One of the greatest strengths of the Christian faith is that, being grounded in real history, our narrative never needs to change. What we believe today is what we believed 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, and in the case of things that happened earlier, even up to 6,000 years ago.
Christianity happened. Obviously, there is more to the faith than just history, but there is an awful lot of history in it. And it all really happened. Because of this, there is no need to adapt our story to fit new evidence. No archaeologist is going to flip over a rock tomorrow, and suddenly, it turns out the Torah was written by 20 different authors during the Babylonian exile. Because our faith is grounded in unchangeable history, and because history is, by nature, unchangeable, our narrative will always remain the same, even in the face of certain Liberal conspiracy theories.
Evolution lacks this solid foundation. Because it is such a fanciful fairy tale, Evolution is as open to alteration as Star Wars canon. Not only is it riddled with hundreds upon thousands of plot holes, but there is almost nothing in Evolution that is immune to change, other than the single claim "it happened".
To illustrate this, look no further than simple grass. As it stands, Evolutionists believe it is insane to depict humans and dinosaurs. Some of them even do it to mock Creationists, taking for granted that humans and dinosaurs being depicted together is so absurd, the mere statement of the belief is sufficient to refute it. Yet, it was once considered just as foolish to depict dinosaurs with grass. Jeff Hecht, author for New Scientist, once wrote, "ONE of the oldest mistakes in the prehistoric book has turned out not to be a mistake after all. Artists’ impressions of dinosaurs grazing on grassy plains were considered as bad as depictions of them cavorting with cavemen, but an examination of fossilised dung has shown that the prehistoric beasts did indeed eat grass." (1).
In the original narrative, dinosaurs went extinct approximately 10 million years before grass evolved. But this firmly held narrative changed, not based on eyewitness testimony, nor on well-preserved documents, but because of a fossilised turd! An actually poop changed the course of the Evolutionary narrative. Something Evolutionists used to consider as "bad" as depicting dinosaurs with human beings is now a canonical feature of their religion because a dinosaur went to the toilet... Their story was changed because of Dink's diarrhea. Their fairy tale was flushed away because Barney forgot to wipe. And you're supposed to trust the same people made such a whopping mistake with your eternal soul!
The irony is, if, God forbid, we found a dinosaur coprolite with human bones inside, this is the one time Evolutionists would not revise their story. See, as confident as they were that dinosaurs and grass did not co-exist, this little piece of retroactive continuity doesn't blow up the whole franchise. Inconvenient though it is, Evolutionists can afford to slightly alter their fictional timeline to allow a plant to evolve before dinosaurs. But to have humans and dinosaurs co-exist is just intolerable to them.
The grass thing isn't the only time the Evolutionary narrative has changed. In fact, it does so on such a regular basis, popular podcast Answers News highlights examples on a regular basis. It seems something in the Evolutionary narrative changes every time scientists find a dead fish. But the benefit of Christianity is we never have to change our narrative, neither for small things, nor for large.
To an Evolutionist, the ability to "adapt" the tale based on new evidence is actually a strength, not a weakness. But what kind of strength is it to be so consistently, yet so confidently wrong? A narrative need only be changed if it is false, and so consistent change should at the very least shake your confidence. After so many times of sitting on a broken chair, one might reasonably sit with trepidation...
But the Christian faith suffers no such trouble. When new evidence arises, it only ever seems to align with what we find written in our Holy book. As Dr. Clifford Wilson once said in an interview, "There have been plenty of claims that things contradict the biblical account, but the Bible has a habit of being proved right after all. I well remember one of the world’s leading archaeologists at Gezer rebuking a younger archaeologist who was ‘rubbishing’ the Bible. He just quietly said, ‘Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t rubbish the Bible.’ When the younger archaeologist asked ‘Why’?, he replied, ‘Well, it just has a habit of proving to be right after all.’ And that’s where I stand." (2).
Of course, as true as that is, it doesn't hold up perfectly. An unfortunate feature of our world is that things are subject to decay. Therefore, much evidence has perished, leaving the Bible as the sole source of some historical events. Amazingly, even this can be reversed. The discovery of Hattusas in 1906 A.D., for example, silenced those who claimed Moses simply invented the mysterious Hittites, who at one point had otherwise perished from the Earth. The Bible was no longer the only historical source to record them.
Nevertheless, sadly, much of human history has been lost, and so a lot of evidence for the Bible has been lost too. Ironically, however, even this is strong evidence for the Bible. See, according to the Evolutionary narrative, modern humans evolved between 550,000 - 750,000 years ago. Quite the margin for error... Yet, even by Evolutionary reckoning, human records only extend back roughly 6,000 years.
If the Evolutionary guess is correct, and human beings really did evolve 550,000 years ago, then more than 99% of human history is lost. For literally hundreds of thousands of years, human beings, just like you and me, didn't so much as leave a post it note! Then, out of nowhere, they just magically learned to write, and boom, people who left absolutely no trace of themselves were suddenly able to leave traces. Art, architecture, written records, after many millennia of obscurity, finally the human race would be able to preserve its memories.
The Biblical narrative is far more believable. By our reckoning, human records only seem to appear around 6,000 years ago because human beings only appeared 6,000 years ago. It doesn't fit the faith entirely, but the simple answer is that the same people who erroneously believed grass evolved 10 million years after the dinosaurs died out may have got a date or two wrong. If their beliefs can be so easily extinguished by what Dino the dinosaur left behind in Fred Flintstone's outhouse, I feel like we may have the right to doubt what they say about Manetho's Egyptian chronology...
And doubt it I do. See, although keeping written records is nothing new, dating them is. Modern newspapers may tell you exactly when they were published, but not even the Bible itself does likewise. Thus, we are forced to use other methods to determine when certain things were written. The same is true for dating artefacts, or even ancient buildings.
A great example is the aforementioned Egyptian history. According to the secular narrative, Egyptian history is in direct conflict with the Bible. Placing a special emphasis on the pyramids, unbelievers argue that the Noahic flood cannot possibly have happened. Nor indeed are the Jews believer to have ever been held as slaves in Egypt, only for the wrath of God to buy them their freedom.
But much like Evolution itself, secular views of Egyptian history are both questionable and fluid. In this particular article, I do not intend to go into great depth regarding such a massive topic. But suffice to say for now, the evidence currently available to us is scant enough to require considerable numbers of assumptions. Assumptions which, true to form, tend to spring from the Evolutionary worldview.
One particular problem with Egyptian chronology is that it is primarily based on the works of an Egyptian priest by the name of Manetho. His records are assumed to be the most complete, and best records we have to this day. Yet, Manetho was certainly a man of his time. During his age, many cultures would attempt to establish their primacy over each other by claiming to be the oldest. Thus, Manetho was not only prone to exaggeration, but even included mythological gods, such as Ra the sun god, who most assuredly never sat on a real world Egyptian throne.
As I said, I do not intend to get too deep into Egyptian chronology at this time, though I do plan to do so in its own article in the future. Suffice to say for now, there are significant errors in the secular narrative. The further back in history we go, the cloudier it gets. Thus, although the written record does not appear to fit the Biblical record very well, the most problematic records also happen to be the shakiest.
This all fits the Biblical record very well. When history is solid, the Bible comes out on top. It even guides archaeologists in their work, and when people criticise it, it tends to withstand that criticism, and sometimes even flips it on its head, like with the aforementioned Hittites. When history is less solid, it occasionally clashes with the Bible, but why would we trust the sinking sand of secular "history" over the Bible, which consistently and reliably passes every test that it can be reasonably put through?
Ironically, all of this can be skipped, because human history ultimately centres around one single event: The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Christ is truly risen, the entire Christian faith is verified, and Evolution was dead before Darwin was ever even born. And unlike Evolution, or even Egyptian chronology, there is nothing more historically verifiable than the resurrection.
To quote Sir Lionel Luckhoo, "I have spent more than 42 years as a defense trial lawyer appearing in many parts of the world and am still in active practice. I have been fortunate to secure a number of successes in jury trials and I say unequivocally the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt." (3).
With the evidence for the resurrection being sufficient to convince a twice-knighted, world record holding criminal defence lawyer, along with a literal multitude no one can count throughout history, suffice to say the ever-changing story of Evolution has some stiff competition. In truth, the only reason any human being can look at the aforementioned evidence and still conclude we are descended from apes rather than Adam is simply that we are descended from Adam.
See, when Adam took the forbidden fruit, he cursed his entire race, from his firstborn son, right up to the last human being to ever exit the womb. That curse includes following in his rebellious footsteps. Each of us, without fail, have gone our own way, sinning against God in various ways. For some, that includes the blasphemy of atheism. Yet, even this can be forgiven, because Jesus didn't die and rise for nothing. In His death, He received the full punishment for the sins of the whole world, and by rising again, He purchased eternal life for all who repent and believe in Him.
In spite of the creative storytelling of Darwin and his successors, God has made it significantly easier to believe in Him. In fact, His word tells us that creation makes Him so evident, we are without excuse. When we suppress the truth in our unrighteousness, it is both a genuine, yet deliberate delusion. The punishment we suffer, if indeed we suffer it, is our own fault. Yet, through faith, we may escape it. Let us therefore cease with silly religions that change with the winds, and instead confess Christ as the Lord He is, before He removes the option.
References
1. Hecht, Jeff - Dino droppings reveal prehistoric taste for grass, New Scientist, November 23rd 2005 (link)
2. Wilson, Clifford - quoted in Archaeologist confirms creation and the Bible, creation.com, September 1992 (link)
3. Luckhoo, Sir Lionel - The Question Answered: Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?