3. Evolution Contradicts the Universal Principle of Decay
Ever since God said “Cursed is the ground” (Gen. 3:17), the “creation itself” has been waiting to “be delivered from the bondage of corruption” (Rom. 8:21). “All flesh is grass . . . the grass withereth, the flower fadeth” (Isa. 40:6–7). “The earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner” (Isa. 51:6). There is in effect a universal principle of disintegration and death, both in the physical creation (“earth shall wax old”) and in the living world (“all flesh is grass”). This is nothing less than the curse, pronounced by God on man’s entire dominion because of man’s sin, reflected in the scientific realm by the universal law of increasing entropy. It is obvious that the evolutionary concept of a universal process of order increasing from molecule to man is incompatible with the universal process of decay and decreasing order.
4. Evolution Is Incompatible with Christian Ethics
The essence of the evolutionary process is survival, because obviously no organism can contribute to evolution unless it survives and reproduces. The concept of natural selection entails a struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. The weak and misfits are exterminated; the strong and fertile survive. If God had anything to do with the evolutionary process, it does seem strange that He would utilize a method which squarely contradicts the system of ethics He established for the man He created by this process. Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:38–39). The chief good of evolution is struggle and survival, but the essence of Christianity is sacrifice and death, as demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Theological Contradictions Apart from Scripture
Many people believe in God without any strong commitment to the Bible as His Word. Therefore, the fact that the teachings of the Bible cannot be harmonized with evolution is of no particular concern to them, since they accept the inspiration of Scripture only in a very loose and generalized way, if at all. To them the Bible is merely a valuable book in terms of religious insights and ethical values, but not in matters of science and history.
However, even apart from Scripture, there are still a number of serious contradictions in theistic evolution (assuming that the God who supposedly created things by this process is really a personal, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, gracious, loving, purposive God). Most theistic evolutionists (not considering pantheistic evolution) would probably agree with such a concept of God, and, of course, that is the type of God revealed in the Bible. But if God is like that, it seems completely incongruous that He would use evolution as His method of creation, for the following reasons:
1 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s omnipotence. Since He has all power, He is capable of creating the universe in an instant, rather than having to stretch out His creating over eons of time.
2 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s personality. If man in His own image was the goal of the evolutionary process, surely God should not have waited until the very tail end of geologic time before creating personalities. No personal fellowship was possible with the rocks and seas, or even with the dinosaurs and gliptodons.
3 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s omniscience. The history of evolution, as interpreted by evolutionary geologists from the fossil record, is filled with extinctions, misfits, evolutionary cul-de-sacs, and other like evidences of very poor planning. The very essence of evolution, in fact, is random mutation, not scientific progress.
4 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s nature of love. The supposed fact of evolution is best evinced by the fossils, which eloquently speak of a harsh world, filled with storm and upheaval, disease and famine, struggle for existence and violent death. The accepted mechanism for inducing evolution is overpopulation and a natural selection through extermination of the weak and unfit. A loving God would surely have been more considerate of His creatures than this. “One (sparrow) shall not fall on the ground without your Father” (Matt. 10:29), said Jesus.
5 Evolution is inconsistent with God’s purposiveness. If God’s purpose was the creation and redemption of man, as theistic evolutionists presumably believe, it seems incomprehensible that He would waste billions of years in aimless evolutionary meandering before getting to the point. What semblance of purpose could there have been in the hundred-million-year reign and eventual extinction of the dinosaurs, for example? “Let all things be done decently and in order,” the Bible commands (1 Cor. 14:40).
6 Evolution is inconsistent with the grace of God. Evolution, with its theology of struggle for survival in the physical world, fits perfectly with the humanistic theory of works for salvation in the spiritual world. The Christian concept of the grace of God, providing life and salvation in response to faith alone on the basis of the willing sacrifice of himself for the unfit and unworthy, is diametrically opposite to the evolutionary concept (see Eph. 2:8–9).
Progressive Creation
A large group of evangelicals, sensitive to the traditional opposition to evolution in their own constituencies, have tried to circumvent this opposition while at the same time embracing the essential framework of the evolutionary system through what they call “progressive creation.”
A similar concept is called “threshold evolution.” Other labels have been suggested for these general concepts, but they are all semantic variants of the fundamental system of theistic evolution.
The idea in the progressive-creation approach is to suppose that, while life was developing over the vast span of geologic time the way evolutionists have imagined it, God intervened on various occasions to create something new that the evolutionary process could not accomplish unaided. Thus, the “progressive creationists” give a sort of “nod to God” every now and then, and they consider this an adequate accommodation to Scripture.
For example, early in the Tertiary period, God presumably stepped in to create Eohippus, the small three-toed “dawn horse.” He then withdrew to let subsequent horse evolution continue through the stages of Mesohippus, Parahippus, etc., until finally they developed into the modern Equus. Similarly, a long succession of humanoid forms developed from their unknown apelike ancestor until, at the right moment, God intervened and placed an eternal soul in one (or two) of them by special creative power.
Details vary considerably in the exposition of the progressive creation concept by various writers, with greater or lesser numbers of creative acts interspersed in the evolutionary process according to the taste of the writer. All, however, accept the basic framework of the evolutionary geological ages and visualize progressive creation as taking place over billions of years instead of six normal, 24-hour days.
A few such accommodationists even suggest that every new species was a special “mini-creation,” introduced by God at the appropriate point in earth history. They call this “creationism,” but, obviously, it is essentially the same as theistic evolution.
It is difficult to see any biblical or theological advantage that the progressive-creation idea has over a straightforward system of theistic evolution. Exactly the same theological problems as outlined in the preceding section still apply, whether the process is called theistic evolution, progressive creation, old-earth creationism or anything else.
In fact, if one were forced to choose between the two, theistic evolution seems less unreasonable and inconsistent with God than progressive creation. It involves one consistent process, always the same, established by God at the beginning and maintained continually thereafter. Progressive creation, on the other hand, implies that God’s creative forethought was not adequate for the entire evolutionary process at the beginning. He, therefore, frequently interfered in the process, setting it back in the right direction and providing enough creative