The Giraffe's Neck

11 Jul 2010

The Giraffe’s Neck – Evolution vs. Creation
Notes from a talk presented by Nikhil Isaac

Slides from the talk can be found below.

Being believers in Christ, we know how awesome God’s creation is. He created the world in 7 days.

As far as the world is concerned there are two views. Creation & Evolution.

We all realize that God is Creator, but how often do we consider what was involved in that creation? God is a chemist, a physicist, an astronomer, a biologist. He is most certainly an artist, a maker of all of our world’s beauty. He is the lawmaker of all of the unseen forces that make nature orderly and predictable.

The conditions of creation were intricately planned and considered. A mindless uncontrolled big bang would result in destruction and chaos, not the life and order we now see.

Creation

The First Day – The first recorded Words of God that we have are: “Let there be light”. And so it was, that the light was made separate from darkness. (Genesis 1:3-5)

The Second Day – The separation of the waters. There was yet no liquid water, no oceans. (Genesis 1:6-8)

The Third Day – The first appearance of dry ground. With dry ground available, the first plants were made to grow in great abundance. (Genesis 1:9-13)

The Fourth Day – With the sky now clear, the sun, moon and stars were dependably visible. They were to serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years. The sun marked the day, and the stars marked the seasons. Constellations are seen in particular seasons. For example, Orion is visible only during winter in the northern hemisphere. (Genesis 1:14-19)

The Fifth Day – Great numbers of birds and sea creatures were created. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” (Genesis 1:20-23)

The Sixth Day – Man. From the man, woman. Humans today are just now discovering how to genetically alter fertilized embryos, and even create a human from the tissue of another – cloning. (Genesis 1:24-31)

The Seventh Day – The Sabbath Day. “By the sixth day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done. (Genesis 2:2-3)

Evolution

Evolution is a theory put forward by Charles Darwin and other scientists.

According to this theory the universe exploded out of nothing. Different life forms are said to have evolved from a common ancestor.

Natural selection – It is a process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. The natural genetic variation within a population of organisms means that some individuals will survive more successfully than others in their current environment. Factors which affect reproductive success are also important, an issue which Charles Darwin developed in his ideas on sexual selection. The term was introduced by Darwin in his groundbreaking 1859 book On the Origin of Species.