What the early Church didn't know couldn't hurt them

Over the past few millennia, human beings have come up with a number of theories about our origins. In the 1800s, we finally got it right. We stopped relying on bronze age folklore, and started thinking about these questions scientifically, and as a result, we now have all the evidence we need. It turns out, we are not special creations of the Holy God, but are actually the end result of billions of years of accidents. Or so our atheist friends will tell us...

Unfortunately, just as many religions tend to outgrow their primary source (including Evolution itself), it isn't just atheists who believe the atheistic creation myth. Many people across the world now believe Evolution is either the truth of origins, or at least the best theory we have on the subject.

In spite of this, Evolution is nothing more than an atheistic religion. Its followers frame it as science, but by definition, origins is actually a matter of history. Science, by nature, primarily deals with present claims. As a result, it works in all three tenses. We can state a scientific fact as past (friction produced heat), present (friction produces heat), or future (friction will produce heat). This is not a thing we can do with Evolution, or indeed any theory of origins. Of course, there are a few exceptions. The reproductive process is an obvious example. We can say women gave birth, women give birth, and women will give birth. This is a scientific fact that works in all three tenses because it is a presently occurring process.

But there is a world of difference between re-production and initial production. We can say "humans evolved from..." and follow it up with any weird and wacky story we like. We just can't see it happening. But we cannot say "humans evolve from...", or "humans will evolve from...", because humans are already here. And of course, when we expand to chemical Evolution, or cosmic Evolution, it gets even worse, because although all of these claims can make grammatical sense in the past tense, proving they actually happened - or even could - is a whole other matter.

Of course, in truth, none of these things can happen. There never was a big bang, life is not the result of a chance chemical reaction, and it certainly isn't all descended from a single, magic microbe. But it's literally the best theory atheists have, and so while many of them are content to just throw up their hands and admit they'd rather have no theory of origins at all than accept that God did it, the majority of the atheistic world, and even a large portion of the Theistic world, cling to Evolution for dear life.

This adds an unfortunate layer to Christian apologetics. In the past, atheism was a relatively difficult position to hold. As Isaac Newton put it, "Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors." (1). This is because atheism was nothing more than the increasingly irrational denial of God in face of the evergrowing wealth of new evidence. But Charles Darwin, as Richard Dawkins would later put it, "...made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." (2).

With the popularisation of Evolution, atheism became significantly easier. They were no longer forced to merely deny God's hand in what they admitted - and occasionally still admit - is a universe that appears designed. Finally, they had their own alternative. Everything the Christian would attribute to God, the atheist could now attribute to a Naturalistic process. One which, far fetched as it may seem, is supposed to be more scientifically valid than our "sky daddy".

For the Christian, the answer is the same as it has always been when another religion seeks, or even gains dominance. We give it as little credit as it is due, sticking to the truth, as we have been given it by God. To give a few examples from the early days of our faith:

- When the Jews forbade the teaching in Jesus' name, we stuck to our religion: "...Peter and the other apostles answered and said: “We ought to obey God rather than men." (Acts 5:29).

- When loyalty to the Roman Empire required loyalty to its gods - a mandate to which Jews were uniquely exempt - we stuck to our religion: "...Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve." (Matthew 4:10).

- When the Gnostics claimed Jesus was a phantom who was not raised in the flesh, we stuck to our religion: "...every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world." (1 John 4:3).

In stark contrast to this rich tradition of courage in the face of Satan's lies, many Christians in the modern world have decided that if the atheists want us to have faith in Evolution, then this is what they shall have. In fact, we will even incorporate it into our apologetics!

See, Evolution is impossible, a fact that becomes more and more obvious as we make new discoveries. The big bang is completely illogical. We all know that explosions do not create order, but chaos. They do, however, still obey certain natural laws, many of which we are familiar with, and the universe we observe is not consistent with an explosive origin. Scientifically speaking, the idea that the big bang could happen, much less did, is insane.

Similarly, chemical Evolution does not work. In Darwin's day, a cell was considered a simple thing, wholly unimpressive, and almost easy for nature to create at least once. Beyond all imagination, he was from a time when people still believed in spontaneous generation, a theory which was finally refuted by Louis Pasteur. But in the modern day, with all our fancy technology, we know that even the "simplest" cell is the microscopic equivalent of an entire city! We also know that there are more factors in play than simply chance; nature itself is opposed to the creation of such things! We're not talking about the likelihood of a specific raindrop hitting a specific hair on your head. We're talking about you putting up an umbrella specifically to block it from doing so.

Finally, biological Evolution is shut off by the very mechanism that supposedly drives it! Natural selection is commonly summarised as "survival of the fittest", though this is too simplistic. In reality, it is the process by which selective pressures remove traits that are disadvantageous for either survival, or reproduction, while propagating traits that are beneficial. A standard example is camouflage. A prey animal that is easily seen is easily hunted, whereas one which blends in with its surroundings is more likely to avoid a predator. Therefore, natural selection tends to select for camouflage (except in the literally millions of cases where it doesn't).

But the reason natural selection is so deadly to Evolution is that any transitional form between fundamentally distinct organisms would be inherently unfit. This is a problem Darwin himself noted when he said "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not have been formed by successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." (3). Ironically, he himself gave several examples of complex organs fitting this exact description, meaning Evolutionists have always known their "theory" has absolutely broken down.

For an atheist, these are all major problems. With so many insurmountable flaws, the hypothesis should have been abandoned before it was ever put to paper. But the thing about God is He is omnipotent, and omniscient. What is impossible without Him is possible for Him. That is why even though virgin births, faith healing, and resurrection, are scientifically impossible, we, as Christians, believe Jesus was born of a virgin, healed people of numerous incurable illnesses with nothing but a word, and of course raised Himself from the dead. This isn't just a list of things we believe God could theoretically do, we believe God did do them. God's performance of the scientifically impossible is the cornerstone of our faith!

So, let's suppose Evolution happened. If Evolution is impossible without God, yet Evolution happened, the only logical conclusion is that God did it. Thus, to many Christians, it makes sense to accept Evolution and use it to convince atheists there is a God. But there is a very obvious alternative! If Evolution is impossible without God, and God didn't do it, then Evolution didn't happen. Therefore, whatever arguments we use to show Evolution is impossible without God, we can use to show Evolution is impossible full stop. That's when we point the atheist to the God who actually created us.

But that's "unscientific", right? Apparently, current scientific understanding is that Evolution happened, however unlikely it actually is. Therefore, we must accommodate it, even if that means changing our interpretation of Scripture.

Even if we're as kind as humanly possible and assume current scientific evidence does strongly support Evolution, this evidence is obviously a new thing. It wasn't around in 1400 B.C., when Moses wrote the Torah. It wasn't around in the first century, when Jesus scolded His fellow Jews for casting the Scriptures aside in order to hold to their traditions. It wasn't around when the Apostles wrote the New Testament under guidance of the Holy Spirit. It wasn't around in the second century, when the Church fought for its life against an increasingly hostile culture filled with unbelieving Jews, aggressive pagans, and a wide variety of heretics. It wasn't around in the third to fourth centuries in the lead up to the so-called "Dark Ages". It wasn't around in the 5th to 14th centuries, during those so-called "Dark Ages". It wasn't around in the 15th and 16th centuries during the Reformation, or the Scientific Revolution. It wasn't around in the 17th century, when the so-called "Enlightenment" began.

With so little evidence for Evolution, and with the absence of its modern forms even in pop culture, it makes sense to assume that no one took them into account when reading Genesis. They did not use Evolution and the like as interpretive guides. In fact, it's worth noting that even though Evolution was not yet in its modern form, it was present in primitive forms, along with other Old Earth beliefs.

Because Old Earth beliefs were present alongside the Church (and even well before then), we actually do have extant writings dealing with the topic of the age of both the human race, and the Earth as a whole. Augustine, for example, is a famous early Christian writer who both directly encountered, and rebuked, Old Earth views. In The City of God and Christian Doctrine, he writes "They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed." (4).

This view is practically unanimous, even "across party lines". No Jew, no orthodox Christian, not even heretics, seem to have compromised with the Old Earth views of the pagans. None of them seem to have accepted even 10,000 years as a possible gap between creation and their time, and if anyone did, those writings did not survive. The main dispute on Creationism, rather than being long periods of time, was short periods of time. Did God create in 6 days, resting on the 7th, or did He just instantly create all things? Suffice to say, an Evolutionary origin requires more time than both of these, though the Biblical answer is "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." (Exodus 20:11). To make things worse, this is the basis for the doctrine of the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11), meaning if we attack the creation week, we attack the Sabbath.

This means that not only did the early Church, or even the Jews, not use modern "scientific" views to interpret the Bible, but they actually interpreted it as it is written. This is exactly the way modern Creationists would read it, and they drew the same conclusions modern Creationists draw when we read it. By contrast, Old Earth Creationism, let alone Theistic Evolution, are alien views because they use alien methods of interpretation.

So, what are we to make of these alien views? Because they use alien methods of interpretation, they should logically be rejected. Why should we interpret the Bible in any other way than it has been interpreted literally since the beginning? Did God write the Bible only for the 21st century? Did He do His Church wrong, leading them into error until the oh so noble atheists could tell us what really happened in the beginning? It's clearly a compromise! Modern Christians are actively lying about what the word of God says in order to make it seem more suitable to those who claim God never said it at all!

Do you imagine they would make the same concessions for you? Would they reduce their timeline a few million years, just so you feel heard? Would they give up universal common descent, just to accommodate the idea that we are made in the image of God? My Christian brethren, I speak with the experience of an ex-Evolutionist, an ex-Old Earther, and an experienced Creation apologist: Atheists do not respect this compromise. They laugh at it. They consider compromisers "useful idiots". They ask "if you don't believe your own Bible, why should we?" They look at consistent Christians as stubborn holdouts, asking us why, if our brethren have realised the Bible is not true, are we still clinging to it?

So what are your motives here? Evolution isn't true, so you're not following the evidence. Evolution isn't helpful to apologetics, atheists use it to mock us and win us to their side. Evolution is useless as an interpretive guide, the text doesn't change meaning according to the whims of those who made it up specifically to oust God. The only reason anyone attempts to fit Evolution into Genesis is that Evolution is an alternative to Genesis, but praise be to God, He hasn't let the compromisers fall so far as to flat out reject it yet.

But compromise is still sin. It's dishonest, for one thing, but it is ultimately nullifying the word of God for sake of a new tradition. It's time for modern Christians to learn from our forerunners in the faith. If atheists mock you, just remember, they do anyway. If atheists exclude you, just remember, you have a real family in the Church. If atheists persecute you, be grateful, at least they're not putting you on a cross. But that's where we're supposed to lead them. To the Man upon the cross. To the Creator upon the cross. His words matter. They mattered 6,000 years ago. They mattered 3,400 years ago. They mattered 2,000 years ago. They mattered 500 years ago, 200 years ago, yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever, the words of God matter. Darwin's don't.

References

1. Newton, Isaac, cited in Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton by Sir David Brewster, 1855

2. Dawkins, Richard - The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin Books, London, England, 1991

3. Darwin, Charles - On the Origin Of Species, 1859

4. Augustine of Hippo - City of God and Christian Doctrine, Chapter 10.—Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World’s Past

AI usage

AI was used in the following ways for this article:

1. To create the monkey background in this image.

2. To create the Jew on the phone in this image.