A Scriptural analysis of the Theory of Evolution

Biblical problems with evolution
~Jesus said in Matthew 19:4 and Mark 10:6 that the creation of Adam and Eve was the beginning. If it was not the beginning, then Jesus is a liar. Also look at Luke 17:26-29, Luke 20:37, Luke 24:25-27 and 44, John 1:3. Jesus also says “It is written” 39 times and “Have ye not read?” 9 times in the gospel. He clearly believed and taught that the Old Testament was historical and reliable.
~John 5:45-47—“if you don’t believe Moses and the prophets, you won’t believe me.” Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, particularly Genesis. Jesus is affirming both the authorship and the authority of those books.
~Exodus 20:11—The version of the ten commandments written in the stone by the finger of God. Many try to discount Genesis, but they have much more trouble with this one. After all, if anything in the Old Testament can be taken literally, it’s got to be these commandments. (See Exodus 31:18)
~1 Corinthians 15:45 and Romans 5: 12-14 Paul bases his whole theology of salvation on the sin of Adam and our option to enter into the second Adam: Jesus. A myth is not a good foundation for a true theology.
~John 1:36 and Exodus 12 and Genesis 3:21 Jesus is the Lamb of God, which is meaningless without the historical exodus from Egypt and Passover which can only be understood in the context of blood sacrifice stemming from Genesis. If we were not made perfect and then sinned, we did not need a blood sacrifice for our sins. Then, Jesus did not need to die. (See also Matthew 26:28 and Hebrews 9:22)
~2 Peter 3:3-6—Three things people don’t understand when they mock the Bible: Creation, Water, and Flood. Also, they mock because they do not want to accept the moral restrictions God brings.
~Romans 1:20—Conscience, Evidence of world, Word. We can see God in His creation.

Why it matters conceptually for a Christian:
There are five essential features of Christian salvation theology: Creator, Accountability, Sin, Death, Redemption. The entire Christian faith rests on these five things. Otherwise, there is no need for Christ to die. If we don’t stand in need of redemption, then Christ did not have to die, and He died in vain as a fool. After all, He even prayed to the Father to “take away this cup from me, nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” Jesus was clearly convinced it was the direct Will of the Father that He be crucified. But if He did not need to die in order to redeem us from sin (because the world was created sinful with death included) then why would the Father command Jesus to go to the cross? And if the Father did not so command Jesus, then Jesus is not the messiah and certainly not divine. Either possibility is unacceptable. In other words, if there were millions of years of death before Adam, then there were millions of years of sin before Adam (since death comes from sin, Romans 6:23) and the Creation was never created perfect and in need of a redeemer. The whole concept of blood sacrifice which eventually culminated in the Cross goes away.

How do you expect to convert people if you don’t even take your own “Holy” book seriously? The biggest stumbling block to Christianity is Christians who cannot answer questions which intelligent new converts ask them, and the majority of these questions come from the very first book in the Bible, often because they haven’t even read the whole thing.

Implications of theistic evolution for our concept of God.
~God is too stupid to know what He really wants. He had to wait and see how it evolved.
~God is incapable of doing what He wants in one short period of time as it says in Genesis.
~God is vicious, creating a carnage-infested world on purpose. Is that really God’s best?
~God is a liar. When He pronounced everything very good in Genesis 1:31, He was wrong.

The real issue is whether we are going to trust God and His Word and start from there or whether we are going to trust our eyes and our minds and start with what we see rather than what we are told by God. Are we going to take the words of a perfect God who was there or the words of fallible men who weren’t there? Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” 2 Corinthians 5:7 “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
There is no reason for a Christian to compromise on this issue, and the implications of compromise are devastating for theology. What possible motive could there be to do so other than putting the theory of men above the Word of God?

Miscellaneous Issues
1 Objection: This is just a divisive issue. Don’t stir up the pot.
Answer: What issues are worth fighting over among us? When does heresy become serious enough? The truth is divisive. (Luke 12:49-53) “One should not judge a method or message on the basis of whether it is divisive or not, but on the basis of whether it is truth and based on the Bible.” Ken Ham

2 Objection: You should worry about saving people, not disputing peripheral stuff.
Answer: That’s how we got in this mess: by failing to teach the relevance of the Old Testament to people, the foundation of the New Testament erodes. If we fail to address the source of the problem, we will continue to reap failure in the end results. You cannot fix a problem that developed from the foundations up by repairing the symptoms. You must fix the problem at the source. Besides, evolution is the number one stumbling block to people receiving the message of Christianity with an open mind. It’s amazing how many people will at least listen once they come to recognize just how shaky the idea of evolution is.

“What I am saying is this: issues such as abortion are just symptoms of the foundational change. Thus, one can’t change the culture back to a Christian philosophy just by attacking the issues. Christian morality can’t ultimately and consistently stand on the wrong foundation of evolution. If the approach is merely to try to get politicians to change the laws about abortion, homosexual behavior, and the like, it won’t work in the long run. Even if some laws were changed to be more consistent with Christian thinking, what happens if new legislators who don’t accept Christianity get voted in? They’ll just change the laws back again. You can’t change a system from the top down when it has changed from the foundation up. Fighting the issues may bring these things to people’s attention. And it may stimulate much discussion and debate. But in the long run, this approach will not change society.” Ken Ham

3 Objection: It’s not clear what a day means in Genesis.
Answer: The Hebrew word “Yom” can mean either an ordinary day or an indeterminate period of time. However, the key to textual interpretation is to let the text interpret itself. Every time the word, “Yom” is used in the Old Testament along with a number (1st, tenth, etc) it always means an ordinary day. When it means a period of time, it is always used without a number. Besides, if a “day” is actually a period of time, then what in the world does it mean to say “And the evening and the morning were the Xth day.”? Also, where does the Sabbath come from?

4 Objection: Time is different for God, look at 2 Peter 3:8, “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
Answer: Ignore the fact that this is telling us that God lives outside of time not that time cannot be measured, and consider the implications of this way of interpreting such a passage. This means that every reference to time in the Bible becomes unreliable. Any mention of time could be thousands of times off in duration. Besides, simply observe that this is just after Peter has just told us how absolutely crucial the creation, waters, and flood are in verses 5-6. Why would Peter soundly affirm the creation story and then write about time in a way which completely undermines the creation story? But okay, if a day is a thousand years, then when the Bible says that Adam lived to be 930 years old, that must mean he really lived to be 930 x 365 x 1000 years = way too old! There is no fundamental need to mention units of time in the accounts given, why not leave them out entirely unless they have some meaning and accuracy? The earmarkings of a genuine historical account are that it includes information which can be falsified and which is not necessary to the main point. If “wise men” really wrote the Bible all on their own, why would they put in things like names dates and incredible life-spans. This just isn’t the way people write fables.

5 Objection: Maybe there’s a gap of time between Genesis 1:2 and Genesis 1:3.
Answer: Same as above, why not just tell the whole story? Also, Genesis 2:1 says “thus” indicating this is the complete story. Besides, if there is a big gap, then what did God mean when He said in Exodus 20:11 “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Are we really to understand that when God carved in the tablets of stone with His finger that He really meant “For in six days (after billions of years) the Lord…”?

6 Objection: But most of the Old Testament is just fables and tales to explain what we didn’t understand.
Answer: But all around this supposedly embellished or invented account are all sorts of names, dates, places, and measurements, none of which have been invalidated and most of which have been affirmed by modern archaeology. How do you find a razor so thin as to cut out and save the parts which are literally accurate from the parts which are fables? Why didn’t or why couldn’t God just tell us the truth in the Bible? Genesis is in the history section of the Old Testament, clearly not poetry or prophecy.

7 Objection: Couldn’t there have been people, time, or anything before Adam and Eve?
Answer: Jesus calling Adam and Eve the beginning. This means either He was confused or lying, neither of which is a particularly acceptable conclusion.

8 Objection: Don’t Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contradict each other?
Answer: Sure they do if you read them as different accounts of the same period of time, but that’s not what they are. Genesis 2 is an expanded description of the events of day 6, which were glossed over by Genesis 1. You can’t read Hebrew texts like it’s a Western text, they don’t always read in chronological order like that. Besides, let’s consider the possibility that these two chapters were just written by men as differing accounts of creation. What kind of colossal fools would these men have to have been to then place them side by side in the very first pages of the book for anyone to compare and see the contradiction? Perhaps the words are accurate since it seems at best uncharitable to assume that the “great and wise scholars” who are thought to have written the Bible were so ignorant they didn’t see this problem. Think of it like this, when someone invents something, he usually designs it to not look contradictory, but this error seems so blatant that it either must be right or they were complete idiots. The rest of the Bible is too brilliant to have been composed by idiots, so…they must have been right.

9 Objection: Creation is religion and evolution is science.
Answer: The Christian religion is a religion based entirely on a factual history which requires certain things to be factually true or else it is false. If Jesus did not really life, die, become resurrected, and ascend, then Christianity is all a big mistake. Even Paul says so. (1 Cor 15:17) If this world developed all on its own by natural processes, then there is no creator. If there is no creator, then God is just something we invented to make ourselves feel better. Evolution is not science any more than Creationism is. Both are historical, since they deal with unique, unobservable, unduplicateable phenomena.

Educational issues
~“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.” Luke 17:1-2
~Education is a parent’s responsibility, not the government. And the primary purpose of education is to introduce a child to God by teaching him His commands and nature. Deut 6:4-6
~“Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.” Adolf Hitler
~“The universities only ought to turn out men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and stand in the front and all the world. But where do you find that? I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach the Holy Scritures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide gates to hell….I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme. Every institution that does not unceasingly pursue the study of God’s Word becomes corrupt. Because of this we can see what kind of people they become in the universities and what they are like now.” Martin Luther
~Remember, this is a historical issue, not a scientific one. In the schools, this issue is presented as historical fact, but yet it directly contradicts the clearest reading of the Bible. If someone were to teach that Jesus never existed as a matter of historical fact, or that He was never resurrected as a matter of medical or scientific fact, surely this would be an unacceptable State sponsorship of anti-religion. Evolution in the public schools is no different. It is a historical claim with anti-religious implications.

Other thoughts
Keep this in mind. The ideas in this handout are taken specifically from the perspective of whether evolution can be squared with the Bible or with Christianity. Can someone be a Christian and believe in evolution? Sure. Because being a Christian doesn’t mean you know everything or live perfectly. It’s a beginning. Salvation is dependent on grace, not on works, even mental works. The problem is that eventually as you understand what it means to believe in Christ as a Redeemer, you understand that the two ideas are truly incompatible. From the very beginning, shedding of blood has been the only way to atone for the sins of man and bring man into a right relationship with God. Even following the expulsion from Eden, God finds the leaves Adam and Eve use to cover themselves insufficient and He slaughters an animal and makes “coats of skins” for them to wear. Genesis 3:22. This means blood had to be shed. Eventually this need for blood is what made the Cross so necessary. If there was death and sin before Adam, then the whole foundation for needing a Redeemer in Jesus falls apart.

Many people want to mythologize Genesis and claim that those things never really happened. They are just some kind of “useful story” to help us understand things. Why can’t God have chosen to use True events to help us understand things? The idea here is that you can only explain the Truth by using lies and fictional stories. How does that make any sense? Besides, there are a whole lot of very important concepts which come directly from Genesis such as the commands to procreate, live in marriage, wear clothing, work or labor, not murder, rest one day in seven and so on. Such concepts do not have much intellectual vigor if they are understood as coming completely out of mythology.

The Icthus (A Greek Acronym for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, which, when spelled in Greek, the first letters of this phrase also spell out the word for fish.) has long been a symbol which Christians have used to identify themselves, both because of the linguistic ties and for the “fishers of men” concept. You can see these symbols on many cars in America today. In response to the Icthus bumper signs, atheists contemptuously place similar looking symbols on their cars only with little legs and feet added (to look like an amphibian, which is evolving into a “better” way of thinking) and the word “Darwin” printed inside the body of the fish/reptile. If evolution is really a non-religious or religion-neutral idea, then why would people who believe in it take this approach? Why would they replace an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” with Charles Darwin’s name? Think about it, why on earth would a Christian want to compromise and reconcile himself with people who would use the theory of evolution as a way to mock and ridicule Christianity? If you really think there is no incompatibility between the two, then ask someone with such a bumper sign on his car if he agrees. Even atheists seem to get this point of incompatibility better than many Christians:

Quotes
“Christianity is—must be—totally committed to the special creation as described in Genesis, and Christianity must fight with all its full might, fair or foul, against the theory of evolution….It becomes clear now that the whole justification of Jesus’ life and death is predicated on the existence of Adam and the forbidden fruit he and Eve ate. Without the original sin, who needs to be redeemed? Without Adam’s fall into al life of constant sin terminated by death, what purpose is there to Christianity? None.” G. Richard Bozarth in The American Atheist, Sept 1978, p 19.

“Selection is the blindest, and most cruel way of evolving new species, and more complex and refined organisms…the more cruel because it is a process of elimination, of destruction. The struggle for life and the elimination of the weakest is a horrible process, against which our whole modern ethic revolts. An ideal society is a non-selective society, it is one where the weak are protected; which is exactly the reverse of the so-called natural law. I am surprised that a Christian would defend the idea that this is the process which God more or less set up in order to have evolution.” Jacques Monod—biologist and philosopher

I believe it was Richard Dawkins (Possibly one of the Huxleys) who said, “Darwinism has made atheism respectable.”

“I came to the conclusion that there were two factors which destroyed Christianity in Western Europe. One was the theory of evolution, and the other, liberal theology….Liberal theology is just evolution applied to the Bible and our faith.” Josef Ton, pastor of the largest Baptist Church in Romania now living in exile in the U.S.

Finally, consider this.
The original lie told to Eve by Satan in the Garden of Eden went through three stages.
1. Questioning God’s Words. (Genesis 3:1)
2. Outright denial of God’s Words. (Genesis 3:4)
3. A promise to develop into more evolved beings (gods) (Genesis 3:5)

The theory of evolution says the same three things in the same order.
1. Couldn’t the Earth be extremely old? (Question the Bible)
2. Adam and Eve never existed, nor was the world created by God, perfect, in six days. (Deny the Bible)
3. If you wait around, people will evolve into something better. (You will be as gods.)
There isn’t anything new in this idea of evolution. It’s just the same old original lie spruced up with some brand new bells and whistles to distract us from the real message it contains.