It is a horrible calamity that truth has become theoretical.
To the media, to the government, to opinionated but under-informed coworkers, to scientists, to parents, to soldiers, to couples, even to pastors, truth has become an obsolete ideal that is no longer worth striving for. This is called compromise, and with the steady decay of an old society’s universal morality, we can plainly observe many unbelievable problems that have arisen. In the time since we let go of the truth, we have seen the rise of legal abortion, homosexual marriage, and the removal of the Ten Commandments from public institutions, among countless other civil and ethical controversies. It is not coincidental that such a vast array of problems has arisen in so compact a period of time, in just these last eighty years. If you look back even as recently as the American 1950’s, you would still see a solid national core of morality, built upon the rock of Christian faith. This was what kept so many heated issues from surfacing and become problems in society. But look at us now. We’re an absolute mess. Having strayed from the admirable faith of our American founding fathers, we are now in dire ethic straits. All it takes is a road trip to see the perversity that results from loosing the truth. But when did things start going wrong?
I would argue that our national decay began when we removed the root of our proud country: it’s faith. For the purposes of this essay, I’ll pick up somewhere just before the ball got rolling, in 1925. The Scopes Trial was raging; it was the State of Tennessee versus John Scopes, who was accused of teaching evolutionary concepts to his high school students. The trial didn’t truly address whether Scopes was guilty or not, he’d already confessed; instead, the trail took a hugely controversial twist when a member of the defense, Clarence Darrow, deviated from his defensive plan, and actually attacked the Bible and the State’s knowledge of science and foreign religion. While Scopes was found guilty by the time the “Monkey Trial” was finally adjourned, the event’s publicity opened the door to evolutionary thought on (at least) a national scale.
The Scopes Trial was a huge leap in the process of yanking truth from its place in society. It led the way to the controversy we see today, the debate between creationists and evolutionists, if that’s what you want to call them. But, of course, nothing is quite as cut-and-dry as that. We are not simply given two options – creation for the church ladies, and evolution for self-sufficient philosophers – and then all sent on our way. No, no, it is much more complex than that. When we regard the question of origin, we must approach with a more objective array of criticism, looking at not simply the origin itself, but also the events following the origin. Logic alone can prove nothing, we must have evidence. Both theories (evolution and creation) are similar in that before, there was nothing, and after, there was something. However, the true question can be divided into two further queries.
If there was nothing before, then after, was there everything or only something from which everything sprang?
And what gave beginning to everything? An event, a person? Has matter always existed? What made everything come about in the first place?
So when this more in-depth approach is given opportunity, we realize that we can no longer simply look at the question of origin in terms of “creation versus evolution”. We have to see the issue through the lens of: “what events happened after the great origin?” So what we’re really doing is looking at the history we can see, grasp, examine, to understand an event that produces no direct evidence of itself. We are, effectively, following the trail backwards, seeing if it will lead to a divine creation, or a long process of evolution. If you ignore the context of “evolutionist” or “creationist” and hone on the evidence itself, you will realize that the lines are more blurred. We get two new names for essentially the same thing.
A Uniformitarianist is essentially an evolutionist, someone who firmly believes that the geological column evidences billions of years of recurrent evolution, punctuated by occasional periods of mass extinction, all eventually leading to the latest evolution: mankind (Wile, 137).
A Catastrophist is someone who believes that much of the aforementioned geological column was produced very rapidly as the result of one or more global catastrophes (floods, earthquakes, etc.) that would have produced huge environmental changes in a very fast period of time, essentially shortening the estimated age of the earth to the15,000 year-old range - give or take a few thousand years (Wile, 137).
Of course, with both of these viewpoints firmly established within the scientific community, it is natural to assume that there will be a great deal of controversy over the issue. And there certainly is. While catastrophists are generally associated with the creationist populace, and Uniformitarianists with the evolutionist crowd, there is a noticeable amount of ambiguity in the picture. Some catastrophists adamantly support the Darwinian Theory, and some Uniformitarianists side with a creation theory…there’s just too much evidence, too vast a field to restrain opinions to one “side” or the other.
Now for the evidence.
One of the greater differences between Uniformitarians and Catastrophists is their beliefs about atmospheric changes in the past. Uniformitarians believe (or hope) that the earth’s atmosphere was more or less the same millions of years ago, as it is today. This belief sufficiently facilitates several core Uniformitarian ideas, including the geological column and radiometric dating. Catastrophists, on the other hand, usually cling to the idea that the earth’s atmosphere was significantly altered by their signature “catastrophe”, and that Carbon-14 half-lives used for radiometric dating suffered a much faster decay rate, all while the catastrophe rearranged the geological column and formed many of the terrain features we see today very quickly. Perhaps even in the space of only forty days and forty nights…
And then there’s the issue of physics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (a proven law, mind you) openly contradicts core evolutionary theory. Though it doesn’t necessarily contradict Uniformitarian geological evidence, it is a blow in the face to Darwin’s original ideas, and therefore worthy of mention here. It states, “the entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium” (wikipedia, 2007). Entropy, quite simply, is chaos and disorder. So when the Second Law is placed into the evolutionary context, the two are incompatible. Evolution implies that over long periods of time, nature will improve itself significantly, aiding the fittest species and eventually producing more and more intelligent beings of sentience. But the Second Law states that any isolated system will do exactly the opposite, and that everything will move closer and closer to chaos as time progresses. So the two concepts seemingly duel; a yet unproven theory versus a time-tested Law of physics. Though, it is worthy to note that the Second Law deals in chiefly thermal physics. Yes, that means temperature, and other versions of the Second Law read “the entropy of any isolated system not at thermal equilibrium…” and so on. While I am certainly not an advanced scientist, I cannot truly see the connection between thermophysics and the origin of matter.
Then there is the geological evidence. Uniformitarians use the structure of the Grand Canyon to illustrate their theory that such a colossal feature of geology could only result from millions (if not billions) of years of erosion by water. Granted, some of the evolution-friendly scientists out there agree that a massive flood or earthquake could form the canyon, although the majority remains skeptical. Just how likely is it that a four thousand foot deep, two hundred seventy-mile long, fifteen-mile wide canyon formed such intricate geological features at the hand of a random global flood (http://www.nps.gov/)? Catastrophists often answer this question by examining geological evidence at another part of the United States. On May 18th, 1980, Mount Saint Helens erupted violently in Washington State, releasing the energy equivalent of 33,000 Hiroshima-size nuclear devices (Ham, 2000). Remarkably enough, this explosive discharge was considered to be only a minimal volcanic eruption, affecting a localized region. In the eruption itself, massive volumes of very low-altitude steam mixed with volcanic ash formed a river of mud that moved at speeds in excess of 100 mph. As the river surged downhill, it deposited sediments, forming stratified rock very quickly (Wile, 199). Furthermore, when geologists went in later, examined the rock, saw the lava forms for themselves, they came to a startling realization. In the hours that Mount Saint Helens erupted, the flow of lava and buildup of drying rock formed full canyons, hills, small valleys, literally a 1/40th scale of the Grand Canyon itself. Yes, in hours. Not thousands of years, as Uniformitarians say it should have, not even a hundred years, or ten…or even one. Hours. This seems to imply that the Grand Canyon, assuming that it is the product of a catastrophic event, could feasibly have been created in the space of several weeks.
It is even quite possible that rather than the Colorado river forming the Grand Canyon, the catastrophic existence of the Grand Canyon rerouted remaining floodwater into it’s chasm. That the Canyon formed the river, rather than vice versa.
Nonetheless, the evidence presented here is the same evidence most commonly squabbled over. The same evidence that people use to make their theory and break the other. It is, hopefully, presented here in its entirety, with no significant truth left out. As such, I must say that while a noteworthy amount of evidence seems to suggest that the earth is billions of years old, it is overweighed by a more logical, circumstantial conclusion. One has only to look around, to see the placement of the earth in the confines of space, to examine the physical, ethical, and logical evidence, and follow the trail back to its origin. With what I can observe, with the evidence I myself have seen, with the trail I have followed, I have come to the conclusion that the earth cannot possibly be a product of itself. Just as a painting cannot make itself a better work of art, the earth cannot possibly have maintained a consistent state of forward motion. It had to have begun in a desirable state able to sustain life, consistent with the Genesis account.
Which means that this was all designed, all maintained, all premeditated by a being beyond His creation, who by default must be outside time and space, and by default bears a huger, higher intelligence and range of expression than mankind can ever envision or embody. That, of course, would be God, and God is truth.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Bibliography
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation-evolution_controversy
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
- http://www.nps.gov/grca/naturescience/index.htm
- Wile, Jay L. (2002). Exploring Creation With General Science. Anderson, IN: Apologia Educational Ministries
- Ham, Ken (2000). Answers In Genesis. Retrieved January 28, 2007, from http://www.answersingenesis.org/ Web site: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4305news5-17-2000.asp
