QUESTION:

I know that you are probably busy but I hope you can answer some of my concerns. I am currently a Christian bordering on converting to Nihilism. I grew up believing in God creating everything as per the Genesis account even though I believed in an old universe. I believed that God physically created everything at different points in time. That is currently changing.  I am having deep trouble accepting that God used evolution to bring about man. Evolution is an extremely wasteful and brutal way of creating and I can’t see God using it especially if he is all-powerful and can create anything from nothing. Theistic Evolutionists argue that God created these laws to bring about his creation but it sounds like they are trying to sneak God in through the back door. If we know about the natural laws that created everything, why do we need God? It seems to me that science has disproven the Genesis account of creation and the historical Adam & Eve. If all this was metaphor then what separates this from any other creation account? We can posit that anything is a metaphor. Did Jesus die for a metaphor? We even have evidence of intelligent early hominids that functioned perfectly fine with an evolved brain. It stands to reason that the more they evolved the bigger their brains got and our minds just evolved with it. If we can’t test for God and we have all the natural laws, how can anyone possibly believe in God anymore? It seems that evolution can explain everything, even God. I can’t understand how Darrel Falk and Francis Collins can believe in random mutations and still think God created us. If it’s all random, how does one test for a God in that? It would seem that man was not the desired end of God’s creation but a happy accident. Again, why would Jesus die for that? I feel that if there is no God then everything in life is pretty pointless. There is no meaning, no purpose, no value, no morality, and no afterlife. I might as well end it all for the good that it will do me. Please help. Thanks.

ANSWER:

I agree with you that without God there is no objective meaning, purpose, value, morality or afterlife.  I would further contend that without God there wouldn’t be anything at all—no universe and no biological life.  The objective fact that the universe exists, operates according to natural laws, is hospitable to biological life, contains biological life, and that some of these living things are intelligent, moral, and report interaction with God that has been faithfully recorded in scripture as strong evidence that God exists and the biblical account of the world is true.  The Evidence for Christianity website exists to make this case, and you will find arguments for all these points here.  In light of these multiple lines of evidence, it would be foolhardy to cast off your faith in God because of consternation about the current state of evolutionary theory.

Few things evolve faster than evolutionary theory.  With all due respect to Drs. Falk and Collins, they have wedded Christianity to the current state of evolutionary science only to have the science move past them.  For example, they both have relied heavily on “junk DNA” arguments, which have rapidly been overturned as genetics and genomics have advanced.

Evolutionary theories encompass a wide range of contested, conflicting and constantly changing data in numerous scientific disciplines.  This is why evolutionists seem to be able to explain anything and everything.  Their various explanations tend to change over time, however.

Some argue that “evolution is a fact” and others argue that it is “only a theory.”  Both are correct.  Aspects of evolutionary thought are settled science (such as the observation that species have changed over time) and other aspects are unproven speculation (such as the development of life from inorganic matter (chemical evolution), punctuated equilibrium, etc.).  We must be careful in drawing firm theological conclusions from research that is ongoing (and somewhat controversial).

Did Jesus die for a metaphor?  This seems to be where many Theistic Evolutionists leave us in regards to Genesis. But there are other perspectives on Adam and Eve in light of science and scripture that would affirm the special creation of human beings.  I would recommend Who Was Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man by Dr. Fazale Rana and Dr. Hugh Ross.  There have been further scientific discoveries made since this book was published in 2005, but these have tended to confirm many of the arguments made by these two scientists.  Another great resource from a slightly different perspective is Dr. C. John Collins’ 2011 book Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?: Who They Were and Why You Should Care.  This author is an Old Testament scholar who is conversant with both the scientific and scriptural issues.

The truth remains that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15).  Jesus’ life, teaching, atoning death, and resurrection still stand regardless of the apparent messiness of God’s creation and the messier progress of scientific theories about it.  Don’t lose heart, for “Christ was faithful as a son over His house–whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.” (Hebrews 3:6)

God bless you!  Hope this helps.

Dan Conder