Why Believe in Evolution?

What will your children be taught in public school this Fall? A popular textbook by Stephen Law, titled “Real Big Questions,” begins by asking the student, “Have you ever wondered:  Where did everything come from? Did someone design the universe?” Then Law answered:

“We inhabit a vast universe. Our planet, Earth, revolves around the Sun, which is just one of the many billions of stars that make up our galaxy, the Milky Way. And there are many billions of such galaxies. Where did all this come from? Why is it here? Was it designed by God? And how did living things appear? Why is there something rather than nothing? (p. 9)

The author then answers his own question:

Scientists say that the universe started with an enormous explosion—called the big bang—in which all matter and energy, and even time and space, began. This happened about 13 billion years ago.

It is hard to keep up with the ever-changing date estimates of the cosmos, but it seems the evolutionary community teaches that the universe is fast getting older. In the 1800s, “science” thought it was millions of years old. When astronomer Edwin Hubble plotted the redshift expansion line for galaxies in 1929, the estimate was about two billion years. My science textbook published in the late 1950s also gave two billion year date for the age of the Earth. Now the estimate is closer to 4.6 billion years old. In the 1970s, the oldest stars were believed to be at least ten billion years old. Needless to say, I take these exponentially increasing numbers with a grain of salt. Law continued:

What was before the Big Bang? the big bang … has an after …, But there is no before. The big bang marks the beginning of time itself… nothing happened before the big bang because there was no time for it to happen in. So there was no time or space or matter or energy or anything at all. [then] Pop—the universe appears [out of nowhere]!

Matter popping into existence is a violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics which says matter can neither be created nor destroyed by natural processes. This is a fundamental law of physics known as the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy. To support evolution, Darwinists must resort to the anti-science of things popping into existence as if by magic.  Next Dr.  Law explained the creation explanation:

“Some people believe that not only do eyes, and living things generally, have a designer, but so too does the whole universe and everything it contains. They think that planet Earth was carefully designed for us to inhabit—there’s just the right kind of food, just the right amount of water, and there is oxygen in the air. How likely is it that the world should fit us so perfectly, just by chance who designed the world for us.”

This was the explanation believed in Western society until 1859 when Charles Darwin unleashed his theory of evolution to the world. Now the majority of academics and scientists have rejected it. Law cited a story by Douglas Adams to refute the creation explanation: Imagine water in a puddle thinking this hole I am in fits me perfectly, so well that it must have been made just for me! Law then comments, “If the hole wasn’t designed to fit the puddle, why suppose Earth was designed to fit us?”

The answer is because the Earth was designed for humans. We now know of over 5,000 planets in the universe, and more are being discovered all the time. None of them are even close to being able to support life. Thousands of conditions are required for life to exist. The planet must be the right size, must have a sun and moon of the right size and distance from the Earth. It must have a magnetic field of the right strength, an atmosphere consisting of an ozone layer, troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere.

Earth must also have plate tectonics, volcanoes, and oceanic and continental crusts. Oceanic crust is denser and thinner and is composed mostly of basalt. Continental crust is less dense, thicker, and composed mostly of granite. The mantle lies below the crust and is up to 2900 km (1800 miles) thick. The core of the Earth is made almost entirely of metals—iron and nickel. Elements that dissolve in iron, called siderophiles, are also found in the core. The core produces a magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic field is, as far as known, generated in the fluid outer core by a dynamo process.

Electrical currents flowing in the slowly moving molten iron generate the magnetic field. Without the magnetic field around the Earth, life could not exist on it because  solar radiation/solar winds would strip away our atmosphere and irradiate all life. The magnetosphere, together with Earth's atmosphere, protects our planet from cosmic rays and charged solar particles. The magnetosphere is formed by the interaction of the solar wind with Earth's magnetic field. Next week, I will discuss the rest of the claims made by Dr. Law. This review helps to explain why so many well-educated young people reject Christianity, and often God as well.