The Bible and Evolution

By Pastor Doug Batchelor
Contributions by Emily Simmons

An Amazing Fact: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

Imagine, if you will, downtown New York City during rush hour. Subways roaring; elevators whizzing up and down skyscrapers; cabs … well … idling in traffic; people humming in and out of buildings, over bridges, across streets. From 10 stories below street level to 180 stories above, it’s a dynamo of activity and a complex network of electrical and telecommunications systems.

But according to even most evolutionary scientists, one single human cell of life is staggeringly more complex than New York City rush hour. “Each of those 100 trillion cells functions like a walled city. Power plants generate the cell’s energy. Factories produce proteins, vital units of chemical commerce. Complex transportation systems guide specific chemicals from point to point within the cell. … Sentries … monitor the outside world for signs of danger. Disciplined biological armies stand ready to grapple with invaders. A centralized genetic government maintains order” (Peter Gwynne, “The Secrets of the Human Cell,” Newsweek, August 20, 1979, p. 48).

Despite this confession, much of the modern world teaches that if you believe in creation, that God simply spoke things into existence … well, your intelligence is pitiful.

However, you’re also in good company. Jesus said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me” (John 5:46 NKJV). Christ took Moses’ writings as plain truth; He authoritatively and liberally quoted from the Old Testament regarding Creation, the Exodus, and the Flood. He never suggested that any part of Genesis was a parable or fable. In fact, Jesus referred to Adam and Eve as real people. (See Mark 10:6–9.) No matter what the world thinks of us, we should believe like Jesus.

This subject is very close to my heart. I grew up believing in evolution. Most of the 14 different schools I attended taught that we are here because of evolutionary processes that took millions and billions of years. Surprisingly, some of these were even religious schools!

William James, the father of modern psychology, said, “There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.” Thus, the ridiculous view that, given enough time, chaos will produce order has taken a firm hold on our culture. And now, more and more Christians are being swept up by it, suggesting that God created all the sophisticated design around us using evolutionary processes. But this compromise creates an enormous problem: It makes it logically impossible to believe the rest of God’s Word as it is written.

However, even with my simple faith in God’s Word set aside, both reason and science soundly refute evolution. Indeed, mounting scientific evidence indicates that intelligent creation is truth.

The Whole World Can Be Wrong
As a child, I wanted to be a paleontologist. I could name all the dinosaurs and many different layers of the geologic column. Evolution fascinated me, and I thought people who believed in creation were fools. The evidence was as plain as day, right? It was in National Geographic and all those beautifully filmed nature programs on television. All these scientists couldn’t be wrong … could they?

Then I gradually discovered they were, in fact, very wrong.
But it wasn’t the Bible that convinced me. When I became a Christian, I didn’t check my brain at the church’s door. I’m still inquisitive about our world and our universe; I still love science. So at first I tried to marry the Bible and evolution. But science and reason kept getting in the way.

How can so many people be wrong? It’s human nature to follow the crowd, even when the crowd is clearly in error. The Bible says, “You shall not follow a crowd to do evil” (Exodus 23:2 NKJV). That covers our actions, yes, but it also covers our philosophies. It doesn’t matter if the whole world believes in the theory of evolution; the Bible is our standard of truth. Besides, evolution is totally incompatible with biblical Christianity.

Darwinism: The Evolution of Atheism
If you think creation is a fairy tale, you won’t find much else in the book of Genesis relevant either. You must eventually accept creation as a fact for any of the other great biblical truths — including God’s standards of morality — to be significant in your life.

Indeed, Darwin’s theory of evolution was a daring attempt to make God’s existence unnecessary; evolution really is the origins myth of atheism. It was developed for the purpose of giving humans the freedom to act without accountability to a higher power.

At its very core, atheism balks at the existence of an objective right and wrong. Obviously, not all atheists are ready to commit the evil their beliefs would allow for. However, to the atheistic evolutionist, humans have simply evolved into a society that currently frowns on theft and murder. But we could just as easily evolve into something else, and the result could not objectively be called good or bad. Blood could run in the streets and evolutionists could simply label it as “eliminating the weaker members of the species.”

Is it so surprising then that the horrors of the Holocaust find their underpinnings in the theory of evolution? An examination of the writings of Hitler and other Nazis reveals that Darwinism heavily influenced the policies of WWII Germany. In fact, many people are surprised to learn that the entire title of Darwin’s Origin of Species is: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life” (emphasis added). Hitler labeled Jews as an inferior race and less than human, thereby justifying murder, torture, and ghastly human experiments in the name of survival of the fittest. And racism continues today because many people believe that some humans are more highly evolved than others. But racism directly contradicts the Bible, which says God “has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26 NKJV).

A Bad Foundation
Teaching our children the lesson that there is no absolute right and wrong is very dangerous. It has caused a disaster in our public schools, our court system, and for the very fabric of our society.

A false understanding of human origins ultimately degrades society. Consider the nations that have made atheism the core of their culture — the former Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and Vietnam. I’ve been to Russia and China and have seen the devastating effects of atheism: Suicide, alcoholism, and spousal abuse are epidemics. Atheism offers no hope or purpose for life.

But exhibit “A” would be the drastic differences between North and South Korea. If you stand on the 38th parallel, you’ll see a very bleak and backward existence of the imprisoned people of the North. Look south toward Seoul and you will see a bright and free civilized existence. The core difference? South Korea is a Christian stronghold; North Korea teaches evolution and atheism.

Satan told Adam and Eve that if they rejected God’s Word, they would be freed and experience unlimited human advancement. Instead, they were enslaved by sin. Today, Cuba, North Korea, and China aggressively persecute Christianity, all the while suppressing freedom, advancement, and hope — enslaving their people in unspeakable evil.

Evolutionists can also rationalize all kinds of immoral behaviors as merely part of the evolution of man; nothing is inherently bad. As a teenager, I learned that my science teacher had an affair with a woman in the loft of his home while his pregnant wife was downstairs. Though it deeply hurt his wife, he appeared indifferent to her feelings. He excused himself by saying, “Not all of the primates we’ve evolved from are monogamous, so adultery is perfectly natural. We can’t help it.” Evolution clearly undermines Christian living.

False Assumptions, Faulty Conclusions
But what about all the supposed scientific evidence that proves evolution? The truth is that the theory of evolution is based on huge assumptions about things that happened in the unobservable past. (Remember that the scientific method requires observation and repeatable research. So calling evolution “science” doesn’t make any sense.

For instance, the theory stands on dubious dating methods. One is carbon dating, a method used to date dead plants and animals. All living plants and animals contain the same ratio of two types of carbon, 14C and 12C, which they get from the atmosphere and from space. When an organism dies, 14C begins disintegrating while 12C levels remain constant. Thus, measuring the 14C/12C ratio in a dead plant makes it possible to estimate how long ago the plant died.

But to precisely determine the plant’s age, at least two questions must be answered: How fast does 14C decay? And how much 14C did the organism contain when it died? In answer to the first question, 14C has a half-life of 5,700 years. (A “half-life” is the amount of time required for half of the atoms — in this case, carbon atoms — in a given sample to decay.)

To answer the second question, scientists made an assumption that the atmosphere’s 14C/12C ratio has remained constant throughout earth’s history. If so, they argue accurate dating is possible up to about 80,000 years — after that the amount of 14C left in a specimen is so small it is undetectable. But if this assumption is wrong, any dates calculated by this method are untrustworthy.

In science experiments, assumptions are critical. But if the starting assumption is false, the ensuing experiment will lead a scientist to draw a flawed conclusion, even if his calculations appear correct. Willard Libby, the developer of carbon dating, drew his conclusions based on the assumption that the earth was millions of years old. He calculated that it would take about 30,000 years for an atmosphere’s 14C/12C ratio to reach equilibrium. When he discovered that earth’s ratio was not in equilibrium, meaning it must be younger than 30,000 years, he dismissed it as an experimental error!

Suppose you enter a room with one door and no windows. In the middle of the room, a burning candle sits on a table. With nothing else to do, you try to figure out how long the candle has been burning. You start by observing how fast the candle is currently burning; how many inches per hour, for example. Does that tell you how long it’s been burning? No, because you don’t know how tall it was when it started burning. Suppose a note on the table stipulates that the candle was three feet tall when it was first lit; now you can calculate how long it’s been burning based on how tall it was to begin with and how fast it’s burning now.

But wait. When you entered the room, the open door let in more oxygen, so now the candle would be burning at a faster rate than before. Even if you know the present oxygen level of the room, you wouldn’t know what it was before you opened the door. Without an observer taking careful notes during the entire process, you can only guess as there are simply too many unknowns to make an accurate calculation.

It’s the same with carbon dating: There are simply too many variables. Scientists don’t know how old the earth is because they don’t know and can’t observe what has happened in the past. Or how the environmental factors have changed. Amazingly, an entire religion has been established on these dubious assumptions. It seems strange then that evolutionists ridicule the faith of Christians. Believing in evolution requires far more faith than believing in creationism.

Evidence for Creation
Increasingly, genuine science suggests a young earth, which supports the biblical creation story. Bear in mind that even the most advanced techniques cannot detect 14C in specimens older than 80,000 years. In 1997, the Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth group (RATE) began an eight-year project researching data typically ignored or censored by evolutionists. One of their discoveries was significant levels of 14C found in various samples of both coal and diamonds collected worldwide. The finding indicates that the coal and diamonds could not be billions of years old, as evolutionists claim.

Scientists also now know that the 14C/12C ratio has not been the same throughout earth’s history. (For one thing, the amount of 14C in the atmosphere increased sharply around the time of the Industrial Revolution.) Physicists Suess and Lingenfelter have now shown that 14C is entering the atmosphere about 30 percent faster than it is leaving. When it comes to carbon dating, this means that a thousand-year-old specimen appears much older than it really is when dated by a method that assumes atmospheric equilibrium. In fact, the older a specimen, the greater the error!

Even when correcting for the known increase of 14C during the Industrial Revolution, specimens still appear older than they really are. Moreover, the layer of water described in Genesis as surrounding the pre-Flood earth could have shielded the atmosphere from much of the 14C entering from space. Thus, pre-Flood specimens would contain so little 14C that they would appear to have been decaying for tens of thousands of years.

Where Are the People?
Consider the world’s population, now approaching seven billion. Around 1960, there were only three billion people; in 1804, one billion. In Christ’s day, only about 200 million people lived on the earth. Calculate this same growth rate back about another 2,500 years — to the time of the Flood — and you get just eight people: Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives.

But now use this same growth rate, an observable scientific fact, to project the world’s population if man had begun multiplying, say, just 10,000 years ago. (Never mind the millions of years that evolutionists postulate!) We should be standing shoulder to shoulder, 100 deep, over every square foot of the planet! Where have all the people gone? Moreover, there aren’t enough human remains, graves, or even artifacts to account for that many people having lived and died on the earth.

Ida: Follow the Money
Found in two pieces in Germany in 1983 by amateur fossil hunters, Ida, supposedly 47 million years old, was passed around the fossil-collecting community until she ended up in the hands of a research team. Earlier this year, the media eagerly dubbed Ida “the newest missing link” in response to a press release bent on promoting the find rather than the science.

Indeed, Ida has come under immense scrutiny by evolutionists as just another sham meant to drive DVD and book sales. Examine her photograph and you’ll see a skeleton that looks identical to a modern lemur, not an ape. Moreover, her remarkably intact skin, fur, and stomach contents suggest rapid burial (consistent with a flood) and an age of thousands of years (consistent with a young earth) rather than millions. Remember also that not a single so-called missing link ever submitted as proof of human ancestry has ever been uncontested in the science community. Some have been utter frauds. That’s important to consider the next time our evolution-fawning media prints another fossil fable as truth.

The Un-Fossil Record
In 1990, Dr. Mary Schweitzer and her colleagues discovered some T. rex bones to be partially un-fossilized. Adding to the excitement, when examining the bone specimens under the microscope, Schweitzer’s team identified little reddish-brown, translucent, round objects: red blood cells!

Further investigation revealed the presence of hemoglobin in the bone specimens. These findings can only mean that dinosaurs are much younger than previously claimed. Since then, Schweitzer continues to find soft, fibrous tissue and blood vessels in other dinosaur bones. Why have these never been found before? Probably because, blinded by their assumptions of an old earth, scientists have never looked for them before. And, true to form, Schweitzer automatically questioned the clear evidence rather than re-examining her assumptions! But when a creationist scientist does that, it’s labeled unscientific.

Censored!
I used to believe in the Big Bang theory. I still do in a sense — I believe that God spoke, and bang!, it happened. Controversy over the Big Bang rages even among scientists who believe it; there are many problems with the theory that simply can’t be explained. For one thing, no scientific experiment has ever demonstrated that an explosion can produce order and interworking systems.

Yet blatant persecution of scientists who merely question it (or other “established scientific facts”) is widely practiced. Once highly esteemed scientists, such as astronomers Geoffrey and Margaret Burbridge, who dared to suggest different explanations, find themselves censored, ostracized, even without a career. Physics professor Dr. Stefan Marinov actually committed suicide because of the intolerance he experienced in response to his “non-mainstream” work.

When a scientist’s conclusions contradict the Bible, it doesn’t mean we should reinterpret the Bible. Thousands of true scientists believe in creation, but they are consistently silenced by the atheists who have a vice grip on science journals, academic privileges, and a fawning media who put the beliefs of faulty men above the Word of God.

Evolution: At Odds With God’s Word

• The Bible teaches that creation was instigated by the supernatural word of God. There was no death, no suffering, no pain. Everything was “very good.” Evolution teaches that creation was instigated by a “supernatural” big bang. There was death and decay from the very beginning.
• The Bible teaches that a global cataclysmic flood formed the geologic layers and that mankind has been devolving since his creation. Evolution teaches that slow wind and water erosion formed the geologic layers over millions of years. Man has been evolving since the beginning.
• The Bible teaches only Jesus Christ can save the human race and restore us to paradise — and only through grace by faith. Evolution teaches, as the devil said 6,000 years ago, that the human race can save itself, and we will one day become like gods if we try hard enough.

In the Beginning
Honest science and logic show that our incredibly marvelous and complex world could never have evolved by accident. It happened as Jesus says it did, and it’s crucial that we believe it.

Sadly, many churches and Christian universities are compromising on this issue. “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17). If your pastor or professor suggests God used evolutionary processes to produce the earth, ask them if this means the saved will have to wait a few billion years while God creates the new heavens and the new earth. Then ask if our new resurrected bodies will have to evolve from a single cell again.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10). Which is harder: to speak a galaxy into existence or to change a human heart? Salvation relies upon God’s miraculous, instant creative power. When you toss aside the six-day Creation account, you do more than clear a pathway to immorality — you remove the hope of salvation!

Ultimately, something very simple but very important lies at the heart of someone who rejects biblical creation. If “in the beginning, God created” is true, then God is the supreme authority and, as His creation, we are subject to Him. Fallen human nature doesn’t like that arrangement.

Do you believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days? If so, praise the Lord! Then you can also believe that He will give you a new heart through a similar miracle of creation. (See Ezekiel 36:26; 2 Corinthians 5:17.) Could we have a better hope than that?

Source: http://www.amazingfacts.org/Publications/InsideReport/tabid/123/art...