Creationism 101

Did you know that the geocentric model of the solar system had such predictive power that sailors pretended the earth was the center of the solar system in order to navigate the seas, even after it was common knowledge that the earth moved around the sun? That is how good of a scientific model geocentrism was. People could assume the earth is the center of the solar system and then make predictions about the night sky, the movement of the stars, and the behavior of the planets. And more often than not, these predictions were accurate! So accurate, in fact, that it was easier to use this incorrect model to navigate the seas than it was to understand the complicated nuances of a moving earth. Imagine standing on a boat with sailors in the early pre-Copernican 1400s, watching them navigate from one point on the globe to another based on their geocentric interpretation of the solar system. Then imagine telling them, "no, you have it all wrong, the sun does not actually move. The earth does." This would sound ridiculous to them, because in their minds, nothing in astronomy makes sense except in light of geocentrism.

Now, take that mental scenario and keep it open in a separate tab of your mind. In the meantime, consider this title from a 1973 paper by biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky: "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution." What does Dobzhansky mean by this? He means that everything in biology must be interpreted based on the framework of evolution, specifically the version of evolution where all living things share a common ancestor. He "navigates" the world of biology under the umbrella of evolution, and removed of that umbrella, the world makes no sense to him. His argument is essentially the same as C.S. Lewis' famous Christian apologetic: "I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else." If you remove a fact of life from its context in Christian theology, it no longer makes sense to C.S. Lewis. To Dobzhansky, if you remove a biological fact from the theory of evolution, it no longer makes sense, either.

So, what do we do with this? If you are a Christian reading this, you might be thinking "why would anyone believe a silly idea like evolution? If you believe your ancestor was an ape, it is only because you don't want to believe in a God." But someone else--even a Christian like Dobzhansky--could read this and say the opposite: "why would anyone deny evolution? It is so obviously true." We at Creation Reformation offer a different approach: a "reformation" of sorts. The truth is, there is a lot of data in biology, paleontology, and genetics that is adequately explained by the theory of evolution. But on the flip side, this does not make the theory true. Incorrect models can explain lots of data. In fact, the great statistician George Box once famously remarked that "all models are wrong, but some are useful." A scientific model exists in the mind, constructed by humans to explain what they observe in nature. No model is perfect. Ask any physicist, and they will tell you that our models of the atom are all wrong. They are just useful to explain what protons, neutrons, and electrons are. And, as has already been established, you can assume the earth is the center of the solar system and consequently get a lot right about your astronomy. But none of that makes geocentrism true.

Science is a funny field. In practice, scientists gravitate towards whatever model or theory predicts and explains the most data. Sometimes, they think they get something so right that nothing else makes sense except in light of that particular theory. But at any time, a new theory may be proposed that explains more data, or explains the same data even more precisely. No amount of evidence proves a theory true. This is why the dominant scientific model has changed over and over and over again. While it may be incorrect to say there is no evidence that supports the theory of evolution, it is equally false to claim science has "proven" the theory, or that evolution is a "fact." And it turns out, when we remove ourselves from the assumption that evolution has to be true, we find there are a lot of problems with the theory.

The fickleness of science is not some dreadful secret we are exposing. Most scientists are quite open about how they go about their business. They say they are not married to a model, and they promise that if a better one comes along, they will accept it (whether they do that in practice is a bit more fuzzy, but let's not open that door just yet). So, how do we know which model is best? Why reform our current theory instead of believing it until a better theory comes along?

We at Creation Reformation believe that the creation account does not fall into this always-changing arena of "wrong-but-useful" models. We can be sure that the six-day creation, the special creation of man, the subsequent fall of Adam and Eve, and the worldwide Flood have all happened because those are not scientific models but historical accounts, recorded in the most reliable, enduring, and world-changing book ever written: the Bible. This is not to say that each scientific model creationists have come up with has been correct. Many have been wrong. This is to say that we don't want to simply tear down a scientific model we don't like. We want to propose a new scientific explanation based on the data we know to be true, which includes the Genesis account. Creation Reformation is not about being anti-evolution. It's about affirming the truth of the Word of God and looking at science differently as a result.

Conventional science contains two major theories that both rely on an ancient (4.6 billion-year-old) earth. These theories are: uniformitarianism, actualism, and evolution.

Uniformitarianism is the simple but bold idea that all natural processes we see today have essentially been the same for all of natural history. Its rallying cry is: "the present is the key to the past." In other words, if we notice a river is eroding away a rock wall at a tedious, incremental pace, then we should assume that it has always worn away the rock at that pace. The theory of evolution is the idea that all organisms have descended from earlier life forms. This is assumed to be a slow process that takes millions of years, because the primary mechanisms of evolution (natural selection and mutations) take a long time to produce a new life form. The alternative to uniformitarianism and the theory of evolution is "catastrophism" which is the idea that processes do NOT always happen at the same rate, and that large-scale natural catastrophes have dramatically altered the history of the world, affecting these natural processes as a result.

Additionally, many scientists prefer the more nuanced term “Actualism” to describe their position. Actualism is similar to uniformitarianism in that it states that today’s scientific processes are sufficient to explain the history of the planet, but it takes into account that dramatic catastrophes have happened as well as slow changes, meaning it encompasses a wider range of processes (both slow and rapid) rather than limiting itself to current geological rates. More lay-level creation science writing often uses the term “uniformitarianism” while most scientists accept that rapid catastrophes do happen and thus it would be more accurate to call them “actualists.”

We do not have the space here to dive into every piece of evidence for and against an old earth. But in short, here is a brief apologetic for why the earth is young. Within the fields of geology and paleontology (where uniformitarianism and actualism dominate) are many processes, such as sedimentation, fossilization, and erosion. In the fields of biology and genetics (where evolution is concerned) are processes such as natural selection, speciation, and mutations. The old-earth position holds that these processes happen slowly, and that the world we see today is the result of millions of years of these phenomena slowly shaping the earth and the organisms in it. But when we observe these processes today, they are often much faster than the old-earth story predicts. Flash floods produce rapid sedimentation and erosion. Species adapt and populations diversify in surprisingly short time spans, sometimes pretty much on the spot. It is well documented, even among conventional journals, that mutations build up in organisms much faster than evolution predicts. Scientists generally have explanations for these phenomena. Geologists and paleontologists believe faster processes can occur under rare circumstances. But if this is true, and has been true for all of earth history, then time gaps must exist in the current old-earth story that need further explanation. Likewise, biologists do not necessarily have a problem with rapid adaptations in organisms, but such unexpected biological adaptations do throw into question much of what was thought about the mechanisms of Darwinian evolution (and mutation rates continue to be a thorn in the side for evolution theory).

What does all of this mean? Well, the fact that natural processes, both in biology and earth sciences, occur quicker than most scientists expect might suggest that the old-earth perspective is a bit on the wrong track. While catastrophism still requires big catastrophes to speed up all of the erosion, sedimentation, and fossils we see today, it is encouraging to see that young-earth predictions have merit. The old-earth perspective consistently predicts slow rates, and then scientists consistently notice faster rates when they do observational science. This may not be enough to overthrow the old-earth paradigm, but if you believe that the entire history of the earth spans only 6,000 years, then these rapid processes should come as no surprise.

Before we determine which worldview explains the order of the fossil record, we should determine what the fossil record is. It's quite a remarkable thing. Rock layers called "strata" are found in places all over the world, and scientists who studied the layers began to notice patterns. The same types of rocks could be found in the same sequential order in different places. Not only this, but different types of fossils could be found in each layer, and they were fairly consistent in their order and organization no matter where they were found in the world. This allowed scientists to put the pieces together and establish an order of rock layers and the fossils within them, which is what we refer to when we say "fossil record." Now, it is important to establish one crucial fact here: creationists and evolutionists do not disagree about the order of the fossil record or about which fossils are found where. The fossil record is observational data, which scientists must understand and then attempt to explain by constructing theories and models.

Each rock layer gets a name and a place on the vertical column. Most of the important major strata containing multicellular life fall into the Phanerozoic Eon, which is sorted into three major eras: the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic (see diagram above). Each of these time periods is an interpretation of rock layers with the same name. Precambrian rock is the lowest rock down, and contains mostly microscopic fossils. But once we get to the Paleozoic, there is suddenly an explosion of fossils, including plants, invertebrates, fish, and even the first chordates (animals with a notochord). This marks a major event in the fossil record: the "Cambrian Explosion" (the first subdivision of the Paleozoic is the Cambrian period). As we move up the record, larger invertebrates appear, bigger fish show up, and eventually the first jawed fish and amphibians appear. This leads to the Mesozoic strata, which conventionally represents the time period known as the "Age of Reptiles" and contains only three layers: the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous. Dinosaur fossils are prevalent throughout these strata, but small mammals and birds appear as well. The end of the Mesozoic marks another major event: the end of the dinosaurs and the sudden appearance of large mammals. Finally, the Cenozoic (meaning "recent life") is divided into the Paleogene, the Neogene, and Quaternary layers. All three strata are full of mammals, with humans appearing at the very top of the Quaternary.

With this incredibly brief summary of the fossil record under our belts, what does all of this mean? Why are animals and plants buried in this particular order, in rock layers scattered across the world? According to the conventional view, each layer represents the passage of time, with sediment being deposited (sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly) as the years pass, adding up in total to hundreds of millions of years. Fossils represent unlucky organisms that were caught in flash floods, mudslides, or other small-scale disasters. They provide a snapshot of the types of living organisms that were alive at that time. The theory of evolution, therefore, explains the order of the fossil record as the order in which organisms lived and died over millions of years. The general predicted order for animals would be in order of complexity: simple marine invertebrates->fish->amphibians->reptiles->birds->mammals. If you go back and read the last paragraph, we find something roughly similar to this in the fossil record, with lots of overlap between types of organisms. Generally speaking, the theory of evolution explains the fossil record pretty well.

But what about the creationist interpretation? Well, creationists tend to believe that most of the fossil record is explained by the flood of Noah's day, which quickly caught up and deposited millions of organisms, depositing them in a sequential order. What order does the creation model predict? If you think about it, it makes sense that deep marine fossils would be buried first, as the ocean picks them up and drops them on land. Then, as the floodwaters continue to rise, shallower organisms were deposited next, followed by coastal animals, land animals, and finally inland mammals and birds (which could avoid the flood the longest). The predicted order would be, roughly, marine ground feeders->fish->amphibians and reptiles->birds and mammals. Once again, this generally explains the fossil record pretty well. It also explains why lots of animals (such as horseshoe crabs) continue throughout all the layers. It appears that the fossil record can be made to fit both the evolution story and the creation story, with plenty of disagreement, questions, and debate within each camp.

The challenges to both theories are quite expansive. The theory of evolution struggles to explain why so many creatures remain unchanged in the fossil record for millions of years. In addition, the branching order in evolutionary tree diagrams (called phylogenies) often doesn’t match the fossil order. Meanwhile, there is a disagreement among creationists about whether Cenozoic rock layers were formed during the flood, or by other catastrophes in the period after the flood. And there are some features in the fossil record that seem to require lots of time to form, which poses a challenge to the current flood model. So, there are lots of baffling questions about the fossil record for both evolutionists and creationists. But this overview will do for now.

The dominant theory used to explain most geological phenomena is called "Plate Tectonics." Plate tectonics is the theory that all continents sit on top of even larger plates that make up a layer of earth's mantle called the lithosphere. These plates shift and move, causing continental drift, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and even tsunamis. This is the dominant explanation for good reason. It not only makes good predictions, but it is also supported by observational evidence, such as oceanic rifts in the sea floor, observational continental drift, and volcanic chains such as the Pacific Ring of Fire. It is also clear just by looking at the world map that the continents could fit together nicely like a puzzle. 

In the conventional model, the earth's continents have a long history of breaking up and coming together to form supercontinents. The most recent supercontinent was Pangea, which split apart about 250 million years ago. The continents have drifted at a relatively stable rate ever since, and continue to drift at that steady rate today (about 1 inch per year). As recently as the 1900s, scientists were skeptical of the idea that continents could simply move around on top of the earth's mantle, but once oceanic ridges were discovered by World War II era submarines, the tide shifted in favor of continental drift, and by extension Plate Tectonics.

Why do the rifts demonstrate continental drift? The theory explains: 250 million years ago, a rift in the ground opened, and lava rose to the surface, cooling as it made contact with water and forming new solid crust. This new sea floor forced the old sea floor both directions, separating the tectonic plates and causing the continents to drift away from each other. All of this occurred so slowly that life went on as usual for the animals and plants living on the continents. Fossil evidence indicates that similar species lived where the continents were united. In places, we can see where a species range was split by the separation of Pangea. To cap this all off, the volcanos, earthquakes, and tsunamis that occur today are easily explainable by plates colliding with each other.

Alternatively, young-earth scientists have suggested a dramatically sped-up version of this theory. Instead of merely Plate Tectonics, this model is called "Catastrophic Plate Tectonics" (CPT). Incorporating "Continental Sprint" rather than drift, CPT places the split of Pangea during the flood. During the worldwide flood of Genesis 8-11, CPT maintains that at the edges of the continents’ lithosphere, a phenomenon called "runaway subduction” occurred. This process began when continental plates collided and one plate slid under the other, thanks to the buoyancy of the lithosphere. This occurred at a rate of five miles per hour, in contrast to the inches per year that continents move today.

Slow subduction today causes mountain formations and volcanic eruptions as lava is forced upwards by the subducting plate. And earthquakes can occur when the top plate catches on the bottom one and buckles. This is all comparable to a spatula sliding under a pancake. The bubbles rise in the middle of the pancake (volcanos) or the spatula doesn't slide properly and messes up the edge of the pancake so that it has to fall back into shape (earthquakes). But during the flood, the plates were moving much faster than they do today, so we call this process "runaway subduction." Massive volcanic eruptions, destructive earthquakes, and towering tsunamis (caused by earthquakes at sea) were the catastrophic result. These tsunamis picked up entire ecosystems of life and dropped them on land, allowing many of them to fossilize. Remember, this is God's judgement on creation for the sin of man. It was unimaginably destructive. Studying such events should remind us about the terrifying power of the wrath of God.

Meanwhile, the thermal tectonic movements stretched subducting in opposite directions caused the sea floor to split, eventually forming the perpendicular ridges on the sea floor. This tear in the earth opened up the cold sea floor to subterranean lava. The lava that bubbled up from underground boiled the seawater, sending walls of hot vapor up into the atmosphere, where it cools and falls down as a fierce rain. As the waters rose to cover the globe, the continents moved rapidly to close to their current positions.

In summary, plate tectonics is the name of the game in geology. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics places a majority of the process during the flood, explaining the origin of the fossil record, the destructive processes during the flood, and how the continents got to where they are today in such a short period of time. This difference in interpretation is a great example of how conventional scientists see the world as slow and steady processes, while catastrophists interpret the world as a landscape in recovery from dramatic events in earth's relatively recent past.

It could be said that the current theory of the origin of species began with a few small birds on a tiny cluster of islands in South America. Or you could say that it began with a young English naturalist stopping on the Galápagos islands during his voyage as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. Both statements are oversimplifications, of course, but to this day Darwin's finches are the easiest way to understand the conventional model of the diversification of life.

Darwin collected many finches and mockingbirds from the Galápagos islands that directly led to his theory of common descent. Contrary to popular belief, it was three species of mockingbird (not the finches named after Darwin) that drove him to make several key observations:

1. Islands have endemic species of mockingbirds (endemic means they are found nowhere else in the world)

2. Each island has its own species of mockingbird, but all three species are very similar with minor variations between them

3. These small variations make each species perfectly adapted to eat food sources on that island

Darwin's questions were pretty natural, considering most people believed God had created all animals as they are found today, with no room for change (an idea called "species fixity.") Darwin challenged this idea by asking why God would create so many bird species and then put them only on these islands and nowhere else? Instead, Darwin hypothesized that one mockingbird species had once landed on the Galápagos by chance, and then its offspring adapted to live in the unique conditions on each island. The original version of the finch went extinct, leaving only these variations of finches, each in their own island environment. His mechanism for how these finches changed was natural selection, or "survival of the fittest." Natural selection states that organisms are constantly competing for limited resources (such as food sources, mates, or space), and that organisms with the traits best suited for reproduction and survival  (usually speed, agility, bright colors, etc.) are most likely to access those resources, while organisms with "unfit" traits are more likely to starve or lose out on mates. Thus, “fit” traits survive in populations of organisms, while “unfit” traits go extinct because organisms failed to live and reproduce. This theory explained how many species can come from one ancestral species, as populations compete in different environments and develop different traits, eventually becoming different species, genera, families, etc.

Here is the shocking part of this story. Most creationists do not dispute Darwin's proposal for the origin of species. But the key word here is species. A species is the narrowest classification in biology. Scripture declares that God created living things according to their kinds. A "kind" is not a scientific classification, and creationists believe a kind is a much broader category than a species, for a variety of reasons. At the moment, we believe a kind is roughly closer to what Linnaeus (the father of taxonomy) called a "family." Why do we assume this? One reason is that we observe new species appearing in the present day, which means the designated created kinds are likely more broad than the species level. Another reason is that if two of every species were brought to Noah’s ark, they would certainly not all fit. 

So, creationists believe that God created living things in kinds, and from there, the kinds reproduced, filled the earth, and diversified into all the different species today. In other words, Darwin's idea, though radical and in many ways anti-design, is not all bunk. It actually helps explain how we find so much diversity in the animal kingdom today. In fact, one major criticism often thrown at creationists by evolutionists today is that they believe in too much evolution. Creationists believe animals diversified from roughly family-level groups in the last 4,400 years since the flood, a radically short timespan by mainstream evolution's standards. Darwin's mechanism of natural selection is indeed too slow to produce such diversity in such a short time, and creationists are currently researching and finding new mechanisms to explain rapid post-flood speciation. This is a large ongoing research goal of creationism, and we predict that one day we will find mechanisms that cause rapid speciation to a degree Darwin would never have imagined.

So, evolution and creation biology are parallel but different. Charles Darwin visualized his theory of evolution as a tree. Famously, his first evolutionary tree was written in his notebook, with the words "I think" scribbled above it. In this visual, the trunk of the tree represents the common ancestor of all animals. As you move up the tree, each new branch represents a new type of organism that evolved from the ancestral branch before it. It is just like a human ancestral tree, except it includes species or higher taxa instead of individuals. In this way, all living things are related, as they all descend from a single-celled ancestor. Humans have a branch too, and our closest relatives on the family tree are great apes. Creationists prefer to use a different but similar visual. In this version, God created many different kinds, each with its own family tree. Each kind has its own trunk: a common ancestral pair that survived the flood on the ark. Since the flood, each pair has multiplied and its offspring has spread and diversified, covering the planet and producing the diversity we see today. Creationists even developed a new field of biology called "Baraminology" (a combination of Hebrew and Greek which translates “the study of created kinds”) which seeks to identify and describe these original kinds. In this way, creationists can study adaptations and changes in biology, identifying both the similarities and differences in organisms, knowing that they are the result of a God who created creatures with the ability to change rather than proof of the common ancestry of all life billions of years ago.

Chances are, you have looked up at the night sky and seen stars at some point in your life. The probability is also high that you have learned that those stars are millions or billions of light years away. This is a remarkable, unfathomable fact, when you think about it deeply. Remember, light travels about 186,000 miles per second. The distance it would cover in one year is hard to imagine, even before you think about millions of lightyears!

For most stars, it would take light millions of years to reach earth because of how far they are from us. Our sun is the one major exception: it takes under 10 minutes for light to reach us because it is "only" 93 million miles away. This has led to one of the most common challenges to young-earth creationism, which is: how can we see distant stars from earth? If the earth is only 6,000 years old, starlight should not have reached us yet. The alternative is that we are seeing starlight that has been traveling for millions or billions of years.

Of course, the conventional model incorporates billions of years already. This view is called the "Big Bang." In this model, the universe exploded into existence over 13 billion years ago. This singularity marked the beginning of space, matter, and even time! From this first cosmic moment, the universe expanded in all directions, stretching out space and slowly forming galaxies, stars, and planets. In the most popular version of this theory, the explosion was caused by universal physical laws, which produced matter from nothing. The Big Bang is not without its evidence, as the "red shift" phenomena shows that the universe is indeed expanding. Essentially, light wavelengths are like sound wavelengths in that they change frequencies if the object emitting them is moving towards or away from you. This is why a vehicle sounds differently when it is driving towards you (wavelengths are shorter) than it does when it is driving away (wavelengths are longer). In the same way, scientists observe light wavelengths from stars shifting towards the red end of the light spectrum, because the objects are moving away from us (long wavelengths are what our eyes see as red). nothing. This expansion of the universe is consistent with the Big Bang’s concept of the universe beginning with a condensed point that marks the origin of space, time, and matter. Christian proponents of the Big Bang point out that since there are far more light particles (photons) in the universe than matter particles (protons, electrons, and neutrons), then this explosion would have looked like a big burst of light firing in all directions. This, of course, is exactly what you imagine in Genesis 1 when God speaks light into being. In fact, the Big Bang's discovery was a shocking one for physicists and cosmologists, who believed the universe was eternal and had always existed. The eerie similarity between the biblical account of creation and the new discoveries of the Big Bang even drove some of them to belief in God, especially since the alternative to God creating the universe is that the universe exploded from nothing, a logical impossibility. Albert Einstein famously fought the model and only accepted it reluctantly, because he disliked the theological ramifications of the theory.

But alas, the Big Bang theory requires billions of years. Scientists calculate the age of the universe to be between 13 and 14 billion years old, based on the time it would take for the universe to expand from its original state to today. How do we account for the Big Bang in Scripture? Light was created on day 1 of creation. Are we supposed to believe billions of years fit right in between day 1 and day 2? Or that the creation of the sun, moon, and stars on day 4 actually reflects a slow and expansive creative process as conventional science suggests? The short answer to this is that creationists do not know how God created the universe, and neither does anyone else. But creationists do have several ideas as to why the universe might look old but indeed be young.

Some have proposed that God created a "mature universe." In the same way he created Adam and Eve as adults, and all of the animals as fully grown, He also made the universe look older than it was. He did not create Adam as a baby, or the first birds as eggs. He created them with the appearance of age, in order to function as a fully mature, actively working system. In other words, God created the universe on day 1 as an expanding, fully formed universe, with its processes and activities already happening. One problem with this idea is that it paints God as a deceiver in some ways. Consider the fact that we can observe supernovas, (exploding stars). In these cases, we are not actually observing the star explode now. Instead, we are seeing what it looked like millions of years ago when the light actually left the star. If God created a mature universe, then this star never existed, and God created the light to make it seem like a star exploded. This is more serious than God creating an adult Adam and Eve instantly. Instead, it is like God creating Adam with a healed scar from a medical surgery that never actually happened. Does this type of creative act make God a deceiver?

Another idea is that God used accelerated processes during creation week. Some of these processes are similar to the ones the Big Bang describes. But the "accelerated processes" position maintains that when God created the universe, He dramatically accelerated these processes, fitting billions of years of time into a day. Think of a time lapse video of a tree growing and apply that to creation week. Trees sprouted, space expanded, and light traveled much faster than it does today, only while God created it. A third potential explanation is relativity. We know that certain phenomena can bend time, making time a relative factor rather than a constant. In the same way time works differently for someone who is near a black hole, maybe the universe expanded for billions of years, in the same time span of creation week on earth. This fits with how Scripture focuses intentionally on the earth and may be describing a literal 6-day week relative to earth. For example, the Bible does not describe God creating all stars, but rather placing the stars in the night sky. God's creative acts were earth-focused, so maybe billions of years of physical processes occurred in the universe while only a 24-hour day went by on earth.

Though important, the "distant starlight" problem is not the full extent of creation astronomy. Creation astronomers and cosmologists have yet to find an alternative model to the Big Bang. Some creationists incorporate the Big Bang into a young-earth perspective, while others question its validity based on things it cannot seem to explain. As amazing as God's universe is, the future of creation astronomy is a murky but exciting one as creationists continue to study Scripture and creation to uncover the secrets behind the origins of the universe.

If you look closely at a whale, a bird, a bat, a horse, a frog, a crocodile, and a human, you will notice something about their bones. Each one of these animals has a humerus bone which attaches to a radius and ulna bone, which in turn attaches to hand bones called carpals and finger bones called metacarpals and phalanges. It is the same basic body plan for each of these organisms, even though each animal is incredibly unique and lives in a different environment. The whale's finger bones are large and powerful, while the bat's fingers are long so their membranous skin can stretch between them, allowing for flight. But at their most basic forms, all vertebrate animals have similar skeletal design plans, varying only in how they use their organization to interact with he world. In conventional textbooks, this is considered powerful evidence that all of these animals share a common ancestor, which had this same body plan originally. Similar structures in different organisms that are thought to have been inherited from a common ancestor are called “homologous.”

Common ancestry fits the creation model to an extent. For example, a puma has retractable claws and an African lion has retractable claws because they are both descendants of an ancestral cat pair that walked off Noah's ark just a few thousand years ago. But the similarities between a lion and a bat cannot be explained this way. Instead, creationists suggest this has more to do with how God designed His creation. It makes sense that God might design animals using the same basic body plans. This might have practical applications, because He is creating animals that all must thrive in the same world. Think of this like how humans build cars and boats with similar designs (combustion engines, steering mechanisms, windshields, etc.) because they serve similar purposes (transportation). God may have designed animals with similar body plans to fulfill similar tasks (movement, finding food, sensing environments, etc.). The design works, so God used it for all of his animals.

We can go deeper than this, too. What if God designed animals with similar features because He values unity in creation? A well-known biologist in the 19th century named Richard Owen once suggested that God had a metaphysical archetype in mind when creating all living things. This archetype is abstract and entirely in the mind: God's mind, in particular. God used this archetype to unite all animals. He used a "primitive" form of this archetype in fish and amphibians, and then the archetype improves or advances as we move up the chain of life. This continuous chain culminates in the pinnacle of creation: mankind. The archetype idea suggests that the chain linking all organisms is not an evolutionary history, but rather a continuity designed by God from the mind of God. This explains both the unity of life (why they all share characteristics) and the diversity of life. It also offers a reason why all organisms look fairly similar early in development: this is an undeveloped archetypal form yet to reach its final appearance. Is this an abstract and metaphysical idea? Yes. But would we expect the creative mind of God to be a simple one? Of course not. This is one of those cases that reminds us that viewing creation as the result of a mind leads us to interpret the evidence differently. 

Have you ever wondered how scientists calculate ages for their fossils? They use a process called radiometric dating to attain ages for the rock layers in which fossils are found. What does that mean? Let's break it down. Remember from chemistry class that elements are made up of protons (positively charged particles in the atom's nucleus), electrons (negatively charged particles that circle the nucleus), and neutrons (particles with neutral charges found in the nucleus with the protons). The number of these particles in the nucleus determines what type of element it is. Now, elements can vary in the number of neutrons they have. Atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes. Having a different number of neutrons usually makes an element unstable, so most isotopes eventually emit particles (accompanied by radiation) to reach a more stable form. For example, carbon-14 emits an electron in a process called beta decay (see image below). After it loses this particle, the element that remains is nitrogen-14.

Here is why this can be used to date rocks. Every radioisotope has a consistent decay rate that does not change, no matter what scientists do to it. This decay rate is measured by a "half-life," which is the amount of time it takes for the original element (called the "parent") to decay by 50%. In other words, if you have 1,000 atoms of carbon-14, it will take one half-life to reduce that carbon-14 to 500 atoms. The new product, nitrogen-14, is called the "daughter" isotope. Each radioisotope has its own unique half-life. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730 years. This is considered a very short half-life. Potassium-40, by contrast, decays into Argon-40 with a half-life of 1.25 billion years. Samarium-147 decays into Neodymium-143 with a half-life coming in at 106 billion years! Once again, no matter what scientists do to this process (they have tried increasing temperature and pressure, added chemicals, and applied electric and magnetic fields), this decay rate does not change significantly. Decay rates are therefore considered to be constant.

Let's put all of this together. Any organism at all times has a set ratio of carbon-14 and carbon-12 in its body. When the organism dies, though, it stops taking in carbon. The carbon-14 is unstable, and begins to decay into Nitrogen-14, completing a half-life after 5,730 years. Now, scientists know everything they need to calculate the fossil's age:

1. The ratio of parent and daughter isotope the organism had when it died

2. The rate of decay of the parent isotope

3. The ratio of parent to daughter isotope that is in the organism now

With these calculations, an age can be assigned to the organism (unlike other methods, carbon dating can date the fossils themselves). Because of its fast decay rate, carbon dating is only "accurate" up to 50,000 years (after this time, no traceable carbon-14 is left). But other radioisotopes with longer decay rates can calculate ages of rocks to be millions or even billions of years old. Scientists have even found lots of evidence that vast amounts of decay have happened in the past. "Fission tracks," for example, provide microscopic evidence of uranium-238 decay, and "radiohalos," are areas of radiation damage in minerals that can only be formed if millions of years of decay has happened. Radiometric dating is thus a strong argument in favor of an ancient earth.

But as always, the story does not end there. In 1997, two creation organizations (the Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society) convened a team of scientists to answer the radiometric dating challenge. This project was titled the RATE (Radioistopes and the Age of The Earth) project, and its findings were important. First, the RATE project tested the ages of rocks using different radiometric dating methods, and found that each result differed dramatically from the others, sometimes by over 100 million years! But even more fascinating was the discovery of helium in zircon crystals in New Mexico.

Uranium-238 is another radioisotope used to date rocks. It decays into lead-206 with a half-life of over 700 million years. But when it decays, it also emits helium as a by-product. This helium leaks out of crystals at a comparatively quick rate, leaving the parent and daughter isotopes as strong evidence that radioactive decay occurred. But the RATE scientists found lots of helium in the zircon crystals! The best way to explain this is that lots of decay did indeed occur (1.5 billion years worth of decay was needed to produce the helium) but in this case, the decay happened in a short period of time, because helium did not have time to leak out of the crystals. The RATE scientists even calculated that the amount of helium in the crystals suggests that the minerals could not be more than 6,000 years old! So, even though radiometric dating remains a challenge for creationists in many areas of science, there is encouraging evidence suggesting that there is more to the story than long decay rates. Instead, the data suggests that certain events in the past caused rapid radioisotope decay.

Take a look at the picture of the fossil above. What is it? You might say it looks like a bird, because it has feathers, wings, and a tail. But it also has claws for hands and jaws with teeth instead of the traditional bird beak, like a reptile. What is it? This is a famous fossil called Archaeopteryx, once thought to be the missing link between reptiles and birds. Remember, the order of the fossil record led scientists to believe that reptiles evolved into birds. Their model suggests that we should find fossils of transitional forms, which are fossils that combine traits of the ancestral and descendant groups. While scientists no longer believe Archaeopteryx to be a "missing link," they do believe it is a remnant of the reptile-to-bird transition, since its physical characteristics certainly look like a cross between the two. The fossil continues to be used as evidence of the theory of evolution.

Another example is the fossil Tiktaalik, which looks like a cross between fish and land animals. Not only did this creature look exactly like evolutionists predicted it would, but evolutionary paleontologists also predicted the location in the fossil record in which they would find it (i.e. Devonian rock in the Canadian arctic). This fossil has a flat head, long slender body for swimming, and limbs that could function as flippers for swimming and for crawling around on shore. Is this irrefutable evidence for the theory of evolution?

Remember, making predictions does not make a theory true, even though it is a metric scientists use to test its merit. There are other possible explanations for such creatures as Archaeopteryx and Tiktaalik existing. Instead of trying to explain these fossils with a narrow scope, let's reconsider the data in light of two more general facts. 

The first fact is that there used to be a lot more diversity of living things than there is today. Many, many species have gone extinct in the past. This fits both the evolutionary history, where asteroids and climate change wipe out many species at a time, and the creation view, where a worldwide flood decimates all life on earth and narrows all animals into two of every kind. The harsh post-flood world is also responsible for killing off many species, whether from dramatic climate change, predation, or post-flood natural disasters. With so many extinct animals in the fossil record, it makes sense that some of them look like transitional forms. A group of animals called "Synapsids" were basically reptiles with lots of mammalian characteristics. Archaeopteryx, in fact, is one of many reptilian creatures that had wings, partial flight, and feathers. Even dinosaurs share characteristics with both modern-day reptiles and modern-day birds. This wonderful diversity of the past undercuts our modern world, where everything neatly falls into categories (Linnaeus called them "classes") like birds, reptiles, and mammals. If you only look at today, these categories are helpful. But if you look at all life to ever live, these categories are less effective, since there is a lot of overlap in characteristics that normally distinguish these groups easily. Creatures that appear to be transitional may just be unique creatures God made in the beginning, when there was actually more diversity than there is today.

But why did the theory of evolution predict so precisely where the Tiktaalik fossil would be found? It does seem like a wild coincidence that evolutionists found exactly what they were looking for in the exact part of the geological column they thought they would find it. But here is the second fact to remember: incorrect theories can make true predictions. How? Because usually theories are constructed to explain natural patterns. An incorrect model may explain a pattern in nature. When it makes predictions based on the pattern, it is quite possible to come up with positive results, even if its explanation of that pattern is incorrect. If the current creation model were the dominant view, scientists might have gone looking for the same creature in the same place, because creationism also explains the patterns of the fossil record. 

In the creationist's view, the fossil record begins with deep marine fossils and as the layers get higher, they contain shallower creatures until they turn into shore animals and then land animals. Part of this model involves a unique ecosystem that existed before the flood called a “floating forest.” This continent made of plant matter once floated above the deep sea, and when it was destroyed in the Flood, it fossilizes plants and animals, starting from the outside and working its way in. This model adequately explains the order of plants in the fossil record, but it also reveals where a creature like Tiktaalik lived. This “transitional” creature would have thrived in a floating forest ecosystem, which would have been a type of intermediate biome between land and sea. During the flood, the floating forest was broken up and fossilized in a particular order, and this explains the placement of Tiktaalik in the fossil record.

God made sea creatures to live in the sea, land creatures to live on land, and in the ecosystems in between, He designed organisms to live in between worlds. Tiktaalik is not a transition from fish to land animals; it is an intermediate organism living between the sea and the land. It lived at the same time as the sea and land creatures and was deposited between them during the worldwide flood.

The evolutionary explanation for Tiktaalik was delt a significant blow when fossil trackways of a land animal were found in Poland in rock layers that are supposed to be older than Tiktaalik! This is puzzling for conventional scientists. On the one hand, their chain of fossils from fish to tetrapods (with Tiktaalik as the link between them) looks quite convincing on its own. But on the other hand, evidence of a tetrapod in the fossil record exists earlier than the fossil that is supposed to be its ancestor!

Transitional forms are nothing to be afraid of. At first glance, they seem to confirm the theory of evolution beyond a reasonable doubt. But by diving deeper into the evidence rather than denying it, we can find better ways to explain the data before us. We can rest easy and remember that truly following the evidence can only lead to the truth. And the truth is the very last thing that Christians should fear.