The Idol Of Evolution: Part 1

Evaluating a common belief

Many different opinions and ideas are held by people in the world. We are bombarded by merchandisers and marketers who will sell anything to make a dollar. The Bible does not say “believe everything,” but instead urges us to: “Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil” (1 Th. 5:21-22 NIV). We need to be able to separate the good from the bad, the true and valuable from the false and worthless (Jer. 15:19). Our culture has lost these distinctions. Unfortunately, we can’t rely on information and guidance from family, friends, schools, universities, newspapers, magazines, books, movies, radio, television, or the Internet.

If we do, we will end up confused like the Roman governor Pontius Pilate who asked Jesus “What is truth?” (Jn. 18:37-38). We will be influenced by all the messages around us, not knowing the truth, or believing the lies that are marketed as being the truth. For example, let’s look at the theory of evolution, a firmly held belief of many. According to the Bible, is it true, or false, or doesn’t it matter?

True Or False

Children are easily deceived; they are gullible. So are those young in the Christian faith. But the mature are not deceived as they “have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” and we should all have this objective (Heb. 5:14).

The Bible is the source of absolute truth that has stood the test of time much longer than any other document or philosophy. Of course, as is the case of any literature, it requires interpretation as to what is historical and what is metaphorical or symbolic. Besides obvious literary techniques, the most reliable method is to use the whole message of the Bible to interpret any particular passage. Otherwise, an interpretation may not be consistent with the rest of the Bible.

The Bible contains three clear tests for determining whether a belief, teaching or philosophy is true or false. To be true it must pass each of the three tests that get to the core of Christianity. I call them the Jesus test, the gospel test and the fruit test. They may be summarized as:

• The Jesus test – What does it say about Jesus Christ? Is it consistent with Christ’s unique birth, sinless life, sacrificial death, resurrection, and second coming? (1 Jn. 4:1-3)
• The gospel test – What is the core belief or hope? Does it acknowledge our sinfulness? Is it consistent with the creation of the universe, the fall into sin, salvation by faith in Christ alone, and the restoration of all things? (Gal. 1:6-9)
• The fruit test – What attitudes and behaviors does it encourage? Is the divine nature or the sinful nature most evident? (Mt. 7:15-20)

Testing Evolution

Evolution has been proposed as a scientific explanation of the origin of the universe and the origin of life on earth. It involves the idea that life develops continually over time from the simple to the more complex as a result of natural processes. The story of evolution has been summarized this way: “The universe exploded into existence about 15 billion years ago and is still expanding outward. About 4.5 billion years ago, the debris from an exploding star condensed into our solar system. Sometime during the next few hundred million years, single-celled microbes bearing an ingenious molecule called DNA emerged on the earth. These microbes diversified, by means of natural selection and Mendelian genetics, into an extraordinary array of more complex creatures including homo-sapiens.” As these events are claimed to have occurred long ago and are not subject to direct observation or experimental tests, evolution is a philosophical belief based on naturalism which assumes that everything that exists can be explained by physical and chemical processes alone. Evolution is the process that is used to support naturalism. Of course, evolution is also viewed as being a process of continual change within the biological world. So, evolution and naturalism are assumed to be true by those who exclude the possibility of a supernatural God.

Now let’s apply the three tests to the concept of the evolution of life on earth.

• The Jesus test – As evolution assumes that nature is all there is, it is associated with atheism. In fact, according to its adherents, evolution removes the need for God. For example, the American Association of Biology Teachers says this: “The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.” This view of origins has no need for a Creator or the divine, and so is consistent with a belief that Jesus Christ was only a human being and not divine. Secular evolution clearly fails the Jesus test.
• The gospel test – As evolution assumes there is no God, it is associated with a rejection of absolute standards of right and wrong, and a rejection of the existence of sin in the sense of falling short of God’s standard. If sin does not exist, then neither does punishment for sin, and there is no need of a savior to rescue people from that punishment. The core belief of evolution is that nature has made itself, which means that the Genesis account of origins is not literal truth. In fact, secular evolution fails the gospel test because it rejects all the basic biblical truths, such as divine creation, the existence and source of evil, the need for salvation, and the ultimate destiny of human beings.
• The fruit test – Because it relies on physical processes alone and denies the possibility of the divine or the unseen spiritual world, evolution supports naturalism and materialism. Also, it views humanity as being self-sufficient and capable of solving all their own difficulties, which is the essence of humanism. Furthermore, evolution can be viewed as a version of pantheism where nature replaces God.The acceptance of the idea of evolution can lead to the following pattern of behavior:
  Less value on human life – For example, practices such as abortion and euthanasia are more acceptable. Another example from the past is racism; the Australian Aboriginals were considered to be biologically inferior to Europeans. This was justified by biological determinism promoted by evolutionary anthropology.
  Less value on family life – Marriage is less important and divorce is more acceptable. This is supported by relating human behavior to that of animals.
  Less value on morals – Truth is now relative and changeable, not absolute. Society replaces Scripture as the guide as to what is right and what is wrong.
  A “might is right” attitude – This attitude supports the strong, but not the weak. It is the opposite of compassion which involves saving “weak genes.” This comes from the idea of the “survival of the fittest” in a competitive world, which leads to a competitive approach to all aspects of life.
  As these are opposite to the values of the Bible, it is clear from the above that biological evolution fails all three biblical tests for determining what is true. Therefore, it is false and inconsistent with the overall message of the Bible. It is an idol – the creation story and the religion of many today.

Published: May 2001

See the next article in this series:
– The idol of evolution: Part 2