Dave Greear BSEE, MDiv, DMin

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How do living creatures change and adapt to new and changing environments? That is a question that has been debated by creationists and evolutionists for well over a century. When it comes to the large-scale changes like moving from molecule to man, the two camps hold to irreconcilable positions/answers to that basic question. Special creation and macroevolution (be it the Darwinian version or the “theistic” version) always have been, and continue to be, mutually exclusive. Either God created the original “created kinds” (or baramins) and one never “evolves” into another, or all of life has descended from an initial life-form as a result of major transformations driven by environmental/selective pressure, that is to say “natural selection” acting on random mutations.

That being said, for decades now, creationists and evolutionists alike have agreed on the validity of microevolution, the idea that small-scale changes (within a Biblical “created kind”) can occur naturally via the same process of “natural selection” acting on random mutations. Thus, up until recent times, most creationists would not question the mechanism that theoretically drove the change postulated by neo-Darwinism, just the unlimited extent of the change that was claimed by evolutionists. That is now beginning to change with the introduction of a brand new theory of biological design called “continuous environmental tracking” (CET) that has been proposed by scientists at the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). In contrast to the existing evolutionary paradigm of random mutations and natural selection, CET is engineering-based and non- random/non-mystical in nature. It holds much promise in providing design-based explanations for how creatures change and adapt to their environments. Before examining this new theory in detail, let’s first review and evaluate the old theory about “how creatures change/adapt” that has dominated the scientific literature for nearly a century.

Exactly one hundred years ago last month was the date of the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial.” To this date the public impression is that Bible-believing Christians, in general, and creationists, in particular, were shown to be unscientific, foolish buffoons at the trial. This interpretation of the trial was indubitably impressed on the public with the intentionally biased movie Inherit the Wind released some thirty-five years later in 1960 that was based on a fictional play by the same title written in 1955.

Recently I was thrilled to be able to experience an adventure of a lifetime, rafting the Colorado River though a portion of the Grand Canyon with Canyon Ministries. This is a trip I had wanted to do for years, and the Lord opened a door of opportunity for me in late May. On one level the trip was a ton of fun. I have white-water rafted on several rivers in the east, including my favorite, the New River through the New River Gorge (“The Grand Canyon of the East”) in my home state of West Virginia, but nothing compared to this. On another level, however, the trip was so educational and faith-affirming! So many of my beliefs about geology, the age of the earth, and especially the Genesis flood of Genesis 6–9 were confirmed/reinforced on this trip.

Perhaps the most frequent argument used by skeptics against the Christian faith is that a good, loving, and all-powerful God wouldn't possibly allow evil (along with sorrow, pain, bloodshed, etc.) into his world. Evil obviously exists in our world. It is all around us. Thus, the biblical God can’t possibly exist. If he did, and he was indeed omnipotent, he would obviously do something about it! It is not only skeptics, however, who struggle with this “problem of evil.” The Christian who shares his faith will find that this question probably causes more people to doubt the validity of the Bible and the Christian faith than any other.

In today’s world, both the book of Genesis and the Biblical creation model of origins that flows from it are mocked by the main-stream media and the scientific establishment as nothing more than fairy tales. These entities have no more connection to reality than do Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. They are never given serious consideration as alternatives to the ruling paradigms of the Big-Bang theory for the origin of the universe, spontaneous generation for the origin of life, or of some form of biological evolution for the progression of life from molecule to man. Why is this? Is it due to the overwhelming scientific evidence in support of the ruling paradigms?