CHURCH AND EVOLUTION
BY KEN HAM
The whole Galileo affair, however, has been largely misunderstood. What actually happened was that the seventeenth-century Catholic Church had endorsed the view of Ptolemy (a follower of Aristotle) that the Earth was the center of the universe. In essence, then, the Catholic Church had accepted a Greek idea and added it to the Bible. If, instead, the church had started with the Bible, it would not have taught that the Earth is the center of the universe. The Scriptures do not contain clear teaching on this topic.
Some have also claimed that the Bible should not be our foundation for truth because it teaches errors, such as that the Earth is flat, or is supported by pillars. But again, a close study of Scripture reveals that it states clearly that the Earth is round and hangs in space (Proverbs 8:27, Isaiah 40:22, and Job 26:7). In all matters, Christians should be like the ancient Bereans, of whom we read in Acts 17:11, "They searched the Scriptures daily whether those things were so."
It is very important in this context to understand the distinction in science between what can be observed in the present and what has happened in the past. For instance, all scientists (Christian and non- Christian), because they agree on language convention (i.e., they agree on the meaning of words), and because what they see and feel around them is real, can agree on what a fossil is. Many even agree that fossils are the result of catastrophic processes. Some may suggest that, because of the abundance of fossils, there was a global flood.
To give meaning and proper historical context to the fossils, however, would be impossible without the revelation of a witness to these events, who had access to all knowledge. The Bible claims to be such a revelation from such a Witness. Its record of the entrance of death into the world and the event of a global flood, then, is a key to interpreting evidence in the present-connecting the present to the past. The Biblical revelation is indeed foundational to our thinking.
The different approaches to connecting the present with the past can be illustrated with what occurred on a tour I conducted at the Grand Canyon. I heard an evolutionist guide tell visitors that "a lot of time and a little bit of water" caused the layers and the eroded canyon. On the other hand, because of my access to Biblical revelation (and because of the evidence of the present), I told the people on my tour that "a little bit of time and a lot of water" were responsible for the Grand Canyon. The evolutionist and I had the same evidence, but different explanations.
God's Word is the ultimate foundation for all our thinking. However, because of the prevalent idea that the Bible is not foundational to our thinking, many Christians have made the same mistake the Catholic Church did in Galileo's time. They have accepted as truth the word of fallible men who, though not having all knowledge, presume to tell God what His Word means. For instance, they accept the evolutionist account of how the fossils and such things as the Grand Canyon were formed, and then try to mesh these ideas with the Bible.
This error in thinking is reflected in the many compromises about Genesis which are held by various leaders of the church today. Theistic evolution (the belief that evolution is true, but that God used this process), progressive creation (God created millions of species over millions of years), the "gap theory" (postulating a gap of millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2), and many other ideas are prevalent today in Christian circles. Christians must be warned. The more they build their world view on the words of men rather on the Word of God, the further they travel down the path to destruction.
For instance, if Christians started with God's Word and not outside influences, they wouldn't have problems with the "days" in Genesis, Chapter 1. Many believe that these days were long periods of time, perhaps even millions of years. But if one studies: 1) the language of Genesis, 2) the context of the passage in which the word "day" is used, and 3) the references to this passage in other places in Scripture (e.g., Exodus 20:11), one can readily see that the Genesis reference is to an ordinary Earth-rotation day.
The main reason people have not believed this definition of "day" is because they have taken the belief that the Earth is billions of years old, along with other erroneous ideas, and have attempted to fit these into the Bible. If, however, we begin with the Bible as our foundation and judge man's opinions on the basis of what it says, these problems will not arise.
| Often, when we do start with the Bible, we are accused of having a blind, unscientific faith. I recall having a radio debate with a humanist about this. He declared that Christian scientists who use the Bible as their foundation are not real scientists. Real science, he contended, starts with doubts, which lead to theories that change constantly as new evidence is discovered. Because what the Bible says cannot be changed, he claimed it was, therefore, "unscientific.î |
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At one church a young lady commented after my talk, "Well, that means I can believe it because God said it!" I replied that this indeed was the essence of what I was saying. But don't fall into a trap here. Christianity is not just blind faith. We believe it because God said it, and because the evidence in the present is explained by God's Word and is consistent with there being a Creator. The Bible makes sense of this evidence, thus supporting our faith that it is indeed the Word of God, as it claims to be.
We must be familiar with how to explain evidence in order to give reasons for our faith (1 Peter 3:15), in order to show that it is not just blind or experiential faith. Many Christians who are not familiar with the evidence consistent with Biblical truths regarding creation, and who see the humanists using "evidence" to support evolution, become anti-intellectual -not interested in evidence. Sadly, this anti-intellectualism in modern Christians often produces unfortunate consequences in their children.
I have met many people who told me they rejected Christianity because their parents did not give adequate reasons to show that it was anything other than blind faith. Many have doubts about Christianity because they think Christians can't answer such questions as: "Where did Cain get his wife?" "Where did the "races" come from?" "What happened to the dinosaurs?" There are easily understood answers to all these questions, which make sense of the evidence from a Biblical basis.
In the eyes of the world, Christianity loses its power when its adherents cannot give answers to questions about the validity and trustworthiness of the Bible. Many books and articles have been produced by creationist groups around the world to explain some of these seemingly difficult questions. They give overwhelming evidence in support of the accuracy of the statements in the Bible. Consider a few summarized examples:
- Creation. I am often asked to give the evidence that there really is a Creator. The answer is quite simple. Remember, if Romans 1:20 is correct ("For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse"), then this evidence should be obvious to everyone.
It is easy to recognize the effects of intelligence. When we look at life and consider the incredible amount of genetic information contained in each of our cells, we realize that the information in our genes must have come from information; it did not happen by chance. We never observe, anywhere in the world, functional complexity coming from disorder by random processes; there is not one example. Everything we observe with our five senses shows us that such order comes from disorder only when there is information (intelligence), and a system present to make it work.
The evidence that there is a Creator-a Designer-behind this universe is overwhelmingly obvious. Anyone who does not believe in a Creator is without excuse. - Global Flood. Creationist geologists have shown clearly that the formation of most of the fossil record is more consistent with the catastrophic processes of Noah's flood as recorded in Genesis, than with slow processes over millions of years. Whether coal deposits in Australia (obviously the result of billions of tons of plant material washed in by enormous quantities of water) or the hundreds of thousands of square miles of rock layers exposed to great depth at the Grand Canyon, the Biblical account of a global flood makes sense of the evidence.
- Origin of 'Races.' As scientists have studied the different people groups, the more obvious it has become that their origin corresponds with the Biblical account of the origin of cultures and nations.
All people of the world (except the rare albino) basically have the same color skin! From a single pair (Adam and Eve), all the range of shades in skin color possessed by humans can be explained. This color is a reflection of the amount of the pigment "melanin" in the skin. A person with a great deal of this pigment, for instance, has dark skin. And conversely, of course, a small amount of melanin produces a very light skin. The different shades of skin color, as well as other characteristics of the individual "races," came as the result of division of the genetic pool at the time of the Tower of Babel.
The Bible tells us that all humans have the same ancestors-Adam and Eve. It is interesting to note that nearly every culture of the world - from Australian Aborigines to Native American Indians, Pacific Islanders, and Eskimos-has legends strikingly similar to the Creation and Flood accounts of Genesis. This is strong evidence to support the Biblical view of the origin of the people groups. Furthermore, Acts 17:26 says that we are all of "one blood."
The church needs to get back to faith in the Scriptures; back to building its thinking on the Word of God; back to the true foundation of Christianity-found in Genesis.
In 1795, James Hutton released his book Theory of the Earth. Its thesis was that in order to understand the geologic past of the planet, we must study the present Earth and its processes. This approach, of course, was quite different from that of the many scientists who used the Bible as their foundation (including such things as the account of the worldwide flood) to understand the Earth's geologic history.
In the early 1830's, Charles Lyell published his Principles of Geology. Building on the work of Hutton, he promoted the idea that "the present is the key to the past." He proposed that geologic changes occurred slowly in the past, and, therefore, enormous time periods were required to form strata, mountains, and canyons. In other words, it excluded any consideration of catastrophism.
Catastrophism is the belief that massive upheavals (such as a world flood, along with the earthquakes, volcanic activity, and tidal waves that would have to accompany it) have been the major instruments in forming the geological features of the Earth. During such catastrophes, large forces acting at much greater rates than at present can do a tremendous amount of geological work in a very short time, something which the ordinary forces of erosion would require a very long time to do.
Lyell taught, as did Hutton, that the Earth had been shaped by processes occurring slowly over millions of years. For instance, Lyell wrote that Noah's Flood was only a "tranquil" flood, leaving little phys- ical evidence of its occurrence. He had already decided that the Earth's vast sedimentary layers had been formed over long periods of time.
Even though Lyell at first appeared to believe in some sort of stability, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that he had considerable influence in shaping his friend Darwin's views on evolution, which he later embraced openly. His published and private writings reveal a deep antagonism to the Bible from the beginning. He was a lawyer, not a geologist, and evolutionist professor Stephen Jay Gould, in his book Ever Since Darwin, described how Lyell used "true bits of cunning" and "imposed his imagination upon the evidence" in order to get his dogmatic, slow-and-gradual philosophy accepted as "the only true geology.
It is important to note that neither Hutton nor Lyell was viewed as directly attacking the book of Genesis. Rather, they subtly introduced doubts that its narrative could be taken literally. By popularizing the idea that the time frame for the Earth was much greater than the mere several thousand years indicated by the Bible, they cast doubt on the global flood of Noah's day, among other things. It was a very clever undermining of Genesis-the foundational book of the Bible. Once people could be made to doubt, it was much easier to bring them to a point of total unbelief, which is what Lyell wanted. (Of course, there were also theologians who had been undermining the Bible in other ways at this same time.)
And so, enough doubt had been created about Biblical events such as Noah's Flood and Creation that by the advent of Darwin's book in 1859, many people were fully prepared to reject the Bible's explanation concerning our origin in favor of a totally mechanistic, materialistic philosophy -secular humanism. This radically new belief system gradually replaced the eroding Christian foundation which had permeated the Western world, and had brought the laws of society into accord with Biblical standards. As the foundation continued to erode, the whole structure above it began to collapse.
Although this new approach in determining the Earth's geologic history was introduced many decades ago, this issue is still a crucial one. The approach-"the present is the key to the past"-is in essence a mancentered philosophy which rejects the Word of the only witness to all of history - God. Hutton and Lyell were really saying that revelation from finite man is the key to the past. This concept is an expression of their belief that man is autonomous-that he can determine truth by his own opinions (without Biblical revelation). But was man present at the very beginning of the world? This question is exactly what the Lord asked Job: "Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job 38:4).
With Job 38:4, the Lord is teaching us not only the importance of revelation from the One witness who has always been, but also the limitations of man and his scientific method. People in Hutton's and Lyell's day by-and-large did not realize, nor do people today, that scientists cannot fully or directly investigate past events, simply because they have only the present evidence of these events. As God pointed out to Job, they were not there in the distant past. They cannot disprove any of the events of Genesis.
Neither can they prove scientifically the belief that hundreds of millions of years shaped the Earth, since by their own philosophy no human observers were present during those supposed millions of years. But the Bible records that God has always existed, and that He has given us a written record of exactly what did happen in the past, so that we may come to right conclusions about history. Simply put, then, Biblical revelation is the key to the past-particularly the past in regard to origins (Genesis, Chapters 1-11). Furthermore, the past is actually the key to the present.
In reality, the "age of the Earth" issue was what began the erosion of the book of Genesis. Over a long period of time, other factors (such as the hypothesis that Genesis was actually written by a number of different men, rather than by Moses) helped to further undermine the first book of the Bible. People began to believe that they could no longer trust it. They had been fooled into thinking that the book of Genesis had nothing to do with science or, for that matter, with real history.
How did this doubt about the book of Genesis spread in the church? It is obvious that in any organization-whether church, college, or government -the views of the person at the top are usually reflected all the way down through the organizational pyramid. What happened in the churches and church schools was that those at the top-theologians, professors, etc.-capitulated to the view that Genesis was not to be taken literally. This idea then gradually flowed down the rest of the pyramid, until those at the bottom were also indoctrinated.
The students who had accepted compromising positions from their teachers eventually became professors and leaders themselves, convincing still others of their ideas.
The clergy, then-as had the seminary professors-began to yield to evolutionary ideas, and accept the idea that Genesis was not meant to be taken literally. Their influence gradually filtered down to the churchgoers, so that eventually most of them no longer felt that Genesis was literal -or even important-to either the rest of the Bible or to Christianity. The destruction of the very principles of Biblical authority reintroduced by Martin Luther in the sixteenth century was now well under way. Doubt had led to unbelief.
I have conducted special seminars called "Answers in Genesis," which bring together people from many churches to hear the importance of this issue and see the massive evidence in support of Genesis. Before each seminar, local pastors are contacted by telephone in order to generate interest in the programs. Some respond very positively; however, some give answers such as, "We take the intellectual approach, not the simplistic approach of Genesis. Please don't bother us." What this really means is, "We take the human-opinion approach and reinterpret the Bible. We don't trust God's Word."
It should be noted that at the time Darwin's On the Origin of Species was becoming popular, many of the scientists who were Christians were standing against the idea of evolution. Well-known scientists, such as Faraday, Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, and others, would not accept the theory. There were also clergy pounding the pulpits, warning that to accept the theory of evolution was to destroy the foundation of the Gospel.
But then, as now, the press gave good coverage only to those who opposed the Bible and promoted evolution. By-and-large, people today are not fully aware of the media's anti-God bias, and their censorship of Christian thought. We hear and read only what the media want us to. I have so often found it true that when the media wish to make an issue of the creation-versus-evolution topic, they usually find an opponent who claims to be a Christian, but who accepts evolution. The average radio listener, for instance, must surely be confused when hearing a debate in which one person, claiming to be a Christian, says evolution is an anti-God religion which destroys Christianity, while another person who claims to be a Christian (and is often even a pastor) advocates evolution.
Unfortunately, there are many compromise positions in the Christian church today which undermine the foundations of Christianity, such as theistic evolution, progressive creation, and the "gap theory," to name a few.
One of the saddest aspects of these compromise positions is their effect on the younger generation. I have been to many churches and Christian schools which teach evolution. The effect is painfully obvious. The majority of students no longer have any respect for God's Word. In many ways their attitudes and actions are no different from those of people brought up in a completely secular environment.
How dangerous it is to compromise the Word of God! We must accept and defend its authority and accuracy from the very first verse. If not, the compromise road will further decay the impact of the church in proclaiming Biblical truths and the Gospel message.
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The Lie-Evolution
Ken Ham The Bible prophetically warns that in the last days false teachers will introduce destructive lies among the people. Their purpose is to bring God's truth into disrepute and to exploit believers by telling them made-up stories. An eye-opening look at the harmful effects of evolutionary thought on modern culture and religion. Ken Ham exposes the false teaching that is destroying the lives of children and families. 192 pages. $10.99 |
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Refuting Evolution
Dr. Jonathan Sarfati A creationist response to the National Academy of Science's Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science. The latter, distributed nationwide to thousands of public school teachers, is an effort to saturate students with evolutionary concepts. Refuting Evolution is a cogent rebuttal, carefully examining the points raised in the NAS booklet. 144 pages. $9.99 |
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The Answers Book
Ken Ham, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, & Dr. Carl Wieland; edited by Dr. Don Batten This newly revised and expanded book addresses the most common questions that Christians and non-Christians alike ask regarding creation/evolution and Genesis. The 20 most-asked questions, such as: Where did Cain get his wife? What about continental drift? Also, dinosaurs, the Gap theory, carbon dating, origin of "races," etc., all answered in an easy-to-understand manner (with helpful illustrations). 274 pages. $11.99 |
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