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TechnoratiHowever, here’s what I would say. I was talking recently to an atheist, Dr. Eugenie Scott. I don’t know if you know her, but she’s the head of NCSE (National Center for Science Education) which is a group set up to oppose creationists. She’s one of the ones involved in creating a petition against us. But she said to me that there are many people of faith that believe in evolution and have no problem with that. They can explain evolution with the Bible.
So I said, ‘But tell me, can those that believe in evolution and millions of years believe in a literal Genesis?’
And she said, ‘Oh no, you can’t do that.’ She said, ‘You can’t believe in “Ken Ham’s” interpretation of Genesis.’
And I said, ‘”Ken Ham’s” interpretation … let me put it another way. Ken Ham and Martin Luther and John Calvin and John Wesley and millions of Americans and many Ph.D. scientists and Peter and Paul and Jesus.’
Here’s what I would say, a person who believes in millions of years of evolution as a Christian, it doesn’t affect their salvation if they are truly born again. But what it does affect is this. When you read Genesis, for instance, it says that God made man from dust and woman from man. If you believe in evolution, you have to believe that dust to Adam represents ape-like creatures to people. Then to Eve, ape-like creatures to people as well.
If the woman came from an ape woman, then you’ve destroyed marriage, because Jesus even said we become one because we become one flesh. Where does one flesh come from? It’s because woman came from man. They are one flesh.
Also, if evolution is true, if you believe in millions of years, you’ve got millions of years of fossils laid down before Adam’s sin. The fossil record depicts animals eating each other, because you have fossils of animals’ stomachs fossilized. It’s very easy to see evidence of cancer and abscesses in the fossil record. Did God describe all of that as very good?
Not only that, but Genesis 1:29-30 says that the animals were all originally vegetarian and so was man. Also, the Bible says that thorn came after the curse whereas you find thorns in the fossil record that are millions of years old, so does that mean the Bible is wrong?
The argument we make is this: When you believe in millions of years of evolution and add it to the Bible, you actually have to change what the Bible clearly says. You have to reinterpret it. That unlocks the door to say that you don’t take this as written. You reinterpret it from outside influences, which means that you tell the next generation that you can’t take the Bible as written. So you just undermine biblical authority.
For instance, a guy like Francis Collins - who is part of the Human Genome Project and just wrote a book recently - is a theistic evolutionist. I would say that he could be a great man of God and a great scientist, but he tells people that they can believe in evolution. There is a big difference. What he can’t seem to understand – and I think part of it is academic peer pressure - is that when he studied the Human Genome Project, he was looking at genes in the present comparing genes from around the world doing what I call incredible real empirical science. But when it comes to the past and talking about the histories and origins, he can’t do that. He wasn’t there. He can’t experiment with that, so it’s very different. When he says that you can take man’s ideas of evolution, Darwin’s ideas, and add it to the Bible, he is putting a stumbling block in front of the next generation because he is really saying that the Bible is not the absolute authority. ‘God couldn’t get it right. You don’t have to read it as it’s written.’ Continue »
