The Basic conflict of the ages is between the two world views
of evolutionism versus creationism. In its most explicit form,
this conflict comes down to Biblical revelatory creationism
versus evolutionary humanism. The only Book even claiming
to deal authoritatively with this supernatural creation of the
space/time cosmos is the Bible, and there the Creator personally
inscribed His explicit summary of creation, as follows: "For
in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all
that in them is, and rested the seventh day" (Exodus 20:11;
see also Exodus 31:15-18).
Evolutionary humanism, on the other hand, purports to explain
the origin and development of the cosmos entirely by natural
processes innate to the universe itself. In its current form,
evolutionism says that the cosmos came into existence as an
evolutionary accident, a "quantum fluctuation of some pre-existent
state of nothingness." From this remarkable beginning,
it evolved through a stage of cosmic inflation, then explosive
expansion and eventual formation of elements, stars, planets,
animals, and people--all by natural evolutionary processes.
The road of compromise looks attractive at first, but long
experience has proved it to be a one-way street. The evolutionists
at the end of the road are never satisfied until their opponents
travel all the way to the atheistic void at its end.
Charles Darwin set the pattern. Starting out as a Bible-believing
creationist, he first became enamored of Charles Lyell's uniformitarianism
and his "progressive creationism." Soon he abandoned
the Bible and creationism altogether, moving on into the domain
of theistic evolutionism. Eventually he became an agnostic and
finally an atheist.
Many others in his day followed this compromise road. Darwin's
chief opponents, in fact, were scientists, not the theologians
of his day.
"Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, it is widely
believed that the church was a bitter opponent of evolution."
[1]
Whole denominations and their religious colleges and seminaries
were teaching evolution during Darwin's lifetime, and multitudes
of more fundamental Christians were accommodating the evolutionary
ages of geology by their "gap theory," "local
flood theory," and other devices of artificial Biblical
exegesis.
But did such compromises ever persuade the evolutionists to
meet them half way? The present state of the schools and colleges
and the intellectual community in general is the obvious answer.
Science and religion are dramatically opposed at their deepest
philosophical levels. And because the two world views make
claims to the same intellectual territory--that of the origin
of the universe and humankind's relation to it--conflict is
inevitable. [2]
Despite the attempts by liberal theology to disguise the point,
the fact is that no biblically derived religion can really
be compromised with the fundamental assertion of Darwinian
theory. Chance and design are antithetical concepts. [3]
Despite these lessons of the past, most modern Christians seem
oblivious to the fact that all their different accommodational
schemes were discredited a hundred years ago and that none of
them ever budged the evolutionary establishment from its base
of total naturalism.
A good modern example is found in the writings of Davis Young,
now teaching geology at Calvin College, an institution belonging
to the ostensibly conservative Christian Reformed Church. As
a beginning graduate student, Dr. Young originally believed
in a literal six-day creation and flood geology. Under the guidance
of his Princeton professors, however, he converted to "progressive
creationism" and the venerable "day-age theory"
of Genesis. This position he strongly advocated in two influential
books. [4][5]
He did acknowledge, however, that the "natural" interpretation
of Genesis, as well as the teaching of the early Christians
and the Protestant reformers, was the literal interpretation.
He had simply decided this had to be abandoned because of its
supposed geological difficulties. He did, at that time, still
hold out for the special creation of a literal Adam and Eve.
His progressive creationism did not even satisfy his theistic-evolutionary
colleagues at Calvin, however, let alone his geological peers
at the secular universities. So he is now ready to travel further
down the road.
I further suggest that both literalism and concordism have
outlived their usefulness, and that these approaches should
be abandoned for a newer approach that does not try to answer
technical scientific questions with Biblical data. [6]
By "literalism," Young means taking the six days
of creation as literal days and the flood as worldwide in geological
effects, the position advocated by most scientific creationists.
By "concordism," he means any theory (gap theory,
day-age theory, etc.) that attempts to develop a concordance
between the creation record in Genesis 1 and the geological
ages. Young now wants to quit trying to relate science and the
Bible at all!
I suggest that we will be on the right track if we stop treating
Genesis 1 and the flood story as scientific and historic reports.
[7]
This approach is essentially that advocated by Christian "liberals"
a century ago and now taught in most main-line seminaries.
Another articulate "progressive creationist" is the
Professor of Biology at Wheaton College. Dr. Pattle Pun has
recently written a book promoting this system, which is essentially
the same as that held by most of the Wheaton faculty and by
numerous others in the evangelical college orbit. Like Young,
however, Pun acknowledges that this is not the obvious
teaching of God's Word.
It is apparent that the most straightforward understanding
of the Genesis record, without regard to all the hermeneutical
considerations suggested by science, is that God created heaven
and earth in six solar days, that man was created on the sixth
day, that death and chaos entered the world after the fall
of Adam and Eve, and that all of the fossils were the result
of the catastrophic universal deluge which spared only Noah's
family and the animals therewith. [8]
The problem with this obvious teaching, according to Pun, is
that:
It has denied and belittled the vast amount of scientific
evidence amassed to support the theory of natural selection
and the antiquity of the earth. [9]
The problem with Pun's compromise, however, is that it depends
on "all the hermeneutical considerations suggested by science."
Did God really need to rely on 20th century scientists to come
along one day to tell us what He meant to say? Pun's article,
summarizing his book, was published by the American Scientific
Affiliation (ASA), the organization of evangelical scientists
and theologians which has for forty years been leading Christians
down this path of compromise with evolution.
To illustrate the lack of appreciation by the secular evolutionists
for this service, however, consider the reception accorded ASA's
48-page booklet, Teaching Science in a Climate of Controversy,
first published in 1986 and distributed free (because of a special
grant) to over 60,000 science teachers. The booklet accepts
the geological ages and much of evolution, but argues that the
process was designed by God, advocating progressive creationism
and/or theistic evolutionism as a compromise approach that should
satisfy both creationists and evolutionists. The booklet is
also promoted by the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.
The response of the academic community has been almost totally
negative. Biologist William Bennetta [10]
has edited a collection of essays "from leading evolutionists"
reviewing the ASA publication, and they all attack it as viciously
as they do the strict creationism of ICR. Lynn Margulis says:
The result is treacherous. Authentic scientific and didactic
principles have been put to nefarious use, for the writers'
ultimate purpose is to coax us to believe in the ASA's particular
creation myth. [11]
Stephen Gould, Niles Eldredge, Douglas Futuyma, Michael Ghiselin,
and others all contribute bitterly negative critiques to this
collection of reviews. The anti-creationist Committees of Correspondence
also have come down hard on the booklet, [12]
followed by a rather plaintive response [13]
by Walter Hearn, one of the booklet's co-authors, complaining
that the ASA was merely trying to defend evolutionism against
the scientific creationists. Subsequent issues of the C/E Newsletter
continue to be filled with attacks on the ASA and its "creationist
pseudo-science."
This is ironic. The compromising creationists are attacked
as viciously as the strict creationists, by those with whom
they are trying to compromise. And in the process, they are
rejecting the plain teaching of the Word of God. Even the secular
evolutionists can see this.
Cheer Number One goes to the creationists for serving rational
religion by demonstrating beautifully that we must take the
creation stories of Genesis at face value. . . . Many Christians
have taken the dishonest way of lengthening the days into
millions of years, but the creationists make it clear that
such an approach is nothing but a makeshift that is unacceptable
Biblically and scientifically. . . . Creationists deserve
Cheer Number Two for serving rational religion by effectively
eliminating "theistic evolution." . . . Creationists
rightly insist that evolution is inconsistent with a God of
love. . . . Three cheers, then, for the creationists, for
they have cleared the air of all dodges, escapes, and evasions
made by Christians who adopt non-literal interpretations of
Genesis and who hold that evolution is God's method of creation.
[14]
The road of compromise, however attractive it seems, is a one-way
street, ending in a precipice and then the awful void of "rational
religion," or atheism. Our advice is to stay on the straight
and narrow road of the pure Word of God.
REFERENCES
[1] Francis Glasson, "Darwin
and the Church," New Scientist (Vol. 99, September
1, 1983), p. 639.
[2] Norman K. Hall and Lucia K.B.
Hall, "Is the War Between Science and Religion Over?"
The Humanist (Vol. 46, May/June 1986), p. 26.
[3] Michael Denton, Evolution:
A Theory in Crisis, (London: Burnett Books, Ltd., 1985),
p. 66.
[4] Davis K. Young, Creation and
the Flood (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977), 188
pp. See especially pp. 19-25.
[5] Davis K. Young, Christianity
and the Age of the Earth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing
House, 1982), 217 pp. See especially pp. 44-48.
[6] Davis K. Young, Scripture in
the Hands of Geologists, Part I. Westminster Theological
Journal (Vol. 49, 1987), p. 6.
[7] Ibid., Part II, p. 303.
[8] Pattle P.T. Pun, "A Theory
of Progressive Creationism," Journal of the American
Scientific Affiliation (Vol. 39, March 1987), p. 14.
[9] Ibid.
[10] "Scientists Decry a Slick
New Packaging of Creationism," ed. by W. J. Bennetta,
The Science Teacher, May 1987, pp. 36-43.
[11] Ibid., p. 40.
[12] Creation-Evolution Newsletter
(Vol. 6, No. 6, 1986), pp. 3-9. Reviews by Robert Schadewald,
William Bennetta, and Karl Tezer.
[13] Creation-Evolution Newsletter
(Vol. 7, No. 1, 1987), pp. 16-19.
[14] A. J. Mattell, Jr., "Three
Cheers for the Creationists," Free Inquiry (Vol.
2, Spring 1982), pp. 17-18.
* Dr. Henry M. Morris is Founder and President Emeritus
of the Institute for Creation Research.