Order this tract now, at $10.00/100 copies (or 200 for $20.00, 500 for $50.00, etc.)
Both Dave and his wife, Becki, have a notable missionary heritage, for Dave's parents are the late Ed and Ruth Thompson who were martyred at Banmethuot, Viet Nam, in 1968, and Becki is the daughter of Rev. Archie Mitchell, captured in 1962 by the Viet Cong. Becki's mother continues in Viet Nam.
Dave feels a special concern for high school and college young people confronted by the evolution hypothesis being foisted on them as fact by their teachers. We think he has done a good job of discovering the real truth behind this popular myth.
The challenge of science to Christian faith poses for teen-agers and their troubled parents a greater danger than ever.
As scientific research continues to expand our knowledge of God's creation, it seems to shrink the validity of Christian faith and substantiate its own claims concerning man's origin and his universe.
I call this scientific philosophy "Evolutionism." As a medical student I have had many opportunities to examine it.
Evolutionism begins with the belief that the earth and all life came about as the result of
evolution; that we are the products of chance and that our origins can be explained by statistics,
mathematics, physics, bio-chemistry and archaeology. It progresses from these basic beliefs to their
logical conclusion: the meaninglessness of man.
Throughout this philosophy there is one necessary assumption: God is no part of it.
In our century, evolution has stood for "reasonableness," logic, science, "progress." Only recently
have these values been challenged by the radical leftist student movements.
The doctrine of creation, on the other hand, has symbolized religious faith and mysticism. It is
high time for us as Christians to look critically at Evolutionism and to separate ourselves from
this system of belief.
God declares that He created the world. He says that it was through Jesus Christ and for Him that
the world was created. Genesis is not a science book and it should not be taken as such, but when it
says that God actively made everything and that He created man in His image and breathed life into
him, it speaks unequivocally.
According to the Bible, God existed before anything else. God existed, He exists, He is a person,
and He has been integrally involved with man since man began.
According to the Bible, man is God's creation, made in God's image and made to be a "son of God."
He was made to rule over the earth. According to the Bible, the meaning of life is determined by
man's relationship with God.
Science replies to these declarations by asserting that the earth and all life on it came about
through the interactions of many atoms to form the building blocks of living cells - molecules.
Scientists have succeeded in setting up a model which they feel approximates conditions prior to the
"first spark of life." By allowing atoms to mix with each other under very special conditions and by
introducing into this mixture a bolt of electricity, they have ended up with molecules capable of
making up living cells.
The chances that in the entire universe all these conditions would have come together at one time to
produce these molecules is absurdly small - in our lifetime. But let us mix these atoms around with
each other for a million years. If the chances are a million to one that they will finally succeed
in forming a molecule capable of becoming part of a cell, then in a million years it could happen
once.
In ten million years it could happen ten times. In a billion years it could happen a thousand
times. In a trillion years it could happen a million times. In the context of limitless time modern
scientists feel confident that life did indeed come about through evolution. They believe God had
nothing to do with it, that God is just a figment of man's lonely mind.
Are the scientists right? They fail to adequately reply to four observations.
First, modern scientists are unable to explain where the universe came from. They have theories
about its beginning, but they cannot date its origin because that brings up the problem of what
existed before that.
If the universe is infinite, as some of them maintain, then it had no beginning. This is not logical
to the human mind. But logic is the only method scientists accept to explain the universe. They
cannot use logic to solve this problem. Instead, they adroitly ignore it.
Second, modern scientists have failed to define life itself, even by their own standards. At times
doctors are unable to tell whether a patient is alive or dead.
The current standard is to call a person "dead" when his brain is no longer electrically active. At
the same time we read about "life" being created in a test tube, and in this context "life" is
defined as biological function.
But when they duplicate chromosomes in a test tube have they really made "life," or have they
simply made a biological system? A human being is made up of many cells, all biologically active.
Many are still active after a person's brain is electrically inactive. Yet this situation is called
death.
Modern scientists have also equated man with the animals on the basis of similar biological
functions, classifying him as the "highest animal." But what about all the other evidence? They
have equated life with biological function because they have already assumed that the evolution of
man from lower forms is fact. They can explain this concept of "life" only if evolution is true.
The comedy is that they use the conclusion - life equals biological function - to substantiate the theory of evolution!
For the Christian, "life" is easily defined because he need not rely upon logic and science for these answers.
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image and likeness to rule the fish of the sea, the birds
of heaven, the cattle, all wild animals on earth, and all reptiles that crawl upon the earth'"
(Genesis 1:26 NEB). "Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life" (2:7).
Third, there are certain "laws of nature" which a branch of science called physics is concerned with, for physics is a study of the "laws governing motion, matter, and energy."
If you drop a pencil, it falls to the ground in response to the law of gravity. On the Apollo 15
moon flight Astronaut David Scott demonstrated that if there is no air two objects such as a
feather and a hammer dropped at the same time from the same height will reach the ground at
exactly the same time. That is another "law of nature," discovered by Galileo centuries ago.
Scientists spend their lives investigating these "laws of nature."
By now I hope you have begun to ask an important question: What is this "nature", called laws?
They are called laws because the phenomena are exactly the same every time they are demonstrated. They never change.
This very reliability has made it possible for men to figure out the laws. They are reasonable.
Nothing is left without an origin or a cause.
When something happens, our minds require that it happen according to these "laws of nature." The
very theory of evolution was postulated because of the constancy of these discovered laws.
But let us carry this one step further. The proponents of evolution, in using their minds to
reason out the origin of life, must rely upon the "laws of nature" to think both consciously and
physiologically! They use the "laws of nature" to substantiate and defend the "laws of nature"!
Has one of them ever questioned just where these laws came from? Evolutionism requires these
laws to have been in effect at the time the universe began. Evolutionism requires these laws to
have been the same then as they are now. Does anyone know if that was the case?
If so, when did these laws arrive, and from where?
The modern scientist is analogous to a blind man bumping into a magnificent sculpture. He explores
each part with his hands and describes each arm, each leg, the facial features. With great pride,
as though he himself had made it, he labels each part after himself. He then stands back and
exclaims to himself how marvelous it is that he has found and labeled all the parts. But he never
asks where the sculpture came from, or who the sculptor was, or why the work of art should be
there at all for him to stumble upon!
Fourth, men have rejected God's claim that He created the universe because they have rejected God
and His Son Jesus Christ. In rejecting God they must otherwise account for the origin of the earth
and of man.
For many years I wondered why brilliant scientists of the past and present embraced the theory of
evolution so wholeheartedly. I had a deep, unpleasant suspicion that they were enthusiastic because
the evidence was overwhelmingly positive. I worried that I was being tricked by an old-fashioned
Bible into not looking at the obvious truth.
I found the answer, surprisingly, in myself. My suspicions arose because I could understand neither
the evidence for the theory of evolution nor the theory itself. Further, no Christian had succeeded
in discounting the theory without condemning it as heresy. I rejected Evolutionism (to the extent
that I did) because it contradicted God's Word. Conversely, the disciples of Evolutionism accepted
it because they rejected God's explanation and claim.
In other words, the factor which has determined rejection or acceptance of this theory has been something quite irrational. In the final analysis, it has been determined not by reason but by one's belief or disbelief in God!
What is the meaning of life? Modern philosophers, in accepting Evolutionism, have reasoned
themselves into a corner. This concept is important if you are to understand the source of the
despair that has driven so many young people into drugs and carelessness for their lives.
The problem is this: if man came about as the result of chance, he has no meaning. We Christians
believe there is meaning to life because God created us for a purpose and Jesus Christ has saved
us and given us peace and hope.
If man came about because of chance interaction of atoms, then his mind must therefore function
entirely according to physical "laws of nature." If this is true, man's mind is a complex machine
of interacting molecules, but still a machine. He has no soul, no spirit, no "self" any more than a
machine does.
Do machines love? hate? curse God? Do machines know right from wrong? Are they responsible to
anybody for anything that they do?
The trap begins when man rejects God and His Son Jesus Christ. If God does not exist, then
Evolutionism is the only rational alternative. Modern man, in accepting evolution, has been forced
to conclude that he is a machine. It is a difficult thing to accept, but the implications of
evolution are that man has no soul, that there is no right and wrong, that life is one big joke the
universe played on man. This is Evolutionism.
There remains only one more point to clear up. Why are so many of the proponents of Evolutionism
such decent people? How is it possible for them to be so blind when they are logical, reasonable
people?
The answer lies in what Francis Schaeffer terms "modern man's total dichotomy." Schaeffer says that
modern man lives a contradiction. For all his proclaiming about his being an organic machine, man
does not live his life accordingly. On the basis of a nonrational, nonreasonable leap he believes in
right and wrong, justice and decency. Ignoring the contradiction, he remains convinced that he is a
reasonable being who does not need Jesus Christ.
Are Christians unreasonable? Of course. Faith is not logical, no matter how we try to make it so.
But unbelief is no less illogical.
Jesus said: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be...wise as serpents, and
harmless as doves" (Matthew 10:16). At times we have been about as wise as doves. We should openly
denounce Evolutionism for the fairy tale that it is. Let us not dilute the power of God's creative
act by trying to blend in the "reasonableness" of evolution.
God created the heaven and the earth. God created every living creature of the sea.
God created man in His own image. These things did not evolve. Evolution excludes God by
definition.
As disciples of Jesus Christ let us separate ourselves from the "reasonableness" and "logic" of the
world and proclaim with conviction and power the name of Jesus Christ.
Printed by permission from "The Alliance Witness" December 6th, 1972
in Canada by Western Tract Mission 401-33rd Street West, Saskatoon, Sask. S7L 0V5
Order this tract now, at $10.00/100 copies (or 200 for $20.00, 500 for $50.00, etc.)
