Brief introductory lesson covering the implications of Darwinian evolution and its weaknesses.

1. Introduction
to
Apologetics:
Defending the Faith
Stephen Russell

2. Evolution

3. Definition
“Change in the genetic composition of a
population during successive generations, as a
result of natural selection acting on the genetic
variation among individuals, and resulting in
the development of new species”
-- The American Heritage Dictionary

4. “From goo to you via the zoo”

5. Genesis 1:25-27
“5And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds
and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that
creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was
good. 26Then God said, quot;Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and
over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the
earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.quot; 27So
God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created
him; male and female he created them.”

6. Kind
any group of animals capable of interbreeding
and reproducing according to their type

7. 2 Types of Evolution
Macro : one “kind” of animal changing into
another “kind”
Micro : variation within a “kind”

8. Implications
Sex just a natural impulse
Humans no more important than animals
No morality
No God

9. Dr. William Provine
“No gods or purposive
forces; no ultimate
foundation for ethics; no
free will; no life after death;
no ultimate meaning in
life.”

10. Ingrid Newkirk
“A rat is a pig is a dog is a
boy.”

11. The Effects of Acceptance

12. Eugenics

13. Communism

14. Abortion

15. Euthenasia

16. Is Evolution True?
How sure are its supporters?

17. Carl Sagan
“Evolution is a fact amply demonstrated
by the fossil record and by contemporary
molecular biology. Natural selection is a
successful theory devised to explain the
fact of evolution.”

18. Richard Dawkins
“It is absolutely safe to say
that if you meet somebody
who claims not to believe in
evolution, that person is
ignorant, stupid, or insane
(or wicked, but I'd rather
not consider that).”

19. Review of Scientific Method
Observation
Hypothesis
Experimentation
Theory
Law

20. Problem 1
No way to test hypothesis

21. Problem 2
Irreducible Complexity

22. Charles Darwin
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”

23. Bacterial Flagellum

24. Michael Behe
Darwin's Black Box
“To Darwin, the cell was a ‘black box’ – its inner
workings were utterly mysterious to him. Now, the black
box has been opened up and we know how it works.
Applying Darwin’s test to the ultra-complex world of
molecular machinery and cellular systems that have been
discovered over the past 40 years, we can say that
Darwin’s theory has ‘absolutely broken down.’”

25. Problem 3
Not Observed in Fossil Record

26. Charles Darwin
“The geological record is extremely imperfect and
this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not
find intermediate varieties, connecting together all
the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest
graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the
nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my
whole theory.”

27. David Raup
(Director, Field Museum of Natural History)
“We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the
knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly
expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil
species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The
record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and,
ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary
transition that we had in Darwin’s time.”

28. Stephen J. Gould
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil
record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.
The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have
data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the
rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence
of the fossils.”

29. Dr Alan Feduccia
(UNC-Chapel Hill)
“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx
into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But
it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no
amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change
that.”

30. What About
Theistic Evolution?

31. Micro Evolution
Refers back to “kinds” in Genesis

32. Macro Evolution?
Romans 5:12
“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through
one man, and death through sin, and in this way
death came to all men, because all sinned.”

33. G. Richard Bozarth
(Atheist Writer)
“Evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason
Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary.
Destroy Adam & Eve and original sin, and in the rubble
you will find the sorry remains of the son of God…and
if Jesus was not the redeemer who dies for our sins, and
this is what evolution means, then Christianity is
nothing.”

34. Questions?