What is the scholarly biblical argument against theistic evolution?

score:3

Accepted answer

The law of evolution is selfishness. survival and preservation is only possible if one looks out for oneself, or maybe an immediate relation.

However, the law of God's kingdom is the spirit of self-denial, to love God and one another as oneself1. A love so deep that One would not hesitate to give up His life for His friends.

Simply put, evolution does not carry the signature of God. It does not match the character of God.

God created creatures in perfection in the beginning, out of love. He pronounced them as good. Death and suffering resulted only after the fall into sin, and did not exist before it.


1. Since the Advent of Christ, fulfilling the mandatum novum, the new commandment, loving others as HE has loved us.


Scriptural support

Ps 145:9 (RSVCE)

9 The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.

Ps 8:4-8 (RSVCE)

4 what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? 5 Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. 6 Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet, 7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea.

Matt 10:29-31 (RSVCE)

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Upvote:1

Scripture bears this out clearly, when talking very specifically about the days of the week, and the sanctification of the seventh day in Exodus 20:8-11

8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

So you see can that verse 11, in context, leaves NO ROOM for a theory that God took longer than seven literal days to create heaven and earth. A Biblical stance on the issue holds against the idea that life evolved from simple organisms over millions of years.

Upvote:2

I'm not sure if there is very "scholarly" but the main (If not one of) problem I would suppose theistic evolutionist would have is the manner in which mankind is portrayed in the Bible versus the naturalistic type of view evolution has of mankind.

Evolutionist would have you believe that we are but just a higher evolved type of animal. A view that is in stark contras to the special nature mankind has in the Bible. We are the crown or jewel of creation but under these naturalistic views of creation there seems little acknowledgment of our specialness.

I personally hold a view agnosticism as to the question of how the life sustaining universe was created. I'm not all that convince that the manner in which God created is something our limited faculties are able to comprehend.

That may seem weird view for a Bible adherent to have but I think the question of who made is answerable while the question of how is not? That does not factor into my belief as a religious person though. I hope to ask God how exactly he made what he made when I meet him.

Upvote:3

  • Theistic evolution puts death before sin. According to the Bible, animals died as a result of man's rebellion.
  • The Biblical record shows a different order of creation than evolution. Evolution holds the order: Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Mammals. The creation record disagrees.
  • Theistic evolution generally would hold man to be at the end of a long process of evolution. The Bible says man was created special, out of the dust.
  • The DNA is said to have evolved, mutated, and grown. The amount of information encoded in our DNA is enormous. The ability to differentiate between species (Biblically "kinds") is built into the DNA framework itself, but this is not additional genetic information, simply doing what the DNA already is. For evolution to work, it must create the information from nothing. The order of information science makes this impossible. There has never been a beneficial mutation recorded.
  • Darwin himself said that if it were true, there would be innumerable transitional forms. The fossil record, after 150 years since Darwin, shows none. Every so called intermediate form of man is proven a hoax. After 150years, its time to concede that while there MUST be innumerable transitional forms, there are none. A single fossil would not even suffice. You cannot prove it even had kids.
  • Numerous astronomical facts point to a young earth, not the long span required for gap theory nor theistic evolution. Consider a few: polonium halos (www.halos.org), the magnetic field of the Earth is slowly degrading-zA time frame of billions would make it too strong to sustain life. The moon is slowly getting further away--the rate of slip over anything more than about 10k years puts it on top of us. Lack of star births or mechanism for it to happen--we see novas and super novas, star deaths, but given the rate of their observation, we have never seen one formed nor have any model for how it could happen. The only theory is 10 exploding stars might form one. That is not a viable source for ignition of the universe. Dr Walt Brown demonstrates that, due to the flood, the Earth is destabilized. Magma above a certain depth rises to the surface, while below that depth, it sinks in the mantle. The core is becoming destabilized at that crushing depth.
  • The layers of strata, the hallmark of evolution (besides the fossils themselves) do not necessarily speak of ages of time. Rather, hydrological sorting during the flood could account for all of them. For example, when Mt. ST Helen erupted in the 80s, a river was blocked by a mudflow. After water built up behind it, it broke overnight and created the "little Grand Canyon" (YouTube it). This smaller canyon, created out of sight in darkness over 8 hours or less was complete with strata layers not laid down over millions of years, but in one mud flow. The twists and turns and hundred foot cliffs were carved in relatively short time (hours), not millions of years. The strata seen across the world better fits the Biblical account of the flood, than the idea that each layer of rock being hundreds of thousands of years. The concept of the ages of rocks was made up without scientific basis in the 1800s, and radiometric dating is based wholly upon the basis of the nonscientific need for it to be so. Things like Carbon-14 dating, as well as the others, have many assumptions, any one of which could cause an invalid or misread result.

There are many, many more reasons. These are only a handful of ones as to why evolution fails in general, let alone why theistic evolution fails.

If you are interested in more depth to answers, consider going to YouTube and searching for names lIke Dr. Walt Brown and his hydroplate theory. Dr Kent Hovind's creation seminars (also search for 'young earth').

If you want to get closer to a scholarly source, consider organizations such as ICR, Institute for Creation Research, which has regular FREE magazines with scholarly content representing the leading edge of creation research (and, hence, young earth/anti-theistic evolution).

Additionally, you could check out David Rives and his show, Creation in the 21st century on TBN (also YouTube and FB) for both new finds as well as additional resources. Also, the new series of DVDs from ICR, "Unlocking the Mysteries of Genesis" presents the literal Biblical account for creation in a twelve 1/2 hr DVD series aimed for the millennials. You can find the first video available free online, as an introduction.

A thorough, exhaustive list, of course, is not possible, but this covers the basis for it. At its heart, after sifting through many layers of misinformation (such as the notion of "gill slits" in embryos, a notion still taught today in public schools as true despite being disproved as a complete fraud 150 years ago, and the many hoaxes of "missing links", the direct evidence for evolution is surprisingly slim, in my opinion.

One could answer the question, where is the scholarly evidence FOR evolution, if one wanted, but that would be a much larger debate.

Upvote:8

Last week I heard this argument, again. According to theistic evolution, millions of years took place and animals died all the time. But Genesis 1 says that after each day God pronounced it as good, therefore there must not have been death, because death is bad. And if there was no death, then millions of years of dead animals is wrong too.

Sure my simplification doesn't sound scholarly, but I'm cutting to the chase.

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