What About Origins? (CreationPoints)
Page 24
Having established that evolution is a religion, it is now possible to compare and contrast the false religion of evolution with the true religion of Christianity. This will explain more fully why evolution is a religion and why so many people find it emotionally and religiously fulfilling to embrace it. The six tenets of evolution that can be compared and contrasted with Christianity are as follows:38
A holy book. Christianity has the Bible, which is the inspired Word of God. Evolution has Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.39
An explanation for the origin of everything. Christianity has creation by an all-powerful God. Evolution has chance natural processes honed by natural selection.
An explanation for death and suffering. Christianity has death and suffering being introduced into the perfect world created by Almighty God as a result of the first man’s sin. Evolution does not recognize sin but teaches that the evolution of lifeless molecules to living humans can only proceed via the survival of the fittest; death and suffering are thus the necessary driving forces of evolution.
The reason why we are here. Christianity teaches that humans are the pinnacle of God’s creation and that we are made in God’s image and likeness and are to enjoy him for ever. Evolution teaches that we are just here—the product of the evolution of life—and that our purpose is to pass on our genes to the next generation.
Our future. Christianity teaches that one day the Lord Jesus Christ will return to this earth and that God will create new heavens and a new earth, where those who in this life trusted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour will live with God for ever. Evolution, on the other hand, teaches that humans are not the end-product of evolution and that evolution will continue, with the result that humans will either become extinct or will evolve into another kind of creature.
The future of the universe. Christianity teaches that the present universe will be burned up by God and that he will then create new heavens and a new earth. Evolution, as we saw in Chapter 6, teaches a far more depressing future, with the universe experiencing what is called a ‘heat death’ (although in reality it should be called a ‘cold death’, for the temperature of the universe will be just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero).
In Chapter 7, I related the story of the research worker who had a Ph.D. in Biology and who preferred to believe that carbon atoms had desires and feelings rather than believe in a God who would be ‘telling him what to do in his life’. It is this aspect of Christianity—God telling us what to do—that makes many turn away from God and enjoy what the Bible calls ‘the pleasures of sin for a season’ (Heb. 11:25, KJV). These adherents to the religion of evolution are not slow to admit this, as is borne out by the following quote:
We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else’s home and therefore obliged to make our behavior conform with a set of pre-existing cosmic rules. It is our creation now. We make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality. We create the world, and because we do, we no longer feel beholden to outside forces. We no longer have to justify our behaviour, for we are now the architects of the universe. We are responsible to nothing outside ourselves, for we are the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever and ever [emphasis added].40
Evolution gives people an excuse to do as they please because, for them, there is no God to whom they have to give an account of their life and of the actions and decisions they have made while living that life. This has resulted in the present hedonistic society in which we find ourselves living—a society in which people endeavour to live for pleasure, eating and drinking with no thought that perhaps tomorrow they will die. Unless they are saved beforehand, it will only be when they do die that they will know the truth—that it is appointed unto us all to die, and after that will come the judgement, when we will all have to stand before the Almighty and give account of ourselves to him.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have seen that there is no evidence for the proposed evolutionary origin of humans. We have seen that the history of the evolutionists’ quest for the story of the evolution of humans is littered with mistakes and frauds. We have seen that illustrations depicting ape-people are the products of the imaginations of the artists who drew them. Fossil ape-people have never been found because they have never existed. Humans are not the product of evolution; we are all descended from Adam and Eve, the first human pair, who were created by God.
Yet, despite this, the evolutionary view of the history of humankind still dominates our philosophy. So-called ‘early humans’ are thought to have been primitive intellectually, culturally, technologically, as well as physically and spiritually. The story of humankind is thought to be a steady upward advance in all these spheres. The Bible, however, paints a very different picture of the history of humankind. Instead of developing from a half-ape/half-human creature, the first pair of our ancestors were, according to the Bible, part of God’s perfect creation—creatures made in the image of God and who were morally, intellectually, physically and spiritually perfect. Instead of gradually evolving upwards, humans, as presented in the Bible, are fallen beings who have sinned against their Creator and are morally, intellectually and physically degenerate and spiritually destitute, alienated from God. This sorry state in which we find ourselves is the result of sin—in particular, Adam’s sin.
The Bible refutes the evolutionary concept of the progressive improvement of humankind, and teaches that there is only one way back to God—in and through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul, in his first letter to the church at Corinth, contrasted the inheritance which we have through Adam’s sin with that which we can receive in Christ. For instance, in Adam we inherit death, but in Christ we can be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22). In Adam, we live lives fulfilling the works of the flesh (‘adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like’—Gal. 5:19–21), the wages of which is death (Rom. 6:23). In Christ, we can know a life bearing the fruit of the Spirit (‘love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’—Gal. 5:22–23) and we can have eternal life, the gift of God (Rom. 6:23).
Notes
1 From personal observation.
2 See, for example, Bernard Wood, Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
3 The Neander Valley is named after the famous German Christian and hymn-writer Joachim Neander, who lived from 1650 to 1680. He used to visit a cave in this valley and there write hymns. One of Neander’s hymns translated from German into English by Catherine Winkworth begins, ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!’
4 ‘Neanderthal of the North Sea’, Natural History Museum, 15 June 2009, at: nhm.ac.uk.
5 John Noble Wilford, ‘Discovery Suggests Humans Are a Bit Neanderthal’, 25 April 1999, at: cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Neanderthal.html.
6 Ian Sample, ‘Scientists Unravel Neanderthal Genome’, 12 February 2009, at: guardian.co.uk.
7 A. J. E. Cave and W. L. Straus Jr, ‘Pathology and Posture of Neanderthal Man’, in Quarterly Review of Biology, vol. 32 (1957), pp. 348–363.
8 Quoted by Will Dunham, ‘Neanderthals Trekked All the Way into Siberia’ 1 October 2007, at: reuters.com.
9 Irene White, ‘Kinver Caveman’, in Answers, 2/1 (January–March 2007), pp. 38–39.
10 An examination of the Neanderthals’ genome shows that many of them had red hair. See Paul Rincon, ‘Neanderthals “Were Flame-Haired”’, 25 October 2007, at: news. bbc.co.uk.
11 See under ‘Business of the House’, 26 November 1953, at: hansard.millbanksystems.com. The full motion was ‘That this House has no confidence in the trustees of the British Museum, other than the Speaker of the House of Commons, because of the tardiness of their discovery that the skull of the Piltdown Man is a partial fake.’
12 William K. Gregory, ‘Hesperopithecus Appa
rently Not an Ape Nor a Man’, in Science, vol. 66 (1927), pp. 579–581.
13 ‘First Glimpse of a Stone-Age Tribe’, in National Geographic Magazine, vol. 140 (December 1971), pp. 881–882.
14 Scandal of the Lost Tribe, first broadcast in the UK on 23 August 1988 (ITV).
15 ‘Hominid Collarbone Exposed as Dolphin’s Rib’, in New Scientist (28 April 1983), p. 199.
16 ‘Ass is Taken for a Man’, in The Daily Telegraph, 14 May 1984, p. 16.
17 Tim D. White, Gen Suwa and Berhane Asfaw, ‘Australopithecus ramidus, a New Species of Early Hominid from Aramis, Ethiopia’, in Nature, 371 (1994), pp. 306–312.
18 Tim D. White, Gen Suwa and Berhane Asfaw, ‘Ardipithecus ramidus, a New Species of Early Hominid from Aramis, Ethiopia’, in Nature, 375 (1995), p. 88.
19 James Owen, ‘“Lucy’s Baby”—World’s Oldest Child—Found by Fossil Hunters’, 20 September 2006, at: nationalgeographic.com.
20 Alemseged Zeresenay et al., ‘A Juvenile Early Hominin Skeleton from Dikika, Ethiopia’, in Nature, 443 (21 September 2006), pp. 296–301.
21 ‘“Lucy’s Baby” Found in Ethiopia’, 20 September 2006, at: news. bbc.co.uk.
22 Brad Harrub, ‘Lucy’s Baby?’ (2006), at: apologeticspress.org.
23 Bernard Wood, ‘A Precious Little Bundle’, in Nature, 443 (21 September 2006), pp. 278–281.
24 Russell L. Ciochon, ‘The Mystery Ape of Pleistocene Asia’, in Nature, 459 (18 June 2009), pp. 910–911.
25 G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (EasyRead Comfort Edition, 2006), p. 25, at: books. google.co.uk.
26 John Gurche, an American artist and sculptor, stated in an article in National Geographic Magazine that he painted whites in the eyes of an Australopithecus afarensis as he wanted to get a human soul into this ape-like face to indicate something about its destiny (National Geographic Magazine, 189/3 (March 1996), pp. 96–117).
27 Wood, Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction, p. 78.
28 Ibid. p. 81.
29 See, for example, Wood, Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction.
30 Bernard Wood, ‘Who Are We?’, in New Scientist, no. 2366 (26 October 2002), p. 44.
31 US Census Bureau, International Data Base (December 2008 Update).
32 Michael Ruse, ‘Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians’, in National Post (13 May 2000), p. B-3.
33 From an interview in WORLD Magazine, reprinted in Evangelicals Now (August 2003).
34 ‘Darwinism: Science or Natural Philosophy?’, in Origins Research, 16/1 (1994); also at: arn.org.
35 Laura Sheahen and Dr Richard Dawkins, ‘The Problem with God: Interview with Richard Dawkins’, 11 November 2005, at: beliefnet.com/News/Science-Religion/2005/11/The-Problem-With-God-Interview-With-Richard-Dawkins.aspx.
36 William Provine, ‘No Free Will’, in Margaret W. Rossiter, (ed.), Catching up with the Vision (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999), p. S123.
37 Paul Johnson, ‘Where the Darwinian Fundamentalists are Leading Us’, in The Spectator, 23 April 2005, p. 32.
38 This comparison follows closely that given in A. J. Monty White and Dr Tommy Mitchell, ‘Is Evolution a Religion?’ in Ken Ham, (ed.), The New Answers Book 2 (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2008), pp. 207–217.
39 A Professor of Biology once told me that he believed Darwin’s writings to be inspired, and that he read from On the Origin of Species for at least twenty minutes every night before retiring to bed.
40 Jeremy Rifkin, Algeny (New York: Viking, 1983), p. 244.
Chapter 10
General conclusion
The title of his book is set in the form of a question: ‘What about origins?’ As we have seen, this question can be answered with another: ‘Evolution or creation?’ And as we have also seen, these two accounts of origins are irreconcilable: one account attempts to explain origins naturalistically; the other account is supernatural.
Evolution teaches that there are no reasons for the existence of the universe, the solar system, the earth, the myriad life forms on earth or humans. This is reflected in the teachings and writings of atheists when they talk about living in a universe that has no design or purpose, and where there is no evil and no good—nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. The story of evolution is totally directionless and is without purpose, serving only to ensure the survival of the fittest. According to evolution, the universe is the result of ‘nothing’ exploding. Life on earth is the result of inorganic compounds linking up to form complex organic molecules that were capable of reproducing themselves without the intervention of any intelligent designer. Humans are here because an odd group of fish had a peculiar fin anatomy that evolved into limbs so that terrestrial animals could evolve, and because of a huge meteor that struck the earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, thus giving mammals a chance to evolve that would not otherwise have been available. According to evolution, humans are not the pinnacle of evolution, because evolution will continue; as a result, humans will either become extinct as they fail to evolve, or they will evolve into a new kind of creature that will definitely not be human.
Creation, on the other hand, can be summed up in one verse of Scripture: ‘For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day’ (Exod. 20:11). Creation also teaches why God created—he did so for his own pleasure: ‘Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created’ (Rev. 4:11, KJV).
Creation teaches that there is a purpose for the universe. It was created so that it would declare the glory of God: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament [the expanse of heaven] shows His handiwork’ (Ps. 19:1). Creation teaches that there is a purpose for the earth—God created it so that it could support life, so that it could be inhabited by humans: ‘For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else’ (Isa. 45:18, KJV). Creation teaches that there is a purpose for humans—to have dominion over God’s creation: ‘Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”’ (Gen. 1:26).
Finally, the reason for our existence is given in the Westminster Catechism, when, in response to the question about what is the chief and highest end of humankind, the answer is given that we should glorify God and enjoy him for ever. This should be the focus of our desire—to glorify and enjoy our Creator for ever and ever.
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Evolution: good science?
Exposing the ideological
nature of Darwin’s theory
DOMINIC STATHAM
160PP, ILLUSTRATED PAPERBACK
978–1–84
625–170–2
Darwin’s theory of evolution is often presented as scientifically proven fact. Few are aware, however, that there are serious problems with the theory. We are only told about the evidence that appears to support it, yet many scientific observations seriously undermine it.
Using plain English, Dominic Statham explains the main arguments presented by evolutionists and reveals their major flaws. He shows that much of the scientific data is actually consistent with a biblical account of creation and gives readers confidence to hold fast to the Bible as the true revelation of God, his creation and his dealings with mankind.