Two Belief Systems
In the interview with my Christian Evolutionist friend, he offered the following. ‘I believe in the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, but Adam and Eve, if they were there, were not the first people on the earth. There were many before them. Evolution has gone on for millions of years before the Bible was written.’ This means that God’s perfect world was formed upon the graves of dead creatures for approximately thirteen billion years. I question as to whether God would call it all “very good”. However, these are things you must study for yourself.
There is question we must all answer --- Are the two belief systems compatible? The points listed will only be meaningful for those who take the Bible as their authority. If it is doubted or some parts seen as merely poetry or tradition or lost over time, the points will be discounted. The non-Christian Evolutionist should consider them in his study of Christianity and make a decision as to whether his belief is going to be based solidly on the Word of God or on the wisdom of man.
1. In the interview with my Christian Evolutionist friend, he offered the following. ‘I believe in the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, but Adam and Eve, if they were there, were not the first people on the earth. There were many before them. Evolution has gone on for millions of years before the Bible was written.’ This means that God’s perfect world was formed upon the graves of dead creatures for approximately thirteen billion years. I question as to whether God would call it all “very good”. However, these are things you must study for yourself.
2. There is question we must all answer --- Are the two belief systems compatible? The points listed will only be meaningful for those who take the Bible as their authority. If it is doubted or some parts seen as merely poetry or tradition or lost over time, the points will be discounted. The non-Christian Evolutionist should consider them in his study of Christianity and make a decision as to whether his belief is going to be based solidly on the Word of God or on the wisdom of man.
3. In the evolutionary model, man evolved by a long-age process called macro-evolution. Mutations slowly caused him to change from a primate-kind to man-kind, homo sapiens. In the creation model, every creature was created to produce “after his kind”, which means kinds do not change into other kinds. Many say ‘kind’ is not a scientific word, but we all know what it means. Species can breed together, even if they look different, but kinds can never have a viable offspring and continue on to make a different kind. Microevolution or natural selection does have changes within kinds, but microevolution does not change fish into amphibians, birds into dinosaurs or primates into homo sapiens. Man is not an animal. He was created a human being by a loving God from the dust of the ground, and his offspring can only be human beings.
4. On the sixth day of creation God said His work was “very good”. There was no sin, no death and everything was perfect. In evolution there is no sixth day and everything is always involved in a process of change. Some changes gave the edge over others and they survived; the others died.
5. In the evolutionary model, death began soon after life was formed. This has continued for 13.5 billion years. We see the evidence in the fossils, although the length of time is in dispute. Dead things don’t have a label on them - I DIED FIVE MILLION YEARS AGO. The dates given to fossils are speculation, by whatever belief the calculations are achieved. In the creation model, death arose only after Adam and Eve sinned. God said not to eat a particular tree, “… for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Genesis 2:17. Prior to their sin, death did not exist. If death is only a natural end to life, obedience means nothing. The apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For by one man’s disobedience (the) many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall (the) many be made righteous.” Romans 5:18.19.
6. In the creation model, animals did not prey on each other before sin; all were vegetarians, in fact vegans. In evolution animals preyed on other animals for survival; many still do. In the past some creatures were vegetarians, and some are still vegetarians today. In fact, many dinosaurs were vegetarians, unlike portrayed in Jurassic Park. With death a part of the natural process of life, there is no promise that death will be destroyed.
7. The creation of this world was planned by a loving God, giving us confidence that the world will not accidentally come to an end. In evolution, there was no plan, and it could just as easily come to an end. The promise of God is that Christ will return and take His children to His home in heaven. Everything left will be burnt up, then the earth will be renewed into its original beauty. Jesus will bring His children back to receive the earth as their eternal home. “The meek shall inherit the earth.” Matthew 5:5. Psalm 37:9. Jesus will be King over a beautiful earth and His people will serve Him with love and thankfulness for eternity.
8. When God gave a command for Adam and Eve to obey, it taught cause and effect -- happiness and blessings for obedience, consequences for disobedience. In evolution, there are no commands; everyone does what it right in his own eyes, of which the Bible says “…the ends thereof are the ways of death.” Proverbs 14:12.
9. After Adam and Eve sinned, they covered themselves with fig leaves, which is a spiritual lesson about the unrighteousness of our own works. Isaiah says they are as “filthy rags.” Isaiah 64:6. When God removed the fig leaves, He covered the guilty pair with the skin of a slain animal, a spiritual lesson that shows our need for the righteousness of the Lamb of God who was slain for us on the cross of Calvary. In evolution there are no lessons of sin and righteousness.
10. The creation account is the foundation for the days of the week, the seven-day week. Without it there is nothing to mark off this time. Evolution cannot do this.
11. In creation there is a Law and a Judgment. In evolution, there is no accountability, nothing.
12. In creation there is hope for the future because Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sins. Those who surrender to Him are promised life everlasting, a resurrection from the dead and a home in heaven. “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16. In evolution, there is no hope, nothing.
To conclude this page, we will finish with portion of an article by Richard Dawkins writing on design and illusion. You be the judge as to where the illusion lies. (Brackets are his own)
“The world is divided into things that look designed (like birds and airliners) and things that don’t (rocks and mountains). Things that look designed are divided into those that really are designed (submarines and tin openers) and those that aren’t (sharks and hedgehogs). The diagnostic of things that look (or are) designed is that their parts are assembled in ways that are statistically improbable in a functional direction. They do something well: for instance, fly.
Darwinian natural selection can produce an uncanny illusion of design. An engineer would be hard put to decide whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant. So powerful is the illusion of design, it took humanity until the mid-19th century to realize that it is an illusion.
In 1859, Charles Darwin announced one of the greatest ideas ever to occur to a human mind: cumulative evolution by natural selection. Living complexity is indeed order of magnitude too improbable to have come about by chance. But only if we assume that all the luck has to come in one fell swoop. When cascades of small chance steps accumulate, you can reach prodigious heights of adaptive complexity. That cumulative build-up is evolution. Its guiding force is natural selection.” www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/dawkins_evolution.htm
I take my stand with the Master Designer and His powerful living Word.
Will you stand with me?
On interviewing a friend on the topic, he said, 'I don't know how it happened and it doesn't matter. Scientists are always updating their discoveries, even what was believed to be a fixed law, because science continues to discover new information. If a scientist says something is true, that's okay. If in a few years they find it was wrong and now have something better, that's okay too. The fact is we are here. How we got here doesn't matter. I believe the Bible is true because I have my faith. Science tells us things the Bible does not deal with.'
I asked, 'Did God begin the evolutionary process?'
He replied. 'He could have done so, but it doesn't matter. I believe in God and I believe in science. I love science. It has given us so many wonderful things. Scientists have to have theories before they come to the truth.'
Not every Christian Evolutionist might be so easy-going, but no doubt all have a love of science. Creationists do too, although to many this may not appear to be so. The man interviewed is correct in saying they must have theories before coming to truth. It is correctly called the 'theory of evolution' because experiments are still being conducted to prove it. Einstein experimented over one hundred times on a light globe before he was successful. In other words, he had one hundred theories and only the last one proved correct.
When it comes to the evolution of life on our planet, there are at least ten different theories, including life coming from another part of the universe. Although this might satisfy some, it still does not answer the question as to the origin of life. Not even Charles Darwin answered this question in his book, 'On the Origin of the Species'. He dealt with Natural Selection, but not with where or how life originated.
Where did life come from is a question asked of Evolutionists. One answered, “Scientists are exploring several possible locations for the origin of life, including tide pools and hot springs. However, some scientists have recently narrowed in on the hypothesis that life originated near a deep sea hydrothermal vent. The chemicals found in these vents and the energy they provide could have fuelled many of the chemical reactions necessary for the evolution of life.” http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
Another said, “Experiments suggest that organic molecules could have been synthesized in the atmosphere of early Earth and rained down into the oceans…. Some cells began to evolve modern metabolic processes and out-competed those with older forms of metabolism.” Ibid.
Still another. “Biologists use the DNA sequences of modern organisms to reconstruct the tree of life and to figure out the likely characteristics of the most recent common ancestor of all living things – the ‘trunk’ of the tree of life…. But what came before it? We know that this last common ancestor must have had ancestors of its own – a long line of forebears forming the root of the tree of life – but to learn about them, we must turn to other lines of evidence.” https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=981090773. Quoted in http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
The writer continues speaking about organisms, nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) that are necessary to build proteins, and says, “Experiments can help scientists figure out how the molecules involved in the RNA world arose. These experiments serve as ‘proofs of concept’ for hypotheses about steps in the origin of life – in other words, if a particular chemical reaction happens in a modern lab… the same reaction could have happened on Earth and could have played a role in the origin of life.” Further he says, “Origins is a huge knotty problem – but that doesn’t mean it’s an insoluble one.”
Another wrote, “Many theories of the origin of life have been proposed, but since it’s hard to prove or disprove them, no fully accepted theory exists.” Diana Northup, a cave biologist at the University of New Mexico. Another writer said, “most scientists today agree that life arose from non-living matter.” www.space.com
Be that as it may, how did the different kinds of animals arise?
There are two evolutionary terms -- microevolution and macroevolution. One (microevolution) relates to single species and the changes that take place through natural selection over a very short time. This is well-known by farmers and others who breed animals or crops to gain certain characteristics. The other one (macroevolution) relates to the tree of life and many species. While microevolution is diversity within species, macroevolution is the transformation of species, called speciation.
One writer said, “It is not necessarily easy to ‘see’ macroevolutionary history; there are no firsthand accounts to be read. Instead, we reconstruct the history of life using multiple lines of evidence, including geology, fossils, and living organisms.” http://evolution.berkley.edu
Another writer said, “All living beings have developed over time from ancestors through a series of changes. That life has evolved over long periods of time, with all forms of life related to one another, is a scientifically well-established fact.” www.mnh.si.edu/press_office/statements/evolution.htm
The Orion Nebula http://en.wikipedia.org/orionnebula
The stars in the night sky are incredible, but they are inorganic wonders. They do not live. Truth is alive with the power of God. And God's truth will last for eternity.
The Helix Nebula NGC7293. www.2.lowell.edu
The Christian Evolutionist on the other hand sees God putting in place the process of evolution, which for millennia has operated on its own, bringing into being everything in the universe. This, they believe, is God's method of creation. The non-Christian Evolutionist also believes in this process, but without God being the Prime Mover.
Evolutionists do not speak a great deal about the origin of the universe. The majority look at the Big Bang and believe everything evolved from there. One scientist prefaced his article with the words “it took quite a bit more than seven days to create the universe as we know it today”, which of course is comparing it to the Bible account. He wrote, “Our universe was born 13.7 billion years ago in a massive expansion that blew space up like a gigantic balloon.” www.space.com
He continued, “... the very beginning of the universe remains pretty murky. Scientists think they can pick the story up at about 10 to the minus 36 seconds -- one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second -- after the Big Bang.” Ibid. He wrote later in his paper, “While much about the universe's first few moments remains speculative, the question of what preceded the Big Bang is even more mysterious and hard to tackle.” Ibid.
He suggested “the question may even be nonsensical” because if the universe came from nothing, the Big Bang marks the beginning of time. This means there would be nothing before it. Some feel it could just be empty space before the Big Bang.
Another writer said the same. “The Big Bang theory is fantastic at describing everything after that, but before it, we’re a bit hazy. Get this: At small enough scales, we don’t even know if the word ‘before’ even makes sense! At incredibly tiny scales (and I’m talking tinier than the tiniest thing you could possibly imagine), the quantum nature of reality rears its ugly head at full strength, rendering our neat, orderly, friendly space time into a broken jungle gym of loops and tangles and rusty spokes. Notions of intervals in time or space don’t really apply at those scales. Who knows what’s going on?” www.livescience.com
He continued, “There are, of course, some ideas out there – models that attempt to describe what ‘ignited;’ or ‘seeded’ the Big Bang, but at this stage, they’re pure speculation. If these ideas can provide observational clues – for example, a special imprint on the CMB, then hooray – we can do science! If not, they’re just bedtime stories.” Ibid.
He also wrote, “The Big Bang theory is not a theory of the creation of the universe. Full stop. Done. Call it. Burn that sentence into your brain. Say it before you go to sleep, and first thing when you wake up. The Big Bang theory is a model of the history of the universe, tracing the evolution of the cosmos to its very earliest moments. And that’s it. Don’t try to stuff anything else into that framework. Just stop. You can keep your meta safely away from my physics, thank you very much.” www.livescience.com
On the other hand, quantam mechanics suggests “that the universe did not start with the Big Bang, but instead has existed forever, which means that the cosmos did not have a beginning and does not have an end.... In other words, there is no singularity (or singular event).” http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html Another scientist said of this study that while it may appear to suggest the Big Bang did not happen, “the event still occurred.” He wrote on his website, “The big bang is a robust scientific theory that isn't going away, and this new paper does nothing to question its legitimacy.” http://www.techtimes.com/
Although this is just a drop in a bucket of information available on the beginning of the universe, it gives an idea of the thinking of those who believe in Evolution on the subject. The ideas vary regarding the Big Bang and few venture back any further.
When Christian men and women look at a the night sky, they see God's handiwork, for the “heaven's declare the glory of God…” Psalm 19:1. Whether Orion, the Milkway or any constellation in the night sky, God's handiwork is seen and His voice is heard amidst these beauties, for “there is no language where their voice is not heard.” Psalm 19:3. Of course, His actual voice is not heard, but that He is speaking, there is no doubt.
A non-Christian looking at these wonders will be no doubt be thrilled with their majesty and beauty, but God's handiwork is not seen, His voice is not heard. Isn't it amazing that we both see the same beauty and are thrilled by it, yet have totally different concepts of how it came into being.
The Creationist saw (by faith) God speaking as each wonder came into being, for “by the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth… For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.” Psalm 33:6.9.
When creating this earth, God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth' : and it was so.” Genesis 1:11. On the fifth day of creation God filled the waters with fish and the sky with birds. And they brought forth abundantly “after his kind” and “God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:21. On the sixth day, God filled the land with all kinds of creatures, cattle, creeping things, and beasts “after his kind.” Genesis 1:24.25.
Everything was created ready for God's masterpiece – human beings. The fertile soil was covered with lush grass, the trees bore delicious fruit, the rivers and lakes were filled with crystal clear water, the sky above was filled fresh air. Fish darted about in the water, thousands of birds filled the skies with song, the land was covered with animals of all shapes and sizes, all in harmony with each other. Bees buzzed among the flowers, butterflies flitted about. All was prepared --- air, water, the sun's warmth, food, companions --- the earth was ready for God’s special creation.
And on the sixth day, God formed Adam from the dust of the ground. He is a special creation into which God personally breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. The earth had been prepared for this stately prince and he was given dominion over every living creature. God looked upon all His creation and said, “Behold, it is very good.” Genesis 1:31. On the seventh day, God rested from all His work, sanctifying the seventh day upon which man was to rest and remember His Creator. Genesis 2:1-3.
This is the story of creation through the eyes of the Creationist -- God spoke and it was done.
Creation International Ministries
Truth is incredible -- as incredible as a the Orion Nebula in the night sky