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Tools of Satan?

In some feedback by R.S. to Philip Bell’s recent article Perils of Theistic Evolution, it was argued that the preaching of theistic evolution is being used by Satan to destroy the Christian faith. Mark M. of the UK disagrees. His email is reproduced below, interspersed with a response by Dominic Statham.

But how do you really know that Satan is using those who are theistic evolutionists and not those who are young earth creationists? After all he is a deceptive one.
thewordstreetjournal.com According to evangelist Mark Cahill, ‘The number one answer I get for there not being a God … is evolution’
According to evangelist Mark Cahill, “The number one answer I get for there not being a God … is evolution”

Indeed; and from the beginning, Satan’s strategy has been to ask “Did God say?” (Genesis 3:1). He is saying the same today and many people are listening. More and more prefer to believe the world’s view of origins rather than the plain teaching of the Bible.

Jesus said, “By their fruit you will know them” (Matthew 7:20). This surely applies to the fruit of a person’s teaching as well as that of their personal life. Jesus made this clear to the Pharisees, particularly in respect of their rejection of the ministry of John the Baptist: “John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him” (Matthew 21:32). Philip Bell’s article makes clear that evolution undermines some of the most important Christian truths. This is hardly good fruit.

The simple fact is that many, many people who would come to know Christ do not and will not purely because they are put off by YECism. Many others raised as creationists leave the church daily because of it.

People do not reject Christ because of the preaching of any biblical truth, including the truth about creation, but because they love darkness (John 3:19). Moreover, it appears that many justify their atheism by embracing evolution. The religious studies scholar Professor Huston Smith wrote, “Martin Lings is probably right in saying that more cases of the loss of religious faith are to be traced to the theory of evolution … than anything else.”1 According to evangelist Mark Cahill, “The number one answer I get for there not being a God … is evolution.”2 This suggests that people have great difficulty reconciling the doctrine of evolution with Christianity, rather than a belief in biblical creation.

Young people, raised as creationists, leave the church because they have not been taught the facts. They suffer years of secular, evolutionary indoctrination at school and are never told the other side of the story. The bankruptcy of the claim that evolution is well supported by science is easily exposed. At the same time, the evidence supporting the biblical account of creation and Earth history grows by the month. (See, for example, here). Despite this, many youngsters in churches reach adulthood never having been told these things.

I’ve witnessed both scenarios enough times to see that YECism benefits Satan far more than a loving God who would not work so hard to alienate so much of the humanity He loves.

It is surely the teaching of evolution that benefits Satan. We have to agree with Cornell Professor of Biology, Will Provine that, on balance, “belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people”.3 It is surely evolution that alienates people from God too. As argued by the philosopher of science, Professor David Hull, “Whatever the God implied by evolutionary theory and the data of natural history may be like, He is not the Protestant God of waste not, want not. He is also not a loving God who cares about His productions. He is not even the awful God portrayed in the book of Job. The God of the Galápagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.”4 How can theistic evolutionists answer this?

I know many other Christians who accept science fully, evolution, big bang and all the rest, yet remain devout to God and his word throughout their lives. And through their wonder at the real deeper miracles of His creation, bring many others into faith. So it is clearly not science that is doing the damage but denial of it!

If these Christians were really scientific they would know just how strong the scientific arguments against these ideas are. Nobel Prize-winner Professor Sir Ernst Chain FRS described the theory of evolution as a “hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts.”5 The same can be said today. The theory of evolution is maintained by a commitment to philosophical naturalism, rather than science. That this is true becomes clearer by the month, as more and more top evolutionists admit that current theories of evolution cannot begin to explain what we find in the natural world.6,7,8,9,10

There may, indeed, be those who have believed what the world has to say about our origins and continued to believe in Christ for the duration of their lives. But it is necessary to look at the bigger picture. Fruits take time to manifest and the effect is seen over a number of generations. Since people in the church began to compromise the plain teaching of the Bible (starting in the early part of the 19th century), there has been a gradual erosion of biblical authority, in both the church and society as a whole. We are now seeing this accelerating, as more and more churches compromise on traditional Christian morality and the governments of western nations pass more and more anti-Christian legislation.

Is some of the derogatory language used here to describe scientists and fellow Christians who are not creationists always the sort of language Christ would use to describe His fellow man? Or is it closer to that of hate filled Satan? Is the fact that such hateful words come into your minds so readily not another clue that you may be the ones following the wrong path?

Speaking for myself, I do not use derogatory language to describe fellow Christians and I believe that people can believe in evolution and belong to Christ. I refer to such people as compromised or deceived. While CMI firmly believes the theory of evolution to be a lie, we do accept that one can be genuinely saved and, at the same time, in serious error in this matter of origins and biblical authority. The doctrine of theistic evolution undermines some of the most fundamental tenets of Christianity, such as the origin and meaning of sin and death and therefore the Gospel itself. It weakens and destroys the very foundations of our faith. Hence, I must conclude that even believers may be used as tools of Satan in this area. Moreover, it would be naive to imagine that all theistic evolutionists professing to be Christians are saved. In the parable of the weeds, Jesus did teach that there would always be the unsaved in the church (Matthew 13:24–30). When one sees those who, fully aware of the doctrinal implications for the rest of Scripture, strongly oppose biblical creation and passionately urge others to embrace theistic evolution instead, it’s hard not to be reminded of the fierce wolves among the flock (Acts 20:29), even when they appear outwardly as gentle sheep in other respects (see Matthew 7:15).

I feel frustration towards theistic evolutionists, not hatred. Their ignorance of the scientific facts is enough to bring me to tears. They are convinced that science has shown evolution to be true because so many scientists say so. However, when I ask these scientists for the evidence for evolution they are unable to answer me. It seems to be like the emperor’s new clothes. Everyone is telling everyone else there’s lots of evidence supporting Darwin’s theory because everyone else is saying so. When creation scientists present the evidence against evolution it is not seriously considered. The evolutionist’s mindset seems to be ‘however strong an argument against evolution appears, it cannot really be valid because evolution is a fact.’ With this approach, however, a person can never discover that they are wrong.

The Bible is God’s word, and as such must have been written to last forever. From the earliest desert nomads who first knew Him, with no scientific knowledge through to our own scientific age and beyond. It cannot therefore always be as simple as it seems. God is loving but also beyond our comprehension.

Your comment appears to imply that the contrast between the Bible’s view of origins and that of evolution is somehow compelled by the need for ‘desert nomads’ to understand creation. This does not fit the facts however. If God really ‘created by evolution’, the many children’s books on evolution show that this can be presented very simply.

The Bible is indeed God’s eternal word and, like its author, its truth and message do not change (Hebrews 13:8). The unchanging nature of the Bible’s history is in stark contrast to the theory of evolution which changes radically on a regular basis. Professor Provine wrote, “Most of what I learned of the field [of evolutionary biology] in graduate school (1964–68) is either wrong or significantly changed.”11

What never ceases to astonish me is that people don’t realise that ‘facts’ which are no longer facts were never facts in the first place. The ‘facts of evolution’ which people were taught fifty years ago were never based on science in the way people generally think of the term. If they were, they would still be facts today. Yet many of the previous generation became theistic evolutionists based on these ‘facts’. The same is true of this generation. They are embracing theistic evolution based on today’s ‘facts’. Tragically, they don’t realise that these latest ‘facts’ are no more scientific than yesterday’s ‘facts’ which have now been consigned to the rubbish bin.

The fact the two creation stories clearly contradict each other in the order in which things were created is another clue that you may be wrong.

I assume you are referring to the alleged contradictions between the accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. The sceptics claim that Genesis 1 teaches that the plants were made before man, but Genesis 2:5–7 that man was made before the plants. This is easily answered by the context. Genesis 2:5–6 refers to the plants that God created specifically for Adam and Eve to cultivate, not plants in general as found throughout the earth. They are described as being shrubs and plants “of the field” (Genesis 2:5), rather than the earth as a whole. These had not yet been created “because there was no man to work the ground” (Genesis 2:5). It is ridiculous to argue that this refers to the plants created in Genesis 1:11, as Adam could not possibly have tended all the plants in the world. Genesis 2:9 speaks specifically of the Garden of Eden and how God made “trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.” These were also created specially for Adam and Eve, and speaks of God’s exceptional, loving care for the first couple. Regarding the order of animals being created, see also Genesis contradictions?

I wonder though, how you could possibly think that, overall, a position like yours, that claims that the Bible contradicts itself, would be either more pleasing to God or more likely to have people commit their lives to following the Christ it portrays? How could they ultimately trust the Bible, which claims to be the very Word of God, on anything?

I will pray that you publish this for those who use your site.

We have.

Published: 10 January 2013

References

  1. Smith, H., Evolution and Evolutionism, The Christian Century 99(23):755, 1982. Return to text.
  2. Personal communication with Calvin Smith; creation.com/enemy-revealed. Return to text.
  3. Provine, W.B., ‘No free will’ in Catching up with the Vision, Margaret W Rossiter (Ed.), Chicago University Press, p. S123, 1999. Return to text.
  4. Hull, D., The God of the Galápagos, Nature 352:485–86, 8 August 1991. Return to text.
  5. Chain, E., Social Responsibility and the Scientist in Modern Western Society, Council of Christians and Jews, UK, 1970, p. 25. Return to text.
  6. Davies, P., The Fifth Miracle, Penguin Books, UK, 1999. Return to text.
  7. Kauffman, S., At Home in the Universe: the Search for Laws of Self-Organisation and Complexity, Oxford University Press, UK, 1995. Return to text.
  8. Mazur, S., The Altenberg 16: An expose of the evolution industry, North Atlantic Books, USA, 2010. Return to text.
  9. Morris, S.C., Life’s Solution: Inevitable humans in a lonely universe, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2003. Return to text.
  10. Shapiro, J.A., Evolution: A view from the 21st century, FT Press Science, USA, 2001. Return to text.
  11. Provine, W.B., A Review of Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, National Academy of Sciences, 18 Feb 1999; http://web.archive.org/web/20040709130607/fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/NAS_guidebook/provine_1.html, last accessed 8 December, 2012. Return to text.

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