Understanding the Stakes in the Debate Between Creationism and Evolution

                “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  Then God said, Let there be light; and there was light.  And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.  So the evening and the morning were the first day.
                Genesis 1:1-5
 
This first passage of the Bible establishes God as the creator of the universe.  It also establishes the fact that he did it in terms of days, not billions of years.  The passage clearly ends with terminology defining a day in terms of the traditional cycle of morning and evening, not some abstract length of time that can be stretched to accommodate billions of years of creation.
 
And yet so many Christians want to force such an accommodation into the text (or in more extreme cases, abandon the text altogether) to fall in line with the secular world view of evolution.  One such attempt is known of as the “Gap Theory” whereby they insert billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. They claim the first verse represents an original creation that was corrupted by Satan and the Fallen Angels and therefore God destroyed it and started over again in verse 2.  They say that this destruction gave us all the fossil records and the rock layering and took place over a sufficient amount of time to fall in line with the secular world view of evolution.
 
The main problem with this view is that it places an entirely unsupported first creation/first Fall narrative into Christian doctrine.  To be blunt – it is making stuff up.  The Bible does speak of the fall of Lucifer and a third of the angels, but there is nothing to indicate that this Fall took place as part of some first creation earth that was then destroyed and recreated.  We must be careful about taking such liberties with the scriptures, because there could be no end to the assumptions or distortions that could be carried out to conform to secular notions, leaving us with a doctrine that is built on the spirit of the age instead of the unchanging word of God.
 
An alternative to the Gap Theory is a belief that the days of creation do not represent literal days, but instead entire ages of earth’s history.  This allows them to draw out creation to fit a timeline that matches up with that of the secular view of the age of the earth.  But in doing so they are denying the literal reading of the Bible.  Each description of the day refers to it in terms of an evening and a morning.  You really have to strain against the words clearly spelled out in the text to accommodate any kind of indefinite and lengthy time period.  Once again, I direct you to the warning about bending scriptures to fit a worldview.
 
Does a 6-day creation sound unbelievable?  It most certainly does.  But no more than raising someone from the dead.  You have to ask yourself – do you believe in the power of God or don’t you?  If you cannot bring yourself to believe in the literal 6-day creation that he clearly describes, how can you believe in his plan for salvation?  If you are going to start to twist the Bible and deny it right from the very start, you might as well just put it down and find something else to believe in.  It is ok to have doubts and questions.  But you must have faith as well.
 
We Christians have been put in a false trap of having to defend creation as merely faith while evolutionists claim absolute truth.  The fact is, they are operating from a position of faith too.  They are engaging in theoretical science, not observational science.  Theoretical science requires faith in a series of assumptions and conclusions you draw based on extrapolations from observations.  Darwin saw variations in species while visiting the Galapagos Islands and extrapolated those observation to create a theory that humans evolved from simple organisms.  Not a single scientist was alive to observe the creation of the universe or the rise of the first living creature.  Everything they offer in the realm of creation is a theory and we are learning more and more that there are flaws in their theories.
 
Christians must understand what they are dealing with when it comes to evolution.  It is not an honest form of science.  There are certainly honest scientists trying to chase down and prove aspects of the theories related to evolution.  But Christians need to understand the underpinning of the evolution movement before we give any more ground and make any more changes to our doctrine to comply with its assumptions.
 
The late 1700’s and early 1800’s was a time of revolution against monarchies.  Many revolutionaries viewed the Bible as supporting monarchies, so they sought to discredit it.  They used observable occurrences like erosion to extrapolate the age of the Earth back millions of years instead of the commonly held Biblical view of roughly 6,000 years.  Out of respect for “science” Christians did not push back against this view and instead tried to incorporate it into Genesis by creating the “Gap Theory” described earlier.  This re-dating of the age of the Earth opened the door for Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, as it allowed what he claimed to be the necessary time for the gradual process of evolution to take place.  While there are still many flaws and mathematical improbabilities concerning the scope and complexity of evolution even at a current alleged age in the billions of years, the Theory of Evolution absolutely could not stand if the Earth were only 6,000 years old.  Therefore, it was and remains essential for evolutionists to prop up an age theory of billions of years.
 
This is what I mean when I say that evolution is not an honest form of science.  It started out with an agenda to discredit the Bible.  It should be noted that Christianity was not anti-science at that time, nor is it now.  Virtually all the prestigious institutions of higher learning were founded by Christians.  But the spirit of revolution made the Bible a target and scholars who owed their education to Christianity began to turn against it.
 
Darwin had just finished seminary studies and had plans to be a minister before he came across Charles Lyell’s “Principles of Geology”, a book that advocated for an earth that was millions of years old.  This watered seeds of doubt that had already been planted via other exposures he had to ancient earth theories during his studies.  So you see how the failure of Christians to stand for the Biblical 6-day creation when challenges first emerged snowballed into Darwin’s divergent path which led to science being put at odds with the claim that humans were made in God’s image.
 
I will devote a separate post to the flaws in the theory of evolution.  Right now I want to frame the nature of the debate.  You need to understand the gravity of standing for a 6-day creation.  Satan is a master of sowing seeds of doubt.  He did it with Eve in the Garden of Eden.  He first got her to question what God said:
 
                “Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”
                Genesis 3:1
 
Compare that to secular scientists coercing Christians to question whether God really meant 6 days when he said 6 days.
 
Next Satan convinced Eve of an outright contradiction to God’s word:
 
                “And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.  Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die.”
                Genesis 3:2-4
 
Compare that to secular scientists convincing Christians that the entire creation story as described in the Bible is wrong and their Big Bang Theory and Theory of Evolution are the truth.
 
Lastly Satan convinced Eve that she would be like God, determining for herself that which was good and evil.
               
                “For God knows that in that day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
                Genesis 3:5
 
Science’s attack on Biblical creation did not rise up in the face of compelling scientific proof.  It was based on a desire to seize the godlike power to define good and evil.  Monarchies claimed rule by divine right.  In America, revolutionaries found a path to reconcile Christianity with revolt against a king by pointing out his abuse of authority and appealing to the rights God bestows to all humans.  In places like France, revolutionaries took a different path and turned against both the Monarchy and the religion that helped to prop it up.  Science became weaponized against religion, first in the name of bringing political freedom to the people, but over time it became a perceived vehicle to bring freedom from the moral judgements contained in the Bible.  If you disprove the veracity of the first chapter, what value has anything that follows it?
 
If you think you are entering a scientific debate, you are wrong.  We are fighting a theological worldview.  It is a viewpoint that does not just dismiss the idea of God because they feel the evidence is against him, but rather it is a viewpoint that hold the concept of God in contempt, because it calls into question their moral judgments, or more precisely, their choice to be their own God.
 
You will see in future posts how the deck has been stacked against creationism and how much of what you thought were facts are either outright lies or one-sided presentations that ignore a more plausible creationist explanation.  Eve had the choice between trusting in the words of God and trusting in the words of the serpent.  She chose poorly.  Let us not repeat her mistake.
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