One topic of interest to me is creation and evolution. There are many Christians who try to mix the two together, but creation and evolution really can’t be combined because evolution is a belief about life coming into being through purely natural means apart from a creator. Dr. Carl Wieland writes, “When considering how life began, there are really only two alternatives. Either life was created by an intelligent source or it “made itself” — i.e. evolved. That’s really what “evolution” is all about — things making themselves, arising spontaneously from within nature — the material world — with no outside assistance.”

Across the Pastor’s Desk by Kent Otterman

What do evolutionists think of people who try to insert God into evolution? Evolutionist Wilson da Silva said “the clear implication of evolution is that a God is not needed to create each individual animal; that they can arise naturally and blindly.”

Richard Dawkins, arguably the leading spokesman for evolution, writes about the belief that God used the evolutionary process to create.

“I think that’s a tremendous cop-out. If God wanted to create life and create humans, it would be slightly odd that he should choose the extraordinarily roundabout way of waiting for 10 billion years before life got started and then waiting for another four billion years until you got human beings capable of worshipping and sinning and all the other things religious people are interested in.”

Evolutionist Richard Lewontin said “we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.”

The reason many Christians try to combine God with evolution is because they believe that molecules to man evolution is a proven scientific fact. This is, of course, not true. Evolution, just like creation, is a belief. There is absolutely no hard evidence that ladybugs will turn into leopards if given enough time.

What there is scientific evidence for is something called natural selection, sometimes referred to as adaptation. In other words, over time, different varieties of ladybugs and leopards have developed based on variations in their genetics and environments. However, no matter how much time goes by, ladybugs remain ladybugs and leopards remain leopards. This fits exactly with what the Bible teaches when it says that God created the different kinds of creatures, and all creatures reproduce after their own kind (Genesis 1:24).

In closing, let me quote Richard Dawkins again.

“I think the evangelical Christians have really sort of got it right in a way in seeing evolution as the enemy, whereas the more — what shall we say — sophisticated theologians who are quite happy to live with evolution, I think they’re deluded. I think the evangelicals have got it right in that there really is a deep incompatibility between evolution and Christianity, and I think I realized that at the age of about 16.”

For me, it takes much more faith to believe that all the amazing forms of life on this planet evolved through purely natural means than it does to believe that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).

 

Kent Otterman is the chaplain at Good Samaritan Society of Albert Lea and pastor of Round Prairie Lutheran Church of rural Glenville and Faith Lutheran Church of London.