The discussion is on once again, in a big way!

There are simply too many people, many of them sophisticated scientists, who do not believe that the life of man is in biological succession to that of the beasts of the field.

The question is being pressed upon thoughtful people, “Is evolution true?” “Is there a God who created man in His own image, and nature on a lesser level?” “Is there a hierarchy of value and intelligence in nature?” “How old is man, the world, the universe?” The Christian has a special interest in these questions because they touch not only science, but philosophy, logic, religion and theology. Indeed, it is a devious mind which can convincingly separate “science” from faith.

In considering the truth of these things, let us think for a moment about the evolutionary point of view. It would be well to consider this notion in the light of the known facts of science. Among them are the following:

1. There is no evidence that man has been in the world more than 10,000 years. The earth shows abundant evidence of human habitation back to approximately 4,000 B.C. In an unbroken trail of data going back to that date, there are remains of cities, walls, foundations, potsherds, weapons, millstones, bones and skulls aplenty. Before that time, there is simply nothing, nothing!

It is true that some have picked up a fragment of bone or another piece of something and said, “This is 200 million years old.” Why do they say this? How do they know? There is simply no method whatsoever by which such things can be dated. In addition, one instance of anything is statistically meaningless. Forgetting this and led by desire rather than data, the scientists accepted Piltdown man and Heidelberg man whose remains turned out to be simply hoaxes.

2. There is no verifiable method of establishing the age of anything at whose creation we were not present or which was not accounted by reliable witnesses.

A superficial examination of the geological world leads one to assume from appearances certain notions such as the idea of great age. “It took millions of years for the rock to be formed, the mountains, etc.” says the geologist. In so speaking, he is stating not a fact of science but an attitude of faith. The article of faith in which he is evidencing his belief is called “the uniformity of nature.” This article of faith presumes that, “Processes observed and measured in our verifiable time are the same in all time.” But alas, this faith is false and every scientist knows that it is false. Science, itself, knows that all processes are variable, relative, influenced by the presence of moisture, pressure, light, radioactivity, cataclysm and a thousand known and unknown variables. Age, in a geological sense, therefore, cannot be measured—it can only be assumed. Assumptions about the distant past, being a posterior reasoning, are not even subject to a “law of probability.” They are made “in mid air,” based on data unproved because it must forever remain unprovable.

3. There is no evidence of permanent mutations in nature. Genetic changes have been noted within a given animal, plant or other biological entity. These, however, have all proved themselves aberrant and are always unreproduced in subsequent generations. Species do not change. Every biological strain has reproduced without exception after its kind. This is always the case.

There is, therefore, no “tree of life,” an original trunk from which all species came. There are only trees of life. To insist on a genetic linkage between them is not science at all, it is rather a notion for which there is no evidence. It is in fact “faith” (read “presumption”).

4. Evolution gives no explanation of the moral nature of man. If evolution is true, it is impossible to argue that anything is “right” or “wrong.” Nevertheless, we “know” that one biological entity killing another in the animal kingdom is simply “a law of nature” and has no moral significance. When we are speaking of man, however, we assume the presence of moral values and, therefore, when one man kills another it is called “murder.” Rational men, however degenerate they have become, simply do not admit that “the law of the jungle” has a valid application to human beings. However depraved a man may become, there is a light within his soul that knows that the words right and wrong have meaning, they are built into the fiber of our being.

If the evolutionist would face it, he must admit that, if his ideas were true, the difference between all entities in the universe are only accidental, chemical, and life cannot be built on any moral base whatsoever. It cannot be otherwise. The presence of moral values is an idea without foundation unless behind the creation is a holy and authoritative Being who has ordained moral law by which beings who know they are moral beings are supposed to operate. If we do not admit the existence of moral law, on what basis do we condemn the Nazis, the Communists, the Mau Mau who, apart from moral law, are simply doing what comes naturally?

In addition to this, time would fail to ask the evolutionist to explain nuances of personality, the human soul, the existence of such things as love, compassion, purpose, patience or self-sacrifice in the world. To explain these on the basis of accidental chemistry is an insult to human intelligence. In its simplist form, if evolution is true then man is an animal. The Christian knows that propositions such as the following are simply irrefutable:

1. Only creation explains the existence of matter. Evolution, after all is said, gives us no suggestion whatsoever as to how something was brought into being out of nothing. The evolutionist must inevitably believe in the eternity of matter both past and future. This, despite all his denials, is a huge step of faith for which he has no scientific basis whatsoever. How beautiful, by contrast, is the statement of Scripture that God created the heavens and the earth and He did so ex-nihilo, “out of nothing.” The person who professes to know facts of antiquity which are more than that or different from that simply cannot make this profession from knowledge or science. He simply must insist that all of this happened by accident, thereby forgetting that even accidents have causes.

2. Only creation explains order in the universe. By observing the facts of our world we see that the sun shines, the grass grows, the rain falls and nourishes the world. Food is produced and animals and people live. Apart from this order, this beautiful arrangement, we would all die or, more correctly, we would never have lived. To explain this, the scientist gives us a meaningless expression like “Elan Vital” or “Life Force” or “Natural Selection” or something. By so doing he is explaining nothing—but merely giving an arbitrary name to a process within nature which, when we think of it, must come from outside of nature. This because the second law of thermodynamics insists that all natural processes are running down and cannot be sustained from within themselves.

3. Only creation explains the difference between man and animals. One of the most obvious, apparent, undeniable facts of our existence is the chasm between the animal world and the world of man which is simply unbridgeable. We conduct our lives on the most apparent of all facts, that man is “something special.” He has God-consciousness, self-consciousness, Discrimination between “is” and “ought” and many other qualities unknown to the animal world. Say what we will, animals are not like this.

4. Only creation explains man’s moral nature. One of the most hopeful, reassuring truths ever made in the history of the world is the announcement in the Word of God that He created man in His own image. Therefore, the life of man is not in succession to the beasts of the field, but rather his heart beats in consonance with the loving heart of the eternal God. Because man has a moral nature he is conscious of such things as good and evil and he, unless his heart has become darkened, is conscious of his obligation to do good and eschew evil. People who are not conscious of this are named in the Bible as “natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed” (II Peter 2:12). Man’s consciousness of his moral nature is the basis of all law, all sanity, all purpose and all reason in life. It is true that some human “beasts” are attempting to destroy this nature. In their foolishness, they forget that if they succeed, like a cancer which is destroyed when it kills the body on which it feeds, they themselves will die.

Within the moral universe in which we live, the existence of sin and death is only explained by creation. If one believes in evolution, he hardly can also hold that Adam was a real individual. In this, he contradicts the Scripture which says, “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (Rom. 5:12). The existence of sin and death is not a “normal function of life.” It is rather an aberrant phenomena, an invasion of good by evil. The problems of humanity are explained by the evolutionists as “insufficient development” which will be corrected by future progress. The Christian pursues no such delusion, knowing that man’s problems are a result of sin which is only corrected by redemption through the blood of Christ. Christian truth and evolutionary ideas are, therefore, mutually exclusive. No consistent evolutionists can affirm the moral nature of man, without which all else is instantly absurd.

5. Only creation offers a valid human destiny. If man is merely the result of an impersonal evolutionary process, he cannot hope, cannot aspire, cannot anticipate with any certainty that his personal life will be a continuing thing. He cannot affirm that there is any ultimate Judge in history and must deny that there is a heaven to gain and a hell to shun. He can, therefore, only build his life on Ingersoll’s hopeless foundation of “unyielding despair.” He was born without reason and will die without hope. With evolution, life itself is, therefore, without eternal meaning, an accident of a purposeless history.

The marvelous Christian doctrines, therefore, of creation, the fall of man, redemption in Christ, personal salvation and eternal hope—these are not preposterous propositions that were invented by irresponsible and demented minds. These are articles of faith which we believe because of Divine revelation and they have become the anchor of our hope. We believe in the existence of a God who loves us and who does and will preside over our eternal destiny.

The Christian will, therefore, pray that the evolutionists and the atheists of our world will deviate into sense. They will pray that, during that brief deviation, they will believe the Gospel and receive also the hope of eternal life. The world is not evolving, it is degenerating. It will never produce its implied promise of an evolutionary Utopia. Rather, it will bring to pass by its preposterous science and lack ofmoral conviction an awful hour called “The Great Tribulation.” In the dark hours to come, man will despair even of life as he sees where the false faith in Darwinian fictions has brought him. The myth of natural selection will bring the world to the brink of its own destruction, which destruction will only be prevented by the intervention of Jesus Christ, who created the universe in the first place. To believe in that Creator now is to see Him as a friend in that great day.

From the writings of Dave Breese