The Lie: Evolution (3 page)

But what about a revelationist, that is, a person who believes that the God of history has revealed the truth about himself by means of a book? (A book which claims over three thousand times to be the Word of God.) Can such a person consider the opposite question, that God did
not
create? No! Because he starts with the premise that God is Creator and His word is true.

Atheists, agnostics and revelationists (and theists) hold to religious positions; and what they do with the evidence will again be determined by the assumptions (beliefs) of their religious positions.
It is not a matter of whether one is biased or not. It is really a question of which bias is the best bias with which to be biased.

Glaring examples of bias can be seen in public education in response to the creation ministry. The following conversation, which is rather typical of students in the public school system, shows what bias is all about. After a presentation on creation, one student stated, "There is no way Noah’s ark could be true — he couldn’t have fitted all the animals on board." I then asked the student, "How many animals would he have needed to have put on board?" He gave the usual reply: "I don’t know, but it certainly couldn’t have happened." "I then asked him how big was the ark?" Again he answered, "I don’t know, but he couldn’t have fitted the animals on board." In other words, here is a student who did not know how big Noah’s ark was, or how many animals God would have needed to put on board, but he has already decided it is a fairy tale that could not have happened.

At one town a keen supporter of creation ministries told how he had spoken to fellow academics at a local university concerning Noah’s flood. They, of course, mocked and scoffed at the idea. He then mentioned that someday someone may find Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat. One fellow academic turned to him and said that even if they found a big boat that looked like Noah’s ark on the top of Mount Ararat and dragged it to the main street of the city, he would still refuse to believe it. His bias was showing.

There have been many occasions where I have been able to give a convincing and logical presentation to the students. Many of them then looked to their teachers to try to make some point that could demonstrate where I was wrong. It is easy to read the expressions on the students’ faces. They are saying that this all sounds convincing but surely there must be something wrong with it because they really do not want to believe that the Bible is true. A teacher may respond by asking a question that sounds to the student as if the teacher has proven me wrong. In the students’ eyes there is no way that I would be able to answer the question. Often students spontaneously break into applause (their way of rejoicing over what they think is my demise). However, it is interesting to watch their faces and see their jaws drop when I am able to give a reasonable answer to the question — they are back where they started. It is sad to see that, for many of them, they have already made up their minds and decided they really do not want to believe the Bible.

I am often asked how people change their biases. This is a good question. As a Christian, the only way I can answer is to say that in this area it has to be a work of the Holy Spirit. The Bible teaches that we either walk in the light or in darkness (Acts 26:18), gather or scatter, are
for
Christ or
against
Him (Matt. 12:30). The Bible clearly declares that no person is neutral and that each one does have a bias. Since it is the Holy Spirit who convicts and convinces people of the truth, it is only through the work of the Holy Spirit that our biases can change. As Christians, our job is to bring the Word of God to people in a clear and gracious way, and pray that the Spirit might use our words to open hearts and minds to Christ. I believe Christians understand bias better than others. All Christians were once lost sinners biased against God. They have seen how Jesus Christ can change their bias as He transforms their lives through the power of His Spirit.

One of the reasons why creationists have such difficulty in talking to certain evolutionists is because of the way bias has affected the way they hear what we are saying. They already have preconceived ideas about what we do and do not believe. They have prejudices about what they want to understand in regard to our scientific qualifications, and so on.

There are many examples of evolutionists who have totally misunderstood or misinterpreted what creationists are saying. They hear us through their "evolutionary ears," not comprehending in the slightest the perspective from which we are coming. As creationists, we understand that God created a perfect world, man fell into sin, the world was cursed, God sent Noah’s flood as judgment, and Jesus Christ came to die and be raised from the dead to restore all things. In other words, our message is one of creation, Fall, and redemption. However, because evolutionists are used to thinking in "uniformitarian" terms (i.e., basically the world we see today — the world of death and struggle — has gone on for millions of years), they do not understand this creationist perspective of history.

An interesting example came when Dr. Gary Parker was debating a professor from LaTrobe University in Victoria, Australia. One of the evolutionist’s "refutations" of creation centered around his assertion that there were too many imperfections in the world to have been made by a Creator. This particular evolutionist would not understand, even after it was clearly presented, that the world we are looking at today is not the same world that God created because of the effects of the Fall and flood. To understand the creation/evolution issue correctly, one must have a complete understanding of the beliefs adhered to by both creationists and evolutionists.

In another example, an evolutionist biologist said that if God made all the animals during the fifth and sixth days of creation, why don’t we find parakeets and mice in the Cambrian strata alongside trilobites? Dr. Parker then explained that parakeets and mice do not live in the same environment as the trilobites. Dr. Parker explained to this scientist that the fossil record should be seen in terms of the sorting action of a worldwide flood. Because animals and plants live in different areas, they would have been trapped in sediments representative of their particular environment. Again, we see bias causing a misunderstanding that so many have of the creationists position.

The reader needs to be aware that, when we discuss creation/evolution, in both instances we are talking about beliefs, that is, religion. The controversy is not religion versus science, as the evolutionists try to make out. It is religion versus religion, the science of one religion versus the science of the other.

Evolution is a religious position that makes human opinion supreme. As we shall see, its fruits (because of rejection of the Creator and Lawgiver) are lawlessness, immorality, impurity, abortion, racism, and a mocking of God. Creation is a religious position based on the Word of God, and its fruits (through God’s Spirit) are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The creation/evolution issue (is God Creator?) is the crux of the problems in our society today. It is the fundamental issue with which Christians must come to grips. The creation/evolution issue is where the battle really rages.

Chapter 2

EVOLUTION IS RELIGION

The term "evolutionist" is used extensively throughout the following chapters. In other parts of this book, we will discuss the ideas of Christians who try to marry the concepts of evolution and the Bible. However, because the majority of evolutionists are not Christians, I wish the reader to understand that the term "evolutionist" is used to mean those who believe that evolution — in the sense of time, chance, and struggle for survival — rather than the God of the Bible is responsible for life.

The Autumn 1985 (Vol. 2, No. 5) issue of
The Southern Skeptic
(the official journal of the South Australian branch of the American Skeptics, whose aims are similar to American humanist groups), devoted its entire 30 pages to an attack on the creation science ministry in Australia and the United States. On the last page we read the following: "Even if all the evidence ended up supporting whichever scientific theories best fitted Genesis, this would only show how clever the old Hebrews were in their use of common sense, or how lucky. It does not need to be explained by an unobservable God." These people who vehemently attack the creation ministry in saying we are a religious group are themselves a religious group. They have really said that even if all the evidence supported the Book of Genesis they still would not believe it was an authoritative document. They are working from the premise that the Bible is not the Word of God, nor can it ever be. They believe, no matter what the evidence, that there is no God. These same people are most adamant that evolution is a fact.

Evolution is basically a religious philosophy. We in creation ministries are explaining to people that both creation and evolution are religious views of life upon which people build their particular models of philosophy, science, or history. The issue, therefore, is not science versus religion, but religion versus religion (the science of one religion versus the science of another religion).

The famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky quotes Pierre Teihard de Chardin: "Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow."
¹
To the Christian, of course, this is a direct denial of the sayings of Jesus as quoted in John 8:12: "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." In Isaiah 2:5 we are exhorted to "walk in the light of the Lord." In verse 22 of the same chapter we read, "Cease ye from [trusting] man."

It does not take much effort to demonstrate that evolution is
not
science but
religion
. Science, of course, involves observation, using one or more of our five senses (taste, sight, smell, hearing, touch) to gain knowledge about the world, and to be able to repeat the observations. Naturally, one can only observe what exists in the present. It is an easy task to understand that no scientist was present over the suggested millions of years to witness the supposed evolutionary progression of life from the simple to the complex. No living scientist was there to observe the first life forming in some primeval sea. No living scientist was there to observe the big bang that is supposed to have occurred 10 or 20 billion years ago, nor the supposed formation of the earth 4.5 billion years ago (or even 10,000 years ago!). No scientist was there — no human witness was there to see these events occurring. They certainly cannot be repeated today.

All the evidence a scientist has exists
only
in the present. All the fossils, the living animals and plants, the world, the universe — in fact, everything — exists
now
, in the present. The average person (including most students) is
not
taught that scientists have only the present and cannot deal directly with the past. Evolution is a belief system about the past based on the words of men who were not there, but who are trying to explain how all the evidence of the present (that is, fossils, animals, and plants, etc.) originated.

Webster’s Dictionary defines religion as follows: "Cause, principle or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith." Surely, this is an apt description of evolution. Evolution is a belief system — a religion!

It only takes common sense to understand that one does not dig up an "age of the dinosaurs" supposedly existing 70–200 million years ago. One digs up
dead
dinosaurs that exist
now
,
not
millions of years ago. Fossil bones do not come with little labels attached telling you how old they are. Nor do fossils have photographs with them telling you what the animals looked like as they roamed the earth long ago.

When people visit a museum they are confronted by bits and pieces of bones and other fossils neatly arranged in glass cases. These are often accompanied by pictures representing an
artist’s impression
of what the animals and plants could have looked like in their natural environment. Remember, no one dug up the picture, just the fossils. And these fossils exist in the present. For example, in Tasmania there is a sandstone bed containing millions of pieces of bones, most of which are no larger than the end of your thumb. The evolutionists have placed a picture at one particular excavation so that tourists can see how the animals and plants lived in the region "millions of years ago." You can stare at those pieces of bones for as long as you like, but you will never see the picture the scientists have drawn. The picture is their story of their own preconceived bias, and that, ultimately, is all it ever can be.

When lecturing in schools and colleges, I like to ask the students what can be learned from a fossil deposit. I ask the students whether all the animals and plants contained in the deposits lived together, died together, or were buried together. I then warn them to make sure that the answer they give me is consistent with true scientific research. As they think about it, they come to realize that they do not know if the organisms lived together because they did not see it happen. They do not know if the organisms died together because they did not see that happen either. All they really know is that they are buried together because they were found together. Therefore, if you try reconstructing the environment in which the organisms lived just from what you find there, you could be making a terrible mistake. The correct use of science needs to be emphasized in our educational system.

The only way anyone could always be sure of arriving at the right conclusion about anything, including origins, depends upon his knowing everything there is to know. Unless he knew that every bit of evidence was available, he would never really be sure that any of his conclusions were right. He would never know what further evidence there might be to discover and, therefore, whether this would change his conclusions. Neither could a person ever know if he had reached the point where he had all the evidence. This is a real problem for any human being — how can anyone ever be one hundred percent sure about anything? It is something of a dilemma, is it not? It is like watching a murder mystery on television. What happens? It is obvious. Halfway through, the viewer knows who did it — the butler. Towards the end, this conclusion is still obvious. Three minutes before the end, new evidence is admitted that you did not have before, and this totally changes your conclusions. It wasn’t the butler, after all!

However, starting with the irrefutable evidence of the Scriptures, we are told that in God the Father and His Christ "... are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). There is no way any human mind can know all there is to know. But we have someone who does. This ends our dilemma. We are in no doubt that what God has revealed in His Word is truthful and accurate. He is not a man that He should lie (Num. 23:19) about
anything
. In time, we will know more fully. He will add to our knowledge, but He will not change what His Word has already revealed.

No human being, no scientist, has all the evidence. That is why scientific theories change continuously. As scientists continue to learn new things, they change their conclusions.

The story has been told of a person who went back to his university professor many years after completing his degree in economics. He asked to look at the test questions they were now using. He was surprised to see that they were virtually the same questions he was asked when he was a student. The lecturer then said that although the questions were the same, the answers were entirely different!

I once debated with a geology professor from an American university on a radio program. He said that evolution was real science because evolutionists were prepared to continually change their theories as they found new data. He said that creation was not science because a creationists’ views were set by the Bible and, therefore, were not subject to change.

I answered, "The reason scientific theories change is because we don’t know everything, isn’t it? We don’t have all the evidence."

"Yes, that’s right," he said.

I replied, "But, we will never know
everything
."

"That’s true," he answered.

I then stated, "We will always continue to find new evidence."

"Quite correct," he said.

I replied, "That means we can’t be
sure
about
anything
."

"Right," he said.

"That means we can’t be sure about evolution."

"Oh, no! Evolution is a fact," he blurted out.

He was caught by his own logic. He was demonstrating how his view was determined by his bias.

Models of science are subject to change for both creationists and evolutionists.
But, the beliefs that these models are built on are not
. The problem is that most scientists do not realize that it is the belief (or religion) of evolution that is the basis for the scientific models (the interpretations, or stories) used to attempt an explanation of the present. Evolutionists are not prepared to change their actual belief that all life can be explained by natural processes and that no God is involved (or even needed). Evolution is the religion to which they are committed. Christians need to wake up to this.
Evolution is a religion; it is not science!