Why The Creation-Evolution Debate Matters

Creation-Evolution Debate

Some Christians and conservatives think Darwinism is irrelevant — a dry biological theory best confined to science classrooms. This is false. When youngsters from Christian homes read the Bible or go to church, they learn that God created the heavens and Earth, that God created all life forms, and that God created them, in his image, with purpose for their lives.

In the public school science classroom, however, these youngsters begin hearing a different story. They are told the heavens and Earth were not created by God, but by a random event, “the Big Bang.” They learn that life was not created by God, but resulted from a random arrangement of chemicals forming the first living cell, in an ocean eons ago. And they learn that they themselves are not purposefully created in God’s image, but simply evolved from fish over millions of years through “natural selection and survival of the fittest.”

Any thinking child will now begin to ask a question: “Who’s right? My science teacher or my pastor?” Many begin to say, “Hm, maybe that stuff I’m hearing in church is just baloney. Oh, the pastor, what does he know? He went to a seminary – big deal! These science guys find things out through the scientific method. And if science has proven that evolution is true, then what I’m hearing in church must be phony!” And many of these children begin to consider that church, the Bible, and God Himself are irrelevant.

Julian Huxley, perhaps evolution’s foremost spokesman in the twentieth century, stated that “Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the Creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion.” In other words, according to Huxley, even your sanity is in question if you believe in God instead of Darwin.

Now I realize a few people say something like this: “Hey, chill out, will you? I believe in evolution and the Bible. What’s wrong with that? Look, it’s simple. The Bible isn’t a science textbook. We’re not supposed to take it literally. Jesus himself spoke in parables — that’s symbolic language, right? So obviously, when the Bible talks about creation, that’s symbolic language for Darwin’s theory of evolution. Adam and Eve were probably just a parable for those ape-men we see in National Geographic.”

However, there are problems with such a position. Only limited passages of the Bible are symbolic. If we take its creation account as purely symbolic, where do we stop? Was the life of Moses just symbolic? Was the life of Jesus just a parable? Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that the Bible’s Adam-and-Eve account of creation differs radically from Darwin’s fish-to-man theory.

So, while I acknowledge that some people try compromising the two viewpoints, countless other individuals perceive them as irreconcilable. Many people, persuaded that science has proven Darwin got it right, consider the Bible a fairy-tale myth; some reject the idea of God totally and become atheists. I was once such a person. In sixth grade, after hearing evolution taught as fact, and the Bible ridiculed, I took my first mental steps toward becoming a full-fledged atheist, steps that had significant implications for the way I lived. The same process happened to Stalin and many others whom I document in my published works.

Darwinism has exerted powerful social and political impacts on Western culture. Once the Bible becomes myth, the Ten Commandments — forbidding murder, theft, adultery, lying, etc. — become myth as well, by implication. And we get the chaotic world we live in today, with no real moral compass.

Though some conservative activists think Darwinism is irrelevant, they need to recognize that many of their political opponents — activists on the other side — got their ideological birth when, like me, they were taught Darwinism as fact. Few atheists become political conservatives; most end up leftists. Karl Marx, who sent Darwin the proof-sheets of Das Kapital and offered to dedicate the book to him, summed the left’s position well: “Religion is the opium of the people.”

However, Darwinism cannot be challenged simply by appeals to morals, religion or politics. The public has been told evolution is “science,” on a footing with physics and chemistry. Therefore effective challenges must occur on scientific grounds.

As author of two books on Darwin’s spurious theory, I know one cannot discredit, in a few paragraphs, what countless dollars and textbook pages have been used to indoctrinate society with. But let’s dent it, shall we?

Darwin claimed life began eons ago from chance chemical processes. From the first living cell, all life evolved. This might have been plausible in Darwin’s day, when cells were considered simple. But no longer. Even a bacterial cell requires thousands of different proteins — each composed of hundreds of amino acids in precise order. Frances Crick, who co-discovered DNA’s structure, estimated the odds of getting just ONE protein by chance as one in 10 to the power of 260 — a number beyond imagination.

To function, cells require the genetic code, which is far more complex than Windows 8’s codes. Would anyone argue the latter could derive from chance? Further, the primordial cell must have perfected — in the span of one lifetime — the process of cellular reproduction; otherwise there never would have been a second cell. Yet, despite mathematic implausibility, and a dearth of any supporting observational evidence, schoolchildren are still taught that life began from a fortuitous arrangement of chemicals.

According to Darwinism, single cells eventually evolved into invertebrates (creatures without backbones like jellyfish), then successively into fish, amphibians, reptiles, and finally mammals. Darwin said this occurred from creatures adapting to environments.

The discovery of genetics threatened this claim. New organs require new genes. Just moving into new environments doesn’t give you new genes. This initially stumped Darwinists, but they eventually found a solution. Random mutations — copying mistakes in the genetic code — occur very rarely, but DO alter genetic information. So modern evolutionists said animals gained new genes by chance mutations, which made them more fit, and which they adapted to evolve into higher forms.

Dr. Lee Spetner, who taught information theory for years at Johns Hopkins University and the Weizmann Institute, discredits this in his book Not by Chance: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution. Spetner demonstrates that random mutations destroy genetic information and function — they do not increase it. Essentially, chance mutations are to the genetic code what typos are to a book: they remove information, but do not improve it. In humans, mutations cause sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, Down’s syndrome, and thousands of other genetic diseases. Spetner shows that even the rare “beneficial mutations” evolutionists trumpet — such as bacterial resistance to antibiotics — actually result from functional losses.

If, as evolutionists claim, bacteria evolved successively into invertebrates, then fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, there must have been countless “transitional stages.” Think about it. For a fish to become a land creature, turning its fins into legs would require new bones, new muscles, new nerves — and while it was adapting to life on land, a new breathing system. Since this supposedly happened from chance mutations — which are rare events — innumerable creatures would have to live and die during the intermediate period.

So where’s EVIDENCE for these transitionals? Not in the living world. Among bacteria, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, there are many thousands of species, but no intermediate species between these groups. That’s one reason why Carl Linnaeus, father of taxonomy (the science that classifies the living world) was a creationist. Evolutionists try to explain the missing intermediates by saying “they all became extinct” (a convenient euphemism for “we ain’t got proof”). A more apt reason for their nonexistence: they never existed in the first place.

Evolutionists therefore rely on fossils of extinct creatures as their evidence for these transitional stages. Yet while fossils show variations within types, they do not validate the transitions between major animal groups Darwin’s theory requires. For example, while billions of invertebrate fossils exist, fossils illustrating their alleged evolution from simple ancestors are missing. Furthermore, the study of fossils has a storied history of error. In 1912, the announcement of “Piltdown Man” led the New York Times to exclaim in a headline: “Darwin Theory Proved True.” For four decades the British Museum displayed this supposedly 500,000-year old “ape-man” — until it was exposed as a hoax: an orangutan jaw and human skull had been planted together, stained to look old, with their teeth filed down.

Genuine fossils can be equally deceiving. Evolutionists called the coelacanth — a fossil fish claimed to be extinct for millions of years — a transitional form between fish and amphibians, its fins said to be “limb-like.” Then people started catching live coelacanths, and they were 100 percent fish — no amphibian characteristics. Why are fossils tricky? Because, as molecular biologist Michael Denton notes in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 99 percent of an animal’s biology resides in its soft anatomy, which is inaccessible through fossils. This disposes them to subjective interpretations. Which brings us to our closing point. Evolution is not a science like physics or chemistry, which comprise repeatable, testable knowledge. Water boils at 100 degrees centigrade. This can be tested countless times. If I argued that water boils at 75 degrees, you could easily test and disprove my hypothesis.

But take evolutionary claims. Darwin said we lost our body hair because our apelike ancestors preferred mates with less hair. How do you disprove that? How do you disprove that “Lucy” (fossil bones found in Africa) was our ancestor? Laws of physics and chemistry can be tested in present time. Evolution, however, mostly constitutes opinions about the past, and one cannot test the past with the same authority as the present.

This is as much as I should write on a web page. For more information, see my book Tornado in a Junkyard, or, for a quick read, The Case Against Darwin. Both books are available through Amazon and bookstores.

See also websites such as: True.Origin, The Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, The Creation Research Society  and Creation Today.

Tornado in a Junkyard Reviews

Tornado in a JunkyardTornado in a Junkyard, though published in 1999, summarizes many of the arguments against evolution — arguments that are as enduring as the theory itself. Here are some responses we had to the book’s publication:

Tornado in a Junkyard by James Perloff should be in the library of everyone who is interested in the subject of origins. This book is a powerful argument for creation because it is thorough, fully documented, and scientifically accurate. It is easily readable by scientist and layman alike, and is written in a popular style that will make it interesting and entertaining for readers of all ages. I highly recommend this book.” — Dr. Duane T. Gish, Senior Vice President, Institute for Creation Research

“James Perloff’s intriguing Tornado in a Junkyard aims to debunk evolutionary theory in favor of creationism. Perloff, a former contributing editor to the New American, draws upon the work of neo-Darwinists and geneticists to argue that ‘while microevolution does occur – meaning minor adaptations and variations within a species,’ there is no solid evidence for macroevolution, or conversion of one animal type into another.” — Publisher’s Weekly, 8-30-99

Tornado in a Junkyard is a unique presentation of the scientific case against Darwinism, informally written for laymen. If you are looking for a user-friendly explanation of the facts supporting creation, this book is for you.” — Dr. Emmett L. Williams, President, Creation Research Society

“James Perloff brings all the data together in a volume readily accessible to nonscientific types. His conclusion, carefully drawn: science contradicts Darwinism. … Perloff’s style, unusually lively, makes Tornado in a Junkyard entertaining as well as educational.” — Conservative Book Club, 12-99

“My congratulations to Mr. Perloff for an outstanding piece of work.” — Actor Jack Lemmon, who played Clarence Darrow in the 1999 film version of Inherit the Wind

“Why another ‘anti-evolution’ book? Because Tornado in a Junkyard is different. Author James Perloff, a former fanatical atheist and anti-creationist, understands the other side’s point of view. He presents facts that logically disprove Darwinism and unveils the many frauds and lies perpetrated by Darwinists that the public accepts as unshakeable scientific fact.” — Homeschooling Today, Jan/Feb-2000

“James – I would like to thank you for once again being a guest on Beverly LaHaye Today. The show was a big success and listeners were anxious to get their hands on your book Tornado in a Junkyard. Keep up the good work and continue to stand for righteousness!” — Angela Phelps, Producer, ‘Beverly LaHaye Today’.

“I’ve been heavily involved in the creationist movement for many years and am familiar with most of the facts cited in Tornado. However, the racy style, the many excellent photos, and especially the less known details and extensive documentation will now make Tornado my resource of choice in my work.” — Ellen Myers, Creation Resource Library, Wichita, Kansas

“Perloff demonstrates – in this reviewer’s opinion conclusively – that scientific evidence, when examined honestly, does not support modern Darwinism, but actually contradicts it. … This is a very important work, written in an informal and attractive style that is a joy to read.” — The New American, 9-13-99

“With so many books out on the evolution/creation debate it is getting hard to choose from good, better and best. James’ book falls in the best category. I recommend that every homeschool family and church have a copy for their libraries.” — Vicki Brady, Host, “Homeschooling USA”

“This new book may be one of the very best. Easy reading, loaded with great quotes and very well illustrated, this could be an excellent resource book for student papers, or just the right book for Uncle Fred.” — CSA News (Creation Science Association for Mid-America), Jan-Feb 2000

“I have read many, many books for laymen on creation science over the years, but this is by far the best — easy to read, told with humor. I call it ‘creation science for dummies’ — meaning people like me.” — Tom Eynon, 30-year career missionary with the Navigators

“Perloff’s book is a powerful synthesis of recent work by microbiologists, physicists and other scientists showing there is no hard evidence for the creation of new species from existing ones.” — Massachusetts News, 11-99

“Jim’s ‘product of the sixties’ background and layman’s approach to technical issues make Tornado in a Junkyard extremely readable. I wish I had read this book first when I began my own research into the discrepancies surrounding the theory of evolution.” — Janis Hoover, Host, “Cross Talk,” WTLN, Orlando, Florida

Christian News highly recommends Tornado in a Junkyard.” — Christian News, 9-27-99

Tornado in a Junkyard is a must read! It is one of the most informative books on the creation vs. evolution debate.” — Marty Minto, Host, “Straight Talk Live,” KPXQ, Phoenix

“Few books are as comprehensive on the fallacies of Darwinism as James Perloff’s new book, Tornado in a Junkyard. If you have ever been caught in a discussion of evolution, you will quickly realize the need for this book. Movieguide highly recommends it.” — Dr. Ted Baehr, Chief Executive Officer, Christian Film & Television Commission; Editor in Chief, Movieguide

“I highly recommend Tornado in a Junkyard.” — T. C. Pinckney, Editor, Baptist Banner