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Transcript 222A — Evolution and the Age of the Earth
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. Could you help me? I would like to teach in Sunday School about evolution versus the Bible. Could you give me some pointers on that?
HC: Your question is, How can you give a few points on the problem of evolution verses the Bible?
First of all, the Bible is very emphatic that God created the heavens and the earth. It you look, for example, at Exodus 20, here we find a very straightforward statement in verse 11: "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day." Now that's a flat statement that is not contradicted anywhere else in the Bible.
Moreover, this is what Genesis l teaches, that on Day One He created this, and Day Two He created that, and so on. So, to begin with, the Bible indicates very clearly that God created the universe.
Secondly, when you look at creation, you can immediately see that a Creator was required. Now you look around your room. And you see a lamp, you see a rug on the floor, you see things on the walls, you see doors and doorknobs, and all kinds of things. How many of these things came into existence without some kind of a mind thinking it out and making those objects? Well, not a thing, was there? Not one thing. Anything that you see in your room was made by someone. There's no possibility that any of those objects, your chairs or your furniture, or the lamp, or the light fixture, none of these things could ever have come to pass in billions of years without somebody making them.
Now the same is true when you look at the part that man did not make. You look at a plant. Could that have come into existence by blind chance or billions of years, anymore than your chair could have come into existence? Somebody had to make it. It had to be a Creator. And when we look at the things that man makes, they really aren't complex at all. That chair is really a fairly simple object. Even though you or I may not be able to make it, nevertheless, compared, let's say, to all of the mysterious and wonderful ways that your fingernail is made, or then you can start talking about your finger, and then your arm, and then your whole body, such a complex and mysterious and wonderful object, that could never have come to pass by chance, anymore than that chair could have.
So the world itself cries out that there must be a Creator. There must be a Creator, just like your room cries out and says that somebody must have made these things. They did not come to pass by accident.
Now you can look at evolution from another vantage point. The idea of evolution is that somewhere back when, lower objects, through blind chance, became higher objects, until finally life came into existence. And finally the fish became birds, and birds became animals, and animals became monkeys, and monkeys became man, and so on, whatever path that the evolutionist wants to go.
Now if that was possible, then it would also be possible for you to take a lot of little pieces of metal, and wood, and anything else that you could lay your hands on, and you could put them in a box. And then you could start shaking that box. And if you shook that box long enough, according to the theory of evolution, eventually a beautiful typewriter would come out, or maybe a wristwatch, or maybe something else would come out that was useful, because this is the theory of evolution, that by blind chance certain molecules got into right relationship with other molecules, and pretty soon things began to develop that were worthwhile.
Well, of course, on the face of it that's utterly ridiculous, isn't it? That's utterly ridiculous. Fact is, evolution is one of the most impossible theories that one could ever imagine. It is so absolutely impossible to think that that newborn baby somehow has evolved from something else. That's utterly impossible to contemplate. But because men's minds are blinded, and because they absolutely intuitively don't want to admit that there is a God, because if there is a God, it means there's a Judgment Day. And if there's a Judgment Day, it means they've got to answer for their sins. And so they are convinced that there must not be a Creator. There has to be evolution.
And yet they accept the theory of evolution by blind faith, because there's no evidence of it anywhere. There is no evidence. Everything in the creation cries out that there's a Creator, there's a Creator, there's a Creator. Everywhere you look. the evidence is there that there's a Creator. And yet they cling tenaciously to the idea of evolution by the blindest kind of faith, and the most tenacious faith, without realizing how blind they really are.
Another reason the evolutionist clings to what he clings to is that the idea of evolution is that the world has been around for millions and millions of years. And if this is really so, then the world ought to continue for another several million or billion years. And therefore, if there was the slightest possibility that there was a Judgment Day, it's so far down the trail that we don't really have to worry about it. And so the theory of evolution is very attractive from that standpoint.
The theory of evolution holds the idea that that which is less complex becomes more complex. Or, to put it in another way, that which is less useful can gradually become more useful, because everything began from an amoebae and worked up through the ranks, until finally we have man as the highest expression of the evolutionary process.
Now the fact is, the scientific law itself indicates that exactly the reverse is so, that that which is more complex will gradually deteriorate into that which is less. That which is more useful will deteriorate into that which is less useful. And we can illustrate this very easily. If you have a brand new shining car, and you put it out in a vacant field, according to the evolutionary idea (and this almost sounds like a caricature, and really it is. But nevertheless it illustrates the point.), if you left that car long enough, let's say a few hundred thousand years, pretty soon that car would become a more useful object. It would become even more shiny and bright and wonderful than when it was first put out in that field. Now we know that just exactly the reverse is true.
If you put that car out in that field and then come back ten years later, it will have rusted, it will have begun to deteriorate all over. And if you came back a thousand years later, the odds are that the whole thing would have been completely returned to the dust of the earth.
So, you see, the theory of evolution is exactly contrary to the laws of science themselves. The theory of evolution is not scientific in any sense. It is not practical, it is not logical. But it is a requirement for unsaved man, who desperately is trying to kid himself' that there is no judgment upon his sins, because the theory of evolution is based on a universe that does not have a God.
And therefore, if there is not God, there need not be hell. There need not be a Judgment Day.
CALLER: Just one more question. How old is the earth then?
HC: According to the Bible, the earth is 13,000 years old. As I have tried to work out the chronology of Genesis 5 and Genesis 10, I believe that creation occurred in the year 11,013 BC and the Flood occurred in the year 4990 BC.
Now incidentally the oceans themselves, completely apart from what the Bible says, give very mute testimony to the fact that the earth is very young. In the oceans we of course have minerals, or elements, ions of elements actually would be a proper term to use, which are a product of the continental masses. As the rains fall on the continents, there is erosion, isn't there? And the dirt and the rock flecks, and so on, are swept eventually into the streams. And from the streams they finally find their entrance into the ocean.
Now if scientists could measure the amount of silicon (which is one of the elements that's very common throughout the world) flowing in these ocean streams into the ocean every year, and make an estimate of how many tons of silicon went in, and then if they could estimate the amount of silicon that actually was in suspension in ocean water, then they could obtain a figure as to how long it took for this silicon to come into the ocean water.
Now according to the theory of scientists who are talking about the age of the earth, the earth is four and a half billion years old, and our present oceans are at least 150,000,000 years old. And so you would think that therefore elements have been flowing into ocean water for a long, long, long time. Well, I actually went to the Earth Science Library at the University of California at Berkeley, where there are many, many excellent books written by scientists, who know nothing about the Bible and have no relationship to the Bible. These are simply scientific books on ocean water.
And it is indeed true that scientists have measured and estimated the amount of the various elements that are going into ocean solution every year. And they have also measured the amount of these same elements, or ions of elements, that are in ocean solution. And to their amazement, at least eighteen of the elements that are in ocean solution are in such short supply that they would have been furnished by less than 1,000 years of continental weathering. Now this is exactly what one would expect if the earth, after all, was only very young. And you have some very hard droughts, and so you have differential erosion, and so some of these elements would be going into ocean solution very slowly, whereas others would go more rapidly.
Then I thought, "Well, maybe the ocean water is saturated, super-saturated by all of these elements, and they've all been going out as sediment on the floor of the ocean." But scientists, again, have written that nowhere in the world is any ocean water super-saturated. That is, nowhere is there a place in ocean water, on an average basis, where conditions prevail that heavy precipitation would occur, because the ocean water cannot contain any more elements.
But then I thought, "Maybe in spite of the fact that there is not a supersaturated situation, maybe elements could go out of ocean solution by some unknown process, and maybe the sediments on the floor of the ocean would have something to say about this." But, again, the scientists have been doing a lot of work studying the ocean floor. And they are frankly amazed that vast areas of the ocean floor are almost bare of sediments, which is exactly what we would expect with a very young earth that's only 10 or 15,000 years of age, and where the erosion has only been occurring for this length of time.
Now scientists, of course, are puzzled about this. And they now have concocted the idea that the floor of the ocean is like a great plate, that is slowly on sliding under the continental masses. And as it slides under the continental masses, the sediments ale cleaned from it. Now that's straight speculation. There's no measurement that they've ever made of the floor movement. It is straight guess work because, again, they will not accept the Biblical statement that the earth is very young.
But, you see, in this ocean water, the oceans are dramatically proving to us that the earth is, after all, very young, on the order of l0 or 15,000 years. And the Biblical statement, I believe, shows us that the world is only 13,000 years of age.
CALLER: Thank you so much.
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.