Evolution Revisited

And God said: 

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
(Genesis 1:26, 27, 2:7) 

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:  And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
(Deut. 6:6,7)

If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." 
(1 Cor 15:32)

In the June 1999 edition of the Trumpeter, in my article "Some Causes of Lawlessness" (Click here to see it) I included the teaching of evolution in our schools as one of the causes of that lawlessness. Since that writing, I have again revisited some of the important books on the subject, both pro and con, including the recent book by Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial, InterVarsity Press, which gives the layman a very clear perception of the tactics and weaknesses of the evolution propaganda. I have also consulted Darwin's On The Origin Of Species and his The Descent of Man, and Selection In Relation To Sex, works that necessarily preclude any idea of a Divine will or action in creation. In a class by itself is Earnst Haeckel's History Of Creation.1 The very title of this book is a joke since this Haeckel, often referred to as one of Darwin's "bulldogs", did as much as any other so called naturalist to purge all science of any thought that God may actually exist. Haeckel certainly did not believe in Creation by any other means than "mindless and accidental evolution". Haeckel's absolute bitterness towards God and towards anyone foolish enough to believe in God is evident in portions of the two volume work published in 1892.

I am concerned that we do not take this atheistic attack against God serious enough, or perhaps I should say that we take too lightly the damage done to our children with our passive acquiescence to the presentation of evolution as the exclusive source of all life on the planet.  I say passive, hoping and believing that no one reading this article is gullible enough to take an active outlook towards this pseudo science.  Still, I would encourage every parent and grandparent, relative or friend of any child sitting under this influence to take the time to familiarize yourselves with the "theory" (read “guess”) sufficient to know it is dangerous.  I give you the following few points for starters.

1. The theory of evolution cannot be synthesized with the idea of a supernatural Creator. The scientific community scoffs at such attempts and especially at the proposals that are from time to time offered by the religious community through theologians intent on harmonizing religion and science. Even such conservatives as Benjamin B. Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary and Augustus Hopkins Strong of Rochester Theological Seminary, the author of the famous Strong's Systematic Theology, boldly accepted and defended the theory early in this century. (August Strong is not to be confused with James Strong, the compiler of  Strong's Exhaustive Concordance).

Evolutionist Professor William Provine of Cornell University is not shy when he says that to have serious hopes and beliefs about a supernatural Creator is nothing more than  subjective feeling, and little more than nonsense. He tells us that persons who manage to retain religious beliefs while accepting evolutionary biology "have to check their brains at the church-house door." (And I agree of course). He also said; "Modern science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with mechanistic principles.  There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable."  Again he says; "Modern science directly implies that there are no inherent moral or ethical laws, no absolute guiding principles for human society."  And again "We must conclude that when we die, we die and that is the end of us."  Provine says that most evolutionary biologists are atheists, and that "many have been driven there by their understanding of the evolutionary process and other science." 

It is especially these last comments, declaring that there is no moral or ethical laws, and no absolute guiding principles, and that death is "the end of us", that have done the most harm. This is the opening for the Marilyn Mansons of the world to proselyte our young sons and daughters. This is the rationale for the high suicide rate among our young people, and why they commit this final act for the flimsiest reasons.  And this did not occur overnight, but has been steadily increasing over many years as the dual process of incorporating the humanistic philosophy of John Dewey into our public schools while simultaneously removing all reference to theological reality.

2. No theory of evolution can be considered as scientific until there is a verifiable explanation of how life began. Life does not come from non-life. The belief in  Spontaneous Generation, also known as Abiogenesis, which means the production of some life form by the accidental combination of chemical properties is not from scientific observation, but from medieval ignorance.  Fly eggs laid in garbage, producing maggots was mistakenly thought to be spontaneous generation. Louis Pasteur solved that mystery by preventing the delivery of the eggs in the first place by simply placing a cloth over the garbage. No live eggs?  No life from non-life!  One theory that has been proposed to replace abiogenesis assumes that life on earth began when some advanced life form on another planet in a galaxy far away sent out a "shotgun" spray of living matter by some advanced form of locomotion i.e. spaceship. Known as PANSPERMIA, this occurred billions of years ago, and so we can now spend much time guessing whether or not that planet still exists, whether they became extinct, what was their motive for this act, etc. etc. A variation of this theory assumes that visitors to earth from a far galaxy left life matter in the garbage that they expelled while here during that same billions of years ago. Well, these proposals remind us of the Star Trek series, where one may "create" any scenario desired  for each episode, since time, space and reality are of no consequence. Of course if life came to earth by Panspermia, then where did that life originate?  We are back to square one.   

3.  Either God created ex nihilo or we are left with the conclusion that matter itself must be eternal.  There are no other choices.  Either the account in Genesis is correct, as revealed to Moses by God who was there and actually did the creating, or there has always been and always will be an eternal and limited amount of "stuff".  Ex Nihilo is Latin and means "from nothing". It was indeed the method God used to create all that is!  Does this sound hard to believe?  Well compare it to believing with the evolutionists that through some chemical chain reaction in some primordial chemical soup, a single celled life form "happened".  This cell then reproduced itself until at some point two of its own self, mated and produced offspring.  Over many billions of years, this cell ended up being all the species of life found upon the earth.  How wonderful was that day when one of these critters produced a lung, then others produced gills, legs, wings, eyes, claws, beaks, a brain, memory, consciousness, humor, remorse, etc. etc.  Imagine if you will a critter with no eyes, who decides he (or she) needs one to see, so that it will have an advantage over all other critters, and hence survive.  So it begins with a small adaptation on its head.  Now, it mates with another critter (hopefully of the opposite sex!) who either has the same adaptation, or who has the capacity to pass it on to its offspring. This newly formed "grandmonster" must also find a suitable mate to pass the adaptation along.  Continue this progress for say 2.7 million or billion years and PRESTO! an eye (oops! two of them). How clever evolution is, and look what it has done with the eye! The image which reaches the retina is coded and relayed to the visual cortex. Light falling on the retina stimulates the fibers of the optic nerve.  These fibers join to form a cross, called the optic chiasma. From the optic chiasma, the information passes, via the optic tracts, to the lateral geniculate bodies, where perception of depth occurs, and then on to the optic radiation, which transmits the information to the primary visual cortex, situated in the occipital lobes. The primary visual cortex is responsible for the perception of the position of objects in space, and their relationship to each other, as well as the perception of light and shade.  In this way, an overall composite picture of any object is formed.  And I have not even including the brain's part! Do you believe all this?  It takes faith to believe in God. It takes more than faith to believe in evolution.

There are some apocryphal stories about Darwin, and his denial of the theory of evolution on his deathbed, along with a confession of faith. They are just that, apocryphal. And it is true that in his Origin of Species he mentions the Creator twice on the last two pages.  In the first instance he says "To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual" And the last statement says;  "There is grandeur in this view of life (evolution) with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one ... from so simple a beginning endless forms ... have and are being evolved."  But in his next work, The Descent of Man, he clearly  connected the evolution of man to prior and inferior animals, and removed any place to insert a belief in God, or any intelligent plan of any kind.  Evolution to Darwin required the elimination of any Cause but chance. It then became what has been called the "non-miraculous history of creation".

Obviously the leaven of evolution is not limited to the education system, but permeates every aspect of our society.  I deal with the schools because that is where the teacher that your child respects so much indoctrinates them for good or evil, and where your children's philosophy of life is formed. Therefore, I leave you with the bottom line, that it is your responsibility to know what your child is learning, and to make corrections when error is taught to them.  You would be quick to do this if your child's Sunday School teacher said there was no resurrection!  How do you tolerate someone insisting that your children are the product of blind and thoughtless evolution? 

Until a child (or adult) believes that God created everything, and that He will judge the world, they will most likely do that which is right in their own heart, which heart by the way is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  Jer. 17:9.  The courts have consistently struck down any creationist curriculum in the public schools as a violation of the so called "Separation of Church and State." 

I know that there are many other factors that contribute to the moral decay of our society.  I also know that there are many other reasons for the conditions in our schools.  My point has not been to isolate evolution as the sole cause of lawlessness, but to remind you that it is a very important cause and one that is very often overlooked when we take the time to correct the erroneous teaching our children receive.

I have not attempted to present the theory of evolution in any detail, nor have I taken the time to refute it.  Material to accomplish both of these tasks is readily available to anyone who is interested in pursuing the subject.