Timeless Answers on Origins for the Christian Layman

Foreword

These essays by Dr. David Menton were first published monthly in The St. Louis MetroVoice in the early 1990s. While this outreach was “preaching to the choir,” it was needed because many in Christian circles are not able to defend the literal biblical account of creation.

The onslaught of atheistic evolution has taken center stage in academic circles everywhere, but it fails miserably to make good its claim of scientific underpinning for evolution. Dr. Menton’s essays show solid support for creation and put forth a mighty challenge to evolution in every area touched by his presentations.

Since that time there has not been one serious or substantial rebuttal offered to refute a single issue covered in these essays. Investigations based on true science do not become outdated with the passage of time. They rather sparkle with brilliance and continue standing tall in support of God’s miracle of creation.

The words of the Apostle Paul are most fitting in the ongoing battle of creation versus evolution,

We do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are . . . divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:2–5; NASB).

We heartily commend these essays and pray they will be the encouragement needed to help readers understand and defend the biblical record of creation, thus fending off the pseudo-science of evolution.

Ivan L. Burgener, President, Missouri Association for Creation

Introduction

The origin of this little book on origins may be traced back to a breakfast meeting in St. Louis in the spring of 1993 when I agreed with a friend to write a series of 12 articles on the creation/evolution controversy for a local Christian newspaper, the St. Louis MetroVoice. With the encouragement of MetroVoice editor Jim Day, I ended up submitting 24 articles in a little over two years. Now the Missouri Association for Creation has asked me for permission to republish the MetroVoice articles so that they may be made available to today’s interested readers.

Some corrections and revisions have been made to the articles, since they originally appeared in the MetroVoice, but for the most part they are unchanged. Even though more than 20 years has passed since these articles were written, the basic arguments both supportive and critical of evolution have changed very little. Indeed the unfertile field of evolutionary speculation has contributed essentially nothing to the rapid growth in our knowledge of empirical science. Evolutionist Marc Kirschner, chairman of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, says, “In fact over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry and physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all” (Peter Dizikes, Boston.com, October 23, 2005).

The topics covered in this series of essays were written for an audience of Christian layman; thus the reader will find them neither scholarly nor trivial. No attempt was made to keep the discussion scrupulously secular in the hope that it might better appeal to the atheist/agnostic or be approved for use in the public schools. Such efforts are unnecessary and perhaps even futile. One has only to follow the raging creation/evolution debates on the internet and popular media to observe that attempts to explain origins (whether by creationists or evolutionists) are full of religious implications.

While the essays are arranged in a logical sequence, the reader will find that they can be read in any order, since most do not critically depend on that which has gone before. I hope the brevity of these essays will encourage many to read them who might not otherwise tackle such a wide-ranging technical subject. How we view the origin of the cosmos and its inhabitants is profoundly important for our whole worldview. Whether or not the reader agrees with my conclusions, it is hoped that they will provoke thought and discussion.