Hanningfield Green
Lawshall
Bury St Edmunds
Suffolk
IP29 4QD
Creation vs Evolution
This month I'm going to speak on origins from Genesis 1:1 and ask the Lord to unfold its significance to us.
I'm not a scientist and I am not a theologian so, when it comes to such matters, I have to basically move to somebody else and trust them as an authority. However, we will study Scripture to answer questions that you may have or maybe haven’t considered before.
My intent I suppose is to set the picture in your mind for you to go away and debate, because what I will be saying to you is contrary to just about everything you hear these days through the media.
It is also important to all of us because understanding origins in the book of Genesis is foundational to the rest of the Bible. If Genesis, chapter 1 and chapter 2 don't tell us the truth, then why should we believe anything else in the Bible? If it says in the New Testament that the Creator is our Redeemer, but God is not the Creator, then maybe He's not the Redeemer either. If it tells us in 2 Peter that God Himself will bring about an instantaneous dissolution of the entire universe as we know it, that God in a moment will uncreate everything, then that has tremendous bearing upon His power to create.
Surely the same One who with a word can uncreate the universe is more than capable of creating the universe!
So, what we believe about creation, what we believe about Genesis has implications all the way to the end of Scripture. Implications with regard to the authenticity and truthfulness of Scripture. Implications as to the gospel, and implications as to the end of human history. All wrapped up in how we understand origins in the book of Genesis. The matter of origins then is absolutely critical to all human thinking.
It becomes critical to how we conduct our lives as human beings. Without a right understanding of origins, there is no way to comprehend ourselves. There is no way to understand humanity, as to the purpose of our existence, and as to our destiny. Whether this world and its life as we know it evolved by chance, without a cause, or was created by God, has immense comprehensive implications for all human life.
Now there basically are only two options. You can either believe what Genesis says or disbelieve. Frankly, believing in a supernatural, creative God who made everything is the only possible rational explanation for the universe, for life, for purpose and for destiny.
The scientific equation for this states that ‘nobody times nothing equals everything,’ whereas the divine equation given in the Bible is found in Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." I don't know how it could be said any more simply or more straightforwardly than that. Either you believe God did create the heavens and the earth or you believe He did not. Really those are the only two valid options you have. And if you believe that God did create the heavens and the earth, then you are left with the only record of creation, and that's Genesis 1, and you are bound to accept the text of Genesis 1 as the only appropriate and accurate description of that creative act.
So again, I say you're left really with two choices. You either believe Genesis or you don't. You either believe the Genesis account that God created the heavens and the earth, or you believe they somehow evolved out of random chance. Looking at the account of Genesis 1:1 for just a brief moment; the words in that first verse are quite remarkable. They are indicative of the incredible mind of God. God says in that first verse everything that could have been said about creation and He says it in such few terms. The statement is precise and concise almost beyond human composition.
A well-known and much decorated scientist named Herbert Spencer, died in 1903. In his scientific career he had become noted for one great discovery; it was a categorical contribution that he made. He discovered that all reality, in other words all that exists in the universe can be contained in five categories: time, force, action, space and matter. Herbert Spencer said everything that exists, exists in one of those categories: time, force, action, space and matter. Nothing exists outside of those categories. That was a very astute discovery and didn't come until the nineteenth century. Now think about that. Spencer even listed them in that order: time, force, action, space and matter. That is a logical sequence. And then with that in your mind, listen to Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning," that's time. "God," that's force. "Created," that's action. "The heavens," that's space. "And the earth," that's matter. In the first verse of the Bible God said plainly what man didn't catalogue until the nineteenth century. Everything that could be said about everything that exists is said in that first verse. Now either you believe that or you don't. You either believe that that verse is accurate and God is the force or you believe that God is not the force that created everything. And then you're left with chance or randomness or coincidence.
Whether the world was created by God or evolved by chance without cause has been debated a long time. It's been debated since Darwin. But the debate comes down to this, either you believe the Bible or you don't. Either you believe the book of Genesis or you don't. And if you don't believe the book of Genesis, then what do you believe? Well in most cases you believe in naturalistic evolution which excludes a Creator and you with the incredible notion that nobody times nothing equals everything.
David Attenborough is a prime example of this theory as he continuously projects his conclusion that man came out of material matter that evolved into an ape and then man, but what happened to evolution after that!
Can creation be explained only in a materialistic sense, meaning that we are made of nothing but the material which then evolved into man or by the fact that we have been created by God and made in His image in a heavenly pattern? And the debate is not just biological, because it's moral and it's spiritual. The debate gets to questions about man's dignity, about man's nature in the image of the heavenly pattern, the image of God. It asks questions about the issue of control, who is sovereign in the universe, who is in control. It asks: Is there a universal judge? Is there a universal moral law? Is there a lawgiver? Are people to live according to God's standard? Will there be a final assessment of how men and women live? Is there a final judgment?
You see, these are the questions that evolution was invented to avoid. Evolution was invented to kill the God of the Bible, not because evolutionists and materialists and naturalists didn't like God as creator, but because they didn't want God as judge. Evolution was invented in order to kill the God of the Bible. Evolution was invented to do away with universal morality and universal guilt and universal accountability. Evolution was invented to eliminate the judge and leave people free to do whatever they want without guilt and without consequences.
I mean, if we just kind of summed up these two alternatives, the materialistic view would say:
Ultimate reality is impersonal matter. No God exists.
The Christian view says: Ultimate reality is an infinite, personal, a loving God.
The materialistic view says: The universe is created by chance, without any ultimate purpose.
The Christian view says: The universe was lovingly created by God for a specific purpose.
The materialistic view says: Man is the product of impersonal time, plus chance, plus matter. As a result, no man has eternal value or dignity or any meaning other than that which is subjectively derived.
The Christian view says: Man was created by God in His image and is loved by God. Because of this all men are endowed with eternal value and dignity. Their value is not derived ultimately from themselves, but from the source transcending themselves; God Himself.
The materialistic view of morality says: Morality is defined by every individual according to his own views and interests. Morality is ultimately relative because every person is the final authority for his own views.
The Christian view says: Morality is defined by God and immutable because it is based on God's unchanging, holy character.
The materialistic view says about the afterlife: The afterlife brings eternal annihilation, or personal extinction, for everyone.
The Christian view says: The afterlife involves either eternal life with God or eternal separation from Him; either the glories of heaven, or the terrors of hell.
Now, folks, let me tell you something. Which of those views you take is not a secondary issue; it is a primary issue, not only for science but for theology. How in the world can Christianity view those as secondary issues? This is the foundation of all truth. Francis Schaeffer, the apologist, said if he had an hour to spend with a person on an airplane, a person who didn't know the Lord, he would spend the first fifty-five minutes talking about man being created in the image of God, and the last five minutes on the presentation of the gospel of salvation that could restore man to that original intended image. Christianity does not begin with accepting Jesus Christ as Saviour. Christianity begins in Genesis 1:1. God created the heavens and the earth for a purpose and destiny which He Himself had determined.
The doctrine of creation as identified in the book of Genesis is foundational. It is where God starts His story and you can't change the beginning without impacting the rest of the story and the ending. In the Bible, God speaks, and He speaks in Genesis 1:1 and says He created the heavens and the earth. He is the one who spoke in Genesis 1:1 and who speaks right through Scripture till its very end.
When you tamper with Genesis 1 you are tampering with the Word of the living God and you are taking the divine account of real creation in real space and real time and you're saying, it is not accurate, it is not legitimate, it is not the truth. That is a serious assault. And it loosens up the Scripture from reality and divorces religion, the true religion, from reality. That is severe. So evolution would love to do that. It would love to ungod God, it would love to strip Scripture of its veracity. It wants to reject God as lawgiver, judge, Saviour. It wants to destroy the dignity of man as created in the image of God. And it gets pretty ridiculous, doesn't it? According to evolution man is quantitatively better than the animals. That is, he has some features that animals don't have, but qualitatively he's not better. He has a bigger brain quantitatively but qualitatively he was not created in God's image. Therefore, it is ethically wrong to violate the rights of other animals who are our literal brothers, evolutionarily speaking.
Now when I say the word chance, we take it back to its etymology; it once was largely restricted to describing mathematical probability. Where we could say, "Well, if I go over there there's a chance I might see her because she may be coming this way." Or, "If I put this money in this account there's a chance this might happen and I'll make this amount of money." There's a mathematical probability. That's what chance basically used to mean. And then it kind of got broadened a little bit and it took on broader application to include any unpredictable event, any sort of probability no matter how remote or any coincidence no matter how seemingly impossible.
But chance doesn't exist! Chance is a word used to explain something else. Chance isn't anything. It's not a force. Chance doesn't make anything happen. It doesn't exist because it's only a way to explain something else. Chance didn't make you meet that person; you were going there when she was going there, that's why you met her. Chance didn't have anything to do with it because chance doesn't exist. It's nothing. But in modern evolution, it’s been transformed into a force of causal power. It's been elevated from being nothing to being everything. Chance is the myth that serves to undergird the chaos view of reality.
But the new evolutionary paradigm is chance. And it's the opposite of logic. You see, when you abandon logic and logic says, "Oh, there's a universe. Hmm. Somebody made it." What else would logic say? "There's a building, somebody made it. There's a piano, somebody made it. There's a universe, more complex than a building, infinitely more complex than a piano, somebody who is very, very powerful and very, very intelligent made it." You say, "No, no, chance made it." Listen folks, that's rational suicide, that's not logical. Logic abandoned leaves you with myth.
If chance exists, it destroys God's sovereignty. If God is not sovereign, then He's not God. If He's not God, then there is no God and chance rules. That's frightening.
But chance as I have already stated is not a force. Chance can't make anything happen. Chance isn't anything, it doesn't exist. It is just a word!
