Why would God put fossils in the Earth?

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You’ve picked up on my point in the How The Earth Was Made question where I say that God COULD have created everything “as is”, fossils built in and so on.

Yes he COULD; he is after all the Creator of all that exists, (the person who created the Galaxies and your insides is not going to fazed by any creative task).

But the point I was trying to make was there are OTHER explanations I have, as a scientist, for things like the fossil record being there.

(Please note as you read on, I’m NOT trying to “prove” the existence of God here, as if you and I somehow need intellectual proof for our world view. A Christian experiences God. They do not need some sort of intellectual proof, any more than a baby needs intellectual proof that its mother exists and is nourishing it.)

One possible explanation is the “Gap” theory which I have outlined in How The Earth Was Made. Another would be the some global cataclysm (eg a flood event) playing a part in causing and disturbing sedimentary layers.

However, the fossil record is very interesting as it stands, for one of the things is reveals is the scarcity of transitional forms.

Generally, creatures appear in the fossil record, fairly suddenly, fully functional, with little evidence of transitional forms. This is a very embarrassing fact for those who wish to deny a creative force. Science occasionally finds something which appears “in between” and trumpets it loudly to prove it has credibility, but the very fact that such a fuss is made reveals the actual scarcity of these events.

The other odd thing that the fossil record shows is that the expected effect of entropy is reversed in the biological world.

Entropy is a fundamental Law of the Universe that is derived from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In all other branches of science, Entropy dictates that in a closed system, conditions become gradually more homogeneous. A box with a hot object and a cold object will end up with two lukewarm objects, as the temperatures equalise. The diversity DEcreases. You never start off with a box with two lukewarm objects and find one has got hotter and the other colder. In order to do that, you have to interfere with the system somehow, from the outside.

This is unexpectedly not so in biological systems, which have got more diverse, not less so, over time. If the strict requirements of Entropy hold true, this suggests that the biological life of the earth is not a closed system, but is receiving input from an external source. Somebody is interfering!

In the Bible, Hebrews 1:3 says: The Son (i.e. Jesus) is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

The word “sustaining” is one the Greeks used for (eg) the way the foundation of a house “holds up” all of the structure placed upon it. It means more than just to carry or bear; it has the sense of being RESPONSIBLE for the CONTINUED EXISTENCE of the building above it, the walls, floors and the roof.

So in this passage, we are told that Jesus is responsible for the continued existence of “all things”- Greek word “panta” = everything that exists.

Here is just the external influence we need to explain the unexpected non-conformity of biological systems with the Laws of the Universe.