When considering God’s revelation given to us in the Bible, it is correctly argued that He only gave us what He intended to communicate. It wasn’t His intention to give us further details and information that we often enquire about.
With this in mind, some who wish to keep a faith in both the Bible and the idea of evolution, argue that instead of passing on all the details of evolution in Genesis, God created a simple story with a representative character for the beginning of mankind and called him Adam. And, this was so that God could focus on the main messages that He wanted to communicate like Him being the Creator, and later about Abraham and the promise of a Seed. According to this argument then, Genesis is part literal and part fiction with the creation stories of Adam & Eve (and probably the story of Noah) the most difficult to swallow as altogether factual.
In effect, what they are saying is that in the Book of Beginnings, commonly known as Genesis, where we are told about our beginnings, starts out with a simple fabricated story. Doesn’t it seem absurd for God to go against the intention of His book and start us off with poetic vagueness about our beginnings? And, what’s more, with a story that in the light of evolutionary science hardly explains the beginnings properly at all. Or perhaps this sounds plausible to some, thinking God wouldn’t want to leave someone with the long-winded details of “Your dad was a Neanderthal and before that…all the way back to dust (or whatever their version is).”
Some suggest that the evolution story, with the complexities that it involves, wouldn’t have been grasped by early man. (No doubt! We still don’t grasp it today!) However, putting sarcasm aside, if you don’t need all the details of modern science to teach the basic story of evolution to little kids, then these are no arguments as to why it couldn’t have been communicated back then either. Who can’t grasp the “Land Before Time” level of communication!? You don’t need the understanding of the modern man to believe basic ideas. For example, the book of Leviticus is full of laws on hygiene that would not have been completely understood until modern advancement in medicine. Yet they believed and obeyed a message that modern medicine only now fully understands.
Believing God’s written word that has been inspirationally flawless for thousands of years seems far more logical than following a theory that for all its noise and influence has absolutely no real evidence and runs contrary to God’s word. Now, had the theory of evolution produced proof, we would have needed to reconsider our understanding of the Word of God. Because, make no mistake, God’s word would remain flawless. Yet, despite no proof for evolution we have many today who would want to marry the two.
Next time I hope to show how the Bible demands a view that makes evolution a Biblical impossibility. Interestingly, Jesus is our proof. Whatever you believe, I hope I’ve got you thinking! (See The Fact of Adam vs. The Fancy of Evolution – Part 1)
Rob
Real Church Life 