Is there anyway for Christianity to accommodate evolution in a happy medium?

        Dear Reader,

        There is absolutely no way that a biblical Christian can accommodate evolution; belief in any form of evolution (meaning that God did not create life in a fiat fashion in seven literal days as the Bible says) undermines the authority of the Bible, and discredits the whole tenet of Christianity.  One cannot be an evolutionist and a Christian at the same time; one might like to believe that one can accommodate evolution in one’s Christian beliefs, but in reality this is an impossibility.  There are those who call themselves theistic evolutionists, and call themselves Christians.  However, this is a contradiction as we shall show later.  Lets look at some reasons why Christianity cannot under any circumstances accommodate evolution.

        First of all, evolution in essence denies the creation narrative of the Bible.  You see, scientific evolution denies the existence of God; or for some, if he exists he has nothing to do with the origin of life forms as depicted in the Bible.  For them if He does exist He’s an ‘absentee God’ or better,  an ‘absentee landlord.’ Here is how these so called educators put it, according to the Christian Science Monitor in “God is not an absentee landlord” March 27 1984: “Although He is supposed to have set the universe in motion, He pretty much stays out of the picture. Yes, occasionally He has made spectacular appearances, but that was mostly long ago in Bible times. Today, according to this view, if a poor mortal pleads hard enough, God just might intervene and, so to speak, fix the plumbing or get the roof repaired. But then again, He might not, and if He doesn’t, this is supposedly evidence of His inscrutable wisdom. In any event, man is thought to be pretty much on his own.”

        This is a classic example of puny man seeking to bring down God to man’s level, to man’s imagination, ignorantly dismissing the fact that if God could be fathomed by mankind, then He’s not God. Humans may understand humans, but when it comes to God all they can know of God is what He reveals of Himself to them in Nature, science, experiences, and most of all, in the Bible. And when it comes to nature, science, and experiences, and even the Bible, humanity experiences these with dark, obscure, traditional and sinful glasses. 

        The Bible states clearly that God created life in six literal days and rested on the seventh.  Evolutionists say that life evolved over vast periods of time, millions of years, thus contradicting the Bible.  There is no way that one can believe the evolutionist and the Bible at the same time.  To the evolutionist nature, Mother Nature, Gaia, is responsible for creation, not God.  For the biblical Christian God made nature, it is simply the product of the sum of God’s creation.  Secondly, evolution says that life first started out of nothing, absolutely out of thin air, then somehow molecules and and then cells got together and ‘became’ alive and from there started the long, arduous process of passing from very simple forms into the most complex forms we see today.  But to arrive at this fantastic or fantasy position they must of necessity destroy a law that every scientist teaches and accepts, and this the law of biogenesis or the biogenic law, that only life begets life. There’s no room for spontaneous generation, sorry, Anaximander, Aristotle, et al! but Louis Pasteur put paid to that child imagination!

        This means that for the evolutionist life started from the bottom up.  For the biblical Christian life started from the top, perfectly created and complete, and due to sin degenerated from perfection into imperfection.  How can these two meet?  These are two diametrical concepts.  For the biblical Christian God made life perfect without any signs of imperfection or abnormality.  For the evolutionist life forms through trial and error, survival of the fittest, eventually got where it is today.  One cannot have both; one must have either or. 

        Thirdly, the Bible says that due to sin death came into the world.  The evolutionist says that death is natural and is essentially the vehicle through which things evolve from simple to complex.  Without death evolution could not function.   One has to chose which to believe, the biblical account or the false idea of evolution.  Should one believe this concept of death being natural and was always present, then the biblical concept of sin and the Fall must be myths and must be thrown out.  One cannot have both concepts and still be a Christian or even an evolutionist.  

        Fourthly, should one accept the evolutionist’s idea that there is no such thing as the Fall of Adam and Eve, and therefore there is no sin, then the Christian belief of redemption, forgiveness, judgment, and salvation are all myths and falsehoods.  More than that, the belief that Jesus came as Redeemer due to the Fall must go out the window as well.  Christianity in essence is just a made up story by people who call themselves Christians.  And the record of Holy Writ, of the Old and New Testaments, is again a myth.  One has to make a choice regarding which to believe, evolution or creation. 

        What about those Christians who call themselves theistic evolutionists?  Theistic evolution means that God began life through his divine power, but left it all to nature, natural selection, to evolve into the forms that we witness today.  This is really evolution in disguise; for again, should we accept this concept, we must still throw out the Fall, Sin, Redemption, and the teachings of the Bible.  One cannot hold the theistic concept of things evolving, after God made them, into complex forms as we have today, and still cling to the biblical teaching of the Fall, Sin, and Jesus’ Sacrifice offering atonement for man’s sin.  The two concepts are forever opposites; theistic evolutionists are just as dismissive and destructive of the biblical concept of origins, and God’s plan of salvation for a rebellious world; one cannot have both concepts and still be a biblical Christian.  

        Theistic evolution is just a cop out for integrating false science into biblical beliefs.  In accepting theistic evolution one actually destroys the concepts of both evolution and creation; this belief pits the Bible against science.  We biblical Christians believe that both science, true science, and the Bible go hand in hand.  The Bible relates what God did, and science sometimes demonstrate how He did it, but certainly shows that there is a Designer, an author, of the complexities we see all around us.

So can biblical Christianity accommodate evolution in any way?  Absolutely not.  We are not belittling anyone; we are simply rejecting their non-biblical concepts of origins; and we have the right to our own opinions.  May God give us the fortitude to remain faithful to the biblical record of origins, while completely rejecting the worldly notion, or the theistic concept, of how life started on our planet.  God bless.

        Pastor Ron is a retired Adventist pastor. Reach him at ron.hende@gmail.com with your comments.