Test your knowledge
Following is a list of six words and phrases used by creationists. Pick the meaning beside each which you think comes closest to the true meaning of that word. Then check your score below, and learn any words you were unsure about.
Coelacanth, (a) a coral reef, (b) a fish, (c) a dinosaur, (d) a plant.
Archaeopteryx, (a) a branch of science, (b) a fossil bird, (c) a European biologist, (d) ancient pottery.
Spontaneous generation, (a) the arising of life from non-life, (b) bursting into flames, (c) sudden charge of electricity, (d) enthusiastic applause from scientists.
Pterodactyl, (a) an extinct flying reptile, (b) a type of dinosaur, (c) a fossil fish, (d) a large extinct parrot.
Theistic evolution , (a) belief in evolution by a clergyman, (b) belief in creation exactly as Genesis says, (c) belief in evolution with God taking no part, (d) belief that God used evolution as His method of creation.
Yom, (a) a Hebrew food, (b) a Hebrew item of clothing, (c) the Hebrew Bible, (d) the Hebrew word for 'day'.
Answers
Coelacanth
(b) The coelacanth (pronounced seel-a-canth) is a fish that evolutionists thought became extinct 70 million years ago. Because of the bony fins in its fossils, coelacanths were thought to 'walk' on their fins, and related fish were thought to have become amphibians. This idea was largely abandoned after coelacanths were found living off the east coast of Africa in 1938. (And they do not 'walk' on their fins).
Archaeopteryx
(b) Although some have claimed this fossil is a fake, it is generally regarded as a fossil bird. Evolutionists once thought this bird was part-reptile, part-bird, showing the evolution of birds into reptiles. But it gives no support to the idea that feathers developed from scales, or that wings evolved from reptile limbs. Archaeopteryx was not an evolutionary 'link', just an unusual bird.
Spontaneous generation
(a) It was once believed that mice could arise spontaneously from spilled wheat in barns, and that flies arose spontaneously out of rotting meat. Francesco Redi, and (later) Louis Pasteur, showed that living things come only from living parents — that life arises from life. They dealt a death-blow to those who thought life-forms could arise from lifeless matter. Yet even today evolutionists who deny God have to believe in the unscientific idea that some time in the past, life must have spontaneously arisen from non-life.
Pterodactyl
(a) Pterodactyls (pronounced terra-dak-tilz) were flying reptiles, some of which had huge wing-spans. As with all other major types of creatures, there is no evidence from either fossils or biology that pterodactyls evolved from or into any other type of creature.
Theistic evolution
(d) This is the belief that God used evolution as His method of creation. It is untenable for many reasons, including the following: 1. It allows death and bloodshed before Adam's sin (Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 tell us death entered the world through Adam's sin). 2. It is not the view of evolutionary textbooks or encyclopaedias, which present evolution without God, so it gets no support from science. 3. Many evolutionists believe 'the present is the key to the past' — that the alleged evolutionary processes of the past are still going on today. But the Bible tells us God finished His work of creation after six days and rested on the seventh. (Other arguments against theistic evolution are given in Ken Ham's book, The Lie: Evolution, Appendix 2.)
Yom
(d) Yom is the Hebrew word for 'day'. It can mean an ordinary, 24-hour day, the daylight part of a day-night cycle, or an indefinite period of time. But when it has a clear beginning and end (such as evening and morning in Genesis 1) or an ordinal number to distinguish it from other days (first day, second day, etc., as also occurs in Genesis 1), it always means an ordinary 24-hour day.
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