Hugh Ross: Purposeful Cambrian Explosion Argues for God's Existence

Introduction

I love watching illusionists. They perform feats that seem to defy the very laws of physics- cutting people in half (who live to tell about it), disappearing and reappearing, escapes, and many, many others. It is interesting that we see all these things "magically" happen, but we know that they could not happen unless the illusionist was involved. The illusionist has a purpose for making something "appear" or "disappear." They wish to impress and entertain their audience. They usually pick an object with a certain level of complexity that is easily recognizable- a ball, a playing card, or dove or rabbit for instance. They carefully prepare the environment for the illusion; often the audience is a witness to this setup. Now, if any of those objects just appeared on stage (or in the street for that matter), we would not think for a moment that it "just happened" with no explanation. We would immediately look for a cause, a purposeful agent who designed and orchestrated the stunt.

Appearing Acts in Nature

The Cambrian and Avalon explosions are quite analogous to the appearance of an object by an illusionist. These acts were complete with the setup of the environment and everything. In his book "Navigating Genesis" Dr. Hugh Ross explains what has been discovered in nature and how it argues for a purposeful agent behind the setup and execution of the appearances:

"Only through billions of years of photosynthetic activity could Earth's atmosphere and oceans build up sufficient oxygen to support animal life. The very moment oxygen reached appropriate levels, the Avalon and Cambrian explosions occurred. The lack of any appreciable gap between the time of oxygen's rise to minimum life-sustaining levels and the appearance of animals argues strongly for the involvement of a purposeful Creator."

Book Review: Creating Life In The Lab🧫

Introduction

Creating Life In The Lab: How New Discoveries in Synthetic Biology Make A Case For The Creator is Dr. Fazale Rana's latest contribution to Christian apologetic literature. The goal of the book is to provide a case for God's existence from the controversial efforts of scientists to "play God" by creating life. He has written the book with the backdrop of Frankenstein to provide some cultural connection. The book has thirteen chapters plus an appendix that includes a short refresher on biochemistry. The book, though not officially, is divided into two parts: the first examining the quest to create artificial life and the second investigates scientists research behind the origin of life.

Chapter 1- Waking Up in Frankenstein's Dream

Dr. Rana begins his book by giving a little of his own history- what made him want to study biochemistry and what brought him to the point he is at now. He then begins setting the stage for the rest of the book. He explains what has happened regarding origin-of-life research. He starts at the Miller-Urey experiment and brings the reader to the present. He then discusses a bit about the main topic- scientists' attempts to create life in the lab. He explains the two different approaches commonly used. He acknowledges that historically such attempts have been seen as threats to Christianity, but he believe that the opposite is actually true- that the success of scientists will be empirical evidence that the creation of life requires an intelligent agent to accomplish.

Book Review: More Than a Theory

Introduction

I am really excited to bring you this review. Dr. Hugh Ross and the Reasons to Believe (RTB) scholar team are the means that Christ used to keep this modernist thinker from completely giving up on the Christian faith about seven years ago. You can read about this more on my page Nature vs. Scripture. Reasons to Believe provides a scientific and Biblical model of the creation and history of the universe that is testable. They have produced many books and papers outlining details of different aspects of the model. They have not really produced a single resource that provides a quick overview of the model for those who might be curious and need an introduction.

That's where More Than a Theory comes in. This book was written as an introduction to the various aspects of the testable model. It frequently refers the reader to the other resources for more details. Throughout this review I will include links to their other books and articles on their website that I am familiar with that go into some more details. Dr. Ross also produced a series of podcasts that briefly go over the contents of each chapter. I will include a link to each episode at the end of each chapter's description. These episodes will give you a better description of the contents of the chapters plus what Dr. Ross specifically want the reader to focus on for each chapter.

Useful or Useless Evolutionary Terms?

I want to look at a couple terms that have been added to the evolutionary vocabulary, but are hotly contested:

Microevolution- evolutionary changes that result in differences within a species or genus.

Macroevolution- series of microevolutionary changes that result in a new genus, family, order, etc...

The other day, a naturalist claimed that no such distinction is necessary. The argument is that there is a long string of microevolutionary changes from species to species, from genus to genus, family to family, etc...; macroevolutionary changes are a series of microevolutionary changes that result in a new species, genus, family, etc...; thus macroevolutionary changes are really the same as microevolutionary changes over time. Since they are ultimately the same, there is no need to distinguish between the two terms. This person further claimed that even if they allowed the distinction in terms, the fact that small changes over time is undisputed, means that many changes over time is proven; microevolution is undisputed, therefore a lot of microevolution (macroevolution) is proven.

Is Evolution Repeatable?

Most people do not really  think to ask this question about Evolution. However, it has become quite the important question in determining the validity of the paradigm. In this post when I refer to "evolution" I am referring to "macroevolution" (see my post "How Did It All Happen? Part 4- Evolution? Really?"). If I am talking about microevolution (see same post above), I will make the distinction.

As I discussed in the previously cited post, random mutation does happen, and natural selection does operate on those mutations. This observation has been extrapolated into the theory of Evolution. According to the paradigm life began as a single-cell organism, and through the process noted we arrive at the state of life today (complex, mega-multicellular organisms).