By B.J. Thomas
The belief in materialistic evolution has grown, over two decades, with amazing rapidity. It has been widely published, talked, discussed, taught, and propagated. When one’s faith begins to tumble it usually begins in a class where evolution is taught as a fact.
What is evolution? The very word “evolution” can mean many things. Mere change is not the issue. The battle of truth is fought on two fronts. The first is organic evolution, the belief that everything now in existence came from a single change, billions of years ago, and man evolved over countless millions of years from a one cell amoeba through fishes, then through amphibious animals-as snakes, lizards, and frogs-and then through different land animals-from opossums, apes, and ape-like animals to his present complete state. This is the atheist position. A fantastic fairy tale. As one man said, “It is a marvel what people will believe if it isn’t in the Bible.” The second is theistic evolution. This is a belief in the theory of evolution-that all life evolved in this manner through vast periods of time, but God started it off. The theistic evolutionist is a compromiser. He wants to believe evolution and the Bible at the same time. He tries to fit Genesis one and two to his theory. It can’t be done. It is impossible.
Why does a person believe in the theory of evolution anyway? Basically, it is because he does not want to accept the Bible account of creation. Evolution presents the alternative. Henry M. Morris has aptly described the situation in his book, The Twilight of Evolution, “The main reason most educated people believe in evolution is simply because they have been told that most educated people believe in evolution!” Personally, after talking with hundreds of evolutionists and after reading hundreds, probably thousands, of evolutionary books and articles, the writer is more and more convinced of two facts: (1) There is not one shred of genuine evidence, either in science or scripture, for the validity of evolution; (2) The only reason why most people seem to believe in evolution is either because they want to believe in it or else because they have been cowed into accepting it out of fear of being called ignorant.”
The theory of evolution is groundless. It is fraught with countless absurdities. The evolutionist tries to prove his theory in the following areas: Biological Classifications, Natural Selection, Vestigial Organs, and Missing Links.
Biological Classifications
The evolutionist believes all life developed from lower to higher forms. He tries to rest much of his case on comparative anatomy. By this he attempts to compare the anatomy of man with lower forms-up to the ape family. When he gets to the ape family he points out all of the resemblances, and from this comparison he concludes that there must be kinship. He argues that animals have eyes, ears, and lungs just as man, and from this he concludes that they have a common ancestry. It proves they have a common creator. God created all of them.
To point up the absurdity of his case, there are questions the evolutionist cannot answer. If there is no God, and man and beasts have a common ancestry-if they came from the same natural source-why is it wrong to kill a man, and not a cow? The only answer I have ever heard to this question is that man is more intelligent. Then how about people who are mentally retarded. Then, too, if this were so, it would be a whole lot worse to kill a cow than a dodo bird.
Another question evolution cannot answer! If life came from dead matter and there was a crossing of the kinds, where is a record of it and why does it not happen again? A vegetable has never evolved into an animal; a snake has never evolved into a bird. Their theory requires the crossing of the kinds, not once but many times. The law in the book of Genesis is that everything brings forth after its kind.
Natural Selection
Charles Darwin propagated the “survival of the fittest”-meaning the offspring of the most fit inherited only the best characteristics-enabling only the fittest to survive, and each improvement evolved into other improvements and changes. This theory was called “Natural Selection.” In nature, just the opposite of this is true. You can not argue. against a demonstration. The best does not survive without special care, painstaking effort and trial and error education. Put a few fine cattle with scrubby ones, and left to themselves, they will all become scrubby. The “weeds” take over. Every farm boy knows this.
Vestigial Organs
Evolutionists contend that certain organs in the human body are useless organs and are throwbacks from different ages when man was developing and evolving to his resent state. These include the appendix, the small muscles which attach the ear to the skull, and the tonsils. However, the more science learns about the human body, the less it labels any organ as “useless.” A good definition of science is that man learns what God already knows. The fact that these organs may be removed without apparent ill results, does not prove that they are useless. A man may live a useful life with his eyelashes cut off, but they are useful on.
Missing Links
The grossest kind of misrepresentation in this evolutionary idea is the so-called “Missing Links.” The tragic thing is that young people are made to believe that missing links have been found. All of them have turned out to be hoaxes, fakes, and frauds. For nearly forty years the “Piltdown Man” was palmed off on the public as the half-million year old missing link. In 1912, twenty fragments of bones were discovered near Sussex, England. From these fragments, the “Piltdown Man” was constructed. In 1950, scientists began to question this. Later, the whole thing was discovered as a grand hoax, and these 20 bone-fragments were the bones of a modern ape. All of the others have turned out about like this. Some others are: the “Neanderthal Man,” the “Cro-Magnon Man,” the “Java man,” the “Peking man,” and the “Heidelberg man.” It is amazing what a few bone-fragments, a wild imagination, and lots of Plaster of Paris will do. The `Missing Link” is still missing.
Conclusion
The Bible is authored by God. The creation story is true. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness . . .” (2 Tim. 3:16). In selecting the writers of the Bible, God selected “holy men” (2 Pet. 1:21). They taught words “not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth” (1 Cor. 1:13).
Brother R. L. Whiteside had about the best description of the fantastic fairy tale of evolutidn that I have read. He said, “I have heard many big fish yarns, but the evolutionists ask us to believe the biggest one yet. Somewhere in the remote past, they say, a fish flapped out on dry-land and his fins turned into legs. After that, the story of Jonah and the whale seems easy.”
Truth Magazine XIX: 46, pp. 733-734
October 2, 1975