Creation Matters Page 1

Creation Matters is a bi-monthly magazine of the Creation Research Society. Tim Stout, president of Creation Truth Outreach, Inc. has authored over 40 articles published in the magazine. Most are one page articles dedicated to some aspect of how God considers the evidence revealed in the creation to provide such strong testimony of Him and His attributes that He considers a person without excuse who does not receive this testimony, in accordance with Romans 1:20 of the Bible. Hence, most of the articles are in the format of “Without Excuse! The testimony of ….” Links to all of the magazine issues, including the page numbers of the articles, are provided.

The occasional use of the word “I” in the descriptions below refers to the author of the articles, Tim Stout.

Feature Article 1. See Page 1. “The Limits of Prigogine’s Idea of Natural Self Organization.” Historically, entropy has presented one of the biggest obstacles to abiogenesis (a natural, unguided appearance of physical life through evolutionary processes). Ilya Prigogine won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a proposed hypothetical solution to this problem. However, natural limitations to self-organization render Prigogine’s proposed solution as inadequate to solving the problem.

Feature Article  2.   See Page 1. “How Evolutionists Misunderstand Entropy.” This article gives a simple, but deep explanation of the principle of entropy and how it works to prevent a natural origin of life. Incidentally, the concepts presented here are greatly expanded as part of the main argument for the pamphlet featured on our HOME page.

Without Excuse!  Article 1. See Page 5.  “The Testimony of the Medicine Cabinet.”  Discusses how expiration dates on drugs in our medicine cabinets and foods in our kitchen reveal a major difficultly facing a  natural origin of life: the chemicals used in living systems break down far faster they living systems could form them.

Without Excuse!  Article 2. See Page 5  “The Testimony of Beauty.”  Man’s ability to respond to beautiful music is a gift from God. The sounds composers use to create musical works do not exist in nature, yet our response to these sounds is universal among men. Natural selection cannot select for a person’s ability to respond in a particular way to something before it exists. Therefore, evolutionary processes cannot account for our ability to respond to music the way we do.

Without Excuse!  Article 3. See Page 3  “The Testimony of the Seeing Watchmaker.”  Richard Dawkins is a British scientist with a world-wide reputation for his hatred of the God of the Bible and creation science. He wrote a book titled, “The Blind Watchmaker.” In this book he first acknowledges that  a single-step appearance of the enzymes and other components of a living cell is admittedly so statistically unlikely as to be unrealistic. He then offers a solution to this problem with a hypothetical process he calls “cumulative selection.” Yet, there is a simple, obvious flaw in his reasoning which makes his entire scheme void and useless. It is amazing this book is still being sold in bookstores today, almost 30 years since it was written, despite its such obvious error.

Without Excuse!  Article 4. See Page 4. “The Testimony of the Mirror.”  Many of the key chemicals of life can take on either of two alternative shapes, both of which are mirror images of each other. This is called “handedness” or more technically, “chirality.” When these chemicals are produced under natural conditions using processes appropriate for pre-life conditions, both of the possible shapes form in equal numbers. Proteins and Nucleic acids such as DNA are composed of long strings of building block chemicals. Each of these building blocks must be of the same handedness for proteins and for nucleic acids to form a useful shape. Chirality was discovered about 150 years ago. Scientists still have no clue how pre-life processes could supply building block chemicals with the consistent handedness  required for life.

Without Excuse!  Article 6. See Page 4  “The Testimony of Could, May, and Perhaps.”  A review of an unintentionally humorous article in a major science journal. Throughout the article, the four authors use phrases such as “could,” “may,” and “perhaps” to preface each step in a long,  convoluted process to form a certain important molecule. They conclude that their hypothetical processes is therefore a good candidate for the first complex molecule leading to life. If this is a good candidate, one wonders what a poor one would look like. Whatever one thinks of their proposal, their conclusion does not represent good science.

Without Excuse!  Article 5. See Page 6  “The Testimony of a Giraffe’s Tail.”  In The Origin of Species, Darwin talks about how he was bothered about how natural selection could account for structures of minimal significance, such as a giraffe’s tail, which he considered to be little more than an inadequate flyswatter. It turns out his intuition was right on the mark. Geneticists now understand that natural selection cannot effectively track more than about 700 characteristics at a time. Otherwise, the interference between competing selection criteria renders natural selection ineffective.