The Inherent Incompatibility of Theistic Evolution

From SSNet 4thQ 2012: A Defiled Image

One of the many great obstacles for those who read evolution into the biblical creation account is the Fall.

In the Bible, the world and humanity were perfect when created, a teaching that contradicts evolution at the most basic level. Only through transgression did suffering and death enter the world, a concept that’s contrary to the evolutionary model, in which suffering and death are part of the very means of creation itself.

Imagine what it would say about the character of God if He created us in the manner that evolution teaches. God uses processes of violence, selfishness, and dominance of the strong against the weak in order to create a morally flawless and selfless being who “falls” into a state of violence, selfishness, and dominance of the strong over the weak-a state from which he has to be redeemed or else face final punishment.

Think, too, of what evolution does to the plan of salvation. The Lord incarnates into an evolved ape created through the vicious and painfully murderous cycle of natural selection, all in order to abolish death, “the last enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26)? But how can death be the “enemy” when it was one of God’s chosen means for creating humans? The Lord must have expended plenty of dead homo erectus, homo heidelbergensis, and homo neanderthalensis in order to finally get one creature into His own image (homo sapien). So, Jesus comes to save humankind from the very process God used to create humankind in the first place? The whole idea is foolish and unbiblical.

Read Romans 5:12-19 and Colossians 3:10. How do these verses help us to understand what sin has done to humanity? How does the great controversy play into this whole picture? See 1 John 3:8.

Sin has touched all aspects of human life, and even the earth itself. Ellen White talked about a “threefold” curse that has rested on the world, the first resulting from Adam’s fall, the next from Cain’s murder of Abel, and then the damage caused by the Flood. Theologians also talk about “total depravity,” the idea that every aspect of humanity, life, and personality has been damaged by sin. As we look around at the world, and even at ourselves, it’s not hard to see, is it?

Some believe that violence, suffering, and death were all part of how God created humanity. Others believe that violence, suffering, and death were all part of how Satan seeks to destroy the humanity that God has created. Think about the differences in the character of God that these two opposing views present.