Raised in a Christian Home
I WAS RAISED IN A Christian home where the Bible was believed to be the infallible, inerrant Word of God. When I entered high school I came face-to-face with the idea of evolution. If Genesis was not literally true, then what part of the Bible could I trust? Genesis clearly details the creation of the world. One of my friends is a pastor. I recall him suggesting that I accept evolution, but then add it to the Bible—in other words, it is okay to believe that God used evolution and millions of years to bring all forms of life into being. Certainly, this is not what we’re told in Genesis. Another pastor friend of mine whose blog I follow commented that believing God’s creation was helped along by evolution is “a slippery slope.”
If God did not mean what He said in Genesis, then how could I put stock in the rest of the Scriptures? Not only this, but believing in evolution and millions of years meant allowing death, disease, fossils, thorns, animals eating each other, and suffering to be in existence millions of years before man! How could this be true given God’s proclamation that His creation was “very good” before the Fall?
Christianity is Under Attack!
We are living in challenging times. On the whole, our Western culture, once permeated by Christian thinking, is becoming increasingly anti-Christian. We are seeing steady increases in gay marriage, support for abortion on demand, unwillingness to obey authority, reluctance to work, marriages being abandoned, an increase in pornography, a growing level of lawlessness, and increasing promulgation of atheism. Christians are fighting for their own religious freedom and being labeled as the bad guys.
What has happened in society to bring about these drastic changes? Why is it that many people are cynical and seem to be closed to the Gospel when we talk about Jesus? There must be some foundational reason for this change. In 1 Chronicles 12:32, we read of the sons of Issachar who had understanding of the times. Do we have a good grasp of the times in which we live? What is the fundamental reason for the collapse of Christianity in America? Consider the recent proliferation of the phrase “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” Nativity scenes, crosses, and the Ten Commandments are being banned from view in public places. Creation, prayer, and the Bible have largely been eliminated from the nation’s secular education system. Today we see culture invading and changing the church rather than the church having an impact on culture.
No Single Birthplace?
Secular researchers say it is time to drop the idea that modern humans originated from a single population in a single location. The origin of our species has long been traced to east Africa, where the world’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils were discovered. About 300,000 years ago, the story went, a group of primitive humans there underwent a series of genetic and cultural shifts that set them on a unique evolutionary path resulting in the human population we have today. You. Me. My mom. Your brother. Everyone.
Recently, a team of prominent scientists called for a rewriting of this traditional narrative, based on a comprehensive survey of fossil, archaeological and genetic evidence. Instead, the international team argue, the distinctive features that make us human emerged mosaic-like across different populations spanning the entire African continent. Only after tens or hundreds of thousands of years of interbreeding and cultural exchange between these semi-isolated groups, did the fully-fledged modern human come into being.
Secular scientists note telltale characteristics of a modern human – globular brain case, a chin, a more delicate brow and a small face – seem to first appear in different places at different times. Previously, this has either been explained as evidence of a single, large population trekking around the continent en masse or by dismissing certain fossils as side-branches of the modern human lineage that just happened to have developed certain anatomical similarities. The latest analysis suggests that this patchwork emergence of human traits can be explained by the existence of multiple populations that were periodically separated for millennia by rivers, deserts, forests and mountains before coming into contact again due to shifts in the climate. Natural barriers such as theses created migration and contact opportunities for groups that may previously have been separated, and later fluctuation might have meant populations that mixed for a short while became isolated again.
Some experts paint a picture of humans as a far-more diverse collection of species and sub-populations than exists today. They allege between 200,000 and 400,000 years ago our own ancestors lived alongside a primitive human species called Homo naledi found in southern Africa, a larger brained species called Homo heidelbergensis in central Africa, and perhaps myriad other humans yet to be discovered.
Replacing Darwin
Unlike typical jigsaw puzzles, the puzzle of the origin of species does not come in a box. No cover exists. The final number of pieces is unknown. In fact, nearly all pieces must be actively sought. Consequently, with each new discovery, the potential for massive overhaul lurks in the background. I’m reminded of the comment I heard from a facilitator at a Werner Erhard seminar. He said, “There’s what we know, and there’s what we don’t know, but more importantly there’s what we don’t know that we don’t know.” Keeping with the jigsaw analogy, let’s consider the state of the puzzle prior to Darwin’s day. Just a century before Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, the first pieces were discovered.
In a jigsaw puzzle, edge pieces constrain the arrangement of the center pieces. Since species are defined by their traits, the origin of traits constrains the puzzle of the origin of species. The origin of leopards and cheetahs depends on an answer to the origin of spots. The origin of toucans relies on the answer to the origin of large, colorful beaks. The origin of the blue whale is bound up in the origin of baleen. The origin of scorpions and the origin of stingers go hand-in-hand. The answer to the origin of traits represents the edge pieces to the puzzle.
Exactly how does DNA control traits? The mystery of the how concealed the answers to several critical questions. Could the mechanism by which DNA controlled the behavior of traits be altered? Could it be changed to an entirely different program? Could leopards become whales? Could toucans change into scorpions? Could jellyfish become jaguars? These might sound like ridiculous questions, but the answers awaited the discovery of the mechanism by which DNA interfaced with traits. But alas, there are several paradoxes regarding this issue. In in each generation all traits are erased—only to be rebuilt again.
Consider what it takes to form a new species. For a fish to become a spider, significant morphological changes must occur—an endoskeleton must transform into an exoskeleton, fins must become legs, an aquatic form of respiration must transform into a terrestrial form of respiration. Prior to the discovery of DNA, scientists looked for various solutions to these paradoxes. One theory centered on physics and chemistry. For example, consider the physics of transforming a single cell into a complex adult. Many chemical and physical barriers would have to be overcome. Obviously, physical beings don’t spontaneously assemble themselves.
Darwin and Genetics
Darwin wrote the following comment in a notebook in 1837: “One species does change into another” [Italics mine]. Yet his theory of natural selection lacked an adequate account of inheritance, making it logically incomplete. Lack of a model of the mechanism of inheritance left him unable to interpret his own data. Instead, Darwin proposed a rather bizarre developmental theory of heredity (which he called pangenesis). Essentially, he suggested that all cells in an organism are capable of shedding minute particles of inheritance he called gemmules, which are able to circulate throughout the body and ultimately accumulate in the gonads. The theory of pangenesis originated from the claim that characteristics acquired during an organism’s life were inheritable.
Many criticized Darwin’s pangenesis. To test the theory, Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton in London conducted a series of blood transfusion experiments. Galton transfused blood between different colored rabbits. Galton hypothesized that the blood contained gemmules that would influence the color of the offspring. By transfusing the blood from a white rabbit to a black rabbit, the black rabbit would have different colored descendants than normal black rabbits, which did not get transfused blood. But the result of the experiment contrasted Darwin’s prediction. Black rabbits with the blood from white rabbits produced offspring that were all black. Galton concluded that gemmules did not exist. Darwin’s comeback was perhaps gemmules existed in bodily fluids other than blood.
Creation and Religion
Biblical creation is based on the Genesis account of origins from the Word of God—the One who is a witness to all that occurred when the universe was created. Most non-believers have a difficult time with the concept that God is “outside of time itself.” God’s creation consists basically of a threefold view of history—a perfect creation, corrupted by sin, to be restored by Jesus Christ. This account is divided into seven distinct periods referred to by Ken Ham as the Seven Cs of Creation.
- Creation: In six days God created the heavens, the earth, and all that is in them from nothing. Each part is designed to work with all the others in perfect harmony. God created the different kinds of plants and animals, and He made a special garden (the Garden of Eden) in which He created the first two human beings. When God completed His work of creation, He called it all “very good.”
- Corruption: We no longer live in the world God originally created. Because our first parents (Adam and Eve) placed human opinion about God’s Word (as we still tend to do today), struggle and death entered the world, and God cursed creation. Charles Darwin called this “struggle to the death” natural selection and offered his idea as a substitute for an Intelligent Designer. Evolutionists later added accidental changes in heredity (mutations) to their evolutionary belief. But such processes as natural selection and mutations do not creat; instead, they bring disease, defects, and decay into the world God created. Paul describes this now fallen world in Romans: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22, NIV).
- Catastrophe: After mankind’s sin and rebellion (the Fall), the earth became so filled with violence and corruption that God destroyed the world with a global Flood and gave it a fresh start with Noah, his family, and the animals in the ark. Fossils—billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth—remind us of God’s judgment on sin. Most of the fossil record is actually the graveyard of the Flood that occurred about 4,300 years ago. Of course, this same fossil record is used and manipulated by secularists as purported evidence for millions of years.
- Confusion: In Genesis 11, we see that after the Flood, man disobeyed God’s command to spread out over the earth. Instead, they congregated together to build a tower to the heavens, likely to worship the heavens instead of worshiping and obeying the God who made the heavens. As a result, God simply confused their language so that groups began speaking in different languages. Family groups then began separating from each other and moving out over the earth to develop various people groups, which resulted in the diverse cultures and nations we have today.
- Christ: It is unfortunate that despite the Flood the earth again became filled with violence, corruption, and death because of human sin putting man’s opinion above God’s Word. God had a plan from eternity promised back at the beginning (Genesis 3:15) to save man from sin and its consequence of eternal separation from God. God’s Son stepped into human history to become Jesus Christ, the God-man. Fully God and fully human, Christ came to heal and restore, and by His death and resurrection, He conquered death. We may be born again into eternal life as new creations in Christ. As Romans 10:9 tells us, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
- Cross: What was God doing on the cross? What was He accomplishing through the crucifixion? Unfortunately, there are growing numbers of Christians who are having an increasingly difficult time answering that question. There is a diminishing sense of God’s holiness, an increasing denial of man’s sin nature, and a disproportionate sense of self-worth. Both the shame and the shear brutality of the cross have become blurred. The Roman Empire was notorious for performing crucifixions. In fact, they coined the word excruciating to describe the horrible act. Excruciating is an adjective which means extremely painful, causing intense suffering. The Latin word excruciātus (derivative of crux cross) translates as “to torment or torture.”
- Consummation: As surely as God created the world and judged the world with the Flood, our ungodly world will be destroyed by fire (2 Peter 3:10). For those who trust in Jesus, however, there awaits eternal life in the new heavens and the new earth. There will be no more corruption because God’s curse will have been removed. But for those who reject God’s free gift of salvation, the Bible tells us they will suffer a second death—eternal separation from God (Revelation 20:14).
Is Evolution a Religion?
Why do evolutionists not want to admit that the molecules-to-man evolution belief is really a religion? This is so because whatever you believe about your origins affects your whole worldview, the meaning of life, and so on. If there is no God and we are the result of chance, random process, it means there is no absolute authority. And if there is no one who sets the rules, then people can do whatever he likes or hopes he can get away with.
Evolution is a religion that enables people to justify writing their own rules. The sin of Adam was that he did not want to obey the rules God set. Instead, he wanted to do what he wanted to do. He rebelled against God, and we all suffer from this same sin: rebellion against the absolute authority of God. The evolutionary (millions of years) belief has become the so-called scientific justification in today’s world for people to continue in this rebellion against God.
The Book of Genesis gives us the true and reliable account of the origin and early history of life on earth. Increasing numbers of scientists are realizing that when you take the Bible as your basis and build your worldview upon it, then the evidence from the living animals and plants, the fossils, and the cultures fit with what this account details to us. This confirms that the Bible really is the Word of God and can be trusted completely. The secular humanists, of course, oppose this because they cannot allow the possibility of God being Creator. They have fought successfully to have prayer, Bible readings, and the teaching of creation forced out of the public school curriculum. They have deceived the public into thinking this is eliminating religion from schools and leaving a neutral situation. This is absolutely false! God’s Word states, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad” (Matthew 12:30).
How Old is the Earth?
The question of the age of our planet has produced heated debate for centuries. The primary positions are simply stated thus: (a) young-earth proponents believe the biblical age of the earth and universe is about 6,000 years; (b) old-earth proponents believe the age of the earth to be about 4.5 billion years and the age of the universe is about 14 billion years. Obviously the range between these two schools of thought are immense.
Where Did a Young-Earth Worldview Come From?
Simply put, it came from the Bible. Of course, the Bible doesn’t say explicitly anywhere, “The earth is 6,000 years old.” Good thing it doesn’t; otherwise it would be out of date the following year. God gave us something better. In essence, He gave us a “birth certificate.” Genesis 1 says that the earth says that the earth was created on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:1-5). From there, scientists are able to begin calculating the age of the earth. Ken Ham suggests a rough calculation to show how this works. The age of the earth can be estimated by taking the first five days of creation (from earth’s creation to Adam), then following the genealogies from Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11, then adding in the time from Abraham to today.
Ham tells us Adam was created on Day Six, so there were five days before him. If we add up the dates from Adam to Abraham, we get about 2000 B.C. (4,000 years ago). So a simple calculation is as follows: 5 days + ~2,000 years + ~4,000 years = ~6,000 years. Of course, the first five days are quite negligible. Cultures throughout the world have kept track of history as well. From a biblical perspective, we can expect the dates given for creation of the earth to align more closely to the biblical date than billions of years. The examples are provocative. The Anglo-Saxons believe there were 5,200 years from creation to Christ. Ancient British history indicates 5,228 years from creation to Christ. The Irish chronology shows creation occurring at approximately 4000 B.C. Historians have done meticulous work that cannot be ignored. Their dates of only thousands of years are good support for the biblical date of about 6,000 years, not billions of years.
The Origin of the Old-Earth Worldview
Prior to the 1700s, few believed in an old earth. The approximate age of 6,000 years was not really challenged until the 18th century. Opponents, as Ken Ham notes, essentially “left God out of the picture.” The idea of millions of years really got traction through geology. It is noteworthy that geologists believed geological layers were formed slowly over long periods of time based on the rates at which we see them accumulating today. James Hutton (1726-1797) is considered the father of modern geology. Hutton said, “The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now… No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.”
This viewpoint is called naturalistic uniformitarianism. It ignores any major catastrophes like The Great Flood. Thinking biblically, we know that the global Flood in Genesis 6-8 would wipe away the concept of millions of years, for this Flood would explain massive amounts of fossil layers. Most Christians fail to realize that a global flood could rip up many of the previous rock layers and redeposit them elsewhere, destroying the previous fragile contents. This would destroy any evidence of alleged millions of years anyway. So the rock layers can theoretically represent the evidence of either millions of years or a global flood, but not both.
Concluding Remarks
When we start our reflection on these types of questions with God’s Word in mind, we see that the world is about 6,000 years old. When we rely on man’s fallible (and often demonstrably false) dating methods, we can get a confusing range of ages from a few thousand to billions of years, though the vast majority of methods do not give dates even close to billions. Cultures around the world give an age of the earth that confirms the Bible. Radiometric dates, on the other hand, have been shown to be wildly in error. The age of the earth, as well as questions regarding evolution versus creation, ultimately comes down to a matter of trust—it’s a worldview issue. The question is, will you trust what an all-knowing God says on the subject or will you trust imperfect man’s assumptions and imaginations about the past that regularly are changing.
The Accidental Apologist 