Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
a . “But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems.” Charles Darwin, The Life and Letters, Vol. 1, p. 313.
u “For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds (London: Chatto & Windus, 1927), p. 209.
u “If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e. of Materialism and Astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents.” C. S. Lewis, God In the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), pp. 52–53.
u “Each particular thought is valueless if it is the result of irrational causes. Obviously, then, the whole process of human thought, what we call Reason, is equally valueless if it is the result of irrational causes. Hence every theory of the universe which makes the human mind a result of irrational causes is inadmissible, for it would be a proof that there are no such things as proofs. Which is nonsense. But Naturalism [evolution], as commonly held, is precisely a theory of this sort.” C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1947), p. 21.
u C. S. Lewis, “The Funeral of a Great Myth,” Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1968), p. 89.
u “If the universe is a universe of thought, then its creation must have been an act of thought.” James H. Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, new revised edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1932), p. 181.
u “A theory that is the product of a mind can never adequately explain the mind that produced the theory. The story of the great scientific mind that discovers absolute truth is satisfying only so long as we accept the mind itself as a given. Once we try to explain the mind as a product of its own discoveries, we are in a hall of mirrors with no exit.” Phillip E. Johnson, Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1995), p. 62.
u “One of the absurdities of materialism [the belief that nothing exists except the material] is that it assumes that the world can be rationally comprehensible only if it is entirely the product of irrational, unguided mechanisms.” Phillip E. Johnson, “The Wedge in Evolutionary Ideology: Its History, Strategy, and Agenda,” Theology Matters, Vol. 5, March/April 1999, p. 5.
Phillip E. Johnson has also made the point that intelligence might produce intelligence. However, for lifeless, inorganic matter to produce intelligence, as the theory of evolution claims, would be an astounding miracle.
b . Phillip Johnson, “The Demise of Naturalism,” World, 3 April 2004, p. 38.
c . “Behind Darwin’s discomfiture [on how the human brain evolved] was the dawning realization that the evolution of the brain vastly exceeded the needs of prehistoric man. This is, in fact, the only example in existence where a species was provided with an organ that it still has not learned how to use.” Richard M. Restak, The Brain: The Last Frontier (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1979), p. 59.
u Alfred Russel Wallace, who some mistakenly say co-discovered (with Charles Darwin) natural selection, believed the human brain was too complex to have evolved, because other primates got along fine with much smaller brains. Wallace thought the human brain—orders of magnitude more capable in many ways—must have been created by a superior intelligence, because early primates had no need for art, philosophy, or morality. Darwin recognized the logic of Wallace’s argument, but complained in a letter to Wallace in 1869, “I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child [the theory of evolution].” [See James Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1916), p. 240.]
Actually, Edward Blyth, a creationist, discovered natural selection, not Wallace or Darwin. [See “Natural Selection” on page 53.]
d . Albert Einstein, “Remarks on Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Knowledge,” The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 5 of The Library of Living Philosophers, editor Paul Arthur Schilpp (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1944), p. 289.
e . Philip Van der Elst, C. S. Lewis: A Short Introduction (New York: Continuum, 1996), p. 24.