which includes six literal days of creation and allowed for the age of the earth to be several thousand years old, five new theories had been proposed since the time of Darwin, which have come down to today.

And I want to read to you some excerpts from a book by Dr. Thomas Rogers called The Panorama of the Old Testament, which lists these theories. The first theory is called theistic evolution. Now remember these are all theories that were created since the time of Darwin.

They're all relatively new theories. The church previous to this had no such theories. The first one is called theistic evolution, which supposes that God created through evolution, that God created everything, but he did it using evolution.

This cannot be accepted, and I'm quoting Dr. Rogers, this cannot be accepted by true Bible believers because it does violence to the entire Bible and has virtually no proponents among conservative Bible scholars.

So that's the first one, theistic evolution. That one is held mostly by the liberal theologians. The second one is called the day-age theory, which proposes that each of the six days of creation represents eons of time.

While its proponents do not believe in evolution, they do allow for the antiquity of the geologic column, which evolution requires. There are critical flaws in this theory, however. The Hebrew word yom, Y-O-M, if you're trying to get that down, can be used metaphorically, but those who argue for the day-age theory have not demonstrated that the days of creation are metaphorical days.

Even when yom does designate something other than a literal 24-hour day, it nonetheless refers to a period of specific duration. And they're talking about the Hebrew word here. And it is doubtful that yom ever signified a period of time extending into millions of years.

These are serious hermeneutical difficulties. The third theory is called the revelatory day theory. This indicates that the six days were not creative days, but days in which God revealed to Moses the steps of creation.

So on the first day, God told Moses that I created this. On the second day, I created this. And so it was days in Moses' life, not days of creation. If you read the scriptures, you see that's not what it is.

But this was just another attempt to allow for the Darwinistic huge years of ages. So for example, on day three, God revealed to Moses that he had created the land, plant, seas, etc. This theory has few followers today.

The fourth theory is called the gap theory. This theory proposed that there was a gap between Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, and verse 2, which allowed for millions of years that evolutionists believe are found in the geologic column.

Dr. C .I. Scofield was among those who taught this theory, yet it has many problems. John J. Davis, in his book called Paradise to Prison, states this about the gap theory. While the motive of gap theorists, the harmonization of the Bible with current geological theory, is commendable, the validity of their argument is extremely doubtful.

Modern geology knows nothing of the theory's two global catastrophes with two distinct geologic periods. Hebrew grammar will not allow for a chronological gap between verses 1 and 2. So the gap theory not only falls because in the Hebrew language the grammar does not allow for a gap between verse 1 and 2, but it also falls because all of the evolutionists, none of them believe in a flood or a worldwide destruction of any kind, which would be required even if you allow the gap, you have to have this catastrophe that happened.

Well, the evolutionists don't see a catastrophe like that. So nobody agrees with these poor individuals. Revered scholars such as F .F. Bruce, and named several, several different men have pointed out that, quote, the purpose of the disjunctive wa, which is W-A-W, now we're getting in the Hebrew here, and they're simply pointing out that these two verses don't have a gap between them.

Bruce, by the way, is one of the greatest scholars on Old Testament, F .F. Bruce. He and several others point out that the purpose of the disjunctive wa, which verse 2 begins with, is to describe something in a preceding clause, not something which happened later.

So there's your grammar if you need it. I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me, but I kind of know what they're saying. In the Hebrew language, there is a word found at the beginning of verse 2 that ties it to verse 1, so you can't have a gap between the two verses.

The gap theory falls here and has few proponents today. The fifth theory is called the literal day with gaps theory. This theory contends that the days of creation need not be taken consecutively, but may be understood to be separated by long ages.

Each day would then indicate a normal 24-hour period by the time of the arrival of which the major phenomenon which God had been creating since the previously mentioned day had a length of great length.

So they believe that the creative day was a literal 24-hour period, but then there were billions of years maybe before the second day and so forth. J. Barton Paine, I'm going to quote him, he says, quote, Theistic evolution and the Hebrew of Genesis 1 through 2, on each creative day, quote, came when the events previously described were completed.

Davis says, this viewpoint has very few adherents because it severely strains the Hebrew text. If Moses had intended to describe non-consecutive days, it would seem he could have done so with more clarity.

Also, this theory regards the days as times only of completion of divine creation, while the writer of Genesis appears to be describing the beginning of creative activity as well as the completion of it on the same day.

All these new theories for reinterpretation of the Genesis record have self-destructive flaws. Not only do they not fit with the very science which they attempt to placate, but they do damage to the proper methods of Bible interpretation.

So I want to discuss those two problems. First of all, doing damage to proper Bible interpretative methods. In other words, if you use the same method that you would have to use to create more time in here and you apply that to the rest of the Bible, then you could make the Bible say anything.

You are making an exception on your rules interpretation if you change what this passage says. That's the first problem. The second problem is it doesn't fit the science. So I want to discuss those two problems with the time we have left.

First of all, let's talk about damage to the proper methods of Bible interpretation. Not only are these new theories flawed because they fail to answer the science, but also because they do not meet the same standards of sound Bible interpretation that would be used elsewhere in the Bible where other doctrinal issues are involved.

Davis says this, quote, it is unfortunate that the lines in this battle are so tightly drawn. Opponents of the literal day theory usually present it in the worst light. They constantly label a theory which is based on the prima facie impression given in Genesis one as naive.

This objection is quite dangerous because it can be raised just as well against other crucial doctrines of the scripture. For example, the gospels give the prima facie impression that Jesus physically rose from the dead, an impression that at least seems naive to some people, according to modern scientific opinion and research as that given in Genesis one, then the resurrection would be naive.

So should we then reject the literal physical resurrection of Jesus? Of course not. And so why do we have to reject the literal 24 hour days of creation? In other words, it is not a very strong argument to say that it seems naive that God made it all in six days because what we're saying is God couldn't have done it in six days.

Henry M. Morris says in his book, The Remarkable Birth of the Planet Earth, and I quote, is there any way by which the six days can legitimately be transformed into five eons of a billion years each? Any such conversion will require unique techniques of interpretation designed expressly for this one chapter.

Liberals are quick to ridicule those who accept what is called the literal interpretation of Genesis, forgetting that there is really no such thing. If something is interpreted, it is not taken literally at all.

An interpretation is actually a translation in which words are not taken at face value, but converted into other words. Thus quote day may be transformed into quote age and quote all may be transformed into quote some.

If God actually employed such a coding technique in writing Genesis one, it is strange that he would withhold the key to the code from all of his holy prophets and apostles until it was forced from him as it were by the unbelieving scientists of the Darwin age.

When men use figures of speech in their writing, they normally do it for emphasis and clarification, not for cryptic concealment. The creation account is clear, definite, sequential, and matter of fact, giving every appearance of straightforward historical narrative.

If the author did actually intend to tell the sequential creation of all things in six days, it is impossible to see how he could have done so more plainly than in the words and phrases actually used.

Would God be party to such a blatant deception? Perhaps it is not so quote naive after all to take Genesis literally. Christ did. Pretty strong argument, isn't it? That was from Henry Morris, who by the way is the father of the Scientific Creation Research Foundation in California, the greatest group in the world on these issues.

Scientific Objections to Long Ages in Creation

Now, let's stop for a minute and look at the scientific data. And we're not going to, you know, we can just barely touch on this this afternoon. I'm going to give you four or five very interesting points to think about.

It'll also give you some ammunition the next time you're talking to a petroleum engineer or something about how old the earth is. I've had that opportunity several times being in the oil business. I have close friends that are petroleum engineers that work with me, and I'll engage them in conversations that blows their mind.

You know, they think, you know, they're looking at all the strata, and they think that the earth is billions of years old. And they know that I'm somewhat educated, and they can't believe I think it's only 6 ,000 years old.

So it's a lot of fun. But this will give you some ammunition. From the scientific point of view, these theories still do not make the Bible fit current Darwinian theory. I want you to know that. All of the theories that we talked about that theologians have tried to come up with to stretch those days beyond 24-hour periods, none of what they've done have made it fit Darwinism.

And none of the Darwinists would accept what they say as scientific. So all they've done is they've just messed up the scriptures. They haven't done anything to make it fit the science. These theories still do not make the Bible fit current Darwinian theory, and their violations of universally understood scientific facts are worse in some cases than the evolutionary theory.

And that's why Dr. Morris and the creation scientists out of California have not accepted these theories of long ages. They believe in what we call a young earth. So let me give you some interesting points.

Now, I'm going to take most of the remaining points from a fascinating little book I wish each of you could get hold of called The Panorama of Creation by Dr. Carl Ball, who is a friend of mine. I need to have him come here and speak to us because I haven't seen him in a while.

But he's a wonderful man, wonderful speaker, and a brilliant scientist who can take that sort of thing and put it down on layman's terms where we can all understand it. And has a wonderful speaking ability, which is not normal for most scientists.

So he's just really great at this. But a lot of what I'm going to say here comes from his book called The Panorama of Creation. First, I want to speak to you about the impossibility of botanical life existing beyond day three if there are more than 28 days separation between day three and day four.

Okay, let me say that again. The impossibility of botanical life forms existing beyond day three if there are more than 28 days separation between day three and day four. First of all, we have the problem of photosynthesis.

The botanical life forms were created on day three. Remember, I pointed that out when we read through. The sun was created on day four. If these days represent eons of time, then the plants would have had to exist without photosynthesis for millions of years until the sun and stellar heavens were visible and usable as light sources.

Within 48 hours, most of the botanical life forms would be dead, and in a matter of 28 days, all of them would be dead. Now, if you say, well, but the light that God created before he made the sun could have created photosynthesis, then let's talk about the problem of procreation.

If you take the plant life, it was not until day six that God created the insects that are so very important to the procreation of most of the plants. If the six days of creation were not literal, then plants could not have begotten themselves for three million years until the insects were created.

As we know, the insects carry the pollen from one plant to the other in many forms of plant life. Now, let's talk about a second problem, the electromagnetic field of the earth. Dr. Ball moves into this area of science that would be violated unless the days of creation are six literal 24-hour periods.

The electromagnetic field of the earth has been decreasing exponentially, losing one half of its energy every 1 ,400 years. This is why the field is weak today, causing such problems as depletion of the ozone layer with increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation, which we know is going on.

1 ,400 years ago, the electromagnetic field of the earth was twice as strong as it is today, and 2 ,800 years ago, it was four times as strong as it is today. If you go back beyond 10 ,000 years ago, you find that the electromagnetic field of the earth would have been too powerful to allow life to exist on the earth, so the earth could not be older than 10 ,000 years old.

Third problem is the shrinking sun. The sun is losing energy, and a certain number of feet per hour—not per hour, but a certain number of feet in surface material. Well, per hour, actually. You wouldn't be able to measure it per hour, but I guess if you got it down to tiny numbers, you could.

But the sun is shrinking, and scientists know this. If you extrapolate back several tens of thousands of years at the same rate that the sun is currently decreasing in size, and you go backwards in time to see how large it might have been, the sun would have been so large that the earth would have been scorched just a few tens of thousands of years ago.

Also, the magnetic pull of the sun would have catapulted the earth into the sun a long time ago, so the earth cannot be more than a few tens of thousands of years old if the sun has been decreasing at the same rate.

Now, remember, one of the greatest premises of the scientific world today is the theory of uniformitarianism, and they say that everything has always happened as it is happening today, and therefore, we can predict how it used to be based on that.

So if we use their own theory, then the sun must be decreasing at the same rate that it always has, and therefore, the sun would have been—destroyed the earth, oh, maybe, you know, 40 ,000 years ago. Well, they're saying the earth is, what?

What did I say a while ago? 5 .4 billion years old, so we would have been scorched a long time ago. Now, let me give you a fourth thing, the changing distance of the moon from the earth. The moon is receding from the earth a few inches every year.

If this is extrapolated out, say, several tens of thousands of years in the past, the moon would have been so close to the earth that it would have lost its orbit and collided with the earth. Dr. Ball concludes this section of his book by saying that everything was meticulously and artistically designed.

It was orchestrated at the beginning, and we don't have thousands and millions of years to deal with in relation to this intercontext of the days of creation. Now, let me give you a fifth thing. They've looked at the rings that are around Saturn.

Have any of you ever been able to see that through a telescope? I bet you have, Bill. It's neat. It's one of the neatest planets to look at because of the rings. Dr. Ball talks about some of the space probes that have been sent to Saturn.

And on one of these, the mission discovered that the rings of Saturn were intertwined or braided. Now, if you look at them through a telescope, they don't look that way. They just look like one ring and then another one and then another one.

But when they flew the Saturn space probe there and looked at it up close, they found that these rings were actually intertwined and interbraided together. All of the laws of physics show that after several thousands of years, this intertwining of the rings would have been lost, and the rings would have become uniform in composition.

This means that someone designed them in their braided form just a few thousand years ago, Dr. Ball says. I love the way he writes. The sixth thing, and this is something that I have a little bit of personal knowledge with, and that's downhole pressure in oil and gas wells.

I mean, this is logic, and I've really made some petroleum engineers blush with this one myself. But if you think about it, when you look for oil or gas, you're always looking for it in a porous formation.

One of the things you do when you do a log or when you do core samples is you're looking for porosity, and you want high porosity. You want a type of rock that the gas can flow through and the oil can move through.

That's exactly what you're looking for. So Dr. Ball comments on this. From the pressure of oil wells, the downhole pressure, it appears that the earth is just a few thousand years old. Otherwise, all the downhole gas pressure would have long since leaked through the permeable earth crust.

Ball brings out that all the processes of dating, radioisotopic material, and alpha particle decay known to science give different ages when various portions of the same rock are examined. All these processes are based upon the concept of uniformitarianism, which, of course, the flood or any other form of catastrophic event would preclude.

If you look in Hebrews chapter 11 in verse 3, you might want to jot that down because it's just a divine smack in the face of evolution. Hebrews 11, 3 says, through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made by things which do appear.

That is a direct strike at the theory of uniformitarianism. God said the things that you see today were not made by the things that you see today. The way things work today were not placed into existence in the way that things work today.

Yet the whole theory of evolution demands that everything has always been uniform and always worked the same way. You can't have carbon dating unless everything has always worked the same way. The flood itself would have messed that up and many other things create all kinds of problems with carbon dating.

Yet if you read any kind of anything in a popular magazine that has to do with some new bone they've found or any artifact they've found and they'll use carbon dating and they'll say this is several billion years old or if you take your kids to the museum and it's showing all these things, this is 12 billion years old, you know, this is such and such.

Our kids around here just laugh when we take them on field trips and they'll read that and they go, yeah, sure, and they'll go to the next one. But most of the kids in the world believe that stuff because they're told matter of fact, well, this has been carbon dated.

It sounds very scientific until you begin to study how carbon dating works and it's based on uniformitarianism. Bill, were you wanting to make a, I thought maybe you wanted to make a comment on that carbon dating stuff.

How do you think the collapse of the vapor canopy would have affected the ratio? First Timothy 620 says this, O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called.

Evolution is in fact a science falsely so called because it is not science at all. It's faith. It's faith based because they have no facts. Absolutely, they have to take a jump or a leap in logic to come up with their theories.

The Red Shift, the Fossil Record, and Noah's Flood

Now, let's talk about the red shift a minute. Some of you will be familiar with that. It has to do with astrophysics, but some of the stars appear to be billions of light years away. We know that's a fact, isn't it?

I mean, they do appear to be billions of light years away. Astrophysicists will admit that the formula which indicates long ages for the stars known as, quote, the red shift theory or the Doppler effect is an error, although you won't find that in popular magazines where you read.

If you get into some of the scientific journals, they may admit this, but if you're just reading Time magazine or something, they'll just say, well, the Doppler effect proves that the stars are billions of light years away, and it's just given matter of factly.

In fact, in all of the textbooks that the elementary school and junior high kids have in our public school systems, they don't make mention that these are an error, do they, The Doppler effect is a current theory because the textbooks are always, would you say, 10 years behind in the public schools of where science really is or maybe more now, maybe more now.

So our kids are being taught stuff that they already know is wrong. It's being taught as facts, and they will not allow these brilliant creation research men to come into the schools and teach what they believe.

They will not allow that, although some states, I think, are now allowing some of that in on a state by state basis. If we take the formula at face value, the red shift formula, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the universe is twice as large as it is on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Now, Dr. Ball's genius, I mean, I wouldn't know this, but I'm quoting Dr. Ball, and Sunday is a toss up. Recently, it has been found that the Doppler effect can be a phenomenon of light rather than long age implications.

Number eight, let's talk about the fossil record and the flood for a moment. The fossil record is really the only, quote, proof that the evolutionists is left with, because you can blow the rest of their stuff away like we just did.

So now they're left with the fossil record and what they call the geologic column, and I said, well, here it proves it. I mean, we got fossils in here, and you can see evolution here, they say, because if you look at the column, you've got the complex plants and animals at the top, and the farther you go down, they get simpler and simpler.

It proves it all evolved, and that's the way they prove this. When confronted with the fact that no evolution from one basic kind to another has ever been observed to take place in the historic period of the column, in fact, the basic nature of natural processes as specified in the first and second laws of thermodynamics seems to preclude the very possibility of significant evolutionary changes of this type, the evolutionists must eventually fall back on the fossil record.

In other words, if you tell him, well, how can things go from simple to complex when the first and second laws of thermodynamics, in essence, say everything tends towards disorder? If everything in the universe tends towards disorder, how can you take disorder and bring it into order naturally with no designer?

Well, even if they decided not to argue that, they would always go, well, look, we have the evidence here. Look at the geologic column. That's all they can fall back on. So he regards this record as firm proof of evolution, documenting the gradual—now, this was the problem of Schofield and all the theologians, too.

They were convinced by Darwin that the geologic column was a problem for us to deal with biblically. So that was their problem. But if you document the gradual increase in complexity of the organic world with the passage of eons of geologic time, this is what the evolutionist tries to do to prove that his theory is correct.

In fact, though, the very concept of geologic ages is based on this assumption of this assumed gradation of fossils. The various individual geologic ages are supposedly recognized and identified by the evolutionary stage of the fossil assemblages found in them.