The main purpose in going through this 12 week study of a survey of the Old Testament is to lay the theological framework for understanding the Bible. My main desire that under-girds this entire study is you would trust God and trust His word. To begin lesson 2, read the creation account in Genesis 1. Please notice that Genesis 1 is a clear historical account of how the world was formed given by the One who was there and who did the actual creating. It is not poetry or allegory and should not be interpreted as such.
In lesson 2, I will first discuss the theological reasons why evolution and the clear teachings of scripture cannot be reconciled. Secondly, I will discuss different branches of science and show how the scriptures and science are not at odds but rather the scriptures contain true science. Believers in Christ need not apologize for any statement made in the Holy Scriptures regarding any field of science. Believers in Christ must not and need not yield any ground to any evolutionary based science (falsely so called).
Here are 7 theological reasons why a Christian cannot believe both evolution and the Bible.
1. The Bible’s own internal chronology does not allow for the billions of years that are needed for evolution to even be possible.
2. The sovereignty of God does not allow for a reconciliation between evolution and the scriptures. The hero in evolutionary thought is chance which many even treat as some kind of force to guide evolutionary processes. The Lord is not the God of deism who wound up the clock and then let it run. The Lord is intimately involved with His creation. As it says in Colossians 1:17, “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” The Lord is a God of purpose and plan.
3. The genealogy of Jesus through Mary in Luke 3 calls Adam in verse 38, the son of God. Adam was created out of the dust by God. Adam had no subhuman ancestors as evolutionists would try to suggest.
4. The fourth commandment of the ten given in Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” confirms that the days given in Genesis 1 are actual 24 hour periods. Look specifically at verse 11. Although some would suggest that the days in Genesis 1 could be long periods of time, the Bible is self interpreting and tells us that the days were 24 hour periods. Think also of our unit of measure called the week. A day is based on the earth’s rotation on its axis. A month is based on the lunar cycle. A year is based on the earth’s orbit around the sun. A week is based on God’s work and rest in creation listed in Genesis 1.
5. Romans 5 tells us that, “as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin;” so that the reason for death in the world is Adam’s sin. There is no possible way to reconcile the evolutionary idea of billions of years of death, chance, and beneficial mutations with the biblical doctrines of original sin (and the resulting death) and the atoning death (and the resulting grace) of Jesus Christ. Christians who also want to hold to any kind of evolutionary doctrine are going to have to remove Romans 5 from their bible.
6. The doctrine of marriage cannot be rightly understood without believing in the creation account as it is described in the Bible. In Matthew 19, Jesus taught on marriage and divorce. He referred back to the creation account when teaching on the oneness of husband and wife in marriage. It should not be a surprise at all that the divorce rate has risen with the rise of evolutionary thought in the Church. The two go hand in hand (pun intended).
7. The Bible teaches the creation of a new heavens and a new earth by the word of God. To be consistent, do Christians who believe in evolution believe that we will have to wait 12 billion years or so for the new heavens and new earth to form from really, really, extraordinary beneficial chance mutations? Or will God do it the same way He did it the first time, He said let it be and it happened?
The second half of lesson 2 will contain discussions from different fields of science showing the scriptures also contain true science and that evolution is a lie in every field of science.
I want to start in the physics branch of science and tackle what is seemingly the evolutionists stronghold. It is the question of how you can have distant starlight, millions of light years away and also have the young earth which the bible’s own chronology clearly teaches.
The answer here is in what Einstein discovered in his theory of general relativity: that gravity changes time. The greater the concentration of matter, the stronger the gravitational field will be. The stronger the gravitational field, the slower that time will move. This is a measurable change. Here is an example: two clocks, one at sea level and one in Denver, one mile above sea level are started at the same time. The one in Denver will run slightly faster (5 micro-seconds faster over the course of a year) because it is one mile further away from the center of gravity of the earth. The greater the concentration of matter, the greater the pull of gravity so the earth has a greater gravitational pull than the moon and the sun is greater than the earth.
If we take the example of the earth to the next level and consider our solar system, we would find that matter is not evenly distributed throughout the solar system but is instead much more concentrated at its center, the sun. As you move further away from the sun, there is less and less matter and so time would move faster as you move further and further away from the center toward the edge.
Now lets consider the next level which is the galaxy (the Milky Way). It again does not have matter evenly distributed throughout the galaxy but instead has a center (a black hole) where the matter is incredibly dense and the gravitational field is so strong as to not let light depart. The amount of the change in time within a galaxy is very significant as you move from the center to the edges.
Now lets consider one more step which is the entire universe. This is where the evolutionist would have us totally abandon the model we have seen as we have gone from smaller to larger models. To get to the evolutionary guess of 12 billion years for the age of the universe you have to assume that matter is evenly distributed throughout the universe and ignore what we see in the earth, the solar system and our galaxy. If we logically conclude that the universe also has a center where matter is concentrated and as you move closer to the edges there is less and less then we can begin to understand how great the change in time is depending where you are relative to the center and the edge of the universe. This is the explanation of how you can have both a young earth which the bible teaches and starlight that is millions of light years away.
2 Peter 3:4 gives the basic foundational presupposition of the evolutionists (scoffers): all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. It is the presupposition of uniformity. The bible and observation both teach change, catastrophe and the providence of God throughout history. I hope the above brief scientific explanation of how the universe is structured and how gravity affects time helps to strengthen your faith in the absolute truth of the Bible. You will find uniformity is the foundation of all evolutionary thought. Once you understand this fact you will not be fooled by the lies of evolution.
In the chemistry branch of science, I would like to first consider carbon 14 dating. Radioactive isotopes and specifically C14 are used in giving the ages of objects and cited by evolutionists for proof of an old earth contrary to the young earth of the bible.
Here are some things to consider about carbon 14 dating. Carbon 14 has relatively fast rate of decay with a half life of 5730 years. Half life means that if no more C14 was added to a living object, it would take 5730 for half of the C14 in that object to decay into the more stable form of carbon, C12. After 11460 years the same object would have only a quarter of the original C14 and so on. With the measuring equipment available today, C14 dating can only be used up to 80,000 years. It cannot be used for millions or billions of years.
To use C14 dating on formerly living objects (it cannot be used on rocks), one must know the decay rate of C14 and the amount of C14 in a living object when it dies. There are assumptions that have to be made to use C14 dating and what I want to do now is discuss the underlying assumptions, show why they are not true, and how they produce much older ages than are actually true.
As I said in the preceding paragraph, to use C14 dating you need to know the amount of C14 in an object when it dies. However, you cannot know that amount without being there to measure at the time of death. So here is where an assumption is made to compensate for this unknown amount. The assumption is that the amount of C14 being produced is equal to the amount of C14 being consumed or that the earth is in a state of equilibrium. It has been estimated that for the earth to reach a state of equilibrium, it would take 30000 years. So the evolutionist is also assuming from the beginning an older age for the earth than the bible gives. Right now when the production rate of C14 and the disintegration rate of C14 are measured, they are not equal. The production rate is greater than the disintegration rate. The earth is not in equilibrium and therefore must be less than 30000 years old.
One other point to mention about C14 dating is that the production rate of C14 is affected by the earth’s magnetic field. This is an inverse relationship. The weaker the strength of the earth’s magnetic field the greater the production rate of C14. The earth’s magnetic field is getting measurably weaker as time goes by. The evolutionist again interprets everything through their foundational lens which is all things continue as they were or the presupposition of uniformity.
C14 dating does not in any way prove the long ages of evolutionary based science. On the contrary it actually supports the young earth taught by the bible.
In this last discussion about creation, science, and evolution, I will include a little mathematics, and a little biology with our discussion of chemistry. Scientists have conducted some much heralded experiments in the lab where they tried to simulate conditions on an early earth where they could show that simple chemical could have reacted to different forms of energy and produced the building blocks of life. Stanley Miller in 1953 used a mix of chemicals and electrical energy to produce amino acids. Amino acids in chains are what make proteins. Other scientists have used heat or ultraviolet radiation to simulate sunlight to cause chemical reactions which they say produce the building blocks of life.
Here is the other side to these great lab “successes” in producing the building blocks of life in a lab. These experiments produce both left handed and right handed amino acids. Only left handed amino acids are used in living things. There is no natural mechanism for only producing left handed amino acids. Also, even if only left handed amino acids were somehow produced randomly then the order becomes important for these amino acids to be linked together correctly for life building proteins. There is no mechanism or force found in nature to have even the simplest form of life randomly produced by chance. When the probability (mathematics) is considered for the right amino acids to be produced and then all to get into the correct order to make sense, and then that process to randomly happen over and over again until a single living cell is produced, you will find that evolution is mathematically impossible. It is not improbable, it is impossible. Please do not forget also that in order for the fairy tale of evolution to happen, a single cell living organism has to live long enough to reproduce and then zillions of beneficial mutations need to happen to go from goo to you.
Biology uses the idea of beneficial mutations on the cellular level to account for simpler organisms moving to more complex organisms. The idea of beneficial mutations is combined with the idea of natural selection (survival of the fittest) to account for evolution. Mutations are not beneficial. They are called cancer by people in the medical field.
One last point to make about science and evolution. Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics which is called the law of entropy or the law of decay. Most people know this law instinctively. They know that things break down with age and that order and design do not randomly happen. Please consider what your own experience tells you about the way things work when someone who professes to be wise tries to get you to doubt your Creator and your bible.
I will pick up some other scientific discussions when we get to our lesson on the flood.
As you finish this lesson, just notice a few things about the creation account. God made the heavens and the earth good because He is by nature good. He also made things to reproduce with variety within their own kind. Finally, if you look at how God created on each day, He put His stamp on each day. When God created different types of living things He created 3 in 1’s to show His triune nature. See you in lesson 3.