¨
Chapter 12
THE ORIGIN OF
MAN
A Confession of Faith
“In the beginning it pleased God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for
the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, to
create or make the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible,
in the space of six days, and all very good.”
(The
Confession Of Faith Of 1689, Chapter 4, Section 1; study John 1:2,3;
Heb. 1:2; Job 26:13; Rom. 1:20; Col. 1:16; Gen. 1:31).
The
soul did not emanate from the substance of God for two reasons. First, emanation implies that the substance
of God can become disturbed or changed, and this is unworthy of the character of God. God cannot become less than Himself. Second, substance is that in which attributes
inhere. If men were able to partake of
God’s essential substance they would possess the attributes of God, such as
omniscience, infinity, omnipotence, etc.
That is not possible. God will
not give His intrinsic glory to anyone.
(Isa. 48:11)
The soul is not a form
of God for that would be Pantheism. God
and man are separate beings and are not to be confounded or blended.
The soul is not the
product of spontaneous generation.
Science knows nothing of spontaneous generation except as a theory. Elaborate experiments and the most
painstaking efforts and observation have ruled out spontaneous generation for
this reason: "Research sponsored in
part by NASA (for the purpose of enabling astronauts to recognize even the most
rudimentary forms of life on other planets) has shown that the simplest type of
protein molecule that could be said to be "living" is composed of a
chain of at least 400 linked amino acids, and each amino acid is a specific
combination of four or five basic chemical elements, and each chemical element
is a unique assemblage of protons, electrons, and neutrons. It is thus inconceivable (to anyone but a doctrinaire
evolutionist) that a living system could ever be formed by chance. (Scientific Creationism, edited by Henry
M. Morris)
What the Soul Is
According to the Old
Testament usage of the word nepes,
the soul is the essence of man in the totality of his being. The breath of God blown into the body of Adam
created "a living nepes" (Gen.
1:20; 2:7; Ex. 1:5). The soul is
something that can hunger and thirst (Psa. 107:5) and can be distressed (Gen.
42:21). It is often used for the essence
of self (Job 16:4; Psa. 124:7). In the New Testament, the soul (psyche) is the
life principle (Acts
Rational Objections to
Evolution
Ø
The Great Gaps. Science shows great gaps between different species
and that each came without known antecedents in the lineal decent. One evolutionist, former Professor Joseph Le
Conte,
Ø The Insufficiency of Time. When
evolutionists assign millions and millions of years for the process of
producing man, they do so without evidence.
The Question may be justified whether the earth has been habitable
millions of years. The oldest written records with verifiable chronology only dates back to the
first dynasty in
Ø The Sterility of Birds. Equally opposed
to the theory of evolution is the idea of the crossing of the species. Nature herself has closed the door to this
possibility (note Gen. 1:24).
Ø The Remains of Men. The earliest remains of man are
of high development, showing that man like the other species came upon the
scene in the maturity of his being.
There may be evidence for devolution or man going from a higher state of
existence to a lower state as per Genesis 1-2, but there no is evidence that
any man has going from a lower state to a higher form of existence. Radiocarbon dating methods have proven to be
unreliable for establishing dates of antiquity, and evening more damaging is
that lack of fossil evidence when population statistics are considered. From all the people that would have lived on
earth in the last million years, even with a slow population growth rate, there
is little evidence of the preservation of ancient man. If evolution is true, why there so little
evidence in the fossil records? In the
past, some extraordinary hoaxes have been offered by evolutionists to fool the
public.
q
Neanderthal Man. In 1856 in the Neander Valley, near Dusseldorf,
Germany a creature was found that was believed to be semi-erect and sub-human. "It is now known that Neanderthal man
was fully erect and in most details was indistinguishable from modern man, his
cranial capacity even exceeding that of modern man." (Evolution?
The Fossils Say No, Duane
T. Gish)
q
Java Man (Pithecanthropus erectus, "erect ape man"). It was in 1891
that Eugene Dubois, a Dutch physician made his discover of Pithecanthropus erectus in Trinil,
Java. There was a single skull cap
found. The next year, still digging in
the same area but fifty feet away, Dubois discovered a thigh bone, along with
two molar teeth. Assuming all the pieces
belonged together, Dubois dated the find as a half million years old, and told
the world. What he did not tell the
world until thirty-one years later is that he had also found two obviously
human skulls at the same time and on the same level as the digs. Just before his death, Dubois conceded that
Java man was rally the remains of a large gibbon.
q
Piltdown Man (Eanthropus dawsoni, "Dawn Man"). Charles Dawson is credited with the discovery
of "Dawn Man" in Piltdown, England in 1912. From a skull part and a few teeth, the little
chap was dated to be from 500 to 750 thousand years old! In 1950, the bones of "Dawn Man"
were put under the spotlight of truth: fluoride tests were done and a grand hoax
was revealed. The skull portion
unearthed had been stained with iron salts and the teeth had been deliberately filed down to give it the
appearance of age.
q
Peking Man. Unearthed near Peking, China in 1912 by Davidson Bolack, this find consisted of the fragments of thirty
skulls and 147 teeth. Today, Piltdown
man is believed to be the remains of some large monkeys or baboons which were
killed and eaten by those working in an ancient lime-burning quarry.
q
Nebraska Man ("Western Ape
Man). Harold Cook informed the world
that he had made a wonderful discovery in western Nebraska in 1922. What did he find? One tooth!
ONE tooth! The world was made to wonder
as an imagine artist drew a mouth around the ape-man that was declared to be
six thousand years old. In 1927 the
tooth was discovered to have really belong to an extinct pig.
q
East Africa Ape (zinjathropus).
In
1959, National Geographic Magazine was all to happy to tell the world that
Louis S.B. Leakey have made a marvelous discovery in Olduvia,
Tanzania. A skull cap and a few bone
fragments were produced and dated to be 2-4 million years old. Here at last was a real missing link. Or was it?
Just prior to his death, Leakey admitted that he felt his find was
nothing more than a variety of australopithecus (Southern ape) found in 1924.
Ø
The Discrepancies Between
Kingdoms. Nature today, and the fossil records of the
past continue to testify against evolution by demonstrating that some kingdoms
in nature are vastly superiority to others.
This would not be the case if evolution were true. Rather, there would be some sort of
connection between the kingdoms to form a unified ecosystem. However, there cannot be found in the
vegetable kingdom anything from which the characteristic features of animal
life could be developed or vice versa.
So too there is a vast gulf between the animal and man, despite the
attempts of modern science since 1859 to show how similar man and animal
are. Some dramatic differences may be
noted.
q
Man alone is a rational
creature. Animals may solve problems based on a
biological urge but only man sits down to think, the way that a philosopher,
professor, theologian, or someone in love does.
q
Man alone makes things by reason and free will,
not according to instinct. "The instincts of animals remain the
same from age to age. The bird still
builds her nest and the bee her cell as they did at the Gate of Eden. There has been no progress in their mental
development." (David Clark)
q
Only men build machines
which are in themselves productive. Animals may
use tool, but no animal makes a pattern or die press to stamp out other tools
for mass production.
q
Man alone communicates
thoughts based upon words and reasons. Animals
communicate with sounds and grunts. They
communicate emotions and impulses but nothing that can be asserted to be true
or false.
Ø
The Law of Entropy. There is a universal law of degeneration,
which argues against the evolutionary model.
The law of entropy says that everything goes from order to disorder. There is a natural breakdown of all
things. Physically, modern men are
believed to be inferior to the ante-diluvian civilization (and mentally we may
not be above the ancient Egyptians either; their inventions rival ours. It will
be interesting to see if modern buildings will stand the test of time like the
pyramids.) Rather than ascend ever
upward, the body of man is wearing down just like all the things he builds and
the universe itself. One day, the sun
will stop shining, the earth will rotate no longer, and the starlights
shall disappear. The universe is winding
down, not up.
·
The Lack of Visual Evidence. If evolution is a cosmic process, it should
be everywhere apparent and in actual operation before our eyes. Why is there no discernable evolutionary
processes going on? Has everything in
the evolutionary model reached such a stage of perfection that no advance is
possible? Evolutionary science is
strangely silence before such questions.
·
The Logical Impossibility of
the Evolutionary Process. If intelligent cross breeding has failed to produce a single new
species in ideal laboratory conditions, what probability is there that blind chance or natural selection could
do so? Natural selection will not be
able to do what intelligent selection cannot do.
A Theory Of Recapitulation
The
Embryological Recapitulation Theory argues that the unborn child passes through
the various forms which the race is supposed to have traversed. It is argued that each person in the womb
moves from the protoplasmic cell, through invertebrate life, to fish,
quadrupeds, and finally to man. This theory was once held to be the most
convincing demonstration of the evolutionary claims. In response, it is
admitted that there is a cursory resemblance between the fetus of a human and
that of some animal forms. But the
resemblances are only superficial for one can see life similarities in other
things such as unusual cloud formation, rain puddles, and rock formations. King Ahab said that he saw, "a little cloud out of the sea, like
a man's hand." (1 Kings 18:44)
The following points are worthy of consideration.
· It is only a
pre-suppositional thought that says
that the human embryo in its early stages is an actual representation of a mass of protoplasm that is the same as
the lower form of life, which is little more than a globule of protoplasm.
· It is only a
pre-suppositional thought that say
that the elongation into the form of an infant must necessarily reflect the
shape of a fish.
· It is only a
pre-suppositional thought which
supposes that as the as legs and arms develop, they have the same likeness to a
quadruped.
· It is only a
pre-suppositional thought that sees
the folds in the skin of the neck resembling the gills of a fish. In reality, all these things are
superficial and prove nothing as to the background of the human race. Besides, the real differences in fetal
development lies in that which is not physical but spiritual.
The Recapitulation Theory
Does Not Matter
Even if somehow the recapitulation
theory of evolution could be proven true, “what
has been accomplished in building the long stairway from the ameba to man if
every man must begin for himself at the lowest point, a cell of protoplasm? If man
could begin where the animal development left off, there might be some purpose
discerned in the evolutionary process.
But how absurd it is to suppose that it took the cosmic forces millions
and millions of years to do what the human embryo does in nine months! “
(David Clark)
The Harm of Change
The
truth of the matter is that the whole science of reproduction demonstrates that
cross breeding small hereditary changes do not accumulate to the making of a
species. In addition, both macro and micro-mutations have been proven to be
essentially harmful to a species over a period of time. Macro mutation refers to the sudden change in
a organism such as an arm, eye, or leg suddenly appearing. Micro-mutation refers to small incremental
differences from in a species over a prolonged period.
The Fossils Say No!
Evolutionists have always suspected that nature has destroyed millions of life forms. If these discarded life forms could be recovered, they would prove the evolutionary theory to be correct. (Perhaps nature has a sense of humor in that it destroys the very forms needed by its advocates while preserving the rest.) The truth of the matter is that the fossil record bears witness against evolution. In some fossil sites with a continuous deposit being made of nearly two thousand species, all of them appeared suddenly. No fossil has ever been shown as having passed away to be superseded by other forms. Though embarrassing to the evolutionist, some geological sites in the world reverse the order in which life was supposed to appear on the globe. Pre-Cambrian strata (alleged to be the earliest of geological history) and fossils supposedly old lie in complacent conformity to underlying cretaceous (chalky) strata (of the Mesozoic era) and fossils supposedly young. Why is this? The answer is simple: there are no credible signs of the most infinitesimal, let alone intermediate, variations in the fossil records between one species and another. In the beginning, God created all the animals and all forms of life within a six literal day period. Therefore, the Creationist (Christian) would expect