Comment on Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit by David Read.
The fossil record as a whole supports creationism much better than Darwinism. As I wrote in my book:
The fossil record does not support the Darwinian version of natural history. The near-absence of complex life forms below the Cambrian, the incredible diversity of life forms that suddenly appear in the Cambrian explosion, the fact that fossil forms do not change or evolve during millions of years of geological time, and the extreme rarity of transitional or intermediate forms anywhere in the fossil record are together sufficient to falsify the larger claims of Darwinism.
The observed configuration of fossils is, however, exactly what a biblical creationist would expect to find. First, if the fossiliferous layers were formed during the Flood, we would expect that the plants and animals then existing would have been buried and preserved as fossils, and that is exactly what we find.
Second, a biblical creationist who believes that the Genesis Flood began in the oceans with the bursting forth of the “great fountains of the deep” would expect to find a great variety of sea creatures buried by turbidity currents during the early stages of the flood. He would not expect to find intermediate fossil forms leading up to those sea floor creatures; rather, they would all appear suddenly in the fossil record, an “explosion” of diversity and variety at the lowest fossiliferous level. This is exactly what we see in the Cambrian explosion.
Third, instead of the “branching tree” pattern predicted by Darwin, the biblical creationist would expect to find a tremendous range and diversity of life at the very lowest fossiliferous levels. In fact, we find that the “tree” of life is upside down, with almost all the modern phyla and many extinct phyla appearing in the lower Cambrian. This aspect of the “Cambrian explosion” is well illustrated by the Burgess Shale fauna.
Fourth, a biblical creationist would not expect to find fossil evidence of any species changing into a different species. Rather, as each ecological zone was overtaken by the floodwaters, the flora and fauna of that zone were drowned and buried in sediment. After each zone was overtaken, the flora and fauna of that zone were eradicated, and not buried again in higher strata. This is why forms come into the fossil record, they do not change during their tenure of “geological time,” and then they disappear from the fossil record, but yield no evidence of having evolved into something else. This pattern of abrupt appearance, stasis, and disappearance is puzzling to Darwinists, but it is exactly what biblical creationists would expect, and exactly what we find.
Finally, a biblical creationist would expect to find many fossil animals in the strata that no longer exist as living animals. This is partly because the ruined post-Flood world cannot support the range, diversity, and type of life that it could support when it came perfect from the hand of its Creator. Seventh-day Adventists have another reason to expect to find fossil animals that no longer exist as living species. [Ellen White’s statement that “The confused species which God did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood.”] Thus, we find many fossil species that are now extinct and known only from fossils.
Clearly, the fossil record, fairly interpreted, supports the biblical record and the prophetic statements of Ellen White. “God designed that the discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history; but men, with their vain reasoning, fall into the same error as did the people before the Flood—the things which God gave them as a benefit, they turn into a curse by making a wrong use of them.”
David Read Also Commented
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
@Professor Kent: “Naturalism applies the evidence to understand scripture, and creationism applies scripture (in no small part) to understand the evidence.”
Jeff, your clauses are not parallel. Naturalism first assumes that there was no Creator God (a faith assumption) and then uses that assumption to interpret the data of nature. It then uses its (atheistic) interpretation of nature to re-interpret Scripture. But since Scripture is all about miracles, all about an omnipotent Creator God, why would anyone who rules out such a God in his interpretation of the data of nature even be interested in the Bible?
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
@Professor Kent: Jeff, see my response to Eddie, above. It is clear that the modern world is not a reliable guide regarding conditions that existed before the Flood. Inspired history tells us that there were no bare, jagged mountain tops, no dismal swamps and no arctic wastes; the world was very different, and the conditions that prevailed then are not the conditions that prevail now.
The fossil record confirms inspired history; warm-weather flora and fauna are found in abundance in arctic and antarctic zones, and this fact cannot remotely be explained by continental drift. How were the arctic climes ever able to support these life forms? The fossils tell us that conditions differed radically, but they don’t tell us why. Inspired history tells us that conditions were very different before the Flood
These types of mysteries are at least as prevalent in the mainstream model as in the the creationist model.
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
@Eddie: The fossil record gives evidence of a pre-Flood world differing in many respects from present conditions. But we also know that from inspired history, such as the fact that there was no rain in the antediluvian world, but rather the earth was watered by a mist. There were no desert wastes, no dismal swamps, and no arctic ice fields.
The radically different climatic conditions of the pre-Flood world might well have given rise to ecological zonation somewhat different from what we see in the modern world. Plants that have taken over in the modern world, such as angiosperms, might have had a much more restricted ecological niche in the pre-flood world.
Recent Comments by David Read
LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: I do not agree that science must be naturalistic, but if that is your bottom line, it will not trouble me much where it concerns most day-to-day science–the study of current, repeating phenomena. But a rigid naturalism applied to origins morphs into philosophical atheism. Hence, mainstream origins science is not science but atheistic apologetics. This is what should not be done at an Adventist school, but sadly what has been the rule at La Sierra.
Dr. Paul Cameron and the God of the Gaps
@Pauluc: The Adventist doctrine of creation is that God created the world in six days and rested on the Seventh day and hallowed it. (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:11) Do you believe that doctrine? It won’t do to say that you accept some vague “Christian doctrine of creation.” The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a very specific mission to call people back to the worship of the creator God, on the day that He hallowed at the creation.
You say you believe that the “core doctrine of Christianity is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ,” but what was Jesus Christ incarnated to do? Wasn’t his mission to redeem fallen humanity, to be the second Adam who succeeded where the first Adam failed? And doesn’t your view of origins make nonsense of a perfect creation, a literal Adam who fell, and the need for redemption because of Adam’s sin? You seem to want to gloss over all the very profound differences you have not only with Seventh-day Adventist dcotrine, but with the most basic reasons that Seventh-day Adventism exists.
The syncretistic hodgepodge religion you’ve created for yourself, combining elements of a biblical world view (the incarnation) and elements of a pagan worldview (a self-created creation) is not Adventism. It is anti-Seventh-day Adventism.
LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Holly Pham: Holly, I will try, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: Since no creationist could land a job as chairman of a biology department at a public university, it seems entirely appropriate that no Darwinist should be given the chairmanship of a biology department of a Seventh-day Adventist college.
The SDA educational system doesn’t exist to expensively duplicate the public university system. It exists to provide a uniquely biblical and Seventh-day Adventist education to interested young people. If mainstream origins science is correct in its assumptions and conclusions about our origins, the entire enterprise of Seventh-day Adventism is an utterly foolish waste of time. So at Adventist institutions, our professors should assume that Darwinistic science is false, and that creationistic science is true (just the reverse of how it is done at public universities), and proceed accordingly.
LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@gene fortner: What I like about your list of topics, Gene, is that it points out that many disciplines are implicated in the necessary change of worldview. It isn’t just biology and geology, although those are the main ones. History, archeology, anthropology and other disciplines should also be approached from a biblical worldview. The biblical worldview should pervade the entire curriculum.
