Atheists Say It Better Than I Do . . .

(Note: If you haven't read my Tuesday, Oct. 20th post, "Where's the Fall?" then you should read that first as it is the context for this post. Also, I would value a few of you trying out the comment feature at the bottom of this post. If you have subscribed to email notifications of new posts and you are in the email viewing this you need to click on the post title, "Atheists Say It Better Than I Do," to get to the web page to be able to comment. Someone told me yesterday that they tried the comment feature and it didn't work. I value your comments and thoughts and insight and knowing you are out there. I need and grow from your thoughts and comments as well, so I would like to test the feature and make sure it works. Thanks bunches!)

I made my post on Tuesday evening about the critical difference between evolution and Creation (as recorded in the Bible). The thrust of that difference is that evolution (whether accident or God initiated) removes the Fall, hence the need for a Savior, and ultimately undermines the whole Gospel message.

Literally just a few hours after making that post I curled up in bed and started leafing through Dennis Petersen's book Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation. On page 75 he writes, "Can an atheist understand the battle better than most Christians? Note what one wrote:". He then goes on to quote from a 1978 American Atheist periodical which says the following (punctuation, spelling, and capitalization are exactly as quoted):

Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus' earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.

Christianity, if it is to survive, must have Adam and the original sin and the fall from grace, or it cannot have Jesus the redeemer who restores to those who believe what Adam's disobedience took away.

What all this means is that Christianity cannot lose the Genesis account of creation like it could lose the doctrine of geocentricism and get along. The battle must be waged, for Christianity is fighting for its very life. (Note from Erick: Geocentricism is the belief that the sun orbits around the earth.)

This atheist said it better than I did! I found it fascinating to stumble on this just hours after sharing (far more clumsily) what I had about exactly that same point. We can't afford to doubt the Bible, nor can we afford to say, "What does it matter if it is a literal six days or figurative?"—and we don't need to say it. Literal, Biblical Creation is dependable, supported, and true.

Where's the Fall?

I have been reading the book Already Gone by Ken Ham of "Answers in Genesis." In it he talks about how doubt over the Genesis accounts is undermining faith in the entire Word of God, and how people (especially youth) are "checking out" of the church because, in the wake of such doubt, they are losing confidence in the relevancy of church and Scripture to their life. It becomes a "good story," and in this world of pain and uncertainty "good stories" may be fun but they don't pay the bills, heal the hurt, or give hope amidst hopelessness.

In the book Ken made a comment that started my mind down a path of thought that I wanted to share. In a nutshell, it is this: Evolution stands as the absolute opposite of Creation in more ways than just the obvious (how life and we began). If we believe in Creation as it is recorded in the Bible then man started off in God's image, we started off good, and then we fell and became separated from God, in need of a Savior, and cut off from the life and source of goodness. If we believe evolution (either accident or God initiated), man started out as a cell in some primitive pool billions of years ago and we have just been improving ever since! Truly, in evolution's natural conclusion, we just keep getting better.

Are you starting to see where this is headed? Evolution, which in its truest implications says man is just improving more and more, stands in stark contrast to Creation which says man is getting farther and farther from God, hence more and more lost and astray. The gap between the two end points of these two explanations just gets wider and wider as they both continue down their logical paths—one saying man is rising, the other saying man is falling.

Evolution promotes, inherently, the idea that in man we will eventually find man's solutions. It promotes the idea that the key is to just keep getting better, trying harder, etc. The natural implications of evolution, when we take them to their natural conclusions, draw man farther and farther from God and the realization of our need for God.

We see this ever-widening separation in the vast gap between politics and candidates and policies that exists today—one side feels man can fix man's problems, the other says that only God can and that we will only find our solutions in a deep reliance and dependence on God.

For the atheist, this all poses no seeming problem. They don't believe in God or the fall or heaven or hell so they don't see any other option than man fixing man. But, for the Christian who has embraced evolution, there becomes a very big problem—when was the fall? (I speak from experience here, having tried to reconcile evolution and Creation as a young Christian, and eventually finding out it just can't work if we allow it to take its natural course to its natural conclusion. I explain this below.)

Think about it with me for a moment if you will. If God started the whole thing and then let evolution bring us to today, when did we fall? When did we become advanced enough to understand good and bad and the law of God and to become accountable to a decision to disobey? When did that happen? Was man still hunched over in ape-like form when he first understood what God wanted and chose to disobey? When was the point of accountability and separation from God? Really, it boils down to this: When was the fall?

You see, the problem is that in evolution there is no room for a fall. We are just improving, not falling. We are going up, not down. There was never a defined point in which man fell. Evolution is the epitome of the results of rebellion in which God decreases in our eyes and man increases because in its teaching man continues to improve. Inherent in that is the assumption that technology and knowledge mark improvement, whereas inherent in God's Word is that the fear of the Lord marks the beginning of knowledge and growth, and that the fool in his heart says there is no God.

In evolution's natural conclusion we don't need a Savior because there never was a fall, and we are just getting better and better—we will become our own Savior. In Creation, and the Word that provides authority for Creation, we fell from God and until that separation is bridged we are lost and hopeless and separated from goodness and our Creator until we are saved . . . and Jesus alone is that Savior.

Of course, start to doubt the Bible's account of Creation or the Flood and you (or, if not you, then your children) may soon start to doubt the Jesus that the same Bible talks about, and Whom the Bible gives His lineage back to Adam, and Whom talked Himself about Noah and the flood and the ark as a literal person and event and boat. Be careful, it is a slippery, untenable slope to begin down the path of "Christian evolution." I know, I tried it out when I first became a Christian. Trust me, it doesn't work if we think it all the way through. The nice thing is that "Christian evolution" doesn't need to work—Creation, as described in the Bible, stands alone, scientifically supported, easily defended, and authoritative. Yes, there will always be faith required, but the faith required to embrace Creation is reasonable, not blind, and does not require at all the amount of faith it requires to believe in evolution in the face of all of the honest science that stands against it. Whatever your stand on this, I love ya. Just, please, think it through, because it is a serious, unsupported, dangerous slope we start down to embrace any evolution across kinds.