Current Events	AIG 1998	AIG 1998 Speakers	A Case for Creation

Let me give you an example. We can tell the difference between a pebble shaped by time and chance and an arrowhead created with plan and purpose. Scientists find created order in DNA's genetic code, the cell's "irreducible complexity," pre-programmed stages in a baby's development, marvels of adaptation, variations in the one skin color we all share, and so many other places that, even without identifying the Creator or seeing the creative act, "agnostic creationists" are now even writing influential books using the tools of science, logic and observation, to present scientific evidence for creative intelligence.

Wait a minute! Evidence for intelligent design? What about the AIDS virus, birth defects, and disasters? Don't these horrible things prove evolution by time, chance, struggle, and death? I thought that (as detailed in my book, Creation: Facts of Life, 1994), until I learned the Bible says God did NOT create the world as we know it today. God created a wonderful world with no suffering or death. But our first parents did what we also do so easily: put human opinions above God's clear and loving words. Their rejection of God's Word of life led to suffering and death -- a corruption of God's Creation.

Is there a struggle for survival as Darwin said? Yes, but natural selection (actually an idea published by a Christian years before Darwin) only helps explain how and where varieties survive as they multiply and fill the Earth after men brought death into God's Creation. Do random changes in genes (mutations) occur? Yes, but mutations help explain the origin of disease, defects, and death, NOT the origin of species. Mutation and selection ("microevolution" produce only harmful changes or just variation within kind, such as the peppered moth, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, etc. Fossils confirm large but limited variability and point to disaster and decline, supporting what the Bible says about God's perfect Creation ruined by rnan. Fossils also testify to the cataclysm of the Flood brought on by man's corruption.

The first fossils buried in abundance -- the now rare or extinct -- had marvelous eyes enabling them to see underwater better than my students and me on our scuba dives in the Florida Keys - well-designed (Creation), but followed by disaster and decline (Corruption and Catastrophe).

Students see the evidence of a lot of water, not a lot of time, on our week-long backpacking trips through Grand Canyon, and hear how Mount St. Helens formed a 1:40 scale model of Grand Canyon in just 5 days! Studying fossils while doing my doctoral degree (with a fellowship from the National Science Foundation) completed my "conversion" from believing the words of men (evolution) to believing the Word of God.

And that "Word became flesh" as Jesus Christ. According to evolution, death wins. According to the Bible, life wins--the new life we can have in Christ. But, don't take my word for it. Examine the evidence for yourself -- if you can. We live in an age when our academic and media establishments preach evolution with dogmatic fervor and censor opposing views. The lesson of the 1925 Scopes trial has been lost: toleration of another viewpoint. How the times have changed.

Dr. Gary Parker is a former evolutionist. He holds a doctorate in biology and is a Phi Beta Kappa.