The Bible teaches creation while most modern day scientists teach evolution. The implications of who is right are enormous. Are we made in the image of God as the Bible states or are we made in the image of a monkey as evolution claims? If the Bible is right then we have tremendous intrinsic value but if evolution is the way we made our way into existence then the only conclusion is that we are the product of a vast chain of random mutations with our great-great-great-great-etc. grandparents being the chance collision of random molecules.
The late apologist Ron Carlson summed it up best when he shared: “In grammar school they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fairy tale. In the university they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fact!”1
If evolution is a fact then we must face the sad reality that we came from nothing and when we die we go back to nothing. The question we must face is can mindless molecules create the magnificent minds we possess and can a person ultimately find real meaning without God. In the remainder of this devotion, I would like to share with you a few observations on why I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist and believe in evolution.
Some say that there is a middle ground position we can take called theistic evolution. Under this scenario God exists and He used evolution as the mechanism to bring about mankind. I contend that this is the worst possible belief system. What theistic evolution posits is that God used trial and error over millions and millions of years to get it right and to bring about mankind. God, as a result, used millions of years of death and decay, survival of the fittest, and a host of fortuitous events to bring you and me into existence. This clearly flies in the face of (Genesis 1:31): “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
Another major problem with evolution is that those scientists who believe in it can’t tell us where the original matter that the process of evolution needed to work on came from. Inanimate matter is needed for the process of evolution to work on to create the first life and evolutionists have no really good answer as to where this matter came from. Only the Bible goes the final step saying in (Hebrews 11:3): “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” Only an all-powerful God could create a universe out of nothing! I am much more comfortable in casting my lot with (Genesis 1:1): “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Before we close I would like to leave you with a thought experiment concerning the Apple iPhone. If you could take an iPhone apart into all of its components and place all of these parts in a box, how long would it take you to shake the box and reassemble all of the parts into an iPhone? I think most rational people would say that you could shake the box forever and the parts would never reassemble into an iPhone. But let’s help our evolutionist friends out, who believe given enough time, that complex organisms can evolve.
First, the evolutionist already has a distinct advantage in that in our box he already has all of the parts he needs to assemble the iPhone. Therefore, he doesn’t need to form new parts through the mutation process. But let’s toss in the box the instruction manual on how to assemble all the component parts – another advantage. Will this help – quite frankly no. Finally let’s take all of the parts in our box and bring them to a big room with some of our best scientists and Apple inventors and ask them to reassemble all of the components into an iPhone. The only catch is they can’t use any tools.
Well, here we have all of the components, the detailed instructions on how to assemble our iPhone, and the best minds in the world, but without tools they will NEVER be able to produce an iPhone. Yet with all of these advantages over the true evolutionary process, which basically starts with nothing, the evolution of the iPhone is still impossible.
Finally, to suppose that a human being, who is infinitely more complex than an iPhone, could somehow evolve through some blind random process takes a lot of faith; far more faith than I have.
I leave you with two possible scenarios: One says that an all-powerful God created the universe and, yes, you and me or that the evolutionary mantra of “nobody times nothing equals everything” is true. I ask you to ponder your choices.
1 Ron Carlson quote: In grammar school they taught me that a frog turning… (azquotes.com)