7 Reasons Christianity and Evolution Just Can't Get Along
If you are a churchgoing Christian you have no doubt heard someone (possibly even your pastor) say in reference to Creation, that the Hebrew word for day, "yom," can mean an indeterminate amount of time. Or they may quote the verse in 2 Peter 3 that says, "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day," in an attempt to meld evolution with the Biblical narrative. Those texts, these individuals argue, are evidence enough that the Bible's account of Creation — with Adam and Eve talking with a serpent — is merely metaphorical, and that Christians are free to believe in evolution with no logical contradiction with Scripture. For college-educated millennialx who often leave churches because of the perceived conflict between Christianity and science, this solution is an intellectual life saver. They get to keep the faith, as well as some credibility with their peers. Unfortunately for them, this hypothesis falls apart under the most basic scrutiny.
If you have fallen for this simplistic and entirely deluded proposition, here are the top 10 reasons why you can't logically be a Christian and believe God created life using evolution:
1. Darwin proposed evolution to avoid using "God did it" as an explanation for life
Darwin's life experiences continually impressed him with the thought that life is too cold and heartless to be the result of a benevolent designer. Coupled with his observations of natural selection, he came up with Darwinism as a means to explain how life came to be without any design. How, therefore, can a Christian reject Darwin's basic premise — there is no design — and still accept his conclusion that rests upon the premise?
2. According to the Bible, death is a consequence of Adam's sin
In evolutionary theory, death is the weeding-out mechanism that allows natural selection to work. In Christian theology, death is a hostile intruder that came into the world as a result of Adam and Eve's sin. If God used evolution to create, that would mean death is God's primary creative tool, and not something repugnant to the Author of Life.
3. If God used evolution to create life, that means he designed a couple billion years of mass starvation and suffering
It doesn't really matter what extra-Biblical deity you concoct to ease your cognitive dissonance on this topic. If this deity had any say over how life developed, and it thought evolution was an elegant mechanism, that being would be a straight-up sadist. Can you say, "Dracunculiasis?"
4. Jesus did not need to die if man is not responsible for the havoc sin brought upon the planet
Think it through: No Creation week, no Adam and Eve. No Adam and Eve, no fall. No fall, no need for a Redeemer. No Redeemer, no need for Jesus. Simply put, Christianity is not coherent without the first few chapters of Genesis.
5. The mechanism of "survival of the fittest" is antithetical to God's character as revealed through Jesus
If God is the Creator, why would God's method of Creation look so different from His son's ministry? Imagine Jesus teaching on a grassy hillside. Surrounded by a multitude that presses around Him, He says, "For the health of the population as a whole, the weak and the sick in your midst need to be left to die. Giving food to those incapable of passing on healthy genes might seem nice, but in the long run it will hurt everyone." It sounds so ridiculous because Jesus taught values that are exactly opposite to "survival of the fittest."
6. God gave us the Sabbath as a memorial in time designed to erase all doubts about our origins
Unlike days, months, and years, there is no astrological reason for the weekly cycle. The Fourth Commandment (written by God's own hand on a tablet of stone) spells out the reason for its existence quite clearly. God ceased his labor at the end of Creation week and established a day of communion with man before sin ever entered the picture. One of the purposes of the Sabbath is that it is an unbroken bread-crumb trail that leads all the way back to Creation week. It would be much harder for non-believers to deny the Creation story if Christians had always faithfully upheld the command to "Remember." As a consequence, there is no way to ignore God's account of our origins without also breaking all of His commandments.
7. The Resurrection isn't exactly mainstream science either
If you fret about being mocked for believing in a literal six-day creation, you should also consider worrying about believing in another scientific impossibility: Jesus raising from the dead. Or is there some reason that that is the only supernatural Biblical event you are willing to accept without scientific "consensus"?
