The origin of life is the apologetic issue of our time. No topic I speak or write on attracts as much ridicule and anger as teaching the simple, biblical facts about Creation. Refute the claims of evolutionists, and you’re instantly branded as ignorant, anti-progress, superstitious, and many worse names.
After one of my blog posts on evolution, a pro-evolution commenter responded, “What is really crumbling is Hank’s ministry, and in fact the entire Christian religion is crumbling precisely because of the anti-scientific claims of liars and idiots like Hanegraaff and the rest of the creationist loonies. Dawkins is right. Anyone who claims not to believe in evolution is really an idiot.”
And sadly, the attacks don’t just come from outside the church. Theistic evolution has grown in popularity as multiplied millions of Christians run in fear from the derision of evolutionists, such that some Christian leaders now denounce creationism with equal vigor.
In a widely noted New York Times op-ed titled, “The Evangelical Rejection of Reason,” Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens contend that to “dismiss evolution as an unproven theory” constitutes “the rejection of science,” “stubborn anti-intellectualism,” and “textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious.”
The truth is, the evolutionary hypothesis is no longer tenable in an age of scientific enlightenment. The Cambrian explosion – biology’s Big Bang – has uprooted Darwin’s tree of life. In the modern era, it is untenable to suppose that something as seemingly simple as a human tear (which finds no counterpart in the animal kingdom) evolved through unguided purposeless processes.
Nothing could not have created everything. And life could not have evolved from non-life. Indeed, we have ample evidence to believe that the opening words of Scripture, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” are perfectly suited for the age of scientific enlightenment in which we find ourselves.
