Issue

To understand the issue of evolution it is important to first become familiar with the root from which it sprang–secular humanism. The word secular refers to “worldly,” and ancient Greek philosopher Protagorus, writing over 400 years before Christ, sums up humanism in this statement, “man is the measure of all things.” In other words, secular humanism denies the existence of God, and thus all morality, law, science, and philosophy in this world must then be judged solely by human standards. You must understand, it’s not that anyone has ever disproved the existence of God, but rather, a worldview of naturalism has been adopted that simply doesn’t allow for any supernatural occurrences–those that would be outside of the realm of empirical science.

The theory of evolution is the chief tenet of secular humanism, for without which, there would be no natural explanation for the origin of the universe. Unfortunately the apathy of the Christian community has allowed the promoters of humanism to quite successfully sell the idea to the general public that science, archaeology, and philosophy have proven that there are no supernatural miracles, the Bible is only mythology, and that in this “scientific age” there is just no real need for God. This philosophy of naturalism, the belief that for every phenomenon there is only a natural explanation, forms the basis for our public schools, almost all of the sciences, most institutes of higher learning, and increasingly more seminaries–particularly those of mainline denominations–but even so-called conservative Evangelical seminaries are now being affected.

Dr. Ron Carlson, president of Christian Ministries International, gives us further insight into this subject when he says:

Secular humanism is based on the presupposition that there is no God. Now it’s interesting to note that the 19th and 20th century philosophers and scientists have never disproved the existence of God. What the philosophers have done, and this is very important to understand, is to simply set up a definition of science so small that God just doesn’t fit. The philosophers of the 19th century who said there is no God devised a philosophy called naturalism, where they drew a box called ‘our empirical world of science’ (i.e. the world of our senses). Now science is based on two things, observation and experimentation, of the real world by analyzing the data from repeated tests. And in naturalism, the scientists and philosophers said that the only things that exist are what we find our little three dimensional box of time and space. Then, because God doesn’t fit in our three dimensional box, we can’t observe or experiment with Him, and since we can’t put Him in a test tube or in an algebraic formula, therefore they say, God doesn’t exist.

In other words the faulty premise of the secular humanist can be stated like this: Everything that exists can be seen in the natural world. God cannot be seen in the natural world; therefore, God doesn’t exist. However, this is not science at all. It is instead a philosophical error known as a self-refuting sentence. There is no way that this opening premise can verified scientifically, it is simply assuming facts that are not in evidence. What the evolutionary scientists are actually asking us to do is to affirm what they say is valid; simply because they believe it is true. And the sad thing is that those who use this type of fallacious line of reasoning have duped so many millions into believing these things before people have even looked into the issues for themselves.

Overview

The insurmountable difficulty with the theory of evolution, right from its initial conception, is that it violates basic laws of science. The Big Bang theory, in it’s simplest form, teaches that within a vacuum, a series of elements eventually interacted in such a way, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 billion years ago (and this time frame keeps “evolving” backward itself), that they exploded into the universe that we can now see. And this leads us to what is known as spontaneous generation arising to evolution; as life itself, would have had to begin by itself somewhere after this process. Charles Darwin postulated that “in a little warm pond” other non-living chemicals then combined in such a way that they spontaneously generated into life, forming the first living cell, which then began to evolve.

The decisive problem for the theory of evolution, however, is that scientists themselves have already proven that this alleged spontaneous generation is simply not possible! In Scientific American, longtime professor of Biology at Harvard University, the late Dr. George Wald, winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, spoke very candidly on this very subject:

Louis Pasteur experimented with spontaneous generation. When he had finished, nothing remained of the belief in spontaneous generation… The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of a supernatural creation [by God]. There is no third position. For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a “philosophical necessity”… Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in [God and] special creation, are left with nothing. I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the origin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous generation… One has only to contemplate the magnitude of the task to concede that the spontaneous generation [from non-life to] a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are–as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.

Dr. Wald, who was widely known as one the preeminent scientists of his day, could not have stated the secular humanist’s position of naturalism any clearer. There is no belief in evolution here based on scientific evidence; rather, what we can clearly see is that the humanist just doesn’t want to even accept the possibility that God exists. And so, when the scientific evidence for evolution is missing, they simply make a philosophical decision to reject God as the Creator of this immense universe of such intricate design.

In The Illustrated Origins Answer Book, Paul Taylor of the Christian Answers Network points out the other huge problem as we attempt to grasp this crucial issue. The scientific evidence for evolution is nowhere near conclusive, as you are becoming aware of here, and in point of fact, instead can easily be interpreted in such a way to warrant intelligent design–and hence the need for a Creator. Then how it is that evolutionary scientists, despite this lack of actual scientific evidence, are able to make it look to the largely uninformed public as though they’ve solved the mysteries of life apart from God? Taylor enlightens us:

There are three common misconceptions about scientists: (a) Scientists are objective, (b) Scientists are unbiased, and (c ) Science is infallible…[but] Scientists are emotional human beings who carry with them a generous subjectivity [this means personal opinion] into the supposedly objective search for the truth.

Dr. Henry Morris, who founded the Institute For Creation Research, and who is a scientist himself, is correct when he says: “If evolutionary scientists are going to continue to insist that science is pure naturalism, then they ought to be honest enough to admit that such a position requires at least as much faith as that of the Bible-believing Christian.” If one honestly looks at the scientific evidence itself, the theory of evolution is far from the so-called fact that is presented to be in virtually all of this nation’s public venues. The absolute truth is: The naturalist would do well to read Psalm 14:1: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

Conclusion

Sir Fred Hoyle, the great British astronomer and mathematician, put the origin of first life in perspective when he calculated the probability of non-life becoming life by random chance. Here is what he found: “The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 [zeroes] after it… It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution.” And Hoyle’s associate Chandra Wickramasinghe said: “believing that life arose by pure chance is like believing that a Boeing 747 arose by a tornado blowing through a junkyard.”

I would be so bold as to say, to believe things such as these actually takes more faith than to simply believe the Bible when it says – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). The Church of our Lord needs to help people see that the theory of evolution is not based on the scientific evidence, it is actually based on a simple philosophical decision to reject the Creator. And the Christian should boldly point out that it is much more reasonable to place our faith in Jesus Christ and His Word contained in the Holy Scriptures, than it is to accept the profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called (1 Timothy 6:20, KJV), and the ever-changing words of men who are always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:7, NASB).