The Origin of Life: Is It Fact, Faith Or Fiction

The Origin of Life: Is It Fact, Faith or Fiction?

Creation vs. Evolution

A Living Environment Webquest designed by Loris LaBorde and Bryan Bissell

THE QUEST--Task One:

Examine the theories of creation and evolution and write a report to answer the questions in "The Quest." Include:

• Introduction
• Why is it important to believe your theory?
• A basic outline of the theory you support and similarities and differences with the opposing view.
• Specific scientific questions and aspects of the theory, some scientific data to support these aspects, what are their strong and weak points scientifically
• A conclusion.
• Pictures can also be used to enhance the report. A three minute oral presentation is also required.

Task Two: Students with similar beliefs (creationist or evolutionist) will form two separate groups. Each group will select representatives to debate their beliefs. Representative should include these things:

1) Introduction2) Body3) Conclusion 4)Rebuttal (of the other groups arguments)

Groups will be judged based upon facts, presentation skills, clarity, time management, style, and content. Representatives are also required to present a written report before the debate. The audience and group members will rate the aspects of the theory that you discuss according to this scale:

• 0--no evidence...it is based completely on faith since no scientific tests can verify it or show that it’s logically possible in the real world (examples: God spoke the animals into existence & macro-evolution: one animal changing into another kind of animal)
• 1--very circumstantial evidence, lots of assumptions, nothing testable and demonstratable...many unexplainable anomalies
• 2--good testable evidence, good logic, real examples from today and experiments that show it's definitely possible and doable.
• 3--100% proof...we've seen it, have witnesses of it, this IS the way it happened...it's undeniable...etc. (examples of this include variation in species (Darwin), animals producing after their kind (Genesis), fossils made by Mt. St. Helens, etc.)
  

FINISH: Which theory is the most plausible explanation for the origin of life?
POSSIBLE ISSUES TO DISCUSS

Here are some of the questions you might include in your presentation:

PHILOSOPHY/LOGIC/GENERAL SCIENCE

• ASSUMPTIONS: What assumptions does each theory make? What predictions can they make (or have they made and subsequently been proved accurate)?

• FALSIFIABLE: Are evolutionary theories testable and falsifiable? Are creation theories testable and falsifiable?
• AUTHORITY: What authorities do you trust as truthful? Why do you trust them?
• IS FAITH UNSCIENTIFIC: Which aspects of the theories are based on fact, faith, or fiction? Can creationism be scientific? Can a theory exist without faith? What faith does creation need? What faith (axioms and assumptions) does evolution need?
• INTOLERANCE: Is creation intolerant of other views? Is evolution intolerant of other views? How about science and theories? Should they be tolerant or not? Why?

ARCHAEOLOGY-HISTORY

• ACCURACY: Is the Bible accurate historically? Is evolution accurate historically? Which one has proved more credible?
• FLOOD: Has Noah’s ark been seen or found? Was his boat stable enough to float? How could all species of animals fit into one boat? Is there evidence of a world wide flood? Does the evidence around the world support only a local flood?
• MIRACLES/PROPHECIES: Are miracles and prophecies real? How can they be explained through evolution?

• HISTORY: Why was Darwin traveling to Galapagos? What did people believe about animals before Darwin visited Galapagos? Did evolution, natural selection and survival of the fittest originate with Darwin? Who first thought of these ideas? Why were Darwin’s ideas accepted so quickly?

BIOLOGY

• EVOLUTION OF KINDS: Can animals evolve from one kind into another—for example from a dog to a lion? Do animals always reproduce after their kind? What is the scientific observable proof?
• TREE OF LIFE: Evolution predicts many new species will develop. Creation predicts that animals will stay within the barrier of their kind. Is the evolutionary tree accurate with the fossils or is creation more accurate?

• DNA/IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY: Life requires many interrelated parts. How can complex things like cells, cilia and bacteria and DNA develop by chance? Can living things develop from non-living things? Do we have examples today of complex things developing by chance or by design?

• MISSING LINKS: Is there fossil evidence of animals developing by evolution?
• SEX: How can male and female sex be explained by chance? Lower animals are unisex. That’s the most efficient way. How did partner sex develop?
  

GEOLOGY

• FOSSILS: Evolution says fossils are made by slow gradual processes (this is uniformitarianism). Creation says there was a worldwide catastrophe—the flood that made most of the fossils (this is called catastrophism). Which has more evidence? How are fossils made? What is observable? Why are there millions of fossils in a state of panic?
• AGE OF THE EARTH: Is the earth young or old? How many methods are there for dating the earth? What ranges are there? What assumptions do they make? How can they be checked for accuracy?
• GEOLOGICAL COLUMN: How can we date the geological column accurately?

PHYSICS-ASTRONOMY

• BIG BANG: Who invented the Big Bang Theory? What is the evidence for the Big Bang? What is the evidence against it? Does the Big Bang prove evolution or creation? What is the red shift and the Doppler effect?
• THERMODYNAMICS: Does the 2nd law of thermodynamics invalidate evolution?

RESOURCES

These are some of the best websites on the topic of creation and evolution:

SITES THAT TRY TO BE OBJECTIVE

(directory of sites for creation and evolution)

(comparison of 3 main origin views)

(evolution/creation chat room)

(non-christian site devoted to objectivity and showing that macro-evolution is unscientific)

CREATION SCIENCE SITES--BEST SITES

(good short summaries of the questions of each area)

(online book with evidence for creation in many areas of science..most references are from evolutionists)

(great site with many excellent videos, media and graphics and more to prove many ideas of creation scientific)

(brilliant site by a former agnostic showing that belief is rational in simple but scientific ways)

(tons of brilliant quotes on evolution)

(korean website on creation science)

(14 hours of great video at:

(funny slide show about the impossibilities of evolution)

(chat group discussing origins of the world)

(book on scientific and natural laws that undermine evolution)

(discusses how human “truth” changes often and how evolution is losing scientific ground quickly. Some interesting links on proportions used throughout nature to show a designer and other things.)

(good links to some basic questions)

(comprehensive multilingual site for creationism)

(quite technical articles are here)

(The Darwin papers showing the background and some results of the theory of evolution)

(Rage against Evolution)

(God and Science)

(some good articles on science and creationism)

Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter (cool illustrations of animals such as the bombardier beetle that could never have evolved by chance.)

(interesting site about the preflood worlds and atmosphere and giant animals and plants)

(some articles against evolution)

(many quotes about evolution!!!)

(articles by Michael Behe on irreducible complexity)

OTHER SITES

(a couple experiments),

(good sections and one on scientific foreknowledge in the Bible)

(results of communism based on evolution is 128 million deaths)

(ooparts and weird things in the past, such as giant animals and people, ancient flight and nuclear warfare and technology,

$1.35 million prize for proving origin of life:

EVOLUTION SCIENCE BEST SITES

(links to many evolution sites)

(good basics from Berkeley, but not much real evidence)

(articles on several aspects of evolution with graphics and shockwave and Darwin’s life)

(nova site on Darwin)

(many articles mention evolution or discuss details of it)

(many articles mention evolution or discuss details of it)

(evolution chat group…calls itself objective, but is usually critical of creationism)

(tries to show creationist lies)

(no answers in Genesis)

(the triumph of life)

(BBC sites on Darwin)

(history of evolution)

(Evolution Webquest and links)

(The descent of man 4 part radio show and articles)

(creation science debunked)

(human evolution in 3d)

(history of human evolution and it’s hoaxes such as Piltdown man)

(thinkquest activity on evolution)

(Evolution Revolution, 1998 ThinkQuest Internet) Challenge

(3d gallery of fossils)

OTHER SITES

(current viewpoints and debates in evolution)

(nurturome breakthrough)

for teachers on teaching evolution)

(site for teachers on teaching evolution)

(virtual museum of fossils)

MISC:

evolution webquests

(fossil collections of the world)

(paleo association)

EXTRA NOTES FOR TEACHERS

creation webquest

webquest maker:

NOTES FROM UNIVERSE 2001 VIDEO

“We’ve known for a long time that the universe is expanding and coasting along since they Big Bang.” Bob Kirshner, Harvard University His team has discovered that the universe “is not just expanding, it’s speeding up.” Narrator, Universe 2001, Discovery PBS

“12 billion years ago there was absolutely nothing. No matter, no space, no time. We may never know how or why it happened. But a seething mass of energy smaller than an atom grew from nothing.” Narrator, Universe 2001, Discovery PBS

Martin Rees, English Astronomer Royal believes that understanding the Big Bang is the key to the universe. “Something smaller than an atom expanded to be large enough to encompass everything in our present universe.”

“If it were possible to travel fast enough for long enough and reach the edge of the known universe, this is what we would see--uneven clusters of galaxies—a pattern that was predetermined from the very first second of the Big Bang. We are now 50 billion trillion miles from earth…This is where science ends and speculation begins.”

The universe has at least 100 billion galaxies. Each galaxy has 50-100 billion stars. There are something like 10 galaxies for each person on earth.

Since it’s expanding from 1 point, it had a beginning.

Hubble found that almost all galaxies are moving away from us…found evidence that galaxies were expanding. Logic tells us that in the past galaxies were much closer and matter would have been much denser and hot. (minute 30-31)

RED SHIFT: If an object is moving away from us, then the light will be shifted towards the red part of the spectrum. If an object is moving away towards us, then the light will be shifted towards the blue part of the spectrum.

DOPPLER EFFECT: By determining just how much the color had been changed, Hubble worked out how fast the galaxy was traveling. He found that all light from all galaxies were traveling away from us at incredible speeds.

We are moving away from the nearest galaxy at a million miles per hour. In one hour, the universe expands 1 billion miles in all directions.

Measure weight of universe with Newton’s laws.

Stephen Hawking knows that visible galaxies don’t produce enough gravity. He suspects that the universe is full of dark matter

“If universe continues to expand forever, everything will burn out and decay. The amount of matter we observed in stars and gas clouds is only about 10% of what is required to stop the expansion of the universe and cause it to collapse again. However there may be other dark matter that we can’t see, but which can still affect the expansion of the universe.” Stephen Hawking in Narrator, Universe 2001, Discovery PBS minute 34-5

“Bob Kirshner believes that dark matter may not be holding the universe together at all…” “[His team] measures the distant supernovae as markers to help them work out how fast the universe is expanding…like Edwin hubble, they are using light from distant galaxies to get an accurate fix on the universe’s rate of expansion. They thought they would be measuring how much the gravitational pull from dark matter was slowing the expansion rate down, but what they have found has stunned the cosmological community. Rather than slowing down, the university is speeding up. The galaxies are moving apart faster than ever before. Dark matter is not powerful enough…Scientists now believe that the universe will not collapse in a catastrophic fireball, nor will it coast along serenely. Instead its contents will speed apart faster and faster until lost in the vast blackness of space.” Narrator, Universe 2001, Discovery PBS

“Our sun has about 5 billion years of life left and very very few stars will still be shining 10 billion years from now. The dead stars will still orbit around the center of the galaxy, but their collisions will gradually cause most of them to fall into a giant black hole in the center.” Stephen Hawking Universe 2001, Discovery PBS

“It’s incredibly interesting, but there is a lot we don’t know about the universe than we do know in spite of all we’ve learned to date. Therefore some of the wild ideas from science fiction including even things like wormholes might or might not be possible. We just don’t know yet.” Lawrence Krauss, CWR University, Universe 2001, Discovery PBS

“Wormholes are another prediction of Einstein’s theories. Here, space is so twisted that it forms a tunnel from one universe to another. Even if these hypothetical holes in space and time do exist, entering a neighboring universe could be unwise. Travel into one where the laws of physics are even slightly different from our own and you would cease to exist at all.” Narrator, Universe 2001, Discovery PBS

It’s almost as if the universe invented a way to know itself.

“After centuries of gazing at the heavens, scientists now know that everything in our universe was born 12 billion years ago. Before the big bang there was nothing. This violent explosion gave birth to everything we can see, countless galaxies, stars and planets, even life itself.” Narrator, Universe 2001, Discovery PBS

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"A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe; but if it does, science cannot find out what the explanation is. The scientist's pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth... At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." -- Robert Jastrow, Robert Jastrow , God and the Astronomers, 1978, W.W. Norton, NY, pp115-116, in Moreland J.P. ed., The Creation Hypothesis, 1994, pp292-293.

A big bang should not produce highly concentratedp or rotating bodies.q Galaxies are examples of both. Nor should a big bang produce galaxies with the spacings among them that are actually observed.r Also, a large volume of the universe should not be—but evidently is—moving sideways, almost perpendicular to the direction of apparent expansion.s

If the big bang theory is correct, one can calculate the age of the universe. This age turns out to be younger than objects in the universe whose ages were based on other evolutionary theories. Because this is logically impossible, one or both sets of theories must be incorrect.y

“Of all the many mysteries of modern astronomy, none is more vexing than the nature of dark matter. Most astronomers believe that large quantities of some unidentified material pervade the universe. ... Yet this dark matter has eluded every effort by astronomers and physicists to bring it out of the shadows. A handful of us suspect that it might not really exist, and others are beginning to consider this possibility seriously.” Mordehai Milgrom, “Does Dark Matter Really Exist?” Scientific American, Vol. 287, No. 2, August 2002, p. 43.

“Even the most enthusiastic cosmologist will admit that current theories of the nature of the universe have some big holes. One such gap is that the universe seems to be younger than some of the objects contained within it. [See “How Old Do Evolutionists Say the Universe Is?” on page 257.] Another problem is that the observed universe just doesn’t appear to have enough matter in it to explain the way it behaves now, nor the way theorists predict it will evolve.” Robert Matthews, “Spoiling a Universal ‘Fudge Factor, ’ ” Science, Vol. 265, 5 August 1994, pp. 740 –741.