Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/online/topics06/t08850

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08850
 \\Chapter 9 - Problems in Earth History\\

 1) What were the created kinds?                             8851
 2) Why did God create carnivorous animals?                  8852
 3) How could great geological structures have been          8853
    formed in a few thousand years?
 4) What about the theory of continental drift?              8854
 5) Was there an Ice Age?                                    8855
 6) What and when was the Stone Age?                         8856
 7) Will man ever be able to create life?                    8857
08851
 \\1. Question:\\ "What were the originally created kinds of plants and
               animals?"

 \\Answer:\\ Ten times in the first chapter of Genesis we are told that
 the plants and animals created by God were to produce "after their
 kinds" (Genesis 1:11, 12a, 12b, 21a, 21b, 24a,24b,25a,25b,25c). There
 could be an abundance of variation \\within\\ each kind, but never
 could one kind bring forth a \\different\\ kind.  Thus, an unlimited
 evolution was prohibited and prevented by the creator right from the
 start.  He designed and formed a highly-complex reproductive program
 for each of the kinds, implanting that "code" in what is now known as
 the DNA, which would permit a tremendous latitude of variation (for the
 twofold purpose of assuring that each individual would be unique and
 recognizable as an individual, and also of enabling the kind to shift
 its major characteristics sufficiently to adapt to a wide range of
 possible future environments), but never so much as to become a
 different basic kind of organism.

    The question is, exactly \\how much\\ variation is possible?
 Evolutionists believe such variation is unlimited, especially if
 mutations are continually being added to the gene pool.  However, all
 known and demonstrated true mutations seem to be harmful (or neutral, at
 best), so it is difficult to see how this factor would significantly
 increase the range of viable and useful variations.  In an attempt to
 delineate the Genesis "kind," Carolus Linnaeus, the "father of
 taxonomic classification," defined a \\species\\ as a stable,
 reproducing population, not interbreeding with other populations, and
 his basic classification system (species, genus, family, class, order,
 phylum, kingdom) is still largely in use today.  Linnaeus did recognize
 the key factor to be reproductive stability, as implied in Genesis.

    On the other hand, geneticists have argued that new species, as
 defined in this way, can sometimes be developed which will normally not
 breed back with their parent populations, and they have cited such
 phenomena as experimental proof of trans-specific evolution.  Also, it
 has been found that what seem to be reproductively isolated species
 will, under some conditions, cross to produce hybrids (horse and donkey,
 lion and tiger, cabbage and radish, etc.).  Some of these hybrids are
 sterile, but the very fact they do breed and reproduce would seem
 to contradict God's dictum that reproduction can only occur "after its
 kind,"--unless, indeed, such unusual crosses do indeed represent two
 stable variations of an originally created kind.

    An idea of the wide range of possible variation within a kind can be
 best obtained from the dogs.  Tremendous variations in size, abilities,
 temperaments, climatological preferences, and other characteristics
 have been developed in dogs by selective breeding by man within a few
 thousand years.  Not only domesticated dogs but also wolves, coyotes,
 foxes, etc., are probably from the same ancestral "dog kind."  All of
 these characteristics must represent originally created characteristics
 which remained dormant or latent until selective breeding techniques
 brought them to the surface.

    There has obviously also been a tremendous range of human
 characteristics that have surfaced just since the dispersion at
 Babel--contrast the African pygmy and the giant Watusi, the Australian
 aborigine and Scandinavian, the Chinese and the Englishman.

    It is probable that similar ranges exist in other kinds.  It is
 also probable that the most rapid rate of variation (and possible
 speciation) took place soon after the great Flood.  It is known that
 only a relatively few dominant characteristics are normally expressed
 outwardly in a large interbreeding population.  In a small, inbreeding
 population, on the other hand, many new varieties may appear rapidly.
 Recessive characteristics have much better opportunity to become
 visibly established in the population under such circumstances,
 especially if the environment is different from that to which the large
 parent population had become adapted.

    Both situations applied with a vengeance during the first centuries
 after the Flood.  The worldwide environment had been drastically changed
 and the animals radiating out from Ararat were continually entering
 other new and different local environments.  The populations initially
 were minimal--six of each "clean" kind and two each of all the rest.
 Thus, the conditions strongly favored the rapid development of many new
 varieties within each kind.  As each variety became adjusted to its
 appropriate ecological niche, it eventually became, in effect,
 "reproductively isolated" from its cousins and, for practical purposes,
 might now be defined as a Linnaean species, or perhaps even as a genus.
 Were it not for the known historical connection, many breeds of dogs
 might today be regarded as reproductively isolated from others
 (consider the psychological and physiological barriers in the way of
 any natural mating of, say, a Great Dane and a Pekingese).

    It may well be that clues to the original kinds may be derived from
 hybridization studies.  Those which can form hybrids may possibly be
 varieties of the same original kind, even though they may seem very
 different now.

    Man's attempt to classify plants and animals is admittedly
 arbitrary.  Therefore, the original kinds may have been in some cases
 what we now arbitrarily define as species, in others as genera.  In
 many cases, in view of the high probability of rapid variation after the
 Flood, it may well have been what we now call the "families" (dogs,
 cats, horses, bears, etc.).  This is an area for potentially important
 creationist research, through hybridization, post-Flood paleontology,
 genetics and molecular biology.  In any case, we can be sure that such
 variation definitely was within the limits of the kind, whatever
 precisely that may have been.

    Furthermore, such variation was "horizontal," at the same level of
 complexity, rather than vertically upward toward higher levels, as
 ultimately required for true evolution.  Any true vertical changes
 (e.g, mutations) must have been downward rather than upward, toward
 degeneracy and extinction, in accord with the entropy principle and the
 nature of known mutations.

    In fact, even apart from the possible effect of mutations, natural
 selection would tend to favor smaller varieties than those which had
 thrived before the Flood, due to the smaller amounts of suitable food
 and more vigorous environmental conditions in general.  The fossil
 record does show that many plants and animals deteriorated drastically
 in size during the post-Flood Ice Age.  Furthermore, even though each
 kind had been equipped to adapt to a wide range of environments, the
 post-Flood environment and climate were so extremely different than
 before the Flood that many varieties and even entire kinds (e.g.,
 dinosaurs) finally found it impossible to survive at all, and became
 extinct.
08852
 \\2. Question:\\ "Why did God create carnivorous animals if there was
               to be no death in the world as first created?"

 \\Answer:\\ It is certainly true that the created world, as God had
 originally finished it, was a world that was "very good" (Genesis
 1:31), with no suffering or death in the animal or human realms. Death
 came into the world only when "by one man, sin entered into the world,
 and death by sin" (Romans 5:12).  It was "by man came death" (I
 Corinthians 15:21), when God pronounced the great Curse "on the ground"
 for man's sake (Genesis 3:17).  The ground (or "earth") comprised the
 very elements themselves.  Adam's body was formed of the dust of the
 ground, as was every other system, organic or inorganic, in the
 physical and biological creation.  All were affected by the Curse.
 Since that time, "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain,"
 under what Paul calls "the bondage of corruption (literally 'decay')"
 (Romans 8:21,22).  Everything is in a process of decay, of
 disintegration, of descent into disorder.  This principle, in fact, is
 now one of the basic laws of science, the law of increasing "entropy,"
 also known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

    In the original creation, however, this law was not yet operative.
 All disintegration processes were balanced by growth processes, so that
 the total "order" (or "available energy") remained unchanged.  For
 example, the fruits and herbs were designed to be eaten by man and
 animals, but this process did not entail "death" of these plants, since
 plants do not possess "life" in the Biblical sense.  They are complex
 chemical systems, in which exist elaborate programmed information
 systems designed by God to enable them to specify their own
 replication.  For each plant, the "seed was in itself, after his kind"
 (Genesis 1:12), and its particular form of existence was thus to be
 continued, generation after generation, at the same level of order and
 complexity.  The processes of feeding, digestion, animal excretion,
 soil replenishment, plant nourishment, were all in perfect balance, so
 that the state of order would remain unchanged in the plant kingdom.
 The inorganic processes on the earth were also in perfect balance.
 Not only were total mass and energy conserved (First Law of
 Thermodynamics) but so were order and \\available\\ energy.  To the
 extent that the "biomass" of plants, animals, and people increases with
 time, the required excess energy to produce this mass presumably was
 obtained ultimately from the earth's internal heat and from the
 incoming solar radiation.  The details of such "negentropic" processes
 are probably impossible to delineate now, since they have been
 superseded by the "entropic" process triggered by the Curse.

    In any case, there was certainly no "struggle for existence" among
 the animals, for God had provided abundantly for their needs.  "To
 every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to
 everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have
 given every green herb for meat" (Genesis 1:30).  Neither man nor the
 animals were intended originally to be carnivorous, but to eat fruits
 and herbs only.  It is possible, even today, for both man and the
 carnivorous animals to survive on vegetarian diets if they have to.
 Furthermore, neither man nor animals were originally intended to die,
 possessing as they do the \\nepesh\\, or "soul," or "creature," the
 principle of \\conscious\\ life which plants do not possess (Genesis
 1:21, 24; 2:7).  If and when the numbers of people and animals ever
 reached the optimum values for their ecological niches and for the
 earth as a whole, God no doubt would have terminated His command to "be
 fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:22,28) and caused their reproductive
 activities to cease.

    However, the original idyllic world suddenly was drastically
 changed when sin entered it.  Because man (through Satan) brought
 spiritual disorder into God's dominion, God pronounced the Curse of
 physical disorder on man's dominion.  It is also possible that Satan's
 prior sin in the heavenly realm had introduced the same principle of
 physical decay into that realm as well, so that the stars and planets and
 other heavenly bodies are also now under the Curse--"the whole creation
 groaning and travailing together in pain."

    In the plant kingdom, plants that were originally completely
 beneficent started to change, many beginning to produce "thorns and
 thistles" (Genesis 3:18).  Such structures may possibly have arisen by
 mutation, but more likely by recombination of latent genetic factors
 present from the time of creation.  Within each created "kind" God had
 provided a tremendous variational potential, making it able in the
 future to adapt to a very wide range of environments.  Such
 \\horizontal\\ changes (within the kind, at the same level of
 complexity) are not, of course, true evolutionary changes (that is,
 \\vertical\\ changes from one kind to a more complex kind).  As long as
 the environment was universally pleasant and conducive to fruitfulness
 and harmony, the characteristics outwardly expressed were likewise
 pleasant and harmonious.  Later, however, the hostile environment of
 the post-Edenic world--and later, even more of the post-Flood
 world--permitted many recessive characteristics suited for such a
 hostile environment to become outwardly manifest.

    Not only did gentle plant protuberances become replaced by thorns,
 but many other deteriorative changes gradually developed.  Pleasant
 flowering shrubs degenerated into noxious weeds.  Many bacteria
 originally helpful in various organic processes became deadly
 disease-producing micro-organisms.  Certain organisms planned for
 symbiotic relationships with others declined in usefulness and became
 mere parasites.  Certain plants actually became poisonous.  Instead of
 the earth yielding an abundance of fruits and edible herbs to man's
 cultivation, as originally intended (Genesis 2:9, 15, 16), it now
 "yielded its strength" only reluctantly, requiring hard labor and
 sorrow in the production of man's necessary food (Genesis 3:17-19;
 4:12).

    Similar changes began to take place among the animals, not
 immediately, but gradually, with the greatest modification reserved for
 the drastic changes in environment following the great Flood.  The
 genetic system for each animal kind, as for plants, included provision
 for extensive variations as needed to adjust to varying environments.
 As the plant kingdom began to suffer deteriorative changes, it became
 more and more difficult for the animals to derive their nourishment
 solely from the grasses and herbs.  Gradually certain animals began to
 obtain some of their proteins and other needed foods by killing and
 eating animals smaller than themselves.  (Actually, the precise boundary
 between plants and animals is not clear; it may be that some of the
 lower animals--especially among the protozoa and smaller
 invertebrates--do not actually carry the \\nepesh\\ life of the higher
 animals, and so were intended from the beginning to serve as food in
 the same way as the plants.)

    In any case, many of the animals in some such way began to acquire
 carnivorous appetites, in order to overcome the dietary deficiencies
 set up by the deteriorating plant world.  In the normal processes of
 variation, natural selection began to favor those individuals containing
 features best able to catch and devour smaller animals, and eventually
 teeth and claws and other such characteristics (perhaps originally
 intended merely to tear and eat tough roots, bark, etc.) were modified
 and became established in certain varieties, and many species of
 animals thus became carnivores.

    This was not really bad, because all creatures must now suffer
 death anyway, under the Curse, and the "food chains" thus beginning to
 be established would serve to maintain proper ecological balances.
 Especially after the Flood, with land area and vegetation drastically
 reduced in extent, with the soil largely depleted of its original
 minerals and thus plants much less nourishing than first created, many
 animals became largely dependent on the food value in other animals for
 their survival.  Great numbers, especially of the larger animals, were
 unable to adapt sufficiently at all, and so soon became extinct.

    Finally, after the Flood, God even authorized man to eat animals
 (Genesis 9:3,4), provided that he first drained the blood (representing
 the "life") from them.

    The foregoing sequences of events seem to be reasonably implied by
 the Scriptural descriptions of the primeval world, the Curse, the
 Flood, and the effects associated with each.  However, much is
 uncertain and there is room for considerable research, both in
 Scripture and science, as to the details.
08853
 \\3. Question:\\ "How can we explain the thick beds of sedimentary
               rocks, deep canyons, great coral reefs, salt beds, and
               similar geologic formations in terms of the few thousand
               years of Biblical chronology?"

 \\Answer:\\  The reason why many geologists believe the earth to be of
 great age is because of their commitment to the \\principle of\\
 \\uniformitarianism\\, the philosophy that "the present is the key to
 the past."  According to this idea, which has been dominant in
 geological thinking for 150 years, present processes operating
 essentially at present rates are believed to explain all the geological
 phenomena now seen in the earth's crust.  If the present rates of
 sedimentation, erosion, evaporation of salt lakes, and growth of coral
 reefs have been those which produced the great formations with which
 they have been identified in the earth's crust, then an immense amount
 of time must have been required.

    However, the uniformity principle is being seriously questioned
 today, not only by creationists but also by many evolutionary
 geologists.  There seem to be no processes taking place in the present
 that are competent to explain the corresponding formations of the past.
 For example, the evaporative processes which are producing salt
 deposits today are leaving salt beds which are both qualitatively
 different and quantitatively trivial in comparison to the great
 thickness of pure salt and gypsum found in the geological strata.  The
 same is true of coral and limestone formations.  Great continent-wide
 formations of sandstone and shale are quite incommensurate with any
 beds of sand and silt being deposited by modern rivers.  Modern
 volcanoes are in no way competent to produce the great thicknesses and
 region-wide areas of volcanic rocks found in the earth's crust.  Modern
 rivers could never produce the deep canyons or the thick beds of
 alluvium through which they flow.  Modern glaciers could never produce
 the continental glacial deposits of the past.  The present is \\not\\
 the key to the past.  Catastrophism, not uniformitarianism, is the only
 sufficient explanation for the geologic column.

    Creationists do, of course, believe in the uniformity of the basic
 laws of nature (e.g., the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of motion,
 the types of force systems, the properties of matter, the fundamental
 nature of the earth and the universe, etc.)  Such basic uniformity of
 the laws by which God operates His completed creation (Genesis 2:1-3)
 does not mean, however, that the rates of all the innumerable processes
 which exist in the cosmos, and which themselves operate within these
 laws, must always be uniform.  Rates of sedimentation, evaporation,
 biological growth, volcanism, radioactive decay, and all other process
 rates are subject to wide variation, depending on how the specific
 factors which control them may vary.  Evolutionists frequently try to
 confuse the issue by saying creationists reject uniformitarian laws of
 nature when they know quite well that creationists reject only the
 assumption of the uniformity of process rates.

    There is reason, in fact, to believe that practically every
 formation in the geologic column was formed rapidly, in some type of
 physical catastrophe.  The very existence of fossils in rocks is
 evidence of this.  To be preserved as fossils, an animal or plant must
 not only be trapped and buried in sediment, but must be buried and
 compacted rapidly, before air and bacteria can cause decay and
 degeneration.  Often, fossils are found in large numbers, speaking
 clearly of catastrophism.

    Sedimentary rocks are the only rocks which contain fossils, and this
 can only mean that most sedimentary rocks were originally laid down
 rapidly, under flood conditions.  This is further evidence by the vast
 extent of many sandstone, shale, and other sedimentary formations,
 often covering great regions of the continent, each obviously having
 been formed under a continuous body of moving water.  The great
 Colorado Plateau, for example, consists of hundred of thousands of
 square miles of flat-lying sedimentary formations, each of which was
 formed when under water, before the entire region was uplifted
 thousands of feet above sea level.

    Furthermore, there is reason to believe not only that each
 formation was formed rapidly, but also that the entire sequence was
 formed continuously with no great time gaps intervening.  There are no
 worldwide "unconformities" (physical discontinuities between adjacent
 formations, presumably representing time interruptions in the
 deposition process), and therefore, one way of the other, deposition
 must have been continuous throughout the entire geologic column.  With
 each formation having been laid down rapidly, and the whole column
 continuously, the obvious conclusion is that the entire geological
 column was laid down rapidly, in a global hydraulic catastrophe, nothing
 less than the Noahic Flood!

    At the conclusion of the great Flood, after all the eroded sediments
 had been redeposited in great stratified formations, tremendous
 continental uplifts took place and basins opened up in the ocean depths
 (Psalm 104:8). The waters of the Flood drained off into these new
 basins, scouring out great canyons in the process, easily eroding the
 still-soft sediments and laying down vast thicknesses of alluvium in
 the newly forming valleys and flood plains and deltas.

    Similarly, during the Flood itself, other geophysical processes were
 intensified.  As the "fountains of the great deep were broken up"
 (Genesis 7:11), tremendous quantities of lava welled up from the mantle
 below the earth's crust, forming the great igneous intrusive rocks in
 the geologic column, along with huge volumes of "juvenile" water.
 These waters included hot brines, from which precipitated vast
 thicknesses of salt and other chemicals, to form what are now
 mis-called beds of "evaporites."

    During the upheavals of the Flood, extensive coral deposits in the
 warm antediluvian oceans were torn up, transported, and redeposited
 later around great rock mounds, giving a superficial appearance of
 having grown there in place, rather than having been washed into place.

    Although the very nature of catastrophism makes it difficult to
 reconstruct now the details of the phenomena occurring during and soon
 after the great Flood, it does appear quite possible to explain all the
 earth's geological features in terms of this model, much better in fact
 than can be done in terms of the uniformitarian model.
08854
 \\4. Question:\\ "Can the theory of continental drift be harmonized
               with the Bible?"

 \\Answer:\\  The Bible record of early history is not affected one way
 or another by the theory of continental drift, so that it is
 unnecessary and unwise to take a "Biblical" position on either side of
 this question.  The only reference in Scripture that may possibly
 related to this subject is Genesis 10:25, where it is said that the
 "earth was divided" in the days of Peleg, and it is very doubtful that
 this refers to an actual physical division of an original single
 continent, especially in light of Genesis 10:5, which states that the
 primary intent of Chapter 10 is to show how mankind was divided by
 languages, by families, and by nations.

    Most modern geologists have accepted the "model" of continental
 drift, as well as the related concepts of sea-floor spreading and plate
 tectonics.  For more than 25 years, these scholars have been
 reinterpreting all the accumulated geological, paleontological, and
 geophysical data to correlate with this new model, and everything seems
 to "fit."  On the other hand, one of the criticisms of the model has
 been that it is \\too\\ adaptable.  Thirty years ago, geologist were
 equally insistent that all these same data correlated perfectly with
 the then reigning model of stable continents, and that the handful of
 earth scientists who believed in continental drift were just being
 stubborn and ignorant.

    The main factor that led to this extensive change of opinion was
 the discovery of certain evidences (thin sediments, paleomagnetism,
 etc., on the two sides of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge) that magmatic
 material was emerging from the earth's mantle through the Ridge.  These
 evidences were believed to indicate that these emerging materials were
 spreading both east and west on the sea-floor and carrying the American
 continents ever further from Europe and Africa.  If material were
 continually emerging from the mantle, continuity required that somewhere
 they must be "subduction" zones, through which crustal material could
 flow back into the mantle.  All of this led finally to the concept of a
 full-blown worldwide system of crustal "plates," with circulating
 mantle and crustal material.

    Although most geologists enthusiastically endorse this new model of
 drifting continents, there still remains a significant minority of very
 competent earth scientists who do not.  One of their main objections is
 that there is no evident mechanism to supply the tremendous amounts of
 energy required to empower these vast motions.  The evidences (e.g.,
 the supposedly reversed alignment of the paleo-magnetic particles on
 the two sides of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge) which are presumed to indicate
 sea-floor spreading, are believed by these sceptics to be very
 equivocal, capable of other interpretations, especially since these
 "reversals" are now known to characterize vertical alignments of the
 particles as well as the horizontal "stripes," so that the whole
 pattern is extremely complex.

    Consequently, continental drift is still an open question among
 earth scientists.  Since the Bible is silent on the subject, it seems
 best for Bible expositors also to leave it as an open question.  In
 fact, the very silence of Scripture may be an indication that the idea
 is questionable.  If a splitting and drifting of the hypothetical
 original continent really occurred, in the Biblical context it would
 have to be after the Flood, and probably about the time of the
 dispersion at Babel.  Early peoples must have been aware of it, in this
 case, and it seems strange that such a tremendous event of such
 worldwide effects was not given more recognition in the early chapters
 of Genesis.

    On the other hand, the evidences for continental drift are strong
 enough to have satisfied \\many\\ geologists, and it is at least
 possible that the model may be correct.  If so, then Genesis 10:25 may
 indeed be referring to the actual splitting of the land mass.  Peleg
 (whose name means "division") was apparently born soon after this
 event, and was named in commemoration of it.

    If continental splitting actually occurred at this time, the basic
 cause could have been the tremendous release of subterranean energy
 during the great Flood, when "all the fountains of the great deep were
 broken up" (Genesis 7:11).  Vast quantities of pressurized waters and
 magmas had broken forth and tremendous readjustments of continents and
 oceans may well have taken place after the Flood.

    In any case, such a traumatic splitting would be followed by a
 rapid drifting of the new continental blocks away from the center. The
 velocity of drift would gradually decrease with the passing of time,
 eventually becoming essentially imperceptible, as it seems to be at
 present.

    Evolutionary geologists say that the drift has always been
 exceedingly slow, so that the entire process has taken about 100
 million years. Such estimates, however, are based entirely upon
 uniformitarian assumptions, especially as applied to the dating of sea-
 floor sediments by the potassium-argon technique.  These assumptions
 can easily be shown to be wrong so that the actual sediments are quite
 compatible with a very recent origin.

    The great actual amount of drifting could not have been more than
 4,000 miles, and this could have been accomplished easily in, say,
 1,000 years (an average of less than 2-1/2 feet per hour).

    This drifting, if it occurred, may partially explain the distribution
 of men and animals after the Flood.  However, it is not at all
 necessary to account for such distribution in this way, since extensive
 land bridges are know to have existed across the Bering and Malaysian
 Straits following the Flood.  Even if migrations had to be carried out
 entirely on foot, early man could easily have traveled from Ararat to
 Australia or to the tip of South America in only a few centuries.

    There are two other verses in Genesis 10 (verses 5 and 32) which
 speak of something being "divided."  In these verses, however, the
 "division" obviously is only that of the nations and languages, which
 occurred following man's rebellion against God in connection with the
 tower of Babel.  Since this rebellion probably was led by Nimrod, who
 was in the same generation after Noah as was the father of Peleg, it
 seems likely that the divisions were the same.

    Even though the Hebrew word for "divided" in Genesis 10:25 is a
 different word than the one used in 10:5 and 10:32 (owing to the
 different type of subject in view), they are sufficiently synonymous in
 meaning and usage to justify assigning them to the same basic event.
 In the one case, the division was linguistic; in the other, it was the
 geographical division which ensued as a result of the migrations forced
 by the linguistic division.  Although possible, it would be an unlikely
 forced exegesis to assign to it the meaning of an actual physical
 sundering of continental blocks.
08855
 \\5. Question:\\ "Where does the Ice Age fit into the Biblical record
               of history?"

 \\Answer:\\ The Ice Age is the popular term given to the so-called
 Pleistocene Epoch, the last of the supposed geological ages of earth
 history as formulated in the minds of modern historical geologists.  It
 was immediately prior to the Recent Age in which man has left written
 records.  Most anthropologists believe man reached the true human stage
 of evolution early in this glacial period, after a long process of
 naturalistic development from an unknown ape-like ancestor starting
 about 15 to 20 million years ago.  The Ice Age is believed by
 evolutionists to have started about two million years ago and
 terminated about 11,000 years ago.  Some creationists, on the other
 hand, believe the Ice Age began soon after the Flood and continued for
 less than a millennium.

    During this period, a great continental sheet of ice, centered
 somewhere in the northeast Canada-Greenland region, swept down over
 North America, reaching into what are now the states of Wisconsin, New
 York, etc., and leaving effects in the form of great moraines (mounds
 of unsorted sand, gravel, and boulders), scratches and grooves on
 bedrock, etc.  A similar ice sheet swept over northern Europe.  In the
 Rockies and other mountain chains, permanent ice caps rested on the
 summits and extensive valley glaciers descended down almost to the
 plains below.

    Most evolutionary geologists believe that the Ice Age involved at
 least three advances and retreats of the ice, with warm periods in
 between.  However, the evidences for the earlier advances are of an
 entirely different sort than the moraines and striations of the last
 one, the so-called Wisconsin stage.  The former consist of certain
 dense clay soils, old river terraces and other phenomena than can be
 interpreted as water laid formations more easily than they can as
 earlier glaciations.

    It should be noted that the ice never covered the entire earth.
 Some Bible teachers have mistakenly equated the glacial period with an
 imagined worldwide cataclysm which left the earth "without form and
 void" (Genesis 1:2) and covered with water, but this interpretation is
 impossible.  The ice never covered more than a third of the earth's
 surface, even at its greatest suggested extent.  As a matter of fact,
 there was a "pluvial period" in the lower latitudes at the same time
 there was a "glacial period" in the upper latitudes.  Extensive
 rainfall assured abundant water, even in such modern deserts as those
 of the Sahara, the Gobi, the Arabian, and the western basins in the
 modern United States.  Archaeological excavations have yielded
 abundant evidences of human life and, in fact, complex irrigation
 economies in these now-desolate regions.

    There is abundant evidence of human occupation in these lower
 latitudes throughout the Ice Age.  Some evolutionists are now dating
 the earliest fossils of what they consider true men as in the Pliocene
 epoch, even before the Ice Age.  The Neanderthal peoples seem to have
 lived near the edge of the ice sheet in Europe, and many anthropologists
 now believe that their somewhat brutish appearance was due to disease
 (rickets, arthritis) contracted because of the cold, damp climates
 characteristic of such regions.

    There is no reason (apart from highly questionable dating methods) why
 these peripheral cultures could not have been contemporaneous with the
 advanced civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, and others that were
 developing in the lower latitudes.  The Ice Age can easily be understood
 as lasting several hundred years rather than two million years.

    Evolutionary glacial geologists have been debating for nearly a
 hundred years as to what may have caused such an Ice Age, without
 coming to any consensus.  The rocks which supposedly correspond to
 earlier ages practically all give evidence of a worldwide subtropical
 climate, and the cause of this condition is also a mystery.

    What evolutionism and uniformitarianism find inexplicable, however,
 the Biblical record explains quite satisfactorily.  Before the great
 Flood, the world had pleasant topography and climate everywhere, the
 latter involving the "greenhouse effect" produced by a vast thermal
 blanket of invisible water vapor (the "waters above the firmament"
 noted in Genesis 1:6).  There were no rainstorms, no volcanic
 eruptions, no earthquakes, no blizzards or physical disturbances of any
 kind--the world had been prepared to be "very good" (Genesis 1:31) as a
 home for man and the animals.

    With the Flood, however, all this changed.  The vapor canopy
 condensed and fell to the ground in violent torrents for five long
 months, and waters and magmas burst forth all over the earth through
 "the fountains of the great deep" (Genesis 7:11; 8:2) for the same
 period.  Tremendous earth movements accompanied and followed the Flood,
 and catastrophic phenomena of all kinds continued on a lesser scale for
 many centuries.

    In particular, the precipitation of the vapor blanket gradually
 dissipated the green house effect, and the arctic and antarctic zones
 grew bitterly cold.  The tremendous heat energy released from the
 depths continued to evaporate great quantities of water, much of which
 was transported to the polar regions by the newly developing atmospheric
 circulation, where it fell as great quantities of snow.  Soon the
 accumulating snowpack became an ice sheet, radiating out from its
 center.  There seem to be certain references to this Ice Age in the
 ancient book of Job (37:9-10; 38:22-23; 38:29-30), who perhaps lived in
 its waning years.

    The lands have been denuded of their plants by the Flood, and the
 air of its carbon dioxide.  Gradually, however, the seeds and twigs
 from the antediluvian plants rooted and grew again and the new plants
 began again to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Great peat
 bogs developed along the ice sheet margins, and peat bog vegetation is
 known to be especially effective in supplying large amounts of carbon
 dioxide to the atmosphere.  Eventually enough of this gas built up in
 the atmosphere to restore a partial greenhouse effect and the
 temperatures rose sufficiently to cause the ice to retreat to its
 present day position. {[1] For more detailed discussion and
 documentation of this Biblical interpretation of the Ice Age, see
 \\The Genesis Flood,\\ pp. 288-326.}

    During the centuries of the Ice Age, many of the great animals that
 had come off the Ark, though they survived and proliferated for a time,
 eventually were unable to cope with the drastic changes in climate and
 environment and became extinct.  As the ice later retreated, and the
 rainfall patterns changed, many of the pluviated regions became arid
 and still other animals died out.  The great cataclysm of the Flood,
 followed by the smaller related catastrophes of glaciation, volcanism,
 and eventual desiccation, drastically changed the character of the
 earth and its inhabitants.
08856
 \\6. Question:\\ "What and when was the Stone Age?"

 \\Answer:\\ Evolutionary anthropologists have divided human prehistory
 into several divisions, supposedly marked by the evolutionary stage of
 culture achieved.  The Paleolithic Era (meaning "Old Stone Age")
 supposedly began when man had essentially completed his biological
 evolution and was just beginning his cultural evolution.  Until
 recently, this had been dated at about a million years ago, but certain
 fossil discoveries of genus \\Homo\\ have been tentatively dated (by
 Leakey, Johanson and others) at up to four million years ago.  At this
 stage, man was believed to live in a simple, "hunting-and-gathering"
 culture, with no stable agriculture, no domesticated animals, no
 permanent villages, no use of metals, and no knowledge of writing.  His
 only tools were of chipped stone, and he lived in caves, if available,
 or in the open otherwise.

    Eventually, he learned how to make and use shaped stone tools and
 developed a simple "village economy."  Soon thereafter he began to
 raise crops and domesticate animals.  Almost at the same time, he
 learned how to work metals and make pottery.  Then he began to build
 cities and true civilization had been attained.  Thus, following the
 Paleolithic Era, there was the Neolithic Era ("New Stone Age"), then
 the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

    It is significant that, until very recently, most archaeologists and
 cultural anthropologists believed that all the attributes of
 civilization (agriculture, animal domestication, pottery, metallurgy,
 urbanization) were attained first by people living in the Middle East,
 and that this was very recent on the geological time scale--in the
 period 11,000-7,000 B.C.

    The dates of the artifacts and the sites on which they were found
 were obtained primarily by the radiocarbon method.

    More recently, the method of dendrochronology ("tree-ring dating") is
 thought to have forced a significant revision in the radiocarbon
 chronology, such that the attainment of civilization took place in
 Europe and North Africa at essentially the same time as in the Middle
 East.  It is significant that this inference corresponds precisely to
 what one would expect from the Biblical record of the confusion of
 tongues and the resultant rapid dispersion and development of cultures
 and nations radiating out from Babel.

    As each small family group separated from the others and migrated
 from Babel (Genesis 11:9), they must have searched for a place to
 settle down and establish their own homeland.  Presumably the stronger
 and more intelligent clans laid claim to the nearest and most
 productive regions; others kept on traveling until they could find a
 suitable location unclaimed by others.

    Because of the changed languages, the different clans could not
 cooperate with each other.  Therefore, it was necessary that each tribe
 become self-sufficient in order to survive at all.  It was impossible
 to develop a complex culture, with specializations and intellectual
 innovations, for several generations at least, until a population large
 enough for these purposes could be developed.  The immediate essential
 was self preservation, and this meant living by hunting animals and
 gathering wild fruits and vegetables for food, and using sticks and
 chipped stones for tools and weapons, living in grass huts or caves for
 shelter.

    The people knew how to work pottery and metals, but such knowledge
 was useless until they could find adequate sources of metals, clays and
 building materials.  Similarly, they knew how to raise crops and
 domestic animals, but the establishment of such sources of food and
 clothing would take many years.

    Furthermore, even after they did manage to get such industries
 started, there was always a very real danger that another
 tribe--perhaps spreading out from a more rapidly developing
 center--would invade their community and drive them away, forcing them
 to start over again somewhere else.

    Thus it is that, wherever one looks around the world, at each site
 suitable for human cultural habitation, there is nearly always evidence
 of a "Stone-Age" culture when that site was first occupied.  Later
 occupations (or later periods in the original occupation) indicate
 higher cultures, not because of slow evolutionary development, but
 because of rapid growth of population, development of specializations,
 location of sources of metal and building materials, and establishment
 of stable supplies of food and clothing.  When a culture was
 interrupted by an outside invasion, the latter (if successful) had
 usually come from a center of still higher culture, which it then
 transplanted to the new site.

    It is clear, therefore, that the artifacts found at ancient
 habitations by modern archaeologists, do not really reflect man's slow
 cultural evolution at all, but rather show the drama of post-Flood,
 post-Babel man being forced by God to "be fruitful and multiply and
 fill the earth" (Genesis 9:1), as He had commanded in the first place.

    The question of the vast period of time assigned to the Stone Age
 by evolutionists (from one to four million years or more) needs brief
 mention.  These ages are purely imaginary, based mainly on the
 arbitrary and unrealistic uniformitarian assumptions of the potassium-
 argon dating technique.  Even the dates assigned to the beginning of
 civilization (about 8000 B.C.) are based on similar unrealistic
 assumptions in the radiocarbon method.  It is amazing that
 evolutionists can blithely believe that man's physical evolution was
 completed over a million years ago, but that he then completely
 stagnated in a cultural rut until he began his cultural evolution only
 about 10,000 years ago.

    There is no firm scientific evidence to compel us to date any part
 of man's history at more than several thousand years ago, just as
 indicated in the Bible.  The "Stone Age" was not a long period of human
 evolution at all, but rather a brief stage in the establishment of new
 tribes and habitation sites.

    It is even possible for a tribe with a higher culture to deteriorate
 to a lower level for various reasons--immorality, disease, dwindling
 populations, etc.  There are many "Stone Age" peoples living today
 (and, therefore, no doubt, there have been similar Stone Age cultures
 all through history) in African and South American jungles, New Guinea,
 and other places, and most of these tribes give evidence of having
 known a much higher level of culture in their distant past.  As a
 matter of fact, most people living today in highly technological
 societies would, if suddenly transplanted in very small groups to
 separate desert islands, do well if they could even survive by hunting
 and gathering.  Stone-Age people, past and present, are not
 half-brutish primitives, but intelligent men and women, with complex
 languages and relationships, not fundamentally different at all from
 Space-Age people.
08857
 \\7. Question:\\ "Will man ever be able to create life?"

 \\Answer:\\ The popular press has fostered the notion that modern
 biochemists and molecular biologists are very close to a scientific
 breakthrough which will enable man actually to create life in a test
 tube.  Many people even believe that scientists have already created
 life.

    These notions are completely false.  Man is not even remotely near
 any such breakthrough.  Living systems are far too complex to be
 synthesized strictly from non-living chemicals.

    It is true that scientists have been able to learn a great deal
 about the structure and functions of the living cell, and the many
 complex organic molecules that operate in life systems.  Certain very
 simple components of protein molecules (e.g., amino acids) have been
 synthesized under very special and artificial conditions.  Some
 experimenters have been able to link certain amino acids together in
 what they have called "protenoids," but these are mere blobs of matter,
 with no specific utility or function, not in any way comparable to true
 proteins.

    Other experimenters have been able to synthesize a virus, or a gene,
 or even a DNA molecule, provided they start with a virus or a gene or a
 DNA molecule, as the case might be, and provided the synthesis is
 carried out in the presence of the necessary enzymes--which can
 themselves only be formed at the direction of the DNA.  That is,
 synthesis of life has to start with already living systems and be
 accomplished with the aid of other living systems.  This is \\not\\ the
 creation of life from non-life!

    Most people have no adequate comprehension of the extreme complexity
 of even the simplest unit of living matter.  In an attempt to determine
 the amount of "information" that would have to be programmed into the
 simplest conceivable protein molecule to enable it to direct its own
 reproduction, information scientists have found such a molecule would
 have to be comparable to a machine capable of making at least 1500
 successive correct choices between equal alternatives.  The probability
 that such a synthesis could occur by chance is thus less than one chance
 out of 2^1500, which is equal to one chance out of 10^450.  Such a number
 is unimaginably larger that the total number of words that have ever been
 spoken or written by man in all the world's history!

    In fact, if one assume that the universe is 30 billion years old
 (that is, 10^18 seconds) and that it could hold 10^130 particles (that
 is, the number of electrons that could be crammed in a universe five
 billion light years in radius), and that each particle could
 participate in a billion-billion separate "events" every second, then
 the total number of "events" of any kind that could every occur in all
 the universe in all time is the product of these numbers-- that is
 10^166.

    Now the probability of a replicating molecule arising by chance is
 one out of 10^450, as noted above.  For one of the 10^166 possible
 events to have been this particular event is, obviously, extremely
 unlikely.  The probability, in fact (even assuming that all of these
 "events" consisted exclusively of particles trying to come together to
 form such a living molecule), would have to be less than one chance out
 of 10^166/10^450, or one chance out of 10^284.  Since this latter
 number is still unimaginably greater than all the events that could
 ever possibly occur in all the history of the universe, the possibility
 that life could ever evolve by chance is absolutely zero!  Even the
 simplest imaginable living system could only have come into existence
 by intelligent design and special creation.

    As to whether man will ever be able to design and synthesize such a
 replicating molecule, this also is extremely improbable, though not
 completely inconceivable.  If he did, of course, such an achievement
 would only add to the evidence for the uniquely complex structure of
 the human brain, in its ability to solve amazingly difficult problems.
 It would certainly \\not\\ prove that any such synthesis could ever
 occur by chance in the primeval soup.

    As a matter of fact, the complexity of such a replicating
 system--already shown to correspond to at least 10^450 ordered and
 linked units of information--is far more complex (that is, containing
 more stored information) than all the words ever spoken or printed in
 all history.  It is impossible to see how any team of scientists could
 ever solve a problem which required them to analyze and organize more
 units of information than events which could ever happen!

    Furthermore, the foregoing discussion applies only to a hypothetical
 replicating molecule, something which is infinitely less complex than a
 real living cell--not to mention man's brain, with its billions of
 cells all interlocked into a functioning whole.

    Finally, even man's body and brain would be simple to explain com-
 pared to his soul--his mind, his conscience, his will, his personality,
 his spirituality.  If one can believe that inanimate, random, particles
 can evolve through vast ages into conscious, abstract thought, and into
 moral and spiritual ideals, surely it would be easy for him to believe
 that up is down and the world was hatched from an Easter egg!  The law
 of cause and effect means nothing to such a person.

    The only adequate Cause to explain the phenomenon of life is a
 Living being.  Life comes only from life, and the first created life
 could only have come from the Creator.  "In Him was life" (John 1:4).
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