Spanish-American War
Essay Preview: Spanish-American War
Report this essay
Creation versus evolution is probably one of the most highly debated and argued topics all over the world. This subject alone has divided families, churches, and nations asking this one question: is there an intelligent creator that made everything and everyone, or did everything come to be out of random chance? So the question comes to be, is there a God?
First we need to establish what creation and evolution are. Creationism is the theory that all animals, humans and things were created by an intelligent designer which is what the Holy Bible states. Evolution is the theory that the world came to be by random chance, and all living things evolved from one another without any help from a supernatural being. Now that we see both are theories, we can establish that both require faith. But only one can be true, so why is it so highly disputed?
I too used to believe evolution when I was younger. First hearing about it in middle school, I believed it because it was taught as fact, not theory, and I had never any other theory that contradicts it. Then, my sophomore year in high school, a huge change occurred in my life and I started attending church more. I wanted to learn as much as I could, and this year I came upon the infamous creation versus evolution. Wanting to learn more I did something no one does, I questioned the experts. Now I know the four major studies evolutionists use to support their claim (which are homology, macroevolution, the fossil record, and the big bang theory), why these don’t hold up well, and what support there is from the creation side.
First we will tackle the evolutionists’ claims starting with homology. Homology is the study of common body parts. From the evolution side, homology is seen in animals that have common joints, muscular structure, or skeletal structure. They explain the reason for this is having a common ancestor, but that would be the same as saying that humans and grasshoppers have a common ancestor because we both have knees.
What about a common intelligent designer? Ralph Muncaster says that a “good designer applies a successful system to like mechanisms” (38). In fact, every living body has hundreds of systems that aren’t just successful, they’re perfect; all the way down to the cell that is a world in its own. Each part in the cell has to work perfectly for it too survive. Millions of cells work together to make up tissues, these tissues work together to make up organs, organs work together to make up organ systems, and all these systems working perfectly together to make up each living being, and if one heart beat, brain signal, or muscle contraction doesn’t function in perfect harmony with the rest of the body, then the whole body fails. “You don’t have to look any further than a mirror to see the very work of God’s hand” (Ronald interview).
One of the most important claims evolution is supported by is microevolution to support macroevolution. Microevolution is the change within a species, and macroevolution is the evolution is the change of one species to another by thousands of microevolutions taking place. Microevolution is something that has been proven to be true. It gives us the physical characteristics that make us who we are, and different breeds of animals. These changes in a species are the result of the 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA that every living thing has. This permits massive flexibility of an organism to adapt to its surroundings. Some breeds in a species adapt to a certain environment better than others, this is called natural selection, but natural selection has limits. In dogs, for instance, we can experiment with DNA or breed them a certain way to make that dog be able to run faster, climb trees better, or have a larger lung capacity, but it is still a dog. With each improvement it hurts it in other ways. For macroevolution to work, an increase in genetic information is required. All that has been found “is sorting and loss of information” (Answers “arguments not to use”), not even the smallest bit of an increase. If evolution is true then such changes should be frequent.
The fossil record was Charles Darwin’s greatest hope for proving evolution. In his time the fossil record had just been started and he believed that as the fossil record grew it would show the complete transitions between species. Today the fossil record is enormously large and nearly complete and they have only found a handful of disputable fossils. Some may argue that these are without a doubt transitional fossils, but “one doesn’t have to look very far for statements by paleontologists pointing to the fact that transitional forms are traditionally absent” (probe). All of the fossils show completely developed organisms, when it should show organisms developing eyes, fish growing legs, etc., but this is not the case. Since natural selection works in extremely small inherited changes, there should be, as Darwin stated, a countless number of different organisms fossilized in the earth.
To explain the lack of transitional fossils, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould came up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium. This theory states that, in contrast to Darwin’s theory of evolution, happening gradually over billions of years, groups of animals would be cut off and isolated from the rest of their species in hostile bordered habitats. This would force them to evolve much more rapidly and this original site would never be discovered. This was the explanation for the gaps in the fossil record a long time ago, but as explained above, the fossil record today is almost complete and there are virtually no gaps. Also, another reason that there cannot be any transitions is that all major changes, such as the development of lungs from gills, must all happen at once or the creature would die. There could be no in-between stages.
Also, another unexplainable part of the fossil record by evolutionists is the Cambrian Explosion. Scientists found in the fossil record that there was an “explosion” of fully developed organisms including mammals, shelled creatures, and many more in a very short amount of time. Looking at this from the evolutionists’ point of view, the Cambrian Explosion doesn’t make any sense, but looking at it from a creationist’s point of view, it makes perfect sense. Looking in Genesis 1:20-25, it states that God created all creatures in two days.
The big bang theory was once claimed by evolutionists to support evolution, but today the case is much different. The big bang theory states that the universe started from nothing and then exploded into existence. The only problem