The Facts of Embryology Repudiate Evolution
January 27th, 1957 @ 8:15 AM
Genesis 1:26
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-Book- Did Man Just Happen, Animals, Creation, Evolution, Mankind, Science, Genesis 1956 - 1958, 1957, Genesis
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THE FACTS OF EMBRYOLOGY REPUDIATE EVOLUTION
Dr. W. A. Criswell
Genesis 1:26-27
1-27-57 8:15 a.m.
You’re listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. This is the 8:15 o’clock hour, and this is the pastor bringing the morning message entitled The Facts Of Embryology And The Creation Of Man, or to state it positively, The Facts Of Embryology Repudiate The Theories Of Evolution.
In our preaching through the first chapter of Genesis, we have come to the twenty-sixth verse which says: "And God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness . . . " [Genesis 1:26] and the twenty-seventh verse: "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female, created He [them]" [Genesis 1:27]. And in these several Sundays, we are speaking on God’s creation of man.
I would like, first of all, to admit that not only in certain academic circles but also in certain ecclesiastical circles the evolutionary hypothesis of the creation of man has been accepted. For example, this week, I read of a great ecclesiastic who said, and I quote, "Since 1910, I have worked my way through to a recognition of the theory of evolution. Its application to man I have, during these almost thirty years, come to know as possible, as probable, as certain." This is a great divine of the church who says that after studying thirty years, he has come to the conclusion that evolution in the development and the creation of the man is a certain fact.
Now, in these few Sunday mornings that I am speaking from this text, I am not speaking from it religiously. I am not speaking as an ecclesiastic though I do say that the theory of evolution, if it is accepted, has tremendous, immeasurable repercussions for the Christian faith, and those repercussions are tragic in the extreme. If something evolved out of nothing, and if out of that something that was evolved out of nothing there evolved a little piece of life, an amoeba, and if out of that amoeba there evolved a larva, and out of that larva, there evolved a fish, and out of the fish there evolved an amphibian, and out of the amphibian there evolved a reptile, and out of that reptile there evolved a bird, and out of that bird there evolved a mammal, and out of that mammal there evolved a man – if from the beginning of emptiness and void and nothingness until the man that is you emerges, if it is done by evolution, then there’s no place in it for God – none at all – and you live in a material and mechanistic world.
Not only do I say that it has a repercussion in religion that is tragic because it takes God out of life and out of the world, but I also say that it vitiates the redemptive work of Christ. If the truth of evolution is established, if the fact of it can be demonstrated, then look where we are now compared to where we were years and ages ago. And just give us more time, and we will evolve into celestial and immortal archangels.
But, according to the redemptive work of Christ, the man was created perfect and he fell in sin [Genesis 1:27-31, 3:1-24], and Christ was promised to restore the man to his once and original perfection [Genesis 3:15; Romans 5:1]. And that redemptive work of Christ is experienced in the heart of His Christian people today [Hebrews 10:9-10]. But if evolution is correct, then all of that is nothing. The Bible itself is not a revelation of God nor is Christ the Son of God, but rather, the Bible itself is a product of the evolutionary upreach of man that is seeking to find something higher and better, and just give us time and we will finally evolve into all of those wonderful and holy characteristics toward which our human hearts do faithfully long.
But I say, I am not speaking of these things religiously. I am speaking of these things factually. I am speaking of these things scientifically. I am speaking of these things observably and demonstrably. After all, can we not read? After all, can we not see? After all, can we not look? Is there anything a scientist writes that we cannot read? Is there anything that he sees that we cannot see? Is there anything that he says that we cannot understand? So we can see and we can look and we can read for ourselves, and this is the burden of the messages of these several Sunday mornings: that having looked and having read and having seen, there is not in science any fact – none, not one – there is not in any science any fact to demonstrate or to prove the hypothesis of the evolutionary emergence of the man.
Now, last Sunday morning we spoke on the facts, not the theories or the hypotheses. Those are words for guesses. A little guess is a theory. An astronomical guess is a hypothesis. An unbelievable guess is a hypothesis.
Now, just a little guess, a more probable guess, is called a theory. Last Sunday morning, we spoke on the fact that the facts of biology, not the theories or the hypotheses, but the facts of biology repudiate the theories and hypothesis of evolution. Now, this morning, we are to speak on this: the facts of embryology. The facts of embryology rebuke, repudiate, disprove the theories of evolution.
All of life is built up of little living units called cells. As a wall, as a brick wall is built up with little units called bricks, so all of life is made of little created units called cells. That little unit may be an animal in itself, as a paramecium, and all of the vital functions of life are carried on in that one little cell; or the animal, the organism, may be a metazoa. It may be – it may be a metazoan. It may be made up of millions and trillions of cells such as you. In an ordinary human body, there are about 26 trillion cells that are organized into that amazing complex of separating functioning organs that make up the one great body.
Now, when you cross that tremendous gulf from dead, inert matter to a living cell, such as a paramecium, there are three properties that are easily recognizable and observable in that little living bit of protoplasm. One is this: it has the power of spontaneous motion. In the case of an amoeba, it can stick out from itself a little pseudopod, a little false foot, and then it can pour itself into that pseudopod, and it has moved just that much. It has the power of spontaneous motion; it can move. Again, it has the power of assimilation. Place that little piece of protoplasm called an amoeba or a paramecium or any one of those infusorians – place that little blob of life into an environment where it can assimilate food, and it will grow in size, and it will live, and it will carry on all of the functions of a living creature.
Then, the third property that you will notice in that little blob of protoplasm of life, that little unit of life, is this: that it has the power of reproduction. The miracle of mitosis will happen before your very eyes, and you can watch it and see it. And that little amoeba that is one, or that little paramecium that is one, or that little rotifer that is one, or that little euglena that is just one, just watch it, and through the miracle of mitosis, it will divide and become two. And the two daughter cells will be exactly like the parental cell.
Now, I want to speak of that miracle of mitosis: the the miracle of cell division, the miracle of the multiplication of the cell. I suppose that there is not anything more astoundingly wonderful, more miraculously marvelous in all of this world than the miracle of mitosis, cell division. You don’t have to go back into the dim ages of the past to wonder at the miraculous, creative hand of God. It is all around you. You can observe it today. Just as God wrought that miracle of creation in the beginning, you can look upon the miracle of creation this very moment, this very hour, this very day.
The miracle of mitosis: it begins with a living cell, the parent cell, and that little cell is made like this. On the outside is the cell wall and on the inside is what you call protoplasm, the living matter. And that protoplasm is made up of two parts: one, the cytoplasm. The study of cells is called "cytology" from the Greek word meaning "hollow." On the inside of that cell wall is that protoplasm, and the protoplasm is made up of two parts: the cytoplasm and the little nucleus, and on the inside of that nucleus are little tiny granules called chromatin.
That word "chromatin" comes from the Greek word chromas, chromatos, which means "color." And they call that unknown stuff, those little granules in the nucleus of the cell, they called it chromatin because it could be easily dyed. It could be easily stained. And when you mount it on a slide and look at it under a microscope, it easily was stained, so they call that unknown substance, and still unknown substance, they call it chromatin – easily colored.
Now, the miracle of mitosis goes like this. There is that parent cell, that one cell, and on the inside of that cell is that cytoplasm and that nucleus. Now we’re going to watch that cell divide – a miracle of the hand and wonder and work of God.
First, there is the early prophase. All of the granules in that little nucleus form themselves into one continuous thread. Then you have the later prophase, and that thread of chromatin breaks up into little rods that you call chromosomes. Then you have the metaphase. On either side of that cell, there appears little spindles – little poles – and those little rods of chromosomes are drawn halfway, exactly halfway, between the spindle on this side and the spindle on that side. Then you have the anaphase, and in the anaphase, each one of those chromosomes split lengthwise right down through the middle so that you have in those chromosomes half of them here and half of them there. Then you have the early telephase. Those chromosomes that are split, half of them begin to go to this spindle and half of them begin to go to this spindle – drawn to either side. Then you have the final later telephase. Those chromosomes that have been split lengthwise, half of them drawn over here gather around this spindle and half of them over here gather around this spindle, and the cell wall begins to form between the two. Then finally, you have the two daughter cells. Here is this cell, and here is this cell; and each one has its cytoplasm, and each one has its nucleus, and each one has its proper number of chromosomes. And then, in the resting cell, the chromosomes break up again into the little chromatin granules that fill the little nucleus. That is a miracle of mitosis.
What makes it work? Who does that? Who speaks to that little cell? Who teaches it what to do, and what are those little genes on each one of those chromosomes? And the miracle of all miracles is this: that in every species, the number of chromosomes in every cell in its body is exactly the same, no exception – never, never. In every cell in the body of a man, there are forty-eight chromosomes, just forty-eight. Always, through all time and through all ages and today and forever, each cell in each man has forty-eight chromosomes. Each cell in every ox has thirty-eight chromosomes. Each cell in each lily has twenty-four chromosomes. Each cell in each fly has twelve chromosomes. And there are little insects that have just two chromosomes. And so all through the species: every species has its own number of chromosomes, and it never varies.
Now, I have said that there are those full number of chromosomes in every cell in the body. There is just one exception and that is this. In the reproductive cells, where you have a male and a female – the conjugation of two cells in order to bring a new life – in those, in those species that reproduce by sexual attraction, the chromosomes are cut in half in the reproductive cells.
There are two kinds of cells in a man’s body. There are the somatic cells. The Greek word for body is soma. So the somatic cells are the body-building cells, the cells that build the structure of your anatomy. But there are also, on the inside of the body of a man, what you call generative cells – genetic cells, reproductive cells. In a man, they are called sperm or spermatozoa. That comes from the Greek word sperm meaning "seed." And in a woman, they are called "ovum." The Latin word for "egg" is ovum.
Now in a man, in the reproductive cells, the number of the chromosomes is cut exactly in half. In a man, the cells of his body have forty-eight chromosomes, so in the reproductive cells of his body, the sperm, there are exactly twenty-four chromosomes. Now, in the female, all through her body, every cell in her body has forty-eight chromosomes, but the little ovum, the little ova cells – the little egg cells – they’re exactly cut in half and the woman has twenty-four chromosomes in the little egg. So when the two come together, the spermatozoa and the ovum, when they join together, the number of the chromosomes are again complete – twenty-four from the man, twenty-four from the woman – forty-eight in all, and there is no exception to that. That is the iron law of almighty God. It is the miracle of reproduction, the miracle of mitosis.
Now, there is a law of God that controls all of this thing that we call heredity. There was an Austrian monk by the name of Mendel [Gregor Johann Mendel, 1822-1884] who did a wonderful, wonderful work in discovering the laws of heredity that we call Mendel’s Law of Heredity. The work that he had done was buried in the monastery with the flowers that he observed. Had that work been known to Charles Darwin [1809-1882], the whole course of the idea and theory of evolution would have been altogether different. But Darwin did not know Mendel’s Law of Heredity, and it only came to light as a rediscovery after the days of the furious war over Charles Darwin. Now, Mendel’s Law of Heredity is one of the great laws of God that we have discovered.
Mendel’s Law of Heredity is this: that the offspring inherit and produce and exhibit the characteristics of the parents according to dominant and recessive characteristics. For example, brown is dominant over blue. If you had solid – if you had, say, a father that was pure brown-eyed and a mother that was pure blue-eyed, all of their children in the first generation would be brown-eyed. We’re going to illustrate that a little further along with chickens. I can do it with chickens better than I can with eyes.
Mendel’s Law of the inherited characteristics, a recessive one – I’ve just mentioned a dominant one – a recessive one would be epilepsy. That’s the reason it is very difficult to find or to breed out epilepsy because the gene upon which it is carried is a recessive gene. And it lies dormant and recessed, maybe through generations, and will only come out when it has opportunity to be matched by a gene from an opposite ancestry – a recessive characteristic.
Now, let’s take Mendel’s Law and illustrate it in chickens. There is a type, a breed, a variety of chicken that is called Blue Andalusian. Now a Blue Andalusian chicken is bred by a parent that has black plumage and a parent that has white plumage with gray streaks. So you take those two original chickens, the father and momma chicken, one of them is black and the other is white with gray streaks. Now the first generation of chickens will be Blue Andalusian.
Now, if you take all of that first generation of chickens, Blue Andalusians, and you mate them, then the grandchicks are one-half Blue Andalusians, [one-fourth] black, like the grandpa chick, and [one-fourth] white, like the grandma chick. All right, now take those grandchicks and mate them. Mate the black to black and they’ll produce black forever. Mate the white to white, and they’ll produce white forever. But mate those Blue Andalusian grandchicks and they’ll produce again one-half blue Andalusians, [one-fourth] black; [one-fourth] white; and then it just goes on forever.
Mate those Blue Andalusians, and they’ll come out the same way: first generation all of them blue; the second generation, one-half blue, one-fourth black, one-fourth white. Breed the Andalusians, and it’ll go on that way. Breed the one-fourth black to the one-fourth black, and they’ll be black from then on. Breed the one-fourth white to the one-fourth white, and they’ll go on. And I can see that very plainly, but I don’t think you can – my talking about it up here.
That’s Mendel’s Law of Heredity, and it never varies. It goes right according to the Word of God. Now Mendel’s Law of Heredity does two things: one, it makes possible the breeding of great variety in a species. For example, you can breed speed into horses. If our propagation, if our generation, if our reproduction was like an amoeba, you could have no variety at all, nor could you improve the species. An amoeba breaks itself in half, and that half is half of the original parent, and half of the original parent, and then it just goes on halving itself into immortality.
But where you have sex, you have infinite possibility of variety and change. You can have all kinds of dahlias by breeding different strains of dahlias. You can have all kinds of dogs by breeding different strains of dogs. On the sperm of the male is all the ancestry of the male, and on the ovum of the female is all the ancestry of the female. So when you bring them together, you have infinite possibilities of variety.
I say, if you wanted to breed speed in a horse, why you’d take those varieties and breed them up. If you want to breed heavy feed stock on a cow, you take those strains and breed them up. If you want to breed the wool, the heavy wool on the back of a sheep, you take those strains and breed it up. If you want to – if you want to change the color of a hog or his shape or his size, well, you breed it up. If you want to add more grains on an ear of corn, or anything, you have infinite opportunity by Mendel’s Law to breed up these strains.
All right, that’s one thing. But there is another thing, according to Mendel’s Law, and that is this: that whatever is done to change that variety has to be done – has to be done on those genes, on those chromosomes. It can never be done by inherited characteristics.
Now, for a thing to change, the parent has to change because the parent is the only one that can give life to an ovum or a sperm. An embryo can never produce another embryo. It produces another parent. An egg never produces another egg. An egg produces a parent which, in turn, produces the egg.
And inherited characteristics are never acquired. Acquired characteristics are never inherited. You can take a little dog and cut off its tail and when that little puppy has puppies, why it’ll have tails. And you can cut those tails off and then in the next generation cut those tails off, and the next generation cut those tails off, and cut those tails off for 100,000 generations, and at the end of 100,000 generations, the little puppy that’s born will still have a tail. You can’t take off or add to by an acquired characteristic. It has to be done in the genes. It has to be done in the chromosome. It has to be done in the nucleus of the ovum part of the sperm.
Now, I say the only thing that can give life to an ovum or a sperm is a mature parent. So you have that endless cycle that is locked by almighty God. God said, "each after its kind" [Genesis 1:24]. And the earth – and the earth gave birth to all of these different kinds of animals and beasts and cattle and creeping thing after his kind. And that’s according to the locked law of Almighty God. Each gives birth to progeny after its kind.
So we come to that little embryo, one of the marvelous, marvelous creative workmanships of God that little embryo. When the ovum, when the egg, is fertilized by the spermatozoan – by the little seed, by the little sperm – immediately, the miracle of mitosis begins to form before our eyes. And after a little while, there comes into that, into that little place there, there comes a little tube-like structure, and it has three layers of cells. On the outside is the ectoderm, on the inside is the endoderm – the [endoderm] and the mesoderm on the inside – and then on the inside of that the endoderm. The ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm: and out of those three little layers of cell that make up that little tube-like creature, all of the organs of the body develop.
And there is a design, a hand of God that works in the multiplication of those cells in that miracle of mitosis. For it does not multiply into an amporphous mass of just great big globs, but each one of those little cells, directed by an unseen Hand, finally develops into the glorious organs of the body.
Now, that little original cell, it isn’t nerve cell; it isn’t blood cell; it isn’t bone cell; it isn’t muscle cell. It’s just that seed. It’s just that original cell; and the hand of God, through mitosis, through the mitotic process, finally brings it into all of this marvelous thing that you see living about you.
And a wonderful thing: all of those cells in the body greatly differ. There’ll be cells of the brain and cells of the lungs and cells of the stomach and cells of the bone, but all of those cells will have the same number of chromosomes in them. In the human body, they’ll have forty-eight chromosomes and every cell in the human body will be a human cell. Every cell in the chicken will be a chicken cell. Every cell in a rabbit will be a rabbit cell. And every cell in every creature God has made will be according to that cell. And the Lord wrote that in His Book. In the first Corinthian letter, in the fifteenth chapter and the thirty-ninth verse, Paul says: "All protoplasm is not the same protoplasm, but there is one kind of protoplasm of men, and another protoplasm of beasts, and another of fishes, and another of birds" [from 1 Corinthians 15:39]. The protoplasm in all of these species is different, and give any, any little tissue to a scientist, and he can immediately identify "this belongs to a man; this belongs to a beast; this belongs to the fowl; this belongs to some other kind of an animal." But they all are the same. And yet, in their species, they vitally differ according to the functions in the human body or in the organism.
Now, may we briefly – wish we had an hour for this – may we briefly speak of the evolutionary hypothesis which is called the Recapitulation Theory? The Recapitulation Theory of the evolutionist is this: that in the development of the human embryo, it relives all of the stages of its evolutionary ancestry. You see, the evolutionist says, "We started from a protozoan, from a little amoeba, and then we came up through a worm, and we came up through a fish and through an amphibian and through a reptile and through a fowl and to a mammal and finally, the man." So the Recapitulation Theory of the evolutionist is that the human embryo, as it goes through the development into a man, into a human being, the human embryo exhibits all of that ancestry of the past. It first is a protozoan, then it is a fish and lives in an aqueous environment, then it has a tail like a puppy, then it is a little mammal fetus like any other mammal of an ape, like an ape or a monkey, and then, finally, it emerges a man.
Now, the Recapitulation Theory of the evolutionist is that the story of the development of the human embryo recapitulates, summarizes, all of that evolutionary past. Now, that is the sheerest nonsense, that is the sheerest inanity that you’ll ever find on so-called scientific pages.
For example, let’s take the first – that the human embryo begins as a protozoan, as a little amoeba. I do not think there is any credible scientist in this world that would ever mix up, be unable to distinguish, between a little amoeba and that egg that turns into a man. He just wouldn’t do it. Were we able to get on the inside of that protozoan and walk around and look at it and were we able to get on the inside of that egg that finally becomes a man, we would find the difference between them as much as between a locomotive and a pipe organ. Because both of them are small and because both of them are unicellular means nothing at all. They are vastly different in every one of their parts. That little protozoan is the complete animal. It can eat; it can assimilate; it can reproduce. It lives a whole life. But that little egg is the seed of a man and the genes and the chromosomes and the whole outreach of its life is altogether different.
Now, that second thing: that the embryo lives like a fish and has gills they say. Well, that’s ridiculous when you look at it. The little embryo is alive on the inside of an amnionic sac filled with amnionic fluid. The little sac around an embryo is called an amnion. Now, to me as I could see that, look at that, I’d say that was for protection. In order to protect the little fetus on the inside of a mother’s womb, it is cushioned on every side by the amnionic fluid.
And when they say that it is an aqueous creature, that it lives in water like a fish, why there’s no resemblance between that little embryo that turns into a fetus, that turns into a man – there’s no resemblance between that and a fish. A fish lives in water and breathes free oxygen from the water. A fetus doesn’t breathe at all. The oxygen comes into its life stream from the blood of the mother that comes to the placenta. And then, and then, the little life’s bloodstream of the fetus picks it up not directly but through that placenta by the process of osmosis. And so the little fetus is fed by oxygen through the breathing of the mother. But it does not breathe at all, and there is no free oxygen in that amnionic fluid – none at all.
Then they say that at a certain stage that little, that little embryo has gills like a fish. All right, here’s what happens. As I can read – and anybody can read, and you can see it for yourself – as that little embryo begins to form, at the early stages, it has little arches, little bony ridges like those branchial arches that are the little bony ridges that support the gills of a fish. So some of these evolutionists look at those little ridges there, those little bony arches, and they say, "Look, those are the gills of a fish."
Now, those branchial arches have to do with respiration. They have to do with breathing, but that fetus doesn’t breathe. That fetus has no purpose or cause or demand for breathing at all. It just doesn’t breathe. And branchial arches that support the gills of a fish are put there for the purpose of breathing.
Now the little fetus has no reason or any cause to breathe, but it does have a cause to live, to eat, to be nourished, without which nourishment, it would die. So these little arches – one man called them pharyngeal arches from the pharynx, the place in your alimentary canal between the open cavity of the mouth and the esophagus – he called them pharyngeal arches. That is, at that point when the little embryo is just a little tiny thing, at that point, that amnionic fluid is almost altogether pure food – fats and carbohydrates and proteins. Later on, it changes in character and could not be used for food at all. But at that stage, all of that fluid around the little embryo is made up of pure food. And those little arches that the scientists, some of them, look at and say "those are gills of a fish," those little arches that we will call "pharyngeal arches," they absorb that food. That’s their purpose. Then a little later on, when they, when the little embryo begins to get its food from the placenta which is fed from the mother’s blood, why then, there is no need for those pharyngeal arches and they disappear. But they are in no wise like the gills of a fish, nor are they used, nor are they built for any purpose like the branchial arches that support the gills of a fish. There is no resemblance whatsoever. They’re for altogether different purposes.
Now, they say, they say, that at a certain place, it has a tail like a little puppy. Well, when the little, when the little embryo is about the size of a lima bean, when you mount it on a slide and look at it, there is a little – there is an unusual activity in the posterior region of the little embryo. And when you mount it and look at it, why, some fellow might say, "Well, it looks as though it might have a little tail back there, but give that little tail time to develop, and it develops into legs." The structure of a tail and the structure of legs are altogether different. Nor is it ever in anywhere in anatomy, or in embryology, or in the development of life, is it ever that a tail ever develops into a leg. It just doesn’t, and there’s no resemblance in them at all.
Then last, they say that the fetus of a man, the embryo of a man, is like that of a mammal. It’s like that of an ape. And when you take an ape embryo and a man embryo – a monkey embryo and a man embryo – why, why, they look alike. Therefore, they must have come from the same thing.
I will tell you I cannot understand the reasoning of men when they say things like that. Yet that’s one of the great fundamental facts that they produce as being able to substantiate the evolutionary hypothesis – that those little feti are the same – that they look alike.
Well, there are a lot of poisons that look exactly like sugar and like salt, but that doesn’t make them all alike. One’s a poison and one’s a sugar and one’s salt. I can go down there to the record shop, and I can buy two records and they look exactly alike, and to all appearance they are alike. And I can put one of them on the record player and it plays a beautiful aria by Caruso [Enrico Caruso 1873-1921] entitled "Martha," and I put the other record on and it plays "You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog," by Elvis Presley [1935-1977]. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that right? Yet the evolutionist comes along and says they’re exactly alike. They’re exactly alike. They just look at them: "They’re exactly alike." Why, there is no such thing in this earth as those things being exactly alike just because they look alike.
Now, I must hasten. It’s far beyond my time. May I make one comment? Then I have to quit. May I make one comment about why things look alike? The reason things look alike is because God made them on the same pattern. The reason is this: in this world, all of us have to breathe alike. All of us have to eat alike. All of us have to live alike, and the same matchless hand of God made us – made the animals, made us, made all of this world.
Just like a wheel, you have many kinds of a wheel. You have a wheel on a wheelbarrow; you’ll have a wheel on an automobile; you have a wheel on a great locomotive: they’re all wheels. They are the same type. You have many houses, but you have the same type of a thing whether the house is a cottage, whether it’s a great big building, or whether it’s a palace, or whether it’s your home. It’s the type of a thing. So it is with God’s workmanship.
When you look at this thing, there are many, many, many things that are similar, but they are similar only on the basis that we live in the same world and the great creative hand of God did all of it. But as for its being exactly alike, similarity has nothing to do with it. The embryo of a man will be one thing. The embryo of an ape will be another thing. The embryo of a monkey will be another thing. And if you don’t believe it, just give them time to develop so that your eyes can see it, and there will be the vast difference between the two. The facts of embryology repudiate the theories of evolution.
"God said, ‘Let us create man in Our image, in Our likeness’ . . . and in the image of God created He him" [Genesis 1:26-27]. And that same miracle that happened back there in the Garden of Eden is the same miracle that happens today as we look upon it with our very eyes: God’s creation of a man in His own image and in His own likeness. Now may we stand and sing our first stanza of the hymn together?