Category: Atheism, agnostic, evolution, etc.

Suppose you were born this morning with the ability to read, think, and understand and found yourself wondering how and why you existed.  Suppose further that someone gave you a Bible, told you it was the word of God, and encouraged you to read it, which you did, from the beginning.  After reading the first few chapters of Genesis, and having not yet “benefited” from modern indoctrination enlightenment, you would not conclude that your existence was attributable to millions and millions of years of micro-evolution, and an amoeba to man metamorphosis.  Frankly, there is simply no way you could infer that from Genesis for from any other book of the Bible.

So, if I told you that although we believe the Bible is a remarkable book and the inspired word of God, most of us also believe that we evolved from some primordial micro-ooze a very long time ago, you just might conclude that there exists compelling evidence that compelled us to shoe-horn such an idea into Genesis.  Of course it would have to be overwhelming evidence before we compromised what we’ve acknowledged as God’s word, or, to put it more delicately, to “accommodate” the narrative to the evidence.

Of course we might think that way, if we were born yesterday.  If, however, we’ve spent decades being told that the Bible governs spiritual issues and science governs reality and that “science” teaches us that our origins and the various forms of life are attributable to the process of evolution, we might more or less simply accept the continual declarations as true, especially if we’d been instructed with the millions and millions and billions of years and evolution theories continually since we wore diapers.

But really, is the evidence of evolution so compelling that it requires us to treat it on par with the plain, ordinary meaning of God’s word?  That we contort God’s explanation of origins to squeeze in millions of years and evolution?  That we treat God’s plain teaching of origins as a metaphor, or worse, as simply untrue?

But maybe evolution for the story of our origins isn’t incompatible with Genesis?  I mean, evolution is science and Genesis is religion.

In the book, The Lie, Ken Ham explains how evolution as origins theory undermines fundamental elements of our faith.

Why do we believe in marriage?

Homosexual marriage is now a heated political topic.  On what do we base our definition of marriage?  Genesis teaches that God created two genders, male and female, and joined one man to one women in marriage.  There was and is nothing arbitrary about our gender or about how we mate.  In Chapter 19 of his Gospel account, Matthew recounts Jesus teaching about marriage: “He who created them in the beginning, made them male and female.  The man shall cling to his wife and they shall become one flesh.”  Jesus himself used Genesis as the foundation teaching about marriage.  Evolution as origins theory has no such foundation for marriage.  To the contrary, if we evolved from some yet-to-be-discovered theoretical ape like creature, marriage is no more and no less than whatever we want it to be.

Why do we promote the wearing of clothes?

We were created and born naked.  Why not strip nude in public when it’s warm out or when we simply feel like being naked?  The entire animal kingdom parades naked with their genitals exposed. We don’t.  Even the most primitive and pagan cultures cover their genitals.  Humans feel ashamed when naked.  Since the fall and original sin, we realize our nakedness and want to hide ourselves.  The first act after falling away from God was to feel shame and exposed.  Further, after the fall, our hearts burn with lust and we cloth ourselves in modesty and for safety.  Our moral hang-up with clothing  makes little sense in the “moral” framework of evolution.  It’s our first reported manifestation of the fall.

Why are there rules of right and wrong?

God created everything, to include us.  We owe him everything and he has all the power.  Quite simply, he has every right and authority to set the rules – the Ten Commandments, etc.   In an evolutionary system, what are rules and why would anyone or anything have more say or legitimacy than any other sentient being?  Why should you, me, a king, or anyone enjoy more “justification” or authority than a rock for asserting what’s right or wrong in an evolutionary framework?

Why are we sinners and what does this mean? 

This question really makes no sense in the evolutionary paradigm.  It’s a fundamental question for Christians that has eternal ramifications.

Why is there death and suffering in the world?

For the Christian, these are the direct result of man’s fall from God.  In the evolutionary context, these are the forces the propel evolution and new species.  In the Genesis account, death and suffering are a curse.  That’s not at all the case in the evolutionary context.

Why is there to be a new heaven and a new earth?

Our hope for the future is utter nonsense from the evolutionary worldview.

The very Gospel Message –

If there was no literal fall of mankind, why would you need a savior of mankind?

If there was no first Adam, why would you need the second and final Adam (1 Cor 15).

Were we created by a loving God or evolved from bugs through a long process of random mutations and pitiless death and struggle?

Does creation testify to the eternal Glory of God or is it the thoughtless product of massive natural processes over billions and billions of years?

Are we eternal souls created by God in the image of God, or are we simply hairless apes?

As believers and followers of Jesus Christ we should come down squarely on one side on all these issues.  But too often, within the church, we want to compromise with evolution.  We want to fit in.  We don’t want to argue with the white-coated scientists or the editors of National Geographic and/or Vanity Fair.  We sit silent as our children are taught that evolution explains the origins of our species and the reason for the life around us.

Is there overwhelming evidence that compels us to disregard these fundamental incompatibilities between Scripture and evolution as origins theories?  Not at all.  In fact, when you look, you can clearly see that this emperor wears no clothes.  Evolution does not deserve the worldly crowns it’s been given, let alone the title of God slayer.  More on this in my next post – Deo volente.

So… an off duty, atheist TSA officer coordinated a porn and obscenity posting “attack” on Ken Ham’s Facebook page this past Sunday morning.  Reason: someone posted a quote by Mr. Ham on an atheism bulletin board that angered the atheists.  See here.  I suspect they don’t care or know about how the Bible instructs to identify a tree by the fruit it produces.

According to some evolutionary and old-earth Christians, the so-called young earth, anti-scientific cave people, sometimes referred to as “Fred and Wilma,” discredit Christianity by believing the creation account as literally explained in the book of Genesis. For ease of reference, I’ll refer to these evolutionary apologists as Esau and Erasmus. They claim that a literal reading of Genesis’ young-earth, six-day creation account is scientifically indefensible and fuels the evolutionary biologist wing of militant atheism. Such argument suffers from both going too far and not far enough in its thinking, while at the same time selling its theological birthright for a bowl of common pottage.

Esau and Erasmus’ argument about biblical creationism does not go far enough. They suggest Christianity would appeal more to worldly rationale and defang militant atheists if only Fred and Wilma would shut-up already about a young earth. It would not, unless Christians compromised the truths of most the rest of our faith. Even without a literal biblical creation, Christianity remains unpalatable to the self-proclaimed intellectuals at the Los Angeles Times, militant atheists, and the rest of the worldly sophisticates.

The Bible repeatedly speaks of God ridiculing the wisdom of man. Paul explained to the Corinthians that if it sounded like he was out of his mind, it was because he was talking of the things of God. Elsewhere, Paul noted that while the Gospel was a stumbling block to the Jew, it was utter foolishness to the Greek. Christianity teaches that the omnipotent, infinite, omnipresent and eternal God of all that is seen and unseen, took the form of human flesh in His creation. Instead of the heraldry due the arrival of such an eternal King, he arrived as the apparent bastard son of a peasant woman in a semi-nomadic tribe somewhere in the west-Asian backwaters of the Roman Empire. To underscore the point, God was born amongst the squalor of livestock and his first visitors were sheep herders who were roughly the social equivalent of today’s garbage collectors. To further emphasize that God does not do it “our way,” he was born to a virgin. This promised deliverer grew up in obscurity. He befriended