This month, creation scientists from all over the globe are gathering in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for the sixth International Conference on Creationism. The modern creation movement is largely considered to have been launched by the 1961 publication of The Genesis Flood by Dr. Henry Morris and Dr. John Whitcomb. In honor of our founder, ICR is featuring the following article in which he clearly and succinctly presents the reasons we can believe and defend the Genesis account of creation.
The biblical account of creation is ridiculed by atheists, patronized by liberals, and often allegorized even by conservatives. The fact is, however, that it is God's own account of creation, corroborated by Jesus Christ (Mark 10:6-8, etc.), who was there!
We are well advised to take it seriously and literally, for God is able to say what He means, and will someday hold us accountable for believing what He says! Furthermore, the account is reasonable and logical, fully in accord with all true science and history. The following chain of logic, while not compelling belief on the part of those who refuse to believe, at least demonstrates the reasonableness of biblical creation.
It is axiomatic that there are only two possible basic models of origins--that is, of the origin of the universe, of the earth, of life, of human life, and of all the basic systems of the cosmos. These are, in simplest terms, evolution or creation. Either the origin of things can be understood in terms of continuing natural processes, or they cannot--one or the other. If they cannot, then we must resort to completed supernatural processes to explain the origin of at least the basic symptoms of the cosmos. Evolution and creation thus exhaust the possibilities, as far as origins are concerned.
This necessarily means that if we can "falsify" (that is, demonstrate to be false) either model of origins, then the other must be true. There is no other option. By definition, evolution should still be occurring now, since it is to be explained by present processes.
Present Processes
If there is anything certain in this world, however, it is that there is no evidence whatever that evolution is occurring today--that is, true vertical evolution, from some simpler kind to a more complex kind. No one has ever observed a star evolve from hydrogen, life evolve from chemicals, a higher species evolve from a lower species, a man from an ape, or anything else of this sort. Not only has no one ever observed true evolution in action, no one knows how evolution works, or even how it might work. Since no one has ever seen it happen (despite thousands of experiments that have tried to produce it), and no one yet has come up with a workable mechanism to explain it, it would seem that it has been falsified, at least as far as the present world is concerned. This does not prove it did not happen in the past, of course, but the evolutionist should recognize that this means it is not science, since it is not observable. Evolution must be accepted on faith.
What about the Past?
Actually, there is no evidence at all that evolution ever took place in the past either. In all recorded history, extending back nearly five thousand years, no one has ever recorded the natural evolution of any kind of creature (living or non-living) into a more complex kind. Furthermore, all known vertical changes seem to go in the wrong direction. An average of at least one species has become extinct every day since records have been kept, but no new species have evolved during that time. Stars explode, comets and meteorites disintegrate, the biosphere deteriorates, and everything eventually dies, so far as all historical observations go, but nothing has ever evolved into higher complexity.
But how about prehistoric changes? The only real records we have of this period are presumably to be found in the sedimentary rocks of the earth's crust, where billions of fossil remains of formerly living creatures have been preserved for our observation. Again, however, the story is one of extinction, not evolution. Numerous kinds of extinct animals are found (e.g., dinosaurs), but never, in all of these billions of fossils, is a truly incipient or transitional form found. No fossil has ever been found with half scales/half feathers, half legs/half wings, half-developed heart, half-developed eye, or any other such thing.
If evolution were true, there should be millions of transitional types among these multiplied billions of fossils--in fact, everything should show transitional features. But they do not! If one were to rely strictly on the observed evidence, he would have to agree that past evolution has also been falsified.
The Necessity of Creation
If evolution did not occur in the past, and does not occur at present, then it is entirely imaginary--not a part of the real world at all. This leaves creation as the necessary explanation of origins.
This fact is also confirmed by the best-proved laws of science--the law of conservation in quantity and the law of decay in complexity, or the famous First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. The First Law notes that, in all real processes, the total quantity of matter and/or energy stays constant, even though it frequently changes form. A parallel principle in biology notes that "like begets like"--dogs are always dogs, for example, though they occur in many varieties. The Second Law notes that the quality of any system--its usefulness, its complexity, its information value--always tends to decrease. In living organisms, true vertical changes go down, not up--mutations cause deterioration, individuals die, species become extinct. In fact, everything in the universe seems to be headed downhill toward ultimate cosmic death.
The First Law notes that nothing is being either "created" or "evolved" by present processes. The Second Law notes that there is, instead, a universal tendency for everything to disintegrate, to run down, and finally, to "die." The whole universe is growing old, wearing out, headed toward ultimate stillness and death. This universal "increase in entropy" leads directly to the conclusion that there must have been a creation of things in the past; otherwise, everything would now be dead (since they are universally dying in the present).
Again, we are driven to the logical necessity of a primal creation--a creation that was accomplished not by present natural processes, but by past supernatural processes. This means, however, that we cannot deduce anything about that creation except just the fact of creation. The processes of creation, the duration of the period of creation, the order of events--all are hidden from us by virtue of the fact that our present observed processes do not create--they only conserve and deteriorate!
The Necessity of a Creator
Nevertheless, there must have been a creation and, therefore, a Creator! Being the Creator of the infinitely complex, highly energized cosmos, that Creator necessarily must be omniscient and omnipotent. Having created life, as well as human personalities, He must also be a living Person. No effect can be greater than its cause.
Therefore, He is fully capable of revealing to us knowledge about His creation--knowledge which could never be learned through studying present processes. It almost seems that He must do this, in fact, since He surely is not capricious. He would not create men and women who long to know the meaning of their lives, yet neglect or refuse to tell them anything about it.
Assuming, then, that He has revealed this information to His creatures, just where is His revelation to be found? There are numerous books of religion, ancient and modern, but their cosmogonies do not contain any account at all of the creation of the universe.
The answer, therefore, has to be in His record of creation in the book of Genesis, for there is no alternative. There are only three creationist "religions" in the world--Christianity, Islam, and Judaism--and all three base their belief in creation on the record of Genesis. Without exception, all the other religions and philosophies of the world have based their beliefs concerning origins on some form of evolutionism. That is, they all begin with the universe (space, time, matter) already in existence, then speculate how the forces of nature (often personified as various gods and goddesses) may have generated all the systems and living creatures of the world out of some primordial watery chaos. Only Genesis even attempts to tell how the universe itself came to be.
Genesis: God's Record of Creation
Whether most people believe it or not, therefore, the creation account in Genesis is God's record of His creation. Jesus Christ also taught this truth, so surely any true Christian should believe it. This account does not allow even the possibility of evolution, since everything was created "after its kind" (Genesis 1:24), and since, after six days of creating and making things, God "rested from all His work" (Genesis 2:3), and so is no longer using processes which "create" things, as theistic evolutionists believe. Instead, He now is "upholding all things" (Hebrews 1:3) through His law of conservation--the "First Law."
Space does not allow documentation and further discussion here, but even this brief summary demonstrates the logic of biblical creationism. Although one may escape from this chain of logic if he wishes, the fact remains that the chain is logical and reasonable. When mixed with faith, there is peace and joy in believing God's straightforward, rational, simple, satisfying, and truly scientific account of creation in Genesis.
Adapted from Dr. Morris' article "The Logic of Biblical Creation" in the July 1990 edition of Acts & Facts.
*Dr. Morris (1918-2006) was Founder of the Institute for Creation Research.
Cite this article: Morris, H. 2008. The Logic of Biblical Creation. Acts & Facts. 37 (8): 10.
