An Evolutionary Idea

I learned something today that has more firmly entrenched me in the literal 6 day creation camp than ever before.

For the past several years I have listened to a number of men who hold to the old earth theory. Given certain scientific arguments, I could at least understand why they could be convinced that the earth is millions, perhaps billions of years old. Not agree, but understand. 

Many of these men would fall into the Theistic Evolution camp; that is, they would argue that God used the processes of evolution to create the world. That was always a stretch for me, but what struck me today is how impossible that position is to hold while still holding to the God as described for us in the Bible.

Evolution is the process by which life adapts to its environment and slowly improves by means of mutations. Ever so slowly through eons of time, species evolve by means of genetic changes that either prove beneficial or harmful to the species' survival. Either the species adapts, or it fails to adapt to its environment and it dies out. Thus, through countless generations, a species may evolve to become better suited for survival. We call this survival of the fittest. Those that do not adapt, die.

The secular world teaches this as fact and derides those who oppose it. Many thoughtful Christians have decided that this view, that this •science• is not in opposition to the Bible.

Except, no. And here's why.

The Bible is clear that death was not originally a part of creation. There was no death when God finished creating. Death didn't come at all until •after• Adam & Eve sinned.

So... if Adam preceded the concept of death... how could he have evolved? Adam can't be both the •cause• of evolution •and• the result of it. Moreover, how could ANYTHING evolve in a world where there was no death? There is no "survival of the fittest" in a world where this is no death.

The Lord is a holy God. His Word shows us that man enjoyed fellowship with God in the Garden of Eden and that the world was in a state of perfection. When man fell into sin, that fellowship was broken; the world was cursed; by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin and so death has passed upon all men. It was God's holiness -- His intolerance of sin -- that separated sinful man and the world from Him.

Evolution claims to find its evidence in the fossil record. But what do we find in the fossil record? Death. Dead flora and fauna. But not merely death for we also find evidence of sick creatures in the fossil record. And creatures that clearly bore the teeth marks of other creatures. None of that was possible before the fall of man and the curse of sin being put upon the world.

For the atheist, this is no big deal and the point of this post is lost on them. But for the Believer, the one who claims to know the Lord, he must come now confront not only the contradiction between the Genesis account in the Bible and evolutionary theory, but he must also admit that he holds to a view of God that is fundamentally contradictory to that which is revealed in scripture.

A holy God would not create from the outset create a fallen world riddled by death and disease and violence. It was man's sin that created that state for ourselves and for our world. 

It's one thing to say that Genesis chapter one is an allegory; it's another thing entirely to deny the attributes of God. 

Oops.

Thus, Christian, we much choose one or the other. We do not have the option of forcing God into the box of "science".