Zachary Bruno
Written By Zachary Bruno
Q. Theistic Evolution has gotten very popular of late. So, how would you defend against it from a scriptural perspective?
A. Great question! Here’s my “short” answer.
When I think of Theistic Evolution, it always appears like a philosophy that tries to fit the Bible to modern-day science (Evolution). Theistic Evolution places a higher value on the certainty of science than the certainty of the Bible.
I can imagine for the Bible-believer that it would be hard to sort out the mess that has surfaced since Darwin’s hypothesis emerged over 100 years ago. On the one hand, we have science which “proves” evolutionary thought using its own evidences (however flawed they might be). And on the other hand, we have the Bible- an old book- which we believe holds the primary absolute Truth.
Yet these two worldviews conflict at the very beginning. One says that (more or less) the universe exploded into existence and progressed slowly over time- getting gradually better and better. The other (the Bible) states that Yahweh created the entire universe, including all life, in only six consecutive days, and that Creation was ultimately good to begin with, but the fall of man into sin has caused the world to get progressively worse and worse through time.
Here are three convincing questions to think about (there are many more as well):
1. If man evolved from primates, when did we stop being primates and start being “made in God’s image” (Genesis 1:26)?
2. Theistic Evolution teaches that death came before the fall, since death itself is the fundamental part of natural selection. But if death was the result of the fall into sin (Romans 5:12, Romans 6:23), then could God’s Creation possibly be called “very good” (Genesis 1:31) before Adam and Eve sinned?
3. If the plants were created on day 3 and the insects on day 6, both certainly could have survived. However, if you believe that each “day” spanned hundreds or thousands of years, how could these plants have survived for that long without their symbiotic partners? Take, for instance, the bee or the wasp which pollinates plants in order to cause them to multiply. Without these insects, most plants would simply cease to exist.
Theistic Evolution is the result of some people beginning to doubt the Bible’s first few chapters because the current-day science would have them think otherwise. This is a very hard thing to wrestle with. After all, both science and the Bible are all about real, absolute truth.
However, the average Evolutionist will have you think that science is all-knowing and all-powerful- not in the “living-being” sort of sense, but just that it possesses the most up-to-date Truth about our world. And in a sense, that is true, but one must realize that science can be very wrong. Yep, scientists and their theories are proven wrong all the time. The world of science is always changing- particularly in the world of physics. Something that scientists used to believe to be true could be proven false in a relatively short period of time, shaking the scientific community in one of many ground-shaking discoveries over the past millennium. How can we ever put our entire 100% faith in such an unpredictable rock-tumbler?
Don’t get me wrong- science is invaluable in many aspects of life, but the very shakiness of science should tell you something. You can never put your entire trust in a scientific theory. In fact, nothing is 100% provable. You can never prove with 100% certainty that Adam and Eve existed or that evolution happens because you weren’t there to observe it yourself.
Scripture, on the other hand, is completely stable. Apart from the numerous English translations which have been created in recent years to replace the word “the” from “the first day” to “a first day” (an attempt to accept Gap-Theory/Theistic Evolutionists), the underlying Hebrew Scriptures are constant and open to translation any time. If we know they are constant and have been constant for thousands of years, then we should be able to support it or disprove it with the evidence we find in the world around us today.
Despite many false evidences catalogued today by the majority of the scientific community (there are many, many lies), there have been some Creationists (among a few others) who have decided to start over from scratch and rebuild the scientific evidence from reliable observation techniques and research. Today, it is even easier to discover how mainstream scientific research is corrupted. As time goes on, it is becoming progressively harder and harder for Evolutionists to find compelling evidence for their theory (in fact, there really is none at all). Secular Evolutionists have problems up to the very beginning of their theory. While it may be easier to fit God into the theory of Evolution- since God can sort of make it all happen and “guide” the process- we never had to resort to the common scientific reasoning of the day in the first place.
Recently, there has been fundamental research done in the area of Creationism with stunningly amazing finds. You can check out Answers in Genesis (www.answersingenesis.org) and Eric Hovind (www.creationtoday.org) among many others who have used real scientific observations and models to uphold countless Biblical accounts and references.
Not only has the Bible been upheld in the light of probable evidence, but much light has been shed on the common Evolutionary thinking of today- disproving many, many aspects of the theory. Theistic Evolution tries to posit that the beginning Creation account in Genesis is really just a metaphorical story. But if so, how does one decide whether or not this applies to the rest of Scripture? In other words, where does one stop thinking that some part of Scripture is just “metaphorical”? Food for thought.
Q&A with HarvestMag written by Zachary Bruno
www.HarvestMag.com – Volume 1 Issue 3 “Design”
