Let me begin this series of articles by reminding you of the well-known words of Genesis 1:1, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’. This opening verse of the Bible relates time, space and matter in a stunning economy of words, all the more remarkable for the fact that these three most basic entities are not mutually exclusive. (Indeed, not one of them can exist without the other two).Taken quite literally, the statement offers the reader a straightforward explanation for the origin of the universe and all that it contains, making no apology for the fact that the account involves supernatural creation out of nothing (ex nihilo).

We are probably all aware that until the beginning of the 19^th Century, the mainstream Christian Church had generally accepted the biblical account of creation as literal and historical fact, those who questioned the account being very much on the fringes. However, with the rapid development of the sciences and scientific enquiry in the nineteenth century, and particularly with the rise to notoriety of men like the geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875), whose book Principles of Geology asserted the age of the earth as being, not thousands but millions of years in age, and Charles Darwin (1809-1882) who published his On the Origin of Species in 1859 and his Descent of Man in 1871, the climate quickly began to change. Previously, it had been generally accepted that the fossil record had been laid down rapidly in the sedimentary rock formations as a result of the great universal catastrophic Flood (recorded in Genesis 6-9), that the earth itself was of a relatively young age and that the creation of the universe, plant and animal life (including man) had taken place as recorded literally in Genesis chapter one. But now, in the light of Lyell’s teaching based on his assertion of millions of years being required for the fossil record, and following Darwin’s famous sea voyage to the Galapagos Islands (1831-1836) on board HMS Beagle (where he assumed that the micro evolution he observed there, ie changes within certain species of animal/plant life to adapt to their own unique environment, could be transferred to the principle of macro evolution, ie changes from one actual species into another and higher form of species), things began rapidly to change. Evolutionary theory became respectable and was embraced almost universally, sadly even in great sections of the professing Christian Church.

2009 was the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. And, somewhat ironically, that year happened also to be the 500th anniversary of the birth of the great Genevan Reformer, John Calvin (in 1509). John Calvin would have been aghast to see how great sections of the Protestant church have radically abandoned the biblical teaching on creation and adopted either wholesale, or with supposed modifications, the evolutionary hypothesis with all of its unscientific bases and its undermining of the authority, inspiration and perspicuity of the Scriptures of God’s Word.

I want to do four things in these articles:

1. To briefly outline the teaching and assumptions of the evolutionary hypothesis, pointing out as I do so its inadequacies,
    
2. To outline the attempts of Bible-believing Christians to compromise the biblical account of creation with the evolutionary hypothesis,
    
3. To focus attention on the biblical account of creation in Genesis 1, and
    
4. finally to summarise the effects of evolution upon certain vital biblical doctrines.

Teaching and Assumptions of Evolution⤒🔗

We are all aware, I’m sure, that the teaching of evolution has become the major hypothesis for explaining the origin of all animate life, if not of the origin of the universe itself as we know it today. (I refuse to call it the evolutionary theory, because the definition of a ‘theory’ is that it is an explanation of a phenomenon which has been tested and proved to be a workable explanation, whereas evolution is not a theory at all but merely an unproved (and unprovable!) hypothesis). Its basic teaching is that all forms of life have evolved from a single cell organism, over a period of millions of years, to become animate life as we know it today – plants, fish, birds, animals and finally man himself. This is ‘macro’ evolution, as opposed to ‘micro’ evolution, ie a vertical change of one lower species into a much higher species of life, and not a horizontal variation within a certain species itself. (We see the latter evidenced continually in our world today, eg there are over 200 different breeds of domestic dogs, but they are all still dogs!).

We must say that this whole hypothesis is a highly speculative one, without any foundation in actual fact through empirical evidence, and that it is not even a ‘science’ but rather a philosophy or even a religion in its own right. This is doubtless why an increasing number of modern biologists, paleontologists, geneticists and scientists of various disciplines are being forced to criticise and even deny the validity of evolution’s claims as to the real origins of life.

1. The fossil record does not vindicate evolution’s claims. Darwin recognised that this should be able to provide indubitable confirmation, by way of empirical records showing the transitional forms of one species changing into another and higher species of life. He recognised that the records available back in his day were inadequate but he was confident that further developments and research would bring this empirical evidence to light in years to come. For instance, if monkeys gradually changed into men, there should be abundant evidence left in the fossil record. Whereas, there is a complete absence of any transitional forms whatever in the fossil record. This confirms creation, rather than evolution. Moreover, whole massive rock strata are often without any fossils at all. It is claimed that 150 million years are needed for invertebrates to become vertebrates, but no record has been left throughout this ‘assumed’ time-frame! Moreover, all the fossil records show clearly defined species – fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds – many of which are recognisable species today.
    
2. Modern research into DNA reveals that while there may be horizontal variations produced, there are never any vertical variations (ie producing a higher form of life or change of species).
    
3. Supposed extinct species are still being discovered today (eg Japanese fishermen off the coast of New Zealand in April 1977 caught a 4,000lb dead creature in their nets identified as a plesiosaur (a sea-dwelling dinosaur), previously only found in fossils and thought to be extinct).
    
4. It is well known that human footprints have been found in the same rock sediments that hold the footprints of extinct dinosaurs, yet evolutionists claim that a vast period of seventy million years separates the age of dinosaurs from the first appearance of mankind.
    
5. Darwin’s hypothesis requires that mutations are to be beneficial, whereas modern medical research has shown that they are almost always harmful and even dangerous to life, not beneficial, and that they normally revert back to their original forms.
    
6. In order to account for the absence of fossil evidence in the rocks, a punctuated equilibrium theory has been propounded (ie evolution happened in short spurts, followed by long periods of inactivity, hence the absence of fossils).This cannot be observed or proved and there is no evidence for this process empirically. It is subjective and arbitrary, merely yet another attempt by modern secular man to ‘salvage’ Darwin’s increasingly challenged hypothesis.
    
7. Complexity of the cell structure is another challenge to Darwin’s hypothesis. Modern research has shown the almost unbelievable complexity of the structure of even the simplest cell with one hundred proteins, tiny machines, memory banks, blueprints etc! Yet macro evolution depends on a single cell being formed by accident, some scientists saying this would require a ‘10 to the power 20’ chance for it to happen! Surely this points to a supernatural creation being necessary! The more so when you consider the sheer complexity of but a single organ in the human body, eg the human eye.
    
8. Evolution contradicts the Second Law of thermodynamics (that everything is gradually running down).
    
9. Various physical phenomena indicate that the earth is comparatively young, and not the millions of years old required by the evolutionary hypothesis. For instance, the salt levels in the oceans of the world would be very much higher than they are now; the earth’s magnetic field is known to be decreasing slowly so that on this basis the estimated age of the earth is only about 10,000 years at most; 14 million tons of space dust are deposited on the earth’s land masses and oceans annually, which would have left a deposit 220ft thick if the earth were many millions of years old; and earth’s gravitation is slowing down, which would currently be impossible if the world were of an immense age; the moon is also slowly receding from the earth, but it would be much further away if the earth were millions of years old! It is well known that when the first American astronauts landed on the moon’s surface, the legs of the landing craft had been fitted with special pods to prevent it from being completely swallowed up in the deep layer of space dust which scientists supposed covered the surface of the moon because of its immense age, whereas to the astronauts’ surprise the dust was barely half an inch in depth, once more evidencing the young age of the universe.
    
10. The supposed ‘missing links’ in human fossil remains have proved to be notoriously unreliable. There have been outright ‘hoaxes’ (such as the famous ‘Piltdown Man’), and other discoveries of supposed ancient human remains have often comprised so few fragments that it has been pure ‘guesswork’ to imagine what the original animal looked like!
     
11. The much-vaunted carbon dating methods cannot be relied upon, tests having showed that their accuracy is limited at most to a few thousand years, and even the dating methods based on the decay of uranium are based on certain questionable assumptions (eg has the rate of uranium decay remained constant?).
     
12. Finally, we observe that the supposed long age of the earth’s existence is based on the geologic column, which was supposedly formed over millions of years and which has the most primitive forms of life, therefore, at its base. But we note that the geologic column does not even exist anywhere in the world! It is a pure assumption: that is, the column has been organised according to the preconceived notions of natural evolution, with the ‘oldest’ rock formations being those which have the most primitive life forms as fossils and the youngest rocks the most advanced ones! (If ever there were a case of circular reasoning, it’s surely just here! The rocks are dated by the fossils, and fossils dated by the rocks!) So, if there are contradictions in the rock formations, eg older rock sediments overlaying younger ones, this is simply explained away as an aberration. Or, if fossils are found in rock layers where they should not be, this is explained away as ‘stratigraphic leaks’!

Summary←⤒🔗

Macro evolution is indeed a ‘religious’ belief that is not only not based on empirical evidence, but it is contrary to the overwhelming evidence which bears testimony against it, some of which we have just cited. Whereas, the evidence points much more directly and convincingly to creation by an Intelligent Designer, with the explanation for a young age of the earth, the fossil record, etc, arising from creation followed by catastrophism (ie the universal Flood in the days of Noah).

So, we need to take just a moment to reflect on why evolution is destructive of the biblical faith:

1. It is openly antagonistic towards biblical revelation, desiring to deny and undermine biblical authority. It claims to put the supposed findings of ‘science’ above Scripture, thus promoting atheism, secularism and theological liberalism, leading inevitably to the rise of such figures as Karl Marx and Julian Huxley in the secular realm and the promotion of modernism in the ecclesiastical realm.
    
2. There is no place for a personal Creator God nor any need for Him. Hence, for instance, the rise of the ‘Big Bang’ theory for the origin of the universe, where pure chance (not God) rules.
    
3. It denies the Person and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, who affirmed the doctrine of creation and who quoted or alluded to the Book of Genesis some twenty-five times in the course of His ministry.
    
4. Scripture affirms the reality of the first Adam and Jesus Christ as the last Adam. The denial of Adam’s creation by divine fiat as the federal head of the human race undercuts the whole basis and plan of man’s redemption through Christ, the last Adam.
    
5. Death is no longer the result of man’s sin as a divine judgment upon him, but merely a natural phenomenon. (We need no reminder that these views resulted in the rise of Nazism and Communism and even in our own culture, the increasing loss of any sense of the sanctity of human life and the seriousness of man’s sinful condition before God.)

So, there can be no compromise between evolution and creation. Evolution, in its essence, implies the destruction of evangelical Christianity. There cannot be, and ought not to be, any compromise with it. But we should be thankful, nevertheless, that we are living in days when more and more honest and enquiring scientists are questioning the validity of Darwin’s hypothesis because of many newly discovered factors and who are therefore no longer in agreement with Thomas Huxley’s arrogant assertion that ‘evolution is no longer theory but fact and cannot be questioned any more than that the earth goes around the sun’.