Creation and Evolution:
Irresolvable Conflicts
Romans 12:2 says that we are not to be conformed to this world but are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, by the renovation of our thinking. The term there for world is the Greek word KOSMOS which has to do with an orderly arrangement of something. In this context it has to do with the orderly arrangement of thought. Every culture, whether it is a primitive stone-age culture, and Asian culture, an inner urban culture, or whether we are talking in the broader sense of a western culture versus an Islamic culture versus a Jewish culture, whatever the culture is, every culture and every nation has certain characteristics. These characteristics more often than not are built on an assumption that God does not exist, they come out of the human viewpoint of that day and that era. So wherever you are in life, whatever you are doing in life as a believer you need to be aware of the fact that you have been in a sense brainwashed, inculcated with the cosmic thinking of your nation, your culture, your background, and need to be in the process of evaluating, examining all of this thinking that we have in our soul that we pick up from the culture around us in order to remove from our soul the thinking that is human viewpoint and replace it with divine viewpoint.
Psychology has its roots in autonomous human viewpoint thinking, not in biblical thinking, and there is a head to head confrontation between psychological concepts and Christianity. The New Age movement and postmodernism and it is important to recognize that many of these isms that came along, as well as Marxism and socialism which gained their real thrust in the middle of the nineteenth century, all started at roughly the same time. If we go back to the 1830s-1850s we will find that the same core group of thinkers were influential in the founding of all of these basic thought systems. They read each other and they cross-pollinated ideas. Yet the history of the 20th century is really the history of the impact of those mid-nineteenth century ideas on western civilization as western civilization drifted further and further away from the Reformation roots that were laid down in the 16th century.
One of these areas that we haven’t taken time to take out and specifically expose is the area of creation and evolution. Evolutionary thought undergirds so much of what it dominates in our society. Most psychological thinking and concepts of who and what man is is influenced by evolutionary thought. In fact, you can even go out and find a lot of so-called Christian psychologists who have tried to merge psychology with Christianity. They have tried to go over into the realm of psychology and pick up certain elements that are neutral, they sound good. Most of these people have never been trained in the history of ideas and the history of philosophy and don’t realize that these ideas they are picking up are like the fruit at the end of various branches on a tree, and they never take the time to see that there is an integral relationship between the fruit at the end of the branch and the roots which are deep in the soil of atheism and evolutionism and Darwinism. So we have to look at this. If we want to break it down again, psychology, sociology, Marxism, socialism and evolution all have their roots in that same framework of thought that occurs in the 19th century.
What is evolution? Evolution is the idea that it took billions of years for the present universe to develop the way it is, and that it took millions of years for organic molecules to develop, and then millions more years for those simple organic molecules to transform slowly and gradually from simple amoebas and protozoa to the complexity of the modern human being. Two things we will look at. One relates to the development of the universe which took billions of years. Today in the literature it is anything from about 3.7 to 4.7 billion years. We can’t even comprehend a billion, it is such a big number. But it is anywhere from 4 billion to 20 billion years, depending on who you read and how much time they think they need. Then when it comes to the earth, the earth just happened by pure random processes, and in those random processes there was this mix of chemicals—a sort of primordial chemical stew cooking on the stove—and something happened, an electrical discharge, they have no idea what, it is all guesswork.
In scientists’ literature they will admit that they do not have a clue how things happened, and there is one particular event that happened from non-living matter/chemicals and suddenly there was produced a living cell, just by pure random chance. And that has to be their view, they have to hold on to that with all of their might to protect their whole theory. But as we will see, that is impossible.
Any Christian who has ever tried to talk to anybody about evolution will have heard people say: “Well you believe in evolution, don’t you? Evolution just means change. Everybody believes in change.” But that is really a debater’s technique to try to avoid the whole issue. There are two types of evolution. There is what is called micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is what we would call change which are small DNA or genetic changes within a species or kind, e.g., you can take two different kinds of dogs and breed them together so that you have a new breed of dog, but it is still a dog. It hasn’t become a cat, a rat, a bird; it is still a dog. Macro-evolution is the idea that there is slow change and transformation from one species to another. This is the whole idea of amoeba demand. What we are talking about is macro-evolution, the idea that there is change and development across the boundaries—where fish eventually crawl out of the water and become amphibious, they develop lungs instead of gills, and eventually they become reptiles, then eventually those reptiles become mammals, and eventually the mammals develop into the highest order of animal, which is man. That shows that there is one chain of being, and this is a critical idea in the whole history of evolution, that all life forms are all part of the same connected chain of life which goes back to the distant mists of history. That is part and parcel of almost every ancient pagan belief, this idea of a chain of being. That undergirds so much of psychology today and some of these other ideas that come along.
One of the classic illustrations that is given in most textbooks is the idea of peppered moths in England; a white moth with black peppering on them. They would be camouflaged on a Beech tree. Then in the middle 19th century as there was the development of industry and the use of coal fuels and the heavy pollution that came about, what would happen is that the soot would get on the trees and all of a sudden these white moths would become exposed. Now the birds, which would eat the peppered moths, would see them, they wouldn’t be camouflaged against that background. As time went on the number of white moths that originally outnumbered the number of black moths became less and less. There were always black moths with white peppering but they were in the minority. As a result of the pollution and the soot from the smokestacks the white moths became visible and were eaten. As years went on there was a shift in the moth population and now 95% of the moths were black with white spots, and the white moths were disappearing. This is given as an example in the textbook of evolution—survival of the fittest. The point is, however, it is still a moth!
So the basic theory of evolution can be boiled down to the idea that in the beginning there was nothing and there was no one, and as a result of nothing plus no one everything else came into existence. That is the basic mathematical formula and if you boil it down like that it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Nothing plus no one equals everything, or time plus chance. If you give something enough time plus chance there is going to develop order, intelligence and complexity. This is the root of all evolutionary thought: time plus the element of chance; given enough time anything can happen. But that is not true. Given enough time I will never win the lottery. Put a typewriter in a cage with a monkey and he will eventually type out, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But that will never happen. The odds are impossible.
There is a direct conflict between the theory of evolution and what the Bible teaches. The first conflict is the conflict of presuppositions and biases. We have to realize that everyone has some sort of presupposed starting point. Everyone has a bias. Scientists want people to think that they start from a position of pure objectivity; they are not going to be influenced by some religious text. But if the religious text happens to be what it claims to be, that is, the direct revelation of God who created everything, and He is an omniscient God who knows everything, and the scientist is not omniscient, then what is going to have more accuracy? If the text of Scripture is what is claims to be it is the revelation of God, is 100 per cent accurate, and it is discarded as part of the evidence by a scientist, then that scientists is not free from bias, he has a presupposition or a bias at the very beginning that has excluded a large piece of the evidence. So he predetermines his conclusion because he limits the evidence he is willing to examine at the very beginning. When you admit that your starting point is an anti-supernatural empiricism or rationalism then you have already determined from the very beginning before you started talking about any evidence that God does not exist and that God cannot communicate, and that any communication that claims to be from God is just something that is made up by man. That is the scientists’ starting point; they have already predetermined the situation by their assumption.
One question we need to ask somebody who says they are not biased, not prejudiced, they are really objective, and that if you want to just prove God to me, I’m willing to listen to the evidence; what would constitute evidence for a person like that? Ask an evolutionist: What do you take as proof that God exists? The Bible claims in Romans 1:19-20 that there is more than sufficient evidence that God exists: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God [the potential of all that could be known about God] is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” If somebody goes out and says, I don’t see God, then His evidence is clear; they are distorting the evidence—“suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.” There is clear evidence every time you look at a molecule, every time you look at a flower, every time you look at some remarkable creatures that are in the world today, it is evidence that there is a designer; there is an intelligence behind that design. But man, because of sin and rejection of God at God-consciousness, suppresses that truth in unrighteousness, and in looking at all of this evidence that God exists, just denies it. So you would ask a scientist what would really constitute proof, and he would say he doesn’t know. That is because he has more proof than he needs but he has rejected that. He really doesn’t know what would constitute proof, and if he doesn’t know what constitutes proof he wouldn’t know if it was proved or not. So what would a rationalist or empiricist accept as constituting proof? If you don’t know what would prove the conclusion then you wouldn’t know it if you saw it if the proof was right in front of you, because you have already predetermined the conclusion. So the first conflict that we have is a conflict of presuppositions and biases. In evolution the presupposition is anti-supernatural: there is no God who is involved in the creation.
The next conflict between the creationist and the evolutionist is that evolution is a religion. The claim of the evolutionist is that they are scientists and they are not going to take into account religion, creation is just a religious belief. The problem is that evolution is also a religion. In fact, evolution is as much a religion as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, or any other religious system. It is a system of faith. For example, how do we know how old the rocks are? One way they date the rocks is by the fossils. How old are the fossils. The fossils are dated by the kind of rock they are found in, so it is a circular argument. The fact of evolution is the backbone of modern biology. Modern biologists believe that evolution is not merely a theory; it is a fact. This puts biology in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory. Evolution is not proved at all. Therefore we must ask the question: Is this a science or a faith? If it is not proved, is it science or is it faith?
Quote from Dr. Harrison Matthews, an evolutionist and the writer of the introduction to Darwin’s book, The Origin of the Species. The full title of The Origin of the Species as it was originally published is, Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Almost all of the founding fathers of evolution—Darwin, Huxley, and others—all believed that the white races are superior to all of the other races and all of the colored races are actually degenerations in the development of the human race, and that they would eventually die off and the white races would be supreme. That has pretty much been expunged from modern evolution because they find it embarrassing. It was that idea that gave root to what was called “social Darwinism” which was the foundation of the whole Nazi theory. Hitler was an evolutionist and he believed that in the process of evolution the Arian races were the superior races. Nazi beliefs were all founded on social Darwinism. They find that embarrassing, so you won’t find that talked about much anymore. Matthews’ quote:
“The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is in the peculiar position of being a science founded on unproven theory. Is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation. Both are concepts which believers know to be true, but neither up to the present has been capable of proof.”
Furthermore, Dr. T. N. Tamezian, who served on the Atomic Energy Commission, stated in an interview in 1959 that scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution we do not have one iota of fact.”
If evolution is not science and a religion what is the evolutionary faith based on? It is impossible for science to test or validate any of the assumptions on which evolution is based. Experiments can’t test it, they can’t be produced in the laboratory, and the basis of scientific methodology is that you are able to reproduce the experiments in the laboratory in order to demonstrate the truth of the theory; and that can’t take place. Evolution is based on seven assumptions, according to evolutionist G. A. Kirkut, that are the foundation of everything in evolution. He outlines the following seven assumptions:
a) Non-living things gave rise to living material—also known as spontaneous generation.
b) Spontaneous generation occurred only once. (Earlier evolutionists would say it occurred several times) From that one single event, that one molecule developing by chance happened at the right time and was preserved long enough to replicate itself. (Inside that cell there had to be the capacity for reproduction. That involves an incredible amount of information inside of a cell for that cell to be able to replicate itself, so we are not talking about something that is simple. In Darwin’s day he thought a cell was something very simple. Today we know that a cell is incredibly complex and that it takes a tremendous amount of information for that cell to even be in existence)
c) Viruses, bacteria, plants and animals are all related.
d) Protozoa (single-celled life forms) gave rise to metazoa (multiple-celled life forms).
e) Various invertebrate are interrelated—one developed into the other.
f) The invertebrates gave rise to the vertebrates.
g) Within the vertebrates the fish gave rise to amphibian, the amphibian to reptiles, the reptiles to birds and mammals.
These assumptions listed virtually define everything in evolutionary teaching. Then Kirkuk states that all of them are assumptions and that not one of them is based on any factual, demonstrable, experimental, testable or reproducible evidence. Their theory is nothing more than an assumption.
Over the years a number of mathematicians have tried to determine the mathematical probability of evolution and of spontaneous generation. Particularly they have looked at the mathematical probability that all of the necessary factors could come together in just the right way and at the right time that non-living chemicals would in one purely random act generate a living cell, and that this cell then survived in a hostile environment long enough to reproduce itself. Where does all of this come from and how could this take place? If all of the universe was crammed with electron particles and the universe is not currently filled with electronic particles, then the maximum number of particles that could fill the universe would be ten to the one hundred and thirtieth power. (That is ten followed by 130 zeros) If each particle in that universe could perform one hundred billion, billion events (i.e., 10 to the 120th power) each second, and then allow ten to the 20th seconds of cosmic history, i.e., 3000-billion years. (Remember, time plus chance equals organization) then what you have is 10 to the 270th power events possible, i.e., 10 followed by 270 zeros. To get a series of as few as 1500 events to take place in the right sequence (an extremely conservative guess; in a cell you have thousands of events) and under the right circumstances the mathematical probability that you would produce a living cell is 10 to the 450th power. That is one chance in ten followed by 450 zeros. That is just for spontaneous generation of that one single cell necessary to start organic life. We are not talking about what would be involved in producing an eye. An eye is one of the greatest problems that evolutionists have because in the development of any part of the eye until it was a fully functional eye it would be some sort of negative development—what good is this single thing if it doesn’t work? It would be a hindrance to the creature. Until you had the fully developed eye no part of it would be considered valuable or functional in the development of the creature.
The basic idea in Darwinism is the idea of survival of the fittest and adaptations and mutations that graduated over time. The problem with Darwinism as it emphasizes the survival of the fittest is that it never explains the arrival of the fittest. How did it get there in the first place? As one evolutionist pointed out, one of the major problems in Darwin’s book Origin of the Species is he never explains the origin of the species. Survival of the fittest only shows why some species survive and some don’t, it doesn’t explain how they got there in the first place.
Most mathematicians who have worked on these probability figures over the years have come up with even a greater improbability.
So that leads us to the theories of the ultimate origins of the universe. There are two basic theories: the big bang theory, which is the predominant theory, and the steady state theory. The big bang view is that the universe and all it contains is the result of matter so dense that matter itself was invisible, suddenly exploding in a super explosion that eventually resulted in the present orderly composition of the universe. Just the very notion seems to be absurd.
In a book called The New Story of Science, Robert Agross and George Stanshew, write that the universe began as a particle that was infinitely dense (how can it be infinitely dense?) and occupied no space (how could it occupy no space and even be in existence?). This event is said to have taken place between five and twenty billion years ago. So, first of all, the big bang theory assumes that matter and energy are eternal. Matter had to be eternally present before the big bang or there would have been nothing to explode. Therefore, what we learn from this is that everyone believes in something eternal. Either they believe in something that is eternal in the form of impersonal matter or energy, or they believe in an impersonal force. This is a faith statement. It is faith, not science.
Second, the big bang theory attempts to explain only the ordering and the organization of matter and energy, it doesn’t seek to explain the origin of matter and energy. The basic problem is if matter and energy are eternal (which the theory demands) then matter and energy would, by the time of the big bang, have reached a state of equilibrium, i.e., it would no longer be in some sort of volatile situation that could explode. This is based on two laws of physics that are violated by the theory of evolution. These two laws are referred to as the two laws of thermodynamics. In the first law of thermodynamics we have the law that matter and energy are not created or destroyed. This means that if there is no matter that is created or destroyed then you have a finite amount of matter. It is not being added to, it is not decreasing. You start off with an X amount of matter. Remember that according to their theory matter is eternal.
The second law of thermodynamics says that all matter or energy is moving to a state of entropy (a non-usable state). It is therefore in a state of decline, moving from order to disorder. If matter and energy are eternal and you start off with a finite amount of matter and energy, and all matter and energy is moving from a state of order to disorder, than an eternity ago we ran out of usable energy and usable matter—because you don’t start with an infinite amount of matter, you start off with a finite amount. And it is always moving from a state of order to disorder so that an eternity ago it reached the state of pure entropy where there is no more usable energy or matter. So that is an internal conflict between the theory of evolution and the basic laws of thermodynamics. But in terms of the big bang it also indicates that by the time of the big bang event you would have reached the state of pure equilibrium and there would have been nothing to go bang and nothing to cause it to go bang. So that necessitates that there would have to be some sort of external principle or force on that matter in order to cause it to go bang. That, of course, is unacceptable because it brings us face to face with the idea of God!
The Bible teaches that matter and energy are finite and created, as does the first law of thermodynamics, and the biblical data fits scientific laws more consistently than the theory of evolution.
Furthermore there is another conflict between evolution and creation, and that is that in evolution they can’t explain what holds the solar system together, what holds the universe together, because gravity is a function of mass and there is not enough mass in the solar system, not enough mass in the galaxies, not enough mass in the universe, to hold it together. There is a missing mass problem. Of course, Colossians 1:16, 17 tells us that everything is held together by the Lord Jesus Christ. That solves the missing mass problem.
Another conflict that we have is that according to the Bible Jesus Christ created mankind in the image and likeness of God, but according to evolution man developed over millions of years, through billions of evolutionary mistakes, and the death of billions of creatures. So on the one hand you have God creating man instantly, and on the other hand you have millions of years of evolutionary mistakes and sidetracks, and the death of billions of creatures.
According to evolution man is fundamentally no different from any other animal, micro-bacteria or plant, he is all a part of that same chain of being. That is why when in terms of the modern ecological movement it is such a terrible evil to go out and chop down a tree in the rain forest—because we are all part of that same chain of being. Man is part of that chain of being; he can’t go in and be over nature as the Bible says. Furthermore, if you try to make any form of compromise with evolution, and form of accommodationist view such as theistic evolution, the day-age theory, or progressive evolution, then you have a god who must be incredibly violent, as well as inept, who required millions of years of ferocious animals and death—the whole idea of the survival of the fittest is built on death, something has to survive meaning something doesn’t survive. The basic mechanism of evolution is death, destruction, violence.
If humans evolved from apes and other creatures then Jesus Christ who was born of the virgin Mary would be genetically linked not just to mankind but to all animals. Again, this is against the statement of Mark 10:6, which specifically says that God created Adam and the woman. Man was created fully mature with the appearance of age. They would reach out and eat of a tree, the fruit of which had the appearance of age. So everything was created and had an appearance of age, and that is not a deception, it is not a subterfuge. For example, in John chapter two we know that Jesus transformed the water into wine. What does it take to make good wine? One element is age, yet Jesus created the best wine that has ever been drunk in human history in a second. It had the appearance of age even though it wasn’t old. In creation there is the appearance of age, and so that is going to affect any kind of dating mechanism. The Bible is in complete and 100% conflict with what is taught in evolution. There are numerous attempts over the years to try to harmonize the Bible’s account of creation with the myth of evolution; but either the Bible is true or evolution is true, you can’t force any kind of synthesis between the two, there are so many radical differences.
The contrasts:
1) The Bible claims that God is the creator of all things in Genesis one. Evolution claims that random events and chance processes, plus no information or person, accounts for the existence of all things.
2) The Bible claims that the present world was recreated in six literal 24-hour days. Evolution says that the world evolved over eons of time.
3) The Bible claims that creation is completed. Whatever laws were in effect, whatever processes were in effect between day one and day six, ceased at the end of the sixth day. Evolution claims that those processes and laws, physical and biological, are still continuing the same today as forever.
4) The Bible says the ocean was created before the land. Evolution says that land came before the oceans.
5) The Bible says that there is an atmosphere between the two hydrospheres. Evolution says that there was one continuous atmosphere and hydrosphere in the early earth.
6) The Bible claims the first life was on land. Evolution claims that life began in the oceans.
7) The Bible claims that the first life was land plants. Evolution claims that the first life were marine organisms.
8) The Bible says that the earth was created before the sun and the stars. Evolution says that the sun and the starts came into being before the earth.
9) The Bible says that fruit trees were created before the fish. Evolution says fish came into being before fruit trees.
10) The Bible says that all stars were made on the fourth day. Evolution says that stars evolved at various times down through the ages.
11) The Bible says that birds and fish were created on day five. Evolution says that fish evolved hundreds of millions of years before birds appeared.
12) The Bible says that birds were created before the crawling things, including insects. Evolution says that insects came before birds.
13) The Bible says that whales were created before the reptiles. Evolution says that reptiles were created before whales.
14) The Bible says that birds were created before reptiles. Evolution says that reptiles were created before birds.
15) The Bible says that man was created before there was rain. Evolution says there was rain before man came into being.
16) The Bible says that man came before woman. Evolution says that woman came before man.
17) The Bible says that light was in existence before the stars and the sun were created. Evolution says that the stars and the sun existed before there was any light.
18) The Bible says that plants were created before the sun. Evolution says that the sun was in existence before there were any plants.
19) The Bible says there was an abundance and variety of marine life all at once. Evolution says that marine life gradually developed from a primitive organic blob.
20) The Bible says that man’s body was created from the chemicals of the soil. Evolution claims that man evolved from ape-like ancestors.
21) The Bible claims that man exercised dominion over all organisms. Evolution says that most organisms were extinct before man ever existed.
22) In the Bible man was originally a vegetarian. In evolution man was originally a meat eater, therefore vegetarianism is considered to be a higher thing.
23) In the Bible there are fixed and distinct kinds. In evolution life forms are in a continuous state of flux.
24) In the Bible man’s sin is the cause of physical death in the universe. In evolution, struggle and death were existent long before the evolution of man.
25) In the Bible suffering, death and pain are viewed as abnormal and the result of sin, and were not God’s original creative intent. But according to evolution suffering, death and pain, and therefore evil, are normal.