Lie: Evolution is true.
Truth: Evolution is false: God created the heavens and the earth.
The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it just happened by blind chance. Superficially the obvious alternative to chance is an intelligent Designer. — Richard Dawkins
In this statement, Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary scientist and apologist, just made a point for creation and intelligent design. ‘Statistically improbable’ – that’s what evolution is, says Dawkins, himself an improbable and reluctant advocate for ‘an intelligent Designer.’ The improbable (evolution) is simply too obvious for Dawkins to ignore.[1]
This lie — evolution is true — tends to make me furious.
When I think how deep this deception goes, how ubiquitous, how improbable, how beyond the pale, that a slow series of random events caused, produced — ALL THIS! (the natural world). Are you kidding me? This ‘theory’ deserves our ridicule and even hate.[2] So often Christians are too ‘nice’ and fail to call out the evil for what it is.
ALL THIS (the natural world) is an astounding, magnificent, ineffable, sublime, and transcendent (we could easily pile up the adjectives here) creation of God, especially when seen in both its visible and invisible elements. Even with our most sophisticated and powerful instruments, both on the macro- and the micro-scopic level, scientists have failed to find its limits and still have no prospects of doing so. The creation is simply too vast to comprehend and is thereby truly awe-inspiring.
But I want to get to the heart of it. Why does evolution maintain such a strong and enduring appeal, even to Christians? In the face of the obvious, what power could be so persuasive to delude us into acquiescing to the absurd? Yes, powerful propaganda from academia, science, and media are behind it. These institutions have built a thin narrative that worked in Darwin’s day, back when our power to see into a living cell was limited, back when the cell was nothing but a ‘black box.’ But slowly our powers of vision have grown to the point that we can now clearly see overwhelming evidence of design. And one of the most compelling evidences is deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.
But our name for this molecule — DNA — is a bald chemicalization[3] of it and an attempt to demystify and reduce it to a purely mechanistic process (and a highly choreographed process it is!) — but it’s not just a chemical code.
And yet it is a code.[4]
But it’s no ordinary code. It’s a sophisticated, complex, and powerful code that, at least on the surface, controls the shape, function, development, and maintenance (error correction, etc), of millions upon millions of unique bacteria, fungi, plants and animals. No code has ever been created out of random processes, even given long tracts of time. I dare you to name one code — even a rudimentary one.
And it’s the same code across all species — for example, the INS gene that produces the insulin hormone is the same basic gene that produces insulin in other mammals – the code is a unified design that points to a Grand Designer/Creator. The sheer size, complexity, and integrity of this grand design is truly awesome.
But it’s interesting that, in this time when the theory of evolution has become even more entrenched, is the same time that the Creator has allowed his creation to be exposed for all to see its wonders ‘under the hood,’ so to speak. We can now see the complex structure of the cell and its highly regulated interactions: mitochondria, golgi, nucleus, chromosomes, ribosomes, reticulum, etc. It’s as if the Creator has taken the reductionist, mechanistic challenge personally.
So what keeps Christians so timid? Yes, the propaganda machine and its onslaught against Intelligent Design, blackballs and bullies scientists, teachers and school systems to keep them in line. But I believe the real answer is in Christians’ own unwillingness to look different, to swim upstream, to open ourselves up to ridicule. Most of us don’t want to ‘make waves;’ we’d rather ‘go along to get along.’
But there’s another reason that Christians remain timid. It’s the fact that we’re usually presented with only two alternatives:
- Darwinism or so-called ‘natural selection’
- Young earth (or six-day) creationism (most often coupled with Intelligent Design)
This is a false dilemma — both of these alternatives claim to be comprehensive theories, and both have elements of truth, yet neither have the whole truth. The adaptation processes described in evolution are obviously true. God has embedded the wonder of plasticity/adaptability in his creation.[5] The problem is that these adaptations, even a long series of them, cannot account for the entire panoply of life. It also cannot account for life’s origins — how did it all start? For example, where did the DNA code/process come from? Science continues to search in vain for the origin of life’s supposed ‘mechanisms,’ locked as they are in their purely materialistic world view.
Young earth, literal six-day creationism is also incomplete. It also tries to reverse-engineer life’s origins using science and the biblical narrative, something that the biblical narrative was not intended to do. The creation story is unique in that it’s a pure revelation — obviously no human was present to observe or record it.
How and when did God create the heavens and the earth? I don’t know how or when he did it. What the Genesis story tells us is that the earth and all life originated by special creation of Elohim.[6] Did the story of Adam and Eve actually happen? In one sense I have no reason to doubt it, but it ultimately does not matter in terms of how or when; it only matters that God DID create the heavens and the earth and all creatures, including human beings.
So must the creation story be LITERALLY true to be true?
Did God literally shape Adam’s body manually from the clay soil?
Did God literally blow into Adam’s nostrils?
Did God literally put Adam to sleep and (surgically?) remove a rib with which to fashion Eve?
Maybe he did, but these stories may very well also be metaphors or symbols or images for the personalization of the creation and the Creator — AND STILL BE TRUE.
And the creation is simply too immense, too complex, too old (yet not-to-appease-evolution old!), too intertwined with physical and immaterial (spiritual) entities. Any belief in a system of origins that claims to fundamentally explain it is hubris. Where is the mystery? Where is our humility? I’m afraid we’ve substituted God for lesser transcendent realities — Nature and Science. See also my article, LIE: God is a vast impersonal force.
Unless we abandon our passivity and confront the status-quo of evolution, and yes, even the dogma of young-earth creationism, it will continue to engulf us like an ocean wave. The assumptions around evolution are everywhere. We must see both of these ‘answers’ as empty shells, as vain attempts to undercut the majesty of the Creator God. We do not need to compete with evolution. Rather, let the majesty of the created world speak for itself. If we’re willing to listen, its wonders are convincing enough. We should not think that we need to be a scientist or that we have to argue the details; and we need not be defensive; there is nothing more powerful than the unadulterated truth.
Christ has called us to confront worldly culture with his cross. He himself confronted the status quo and now calls us to follow him. If we do so we have no need to fear. We are safe under his mighty cross.
[1] Using the word ‘improbable’ is probably the understatement of the century. Evolution, as it’s conventionally conceived, is statistically impossible.
[2] See my article: LIE: We should not hate. (The truth is that we should hate evil.)
[3] Science breaks down the molecule into several compounds, namely, adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine, along with deoxyribose.
[4] Although the code of the DNA molecule is itself a wonder, its functions and processes are no less astounding: transcription, translation, replication, termination, etc.
[5] See for example, Darwin’s study of finches.
[6] Elohim is the name for God that is used in the book of Genesis chapter one.