One of the biggest questions that skeptics have about the legitimacy of the Bible is that of Evolution versus Creationism. In a recent study, 46 percent of Americans say that they believe that God created man and woman, 33 percent believe in theistic evolution while 15 percent believe in naturalistic evolution without any divine intervention.
Creationism holds that God created humans and many of the animals that we see today. There is a huge difference between macro and micro evolution however. Micro evolution has been scientifically proven, such as variations within species or the fact that human beings are getting taller over time. Macro evolution, on the other hand, would say that non-living matter became a living cell and so forth. This view would hold to a literal reading of the Bible and the verses that say that God created us. It would also affirm the passages in the New Testament that refer to the fact that original sin came into the world through one man named Adam.
Theistic Evolution would say that evolution and creationism are not completely exclusive opposing views. This camp would say that all aspects of evolution are correct, but it was God who divinely orchestrated all of the evolutionary steps to take place. The problem with this view, however, is that it would mean that it took God millions upon millions of tries to get things they way that he wanted them to be. He also made things according to “its kind” and not a fish that would eventually be an orangutan. The Bible paints humans as being formed by God out of the dust of the ground and having a soul, this would be hard to reconcile with billions of years of evolution.
Genesis also portrays Adam and Eve as having intelligent and moral integrity, not really the first picture you think of when you picture a cave man. Theistic Evolution would say that Adam could have been a real human, but it was after a long evolutionary process. Also, a basic tenet of evolution is random chance and this is contrary to God having a purpose in mind when God created things.
Probably the biggest problem that you face if you believe in Theistic Evolution is where sin and death entered into the world. The Bible states in Romans 5.12 that through one man came sin and death, and that it would take the second Adam, or Jesus to come to this earth and atone for that sin. With evolution, it would take billions of years of death and the survival of the fittest to take place for a man named Adam to appear on the scene.
Naturalistic Evolution in its essence is random mutation combined with natural selection to produce the varying species that we have today. While this is in fact the prevailing view in the scientific community, the Bible in 1 Corinthians 15.45 and Romans 5.14 see Adam as a historical, literal man who walked the earth and not the product of mutations. It would be hard to hold to the complete authority of scripture and also hold to evolution as a viable option. The Bible is just too specific about the creation of man and woman for this to be.
Also, when you look at such complexities as the human eye or some specific species such as the bombardier beetle, there is statistically no way that these complex organisms can come from tiny mutations, because all of these tiny mutations would have had to happen at once for the end result to occur. Studies have shown that statistically the chance of a protein becoming a living cell is 10 to the 340 billionth power, with anything over 10 to the 50th power being statistically impossible.
Transitional Fossils, or evidence of species in-between known species, also poses a problem. Even Darwin in his Book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, (no comment on the title) while speaking about the lack of transitional fossils is “…the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory,”. In the two hundred years since the writing of that book there still has not been a single intermediate transitional fossil found, and the ones that have been brought forth have proven to be a hoax.
Finally, naturalistic evolution also takes away the purpose and significance we have on this earth as humans. If we really did just come from nothing and are going to nothing then we really are quite hopeless. If this life is really all there is, and there is not a God who designed everything, there really is no purpose for us.
To sum things up, theoretically evolution could be the reason life is here on this earth, but theologically looking at the Scriptures it is hard to hold to the complete authority of the Bible and also hold to evolution. This week, search google images and see the vast array of species that may have been the product of micro evolution but ultimately were created from God and thank him that we have such awesome things surrounding us on this earth.
Purposeful Theology 