I often get asked if I am an old earth or a young earth creationist. Do I believe that God created the world in a literal 6 days, or could He have just initiated the Big Bang and then watched evolution take place? Could God have used evolution when He created the world? And if so, couldn’t He also have set in motion the process of natural selection to create man and the rest of all living things?
The answer is that “Yes,” He could have, if He wanted to. But that is not the creation account we read of in Scripture. He chose to create things His own way.
Here are a few verses that demonstrate that evolution is not scriptural. Bear in mind that I am answering the question of whether evolution is compatible with the Bible. Can a Christian believe in evolution AND the Bible?
The answer is no. He will either have to believe that certain passages are not correct, (the Bible is flawed) or he will have to believe that man’s scientific hypothesis is not correct.
1. Genesis 1:27 says that God created man in his own image. Adam was complete upon his initial creation.
2. Jesus quoted Genesis 5:2 in Matthew 19:4 when he said that “in the BEGINNING (emphasis added) He created them male and female.”
If an asexual creature was reproducing just fine on its own, why would the process of natural selection decide to complicate things in developing male and female parts?
The Bible teaches that they were male and female from the beginning.
3. Genesis 2:5 “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
This is a specific moment of time. There was no evolution or life until God breathed life into him.
4. Genesis 2:21-24 tells about how God put Adam to sleep, took one of his ribs and made Eve, then brought her to him.
Again, a specific event.
5. Genesis 3 describes the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, bringing death and decay and the curse of sin upon all of humanity and even nature. Death is the direct result of sin. Before this point in time, there was no death, no millions of transitional forms struggling for survival of the fittest.
This is a very important fundamental doctrine that cannot be dismissed if one is to understand the rest of the book, the root of humanity’s problems, and the remedy presented in the gospel.
Evolution, as it is taught in schools and universities, is not compatible with the Bible. To believe it, one must either play word games with or entirely disregard clear teachings of scripture, and that is a slippery slope that leads people further and further from the truth as they wrestle with and explain away every other passage that gives them moral or intellectual trouble.
The plain and simple truth is that science, as we call it, is constantly changing its position and its stance on evolutionary theory. A theory of which we have plenty of conjecture, imagination and hypothesis, but do not possess one iota of fact. The Bible, on the other hand, has never changed or been proven wrong. Not once has ‘science’ effectively or convincingly provided sufficient proof that the Bible contains errors. On the contrary, the Bible has repeatedly proven itself to be a solid record that has been handed down and preserved accurately for thousands of years, has remained steadfast, unchanging and true while withstanding the tests of skepticism and scrutiny.