“Did God really say?” Satan’s question to Adam and Eve in the early days of God’s creation has come full circle to challenge whether we live in God’s creation at all. In the ongoing debate between creation and evolution, many people have concluded that human observation is more trustworthy than the Bible’s teachings. Torn between reason and faith, some Christians have tried to combine evolution and creation into theistic evolution, the belief that God created the world through evolution over billions of years.
Does it really matter how God created the world? The more we examine the teachings of theistic evolution, the clearer it becomes that evolution doesn’t require God at all and also contradicts Scripture at crucial points. Evolution says that humanity came from primates, but God says he made Adam and Eve in his own image. Animals and humans need to die in order to evolve, but death didn’t arrive until after humanity’s fall into sin. Evolution requires billions of years, but God said he created the world in six days, each with its own morning and evening. Theistic or not, evolution calls God a liar.
Not only does theistic evolution deny God, but it also influences how we act, how we think of ourselves, and how we treat each other. Sadly, one out of every eight Americans (12%) believes that people are simply biological machines. Another eighth believes that people are part of the mind of the universe. Six out of ten American adults deny that life is sacred, opting instead for the idea that life is what you make it or that life will be fully valuable when humanity reaches its evolutionary potential. Even claiming that God used evolution to create humanity undermines the value he placed on us as intentionally formed and fashioned bearers of his image. Yet most evolutionists would agree that survival of the fittest shouldn’t lead to people harming each other over resources or ignoring helpless victims even though these actions should make perfect sense if evolution were true. The theory of evolution isn’t practical even for those who defend it.
Are science and God’s Word completely opposed to each other? Absolutely not. Part of the wisdom God gave King Solomon included the sciences of botany and zoology (1 Kings 4:33). In fact, many Christians throughout history, including Johannes Kepler, William Turner, Robert Boyle, and others have made important scientific discoveries with the understanding that being a good steward of God’s creation often requires learning how it works.
Satan’s goal in the garden wasn’t to tempt Adam and Eve to do empirical research. His question was meant to undermine their trust in what God said. At its root, knowledge begins with trust in a higher source of truth. Evolution, the Big Bang theory, and other related ideas rely on assumptions and interpretations of data that cannot be proven as absolute fact. They require a certain amount of faith that human observation is always reliable and that the processes of nature have never changed. However, human knowledge is always shifting; sometimes it grows with great discoveries, other times it falls prey to deception, misinterpretation, or decay.
Thankfully, “the word of the Lord endures forever” (1 Peter 1:25). The apostle Peter echoed these words from Isaiah in praise of God’s wonderful plan of salvation and the promise of a rich eternal life. Believing that God created the world according to his Word means that we can always trust that God means what he says about everything else, including our future with him.
Recommended resources:
- Creation from the People’s Bible Teachings series
- The Foolishness of God: The Place of Reason in the Theology of Martin Luther
- Biblical Interpretation: The Only Right Way
- Your Questions, Scripture’s Answers
- Elephants in the Room: Evolution Versus the Message of Scripture
Written by Erika Sims, edited by Ray Schumacher