The Lie: Evolution (10 page)

Also, Christians who do believe in evolution must accept that evolution is still going on. This is because the death and struggle we see in the world around us and the mutations (mistakes in the genes) that are occurring are used by evolutionists to try to prove that evolution is possible. They extrapolate into the past what they see today, and deduce that these processes over millions of years are the basis for evolution. Christians who accept evolution must agree, therefore, that evolution is occurring today in every area, including man. However, God has said in His Word that when He created everything He finished His work of creation and pronounced it "good" (Gen. 1:31–2:3). This is completely contrary to what evolutionists are telling us. Theistic evolutionists cannot say that God once used evolution and now does not. To say that evolution is not occurring today is to destroy evolutionary theory, as you have no basis for saying it ever happened in the past.

There are many Christians who, after being taught the true nature of science — that evolution is religion, abandon beliefs such as theistic evolution and progressive creation. However, there are a number of ministers, theologians, and others who, because of their whole view of Scripture, will not accept what we are saying. They have a basic philosophical disagreement with us in regard to how to approach the Bible.

Perhaps the best way to summarize this argument is to give you a practical example from an encounter I had with a Protestant church minister.

Personnel from the Creation Science Foundation in Brisbane, Australia, had traveled 1,700 kilometers to Victoria to conduct meetings in various centers. In one location, this minister opposed us publicly. Another minister, in the same church, had put an advertisement in the church’s weekly announcement sheet concerning our visit. The opposing minister obtained the stencil before the announcement sheet was printed and deleted the advertisement. He encouraged people to boycott our seminar program and made many discouraging public statements concerning our organization and teachings. He even told people that we were of the devil and they should not listen to us.

I made an appointment with this minister to discuss the issue with him. He explained that he believed Genesis was only symbolic, that there were a great many mistakes in the Bible and one could not take it as literally as I appeared to do. The reason we had this disagreement concerning creation/evolution was because we had a basic philosophical disagreement regarding our personal approach to the Scriptures. He agreed this was so, but again emphasized one could not take Genesis literally and that it was only symbolic. I asked him whether he believed that God created the heavens and the earth.

He said, "Yes, this was the message that Genesis was teaching."

Deliberately, I quoted Genesis 1:1, "Do you believe, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and earth?’"

He said, "Yes, of course I do. That is the message Genesis is getting across to us."

I explained to him that he had just taken Genesis 1:1 literally. He was asked whether Genesis 1:1 was symbolic, and, if not, why did he take it literally. I then asked whether Genesis 1:2 was literal or symbolic. I pointed out the inconsistency of accepting Genesis 1:1 as literal but saying the whole of Genesis was symbolic. He went on to say it was not important what Genesis said — only what it meant was important.

"How can you ever understand the meaning of anything if you do not know what it says?" I asked. "If you cannot take what it says to arrive at the meaning, then the English (or any other) language really becomes nonsense."

I then asked him how he decided what was truth concerning the Scriptures. He replied, "By a consensus of opinion amongst the fellowship."

So I said, "This, then, is your basis for deciding what truth is. Where did you get this basis from, and how do you know that this is the right basis for deciding truth?"

He looked at me and said, "By a consensus of opinion amongst scholars."

I again posed the question to him, "If this, now, is your basis for deciding truth and determining whether or not your fellowship has come to the right conclusion about truth, how do you know that this is the right basis to determine what truth is?"

He then told me that he did not have all day to talk about this topic, and it was best we now finish the discussion. What he was doing, of course, was appealing to man’s wisdom to decide what Scripture meant or said, rather than allowing God’s Word to tell him what the truth was. The real difference between our positions could be summed up as follows:
Where do you put your faith — in the words of men who are fallible creatures who do not know everything, who were not there — or the Words of God who is perfect, who knows everything, and who was there?

Christians (or those claiming to be Christian) who take this liberal view of Scripture will more often than not see the results of this wrong philosophy in the next generation: their children. Because they cannot provide a solid foundation for their children, they frequently see the whole structure of Christianity collapsing in the next generation. For many of these people, it is sad but true that most of their children will reject Christianity completely. This dilemma in regard to liberal theology is very much related to the controversy concerning Genesis. If one rejects Genesis, or claims it is only symbolism or myth, this logically leads to a denial of the rest of Scripture. You see this reflected in people who try to explain away the miracles, such as the crossing of the Red Sea, the burning bush, or a fish swallowing a man (to name but a few). But, these people do not stop there. They go on to explain away the miracles of Christ in the New Testament. Sometimes (and increasingly so), even the virgin birth and the Resurrection are denied. Once one accepts Genesis as literal and understands it as foundational for the rest of Scripture, it is an easy step to accepting as truth the remainder of what the Bible says. I take the Bible literally unless it is obviously symbolic. Even where it is symbolic, the words and phrases used have a literal basis.

Many people use the example in Scripture where it says that Jesus is the door to say that we cannot take that literally. However, understanding the customs of the times, we find that the shepherd used to sit in the gate and literally be the door. So, in this sense, Jesus is literally the door, just as the shepherd literally was the door. Too many people are quick to jump to conclusions concerning the literalness of Scripture without carefully considering the statement, the context, and the customs. When Scripture is meant to be taken symbolically or metaphorically, it is either obviously so from the context or we are told so.

Of course, many liberal theologians claim that the creation ministry is divisive. In that claim they certainly are correct; the truth always divides.
As Christ said, He came with a sword to divide: "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Matt. 10:35). How many situations do you know where relationships have been broken because of the tension between living as a Christian and not living as one? Compromise is too often made with the Christian giving ground for the sake of peace and harmony. Jesus predicted strife, not peace at any price. In Luke 12:51, Jesus said, "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay: but rather division" (see also John 7:12, 43; 9:16; 10:19).

From a practical perspective, I find that students do not want somebody telling them the Bible is full of mistakes or that they cannot believe it. They want to hear that there are answers and that they can really know.

At one meeting a mother told me that her daughter was in the class I had spoken to at the local public school. Her daughter had told her that the thing that impressed the students more than anything was the fact that I spoke with such authority. They were impressed that I did not question God’s Word, but totally accepted it. It reminded me of the statement in the Scriptures: "The people were astonished at His doctrine: for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (Matt. 7:28–29). Jesus was very authoritative and very dogmatic in the way He spoke. He did not preach various ways into heaven. He did not come and say that He believed He was one of the ways to eternal life. Jesus said, "I am
the
Way,
the
Truth and
the
Life" (John 14:6). I do not think Jesus would be accepted in many churches today if He were to preach. He would be too divisive! It was little different two thousand years ago. Are we, as born-again Christians, who are the embodiment of Christ on earth today, too scared to proclaim the truth in case we are divisive?

I spoke to one particular church youth group on the importance of Genesis. I was amazed at the youth leader, who, at the end of the program, told the young people how disappointed he was with my "low" view of Scripture. He said that I was trying to impose a perfect Bible on God and how inadequate this view of Scripture was. They, on the other hand, were prepared to accept that there were mistakes and problems in the Bible. This led to a very "high" view of Scripture. After this conversation, I decided that words were meaningless for this person.

Many people (particularly those of the younger generation) have commented on the lack of authoritative teaching. It is a sad indictment upon our church. What are they feeding their people?

Chapter 8

THE EVILS OF EVOLUTION

If you accept a belief in God as Creator, then you accept that there are laws, since He is the law-giver. God’s Law is the reflection of His holy character. He is the absolute authority, and we are under total obligation to Him. Laws are not a matter of our opinions, but rules given by the One who has the right to impose them upon us for our good and His own glory. He gives us principles as a basis for building our thinking in every area.

Accepting the God of creation tells us what life is all about. We know that God is the life-giver, that life has meaning and purpose, and that all humans are created in the image of God and, therefore, are of great value and significance
. God made us so that He could relate to us, love us, and pour out His blessing on us, and so that we could love Him in return.

On the other hand, if you reject God and replace Him with another belief that puts chance and random processes in the place of God, there is no basis for right or wrong. Rules become whatever you want to make them. There are no absolutes — no principles that must be adhered to. People will write their own rules.

It must be understood that our world view is inevitably affected by what we believe concerning
our origins and our destiny
.

As the creation foundation is removed, we see the godly institutions also start to collapse. On the other hand, as the evolution foundation remains firm, the structures built on that foundation — lawlessness, homosexuality, abortion, etc., logically increase. We must understand this connection.

Many Christians recognize the degeneration that has occurred in society. They see the collapse in Christian ethics and the increase in anti-God philosophies. They are well aware of the increase of lawlessness, homosexuality, pornography, and abortion (and other products of humanistic philosophy), but they are at a loss to know why this is occurring. The reason they are in such a dilemma is that they do not understand the foundational nature of the battle. Creation versus evolution is the bottom line.

If you find it hard to believe that evolution is related to the above issues, some basic research into history will demonstrate the connection clearly. In fact, I have not yet met one informed evolutionist who had disagreed with me concerning the relationship of evolution to these particular moral issues. They might not necessarily agree that this should have happened, but they do agree that this is the way in which people have applied evolution. It is important that you do not misunderstand what I am saying at this point. Certainly, evil, anti-God philosophies existed before Darwinian evolution. People aborted babies before Darwin popularized his view of evolution. However, what people believe about where they came from does affect their world view. When people reject the God of creation, it affects how they view themselves, others, and the world in which they live.

Particularly in the Western nations, where Christian ethics were once very prevalent, Darwinian evolution provided a justification for people not to believe in God and, therefore, to do those things which Christians would deem as wrong. As one non-Christian scientist said in a TV interview, "Darwinian evolution helped make atheism respectable."

We are now going to consider a number of areas where evolution has been used to justify people’s attitudes and actions. This does not mean that Darwinian evolution is the cause of these attitudes or actions but rather has been used by people as a justification to make their particular philosophy "respectable" in their eyes. These are covered in more detail and documented in Dr. Henry Morris’s book,
Creation and the Modern Christian
. (See the list of resources at the end of this book for details.)

1. Nazism and evolution

Much has been written about one of fascism’s more infamous sons, Adolf Hitler. His treatment of Jews may be attributed, at least in part, to his belief in evolution. P. Hoffman, in
Hitler’s Personal Security
, said: "Hitler believed in struggle as a Darwinian principle of human life that forced every people to try to dominate all others; without struggle they would rot and perish. ... Even in his own defeat in April 1945, Hitler expressed his faith in the survival of the stronger and declared the Slavic peoples to have proven themselves the stronger."
¹

Sir Arthur Keith, the well-known evolutionist, explains how Hitler was only being consistent in what he did to the Jews — he was applying the principles of Darwinian evolution. In
Evolution and Ethics
, he said: "To see evolutionary measures and tribal morality being applied vigorously to the affairs of a great modern nation, we must turn again to Germany of 1942. We see Hitler devoutly convinced that evolution produces the only real basis for a national policy. ... The means he adopted to secure the destiny of his race and people were organized slaughter, which has drenched Europe in blood. ... Such conduct is highly immoral as measured by every scale of ethics, yet Germany justifies it; it is consonant with tribal or evolutionary morality. Germany has reverted to the tribal past, and is demonstrating to the world, in their naked ferocity, the methods of evolution."
²

2. Racism and Evolution

Stephen J. Gould, in
Natural History
(April 1980, p. 144), said that "Recapitulation [the evolutionary theory which postulates that a developing embryo in its mother’s womb goes through evolutionary stages, such as the fish stage, etc., until it becomes human] provided a convenient focus for the pervasive racism of white scientists; they looked to the activities of their own children for comparison with normal, adult behavior in lower races" (brackets mine). Gould also concludes that the term "mongoloid" became synonymous with mentally defective people because it was believed the Caucasian race was more highly developed than the Mongoloid. Therefore, some thought that a mentally defective child was really a throwback to a previous stage in evolution.

The leading American paleontologist of the first half of the 20th century, Henry Fairchild Osborne, adds fuel to the fire with his belief that "The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and Mongolian. ... The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven year old of the species Homo sapiens."
³

Many of the early settlers of Australia considered the Australian Aborigines to be less intelligent than the "white man," because aborigines had not evolved as far as whites on the evolutionary scale. In fact, the Hobart Museum in Tasmania (Australia) in 1984 listed this as one of the reasons why early white settlers killed as many aborigines as they could in that state. In 1924, the
New York Tribune
(Sunday, February 10) had a very large article telling their readers that the missing link had been found in Australia. The missing link referred to happened to be aborigines from the state of Tasmania.
⁴

The incredible thing is that we live in a society that states it wants to be rid of racist attitudes. Yet we are conditioned to racist attitudes by our very education system, and the whole foundational basis for racism permeates people’s minds.

It was the evolutionary view that convinced anthropologists there were different races of humans at different levels of intelligence and ability. It is the Christian view that teaches there is one race (in the sense that we all came from the same two humans, and therefore there are no lower or higher evolutionary groups) and that all people are equal.

At one school a teacher said to her students that if ape-like creatures had evolved into people, then this should be seen to be happening today. Some of the students told her that this was happening today because some aborigines are primitive and therefore, still evolving. Regrettably, in the children’s eyes the teaching of evolution had relegated the Australian Aborigines to a sub-human level.

3. Drugs and Evolution

Many people would not think of evolution as being in any way related to the taking of drugs. However, the following letter of testimony from a man in Western Australia shows clearly this relationship.

At school, the theory of evolution was presented in such a way that none of us ever doubted it was scientific fact. Although the school was supposedly Christian, the biblical account of creation was presented as a kind of romantic fiction, not intended to convey literal truths about God, man or the cosmos. As a result, I assumed the Bible was unscientific, and therefore practically of little or no use.

It never occurred to me that evolution was only an assumption — a concept concocted in someone’s head — and I regret to say that I wasn’t sufficiently interested to go check out the so-called "facts" for myself. I assumed that reliable people had already done that.

After I left school, I began to put into practice the assumptions and presuppositions I’d picked up during childhood. My naive belief in evolution had three important practical consequences:

1. It strongly encouraged me to look to drugs as an ultimate source of comfort and creativity.

2. It led me to the conclusion that God, if He was around at all, was a very distant and impersonal figure, separated from humanity by very great distances of space and time.

3. It led me to increasingly abandon the moral values I had been taught at home, because when man is viewed as an arbitrary by-product of Time + Matter + Chance, there is no logical reason for treating men or women as objects of dignity and respect, since in principle they are no different from the animals, trees, and rocks from which they supposedly came.

I want to elaborate on just one point, the great faith in dope that I had as a result of being convinced that evolution was "fact." After leaving school, I became increasingly susceptible to drugs. Drug-taking seemed to me to make sense because in principle it fitted with what I’d been taught about the nature and origin of man. "From chemical reactions hast thou come, and unto chemicals thou shalt return." And so I did.

My faith in drugs as a source of comfort and creativity was almost unbreakable even after ten years of total devastation, during which my job, personality, and relationships had fallen apart. Even after I came to Christ, I still continued using drugs, or feeling strongly drawn to them, until some Christians had pointed out the truth about man’s nature, origin, and destiny as recounted in Genesis. It was only when I perceived the truth of this, that my private love of drugs was completely and voluntarily abandoned.
I now know that my hope is in the person of Jesus Christ, and in Him only. It’s no longer a platitude, but a living reality. I’m free, and it is the truth which has made me free — free from any desire for dope, free from the compelling faith I once had in chemicals as a result of believing a lie — the lie of evolution.
I appeal to you parents and teachers, to re-examine the evidence as I have done."

4. Abortion and Evolution

Many will remember being taught at school that as an embryo develops in its mother’s womb it goes through a fish stage with gill slits, etc., and other evolutionary stages until it becomes human. In other words, the idea is that as the embryo develops it passes through all the evolutionary stages reflecting its ancestry. This theory of "embryonic recapitulation" was first proposed by a man called Ernest Haeckel. Not many people realize that this whole theory was an intentional deception. I quote, "But it still remains true that, in attempting to prove his law, Haeckel resorted to a series of dishonest distortions in making his illustrations. Branding them as dishonest is not too harsh, since Haeckel mentions where he originally procured some of his drawings without mentioning the alterations he made."
⁵

Eventually, Ernest Haeckel admitted this fraud, but the deplorable aspect is that this theory is still taught in many universities, schools, and colleges throughout the world. Admittedly, evolutionists who have kept up with the latest writings know that this view is wrong and refrain from teaching it in their classes. However, in most of the popular school textbooks and reading materials this view is still promulgated in various forms, often very subtle.

As people accepted that the child developing in a mother’s womb was just an animal reflecting its evolutionary ancestry, there was less and less problem about destroying it. As evolutionary ideas became more accepted, the easier it became to accept abortion. In fact, some abortion clinics in America have taken women aside to explain to them that what is being aborted is just an embryo in the fish stage of evolution, and that the embryo must not be thought of as human. These women are being fed outright lies.