Theistic Evolution and the Grim Reaper
In our post-Christian world the antithesis between Belief and Unbelief is becoming sharper as the generations pass. Nowhere is this more evident than in the conflict between Biblical Creation and Evolution.
The Christian Mind rests confidently upon the revelation in Genesis of God “creating all things of nothing, in the space of six days, and all very good” (Westminster Shorter Catechism). But in the academies, streets, media, and belief environment of Athens the Unbelieving Mind asserts that the world came into being by chance through a self-developmental process that has taken billions and billions of years. The sheer dominance of theory of Evolution—its endlessly repeated reiteration—has given it the patina of credibility and veracity.
So dominant is Evolutionism within Athens that to cavil is to lose all credibility immediately and be instantly regarded as a total fool. In Athens, to question Evolutionism is equivalent to believing that the moon is made of green cheese. Sure, people do actually believe the moon and cheese myth, but they are nuts. People who believe in Biblical Creation are likewise nuts.
Faced with this universal and implacable rejection of Biblical Creation within Athenian streets some citizens of Jerusalem have lost courage. Firstly, they are uncomfortable with the disrespect and scorn heaped upon Jerusalem, and want to protect the honour of Jerusalem's Lord and defend the dignity of its people. Secondly, they think it is vital to credibility that one be seen to be rational and to have evidence for belief—otherwise, how can the charge that Christians are naïve, credulous, and foolish be counteracted. In a rationalistic world, to be charged with irrationalism or stupidity is equivalent to being charged with blasphemy.
So, regretably, some within Jerusalem have sought to gain a hearing and respect for the Holy City within the academies of Athens by seeking to reconcile the revelation of Genesis with the prevailing doctrines and “evidences” of Evolutionism. But they have only proved to be an embarrassment. They have adulated an emperor who has no clothes. (Actually, that fable is particularly apt to this discussion. The whole nation, you remember, willed itself to believe in the emperor's marvellous set of new clothes, creating all sorts of self and mutually reinforcing mechanisms to persuade everyone of the “facts” until the little boy spoke up. In the case of Biblical Creation versus Evolutionism, Athens has its emperor and fawning credulites, while Jerusalem its little boy.)
Evolutionism was spawned in the womb of the Enlightenment, which declared that to all intents and purposes Nature was god, and god was Nature. Life existed because Nature brought it into being. But how? Well . . . now, there was a plan. A plan so clever you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel.
Over the top of a universe of absolute brute chaos, let's imagine a few laws to “make things work.” “Survival of the fittest” sounds like a handy suggestion. Then let's add a sort of vague notion that things ineluctably move from the simple to the complex―sort of by a magic cosmic force. Hey presto, before you know it, “scientists” all over the world were discovering “evidence” for this actually happening. Then, let's carefully hide in the bottom drawer our starting assumptions, which are a bit embarrassing after all. Let's just talk about the evidence and the facts.
So the theory was proved, so to speak. It had facts on its side! Soon Evolutionism became the new orthodoxy. Sitting on the throne of academic respectability was a gigantic weasel. It took three hundred years to enthrone the weasel, but it got there in the end.
The Enlightenment had effectively replaced the Christian faith by a new religion. Evolutionism does not just have religious implications. It is inescapably a religion in its own right, a cosmogony.
The Christian response has been―by and large―pathetic. There are reasons for this, historical reasons, theological reasons. Lord willing we will deal with these reasons in future posts when we come to tear apart the Enlightenment and expose its poisonous roots, which, it turns out, had been carefully nurtured in the bosom of the Church for over one thousand years before the Enlightenment. This, it will transpire, is the real Da Vinci code conspiracy! But for the most part the sterling response of many in Jerusalem has resembled not a bang, but a whimper when it comes to confronting Evolutionism. The Holy City has not been well served by her citizens in this regard.
There have been many who have sought to deal with Evolutionism by attempting to make room for it within the Christian faith. In following this course they had noble lineage. Had not Kant boasted that he would reconcile rationalism with faith? So, like Kant, there have been many in Jerusalem who have adopted the mindset of Eve in her sin―which is where rationalism began in the first place. It was in the Garden of Eden that the mind of man was elevated to a status equal in authority to God.
Just as Eve conducted some independent empirical research upon the Tree of Life and drew her own conclusions based on the discovered “facts”, so many Christians still harbour vestiges of mental idolatry in their hearts. For them, they agree with the Serpent and Eve that the facts are the facts are the facts. The facts speak louder to us than the Scriptures. They are more authoritative than the Bible. With great sadness, and not a little anger, we have to acknowledge the idolatry of the Enlightenment is alive and well in Jerusalem.
So, there have been many erstwhile Jerusalemites who have thought that if the Bible teaches that God made the entire universe in six days, and if the Bible stresses the twenty-four hour nature of the period by encapsulating each day in the coda, “it was morning and it was evening, the xth day” to convey the literal twenty-four hour period of time―then either the Bible must be wrong or it must be glossed to mean something entirely different. It must be glossed to fit the “facts.” In each of those “days” in Genesis we are now advised to see the passage of millions and millions and millions of years.
Why do they need to wrest the Bible this way? Well, they feel the need to acknowledge the speculations presented as facts by the Evolutionists. Otherwise Christian may be construed as foolish and mindless by unbelivers. So, we will tip the hat to the Athenian pagans, and we will call ourselves theistic evolutionists. We will “make room” for those millions of years demanded by Evolutionism―the theory requires the passage of billions and billions of years; “evidence” being then spun up to fit the theory―and we will posit God, or more accurately, a god superintending the processes of survival of the fittest, and every other patterned order which Evolutionism requires to make any sense at all. Then, we will read this back into Genesis. We will call our position “Theistic Evolution” and, then, like Kant, we will have saved reason and made room for faith. We will even give it additional fancy names―like “Intelligent Design”―to make us feel better.
In fact, Theistic Evolution, like Kant, does not save reason and make room for faith: destroys both reason and faith.
The plain and obvious meaning of the text in Genesis 1 is that of six literal twenty-four hour days. This perspective is reinforced by many other Scriptural evidences, such as references to the seven days in the Fourth Commandment, and references to the government of the sun and the moon over the passage and sequence of time in Genesis. Moreover, from a theological perspective the theory of Theistic Evolution is a nonsense. Why? Theistic Evolution―which is really another variant of the intellectual idol of Evolutionism―requires that death existed in the world long before the entrance of sin.
Evolutionism, including its Theistic variant, postulates death as an intrinsic and necessary part of the evolutionary process. Evolution does not work without death. The fittest survive; the less fit, . . . well, die. However, the Bible declares, “The soul that sins, it shall die.” (Ezekiel 18:4). Moreover, the wages of sin are death. (Romans 6:23). And again, “wherefore as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin . . .” (Romans 5:12).
It is clear that death did not exist in the Creation prior to Adam's fall. Death is the punishment for one reality, and a consequence of one reality, and one reality only―sin.
Theistic evolution says, “Well, no. The Bible is in error here. Death existed prior to sin―has always existed in the creation or natural order. Our theory of Theistic Evolution requires the perpetual and abiding reality of death in all life forms if it is to make any sense, and what the Bible says about it be damned.” So, Theistic Evolutionism destroys the undoubted Christian faith by being forced to hold, either to death not being the juridical punishment for sin, or to a world where sin is instrinsic to Nature and to God's creation of an evil world.
Theistic Evolutionism is an Athenian idol. Against it stands the invincible rock of the Word of the Living God. Against that Rock, Theistic Evolutionism has been, and will be, shattered―a fate which all those who cling to such idols also risk. To all those in Jerusalem who, still thinking like Eve, try to make the Bible fit to their so-called independent empirical analyses, who have created a most disgusting Athenian idolatry in the fantasy of Theistic Evolutionism―to all those we say, “Stop stroking and kissing the weasel.”
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