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Dimitrovgrad Russia, May 15, 2006
Genesis / Creation Seminar
Part I - Introduction / Creationism and Evolutionism

Let us pray: Father we give the next few hours to you. Take them and use them as you want. We dedicate this presentation and this time we have together into your hands.

Hello my name is Steve Hudgik. I've been invited to talk about the Bible, creation and four basic questions. Where did the universe come from? Where did we come from? Why am I here? Where am I going when I die?

But, the first question I'd like to answer is: Who am I? Let me introduce myself.

I'm 54 years old and I love science and I love the Bible. My undergraduate university degree is in electrical engineering. I love science and engineering. I love figuring out how things work. I also have a Masters degree in business and I'm a graduate of Multnomah Biblical Seminary (GCB). I've been studying evolution and creation for the past six years, I've written several articles about these topics and have I taught this subject in churches and homes for the past three years.

What we will be doing tonight and tomorrow evening is examining evolution and creation, and seeing how well each matches reality.

Tonight we will define what we are talking about, learn what the Bible says about creation, and then we'll start looking at the some of the evidence, such as fossils and Mitochondrial DNA--and see whether it fits the world the Bible describes or the world evolution describes.

Tomorrow evening we will discuss subjects such as radiographic dating, radio halos, what the Bible says about dinosaurs, and whether or not dinosaurs and people lived together.

There are two objectives for this seminar. If you are a Christian, my objective is that your faith will be strengthened as you see that there is no conflict between science and the Bible. Science reveals God's creation. If you are not a Christian, I'm not trying to change your mind--although that may happen. You can make your own choice. Make your own decisions based on the facts, based on reality. You examine the evidence, and come to your own conclusion. What we are going to do this evening and tomorrow evening is to look at the evidence and see which belief best fits the observable reality.

I also have some books about fossils, creation and the Bible that I will be giving away at the end of tonight's session and again tomorrow night. Please feel free to take a copy before you leave.

Let's start with two questions: Where did the universe come from? Where did we come from? Actually I think the question we each really want to ask is, where did I come from?

What are the belief options for the origin of the universe? There are two and only two. I've never heard anyone suggest a third possibility. There are only two options: the universe was created or the universe was not created.
So we have two beliefs: one we will call creationism - the belief there is a God and he created everything. The other we will call evolutionism, the belief that evolution took place over a time period of billions of years.

We will use these two words throughout this seminar as the names for the two opposing beliefs.

What is creationism? In brief, it is: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. After God created the world something happened… sin and death entered the world. Eventually people became so evil that God decided to start over. The result was a catastrophic world-wide flood about 4,400 years ago that would form fossils all over the world. After the flood God told people to spread across the earth, but they didn't, instead they started a large public works project to build a huge pyramid called the Tower of Babel. So God gave people different languages, forcing them to separate and resulting in the formation of the different people groups we have today. And people still disobeyed God. Then Jesus Christ came to earth becoming a man. He lived a perfect life, and then died on the cross paying the penalty we owe for disobeying God. He then is raised from the dead proving there is life after death.

What is evolutionism? It is the belief that chance, plus time, plus natural processes-as opposed to supernatural processes-explain everything. Evolutionism believes that the whole universe started in one real small spot-and then there was a tremendous big bang. Then over billions of years as the gases cooled down the objects in the universe were formed, including our solar system. It also teaches that man came up from the animals by a long series of evolutionary processes.

Just so you know where I stand: I believe that God made a perfect creation in six 24 hour days and that He did this about 6,000 years ago. I've seen that this is true and it can be determined to be true by scientific investigation as well as by faith.

By the way, I didn't always believe in creationism. Like you, I was taught evolutionism in school. I loved reading, especially reading about science. Everything I read said there was a big bang and we evolved from the apes. I became a Christian when I was 48 years old. When I became a Christian I still believed in evolutionism… becoming a Christian did not change by belief that the earth was billions of years old and that we evolved from apes. Although the Bible did seem to plainly say everything was created in six days, I figured that I was not understanding the Bible correctly-because obviously… as we can see just by looking at fossils buried in layers of sediment, dinosaurs lived hundreds of millions of years ago.

But the more I studied, the more I learned, the more I slowly changed from believing in evolutionism to believing in creationism. Why did I change my mind? Because of the scientific evidence that so strongly points to the world being created exactly as the Bible describes, and that there was a world-wide flood about 4,400 years ago.

So we have two views about where the universe came from and where we can from, evolutionism and creationism.

Before we talk about scientific evidence we need to have a basic understanding of what the two opposing views are saying.

Where does evolutionism say everything came from? At one time all the matter in the universe was compressed into a small dot no bigger than the period at the end of a sentence. That dot was spinning very fast. Then it exploded! That's called the big bang. Matter from the big bang started cooling and collecting together, through gravitational attraction, until stars and galaxies were formed.

According to evolutionism, where did life come from? The fact is no one's really sure, but the best guess is that life started in the oceans when the proper combination of chemicals and energy randomly came together to create a single living cell. That living cell multiplied and divided and, over long periods of time, there were occasionally mutations. Some of those mutations were beneficial so that eventually small sea creatures developed; then fish developed; then a fish crawled onto dry land and land animals started developing. Eventually apes evolved, and they then evolved into mankind. Evolutionism says that all life started with minerals and chemicals in the oceans. They gradually formed life that evolved into the plants and animals we have today.

So what does the Bible say?

The first book in the Bible begins by telling us how everything was created. This book is called Genesis.

There is a lot of information in just the Book of Genesis, but we are going to focus on three main events. The creation of the universe, the earth and us; the point at which death entered the world; and we'll look at what happened when God decided things had gotten so bad that he had to destroy everything and start over.

Once we know what the Bible says about these events, then we'll start seeing how well these events, as well as evolutionism, fit with the reality we observe.

The first words in the Bible are:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Who is God? We learn about God as we learn about the world and universe around us. There is one God. You can think of Him as a person who exists in a place we can not go. He is so powerful that He just spoke a word and created the universe and us. He is so big he can hold the universe in one hand. He knows everything, even the number of hairs on your head.

The Book of Genesis then goes on to describe what was created on each of six consecutive 24 hour days.

On day one God created space, time, light and the earth itself.

On day two God created the atmosphere, separating what was on earth from what was above the earth.

On day three God created the dry land and plants.

On day four the sun, moon and stars were created. This immediately brings up a question. If God created light on day one, but didn't create the sun until day four… where did the light come from? The Bible does not answer this question. So we don't know for sure, but some experts have some thoughts on this…

Most believe the light came from God Himself. Passages in the Bible tell us that God is light. For example, the book of 1st John (1:5) says, "This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all." Other passages in the Bible tell us that God is surrounded by unapproachable light:

"…who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see." -- 1 Tim 6:16.

Isaiah 60:19 we read that the sun and moon are not needed because God provides everlasting light. "No longer will you have the sun for light by day, nor for brightness will the moon give you light; but you will have the LORD for an everlasting light, and your God for your glory."

Apparently the light on day one may have come directly from God himself.

On day five God created the sea creatures and the flying creatures.

On day six God created all of the land animals and man.

By the way, based on the genealogies in the Bible we can determine that all this-the creation of everything-took place about 6,000 years ago.
Notice in this drawing that we have giraffes, elephants and there are also two dinosaurs shown. Are dinosaurs land animals? Yes. What did God create on day six? He created ALL the land animals. So the Bible says that the dinosaurs were created on day six-meaning dinosaurs and man lived together.

We'll be talking about this tomorrow evening, and we'll find out if the Bible's claim that dinosaurs and man lived together matches reality or not.
Those are the six days of creation. When God finished creating He looked at what He had made and He called it very good. There was no disease. There was no evil in the world. There was no death.

But, it didn't stay that way.

We now come to the second major event in Genesis, the point at which evil and death entered the world.

The first two people were named Adam and Eve. They lived in a perfect world, and God had given them just one rule. There was only one law in this world. God told them "Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." And God told them the consequences if they did eat from this tree… they would die. Death would enter the world.

Everything was fine, but then Satan tempted the woman Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And Eve gave some of the fruit to Adam and he ate it also. Adam and Eve had disobeyed God's one and only law. Disobeying God is called sin. This is the point at which sin entered the world, bringing with it-just as God had said-death. People started to age. Animals started eating other animals. Diseases started. Some plants grew thorns. Even the earth itself was affected and started to deteriorate.

The third event happened about 1650 years after the world was created. God looked at the world and saw that all of mankind had become corrupt, wicked and full of violence. It was so bad that God was sorry He had made mankind in the first place. But there was one righteous and good man who was named Noah. God decided things were so bad that He had to wipe mankind off the face of the earth, except for Noah and his family. God had Noah build a big boat, called an ark, that was large enough to hold Noah, his family, and two of every kind of animal and seven of a few kinds of animals.

Then God opened up the earth, water erupted out of the earth and the result was a great flood that covered the entire world. The flood lasted about a year before dry land appeared and Noah, his family and the animals were able to leave the ark.

I can see some people are thinking that there may be some problems with this. How could Noah fit all those animals in the ark? Wouldn't there be way too many animals? Does this story about Noah's ark conflict with reality?

We have two questions we need answer. How many animals were there on the ark? And how big was the ark?

The Bible says that Noah was to take two of every TYPE of animal. For example, he didn't need to take a dog, wolf, coyote and jackal-these are all different types of dogs. He only needed two dogs. We wouldn't need to take zebras, donkeys and horses-these are all of one type. They are all of the horse type. He only needed to take two horses. It has been calculated that, including animals that are now extinct, about 8,000 types of animals were on the ark… for a total of about 16,000 individual animals.

So was the ark big enough to carry 16,000 animals?

The Bible provides the dimensions of Noah's ark. So we know what it looked like and how big it was.

In Biblical terms the ark measured 300 cubits X 50 cubits X 30 cubits. A cubit is the length of a human forearm. That makes the Ark about 137 meters long X 23 meters wide and 13.7 meters tall. This gives ark a volume of 43,200 cubic meters. That is the equivalent of 522 standard railroad livestock cars, each of which can hold 240 sheep-for a total of 125,280 sheep. But, Noah would not have packed the Ark, floor to ceiling with sheep, so 125,000 animals is not a realistic number.

The Bible tells us the ark had three interior levels.

If we assume the animals were kept in cages that averaged 75,000 cubic centimeters each-some would be larger some would be smaller, but that seems like a realistic average, then the 16,000 animals would occupy roughly 1,200 cubic meters. That's about 15 railroad cars. The Bible doesn't say anything about insects, but if the insects also had to be on the ark, they would use space equivalent to another 12 railroad cars. This would leave 495 railroad cars for food, Noah's family, air space and room for animals to move around. There was plenty of room on Noah's ark.

Another objection people raise is that Noah's flood was not world-wide, it was just a local flood. However, that argument just does not make sense. For example, if it was a local flood, why did God have Noah build a boat and put all the animals on it? God could have had Noah and the animals escape the flood by walking up a hill, and into the next valley. The Bible is describing a world-wide flood.

A frequent question is, if there was a world wide flood, where did the water come from, AND where did it all go?

The Bible says, "on the 17th day of the second month-on that day all the fountains of the deep burst forth, and the floodgates of heaven burst forth."
So the water came from the "fountains of the deep", meaning there was large amounts of water underground. The Bible is describing the earth cracking open, which means lots of catastrophic volcanic activity, and water pouring out of the earth. At the beginning of Genesis it says that on day three God separated the dry land from the water. The earth originally was created such that it was covered by water, and then God separated the waters by raising up dry land. Now God is apparently reversing the process.
So where did all the water go. It's still here. I have some right here in this bottle. The earth is 70% covered by water. If the entire earth's surface was leveled out by smoothing out the topography, including the topography of the rock surface under the oceans, the water in the oceans would cover the surface of the earth to a depth of 2.7 kilometers. When you take a drink of water from your faucet, you are drinking water from the world wide flood that covered the earth 4,500 years ago.

These are the key parts of the Bible we'll be discussing--the creation; the point at which sin and death came into the world, which is commonly referred to as the fall; and Noah's flood. We'll see if these key points match reality and answer the questions, where did the universe come from and where did we come from?

Part I - Introduction, Creationism & Evolutionism
Part II - The Scientific Facts
Part III - Evidence Support Evolution & Dinosaurs Lived With Man?
Part IV - Dinosaurs In The Bible & Radioisotope Dating