Evolution

Welcome back to another edition of the Be a Berean Podcast. I am your host, Michael Coughlin. We are returning to the friendlyatheist.patheos.com website. The blog posts 40 problems with Christianity in August of 2014. We are on problem number 25. We are trying to refute the atheists' assertions.

We're trying to use sound logic and reason to do so. The goal is to not just own the atheist or drop a mic on him, but the goal is that we would be able to have an answer to these things if they are asked of us. That if people in our family, people in our churches are being led astray by the types of things that are portrayed on this website, that we'd be able to help them to understand Christianity better.

We have no fear of people criticizing our faith because our faith is unshakable. It's founded upon an immovable, unchangeable God who is faithful to the end. And so we are actually happy to have people bring up questions about the Scripture, questions that we agree sometimes are hard to answer, questions that human reason cannot reason themselves into.

And so often the types of things an atheist brings up are things that appear to be obvious contradictions to the unenlightened mind by the Holy Spirit, and they are things that to the mind that has the Holy Spirit we sometimes still will struggle to understand. And so let's see what we can do with question 25 or problem 25. Let me read it to you. The Friendly Atheist calls it evolution demarcation.

He says, for those Christians who accept evolution, there is a noteworthy problem dealing with the starting point when humans first became bound for eternity in the eyes of God. There has to be a starting point when God first awarded an eternal life to human beings. Without this demarcation, we would have single-celled life forms living for eternity in heaven.

Whenever this occurred, it would create a problem. It would mean that many people going to heaven would do so without the company of their parents, who would die and not be raised up, similar to all of the other animals. No matter where the cut was made, this problem was unavoidable. for those Christians who accept evolution, there's a noteworthy problem.

I'll just put a period right there. Christianity is incompatible with evolutionary thinking. Christianity is incompatible with the concept of what we'll call an old age of the earth, more than 6,000 to 10,000 years old. We do not have to worry about a problem caused by evolution, because Christianity doesn't believe evolution is possible, if I can personify Christianity.

So this is an example. We had an earlier one. I don't want to scroll back up to find which one it was, but this is an example where we have what I will refer to as Christian idiocy or crudency. So people who profess to be Christians, maybe even some true believers in Christianity, have believed the worldly idea that evolution is true, that the molecules-to-man evolution from single cells to what we are today is in fact how we came to be.

And yes, that would present an amazing problem for Christianity because it would contradict everything we know in Scripture about God and how he created. and so we categorically reject the idea that evolution was used by God we do not reject the idea that natural selection exists that organisms within their types will change or within their kinds will change we don't reject the idea that people have evolved over time in many senses of that word that do not imply that they have literally changed from non-human to human. We don't believe that there was once a time that we didn't have kidneys and then accidentally over millions of years kidneys through genetic mutation formed in people's bodies and then somehow a use for them was found but before they were developed or before they were magically sprouted, we still survived without them. We reject the notion that there was a point in time that blood clotting didn't occur and then people started dying all the time.

So magically people were born whose blood would clot, but only when it was exposed to the outside air. There's just so many problems with the idea of molecules to man evolution, with the idea of these little changes over time adding up to big changes it's not how it works god created within the created kinds he created variability so that we can have humans with red hair brown hair blonde hair blue eyes green eyes darker skin lighter skin you can have a person I'm sure my listeners won't call me racist for this but you get a person who's very white marry a person who's very black and they're going to usually end up with kids that are sort of in the middle color wise it just how things work in our society Dogs and cats get together and they have puppies and they have kittens But dogs don have kittens and monkeys don have men And it's just not the way God did things. So it's not even worth dealing with that much more.

I would agree with him that if a Christian espouses evolution, that person has a gigantic problem, an unavoidable problem. And in fact, I'd consider them an embarrassment. I most likely would not affirm the person as a brother. I'm sure there have been some wonderful misled people who were Christian brothers and sisters who tried to do something that they called science and came to some conclusion that evolutionary type things were possible.

My experience has been, now this is anecdotal, I'm not telling you every person that believes in an old earth is unsaved. What I'm saying is that my experience is that people who accept things like evolution end up showing you that they have lots of other problems in their doctrine and theology. and usually what you find is that they don't even believe the gospel. They don't understand the gospel in a meaningful way to be able to say that they believe the same gospel that I believe.

I probably would have a lot of trouble with a person being in my church believing in evolution. I probably would not want them to teach. So there's a lot of problems with this. And although I can't say you're unsaved if you don't get this, it's been my experience that people that fail to understand this point are not truly saved. They usually show themselves to be not of us.

So we'll go to number 26. That's not where I expected that to go, to be honest. But number 26, the atheist says, there is a tiny drama and a huge stage. He says, at the time the Bible was written, most people viewed the earth as the center of the universe, while the sun, stars, planets, and moon revolved around its flat surface. Christianity is based on this worldview. placing an emphasis on humans is the ultimate reason that the universe was created in the first place not only is christianity earth-centered but it was also limited to a few hundred square miles in its beginning and did not reach all areas of the earth until about 1500 years later further it's limited in its overall time scope to something less than 10 000 years okay i just want to pause there he says at the time the bible was written most people viewed the earth as the center of the universe he says christianity is based on this worldview that's not true christianity is based on the worldview that the center of all things is god it says it places an emphasis on humans as the ultimate reason that the universe was created in the first place i got a book right here my sons can answer this question if i turned it with them in here.

My sons are three and five. And I could say, who created you? Or who made you? And they say, God made me. I picked up the wrong book. And then I say, why did God make you and all things after they say God made all things and they say for his own glory, even my kids know the ultimate reason it was created was for God's glory.

It says not only is Christianity earth centered. it's not true Christianity is God centered he says but it was also limited to a few hundred square miles in its beginning and it did not reach all areas of the earth until about 1500 years later Christianity was limited to a small area yes and that's exactly how the Bible describes it we don't have any reason to be ashamed of that. His point is that he's reading things backwards. He's saying because the world's big and Christianity was in a small area, that's evidence that the people who invented Christianity invented it based on the limited understanding they had of the world at the time. so it's like he's saying that these these guys in the middle east thought the world was flat and everything revolved around the earth and so they they wrote this book that matched what they thought they saw in the world and it's their lack of ability to understand the size of the universe and the way the world works that would cause them to write such a human-centered religion which to some extent Christianity is.

It's a religion where there is a focus on man as the way God has created things as the focal point other than you know outside his own glory. God has made man in his image. And so the atheist says, what we have since learned about the age and size of the universe has spectacularly dwarf the Christian worldview. Okay, I don't even know how to explain it.

He gets the Christian worldview wrong. And the Christian worldview is that the universe is unimaginably large. We can't even count the stars that we can see, let alone the stars we cannot see. and God's even bigger than all that. That's our worldview. I don't understand how he can say that the size of the universe has spectacularly dwarfed the Christian worldview when the Christian worldview is that the universe is unimaginably large for the human mind We cannot even fathom the numbers that are required to think about the size of even our galaxy.

I mean, it's hard to even fathom the sizes of numbers. And then when we start hearing about like hundreds of billions of galaxies or whatever they've counted, it's insane in fact I think he tells us here he says what we have since learned about the age and size of the universe is dwarfed the Christian worldview he says instead of being 10,000 years old the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old okay so that's just made up I mean everybody understands it's a made up number there's no there's no evidence of it there's nothing with a birthday of 13.8 million years ago and in fact that changes I think it just changed to 14 something and then back to 11 something. I don't know.

You could look it up. But it changes when it's convenient. But the point is, is it's a big enough number for them that nobody can really question it. Nobody can say, well, I was there, or it's really 13.9 or 13.2. It's just this unimaginably big number that just allows the guys who are supposedly doing science to just wave their hands and say, yeah, it's really old.

This is how this happens. and we're supposed to somehow believe that over 13.8 billion years miraculous things can happen like i just described with molecules demand evolution that we've never observed even in a conservative you know six to ten thousand year history of actual written history i i would i'll argue i believe the earth's about six thousand years old so even the ten thousand year old one i don't know where people get that from but he says instead of the earth and a few objects orbiting around it. Like that's what the Bible teaches, a few objects orbiting around it. Not at all what the Bible teaches.

We have the Earth, 4.5 billion years old, orbiting the Sun, which is just one of about 300 trillion, no billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which itself is only one of at least 176 billion galaxies in the observable universe. So again, mind-blowing numbers that Christianity would agree with. Now, just because in literature of the Bible, it's often, you know, if this guy's ever used the phrase sunset or sunrise, he has confessed himself to be a person that thinks the earth has a few objects that orbit around it.

We use words that describe how we view the sun and moon from our perspective. The Bible was not a science textbook that was going to describe things for people who at the time didn't have telescopes, who wouldn't be able to observe and understand some of those things that mathematically were discovered later about orbits and the size of some of these celestial bodies. That doesn't mean that those people thought that they all revolved around them.

And it certainly doesn't mean the Bible says it. The Bible simply talks about things from the perspective of the reader sometimes. So Psalms 19, talking about the sun, it says, its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. Well, so the Bible indicates that we know the sun is what provides heat, which you could argue you could understand from natural revelation but the fact of the matter is is that there's actually nothing observable uh that clearly would say the sun is what's hot other than you know when it's out in a day it's warmer and you can feel the difference in the shade but some ancient idiot sheep herder could have probably assumed something else if they were as stupid as the atheist always wants to make them sound.

The fact of the matter is that the Bible teaches us that that's where heat comes from that we have on the earth. And so the atheist does a really good job of pointing out the things he thinks are flaws, but never really kind of saying, well, but there is all these things that the Bible says that are really true scientifically. So he takes metaphors and figurative language, and he treats it as if whoever wrote it must have literally believed the sun revolved around the earth and therefore he's an idiot and therefore it couldn't have been from God.

Instead of talking about the things that the Bible has said that have been shown to be true, for example, that Isaiah says the circuit of the earth, he sees the earth as round. so there's just no excuse for this kind of bad scholarship we'll say but the atheist point is that the world's big and he's right and it's unimaginably big and there's no reason to believe in a world that large that we're important he says the idea that all this was created so god could create and test human beings is absurd he says if so why did God wait more than 9 billion years after creating the universe to construct the earth this is not true he has these questions about billions of years that I can't even answer he says why did God wait 100,000 years after creating modern human beings before making any contact with them well he contacted them the day he created them about 6,000 years ago why did God allow 3,500 years to pass after the initial contact with humans was made before his word had spread worldwide that's a good question and the reason is because God did everything in the timing that was perfect because God knew the exact right time for Jesus Christ to come for Jesus Christ to die to rise again to be ascended into heaven And God knew the right time, and we don't. And we can't even explain why it was the right time. All we know is that when the fullness of time had come, Jesus Christ was born of a virgin.

And after he died, he said the gospel would be spreading. It's spreading. And the best way I can put it is that we, for 3,500 years, humanity was too stupid and too sinful to understand. And every single moment that existed up until the point until the gospel was able to be spread worldwide was a moment that had to happen so that people would believe it.

So, yes, we are dense. We needed hundreds of years of history of God dealing with people in different ways, through covenants, through different ways that he dealt with them, through the prophets, so that we could finally understand when Jesus came. If Jesus had just showed up day one, it would have been hard to have seen people await a Savior for centuries. how do you fulfill a prophecy of being born in Bethlehem if there wasn't time in between so the atheist suffers from the problem of not understanding that God is outside of time and so the amount of time that the atheist thinks we've waited for God to do things is irrelevant.

God's outside of time. Time is meaningless to him. He says, if God is a perfect creator and designer, why is the universe so chaotic, disordered, and messy? Unreal. Unreal. He just explained that there are 300 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, of which our little solar system is just one teeny tiny star in it.

And that that galaxy is part of a group of 176 billion galaxies in the observable universe. This is on his website. I'm not vouching for the numbers. And his explanation for that is the universe is chaotic, disordered, and messy. we literally know where the sun's going to be every single day of the year. We know when there's going to be an eclipse. We know when we'll be able to observe Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars.

We know when they'll be in a neat position. In fact, two weeks ago on March 16, there were two stars and a moon that formed a smiley face. We could predict all these things. There's nothing disordered or chaotic about it. It's the most ordered system. we know the shape of the orbits of the planets is in an ellipse and we know hundreds of rules about ellipses because mathematically they're always the same they just vary in scale we know when we'll see the various constellations that make shapes that we can think are look like animals or different things and we know when we won't see them.

We know that we're exactly close enough to the sun to have things like water, ice, and vapor that we won't burn up or be so cold we'll die. I mean, it is amazing how ordered everything is. Are there some weird things like Jupiter's got a big red spot? yeah, is that messy? Why can't we call that beautiful? This is just a subjective statement. It's insane to me that people take this seriously as scholarship or rationality.

The universe is messy. What do you mean it's messy? Walk in my daughter's room or my son's room, I can tell you what messy looks like. The only thing that's messy in this world is the sin of human beings who had the audacity to murder the Son of God and then walk around every day metaphorically shaking our fists at a God who we can't touch and we can't actually see, so we blaspheme his name all we can, and then we persecute the people that he loves because we hate him so much simply because we love our sin.

That's messy. That's chaotic and disordered. Want to talk about disordered? how about a world full of people that want to have sex with people the same sex, that's disordered how about pedophiles, that's disordered the only thing disordered in our world is human beings the creation groans with the pains of childbirth to be released from the bondage that it's been put in the corruption that it's stuck in, the futility the only thing disordered is the sinfulness of human beings and fallen angels, all of which fall under God's sovereign control.

God's a perfect creator and designer. That's a statement. It's not an if. And so we actually can trust that in God's perfect creation and design, we have what appears to be the disorderliness. and it's so that he will be exalted as he makes it right he says these thoughts are best summed up by a quotation from richard feinman so i'm going to let you in on something i don't read all this stuff before i do it I studied through this once to make sure I had a once-over.

There's a couple areas where I know I'm going to have to go into more depth, actually. But for the most part, I just read it with my kids. We studied it. We talked about it. And we moved on. And it's been months since I looked at these.

I don't know how bad this quote's going to be. I'm scared to read it. But this is stuff that your cousin's swallowing. your niece your niece that's getting ready to go to uh some campus and and be a freshman and learn nice things um that's that's who hold on i just got a notification from my buddy garrett here um wanted to respond this is the stuff that your your nephew and your niece that's going off to college is going to hear and and and they're going to hear this stuff like it's a fact nine billion years of whatever, and people are going to catch them off guard.

And they're going to run to people that twist the scripture. And so this is why we need to be ready to defend this stuff. And I think we can defend it with a little bit of boldness and even a little bit of harshness at times. I think it's real nice to be kind to people and gentle and patient and understanding as we're dealing with people. But at the same time, when you remember that there's people out there right now raping children because they believe these false worldviews and there's people who will defend them and people who will fight for the rights of people to murder their children in the womb.

There's people that are fighting for the rights of people to be able to steal other people's stuff. Just basic socialism. Like this stuff has consequences when you believe garbage. And I think that Christians ought to stand up a little bit to it with maybe a little more backbone than we sometimes do. I'm not saying don't be kind or gracious. I'm not saying avoid all winsomeness.

I know some people don't like that word. I don't mind if you try to be a bit winsome. I'm not saying be unlikable. But sometimes, let's face it, there's more at stake here than losing or winning an argument with someone. this quote from Richard Feynman it doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe wait, he just said the universe is chaotic, disordered and messy and now he's quoting a guy that's calling it a fantastically marvelous universe the level of cognitive contradiction here is amazing to me and this is why atheists are so angry it's called cognitive dissonance and cognitive dissonance is more than just the simultaneous apprehension of contradictory ideas it's the psychological phenomenon of the anger that people feel when they're in that situation as well he says it doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals and all the different planets and all these atoms with all their motions and so on.

All this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil, which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama. Oh, give me a puke bag. Why? Why? first of all that's not the only reason this is for God to exhibit his glory this is so that you can know that God is righteous and just and pure and good let me turn to this here let go to the Baptist Confession of Faith and we going to go to chapter 2 paragraph 1 This is why we have a creation.

God dwells in light that no one can approach. He's unchangeable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, in every way infinite, absolutely holy, perfectly wise, wholly free, completely absolute. He overflows with goodness and truth, forgiving, iniquity, transgression, and sin. He alone is self-sufficient. He does not need any creature. He has no body parts or passions, changeable emotions. it's so that God can exhibit these things and so that we can experience them it's a gift that he created all these things it's to show his infinite love for his son Jesus Christ that he created the biggest possible concept of a universe that we could ever conceive of which was nothing for him to do it's because of his love for Jesus that he did it so you go to Psalm 2 no Psalm 8 when I look at your heavens the work of your fingers the moon and the stars which you have set in place what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him that's the point he created all that stuff so we be in such awe of his love toward us in his son, Jesus Christ.

It's because the universe is so large and doesn't revolve around humans that it makes it so remarkable that God would do for us what he's done. For scarcely would a man die for a good man or maybe for a righteous man, he would dare even to die. But God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's the stage.

The stage is not humans struggling for good and evil, but God conquering evil because he's awesome. And there's no stage big enough to truly do justice to what he deserves. But he has chosen this exact size stage that he's received. He's created it. He's set it in place. He's ordained all things that are come to pass, and we get to enjoy him forever.

The Westminster divines got it right. What is the chief end of man to glorify God and enjoy him forever? That, that gives us purpose. these are concepts that everyone understands. This atheist guy enjoys things, I guarantee it. He smokes cigars, or he goes to football games, or he watches his kid play soccer, or he watches Big Bang Theory. He's got stuff he enjoys.

There's things in his life that even though he believes it's generally meaningless, that he just decides, I'm just going to enjoy this for a moment. And it's a disordered passion when we enjoy everything but God. But God turns people hearts toward him in his love so that we can walk around this universe where we insignificant little specks Where this creation that dangerous could kill us at any minute in some cases Where the very work we have to do will kill us oftentimes.

Where we labor and labor and labor so that somebody else can enjoy the fruit of it. It's so that on a daily basis we can simply enjoy knowing Jesus Christ. I'm reminded of the need for gratitude. There's the story of the old lady that sits down and she's got a piece of bread and a cup of water. And she looks at it and she says, all this and Jesus too? Mike Stockwell told me that story. and that's the attitude of the Christian heart we're not amazed by the size of the universe we're amazed by the size of our God and that he would set his love on sinners dear Christian the universe is not chaotic, disordered and messy our sin is and everything God does is right we don't question his perfect creator ship his designerness we don't question those things because we see what we think is a failure in the design we question ourselves so just avoid these kinds of arguments I'm I'm trying not to sound annoyed you're my listeners if you're listening now I don't know what to call you you're a listener, a fan I don't know the word so you're with me you probably understand what I'm saying you probably agree with me I feel exhausted I need to apologize for being so fired up But this stuff just gets me.

I read this stuff, and it's like this is insanely, insanely anti-anything that's decent and good, and I hate it. I hate it. I hate the thought of people finding this website who, what was this guy, the Hawk Nelson guy? I never listened to Hawk Nelson. Their lead singer came out and said he doesn't believe in God. And it's like, this is the kind of stuff that guys like that stumble upon.

And they're like, oh, man, you're right. And they read a line like, the stage is too big for the drama. And they're like, oh, dude, oh, that's so true. And they think it sounds so pithy and erudite and philosophically astute. And it's vapid. And I am in great need of humility to remember that I was once like that.

I was never a Christian who stopped being a Christian in a born-again sense, but I was a Christian in the sense that I was Roman Catholic. and I left the faith and I was an anti-Christian type person for a while and this is the kind of stuff that appealed to me. This is the stuff that confirmed my biases against Christianity and had just enough stuff that people couldn't answer easily that I would think it was a gotcha question. and so dear friend if you listening I want you to remember that god is the one that will change the hearts of those who you try to convince the atheist sees 176 billion galaxies all with 300 billion stars or more he can't it's we don't have we can't do the math to count how many it's the number is unfathomable. It's not understandable.

He sees that and he sees a stage that's too big for men or women to have any significance, which is interesting because he thinks his own words are significant to people and should be read and understood. But forgetting that, we look at the same exact thing and we see God's glory on display. The heavens declare the glory of God. The sky above proclaims his handiwork.

So this is a heart problem. This isn't a stupidity problem. Sometimes we use that word because the idea is, this is saying being a fool and being anti-God will kind of make you stupid. And it's proverbial. It's from the Proverbs that you're too brutish to be a man in a sense. But it's really a heart problem.

It's a love for God problem. So pray for the people that you evangelize. Pray for the people you do apologetics with. Do it with passion. Do it strongly, especially in important areas. I don't quibble about...

I don't think I was probably this passionate when I was talking about whether Luke's census was different or whatever earlier. If you've been listening, we talked about how Luke's census, when Quirinius was governor of Syria in Luke chapter 2, there's a contradiction there that the atheist thought he pointed out. So that's, you know, I'm not as passionate about that one as I am about some of these things that I think really start to attack God's character, the validity and trustworthiness of the Bible. and thus whether or not people can even hear what they need to be saved.

And so be passionate, be calm, be loving, be meek, be humble, be bold as lions. We just have one example, Jesus Christ, of all these perfections. So we follow in his steps and we trust that the Holy Spirit is the power of God unto salvation, that he is the one that can take the gospel that's preached, the gospel that's dispensed, and turn hearts to Jesus Christ.

And then we hope that when we tell these things to Christians that they believe them. If you're a Christian listening to me, you should believe the things I'm teaching you. These shouldn't be really hard things for you. It should be natural to believe the things. And to the extent that you're not agreeing with me, I'll blame myself for not using more scripture to explain some of these things but Christians should hear the scripture and believe it and they should have a trust that it's God's word that's true in every man's life Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host Michael Coughlin I am a writer at thingsabove.us And I also have a personal website, michaelcoghlan.net.

You can contact me by emailing me, michael at thingsabove.us. I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.