I’m something of a digital book hoarder and can rarely resist a free book/heavily discounted book. As such, I recently picked up a free copy of The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity by Ed Hindson and Ergun Caner. (Harvest House Publishers, 2008).
As I was scanning the contents page I saw an entry marked ‘Creation, theories of’ where I found a suggested refutation TE/EC (no doubt the authors would lump them in together).
Given how the authors seek to address the philosophical, scientific, and theological issues with TE as they see them, I thought it might make for an interesting discussion starter. As such I have reproduced their refutation in full below.
You may also be interested to note that the authors do not include YEC under the ‘theories’ section but are rather dealt with under its own entry called ‘apologetics, creation’.
Looking forward to reading people’s thoughts.
THEISTIC EVOLUTION
The Basic Thesis of This Theory
Theistic evolution teaches that God initiated the original creation process and then used the life-and-death struggle of natural selection’s proverbial survival of the fittest to complete the job. The term theistic evolution is an oxymoron. Theistic is another term for God. Evolution is another term for gradualism and materialistic naturalism.Scientific Problems with This Theory
Theistic evolution avoids materialistic naturalism’s position that nothing is the ultimate source for everything. But it ultimately still embraces and promotes the belief that molecules eventually evolved into man through a mindless process involving chance, matter, time, and mutation. The theistic evolutionist believes that God started the process and then left it alone.Evolution, whether the argument is for Dawkins’s neo-Darwinian gradualism or Gould’s punctuated equilibrium, is atheistic at its core. Both proposed variations of evolutionary theory were conceived as a justification for the rejection of supernatural revelation and accountability to a supreme Creator. If the process of evolution fails to actually work anywhere other than in theories of men, then it does not matter who or what initiated the process. Nothing from nothing still leaves nothing.
Scriptural Problems with This Theory
The Bible states that sin and death entered the world through Adam.
Genesis 2:17, Romans 5:12-21, and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 indicate that death came as the result of one man’s sin. That man is identified as Adam, the first man. According to the Bible, before Adam’s sin, there was no death. Genesis 1:31 clearly states that everything God created was very good. Theistic evolution teaches that the struggle of the survival of the fittest was a necessary component of man’s evolution, and that, as such, death occurred millions and billions of times before man ever arrived on the scene.If the life-and-death struggle of evolution were present on Earth before man had even evolved, then death did not come as the result of Adam’s sin. If the Bible is incorrect concerning how and when sin and death entered the world, why should anyone believe what it says about how sin and death can be remedied through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?
Jesus said that man was present at the beginning of creation.
In Mark 10:6 Jesus said, “At the beginning of creation God made them male and female.” If theistic evolution is true, then man arrived only after millions of years of ongoing life-and-death struggle. John 1:1-3 clearly states that Jesus is God and the Creator of everything that exists, including humans. Because Jesus did not accommodate His language in speaking of creation, neither should we.A perfect God would not create imperfectly.
Why would a God who is perfect and who does everything perfectly use millions of years of evolutionary death, disease, and destruction as the means to complete His work? Christians who promote theistic evolution reject the plain literal meaning of the first 11 chapters of Genesis. If the book of Genesis is to be interpreted as allegory or myth, how are other books of the Bible to be understood? If Genesis does not mean what it says, how do we explain the fact that Jesus quoted from it repeatedly, presuming and affirming both its authenticity and reliability? Was Jesus speaking in allegory or myth when He predicted His own death and resurrection? If the theistic evolutionist chooses to reject Genesis 1–11 as allegory or myth, what can be said to someone else who chooses to reject John 1–11 or Romans 1–11 as allegory or myth?
“Creation, Theories of” in Hindson, Ed and Ergun Caner, The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity. (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2008). np.