Genesis 1 – is the point to convey what really happened or a roundabout way of saying “God created”?
For a moment, let’s follow the crowd: there’s no way Genesis is literal; the point is God created. Great. God guided evolution (or set the process in motion and let er go). What I love about this solution is that it works great for every person who doesn’t read his Bible.
The problem is I am one of those eccentric souls who actually read mine.
What am I supposed to do when I get to Genesis 3 and I read that the penalty for sin is death? If millions of years of evolution passed before Adam, then millions of years of death passed before Adam, then Adam’s sin didn’t cause death – God did and used it as His mechanism to create. And if God’s mechanism to drive evolution was to weed out the weak, why do we strive to keep them alive? Shouldn’t we endeavor to eliminate the frail, the feeble, and the pathetic? (Is it any wonder eugenics and assisted suicide have been accepted by so many?)
What am I supposed to do when I get to Exodus 20:11 and God inscribes in the Ten Commandments that the basis for our seven day week is the creation week?
What am I supposed to do when I get to Mark 10:16 and Jesus declares that “at the beginning” God made them “male and female”? If Adam and Eve didn’t enter the scene until 12 billion some years after the beginning, what is Jesus talking about?
What am I supposed to do when I get to Romans 5:12 and Paul asserts that death entered the world through Adam? If millions of years of evolution and death passed before Adam, then Paul got it wrong.
And let’s say I’m okay with the above problems and still insist on jamming millions of years into Genesis 1 to make it fit the latest evolutionary theory, do I have to change the order too? Genesis says the earth came before the sun; evolution claims the opposite. Genesis says the plants came before the sun; evolution claims the opposite. Genesis says birds came before reptiles, evolution claims the opposite.
And yet most Christians are okay with this and even defend it. Case in point: the Clergy Letter Project (Google it). Even the pope accepts it (Benedict, JP, and Pious) (Google “Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church”). Never mind that evolution wreaks havoc on Scripture and numerous Biblical teachings; the majority accepts it, so that settles it.
I think Charles Spurgeon said it well, “We are invited, brethren, most earnestly to go away from the old-fashioned belief of our forefathers because of the supposed discoveries of science. What is science? The method by which man tries to conceal his ignorance. It should not be so, but so it is. You are not to be dogmatic in theology my brethren, it is wicked; but for scientific men it is the correct thing. You are never to assert anything very strongly; but scientists may boldly assert what they cannot prove, and may demand a faith far more credulous than any we possess. Forsooth, you and I are to take our Bibles and shape and mould our belief according to the ever-shifting teachings of so-called scientific men. What folly is this! Why, the march of science, falsely so called, through the world may be traced by exploded fallacies and abandoned theories. Former explorers once adored are now ridiculed; the continual wreckings of false hypotheses is a matter of universal notoriety. You may tell where the learned have encamped by the debris left behind of suppositions and theories as plentiful as broken bottles.”
The short of it: evolution can’t dance with the Bible. We either follow the Bible’s lead or get a new partner.
Later I’ll blog about the two mechanisms (mutation and natural selection) that supposedly drive evolution forward while, in reality, doing the opposite.
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