God's Not Dead--But Evolution Is Gravely Ill

March 15, 2015

God’s Not Dead, Pt 2:  “But, Evolution is Gravely Ill”

Genesis 1:1; Psalm 19:1-4; Romans 1:18-20

SIS—The Bible provides a sufficient foundation for a philosophically and scientifically reasonable view of creation.

Let me say right from the start of this message that I am not going to attempt to resolve all the issues between the theory of evolution and the Biblical teaching of creation.  Science has come a long way since Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” first published in ****.  Both good and bad science has promoted evolution in an almost unfettered fashion for generations.  Evolution has become a major tenet of American civil religion.  It is the default position without any real effort being made to examine any evidence that shows otherwise.

My hope with this message is to provide a framework upon which you can begin your own serious investigation.  Beyond that, I want to demonstrate that every person is faced with a serious dilemma in regard to how our world and all that is came to be.  Either the Bible is true when it says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” or evolution is true (in all its various forms) and all that is came to be without any design, purpose, or meaning.  What is at stake is nothing less than eternal life with God in heaven and eternal punishment without God in hell.  No meta-position (middle ground) exists.

1.  The FACT of “Stuff”

There is one point at which the Biblical model and evolution in its various models have agreement.  Stuff exists.  That is, there is something rather than nothing.  Now, I must add that though this is the few held by the vast majority of people, it is not the only view.  There are philosophical skeptics that argue that nothing “real” exists.  Everything is somehow an “illusion of our own imagination.”  Many Eastern religions broadly hold to this view.  The concept is called, “maya,” meaning that the only “real” (ultimate) thing in the universe is “no thing at all.”  I am not going to deal with this view as it has very little relevance for many people in the world, and for the vast majority of Americans.

So, let’s start with the proposition:  “stuff exists.”  That means that “stuff” came into being from Someone or somewhere, somehow.  Darwinian evolutionists and Biblical creationists both agree on this fact.  In the world of law, this would be called, “stipulation.”  Both sides agree without further proof that this proposition can be accepted as fact.

It is extremely important when the debate comes up between Creation and Evolution, that BOTH creation and evolution agree that “stuff exists,” and contrary to what most people think, both the Bible and Darwin agree on “Who” is the origin of all this stuff.  If you watch the debates between Creationist and Evolutionists, it might appear you are watching a debate between Theism and Atheism. That’s how theistic evolution (God used evolution) came to be added to the mix.  Evolution has come to be associated with atheism.  Yet, that was not the case with Darwin at all.  Why?  Because Darwin realized that his theory of adaptation—however elaborate it was (and it is elaborate)—could not explain how anything came to be in the first place.  Natural selection by the survival of the fittest cannot begin until there is a something to start the process.

Almost exactly 200 years ago, Gottfried Leibniz, a mathematician and philosopher, wrote in a book titled, The Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason, “Now we...make use of the great...principle that nothing takes place without a sufficient reason . . . the first question which we have a right to ask will be, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?’”

This is the single-most troublesome fact with which any evolutionist of any stipe must contend.  This question has been reduced to the Latin phrase, ex nihilo, nihil fit, meaning, “from nothing, nothing becomes.”  Perminides, a pre-Socratic philosopher, first dealt with this dilemma over 2600 years ago.  In fact, this is the foundation from which all modern philosophical thought has rested since Thales became the Father of Philosophy. Before that, men simply attributed everything to ancient “gods” without question or deliberation.  Why question the obvious was the popular sentiment.

The idea of ex nihilo, nihil fit so permeates the life and thought of man that it is amazing to me so few people have ever heard of it.  Shakespeare, for example, used the concept in his work, King Lear.  Twice in Act 1 he expresses the idea, “nothing can come from nothing.” 

Here’s something that might shock you:  Julie Andrews sang about it in the Sound of Music!  Well, if Julie Andrews said, it must certainly be true!  In the song, “Something Good,” Andrews repeats the line:  Nothing come from nothing//Nothing ever could.  Neither Shakespeare nor Julie Andrews are using this to make sense of the cosmos, but only express a common sense view of life.

“From nothing, nothing is made.”  So, why would anyone question the obvious?  Yet, we have an entire scientific enterprise that seems bent on proving what man has never accepted that, “stuff comes from nothing.”  So obvious is the fact that “stuff exists” and therefore had to come from somewhere or someone somehow, that the Bible states rather unflatteringly:

^{Psalm 14:1} The fool says in his heart, “God does not exist.”

Who but a “fool” would deny the obvious?  Yet, so many do.

The Bible goes on to demonstrate the obvious fact of a “Creator” many times in ways similar to the Psalmist in Psalm 19:

¹ The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands.² Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they communicate knowledge.³ There is no speech; there are no words; their voice is not heard. ⁴ Their message  has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.

Paul brings the matter to a sharp point and drives it home saying:

Any discussion in regard to creation/evolution debate must first deal with the fact upon which both agree:  “stuff exists and must have come from somewhere or someone.”  The Bible simply takes it one step further and says, “If you want solid evidence, just open your eyes. God’s existence is evident everywhere.”  So, whether an evolutionist or a creationist, the “fact stuff exists” must be the starting point.  From this foundation let us put a F.A.C.E. on evolution and see what it looks like in the bright light of reason.

2.  The F.A.C.E. of Evolution

^{Rom 1:18} For God’s wrath  is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth,  ¹⁹ since what can be known  about God is evident among them,  because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world,  being understood through what He has made.  As a result, people are without excuse.

Let’s consider what we can learn from a “face?”  We can know whether a person is happy or sad.  Often, by the lines on the face we can determine if a person has lived a relatively rugged life outdoors, or is more of a homebody.  We learn something about their culture.  We can even get an idea of whether they are friendly, or perhaps a bit menacing. The face has a lot of information written on it.  And, the FBI just unveiled a new “face recognition technology” that should have us all ready to “Smile! You’re on government T.V.”  There are public cameras everywhere and the government is collecting information from them.  The face can tell you a lot about someone.

Well, what can the F.A.C.E. of evolution?  I am going to borrow the rough outline from a book titled, “The FACE That Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution.”  This book is an entry level treatment of the creation—evolution debate.  As you might expect, evolutionary scientists have taken great exception to this book.  They apply sophisticated answers to the books simple overview.  Evolutionary scientist turn the book into a caricature and then move to dismiss it with great abandon.  I want to use the outline of the book to help put a “face” on evolution so that you can begin to recognize the weaknesses of evolutionary theory that you will never hear taught in public school or in evolution driven textbooks.

The debate between creationism and evolution is seldom, if ever, a fair inquiry into the facts.  We live in a post-Christian society where evolution is the “default” position.  It is the only position taught in public school which forms the world-view of 90-95 per cent of individuals in society.  Yet, when you look at the actual evidence for evolution it is not so nearly “absolute” as textbooks would have you believe.  I want to outline four areas that demonstrate the necessity to question whether evolution is an air-tight, reasonable explanation for creation, particularly the creation of man.

F.  Fossils

Before I talk about how fossils are formed, let me say a thing what we observe when things die.  If an animal dies in the wild, what happens to it?  It immediately starts to decay from the action of bacteria and other microbes, but seldom does that process continue from beginning to end.  Almost always the dead animal will be eaten by other animals faster than it is being eaten by microbes.  And, when all this has taken place, what happens to the bones?  Usually they are scattered by the process of the animal being eaten, the wind, or other natural factors, and it would be uncommon to find a replica of a skeleton.

Fossils are just that, replicas of the skeletal remains in which a mineralized photographic negative appears.  It is not bones that are found, but mineralized deposits replicating the bones.

Fossils exist.  There are many scientific reasons to question the accepted evolutionary view that the fossil record supports the evolution and no other consideration.  I will give only three reasons to ask questions about fossils.  One, the fossil record does not show any, let alone numerous examples of one “kind” of animal becoming another kind of animal, such as a reptile becoming a bird. Evolutionists will try to point to a few so-called, “transitional forms,” but if evolution was anything like true, over millions and millions of years, there should be many clear creatures that are half lizards, half birds, and so forth.  Transitional fossils remain largely a figment of evolutionary imagination.  Two, all the major phyla (kinds) of animals appear suddenly and fully functional, such as with the Cambrian Explosion representing a burst of variety.  Three, the vast majority of fossils (95% or more) are marine invertebrates found in what can be described as “castastrophic deposits” (the result of some great catastrophe leading to widespread death, such as would occur from massive deposits of sediment after a flood).

My point in regard to fossils is this:  the fossil record raises as many questions in regard to the theory of evolution as it does provide answers.  Fossils are not “slam-dunk” evidence for evolution. 

A.  Apes to Man

If evolution is true, then man descended from apes.  Now, this is an uncomfortable position to take when evolutionists tell people they are nothing more than “monkeys in business suits.”  So, evolutionists will dance a jig to point out that Darwinism actually teaches we come from a common ancestor with monkeys, not directly with monkeys.  That is a definition without a difference.

Consider the quintessential picture from textbooks showing the “Ascent of Man.”  (SLIDE: showing the ascent of man from a monkey through Neanderthal to homo erectus to modern man).  You would be hard pressed to find anyone who hasn’t seen this archetypical diagram of man ascending from monkeys.  In fact, you can find many parodies of it also.  There’s a chart showing the evolution of Homersapiens [SLIDE].  I saw another one that uses this iconic chart of a monkey successively becoming a man, but the last man in the series meets a woman face to face and she asks, “What took you so long.”  I cannot show this slide because the woman is not dressed appropriately for church.  Whatever similarities man shares with other primates, the differences are far more striking.  Many discoveries have purported to have found the “Missing Link” but have turned out to be “frauds,” like Piltdown Man, or a grave mistake such as Nebraska Man.  He and his mate were concocted from the find of a single tooth, that turned out to be a “pig’s” tooth.

C.  Chance

The Nobel Prize-winning biologist, Jacques Monod, stated, “Chance alone (emphasis mine)is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution.”

God or chance, but not both, are the only options.  The two are mutually exclusive.  So, everyone must choose.  At the risk of having evolutionist accuse me of childish over simplifying the issue let me share a cartoon with you.  It may seem childish but at the same time quite profound.  The cartoon has three panels.  In the first Panel is a picture of a junkyard with the caption:  “Once upon a time there was a huge junkyard . . . .”  Then panel two is the picture of a big explosion and says, “One day there was a gigantic explosion in this junkyard.”  In panel three is pictured a huge jet plane with the caption, “When the dust settled, there stood a jetliner!”

As ridiculous as this proposition seems, imagine trying to account for all the stuff in the entire universe with a similar, chance event set off by a Big Bang!  When a person takes God out of the equation, the math of creation simply does not add up. 

The argument from probability that life could not form by natural processes but must have been created is sometimes acknowledged by evolutionists as a strong argument.¹ The probability of the chance formation of a hypothetical functional ‘simple’ cell, given all the ingredients, is acknowledged² to be worse than 1 in 10⁵⁷⁸⁰⁰. This is a chance of 1 in a number with 57,800 zeros. It would take 11 full pages of magazine type to print this number (Creation.com).  There simply is NO chance our universe happened by chance.

E.  EMPIRICAL science

I love science.  I began my college career pursuing a degree in theoretical chemistry.  Twenty-six years later, while a student in seminary I would complete my thesis for a Master’s degree with an expose on “God As the Theory of Everything--Understanding the Existence of God in Light of New Developments in Quantum Physics.”  I greatly appreciate the discipline of science and all that it can do to increase our knowledge of our world, and bring great improvements to it.  I also realize the limits of “empirical science.”  Empiricism can broadly be described as what one can know through the investigation of the five senses.  The scientific method is a process of investigating “stuff.”  You must be able to create hypothesis and design experiments that can quantifiably justify your thesis.  To say it simply, empirical science relies on what you can prove with a test tube.

Well, of course, God cannot be subject to such investigation.  Science can contribute to our understanding of God, but can never independently either verify or deny His existence.  It takes something “more” than science to understand God and His creation.

The F.A.C.E. of evolution is not “pretty.”  In fact, it is savage and ugly as represented by the face of an ape (allowing of course for the difference in taste for persons like Jane Udall).  So, what would the F.A.C.E. of Faith look like?

3.  The FORCE of Faith.

The Bible says, “Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof  of what is not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

So, you want proof ?  Well, “faith” is proof of what is “real.”  The word translated, “reality” (substance, KJV), means that which lies under or behind what is perceived.  It means, what is “most” real.  The problem with materialistic scientists is that they—by definition—dismiss anything as evidence that cannot be experienced by the five senses.  They dismiss even the possibility of “non-material” explanations or considerations.  They simply throw out the “supernatural.”  Thus, faith—by definition—cannot account for evidence in anyway.  Faith has not “force” in mainstream science, in the modern period.

Did any of you read or hear about the 18 months old baby that was rescued from frigid waters after 14 hours hanging upside down?  The baby’s 25 years old mother died when her car hit a cement barrier and flipped into the Spanish Fork River in Utah, landing on its top.  When First Responders arrived after a fisherman called 9-1-1, four of them immediately rushed into the frigid waters.  They could see the mother, who was obviously dead.  They may have stopped looking for the baby who was unconscious in her car seat.  But, all four first responders report hearing a woman’s voice frantically screaming, “help my baby!”  They pushed the car up and noticed the little baby in the carseat—alive, but barely.  The conditions were so cold seven responders had to be treated for hypothermia.  They would have likely retreated from the killing current if not for hearing the “mysterious voice.”  People do not share hallucinations.  Four independent sources give an account of the supernatural. 

I ask you, what is the “evidence” for the supernatural voice?  It is not “empirical, naturalistic, materialistic” science that can account for it.  Faith, however, provides a perfect, complete, reasonable answer. 

Faith is a powerful force and accounts as much for knowledge as science.  The great scientist and mathematician, Blaise Paschal, set, “the heart has reasons, reason knows nothing of.”  Paschal was restating what Augustine taught centuries before.  Augustine taught that no matter how sophisticated and successful one’s reason might be, it can never fully know what is true without faith.  He used the analogy of light.  Even with perfectly good eyes, one cannot see anything without light.  Faith gives us that light.

It is very significant that Jesus Christ said of Himself (Jn. 8:12):

I am  the light  of the world. Anyone who follows Me
will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”

Without faith, science is a blind man stumbling aimlessly in the dark.  The F.A.C.E. of evolution is a savage brute.  The face of faith is the Lord Jesus Christ.  Without the “force of faith,” life comes to a hopeless end.  With faith in Christ, life becomes an endless hope.

Let me review quickly.  Stuff exists.  That’s a FACT both creationists and evolutionists must, and do, agree on.  The F.A.C.E. of evolution is not the pretty picture evolutionists present.  Fossils, the Ape to Man issue, creation by Chance, and the narrow and short philosophical postion of empirical science raise many questions in the minds of reasonable men.  The “Force” of faith is that it provides a broader, longer reach into our world that is not limited by the study of natural events alone, but gives us “supernatural” insight into what lies beneath and behind what can be experienced through scientific experimentation alone.

God’s NOT dead—But, Evolution is Gravely Ill.  Far from what popular culture has accepted as fact, science has not proven there is no God.  It really comes down to faith.  Are you going to trust in God, or are you going to trust in science?  Faith does not require that we leave reason and investigation outside on the porch.  Faith invites science into the investigation of truth.  Many (perhaps most) of the  successful scientists in history have been believers.  JOHANNES KEPLER, one of the greatest scientists in history,  described science as "thinking God's thoughts after Him."

The Bible provides a solid foundation for a philosophically and scientifically reasonable answer for creation.  The world rejects this notion, and increasingly so in our modern culture.  If you put your trust in God, He will live boldly and brightly in your heart and you will have a satisfying confidence in life. 

Don’t buy the lie that God is dead, and science has buried Him.  He is very much alive.

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