The Invasion of Evolution and Other Ideas Into Christian Thinking

As nearly as I can tell, the general way the Bible was viewed for centuries changed dramatically in the 1800s. As I study history, until the "Age of Enlightenment", the "Age of Reason", the Bible and science were looked upon as being compatible. They were two areas of study that supported the same foundational truth; God created everything and we owe Him everything. Men read the Bible and then thought, "Hmmm... I believe what this book says, and I wonder how science supports the Bible." Not all men thought that way, but the Bible had always been the final authority. It was above science, because science was observational, and the Bible was seen as inerrant. It was not all that long ago that school teachers and clergymen would never have taken the side of science, giving greater value to its claims than those of the Bible.

What is it that changed? There seemed to be a trend toward rejecting what had before been generally accepted. I may be wrong, but as I see it, the most influential thing to happen in the 1800s was the publication of Robert Chamber's "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" in 1844, and Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species", in 1859. Before those two books were published, the relationship between the Bible and science seemed to be inviolate, even viewed as holy. I know that there were some instances where the church made some pretty bad calls. Insisting that science was wrong, for example about the earth being round, was a stupid call by the church. That was the church though, and not the Bible. The Bible makes it pretty clear that the earth is round. The church evidently wasn't paying attention. That whole exegetical mess with Galileo, and the way he was treated. That wasn't so hot either, but science and the Bible had generally been friendly.

In the decades that those books came out, it seems like those who regarded science above the Bible had been looking for a way to get rid of things spiritual, as though they had been enslaved by any sort of theological thinking, but really by Christianity. The theory of Evolution was elevated to a spiritual place, given a sort of divinity of its own. Even preachers from the pulpit bent toward it, trying to harmonize their own beliefs with Evolution by shoe-horning the events of Genesis 1 and 2 with "fresh" and authoritative information from the latest "scientific" breakthrough. The thinking of many a theologian became compromised by this, and it trickled down into the hearts and minds of many people the world over.

Everybody seems to know what Darwinism is. It basically says that our species originated from an earlier form of some kind. I have heard its process described as, "From goo to you, by way of the zoo." I have no idea who coined that phrase, but it is pretty accurate. Darwin did not actually invent the idea of evolution though. It has been around for a very long time. Darwin, with his book, just contributed to the theory, and somehow, it struck a collective nerve. Why was that? It was because unlike all of the men before Charles Darwin that believed that mankind evolved from the "lower animals", Darwin could supposedly explain how that came about.

Originally, Charles Darwin was not an atheist. He actually believed that his theories about the mechanics of Evolution gave an explanation for the way in which God made life. The Bible and Charles Darwin's model of creation differ greatly though. Darwin theorized that "natural selection" propelled the evolutionary process. He believed that the best variations in a species would perpetuate in the species, and the lesser variations would die out, leaving only more and more evolved and favorable species in their stead. Somehow, Darwin imagined that "selection" involved the guiding, preferential hand of nature in the process, and even though by chance, these variations gave a species the advantage in their respective environments.

One of the many big problems with Darwin's theory, is that there is no evidence for it. I have chatted online with many Evolutionists. The last two men I chatted with wanted to know why Christians choose to ignore all of the evidence for Evolution. So I asked them in turn to name their favorite piece of evidence for Evolution. They simply reiterated that their favorite piece of evidence was "all of the evidence." I worked at getting them to nail down a particular favorite piece of evidence, and neither of them seemed to have one. They did try to present an argument for evidence using fruit fly mutations, the rallying cry of neo-Darwinism. (Neo-Darwinians believe that instead of chance by use and disuse of variations, evolution progresses by chance through random changes in genes or, mutations.)

After failing to get these two men to produce a favorite evidence for Evolution, which I had intended to debunk, I told them that Evolution could produce not one solitary piece of transitional evidence whatsoever. They said that the fossil record was full of them. It isn't though. It is full of fully formed species. You never see fossil evidence that shows a fish turning into something else, or anything remotely close to that. It simply does not exist, and when I told them that plenty of Evolutionists would attest to that fact, I was informed that those were not "leading Evolutionists." I was told that Evolution is not a theory, but is instead a fact.

Sir Francis Bacon defined science this way: observation leading to induction, to hypothesis, to test, to hypothesis by experiment, to proof/disproof and to knowledge. Evolution is not observable. That in itself is not a huge obstacle for me, because Evolution is a faith, really. I believe in Jesus Christ because I have faith in Him, not because I have seen Him face to face. At least saying that Evolution is fact for them is more honest. Calling it a theory and passing it off as fact was a problem for me. I say, if you are going to believe in it, then go for it at least. Don't call it a theory and try to sway me to it.

I don't know enough about Charles Darwin to know what changed his mind about God, but I do know enough about the Bible to be able to say that his theory is in no way supportive of what the Bible has to say. It is not possible to smash the Bible and the theory of Evolution together. I have a brilliant Christian friend who told me many years ago that he no longer had to be conflicted in his mind about being a Christian and accepting Evolution as valid. I was not informed enough at that time to be able to talk with him about what he had decided. He moved away not long after that and I see him rarely. As far as I know, he is still one of the many millions of Christians who believe seriously in Jesus Christ, but who have no idea that they are viewing Him in a low way.

A plain reading of the Biblical text explains a "young" earth. Only exegetical gymnastics of the wildest kind can support an earth that is billions of years old. The day/age type of thinking that states that the six days of creation were actually long, geologic periods of time to allow Evolution to be part of the creation picture has to ignore many Bible passages, including not a few statements from the Lord Jesus Himself.

I maintain that most, if not all sin can be traced in some way back to pride. It is through the weakness of men, and their own mistaken pride that the authority of the Bible is compromised by bringing Evolution to the pulpit. For some reason, after Darwin's theory gained ground, and Uniformitarianism became the accepted geological interpretation of most scientists, the church began to accept an old earth scenario. Most of the church rejected Darwinian thought however. That acceptance came later to many theologians. To accept what Darwinian theory put forth though, they had to allegorize Genesis 1 and 2. This is no different than the way that any passage of the Bible must be allegorized or spiritualized, to be made to fit an unbiblical point of view.

Ideas posited by the sciences to the rest of the world these days are some of the most influential trends in society. In the last couple of centuries there are ideas (theories) which have appeared, then gained a following, become special areas of study and have become a discipline unto themselves. Freudian psychology for example has been a highly influential load of garbage on our society. It is still happening today. Look at global warming. Although scientists have been talking about global warming for years, all it took to launch it from a theory to widely accepted fact was a movie by a former vice-president, based on really questionable science.

I believe that Evolutionary theory is the most damaging idea to come out of the sciences though. One could look back to Galileo and the way he was treated by the Catholic church and make a comparison to that, and to the way that churches reject Evolution out of hand, but I think that is a poor comparison. Evolutionary theory has been very much accepted within many mainstream Christian denominations. If such a comparison were to be made, it would have to be recognized that most of the resistance to Evolutionary theory has come from Christians who interpret the Bible literally, and who believe that it is an unerring revelation from start to finish, and given to us by God. That sort of declaration is not something one will find in many of the major church denominations.

Another reason the comparison would be difficult to make properly is that Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler were devout Christians who believed that the Bible was God's word. I know that there are tons of church goers who view the Bible as a God-inspired collection of stories meant to serve as spiritual object lessons. They believe that Evolution is compatible with Christianity. The problem with that is that the largest part of the scientists and thinkers who staunchly support and promote Evolution have completely rejected a Biblical world view.

It kind of tickles me when an Evolutionist criticizes the Bible, claiming that it is full of contradictions. They have been dealt with in volumes of books. Those apparent contradictions are actually a strength of the Bible, which presents itself unashamedly to the world, with all its warts and blemishes. If there actually were contradictions they would have been edited out long ago, but the transmission instructions for Biblical copyists have been so strongly held to over the last two-thousand years, that we get the real deal when we buy one. This is a stark contrast to the way in which alternative inquiry is quashed by neo-Darwinism.

I get asked often enough why there are so many denominations within Christianity when we are all supposed to be believing the same things. One could easily ask a similar question of Evolution. One Evolutionist has a materialistic view, and the next has some sort of spiritualistic concept of Evolutionary creation where God or "a god" was involved. Whatever the deal, whenever a mistaken notion of Evolutionary science is disproved, or a "discovery" is debunked, the story is soon forgotten.

One can get pretty scientific about what gets ignored. I like the simple stuff. Take the platypus for example. It has webbed feet and a bill like a duck. It swims and it even lays eggs, yet no Evolutionist claims that it is transitional evidence between mammals and ducks. Nor does anyone claim the reverse. That would just be....silly.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Bill O'Reilly interview paleontologist Dr. Terry Gates about whether or not global warming may have wiped out the dinosaurs. Dr. Gates said, "And so right now the leading theory is an asteroid, but an asteroid impact that was very massive. We're talking a six-kilometer-wide asteroid that makes 100-mile-wide crater in the Yucatan Peninsula with tremendous damage." and, "It was very tropical. It was much, much warmer than it was today. There was very high CO2 levels. There were no permanent ice poles. But climate change may have impacted it once again and made one of the factors that contributed to the dinosaur extinction." and......."Birds evolved approximately 150 million years ago from small carnivorous dinosaurs. So you walk outside and you see pigeons in the sky. You're looking at dinosaurs. So technically dinosaurs are not extinct."

Approximately 150 million years ago..... some small carnivorous dinosaurs started wanting to fly, so they started mutating? Which came first, the feathers? The wings? The...oh never mind. None of that is new. It's the same old cabbage patch that has been hoed for the last several decades. Just one question. If the Yucatan asteroid impact killed off all the dinosaurs, or climate change, or a large scale bacterial infestation, and if transitional change takes many millions of years, how did the dinosaurs have the time to transition into birds? When Evolutionists say that they are searching for a "missing link" they are not telling the truth. Conservatively, given the number of transitional changes necessary to evolve one species to another, they are really looking for fifty-thousand missing links, or maybe even a hundred-thousand. Who could say?

Michael Ruse, a professor of Philosophy at Florida State University wrote in 2003, that the notion that science supports creationism was dead. He maintained that even "ardent" evangelical Christians no longer interpreted the early chapters of Genesis literally. He was and is wrong. I know plenty of them, including myself, who do. I believe every word of it, as written. To me, in light of what I have seen, God's creative genius and the global flood are the only scenarios which truly make any sense.

I have a friend at church who submitted some thoughts and a question to an Evolutionist. They go something like this: "Everything we see in the universe is quantifiable mathematically. Math has not evolved. It just is. How do you explain that?" The guy could not answer the question. Not surprising. It is a question that only the existence of an intelligent Creator, who does not change, could ever answer.