Genesis Apologetics K8 Student Zone-Refuting Evolution Part 2 (6-8 Grade)

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Genesis Apologetics K8 Student Zone-Refuting Evolution Part 3 The Fossil Record (6-8 Grade)

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Well, hello and welcome to The Zone, I'm your host Big Wave Dave. So we are in the middle of our three part series on refuting evolution.

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Today we're going to take a closer look at natural selection and adaptation. But first, let's have a review.

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During our last session, we discovered that the word evolution has a lot of different meanings.

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Let's take a closer look. So the first one is adaptation. Now this is the ability for living creatures to adapt to the surroundings, to changes in the environment.

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Next would be genetic variation. This is recombinations of existing genetic information.

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What does that mean? Well, to make it simple, when two dogs have a puppy, the puppy will have genetic information from both of the parents.

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Then there's natural selection. Natural selection is a process. It is the elimination of creatures that are unable to adapt or relocate.

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What's important to remember is that these three are scientific fact. They're observable science.

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We can see them happening and we can do experiments to confirm them. Very unlike this one,

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Darwinian evolution. Now Darwinian evolution is a belief system. It is the belief that all creatures evolved from non -living chemicals over billions of years.

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Now what's interesting is there was an evolutionist named Sir Fred Hoyle, and he was a mathematician as well.

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And one day he sat down and said, you know, I wonder what the odds of evolution producing goo to zoo to me and you.

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What are the odds of that happening? Well, they're the same odds as rolling a six on a dice five million times in a row.

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It's the same odds of a tornado ripping through a junkyard and creating an airplane.

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Sound impossible? It is. So Darwinian evolution is actually a belief system that is not founded on good science.

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You get it? Cool. All right, so let's talk about today's topic. How do creatures adapt?

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Well, the creatures use a system or a process called continuous environmental tracking.

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To give you an idea of how that works, let's start by talking about cars. So a few years ago,

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Google invented a car that is capable of driving itself. Well, how can it do that?

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Well, it uses continual environmental tracking. So the first thing they did is they equipped this car with all kinds of sensors.

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It knows how fast it's going, the objects that are around it, what the weather conditions are.

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And just to give you an idea of how this all works, let's look at a common scenario. Let's say that the

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Google car is driving along and it detects the car in front of it. And it sends that information to the computer and says, wait a minute, timeout.

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I am too close to that car. Now because of the programming that the engineers put into the car, it says,

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OK, I'm too close. I know what to do. And the car automatically applies the brakes.

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This slows down the car and makes it maintain a safe distance. The car will keep doing this.

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It will keep detecting all the conditions around it and make the changes necessary to arrive safely at its destination.

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Guess what? Animals do the same thing. Let's look at a few examples.

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You remember this guy, the Arctic Fox? He actually detects the changes in the weather and the conditions around him.

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And what he will do is in the wintertime, he will turn his coat white. And in the summertime, it'll be brown.

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Now this helps him hunt and stay safe from predators. If you see the pattern there, it's continuous environmental tracking.

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He's detecting, he's processing, he's responding, and then the process repeats. Have you ever heard of a blind cave fish?

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Now these are fish that don't have any eyes. So scientists have made some really cool discoveries.

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What they found out is that the eggs, when they're in the water, they actually detect the conditions of the water around them, in this case, conductivity.

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And based upon that, if it's low conductivity, they will inhibit or produce less of certain type of proteins, which results in no eyes.

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Now what's really interesting is if you take those same eggs and you put them in different conditions, those fish will be born with eyes.

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There it is again, detecting, processing, responding, and repeating.

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This has got to be my favorite, the crucian carp. So Northern Pike, this big fish here, they love to eat these guys.

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Now what's interesting is as that carp passes through the Northern Pike's digestive system and goes into the water, the other carp detect this.

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And within 24 hours, they begin to change into this. That makes them harder to eat by the pike.

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Now this is incredible because these are adult fish, not eggs. So Mr.

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Pike here, he's gonna either have to do one of two things. He's gonna have to eat the carp when they're younger, or he's gonna have to find another source of food.

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Detect, process, respond, repeat. Last example, ever hear of deer mice?

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So these are mice that live all over the country. And scientists have discovered that the mice that live in the prairies have shorter tails than the ones that live in the woods.

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You see, the ones in the woods could use those tails to balance on branches and that sort of thing, right? What's interesting is if you take mice from the prairie and you put them in the forest, and you take mice from the forest and you put them in the prairie, in the next generation, the tails will adjust again.

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Detect, process, respond, repeat. That is continuous environmental tracking, and it's how animals adapt.

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But there's something really important to remember. Animals and creatures do not change from one kind to another.

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You will never see a fish become a bat or a bird or a dog. Speaking of kinds, the

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Bible says that God made all the creatures according to their kind. What does that mean?

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Well, this is the system that biologists use to classify all the different life forms. If you haven't seen this yet, you will when you get into high school.

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So kind fits in right about at the family level. And just to help explain it, it's actually quite simple.

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We have lots of different chickens, but only one chicken kind. We have lots of different species of dinosaurs, but only about 60 to 80 kinds.

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In this case, these are the ceratopsia, and you'll probably recognize a few, the triceratops, the styracosaurus, the centrosaurs.

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All those belong to the ceratopsia kind. And finally, we have lots and lots of different dogs, but only one dog kind.

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So what we see in nature is this. Animals stay within their kind.

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And there's the cat kind, the dog kind, the bear kind, all kinds of kinds. Now, if you wanna learn more about this,

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I highly recommend this book. You can get it from Answers in Genesis. It is fantastic.

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We've covered a lot of material so far. Let's talk about natural selection. You know, woolly mammoths once roamed the earth, and these, they were amazing creatures.

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They're kinda like elephants, only much bigger and stronger, and of course, all that fur. Well, during the

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Ice Age, there were millions of these creatures. But then, towards the end of the Ice Age, most of them were wiped out by gigantic dust storms.

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Now, I would imagine, based upon some of the fossil finds, that some of them tried to go to a different location.

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So, let's say that they were to go down south to get away from the ice and to get away from the dust storms.

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The problem with this is that these areas would be way too hot for these creatures.

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So, they would have to do one of three things. They could leave, try to go someplace cooler.

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They could quickly adapt, maybe shed their hair, or they're gonna perish. In the case of the woolly mammoths, they perished.

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They are now extinct. But you know what? Their cousins, the elephants, just love that kind of weather.

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See, natural selection is the elimination of creatures that are unable to adapt or relocate.

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Now, sometimes, some evolutionists give natural selection almost magic powers.

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Check out this quote. This gentleman believes that bats evolved from small four -legged mammals, probably something like a shrew.

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Natural selection just retooled things. Gave them wings, and different weights, and bones, and nervous system, and all kinds of things.

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Now, even he, at the very end of his statement, says that, you know, it seems pretty impossible. However, since we have bats, it must have happened.

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Time out. You know, shrews and bats are really different creatures.

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If we're gonna go from a shrew to a bat, we need all kinds of new information to be able to create these features.

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When you hear something like that, here's some questions to ask. First of all, since these creatures are so different, and bats are so incredibly complicated, where did nature get the information needed to create these new features?

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And by the way, how would a creature that is half bat and half shrew survive? I mean, think about it.

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He's got these floppy wings that don't really do anything, so that's gonna make him not be able to run. And of course, the wings aren't done yet, so he can't fly.

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It sure seems to me that natural selection would eliminate a creature like that. Also, you ever hear of echolocation?

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Bats have this amazing sonar system that enables them to locate insects. It is incredibly complicated.

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How did that come about, just out of nowhere? And finally, why are there no pre -bats in the fossil record?

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Now we're gonna talk about the fossil record in our third and final session. Okay, some important notes to remember about natural selection.

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Nature does not have a mind and is therefore not capable of selecting anything.

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Natural selection does not have the ability to create or form new creatures.

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It is actually the ability or inability of the creatures themselves that often determine whether they live or die.

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Get it? Great. All right, let's finish up with these key takeaways. First of all, there are many different meanings for the word evolution.

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So when somebody asks you, do you believe in evolution? We need to respond by saying, well, what do you mean by that?

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Living creatures use continuous environmental tracking to adapt to the environment, changes in the environment around them.

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Animals do not change from one kind to another. By the way, natural selection does not have creative powers.

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It is actually the elimination of creatures that are unable to adapt or relocate.

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And finally, please remember, the point of all these lessons is not to win arguments.

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It's to be able to reach people for Jesus Christ. Well, I'm Big Wave Dave.

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That's all the time we have together. I hope to see you here soon on the zone. God bless you.