We all like science. In fact, we couldn’t live without it. Science has helped us put man on the moon, put the Internet in our pockets, see 14 billion light-years into space, and unveil a universe of microbiological machines within each living cell. Science has given us life-saving vaccines against polio, smallpox and measles. Yet science owes an incredible debt to theology.1 History repeatedly demonstrates that where men have built their epistemic foundations upon Scripture, their science has flourished.2 But subsequent to the “Age of Enlightenment” (c. 1650–1800), science has ascended to the throne, happily usurping the Scriptures in every place she can. As Michael Bauman puts it, “Theology, the Queen of the Sciences, has been banished to the back of the bus by her own bigoted descendants.”3 We need to remember that man is fallible, and as the history of science has repeatedly shown, so is science. One of the most audacious and specious theories to fall under the broad umbrella of ‘science’ in the last 200 years is the notion that everything evolved over billions of years. The theory suffers from innumerable theological, philosophical and scientific problems. But in this article I would ask you to consider the following theological problems created by maintaining an evolutionary account of origins.
- It makes death our friend instead of our enemy. Theistic evolutionists, in an endeavour to embrace both Darwin and Moses, claim that God created all the original kinds of animals and plants through a process of natural selection (contra Genesis 1–2). Natural selection is indeed a recognised phenomenon at work on our planet, empowered by the reality of death. But according to Genesis 3, death came as a result of Adam’s disobedience and God’s curse upon this earth.4 When we reject this history, we are compelled instead to view death, bloodshed, violence, disease and the general struggle for survival as the God-given blessings of a perfect world. Yet this makes little sense of 1 Corinthians 15:26, and construes the God of creation to be a moral monster….