December 1963

PUBLISHED IN THE INTEREST OF AN EXCHANGE OF IDEAS BY THOSE WHO ARE CONCERNED WITH SCIENCE DEVELOPED FROM A FRAMEWORK IN HARMONY WITH A CONSERVATIVE VIEW OF THE BIBLE

This Newsletter is being mailed from Caldwell, Idaho. There is no subscription price. Contributions for expenses are welcome. It is our desire to distribute this Newsletter to whomever it will be helpful.

    RESPONSE IS GREATER THAN EXPECTED
In September we began with the modest venture of an exchange of ideas on Bible-Science relationships. There seems to be  an almost desperate interest in finding something effective in combating the overwhelming uniformitarianism of our present educational system. The first issue has already had its fourth re-run. The second issue has had its second re-run and both issues are still being requested. There are about 160 names on our mailing list.

    COMMENTS
In our limited space we cannot use all the material available for this issue. We shall quote at length from recent material by John C. Whitcomb, Jr.  Quotes are from a presidential address at the Seventh General Meeting of Midwestern Section of the Evangelical Society on May 4, 1962. This contains outstanding material regarding outer space and most of this issue will be devoted to this subject. Our commentary on Genesis 1:2 will be reserved for a later issue as will comments on Meldau's book "Creation Not Evolution" and some excellent material from Dr. John J. Grebe of Midland, Michigan.

Before beginning we should like to thank Mr. Byron C. Nelson for his correspondence. He feels there will be difficulty in organizing a group such as the Christian Research Committee because of the many differing views. We note his problems in the American Lutheran Church and his local congregation, Bethel Lutheran Church at Madison, Wisconsin which is producing an evolutionistic Bethel Bible Series.

We apologize to the Rev. R. Goetjen of North Hollywood, California. We stated that possibly in his view God accommodated Himself to man's way of thinking in ordering the sun to stand still in the Book of Joshua. Rev. Goetjen says this is not what he intended to say.  He meant the sun should stand still in relation to the horizon and not in relation to the universe. Joshua did not say the sun should stand still in relation to the universe, but upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalon.  (Joshua 10:12-13)

We have been in contact with the Evolution Protest Movement led by L.V. Cleveland of Canterbury, Connecticut and which seems to be in existence both in England and in this country. We are anxious to see the ten-volume compendium titled "Anti-Evolution Compendium", available at the Canterbury, Connecticut address.
We have enjoyed correspondence with Wm. Tinkle and ordered fifty of his tracts "Look Again Before You Doubt" in its third revised printing. He has also collaborated with Wm. Lammerts in "Modern Science and Christian Faith".
W
e have found a great deal of help in "Creation and Science" by Glenn Gates Cole, published by Standard Publishing Company of Cincinnati, Ohio in 1927. We found this in a nearby library and were amazed at how much it can be used though it is an old work. We also found much help in "The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved" in fifty arguments by the Rev. William A, Williams, D.D., published at Camden, New Jersey, in 1925. We do not know whether these books are still available. Williams disproves evolution mathematically as we have not seen it done by anyone else.

There is much correspondence we could mention. We quote from the Rev. Paul M. Otten, pastor at Hill City, Minnesota: "Your Newsletter had not been here for more than a couple of days when a young graduate of Minnesota University (who is a Methodist but wishes to marry a Lutheran girl) walked in and after a rather lengthy discussion asked why there was so little up-to-date material on the 'conservative' side of the story. Immediately I was able to use your Newsletter.  ... This is the kind of initiative that is needed among the conservatives today."

    WHY NO EVOLUTION IN SPACE
This is not the title of John Whitcomb's essay which we are reviewing, but that is the way in which it interests us. After speaking of the double-revelation theory, whereby people believe God has given to man two revelations of truth, each fully authoritative in its own realm, in the Bible and nature, Whitcomb somewhat rejects this. He rejects "Whenever there is apparent conflict between the conclusions of the scientist and the conclusions of the theologian, especially with regard to such problems as the origin of the universe, the solar system, the earth, animal life, and man;, the effects of the Edenic curse; and the magnitude and effects of the Noahic Deluge, the theologian must rethink his interpretation of the Scriptures at these points in such a way as to bring the Bible into harmony with the general consensus of scientific opinion, since the Bible is not a textbook on science, and these problems overlap the territory in which science alone must give us the detailed and authoritative answers."

    PROBLEMS OF CONDENSATION OF SUN AND PLANETS
Whitcomb in his essay quotes consider-ably from Gerald P. Kuiper, a noted American astronomer who tries to explain the formation of the sun from condensation of gas, from a chance eddy which brought enough atoms into one region so their total gravity overcame the momentum of individual movements and held them together in a single, collapsing cloud.  The largest eddy was the sun. Its overwhelming gravitational influence shaped the rest of the cloud into a huge, rotating disk.  The lesser eddies rolled around as protoplanets, The surface of the sun turned slowly red and hot, orange and hotter, yellow and incandescent.  Its first red rays, falling on the haIf-begotten protoplanets, began to drive away the smog of matter in which they had been born and on which they were still feeding and growing.

Whitcomb's objections to this theory of evolution are as follows:

1.    "Before any condensation of gas and dust could occur, the nebula would have diffused into outer space.  Kuiper himself also admits that before gravitational attraction would become significant,  the particles would have to be as big as the moon!  "Dust particles do not seem to stick together in dust  storms.  "Whipple admits that the chief difficulty is to explain how the pro-tonlanets maintained themselves during the early stages when the dust  clouds were more rare than the vacuum of a  thermos bottle. Yet they had to hold together sufficiently to pick up material from the rare spaces between them,  and they had to be massive enough to grow and not spiral toward the sun."

2. "The theory of 'roller bearing'   eddies of gas and dust is impossible, because a regular system of vortices must remain intact during essentially the entire period of planetary accretion. This is due to the fact that the planets all revolve around the sun in the same direction."

3. " 'what stopped the process from continuing so that the entire mass of material did not form one large body? After all, the sun makes up 99 and 6/7 % of the mass of the sun and planets combined. Why did that paltry 1/7 of one percent not fall into the main body also?'

4. "Other suns do not seem to be developing planetary systems in all of space now, as Paul A. Zimmerman points out. Greenstein, astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory, is of the opinion that the known stars rotate so fast that one must conclude they could never have been formed by a condensation process,"

Whitcomb quotes from Zimmerman what all of this really is: "It is good, clean fun for an astronomer, a mathematician, a chemist, a physicist. It is an exercise in working out a logical scheme of proposed events which would lead to the formation of the earth and the solar system as we find them now. It is a game, the rules of which are observed physical and chemical laws. But even if one wins the game by devising a perfect system that accounts for every detail of the properties of the heavenly bodies, he still will not have proved that things did, in fact, take place."

    PROBLEM OF ANGULAR MOMENTUM OF THE PLANETS
Whitcomb quotes from "Universe" this problem that faces evolutionists of space:

"One key problem that plagues the builders of model solar systems is the fact that the sun, with over 99 percent of all the system's matter in its possession, has a mere two percent of the system's angular momentum — the property that keeps the sun rotating and keeps the planets revolving around it. The lightweight planets, in consequence, contain under one percent of the system's matter, but a staggering 98 percent of its angular momentum. A theory of evolution that fails to account for this peculiar fact is ruled out before it starts."

Whitcomb continues by showing that this problem of angular momentum destroyed the system of Kant and Laplace, and the various collision and near-collision theories of Chamberlin, Moulton, Jeans, Jeffreys, and Lyttleton. Kuiper suggests, in answer: "the sun became ionized during their evaporation.  ... and in this electrical state they acted as a bridge for the sun's magnetic energy. In 'effect, they acted as elastic spokes between the sun's whirling hub and its rims of evaporating proto-planets."

"But in refutation of this idea", Whitcomb continues, "Professor Layzer of Harvard emphasizes that any form of nebular hypothesis 'Demands the existence of some highly efficient mechanism for transferring angular momentum from the central part of the nebula to the periphery. Magnetic coupling has been suggested as the mechanism, but no one has yet shown that magnetic fields of the required kind exist and could be expected to occur in a nebula'. Furthermore, 'the division of angular momentum between Sun and planets must have been even more one-sided than it is now before the planets lost their light gases. The classic difficulty posed by such a division is that of understanding how it could have arisen if all the matter in the solar system had once belonged to a single nebula.' "

    PROBLEM OF ANGULAR MOMENTUM OF SATELLITES
Professor Layzer says:  " 'Except in the Earth-Moon system (which is exceptional in other respects as well), the primary carries the bulk of the angular momentum, instead of the satellites.  This happens because the satellite systems are more compact than the primary system; the distances of the satellites from their primaries, measured in units of the radius of the primary, are systematically smaller than the distances of the planets from the Sun, measured in units of the solar radius.  But in addition, the planets rotate more rapidly, for their densities, than the Sun, as is evident from their greater degree of flattening. This circumstance aggravates the theoretical difficulty presented by the slow rotation of the Sun, for if the Sun has somehow man-aged to get rid of angular momentum it would be expected to have, according to the nebular hypothesis, why have the planets not done likewise?' "

    PROBLEM OF ECCENTRIC AND INCLINED ORBITS
Whitcomb continues: "another rather serious problem for evolution is the marked deviation of smaller bodies in the solar system from the 'normal' type of orbit demanded by the theory that the system began as a huge, rotating, flattened disk of gas and dust that condensed into a central sun and various protoplanets ...
"Now it is true that the planets reveal three types of regularities ...:  (1) all nine planets move around the sun in the same direction, that is, counter-clockwise when viewed from the North Star;  (2) all nine planets have nearly circular orbits; (3) the orbits of these nine planets lie in almost the same plane, which is approximately the plane of the sun's equator ...

Professor Layzer ...  'less emphasis has been laid on the departures from these regularities exhibited by the smaller bodies of the solar system. Of the planets, Mercury (the smallest) and Pluto (the outermost) have the most eccentric and highly inclined orbits (with inclinations of 7 and 17 degrees respectively, and eccentricities of 24% and 20% respectively). The asteroids, which are probably planetary fragments, have still higher eccentricities and inclinations, while the orbits of comets and meteors show no trace whatever of the three regularities.' "

    THE PROBLEM OF RETROGRADE ROTATION OF URANUS
Whitcomb says: "It is unfortunate for the theory of evolution that the so-called 'regularities' of the solar system total no more than three; for of the six planets whose rotations have been well determined, five rotate, in the same sense or direction as that of their orbital motion around the sun, while one, Uranus, rotates in the opposite direction!  To be more specific, the axes of the planets with direct (rather than retrograde rotation deviate from the perpendicular by between 3 degrees and 29 degrees (the earth's axis is tilted 23 1/2 degrees), but the axis of Uranus deviates by 98 degrees, which is eight degrees backwards from the direction of its orbit around the sun! At the same time, the orbit of Uranus inclines less than that of any other planet. Professor Layzer admits that 'it is an open question whether this state of affairs is consistent' with current theories of 'the origin of the solar, system.' "

    THE PROBLEM OF RETROGRADE SATELLITES
Whitcomb further says: "Six of the nine planets have moons or satellites of their own — the earth having one, Mars two, Jupiter twelve, Saturn nine, Uranus five, and Neptune two, for a total of thirty-one. As astronomers began to study these planetary satellites, they were astonished to discover that not all of them orbit their planets in the same direction!  That is, some of them have retrograde orbits in relation to the rotational direction of their mother planets. This is true of the outer four of Jupiter's twelve satellites; of Phoebe, the outermost of Saturn's nine; of the five moons of Uranus, which move in the equatorial plane of a planet that is tilted 98 degrees from the plane of its own orbit; and of Triton, the inner of Neptune's two satellites, which has nearly twice the mass of our moon (its diameter being 3,000 miles) and which revolves every six days in a nearly circular orbit only 220,000 miles from its mother planet (20,000 miles closer than the Moon to the Earth).

"Isaac Asimov, as well as many other evolutionary cosmogonists, believe that Triton, like Pluto, 'was thrown away from that planet by some cosmic collision or other accident,' and that later on Neptune re-captured its lost moon into a retrograde orbit by a similar accident.' But how many such 'accidents' may one be permitted to invoke to prop up a theory already tottering under the weight of its own unproved assumptions?"

"Asimov further states that retrograde satellites are 'minor exceptions' to the general rule ... But eleven out of thirty-one moons having retrograde orbits can hardly be brushed aside as 'minor exceptions'!

    THE PROBLEM OF THE MOON
Whitcomb says: "Though the Moon is not the largest planetary satellite in the solar system, it is much the largest in proportion to the size of its mother planet, with a diameter that is more than a quarter the size of the earth's and more than two-thirds the size of Mercury's.  For this reason, as Arthur Beiser points out, 'modern thought on the formation of the solar system regards the moon as a legitimate planet, which either took shape as a newer twin from the same cosmic raw material that the earth began with or, forming elsewhere in the same general zone, was captured later by the earth to make up the present double system.' But Beiser recognizes that this view of the Moon's origin faces very serious difficulties, for he goes on to state: 'From observations that yield the moon's dimensions and its mass, we know that the moon has an average density of a full third less than the density of the earth.  If both bodies were formed of much the same stuff, what accounts for this discrepency.' No answer is given this question."

"... George Darwin (son of Charles) ... concluded the Moon was pulled out of the earth, leaving the Pacific Basin as the scar which marks the point of its departure, and that it has been receding ever since! ...  Harold Jeffreys in 1931 proved that such a separation of the Moon from the Earth would have been physically impossible ... What, then, does the gradual recession of the Moon prove concerning its origin? Nothing whatever! This point should be carefully pondered by those who insist that present processes are an infallible key to the past."

    THE PROBLEM 0F HEAVIER ELEMENTS IN THE SMALLER PLANETS
Whitcomb quotes Fred Hoyle of Cambridge: " 'Apart from hydrogen and helium, all other elements are extremely rare, all over the universe.  In the sun they amount to only about 1% of the total mass.  Contrast this with the earth and other planets where hydrogen and helium make only about the same contribution as highly complex atoms like iron, calcium, silicon, magnesium, and aluminum ...  First, we see that material torn from the sun would not be suitable at all for formation of planets as we know them. ...  Second ... is that it is the sun that is normal and the earth that is the freak.  The interstellar gas and most of the stars are composed of material like the sun, not like the earth ...  The room you are sitting in is made of the wrong stuff. You yourself are a rarity. You are a cosmic collector's piece.' "

Whitcomb then quotes Robert C. Herman and Ralph A. Alpher; " 'the most serious is the fact that in the sequence of atomic weights numbers 5 and 8 are vacant. That is, there is no stable atom of mass 5 or of mass 8 ... The question then is: How can the build-up of elements by neutron capture get by these gaps? ... In short, if neutron capture were the only process by which elements could be built, starting with hydrogen, the build-up would get no further than hel-ium.' "

    BIG-BANG AND STEADY-STATE THEORIES
Whitcomb now continues: "George Gamow believes that our present universe started from an exceedingly dense core of protons and neutrons and neutrons which exploded in a 'big bang' about five billion years ago,  By a rapid succession of neutron captures and electron decays, all the elements were built up in the first few minutes, and the fleeing matter thereafter formed stars, planets, and galaxies. Gamow worked out his theory with impressive mathematical detail, and most cosmogonists today accept the basic outline of this hypothesis,"

William Fowler says of this theory: " 'How the protons and neutrons themselves were created is a question outside the province of this article: only men of strong convictions, religious or scientific, have the courage to deal with the problem of creation ...  It is disconcerting that so many different processes have to be invoked.' "
Whitcomb continues: "Unfortunately for the theory of evolution, the picture is not becoming simpler as more research is done."

"This is why the steady-state theory is now advocated by Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold of Cambridge, William H. McCrea of the University of London. Hoyle says: 'Where does created material come from?  It does not come from anywhere. Material appears - it is created. At one time the various atoms composing the material do not exist, and at a later time they do ...  Hydrogen is being steadily converted into helium throughout the universe, and this conversion is a one-way process — that is to say, hydrogen cannot be produced in any appreciable quantity through the breakdown of other elements.  How comes it then that the universe consists almost entirely of hydrogen? If matter were infinitely old, this would be quite impossible.  So we see that the universe being what it is, the creation issue simply cannot be aged. And I think of all the various possibilities that have been suggested, continuous creation is easily the most satisfactory.' "

To this Whitcomb answers: "If modern science cannot explain the origin of the earth, the Moon and the Sun, why should it bother to explain the origin of the universe beyond? The fact of the matter is that science steps out of its proper domain when it dogmatizes, or even speculates, concerning ultimate origins ... for it is only through special revelation that God has partially unveiled the mysteries of creation."

    THE WEAK POSITION OF "CHRISTIAN LIFE"
Whitcomb then points out the weak position of "Christian Life", which is edited from Wheaton College, depending upon men such as J. Laurence Kulp, Karl Turekian, Donald R. Carr, Russell Mixter and Howard Claasen.  He includes a number of quotations to show how these men and this magazine still depend strongly on the "Big-Bang" theory of Gamow, even though leading scientists have now given that up. He quotes from these men who even use Hebrews 11:1-2 to support their position. They use this passage to have God say that He created the world from previously existing invisible atoms, when this is just what this passage denies. It states that God made the world out of nothing.

Their position is weak, because only eighteen months after their article appeared in Christian Life, Gamow himself frankly admitted the "Big-Bang" theory could not explain the origin of most of the elements. This is the weakness of depending upon science rather than the Bible - science' theories are constantly changing.

Whitcomb points out how Dr. Kulp even insists that any other view than the unif-ormitarian view of origins would make God a deceiver of mankind. Kulp is sure that uniformitarianism is proved by science and we would therefore be making God a deceiver if we questioned it. The theory has not been proved by science.

    THE BIBLE IS A BOOK OF SCIENCE
Many argue that it is not. However when it speaks of science, as it often does, it is correct. It states that Adam and Eve received their bodies by supernatural, direct creation; that before the Edenic curse there was no death, disease or violence; that the immediate descendants of Adam and Eve were not illiterate savages; that the human race has not been in existence for scores or hundreds of thousands of years; that the Noahic Deluge was geographically universal; and that the present distribution of the human race traces back to the Tower of Babel and God's judgment upon it.

Whitcomb also states: "Furthermore, it is the writer's conviction that the Scriptures clearly teach that the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the various kinds of plants and animals were brought into existence as 'mature' and functioning entities by the direct and supernatural power of God."

For more information regarding the above, write to:

Dr. John C. Whitcomb Winona Lake, Indiana
Dr. Whitcomb is Professor of Old Testament at Grace Theological School.

THE CASE OF THE MOVING LEFT EYE
(This is quoted from John Meldau's "Why We Believe in Creation, Not in Evolution") — We've added another page and so have room for more excerpts.

"the plaice ... the Pleouronecitidae, i.e. fish that swim on their sides.

" 'On emerging from the egg the young plaice, almost microscopic and quite transparent except for its black pinpoint of eyes, is an ordinary round fish with eyes in the position of those of other round fishes, swimming around like a round fish. But after a month a strange thing happens: the left eye begins to move." Meanwhile, the body slowly flattens sideways and the baby fish, a surface swimmer so far, begins to sink slowly towards the bottom. The left eye is still gradually moving, and by six weeks has reached the top of the head. A week later it has gone right around and has almost reached the right eye. By now the young plaice has sunk to the bottom and is lying on what was its left side, but which from now on will be its underpart - the white side - and the two eyes are close together on what is now the top of the head'  (The Living Sea pp. 153.151)

"With plaice, soles, dabs, flounder." and halibuts it is always the. left side that goes down and the left eye that moves; these are called 'dextral fishes' . But with other species (like the turbot and brill) called 'sinistral fishes', the reverse flattening process takes place, and in these fishes it is the right eye that travels toward the left eye and away from the right side on which they lie.

"No one know WHY, but it is always the same eye in the same genus that does the traveling.

"Moreover, many of these fish possess 'homochromic mimicry' or the ability to change their color to suit their surroundings, as protective measure - to an amazing degree.

"They become the same color as their surroundings; and if the color of their surroundings is changed, the fish soon take on that new color!

"Evolution has no adequate explanation of this phenomenon. The truth is, this is one of those many cases in nature in which the new-born of the species has an entirely different environment from the adult form, and so God performed a miracle when He made these fish so that they could live both as round fish in infancy, near the surface, and as flat fish, in adult life, at the bottom of the sea. Common sense tells us, the only answer to such an unusual arrangement in nature is, God made it so."   Pages 20-21.

"An ALGERIAN LOCUST is able to use its own blood as a weapon. It can shoot, like an accomplished Texas gunman, literally 'from the hip'. There is a pore between the first and second joints at the base of the leg. This pore can be opened when danger threatens, and a blistering stream of locust blood ejected to a distance of 20 inches. Why do other locusts not have this strange power - if evolution did the job? Obviously, the creature was designed, made that way; God made it so! Page 22.

    EVOLUTION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS PROTESTED!
One of our corespondents, the Rev. Curtis Clair Ewing, of the National Message Ministry Inc., in Los Angeles, California, tells of how the teaching of evolution in California is being protested.

A clipping from the L.A. Herald dated April 27, 1963 tells of two Republican Assemblymen who tried to introduce legislation into state laws banning the teaching of any theory opposed to sectarian doctrine, including the theory of evolution. The Assemblymen are Robert E. Badham of Costa Mesa, California and E. Richard Barnes of San Diego.

They contended this was fair play.  Badham is quoted as saying: "I have been shocked to learn of the incessant pressure by atheistic and agnostic groups, including the Communist party, to drive from the public schools all reference to God and respect for religious principles.

"Under the Supreme Court ruling, it is now impossible to offer non-denominational prayer in the public schools. My bill simply provides that if it is illegal to present religion in the schools, it must be equally illegal to present anti-religious doctrine."

He also said: "at a time when we are protecting atheists and agnostics from prayers which may be offensive to them, we must protect those with religious faith from irreligious teachings which are equally offensive."

The Rev. Ewing also mentioned two ladies in Santa Anna and Costa Mesa, California who are fighting against evolution in public schools. They have attracted much attention in local newspapers. They say:

"We challenge the right of the school to teach evolution as a fact instead of a theory, and their failure to teach creativity at the same time.

"We don't object to teaching anything that is a theory, as a theory, But opposing theories should also be taught."
These ladies are Mrs. Jean E. Sumrall, of Costa Mesa, a Lutheran; and Mrs., Nell J. Segraves of Santa Anna, a Baptist.

    CHRISTMAS AND THE VIRGIN BIRTH
We have added a third page to this Newsletter and are considering this the Christinas issue.

One of correspondents indicates that virgin birth is observed in animals and plants. His contention is this makes for a more perfect structure and more perfect coordination and elimination of inner stresses. He feels God should have granted this help to Christ, to help Him bear the enormous grief of our blindness.

We should like more information with regard to virgin birth in plant and animal life.

For Christians the great wonder of Christmas which far outweighs all the wonders of science, is the Virgin Birth. The more a scientist delves into space or into the wonders revealed by a microscope, the greater is his amazement. There can be no explanation except that a Creator, God, made them and upholds them. None of these wonders however can compare to the wonder of the virgin birth of the Son of God.

This virgin birth of our Savior does not depend upon the research laboratories to be unearthed. It was prophesied 750 years in advance. Since its occurrence it has been proclaimed the world over, loud and clear. It is this tremendous wonder which saves us, which gives direction to our lives, and which gives direction also to science.

We hope that also in the Bible-Science field, we dedicate ourselves to the Virgin Birth, with its proof of God become Man that we might be saved from sin, and stand holy before God.
 
 

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