An Enquiry
by
Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi
Before we say any word on this topic, it is important to
first understand what today’s Western academic community officially believes
and teaches—with regards to the story of Creation as recorded in the Bible, and
Evolution as taught by today’s science—,that is, what is officially
believed and taught as “Truth” by
the academic community in today’s Western world. Without a waste of time, I take
you to the Encyclopaedia Britannica—a “reference
work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or that treats a
particular branch of knowledge in a comprehensive manner”, the oldest and
longest continually published English-language general print encyclopaedia, (print version: 1768–2012, retired
in 2012 in favour of its electronic versions). In a topic treating the “Creation Myth” the Encyclopaedia Britannica says:
“The myth of creation is the symbolic narrative of
the beginning of the world as understood by a particular community. The later
doctrines of creation are interpretations of this myth in light of the
subsequent history and needs of the community. Thus, for example, all theology
and speculation concerning creation in the Christian community are based on the myth of creation in the
biblical book of Genesis and of the new creation in Jesus Christ. Doctrines of creation are based on the myth of
creation, which expresses and embodies all of the fertile possibilities for
thinking about this subject within a particular religious community.”[1]
“Myth of Creation”? All “speculation” in
the Christian community are based on the “myth of creation” as recorded in
Genesis? And what is a myth? The same Encyclopaedia
says a myth is “a symbolic narrative, usually of unknown origin and at
least partly traditional, that ostensibly relates actual events and that is
especially associated with religious belief. It is distinguished from symbolic
behaviour (cult, ritual) and symbolic places or objects (temples, icons). Myths are specific accounts of gods or
superhuman beings involved in extraordinary events or circumstances in a time
that is unspecified but which is understood as existing apart from ordinary
human experience. The term mythology denotes both the study of myth
and the body of myths belonging to a particular religious tradition.”[2]
It goes further:
“As with all religious symbolism,
there is no attempt to justify mythic narratives or even to render them
plausible. Every myth presents itself as an authoritative, factual account, no matter how much the narrated events are
at variance with natural law or ordinary experience. By extension from this
primary religious meaning, the word myth may also be used more loosely
to refer to an ideological belief when that belief is the object of a
quasi-religious faith; an example would be the Marxist eschatological myth of
the withering away of the state.
“While the outline of myths from a past period or from a
society other than one's own can usually be seen quite clearly, to recognize
the myths that are dominant in one's own time and society is always difficult.
This is hardly surprising, because a myth has its authority not by proving
itself but by presenting itself. In this sense the authority of a myth indeed
“goes without saying,” and the myth can be outlined in detail only when its authority
is no longer unquestioned but has been rejected or overcome in some manner by
another, more comprehensive myth.
It continues: “The word myth derives from the Greek mythos,
which has a range of meanings from “word,” through “saying” and “story,” to “fiction”;
the unquestioned validity of mythos can be contrasted with logos,
the word whose validity or truth can be argued and demonstrated. Because myths
narrate fantastic events with no attempt at proof, it is sometimes assumed that
they are simply stories with no factual basis, and the word has become a synonym for falsehood or, at best,
misconception. In the study of religion, however, it is important to
distinguish between myths and stories that are merely untrue.”[3]
(All emphases are mine.)
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Typical examples of mythical narratives are the stories told
in Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, where we see gods and goddesses
like Greek Zeus (Latin Jupiter), Pluto (Dis), Pallas Athene (Minerva), Artemis
(Diana), Hera (Juno) and others playing wonderful roles. The Encyclopaedia
Britannica, in effect, categorises the biblical stories with these
ancient mythical stories.
It is interesting to note that this same Encyclopaedia, in
other places, says many good things about Christianity. That’s just the
“method” modern intellectuals use to destroy the Christian Faith — say good
things about it when the matter isn’t a serious one, but deny it altogether
when it is.
Human Evolution
Human evolution is the process by which human
beings are believed to have developed on Earth from now-extinct primates. We humans, according to zoologists, are Homo sapiens, a culture-bearing, upright-walking species
that lives on the ground and first evolved in Africa between 100,000 and
200,000 years ago. We are now the only living members of what many zoologists
refer to as the human tribe, Hominini, but there is abundant fossil
“evidence” to indicate that we were preceded for millions of years by other hominins, such as Australopithecus, and that our species also lived for
a time contemporaneously with at least one other member of our genus, Homo
neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals). In addition, we and our
predecessors have always shared the Earth with other apelike primates, from the
modern-day gorilla to the long-extinct Dryopithecus. That we and the extinct hominins are somehow related and that we
and the apes, both living and extinct, are also somehow related is accepted by
anthropologists and biologists. Yet the exact
nature of our evolutionary
“relationships” has been the subject of debate and investigation since British
naturalist Charles Darwin published his monumental
books On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871).
We have already quoted the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the
so-called “creation myth.” Now, on evolution, the same Encyclopaedia says:
“...theory in biology postulating that the various types of
plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other
pre-existing types and that the distinguishable differences are due to
modifications in successive generations. The theory of evolution is one of the
fundamental keystones of modern biological theory.
“The diversity of the living world is staggering. More than 2
million existing species of organisms have been named
and described; many more remain to be discovered—from 10 million to 30 million,
according to some estimates. What is impressive is not just the numbers but
also the incredible heterogeneity in size, shape, and way of life—from lowly bacteria, measuring less
than a thousandth of a millimetre in diameter, to stately sequoias, rising 100
metres (300 feet) above the ground and weighing several thousand tons; from
bacteria living in hot springs at temperatures near the boiling point of water
to fungi and algae thriving on the ice masses of Antarctica and in saline pools
at −23 °C (−9 °F); and from giant tube worms discovered living near
hydrothermal vents on the dark ocean floor to spiders and larkspur plants
existing on the slopes of Mount Everest more than 6,000 metres (19,700 feet)
above sea level.
“The virtually infinite variations on life are the fruit of
the evolutionary process. All living
creatures are related by descent from common ancestors. Humans and other
mammals descend from shrewlike creatures that lived more than 150 million years
ago; mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes share as ancestors
aquatic worms that lived 600 million years ago; and all plants and animals
derive from bacteria-like microorganisms that originated more than 3 billion
years ago. Biological evolution is a process of descent with modification.
Lineages of organisms change through generations; diversity arises because the
lineages that descend from common ancestors diverge through time.
“The 19th-century English naturalist Charles Darwin argued that organisms come about by
evolution, and he provided a scientific
explanation, essentially correct
but incomplete, of how evolution occurs and why it is that organisms have
features — such as wings, eyes, and kidneys — clearly structured to serve
specific functions. Natural selection was the fundamental concept in his
explanation. Natural selection occurs because individuals having more-useful
traits, such as more-acute vision or swifter legs, survive better and produce
more progeny than individuals with less-favourable traits. Genetics, a science born in the 20th
century, reveals in detail how natural selection works and led to the
development of the modern theory of evolution. Beginning in the 1960s, a
related scientific discipline, molecular biology, enormously advanced
knowledge of biological evolution and made it possible to investigate detailed
problems that had seemed completely out of reach only a short time previously—for
example, how similar the genes of humans and chimpanzees might be
(they differ in about 1–2 percent of the units that make up the genes).”[4]
And the evidence for all this? It goes on:
“Darwin and other 19th-century biologists found compelling evidence for biological
evolution in the comparative study of
living organisms, in their geographic distribution, and in the fossil remains
of extinct organisms. Since Darwin's
time, the evidence from these sources has become considerably stronger and more
comprehensive, while biological disciplines that emerged more recently—genetics,
biochemistry, physiology, ecology, animal behaviour (ethology), and especially
molecular biology—have supplied powerful
additional evidence and detailed confirmation. The amount of information
about evolutionary history stored in the DNA and proteins of living things is
virtually unlimited; scientists can reconstruct any detail of the evolutionary
history of life by investing sufficient time and laboratory resources.
“Evolutionists no longer
are concerned with obtaining evidence to support the fact of evolution but
rather are concerned with what sorts of knowledge can be obtained from
different sources of evidence.”[5]
And so on! In other words the issue of “evidence” for
evolution has been settled, says the
Encyclopaedia—we are rather now concerned
“with what sorts of knowledge can be obtained from different sources of
evidence.” Notice how the Encyclopaedia explains carefully that mythical narratives—including the account of creation
as recorded in the Bible—“are at variance
with natural law or ordinary human experience” but teaches dogmatically that evolution, a doctrine suggesting
that it is possible human beings evolved from animals, is not at variance with natural law or ordinary human experience! And how,
also, it says that “Myths are specific accounts of gods or superhuman beings
involved in extraordinary events or circumstances in a time that is unspecified” but pretends as if the time
humans actually evolved (some say it
was millions of years ago, others billions of years ago) is specific! Ladies
and Gentlemen, that is modern Western society and its Western education in
action!
It is important to note that the people writing and saying
all this are not just atheists or agnostics or secularists or members of other
religions, the majority of them are in fact “good” Christians.
And how does the
Catholic Church respond to Evolution?
I
need not say much on this. Evolution is a modern phenomenon which became
prominent in the twentieth century. In fact, the first pope to talk about it
was Pope Pius XII (1949-1958), in his 1950 encyclical, Humani Generis. In Humani Generis Evolution
is mentioned in two places, paragraphs 5 and 36. In paragraph 5 the pope
writes:
“If
anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily
discover the principal trends that not a few learned men are following. Some
imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully
proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all
things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the
world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so
that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God,
they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical
materialism.”[6]
In
paragraph 36 he writes:
“For this reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church
does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences
and sacred theology, research and discussions on the part of men experienced in
both fields take place with regard to the doctrine of Evolution, in as far as
it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and
living matter—for the Catholic Faith obliges us to hold that souls are
immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the
reasons for both opinions, that is, those favourable and those unfavourable to
Evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and
measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgement of the
Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the
Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith. Some, however, rashly
transgress this liberty of discussion when they act as if the origin of the
human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain
and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning
on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of Divine
Revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.”[7]
A
careless reading of the above quote can lead one to an easy conclusion that
Pope Pius XII has taught an excellent Catholic doctrine—“for the Catholic Faith obliges us to hold
that souls are immediately created by God”! But a careful observation shows the pope in this same
statement vomited one of the greatest poisons in human history! In June
(2017), I republished Doug Linder’s 2004 article, The Vatican's View of Evolution: The Story of Two Popes. In it, Doug rightly comments on this encyclical:
“The document
makes plain the pope’s fervent hope that evolution will prove to be a passing
scientific fad, and it attacks those persons who “imprudently and indiscreetly
hold that evolution …explains the origin of all
things.” Nonetheless, Pius XII states that nothing in Catholic
doctrine is contradicted by a theory that suggests one specie might evolve into
another — even if that specie is man. The Pope declared:
“The Teaching
Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present
state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the
part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine
of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as
coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to
hold that souls are immediately created by God.
“In other
words, the Pope could live with evolution, so long as the process of
“ensouling” humans was left to God...”
In case you still haven’t gotten
the point, Pope Pius XII is here saying it could be possible that human body
actually evolved from animals and
then—wonder of all wonders—at a certain period in history—perhaps two million
years after that evolution—was “ensouled” by God! This statement, coming from a Roman Pontiff,
is just horrible. Where did he get
such a teaching? It certainly wasn’t from Scripture because there is nothing
like that in Sacred Scripture. For example, the Bible describes in easily understood language how God
created woman by transforming a rib of the first man, Adam, into Eve, the first
woman (Genesis 2:21, 22). And in case you don’t know what a rib is, it is one of the curved bones round the chest. So Adam’s rib is a part of his
flesh, a part of his body and not a
part of his soul! Here then, the Bible makes it very clear that Eve’s body—and not her soul as implied by Pope Pius
XII!—originated from Adam’s body. In other words, Eve’s body did not evolve from animal or other species. So
where did the pope get this “ensoulment” theory?
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| Pius XII |
Doug Linder goes on:
“In 1951,
interestingly, Pius XII (who so grudgingly acknowledged the possibility of
evolution) celebrated news from the world of science that the universe might
have been created in a Big Bang. (The term, first employed by
astronomer Fred Hoyle was meant to be derisive, but it stuck.) In a
speech before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences he offered an enthusiastic
endorsement of the theory: "…it would seem that present-day science, with
one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the
august instant of the primordial Fiat Lux [Let there be Light], when along with
matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, and the
elements split and churned and formed into millions of
galaxies." (ME, 254-55)
“But the Pope didn’t stop
there. He went on to express the surprising conclusion that the Big
Bang proved the existence of God:
“Thus, with
that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, [science] has
confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction
as to the epoch when the world came forth from the hands of the
Creator. Hence, creation took place. We say: therefore,
there is a Creator. Therefore, God exists!”
Doug Linder adds, interestingly: “The man who laid
the groundwork for the Big Bang theory, astronomer Edwin Hubble, received a
letter from a friend asking whether the Pope’s announcement might qualify him
for “sainthood.” The friend enthused that until he read the
statement in the morning’s paper, “I had not dreamed that the Pope would have
to fall back on you for proof of the existence of God.” (ME, 255).”
The point to note here is that Pope Pius XII, despite his
seemingly “attack” on evolution, actually believed in it just like other
innumerable Western men and women do currently. Hence, he it was who laid the
foundation for the future Vatican II popes—in particular John Paul II—to consecrated the doctrine of Evolution.
On John Paul II’s endorsement of the doctrine, Doug Linder
writes:
“When the pope came to the subject of the scientific
merits of evolution, it soon became clear how much things had changed in the
nearly fifty years since the Vatican last addressed the
issue. John Paul said:
“Today,
almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has
led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a
hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been
progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in
various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor
fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in
itself a significant argument in favour of the theory.” (Emphasis mine.)
Doug
goes on:
“Evolution, a doctrine that Pius XII only
acknowledged as an unfortunate possibility, John Paul accepts forty-six years
later “as an effectively proven fact.” (ROA, 82)
“Pope John Paul’s words on evolution received major
play in international news stories. Evolution proponents such as
Stephen Jay Gould enthusiastically welcomed what he saw as the Pope’s
endorsement of evolution. Gould was reminded of a passage in
Proverbs (25:25): “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far
country.” (ROA, 820) Creationists, however, expressed dismay
at the pontiff’s words and suggested that the initial news reports might have
been based on a faulty translation. (John Paul gave the speech in
French.) Perhaps, some creationists argued, the pope really said,
“the theory evolution is more than one hypothesis,” not “the
theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis.” If
that were so, the Pope might have been suggesting that there are multiple
theories of evolution, and all of them might be wrong.
“The “faulty translation” theory, however, suffered
at least two problems. Most obviously, the theory collapsed when the
Catholic News Service of the Vatican confirmed that the Pope did indeed
mean “more than a hypothesis,” not “more than one hypothesis.” The
other problem stemmed from a reading of the passage in more complete context. In
the speech, the Pope makes clear in his speech that he understood the
difference between evolution (the highly probable fact) and the mechanism for
evolution, a matter of hot dispute among scientists. John Paul said,
“And, to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak
of several theories of evolution.” He recognized that there were
“different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution” and different
“philosophies” upon which the theory of evolution is based. The
philosophy out of bounds to Catholics, the pope indicated, is one which is
“materialist” and which denies the possibility that man “was created in the
image and likeness of God.” Human dignity, the pope suggested,
cannot be reconciled with such a “reductionist” philosophy. Thus, as
with Pius XII, the critical teaching of the Church is that God infuses souls
into man—regardless of what process he might have used to create our physical
bodies. Science, the Pope insisted, can never identify for us “the
moment of the transition into the spiritual”—that is a matter exclusively with
the magisterium of religion.
“Most scientists would be content to let Pius and
John Paul have their “ensoulment” theory and walk away happy. Not
Richard Dawkins, however. In an essay on the Pope’s evolution
message called “You Can’t Have it Both Ways” the controversy-loving biologist
accused Pope John Paul of “casuistical double-talk” and
“obscurantism.” (SAR, 209) Dawkins took issue with the
Pope’s declaring off-limits theories suggesting that the human mind is an
evolutionary product. In his address the Pope said: "[I]f the human
body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is
immediately created by God…Consequently, theories of evolution which…consider
the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere
epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man."
“In his essay, Dawkins paraphrased the Pope’s
statement: “In plain language, there came a moment in the evolution
of hominids when God intervened and injected a human soul into a previously
animal lineage.” Dawkins expresses mock curiosity as to when God
jumped into the evolution picture: “When? A million years
ago? Two million years ago? Between Homo erectus and Homo
sapiens? Between ‘archaic’ Homo sapiens and H.
sapiens?” Clearly, Dawkins finds the divine intervention
implausible. He suggests that the ensoulment theory becomes a
necessary part of Catholic theology in order to sustain the important distinction
between species in Catholic morality. It is fine for a Catholic to
eat meat, Dawkins notes, but “abortion and euthanasia are murder because human life
is involved.”
“Dawkins contends that evolution tells us that
there is no “great gulf between Homo sapiens and the rest of
the animal kingdom.” The Pope’s insistence to the contrary is, in
the biologist’s opinion, “an antievolutionary intrusion into the domain of
science.”
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| John Paul II |
“Dawkins
makes no secret of his disdain for the distinction so critical to the Pope John
Paul’s 1996 speech on evolution:
“I suppose it is gratifying to have the pope as an ally in the struggle
against fundamentalist creationism. It is certainly amusing to see
the rug pulled out from under the feet of Catholic creationists such as Michael
Behe. Even so, given a choice between honest-to-goodness
fundamentalism on the one hand, and the obscurantist, disingenuous doublethink
of the Roman Catholic Church on the other, I know which I prefer. (SAR,
211)”.
As for Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict
XVI), we see his endorsement of Evolution is his scandalous 1981 book In The Beginning—an evil work which he
hasn’t repudiated even till date. In
the book, Joseph Ratzinger writes:
“...for science has long since disposed
of the concepts (Genesis: l-49) that we have just now heard...we hear of the
Big Bang, which happened billions of years ago....it was rather in complex ways
and over vast periods of time that earth and the universe were constructed. We
cannot say: creation or evolution. The proper way of putting it is: creation
and evolution...the progress of thought in the last two decades helps us to
grasp anew the inner unity of creation and evolution and of faith and reason.”[8]
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| Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) |
Again, In the Beginning:
“All of this is well and good, one might say, but is it not ultimately disproved by our scientific knowledge of how the human being evolved from the animal kingdom? Now, more reflective spirits have long been aware that there is no either-or here. We cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the ‘project’ of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary—rather than mutually exclusive—realities.’”[9]
Then came the anti-pope, Jorge Bergoglio—Francis! As I wrote
in my article, Nigerian Clergy Following
a Manifestly Heretical anti-pope, “Francis”!:
“Francis also doesn’t believe in the Bible—but he
fanatically believes in evolution. On October 27, 2014, “Pope” Francis
said, in a speech to members of the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, that
Evolution and the Big Bang are real. (See: Pope Francis declares Evolution and the Big Bang theory are real and God
is not a magician with a magic wand ).”
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| Francis |
“…Evolution in nature is not
inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the
creation of beings that evolve,” he said. But on the Bible: On June 29,
2014, when asked about misogyny and women in the Church, Francis—referring to
the biblical account of God’s creation of woman, Gen. 2: 21-23, said:“The
fact is that woman was taken from a rib … (then he laughed
strongly). I’m kidding, that’s a joke. I agree that the question
of women must be explored more deeply, otherwise one cannot understand the
Church herself.” (ILMESSAGGERO). Similarly, on June 2,
2013, “Pope” Francis, speaking about Jesus multiplying the bread and fish,
said: “Here’s the miracle, that it is more a sharing than a multiplying”!
As I cautioned in that article, “Carefully note that even when Francis talks about “Jesus”, it is NOT the Jesus of Scripture we all know but a radically different one. His “Jesus” is not God but man. For example on October 28, 2014, “Pope” Francis said: “Jesus prays to the Father for us”. (NEWS.VA). This statement is subtly blasphemous. Jesus is God, so He doesn’t pray for anybody, rather we humans pray to Him, and the saints and the Virgin Mary pray to the Father, to Jesus, and to the Holy Spirit for us.”
I remember, years ago while I was in secondary
school, (in SS1 to be precise), the reaction of students and even the teacher
himself the first time the doctrine of evolution was introduced to us by our
biology teacher. Everybody, including the teacher himself, laughed. Of course,
we all laughed because we had not the slightest doubt that it was false. But that is not the case with
many of today’s Westerners. Now putting aside the teachings of Vatican II popes
regarding Evolution, I mean Vatican II popes believed by some to be “false
popes”, the above statements from Pope Pius XII—believed to be “a true pope”—Pius
XII who wasn’t even supporting but “opposing” Evolution—serve to demonstrate
how powerful the influence of Evolution is currently on Western minds—I mean,
both the good and the bad.
Compatible with the
Bible?
In
the very chapter one, verse one, of the Book of Genesis, we read: “In the
beginning, God created heaven and earth.” God Himself put this great truth in the very first
verse of the Bible. He wanted us to know, right from verse 1 of the Bible, that He had created. The Bible
further makes it clear that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit were each personally involved in creation—“let us...” (Gen. 1:26).
This
record of creation found in the Bible cannot be reconciled with the theory of
evolution, which holds that the world and its living species have evolved over
millions or billions of years ago; in other words, that neither is a static
creation of God, but are both instead constantly changing.
As for the time frame in which that creation took place, no
problem. The six days of Creation Week as recorded in Genesis must be of the same length as our days—despite the fact that the Hebrew
word yom, translated “day,” can have a variety of meanings,
including an indefinite period of time, which has led some to suggest that
these six days might then be equated with the billions of years claimed by
geologists.
But whenever a word in Scripture
can have a variety of meanings, we must go to the context to determine what
it does mean and not
be content with what it might mean. When we do, we discover that the first time yom is
used, it is defined as a solar day—Genesis 1:3—and then a total day/night cycle
(1:3).
Again, yom is
modified by evening and morning,
which in Hebrew can only mean a literal day. It is also modified by an ordinal
number (first, second, etc.), a construction limited in Hebrew to that of a
literal day. Elsewhere the six days of creation are equated with the six days
of our work week (Exodus 20:11), a formula incorporated in the fourth of the
Ten Commandments regarding the Sabbath rest. We should mention that the use of
a numeral to modify “days,” in this case “6,” is again reserved for a literal
day in Hebrew, as is the use of the plural word “days.”
As Dr John Morris rightly points
out (in his article, How Old Is The Earth According To The
Bible?):
“Suffice it to say that no one
could conclude that Scripture specifically places Creation any longer ago than
a few thousand years, and to my knowledge no one does. Many do hold to an older
position, but not for Scriptural reasons. They are convinced by radioisotope
dating, perhaps, or maybe the molecular clock of mutation rates, or some other
line of thinking, but not from Scripture.
“Scripture teaches a young earth, and the time has come for Christians
to stop twisting Scripture to fit the evolutionary and uniformitarian
speculations of some scientists about the unobserved past. We suggest it's time
for such Christians to stop calling themselves "Bible-believing"
Christians and start using some such name as "world-believing"
Christians.”
The language in Genesis is that used to set forth simple
historical truths. It is neither allegorical nor poetical. The theistic
evolutionist, biblically, has placed himself in an untenable position. How does
one decide which portions of the Bible should be taken literally and which
should be brushed aside as devoid of historical and scientific significance?
The Virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the
changing of water into wine were all miraculous events. None can be explained
biologically. All involved instantaneous acts of divine creation. Did these
events literally take place as described, or, as some liberal theologians
assert, may we assume rather that these passages of Scripture were given only
to establish certain spiritual truths? Some even question whether Christ
literally rose from the dead! Are individual Christians at liberty to pick and
choose which portions of Scripture describe real events and to which portions
may be ascribed only spiritual significance?
We
have already given an example of the Bible describing in easily understood
language how God created woman by transforming a rib of the first man, Adam,
into Eve, the first woman (Genesis 2:21, 22). This record of the creation of
woman is fully confirmed in the New Testament: ‘For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man’ (1
Corinthians 11:8).
Many other direct contradictions between the biblical record
of creation and the theory of evolution can be cited. Genesis says that things were made to reproduce after their
kind. This rules out the transformations required by evolutionists. Again,
Genesis 1:27 emphasises by repetition that man was
created in the image of God. Surely this rules out evolution from a primate?
Perhaps most significant for our present discussion, evolution of man from
primate does not include a Fall from an initially perfect man, and if there was
no Fall, then there would be no need of a Saviour from sin!
No evolutionist—theistic or atheistic—believes all I’ve just
quoted from the Bible. All evolutionists believe that human beings evolved from
ape-like beasts which had evolved from ‘lower’ forms of life millions or
billions of years ago.
It
is clear then, that theistic evolutionists, or “Christians” who are
evolutionists, either haven’t read the Bible — at all—or they have read it but
don’t believe what they read. The problem is that this people, having been brought up through Western State schools
and secular universities where evolution is generally taught as an established
fact, have been led to believe that evolution is true. They don’t believe that the record of creation in Genesis should be
taken literally. Therefore they believe it is possible to accept evolution
as God’s “method of creation.” While later studies of both the Bible and the
facts of science have convinced some that the theory of evolution is just untenable,
there are others who have also undertaken such studies but because of their love of evolution are unwilling to
believe the Bible.
What
theistic evolutionists must note is that the founders of evolution and
contemporary secular scientists who succeeded them do not really believe in
God—hence, their regarding of biblical narratives quoted above as myths.
Pre-history?
In the quotes above from the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, we see the evolutionists talking about “millions of years ago.” Again,
the Encyclopaedia says:
“The earliest creatures that can be identified as ancestors of
modern humans are classified as australopithecines (literally “southern
apes”). The first specimen of these hominins to be found (in 1924) was the
skull of a child from a quarry site at Taung in what is now the North-West province. Subsequently more australopithecine
fossils were discovered in limestone caves farther northeast at Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, and Kromdraai (collectively designated a World
Heritage site in 1999), where they had originally been deposited by predators
and scavengers.”[10]
The first specimen of these hominins was found “in 1924”!
Interesting?
Well, evolutionary “years,”—I
mean their “millions” or even “billions” of years—it should be noted, are not
based on recorded history but on “prehistory”. The main source for “prehistory” is archaeology. The primary researchers into “human” prehistory are archaeologists and
physical anthropologists who use excavation, geologic and
geographic surveys, and other scientific analysis to “reveal” and “interpret”
the nature and behaviour of pre-literate and non-literate “peoples”.
By definition, however, there are no written records from
“human” prehistory, so dating of prehistoric materials is not really based on historical facts. Data about prehistory
is provided by a wide variety of natural and social sciences—some of them newly
conceived—such as palaeontology (a science dealing with the life of past
geological periods as known from fossil remains), biology (a science dealing with living organisms and vital processes), archaeology
(the scientific study of material remains, as fossil relics,
artifacts, and monuments, of past human life and activities), palynology
(a science dealing with pollen and spores), geology (a science dealing with the history of the
earth and its life especially as recorded in rocks), archaeoastronomy (the study of the astronomy
of ancient cultures), comparative linguistics (a comparative study of human
speech including the units, nature, structure, and modification of language),
anthropology (the study of human beings and their ancestors
through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and
social relations, and culture), molecular genetics (a branch of genetics
dealing with the structure and activity of genetic material at the molecular level) and many others. “Prehistory” differs
from recorded history not only in terms of its chronology but in the way it deals with the activities of archaeological cultures rather
than named nations or individuals. Restricted to material processes, remains and artifacts
rather than written records, prehistory is anonymous. Because of this,
reference terms that “prehistorians” use, such as the so-called
Neanderthal or Iron Age, are modern labels with definitions—which
are always subject to debate.
Palaeontologists claim to have recovered and studied
the fossil remains of many thousands of
organisms that “lived in the past.” This fossil record, according to them,
shows that many kinds of extinct organisms were very different in form from any
now living. It also shows successions of organisms through time, manifesting
their transition from one form to another.
When an organism dies, they assert, it is usually destroyed
by other forms of life and by weathering processes. On rare occasions some body
parts—particularly hard ones such as shells, teeth, or bones—are preserved by
being buried in mud or protected in some other way from predators and weather.
Eventually, they may become petrified and preserved indefinitely with the rocks
in which they are embedded. Methods such as radioisotope or radiometric or
radioactive dating—measuring the amounts of natural
radioactive atoms that remain in certain minerals to determine the elapsed time
since they were constituted—are what evolutionists used to formulate the so-called “millions” or “billions” of years. This
dating, according to them, makes it possible to estimate the time period when
the rocks, and the fossils associated with them, were formed.
Radiometric dating, they assert, indicates that the Earth was
formed about 4.5 billion years ago. The earliest fossils resemble
microorganisms such as bacteria and cyanobacteria; the oldest of these fossils
appear in rocks 3.5 billion years old. The oldest known animal fossils, about
700 million years old, come from the so-called Ediacara fauna, small wormlike creatures with soft
bodies. Numerous fossils belonging to many living phyla and exhibiting
mineralized skeletons appear in rocks about 540 million years old. These
organisms are different from organisms living now and from those living at
intervening times. Some are so radically different that paleontologists have
created new phyla in order to classify them. The first vertebrates, animals with backbones, appeared
about 400 million years ago; the first mammals, less than 200 million years ago. In short, the history of life
recorded by fossils presents “compelling evidence” of evolution!
However, as Don Batten et al point out in their article,
“There is plenty of evidence that the radioisotope dating
systems are not the infallible techniques many think, and that they are not
measuring millions of years. However, there are still patterns to be explained.
For example, deeper rocks often tend to give older “ages.” Creationists agree
that the deeper rocks are generally older, but not by millions of years.
“Geologist John Woodmorappe, in his devastating critique of radioactive dating,
points out that there are other large-scale trends in the rocks that have
nothing to do with radioactive decay.[11] Bad” dates
“When a “date” differs from that expected, researchers
readily invent excuses for rejecting the result. The common application of such
posterior reasoning shows that radiometric dating has serious problems.
Woodmorappe cites hundreds of examples of excuses used to explain “bad” dates.[12]
“For example, researchers applied posterior reasoning to the
dating of Australopithecus ramidus fossils. Most samples of basalt closest to the fossil-bearing
strata give dates of about 23 Ma (Mega annum, million years) by the
argon-argon method. The authors decided that was “too old,” according to their
beliefs about the place of the fossils in the evolutionary grand scheme of
things. So they looked at some basalt further removed from the fossils and
selected 17 of 26 samples to get an acceptable maximum age of 4.4 Ma. The other
nine samples again gave much older dates but the authors decided they must be
contaminated and discarded them. That is how radiometric dating works. It is
very much driven by the existing long-age world view that pervades academia
today.[13]
“A similar story surrounds the dating of the primate skull
known as KNM-ER 1470. This started with an initial 212 to 230 Ma, which, according
to the fossils, was considered way off the mark (humans “weren't around
then"). Various other attempts were made to date the volcanic rocks in the
area. Over the years an age of 2.9 Ma was settled upon because of the agreement
between several different published studies (although the studies involved
selection of “good” from “bad” results, just like Australopithecus
ramidus, above).[14]
“However, preconceived notions about human evolution could
not cope with a skull like 1470 being “that old.” A study of pig fossils in
Africa readily convinced most anthropologists that the 1470 skull was much
younger. After this was widely accepted, further studies of the rocks brought
the radiometric age down to about 1.9 Ma—again several studies
“confirmed” this date. Such is the dating game.”[15]
A.R. Williams, an expert in the environmental fate of
radioactive elements, identified 17 flaws in the isotope dating reported in
just three widely respected seminal papers that supposedly established the age
of the Earth at 4.6 billion years.[16]
Again, John Woodmorappe has produced an incisive critique of
these dating methods.[17] He
exposes hundreds of myths that have grown up around the techniques. He shows
that the few “good” dates left after the “bad” dates are filtered out could
easily be explained as fortunate coincidences.
In fact, clear techniques for all this “dating” were not
well-developed until the 19th century!—a period of serious anti-religion
forces! According to DictionaryReference.com, the word “prehistory” originated
between 1850 and 1855, and is defined as: “of or pertaining to the time or a period prior to recorded history: The
dinosaur is a prehistoric beast.” MerriamWebster.com
defines prehistoric as “of, relating to, or existing in times
antedating written history.” Hence the definition for “prehistoric” refers to a time
before recorded or written history—quite contradictory to Genesis 1:1—“In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth.”
The Bible’s first written
words are recording the very beginning
of time and history. So for true Christians, the term “prehistoric” has
no valid meaning. For a Christian to use “prehistoric’ is to reject
Genesis 1:1. To reject Genesis 1:1 is to reject the Word of God and to
reject God at His Word. To reject God’s Word is to reject the very nature
and existence of God—which is atheism.
Before the nineteenth century, recorded or written history
was the clear and accepted definition used by nearly everyone—even
non-Christians.
What is the origin of
Evolution?
 |
| Jean-Baptiste Lamarck |
 |
| Darwin |
However, evolution as commonly known today was born when in
1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published their new evolutionary
theory, which Darwin himself explained in detail in his 1859 work On the
Origin of Species.
Unlike Lamarck, Darwin proposed common
descent and a branching tree of life,
meaning that two very different species could share a common ancestor. Darwin
based his theory on the idea of natural selection.
Before this period, there was simply nothing like evolution
as we know it today.
Some writers give the impression that some of the ancient
Greek philosophers held an evolutionary view of things. Interestingly, these thinkers
are often presented as pure secularists—like our “moderns”! That is, often the
religious or spiritual side of their beliefs is never mentioned—as if they were
just like modern atheistic intellectuals of our time.
Well, a few Greek thinkers held a similar view—but certainly not
the type of evolution known to us today. Anaximander
of Miletus (c. 610 – 546 BC) held a cyclic view of things, similar to evolution: the first
creatures originated from the moist element by evaporation.
There are three grades of existence in the philosophy of Anaximander. First, there are things (οντα), that is, the multiplicity of individual things we see around us. These are declared to perish into those things out of which they came into being. And those secondary things out of which natural objects came into being are the earth, air, water and fire—the primitive elements of which all bodies are composed, which were recognised long before philosophy began. The visible world groups itself into masses of comparatively homogenous stuffs, each occupying a region of its own. First, there is the great lump of earth, above it the water, then the space of wind and mist and cloud; beyond that we have the blazing fire of heaven, the aether. These are the secondary elements out of which individual things were born and into which they shall return.
There are three grades of existence in the philosophy of Anaximander. First, there are things (οντα), that is, the multiplicity of individual things we see around us. These are declared to perish into those things out of which they came into being. And those secondary things out of which natural objects came into being are the earth, air, water and fire—the primitive elements of which all bodies are composed, which were recognised long before philosophy began. The visible world groups itself into masses of comparatively homogenous stuffs, each occupying a region of its own. First, there is the great lump of earth, above it the water, then the space of wind and mist and cloud; beyond that we have the blazing fire of heaven, the aether. These are the secondary elements out of which individual things were born and into which they shall return.
However, the elements themselves are not eternal nor is their
separation into distinct regions more than a transient arrangement. On the
contrary, they themselves are destined to return into that from which they
came—the third and ultimate stage of existence, which Anaximander identified simply
as ‘‘incorruptible and undying, the limitless thing’’. Thus in the process of
growth, first of all the formless, limitless, indefinite thing separates first
into the elemental forms, distributed in their appointed regions, the elemental
forms again give birth to the multiplicity of individual things and, when they
die, receive them back again. And the process will continue in this way unto
infinity.
In a sole surviving fragment of Anaximander we read:
“Things perish into those things out of which they have their
birth, according to that which is ordained; for they give reparation to one
another and pay the penalty of injustice, according to the disposition of
time”.[18]
Anaximander describes the secular process of birth and
perishing in a moral language. He calls the passing away of things into the
elements ‘making reparation’, ‘paying the penalty of injustice’. This implies
that injustice was committed in the very act of things coming into existence.
All things can only come into being by robbery and misappropriation. For
instance, the proper substance of the animal body is earth, but for its
formation it misappropriates portions of the other elements—water for its
blood, air for its breath and fire for its warmth. The dissolution of death repays
these robberies—each stolen portion rejoins its like: water to water, air to
air, fire to fire. As it is with the animal or human body, so with all other
things that came into being in the universe. Nothing can begin to exist without
an infraction of this destined order. Indeed, birth is a crime and growth an
aggravated robbery. Order comes into being when the four elements are shifted
by the eternal motion into their distinct regions. If this separation of the
elements were ever complete, then there would be a perfect order in the
universe, and no individual thing would exist at all. Every step from this
disposition of elemental provinces towards the multiplicity of particular
things is a declension into the welter of injustice, and every step of this pilgrimage
of wrong must be retracted ‘according to what is ordained’ (kata kreon).
In these words are united the conceptions of fate and right. It simply means a
power which ordains both what must be
and what ought to be. It is the principle of fate and right that sets the
bounds of the original elemental order, and it waits to exact the penalty of
every transgression.
Empedocles (c. 490 – 430 BC), “argued
that what we call birth and death in animals are just the mingling and
separations of elements which cause the countless "tribes of mortal things,”
says Wikipedia. “Specifically, the first animals and plants were
like disjointed parts of the ones we see today, some of which survived by
joining in different combinations, and then intermixing during the development
of the embryo, and where “everything turned out as it would have if it were on
purpose, there the creatures survived, being accidentally compounded in a
suitable way.” Here, as we can see, nothing is said about the “spiritual side” of the philosopher’s
view—nothing, for instance, is said about the soul!
Well, in his principal philosophical poem, On Nature, Empedocles replaces the
Parmenidean One with a universe whose changes are the recombination of the four
basic and permanent elements—air, earth, fire and water—mixing and separating
under the influence of two forces, attraction (Love), and repulsion (Strife).
The universe moves through cycles according to whichever one of these elements
is predominant. He proclaims the Pythagorean doctrine of the pre-existence and
immortality of the soul and the contingency of its bodily existence. Souls are
condemned to the cycle of birth and rebirth by a fall from heavenly ‘grace’, he
maintains. This fall is a penalty for sin—the sin of flesh-eating and
oath-breaking. Caught in the wheel of time, and preserving its individual
identity, the soul passes through all shapes of life—both human and
animal—which implies that human life is only one of the shapes it passes
through. The substance of the soul is divine and immutable and is the same
substance as all other souls in the world. Any difference between the two
explanations?
Other philosophers such as Plato,
Aristotle and the Stoics held views which are simply anti-Evolution. They
disproved Anaximander and Empedocles, holding rather that the types of all
things, not only living things, were fixed by divine design.
Plato was called by the biologist
Ernst Mayr “the great antihero of evolutionism,”[19] because
he promoted belief in essentialism, otherwise known as the theory of forms.
This theory holds that each natural type of object in the observed world is an
imperfect manifestation of the ideal, form or “species” which defines that
type. In his Timaeus (Greek Τίμαιος, Timaios), Plato begins with a distinction between the physical world and the
eternal world. The physical world is the world which changes and perishes:
therefore it is the object of opinion and unreasoned sensation. The eternal world never changes: therefore it is apprehended by reason.[20]
The speeches about the two worlds are conditioned by the different nature of
their objects. Indeed, “a description of what is changeless, fixed and clearly
intelligible will be changeless and fixed,”[21]
while a description of what changes and is likely, will also change and be just
likely. “As being is to becoming, so is truth to belief.”[22]
Therefore, in a description of the physical world, one “should not look for anything
more than a likely story.”[23]
Plato argues, in the work, that since nothing “becomes or
changes” without cause, then the cause of the universe must be a
Demiurge or a god, which he calls the father and maker of the universe.
And since the universe is fair, the Demiurge must have looked to the eternal
model to make it, and not to the perishable one.[24]
Hence, using the eternal and perfect world of “forms” or ideals as a template,
he set about creating our world, which formerly only existed in a state of
disorder.
 |
| Plato |
Aristotle, a student of Plato, was
the most influential of the Greek philosophers in Europe during the Medieval
period. He was the earliest natural historian whose work has been preserved in
any real detail. His works on biology resulted from his research into natural
history on and around the island of Lesbos, and have survived in the form of
four books, usually known by their Latin names, De anima (On the
Soul), Historia animalium (History of
Animals), De generatione animalium
(Generation of Animals), and De partibus
animalium (On the Parts of Animals). Aristotle's works contain accurate
observations, fitted into his own theories of the body's mechanisms. But “Nothing is more remarkable
than [Aristotle's] efforts to [exhibit] the relationships of living things as
a scala naturae,” Charles Singer is quoted to have said in a Wikipedia
article. This scala naturae, the article goes on, described
in Historia animalium,
classified organisms in relation to a hierarchical “Ladder of Life” or “great
chain of being,” placing them according to their complexity of structure and
function, with organisms that showed greater vitality and ability to move
described as “higher organisms.” Aristotle believed that features of living
organisms showed clearly that they must have had what he called a final cause,
that is to say, that they had been designed for a purpose. He explicitly
rejected the view of Empedocles that living creatures might have originated by
chance.
 |
| Aristotle |
Fossils and DNA as evidences for
evolution?
Our
quotes above, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, reads partly: “Darwin and other 19th-century biologists
found compelling evidence for biological evolution in the comparative study of
living organisms, in their geographic distribution, and in the fossil remains
of extinct organisms.” Again, “The
amount of information about evolutionary history stored in the DNA and proteins
of living things is virtually unlimited; scientists can reconstruct any detail
of the evolutionary history of life by investing sufficient time and laboratory
resources.”
In other words the DNA and fossils are two of the most compelling
evidences for Evolution.
Evolutionist Loren Eiseley declared that “Man is a long chain
of DNA accidents taking place over billions of years.” Carl Sagan was quoted in Time magazine as saying that “Only through
the deaths of an immense number of slightly maladapted organisms are we, brain
and all, here today.” These two statements incorporate two major features of
the Darwinian mechanism of evolution: genetic mistakes and death—quite
contradictory to the attributes of God.
Mutations, which are indeed random genetic accidents,
followed by the extinction of the less well-adapted creatures, have supposedly
converted the first microscopic form of life into all other forms of life,
fossil and living, including man. However, mutations are best known by the
defects they often cause. Several thousand genetic diseases in man, due to
mutations, are now known. Thus evolution would be the most wasteful, inefficient,
cruel method that one could conceive to create man. Would an omniscient,
omnipotent, loving God use such a process to create man in three billion years
when He could have created men instantaneously if He chose?
As one Mätt Lintzenich decried in
a comment on Facebook sometime last year:
“...one of the most fundamental theological difficulties relating to the
creation/evolution debate is the "problem of evil." If God is a
perfect Being, omnipotent and totally loving, and He created everything, why is
there evil, suffering, and death in the world? This question is, without a
doubt, one of the most perplexing problems vexing the minds of Christians
everywhere, and the number one intellectual reason that people use to justify
agnosticism and atheism. It is hard to deny that Genesis 3 is an attempt to
resolve this issue. In ...Romans, St. Paul explains that death entered the
world because of sin—the sin of Adam, the first man, not the sin of animals!
Evolution is a theory which embraces sickness, pain, and death as a mechanism
for the development of all animal forms, including human beings. If evolution
is true, does that make God, rather than man, the Author of suffering and
death? The theory of evolution proposes that hundreds of thousands of animal species
lived, suffered, and died millions of years BEFORE humankind even arrived on
the scene! From whence comes evil? Who is responsible for all the suffering and
pain? It does not come from the Fall of Man, if evolution is true, but rather
directly from the Creator Himself! Evolution seems to malign the character of
God and make Him the Author, not of sins, but of physical evils. You are asking
me to believe that the very things which Scripture says are the results of sin
and the Fall are the things which God used to evolve a single-cell creature
into human beings over millions of years!”
Again, in
his article, ‘New discovery makes
Darwinists’ case even harder to make’, Eric Metaxas relates the old story
about a chemist, a physicist, and an economist stranded on a desert island with
nothing to eat but a can of soup. “Puzzling over how to open the can, the
chemist says, “Let’s heat the can until it swells and bursts from the build-up
of gases.” “No, no,” says the physicist, “let’s throw it off that cliff with
just enough kinetic energy to split it open on the rocks below.” The economist,
after thinking a moment says, “Assume a can opener.” ”
He goes on: “There’s more than one
trade that deals in assumptions. The way Darwinists approach the origin of life
is a lot like that economist’s idea for opening the can. The Darwinian
mechanism of mutation and natural selection explains everything about life,
we’re told—except how it began. “Assume a self-replicating cell containing
information in the form of genetic code,” Darwinists are forced to say. Well,
fine. But where did that little miracle come from?
“A new discovery makes explaining
even that first cell tougher still. Fossils unearthed by Australian scientists
in Greenland may be the oldest traces of life ever discovered. A team from the
University of Wollongong recently published their findings in the journal
“Nature,” describing a series of structures called “stromatolites” that emerged
from receding ice.
““Stromatolites” may sound like
something your doctor would diagnose, but they’re actually biological rocks
formed by colonies of microbes that live in shallow water. If you visit the
Bahamas today, you can see living stromatolites.
“What’s so special about them?
Well, they appear in rocks most scientists date to 220 million years older than
the oldest fossils, which pushes the supposed date for the origin of life back
to 3.7 billion years ago.
“This, admits the New York Times,
“complicate[s] the story of evolution of early life from chemicals...” No
kidding! According to conventional geology, these microbe colonies existed on
the heels of a period when Earth was undergoing heavy asteroid bombardment,
making it virtually uninhabitable. This early date, adds The Times, “leaves
comparatively little time for evolution to have occurred…”
“That is an understatement. These
life forms came into existence virtually overnight, writes David Klinghoffer at
Evolution News and Views. “[g]enetic code, proteins, photosynthesis, the
works.”
“This appearance of fully-developed
life forms so early in the fossil record led Dr. Abigail Allwood of Caltech to
remark that “life [must not be] a fussy, reluctant and unlikely thing.” Rather,
“(i)t will emerge whenever there’s an opportunity.”
“Pardon me? If life occurs so
spontaneously and predictably even under the harshest conditions, then it
should be popping up all over the place! Yet scientists still cannot come close
to producing even a single cell from raw chemicals in the lab.
“Dr. Stephen Meyer explains in his
book “Signature in the Cell” why this may be Darwinism’s Achilles heel. In
order to begin evolution by natural selection, you need a self-replicating
unit. But the cell and its DNA blueprint are too complicated by far to have
arisen through chance chemical reactions. The odds of even a single protein
forming by accident are astronomical. So Meyer and other Intelligent Design
theorists conclude that Someone must have designed and created the structures
necessary for life”!
Meanwhile, says Metaxas,
Darwinists, faced with a fossil record that theoretically pushes the origin of
life back further into the past, “are forced to assume the metaphorical can
opener. They just don’t know how these early cells came into existence, and the
more we dig up, the more improbable—rather than likely—life becomes.”
Fossils
The primary resource for detailing the path of “human
evolution” is and will always remain fossil specimens.
For fossils, then, let’s look at the case of dinosaurs. Secular scientists (and
never all scientists) are saying that dinosaurs have existed on this earth
millions of years ago—meaning that they were not created by God. But we know
that this is just a nonsensical assertion—because we know that whether one is
an evolutionist or accepts the Bible’s account of history, the evidence for
dinosaurs is just the same. All scientists have the same facts—they have the
same world, the same fossils, the same living creatures, the same universe. If
the “facts” are the same, then how can the explanations be so different? The
reason is that scientists have only the present—dinosaur fossils exist only in
the present. But some scientists, for
whatever reason known to them, are trying to connect the fossils in the present
to the past! They ask, “What happened in history to bring dinosaurs into
existence, wipe them out, and leave many of them fossilized?” The science that
addresses such issues is known as historical or origins science, and it differs
from the operational science that gives us computers, inexpensive food, space
exploration, electricity, and the like. Origins science deals with the past, which is not accessible to direct
experimentation, whereas operational science deals with how the world works
in the here and now, which, of course, is open to repeatable experiments.
Because of difficulties in reconstructing the past, those who study fossils
(palaeontologists) have diverse views on dinosaurs, and, as someone puts it,
“palaeontology (the study of fossils) is much like politics: passions run high,
and it’s easy to draw very different conclusions from the same set of facts.”
So how can any sensible person rely on the “evidence” gotten
from such diverse—often quite contradictory—conclusions?
The past, as I said, is
not and can never be open to
the normal processes of experimental science, that is, repeatable experiments
in the present. A scientist cannot do experiments on events that happened in
the past. Scientists do not measure the age of rocks, they measure isotope
concentrations, and these can be measured extremely accurately. However, the
“age” is calculated using assumptions about the past that cannot be proven.
There are many examples where the dating methods give “dates” that are wrong
for rocks of known age. One example is K-Ar “dating” of five historical
andesite lava flows from Mount Nguaruhoe in New Zealand. Although one lava flow
occurred in 1949, three in 1954, and one in 1975, the “dates” range from less
than 0.27 to 3.5 Ma.![26]
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”
(Job 38:4).
Big Bang: the world existing billions of
years ago?
In
the traditional view of the Bible, the world is about six thousand years old
and was created in six days. Surely, modern “scientists” contradict this
position, “proving” rather that the world is billions of years old and that man
evolved through a process of evolution. This view is, at least, what the
majority of “learned” men in this present age, including many of today’s
Catholic clergy (late twentieth century and early 21st century
priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes), believe,—thus laying to rest the
biblical story of Genesis.
The
big bang, another type of evolution, is the widely held theory of the evolution
of the universe. Its essential feature is the emergence of the universe from a
state of extremely high temperature and density—the so-called big bang that
occurred 13.8 billion years ago. Although this type of universe was proposed by
Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann and Belgian
astronomer Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître in the 1920s, the
modern version was developed by Russian-born American physicist George Gamow and colleagues in the
1940s.
The
big bang theory proposes that the universe was once extremely compact, dense,
and hot. Some original event, a cosmic explosion called the big bang, occurred
about 13.8 billion years ago, and the universe has since then been expanding
and cooling. The theory is based on the mathematical
equations, known as the field equations, of the general theory of
relativity set forth in 1915 by Albert Einstein. The overall framework
of the big bang theory—which is currently the accepted explanation of the
beginning of the universe by the majority of learned men in the Western
society, including many of the clergy—came out of “solutions” to Einstein’s
general relativity field equations and remains unchanged, but various details
of the theory are still being modified today. Einstein himself initially
believed that the universe was static. When his equations seemed to imply that
the universe was expanding, however, or contracting, Einstein added a constant
term to cancel out the expansion or contraction of the universe. When the
expansion of the universe was later “discovered”, Einstein stated that introducing
this “cosmological constant” had been a mistake!
 |
| Einstein |
After Einstein’s work
of 1917, several scientists, including Monseigneur Georges Lemaître, (a Belgian
Catholic Priest who is generally believed to be the main originator of the Big
Bang!), Willem de Sitter in Holland, and Alexander Friedmann in Russia,
succeeded in finding “solutions” to Einstein’s field equations. The universes
described by the different solutions varied.
In
1922 Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann provided a set of “solutions” to the
field equations. These solutions have served as the framework for much of the current
theoretical work on the big bang theory. American astronomer Edwin Hubble—the
one who received
a letter from a friend asking whether Pope Pius XII’s letter celebrating the
big bang might qualify him for “sainthood”!—provided
some of the greatest supporting “evidence” for the theory with his 1929
discovery that the light of distant galaxies was universally shifted toward the
red end of the spectrum. Once “tired light” theories—that light slowly loses
energy naturally, becoming more red over time—were dismissed, this shift proved
that the galaxies were moving away from each other. Hubble found that galaxies
farther away were moving away proportionally faster, showing that the universe
is expanding uniformly. However, the universe’s initial state was still
unknown!
In the 1940s Russian-American
physicist George Gamow worked out a theory that fit with Friedmann’s solutions
in which the universe expanded from a hot, dense state. In 1950 British
astronomer Fred Hoyle, in support of his own opposing steady-state theory,
referred to Gamow’s theory as a mere “big bang,” but the name stuck, and, since
then, not even the contest in the 1990s by Sky & Telescope magazine
to find a better (perhaps more dignified) name could produce another.
The
fact that this “myth” was not only believed but also preached by men who
occupied the Chair of St. Peter is indeed an extraordinarily bad sign.
To
be precise, just as the Bible tells us how the universe came into existence,
the “big bang” is equally another story about how the universe came into
existence. It proposes that billions of years ago the universe began in a tiny,
infinitely hot and dense point called a singularity. This singularity
supposedly contained not only all the mass and energy that would become
everything we see today, but also “space” itself. According to the story, the
singularity rapidly expanded, spreading out the energy and space.
It
is supposed that over vast periods of time, the energy from the big bang cooled
down as the universe expanded. Some of it turned into matter—hydrogen and
helium gas. These gases collapsed to form stars and galaxies of stars. Some of
the stars created the heavier elements in their core and then exploded,
distributing these elements into space. Some of the heavier elements allegedly
began to stick together and formed the earth and other planets.
This
story of origins is entirely fiction. But many people claim to believe the big-bang
model in the name of senseless “science”. It is particularly distressing that
many professing Christians have been taken in by the big bang, perhaps without
realising its atheistic underpinnings. They have chosen to reinterpret the
plain teachings of Scripture in an attempt to make it mesh with secular beliefs
about origins.
There
are several reasons why we cannot just add the big bang to the Bible.
Ultimately, the big bang is a secular story of origins. When first proposed, it
was an attempt to explain how the universe could have been created without God.
Really, it is an alternative to the Bible, so it makes no sense trying to “add”
it to the Bible. The two—the Bible and the Big Bang—are radically different in
virtually all ramifications.
The
Bible, for instance, teaches that God created the universe in six days (Genesis
1; Exodus 20:11). It is clear from the context in Genesis that these were days
in the ordinary sense (i.e., 24-hour days) since they are bounded by evening
and morning and occur in an ordered list (second day, third day, etc.).
Conversely, the Big Bang teaches that the universe has evolved over billions of
years ago. So how compatible are the two?
It is interesting to note that while our popes are celebrating the big bang the same secular
Encyclopaedia Britannica acknowledges this time around that the big bang is
based on assumptions!
“The
big-bang model is based on two assumptions,” it says. “The first is that Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity correctly describes the gravitational interaction of all matter. The second assumption, called the cosmological principle, states that an observer's view of
the universe depends neither on the direction in which he looks nor on his
location. This principle applies only to the large-scale properties of the
universe, but it does imply that the universe has no edge, so that the big-bang
origin occurred not at a particular point in space but rather throughout space
at the same time. These two assumptions make it possible to calculate the
history of the cosmos after a certain epoch called the Planck time. Scientists have yet to determine what prevailed before Planck time.”[27]
Don Batten et el rightly observe in their article that “of the
methods that have been used to estimate the age of the Earth, 90 percent point
to an age far less than the billions of years asserted by evolutionists. A few
of them follow:
·
Evidence for a rapid formation of
geological strata, as in the biblical flood. Some of the evidences are: lack of erosion between rock layers
supposedly separated in age by many millions of years; lack of disturbance of
rock strata by biological activity (worms, roots, etc.); lack of soil layers;
polystrate fossils (which traverse several rock layers vertically—these could
not have stood vertically for eons of time while they slowly got buried); thick
layers of “rock” bent without fracturing, indicating that the rock was all soft
when bent; and more. For more, see books by geologists Morris[26] and Austin.[27]
·
Red blood cells and hemoglobin have
been found in some (unfossilized!) dinosaur bone. But these could not last
more than a few thousand years—certainly not the 65 Ma since the last dinosaurs lived, according to
evolutionists.[28]
·
The Earth's magnetic field has been
decaying so fast that it looks like it is less than 10,000 years old. Rapid
reversals during the flood year and fluctuations shortly after would have
caused the field energy to drop even faster.[29]
·
Radioactive decay releases helium
into the atmosphere, but not much is escaping. The total amount in the
atmosphere is 1/2000th of that expected if the universe is really billions of
years old. This helium originally escaped from rocks. This happens quite fast,
yet so much helium is still in some rocks that it has not had time to
escape—certainly not billions of years.[30]
·
A supernova is an explosion of a
massive star—the explosion is so bright that it briefly outshines the rest of
the galaxy. The supernova remnants (SNRs) should keep expanding for hundreds of
thousands of years, according to physical equations. Yet there are no very old,
widely expanded (Stage 3) SNRs, and few moderately old (Stage 1) ones in our
galaxy, the Milky Way, or in its satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds.
This is just what we would expect for “young” galaxies that have not existed
long enough for wide expansion.[31]
·
The moon is slowly receding for the
Earth at about 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) per year, and this rate would have
been greater in the past. But even if the moon had started receding from being
in contact with the Earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach
its present distance from the Earth. This gives a maximum age of the moon, not the actual age. This is far
too young for evolutionists who claim the moon is 4.6 billion years old. It is
also much younger than the radiometric “dates” assigned to moon rocks.[32]
· Salt is entering the sea much faster than it is escaping. The sea is not
nearly salty enough for this to have been happening for billions of years. Even
granting generous assumptions to evolutionists, the sea could not be more than
62 Ma years old—far younger than the billions of years believed by the
evolutionists. Again, this indicates a maximum age, not the actual age.[33]”
St. Augustine actually refuted evolution
in the fifth century in his massive work De
Civitate Dei Contra Paganos
In
1930 great Pope Pius XI wrote:
“We
have retraced, venerable Brethren, the life and merits of a man, with whom one
will not find another to compare, or certainly very few, from the beginning of
the world to the present day, on account of the power of his penetrating genius,
the sublimity of his holiness, and the victorious combat with which he
undertook to defend Catholic truth…Surely no one is unaware of the admirable
manner in which St. Augustine wrote of the divine government of all things and
all events of history in his noble work on The
City of God. For he made use of everything he drew from an assiduous study
of the Bible on the one hand, and from the fullness of the human culture of his
day on the other hand, in order to produce one integrated concept of the history
of the world”[28]
 |
| Pope Pius XI |
Pope
Leo XIII wrote:
“St
Augustine was the great Doctor of the Church who before all others conceived
and executed the plan of the philosophy of history. Those who deserve mention
after his time in this branch of philosophy always took Augustine for their
master and guide, and derived their inspiration from his writings. On the other
hand, those who have departed from the path laid down by this great man, have
suffered a variety of errors and have ended far from the truth. The reason for
this is the fact that they who contemplate and narrate the pathway and
development of human societies apart from St Augustine’s position, will lack a
true knowledge of the causes which govern the temporal process of humanities.”[29]
Again,
Pope Leo XIII:
“But
Augustine would seem to have wrested the palm from all (the Fathers of the
Church). Of a most powerful genius and thoroughly saturated with sacred and
profane learning, with the loftiest faith and equal knowledge, he combated most
vigorously all the errors of his age... (and) laid the safe foundations and
sure structure of human science....”[30]
 |
| Pope Leo XIII |
Pope
Pius XII himself remarked that “The doctrine of St. Augustine, since it offers
excellent instruments for refuting and defeating the fallacies of our own times
as well, ought to be expounded in the fullness of its light.”[31]
Let
us carefully note that scientists who propagate the doctrine of evolution are
not doing so because they are sure of what they are doing but because they believe
that it just can’t be the way the Bible says it is! For our “scientists”, the
biblical idea of a few thousand years is just unthinkable. So, with evolution,
they’re just looking for an alternative to the Bible. By this attitude of
course they manifest a complete poverty of thought. What, for instance, would
be the Evolutionists’ answer if we ask: And what existed before those billions
of years? Did the world exist before then? If not, what existed? Where was man
before those billions of years that it took before he “evolved”? And the world?
Did it exist? If so, what was its nature? In fact, where was evolution itself
before those billions of years? Where were fossils, the DNA, etc.?
As
St. Augustine remarks—about one thousand six hundred years ago, even before
evolution raised its ugly head—the idea of so short a time since man’s creation
upsets them because, in their poverty of thought, they fail to consider that
nothing which has a limit is of enormous duration, and that all the finite
spaces of the ages, when compared with endless eternity, are to be counted not
as very little, but as nothing at all.
Science,
broadly defined, means knowledge. Specifically we refer to science as knowledge
ascertained by observation and experiment, critically tested, systemised and
brought under general principles. Being even more specific one must distinguish
between empirical or experimental science dealing with, and confined to
describing and classifying, observable phenomena, and speculative science
dealing with unknown phenomena, sometimes phenomena that cannot be duplicated
in the laboratory. The “science” of Evolution belongs to the latter, that is, speculative. The term “scientific
speculation” is actually a terminological incongruity since no speculation can
be called knowledge in the strict sense of the word. At best, scientific speculation can only describe theories inferred from certain known
facts and applied in the realm of the unknown.
Religion,
on the other hand, means a belief in the existence of God or gods (and the
activities that are connected with the worship of them). In terms of the Jewish
religion, as it was before the coming of Christ, this is belief in the Divine
nature of the Torah–Torah min Hashamayim; belief that the Torah received by Moses and given to the Jewish people is Divine in
source and is the word of God. Being so, Torah
is Divine wisdom, and since God is true, so is His Torah. Torah is often referred to as Torat Emet meaning the True Torah. Torah reveals the truth.
From
these two definitions, it is evident that science formulates and deals with
theories and hypotheses while Torah deals with absolute truths. These are two
different disciplines and “reconciliation” is entirely out of place. Torah is
the realm of truth of the absolute. What Torah says is true not because it has
been scientifically proven to be true, rather it is true because the truth was
revealed by God. Science does not deal with absolutes, rather it deals with the
realm of observable phenomena and produces principles based on its observations.
In
the 19th century it was the prevailing view of “scientists” and modernists that
human reason was infallible in “scientific” deductions and that sciences such
as physics, chemistry, mathematics etc., were absolute truth, that is to say,
not merely accepted truths but absolute. Speaking in Jewish terms, this meant
the establishment of a new idolatry, not of wood and stone, but the worship of
the contemporary sciences and philosophies!
With
regards to the origin of the world, the above view of our “scientists” and “philosophers”—that
the world is billions of years old—is indeed similar to the so-called
Pre-Adamite or Preadamism—a hypothesis within theology which holds that human
beings existed before Adam. This theoretical assumption is contrary to beliefs
describing Adam as the first human, as stated in the Bible. The theory of
Preadamism is therefore distinct from the conventional religious belief that
Adam was the first human. Preadamism has a long history, probably having its
origins in early pagan responses to Abrahamic beliefs regarding the origins of
the human race.
Advocates
of this hypothesis are known as "Pre-Adamites", as are the humans
believed by them to have existed before Adam.
The
first known debate about human antiquity took place in 170 AD between
Theophilus of Antioch and an Egyptian pagan ‘Apollonius the Egyptian’ (probably
Apollonius Dyscolus), who argued that the world was 153,075 years old. Figures
such as this occur regularly in Greek and Roman literature, as do the claims
that the world and mankind have always existed.
The
most serious early challenge to biblical Adamism came from the Roman Emperor
Julian the Apostate who, upon his rejection of Christianity and his conversion
to Theurgy, a late form of Neoplatonism, accepted the idea that many pairs of
original people had been created, a belief termed Co-Adamism or
Multiple-Adamism. To some, Genesis 1:27-28 might allow for co-creation of
multiple pairs, if the word ‘them’ were construed accordingly: “So God created
man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he
created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it;…’” In addition, if a framework of
strictly sequential chronology were adopted in interpreting the order of these
texts from the ancient Middle East, it might be argued that Adam, and therefore
Eve, are created a little later than the humans created in Genesis 1:27-28. But
these are matters of interpretation. Thus, on the other hand, Eve is called
“the mother of all the living” in Genesis 3:20.
St
Augustine’s work De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos, contains two chapters indicating a debate
between Christians and pagans over human origins: Book XII, chapter 11, ‘Of the
falseness of the history that the world hath continued many thousand years’ — ‘De falsitate eius historiae, quae multa
millia annorum praeteritis temporibus ascribit’, as well as Book XVIII,
chapter 40 — ‘The Egyptians’ abominable lying, to claim their wisdom the age of
100,000 years’ — ‘De Aegyptiorum
mendacissima vanitate, quae antiquitati scientiae suae centum milia ascribit
annorum’ indicate that Augustine saw pagan ideas concerning the history and
chronology of the world and the human race as incompatible with the biblical
version. Augustine’s position on this matter was supported by most rabbis and
also by the Church Fathers, who generally dismissed views on the antiquity of
the world—views that modern men like John Paul II and Ratzinger simply
celebrated in the 20th and 21st centuries!—as myths and
fables not requiring any considered refutation.
The
Six Ages of the World, or sex
aetates mundi (also, Seven Ages of
the World) is a Christian historical periodization first written about
by Saint Augustine, which is based upon Christian religious events, from the
creation of Adam to the events of Revelation. These were widely believed and in
use throughout the Medieval Period, and until the Enlightenment, the writing of
history was mostly the filling out of all or some part of this outline. In our
own time, even though the popes and other prominent leaders have embraced
apostasy, many good Catholic historians, theologians and philosophers still
hold the view.
Some
writers talk about each age (Latin aetas), that is, each of the six
ages, lasting approximately 1,000 years. It should be noted, however, that
according to Augustine, the ages from Adam to the Flood and from the Flood to
Abraham correspond not by equality in the passage of time but in respect of the
number of generations. After those ages there are three more—from Abraham to
David and David to the Exile in Babylon and Exile to the coming of Christ
(making it five different ages), after which we have the sixth age (our own
time). Again, this sixth age, according to Augustine, cannot be measured by the
number of generations,
“because
it is said, ‘It is not for you to know
the dates: the Father has decided those by his own authority.’[32]
After this present age God will rest, as it were, on the seventh day, and
he will cause us, who are the seventh day, to find our rest in him”[33]
For
Augustine, then, the six ages of history—from Adam and Eve to the Flood, from
the Flood to Abraham, from Abraham to King David, from David to the Babylonian
Exile, from the Exile to Our Lord Jesus Christ, and from Christ to the Second
Coming—would be followed by a seventh age, the reign of Christ on earth. World
history is a “salvation history”—the
course of events from Creation to the Last Judgment—and its purposes are
religious and moral. Thus, all the references by Augustine and other early
authors to a “middle time” must be understood within the framework of the sixth
age of salvation history.
As
already pointed out, until the Enlightenment, the writing of history was mostly
the filling out of all or some part of this outline.
“Despite
the vast amount written on St Augustine’s Philosophy of History, little notice
has been given to a well-defined plan for instruction in history devised by him
and widely adopted in the schools of later days”,[34]
writes late William Green, professor emeritus of Latin at the University of
California, Berkeley.
“The
novelty of the scheme”, continues Prof. Green, “appears in two aspects: as
against the casual instruction of history given in pagan schools, there was
opposed a well-defined outline of world history based on the Bible; and as
against the Jewish and Christian notion of six thousand years of history (with
no natural division into ages), there was opposed the plan of six ages, clearly
defined by important crises of Bible history. As priest and bishop, Augustine
found his pattern useful for instructing beginners in Christian doctrine. It
not only provided a convenient plan of Bible history, but left room for the
continuation of history till the end of the world. The student was not to think
of a sharp break at the close of the apostolic age, but was rather shown the
continued revelation of God’s hand in the progress of the Church…History and
revelation merge into one symmetrical pattern, in which the believer has his
own stable place, fixed in the eternity of God’s beneficent purpose.”[35]
Again,
“The
Catholic faith brings with it a unique new view of world history,” writes late
Msgr. Eugene Kevane, a student of St. Augustine and one time dean, Catholic
University of America, Professor of Christian Philosophy and Professor of
Catechetics. “St. Augustine was the first Christian thinker fully to realize
this fact. The first element in this Christian view of earthly reality and of
human life and destiny, is the fact that certain striking works of God stand in
the world history of the human family as real events. These works of God, which
Sacred Scripture calls the mirabilia Dei, the “wonderful works of God,” are
real and genuine events, facts established by documentary evidence. These
events took place in this world history of the human family on this planet.
They are not part of a different “history,” called “sacred,” a history
conceived somehow as running distinct and separate from another history called
“profane.”[36]
 |
| Eugene Kevane |
“St.
Augustine, in other words,” he continues, “in accepting the Bible as containing
the religious teaching of God to mankind, accepts it also as a valid knowledge
of history, containing fundamental information concerning the historic life of
mankind. This vigorous assertion of the historical character and validity of
the Divine Scriptures is essential to St. Augustine’s program of education, for
it affects and governs the manner in which the discipline of history ought to
be taught.”[37]
In
his 1951 book, II concetto di storia in
Sant ’Agostino, Giuseppe Amari, a bishop and long-rector of a major
seminary in the Italian city of Mantua, writes:
“This
is the vision of universal history which St. Augustine derived from St. Paul
and the Fathers who went before him. It is the story of the economy of
salvation. Sacred Scripture is a history, but also more than a history,
understood as a mere narrative of events or chronicle. In this sacred history,
the narrative of events is secondary, a means, a vehicle for conveying a
conception of wisdom and a body of doctrine. Creation, the fall, the Old
Testament, these are facts located in time, but they carry with them great
religious truths, the dogmas of the Catholic religion, and many other secondary
and spiritual truths. God has hidden his truths in these human and earthly
facts, in order to make them accessible to all men.”[38]
This
is the type of history—championed by St Augustine—which was taught in the
schools of Christendom. St Augustine, a great teacher, illustrates the manner
in which he elaborates sacred history so that the prospective convert may come
to that grasp of the providential order of things which is the mark of the true
believer in God. “So five ages of the world are ended”, he writes in De Catechizandis Rudibus. “Of these the
first is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the
first man to be made, to Noe, who built the ark in the time of the flood…”[39]
 |
| St. Augustine |
He
was writing in the “sixth age”—our own time, too, the sixth age in the historic
life of mankind on this planet, which is a time of rebirth and reform by means
of the gospel, a process which, according to Msgr. Kevane, elevates the
Catholic Church as a spiritual sovereign over all nations.
In
De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos, St.
Augustine, having refuted the theory of cycles,
and the so-called Preadamism, defended with an unequalled lucidity and power
the historicity of the Sacred Scriptures. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, as we
noted earlier, says that “Myths are specific accounts of gods or superhuman
beings involved in extraordinary events or circumstances in a time that is unspecified” but pretends as if the time
humans actually evolved is
specific! The Encyclopaedia is saying,
in other words, that what is written in the Bible is not historical but mythical!
St.
Augustine states that it is God Himself "who both inspired the Sacred Scriptures, and created this visible cosmos". He rejected vigorously the very thought of a distinction between the
religious teaching of the Bible and the factual character of its historical
narrative. The Sacred Scriptures, in other words, recount a history which is
not the mere local and isolated memory of the Hebrews as one of the natural
peoples; on the contrary, with divine light and power, the beginnings of the
human family as such are announced to modern man through the Catholic Faith in
the Bible.
In his work De Genesi
ad Litteram—a treatise on the Book of Genesis—St. Augustine poses the
question, “are all things to be understood figuratively, or ...asserted and
defended according to the reality of historical events?” His own answer,
exemplified by his entire mode of treatment, is perfectly clear: “The narration
in this book of Genesis”, he writes, “is not in the literary kind of figurative
speech, as in the Canticle of Canticles, but it is entirely a narrative of historical
realities, as in the Books of Kings and others of this type.”[40]
In his earlier work on the Book of Genesis, St Augustine
writes that “this entire passage is first to be discussed according to history,
then according to prophecy. The facts are narrated according to history, but
they also predict future things in a prophetic way.”[41]
Modern Evolution, of course, never existed during the time of
St. Augustine, but a topic related to it is treated in his work De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos, books
XII and XVIII. In Book XII, chapter 10, “Of the opinion that the human race,
like the world itself, has always existed”—De
opinione eorum, qui humanum genus sicut ipsum mundum semper fuisse existimant;
and chapter 11, “Of the falseness of the history that the world hath continued
many thousand years”—De falsitate eius
historiae, quae multa millia annorum praeteritis temporibus ascribit, Augustine
discusses man’s origin from the biblical perspective. Evolution theory says man
has existed for millions (or billions) of years. There were people in the time
of St. Augustine who said something similar—but they, unlike modern
evolutionists, made their assertions based on what they understood as “recorded
history” and not an evolutionary one,
hence their “years”, unlike those of modern evolutionists, were not even up to
one million but “many thousand years”. St. Augustine faulted that assertion:
“Those who hold such opinions are also led astray by some utterly spurious documents which, they say, give a historical record of many thousand years, whereas we reckon, from the evidence of the Holy Scriptures, that fewer than 6, 000 years have passed since man’s first origin. To avoid any long argument in refutation of the nonsense of the writings which allege many more thousands of years, and to show how utterly inadequate is their authority on this subject, I need only refer to the well known Letter of Alexander the Great to his mother Olympias. This incorporates the narrative of an Egyptian Priest, which he produced from the writings considered sacred by the Egyptians. This document records, among other empires, the monarchies which are also known to Greek historical sources. In Alexander’s letter the Assyrian monarchy is represented as lasting more than 5, 000 years, while in the Greek records it covered only 1, 300 years, from the reign of Belus, who appears as the first king in the Egyptians’ story as well as in the Greek. The Egyptian allege a duration of more than 8, 000 years for the Persian and Macedonian Empires down to the time of Alexander, to whom he was speaking. But in the Greek account the Macedonian monarchy is found to have lasted only 485 years up to the death of Alexander, while the Persian Empire, according to this reckoning, was brought to an end by Alexander’s conquest after 233 years of power. The Greek figures are thus much smaller than the Egyptian. In fact they would not equal them, even if multiplied by three. Now it is said that the Egyptians at one time had short years, lasting only four months, so that the real year, a full year, like the modern Egyptian year (which is the same as ours) would contain three of those old Egyptian years. But even so, as I said, Greek record would not coincide with the Egyptian in chronology. And there is good reason for regarding the Greek account as more worthy of credence, in that it does not exceed the true statement of the number of years, as presented in our Scriptures, which are truly sacred. Moreover if this well-known letter of Alexander is so widely discrepant from the trustworthy record of the facts in respect of the chronology, how much less credence should be given to those writings, packed with fairy-tales about reputed antiquity, which our opponents may decide to produce in attempts to controvert the authority of our sacred books, whose inspiration is so generally acknowledged. This is the authority which foretold that the whole world would believe in it; and the belief of the whole world has answered to that prophecy. The fulfilment in reality of those prophecies of the future guarantees the truth of the biblical narratives of the past.”[42]
In
Book XII of De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos,
we read:
“Quae saecula praeterierint antequam
genus institueretur humanum, me fateor ignorare; non tamen dubito nihil
omnino creaturae Creatori esse coaeternum. Dicit etiam Apostolus tempora
aeterna, nec ea futura, sed, quod magis est mirandum, praeterita. Sic enim ait:
In spem vitae aeternae, quam promisit non mendax Deus ante tempora aeterna;
manifestavit autem temporibus suis verbum suum...”
“I
confess my ignorance about the ages which passed before the creation of
mankind, yet I am certain that no creature is co-eternal with the creator. The
Apostle (i.e. Saint Paul) also talks about eternal times not as in the future
but, what is more surprising, in the past. He says, ‘In the hope of eternal
life, which God, who never lies, promised before eternal times; but at his own
appointed times he manifested his word...”[43]
Late Irish classicist and historian of ancient and medieval philosophy (in particular Augustine and Eriugena), John O’Meara, a professor of Latin at the University College Dublin, rightly points out—with respect to Augustine’s reference to “eternal times”—that the original Greek words used by St. Paul in Titus 1:2, πρὸ χρόνων αἰωνίων (“pro cronon aionion”), Latin ante tempora saecularia, actually mean “before ages ago” rather than “before eternal times.”
Interestingly,
I have encountered evolutionists who say that even St. Augustine, too (from the
above statement) confessed his ignorance of the ages which passed—certainly the
billions of years!—before the creation of man!
Augustine
is human, and a humble one for that matter—quite unlike the arrogant, modern
evolutionists.
However, the book we are dealing with is simply a refutation of evolution — those millions or billions of years are just untenable. For instance, in chapter 13 of Book XII, “The reply to the argument against the recent creation of man”, Augustine writes:
“Some people raise the question why an
infinity of ages passed without man’s being created, why his creation was so
late that less than 6, 000 years, according to scriptural evidence, have passed
since he first came into existence. Our answer to this is the same as that we
offered to the similar objection about the origin of the world, raised by those
who refused to believe, not that the world has always existed, but that it had
a beginning (as Plato clearly admits, although some believe that he was not
expressing his real opinion). If the idea of so short a time upsets them, and
the years since man’s creation, as recorded in our authorities, seem so few,
they should consider that nothing which has a limit is of enormous duration,
and that all the finite spaces of the ages, when compared with endless
eternity, are to be counted not as very little, but as nothing at all.
Therefore even if we speak of not just 5, 000 or 6,000 years, but even 60, 000
or 600, 000 or 6, 000,000 or 60,000,000 or 600,000,000, and go on squaring the
numbers until we reach a number to which we cannot give a name, and make that
the time since man’s first creation, the question could still be asked: ‘Why
not earlier?’
“For God’s pause before the creation of
man was eternal and without beginning, so that compared with it an
inexpressibly great number of centuries, which must still have an end and a
defined extent, is not so much as the smallest drop of water compared with all
the oceans of the world: for in this comparison, though one is tiny and the
other incomparably huge, still both terms are finite. But any space of time
which starts from a beginning and is brought to an end, however vast its
extent, must be reckoned when compared with that which has no beginning, as
minimal, or rather as nothing at all. For if you take from it the shortest
moments one by one, beginning from the end, however great the number may be,
even if it is too great to have a name, it will still decrease as you go back,
until the process of subtraction brings you to the beginning. It is like subtracting
the days of a man’s life working back from the present until you reach his
birthday. But if you take what has no beginning, and work backwards, not
subtracting moments one by one, or hours, or days, or months, or years, but
intervals equal to that number of years which exceeds all possible computation
and yet can be wiped out by the subtraction of moments one by one, and if you
subtract those immense spaces of time not once or twice or any number of times,
but without limit, it is all to no avail; you never reach the beginning,
because there is no beginning at all. Therefore the question which we now ask
after 5, 000 years or more, posterity could as well ask, with the same
curiosity, after 600, 000 years, if the mortal state of humanity, with its succession
of birth and death, should last so long, and our frailty, with all its
ignorance, should endure. And our predecessors might have raised the same
question soon after the creation of man. In fact the first man himself might
have asked, on the day after he was made, or even on the very day of his
creation, why he had not been made sooner. And whenever he had been made, no
matter how much earlier, this objection about the beginning of temporal things
would have had precisely the same force then as now—or at any other time.”[44]
Conclusion
According to “Saint” John Paul II’s
scandalous “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, any believer may accept either
literal or special creation within the period of an actual six-day,
twenty-four-hour period, or they may accept the belief that the earth evolved
over time under the guidance of God! This new “Catholicism” holds
blasphemously that God Himself initiated and continued the process of “his evolutionary
creation,” and that all
humans, whether specially created or
evolved, have and have always had specially created souls—not just bodies, because that, according
to Pius XII, may have possibly evolved!—for each individual.
On the contrary, traditional Catholicism teaches that God created the
first human beings on this earth, Adam and Eve, along with the other land
animals, on Day 6 of the Creation Week (Genesis 1:20–25, 31)—and that
was, according to recorded or Sacred History, about six thousand years ago, not the evolutionary utopian millions or
billions of years ago. Death, bloodshed, disease, and suffering as we
experience here on earth are a result of Adam’s sin (Genesis 1:29–30; Romans
5:12, 14;1 Corinthians 15:21–22). Representatives of all the kinds of
air-breathing land animals went aboard Noah’s Ark during the Flood. All those
left outside the Ark died in the cataclysmic circumstances of the Flood, and
many of their remains became fossils. After the Flood, around 4,300 years ago,
the remnant of the land animals came off the Ark and lived in the present world,
along with people. All the people living in the present world are descendants
of those that survived the Flood.
The “logic” of evolution is that
human nature changes with time. This, put simply, is quite contrary to reason
and common sense—quite contrary to what
we really observe in our world.
From the history of humans—and I mean humans as presented to us by recorded history—we are yet to observe
that, to observe, for instance, that an African or European man living in the
present world is different in appearance (as
human) from an African or European
man that lived in the first century AD (or any other period of recorded
history); or that he speaks like a normal human while the former did not; or
that men living in the present world can reason while those that lived in the
BCs did not (even though we are yet to see thinkers in the present world who
can reason as soundly as Plato or Aristotle).
As I once wrote in an old article,
“To deny the relevance of Classics—and may I add, philosophy—in the modern
world is to reject human sentiment,” writes Sarah Graham, “to ignore the fact
that, in spite of the passing of centuries, human character remains the same.
Despite the many differences between the ancients and ourselves, and the many
changes in the world we live in, the ancient writers convey emotions so
eloquently and so strongly, that they are able to bridge the gap across the
centuries and communicate with us directly through our most basic human
emotions. We feel the same horror of war, the same pangs of love, the same
dread of isolation, the same fear of death and the same desire to make our mark
upon the world, to live on through our words and deeds, as the ancient writers
we read.”
In a nutshell, the human beings presented to us by the Bible
or recorded history are those who, just like us, are humans in all things,
while those presented by evolutionary history are radically different from
us and are, in fact, not really
humans.
Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Francis-appointed—and now demoted—“cardinal”,
recently commented on the situation facing today’s Europe—with a focus on
Germany—calling it “dramatic”.
New figures show about 160,000 Catholics left the Church in
Germany last year alone. The number may be an improvement on 2015, when 180,000
“faithful” left the Church—or opted out of paying a church tax compulsory for
members—but it still represents a sharp decline.
Müller lamented the state of German, and wider European,
society.
“Active participation is very much diminished, also the
transmission of the Faith not as a theory but as an encounter with Jesus Christ
has waned. Religious vocations the same.”
Europe, he said, is undergoing a “forced de-Christianisation”
that goes “way beyond secularisation”.
“It is the de-Christianisation of the entire anthropological
base, with man strictly defined without God and without transcendence. Religion
is experienced as a sentiment, not as adoration of God, Creator and Saviour.” (See
a similar news: Dutch bishops tell Pope the Church is collapsing as they face hundreds of closures).
When we see some Westerners teaching the doctrine of
evolution as a “scientific fact”, the above description is the fundamental
“secret” behind their action: that is, it’s because they no longer believe in
God or in what His Church teaches. This disbelief isn’t really because they
aren’t sure whether the Christian Faith is true or not but because there is
simply a massive hatred of God and religion generally—hence they don’t care
replacing Christianity with just any
assumption, true or false.
“As Christian faith has ceased to command universal acceptance, society has turned to other ideological bases,” writes Tony Lane. “For sometime much of the world adopted a new secular ‘religion’, Marxism-Leninism. In the West, society is based on secular, non-religious assumptions. Religion is increasingly seen as a private affair for the individual, a matter for personal preference, like choosing to join a tennis club. This process has been encouraged by the emergence of a more pluralist society where a variety of different religions are practised.”[45]
“As Christian faith has ceased to command universal acceptance, society has turned to other ideological bases,” writes Tony Lane. “For sometime much of the world adopted a new secular ‘religion’, Marxism-Leninism. In the West, society is based on secular, non-religious assumptions. Religion is increasingly seen as a private affair for the individual, a matter for personal preference, like choosing to join a tennis club. This process has been encouraged by the emergence of a more pluralist society where a variety of different religions are practised.”[45]
The reason why the Catholic Church suffers more from
atheists/secularists/liberal Christians in our time than other religions is
because She alone, among other
innumerable false religions in the world, “claims” to be the only true religion
in the world—and She is. This “claim”
has now been vigorously rejected. For instance we observe that the majority of contemporary
scholars worldwide—both Christians and non-Christians—no longer use the terms AD and BC. The terms BC, Before Christ, and AD, Anno Domini, remain in common usage but
have been expunged from the secular language of officialdom and academia. The new terms BCE, Before Common
Era, and CE, Common Era (first invented in the sixth century AD) are now the
rule in order to express politically correct sensitivity to non-Christians—even
though whether it’s BC or BCE, both systems take the (Catholic) Gregorian
calendar as their starting point! Of course, the
reason for this new attitude is because BC and AD do have a religious
significance because they state that Jesus of Nazareth is both God and Messiah:
AD means “Year of the Lord.” BC means “Before Christ” or “Before the Messiah.”
This religious component makes CE and BCE “more attractive” to many people—particularly
atheists, secularists, non-Christians and liberal Christians. CE and BCE are
notations that are not based on religion. They can be embraced by all.
Similarly, Church leaders who currently champion the doctrine
of evolution want something which can be embraced by all, because the concept
of Sacred History is just "outdated".
Notes:
[1]
"creation myth." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia
Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia
Britannica, 2014.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
"evolution." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia
Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia
Britannica, 2014.
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
In The Popes Against Modern Errors (Rockford, Illinois 61105: Tan Books
and Publishers, 1999) p.346
[7]
Ibid. p. 361.
[8]
In the Beginning, pp. 12, 65,
66. In the Beginning is an annotated version of a 4-homily series
delivered by Joseph Ratzinger in Munich (1981). Subtitled A Catholic
Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, the book was published
in Germany in 1985 and is now available in English translation.
[9]
Ibid. p. 50.
[10]
Op. cit.
[11]
Their article,
How accurate are Carbon-14 and other radioactive dating methods?
[12]
Ibid.
[13]
Ibid.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
Ibid.
[16] A.R. Williams, “Long-age Isotope
Dating Short on Credibility,” CEN Technical Journal, 1992,
6(1):2-5.
[17]
Woodmorappe, The Mythology of Modern
Dating Methods.
[18]
F. M. Cornford From Religion to
Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1957) p. 8
[19]
Ernst Mayr The Growth of Biological
Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, MA Belknap
Press, 1982) p. 304
[20]
Timaeus (28a)
[21]
Ibid. (29b)
[22]
Ibid. (29c)
[23]
Ibid. (29d)
[24]
Ibid. (29a)
[25]
Ibid.
[26] A.A. Snelling, “The Cause of Anomalous Potassium-argon
'Ages' for Recent Andesite Flows at Mt. Nguaruhoe, New Zealand, and the
Implications for Potassium-argon 'Dating,'” Proc. 4th ICC, 1998,
pp.503-525.
[27]
"big-bang model." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia
Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia
Britannica, 2014.
[28] In his Ad salutem humani generis (1930).
[29] In his Saepenumero considerantes (1883).
[30] Aeterni Patris (1879)
[31] Quamquam Ecclesia (1954).
[32]
Acts 1:7.
[33]
De Civitate Dei contra paganos, Liber
XXIII, 30.
[34]
William M. Green: “Augustine on the Teaching of History,” University of California Publications in Classical Philology, 12,
(1944), 315.
[35]
Ibid.
[36]
Augustine The Educator (West Minster, Maryland, 1964) p. 228
[37]
Ibid.
[38]
G. Amari II concetto di storia in Sant
’Agostino. (Roma: Edizioni Paoline, 1950) p. 93. Quoted by Eugene Kevane on
page 239-240 of Augustine The Educator.
Original text: “Questa ‘regalis via
liberandae animae’ tracciata dalla Provvidenza all’umanita, e la storia della
religione cristiana. E la visione storica della salute che Agostino attinge
dalla tradizione, S. Paolo e i padri. La Sacra Scrittura e una storia, ma
qualcosa di piu di una storia, intesa come racconto di avvenimenti, come
cronaca. In questa storia sacra il racconto e secondario, esso e mezzo, veicolo
di una con concezione, di una dottrina. La creazione, la caduta, l’antica
alleanza sono dei fatti situati nel tempo, ma portano in seno grandi verita
religiose, dogmi e altre verita secondary e spirituali. Dio ha nascosta queste
verita in fatti, perche siano accessibili a tutti. Questa accondiscendenza
divina e rilevata con parole espressive da S. Agostino.”
[39]
De catech. Rudibus 22 (39): J.P. Christopher (trans.), St. Augustine: The First Catechetical Instruction (“Ancient
Christian Writers” No 2; Westminster, MD.: The Newman Bookshop, 1946) p.70, in Augustine The Educator, op. cit., p.216.
[40]
De gen. ad litt., VIII, 1 (2); P.L. 34,
272: “Narratio in his libris (Genesis)
non genere locutionis figuratarum rerum est, sicut in Cantico Canticorum, sed
omnino gestarum, sicut in Regnorum libris et hujuscemodi.”
[41]
Quoted by Eugene Kevane, op. cit. p.
[42]
De Civitate Dei contra paganos, op.
cit. Liber XII, 11.
[43]
Ibid. Liber XII, 17
[44]
Ibid. Liber XII, 13.
[45]
Tony Lane Exploring Christian Thought (Nashville
Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996) p. 182
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