Why We are Troubled by Darwin’s Inroads into the Church

Evolutionists are just as evangelistic about their faith as we are. And so it’s no surprise that they are trying to push their faith on Evangelicals. However, it is surprising that the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) is joining in this effort. According to WORLD Magazine:

• The NAE...”is in the final stages of formalizing an agreement to collaborate with the American Association for the Advancement of Science…on a project to build a better dialogue and understanding between the scientific and evangelical communities. The collaboration is part of a Templeton Foundation grant received by the AAAS.” (Sept 22, 2012, 12)

This means that the AAAs and the NAE want us to become theistic evolutionists (TEs, or CEs – Christian evolutionists). Clearly, building “a better dialogue and understanding” is not part of their true agenda. The NAE chief operating officer refused to talk with WORLD’s Marvin Olasky, who concluded that:

• The clear goal of AAAS and Templeton is to bolster the “motivation, imagination, and capacity” of pastors who want to influence their congregations to accept evolution.

Well, why not also bolster the AAAS? Seems like a one-way street! But what is the problem with updating our Christian theory with a touch of scientific “advancement?”  There are many ways that marrying Jesus to Darwin undermines the Christian faith. Here are some of them.

This marriage unbiblically elevates evolution to the level of Scripture. Instead of Scripture critiquing all other truth claims (2 Cor. 10:4-5), evolution now stands in judgment over Scripture. Jesus had warned against serving two masters (Mat. 6:23-24) by showing how one of them would eventually get the boot. In all of my conversations with CEs, it has been apparent that the Bible got the boot. It was always coerced to conform to Darwin and not the other way around. Consequently, when science is allowed to trump Scripture, there is no end to the compromises that Scripture is forced to make.

Evolution introduces a competing and entirely alien worldview. The consistent message of Genesis, and the rest of the Scriptures, is that God had made everything “very good” and we screwed it all up, requiring a future Savior (Gen. 3:15) to bring about a “restoration” (Acts 3:21).

According to evolution, life was a dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest struggle from the beginning. Consequently, Adam and Eve screwed-up nothing, and sin and death had their origins from the inception of life, in contrast with Genesis 3.

As a result of this marriage, Jesus, the “second Adam,” has to be re-envisioned. He is no longer the Savior from the effects of the Fall – sin and death, the work of Adam – but the Savior from God’s “glorious” but bloody evolutionary plan.

There can be no “restoration,” because a restoration would be a restoration to our dog-eat-dog beginnings – not a very pleasant prospect.

This alien worldview also undermines morality in many ways. If the “survival-of-the-fittest” is God’s glorious plan to bring us onto the scene, then we can should regard this God-given methodology as normative – a model for our guidance. Consequently, who can blame Cain for killing the naïve and less well-adapted Abel! Besides, if there is no absolute distinction between us and the beasts, then there can be no absolute distinction between the way we treat man and beast.

Evolution disparages the Biblical accounts. In order to make room for Darwin, Scripture – at least the first several chapters of Genesis – have to be relegated to non-historical allegory. For instance, Genesis 1:30 states that God gave the birds and beasts green herbs to eat. However, this contradicts evolution’s insistence regarding the bloody struggle of the survival-of-the-fittest. Therefore, the CE dogmatically asserts that the Bible “isn’t a science or history text,” but a theology text - the way to find salvation.

Thus, evolution illegitimately separates theology from its necessary historical foundations. However, we cannot separate the theology of the cross from the history of the cross. To remove the historical fact that Christ died on the cross is to deny the Gospel – that Jesus died for our sins. No history, no theology!

We also find this inseparable relationship between history and theology in Genesis. Peter reasons that God means business about a future judgment. He cites His past (historical) judgments as evidence – the flood and Sodom (2 Peter 2:4-9). However, if these accounts were merely parabolic or allegorical, then we’d have no reason to believe that the future judgment is any more than an allegory. Clearly, this was not Peter’s intention.

Closer to home, Jesus bases His teachings on marriage on the historical events of Genesis 1 and 2:

• "Haven't you read," he [Jesus] replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' [Genesis 1:26-27] and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh' [Gen. 2:24]? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has [historically] joined together, let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

If God hadn’t actually created them and historically joined the two together, Jesus’ argument against divorce would be insupportable. (If God hadn’t historically joined them together, then there is no need to keep them together!) Therefore, if Genesis isn’t history, then Jesus was mistaken.

Many CEs deny that Adam and Eve were actually historical. However, if we deny their historicity, then we have to deny everything that the New Testament says about them. However, Paul also affirmed the historicity of the Genesis 3 account:

• Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—(Romans 5:12)

Without any doubt, Paul made an historical claim and based a lot of other theology on the historical Adam (1 Tim. 2:14-16; 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 45).

The many genealogies also assert that Adam was an historical person. Besides, if Adam isn’t historical, then Cain and Abel aren’t historical, and Abraham and David aren’t historical – all the way up to Jesus. Consequently, if Adam wasn’t historical, the genealogies would lead us to believe that all of his so-named descendents are likewise unhistorical. Therefore, to compromise the first chapters of the Bible is to compromise everything else.

The CE worldview kills apologetics – the defense of the faith. Proofs build upon what is clear and generally accepted in order to prove what has been unclear and disputed. This also pertains to apologetics – theistic proofs and proofs that the Bible is actually God’s Word. Consequently, we start with what we can see and touch – the physical world (evidences of miracles, fulfilled prophecy, extra-Biblical testimony…) – and apply these areas of agreement to areas of disagreement. Jesus performed miracles and fulfilled prophecies to provide a foundation for our faith. However, the CE claims that the Bible is both mistaken and unconcerned about events in the physical world. This undercuts the possibility of any comprehensive proof.

The CE also disparages ID as science and proof. This too goes against the testimony of Scripture that we are “without excuse” (Romans 1:18-20) when we deny the physical evidence for the existence of God. Consequently, the CE worldview has limited the Christian faith to only subjective/personal appeals – “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8)

The Bible provides no justification for the CE claim that the Bible is about the spiritual world, while evolution is about the physical. (They make this insupportable distinction in order to relieve any possible contradiction between Jesus and Darwin. After all, they deal with two entirely different realms, right?)

However, even evolutionists will admit that evolution knows no boundaries. The atheist Daniel Dennett refers to this theory as an “acid” that will corrode away all religious belief, and I think he is right! Indeed, evolution is now being evoked to explain everything – psychology, morality and even religion. Nothing is beyond its grasp.

When I raise these concerns with CEs, they tell me that, “we have to be humble about our interpretation of the Bible.” (If only they were as humble about evolution! Almost uniformly, they inform me that the Bible is marred by the ancient and errant beliefs of their time. But who cares about that anyway, since the Bible isn’t about the physical world but the spiritual!)

However, based upon my many dialogues with CEs, they seem to have become so “humble” about the Bible, that they no longer know what to believe, and sadly, it doesn’t seem to trouble them. In fact, they tend to exalt Biblical uncertainty and doubt as the virtues of the sensitive and thinking man. As a result, their worldview is almost inseparable from that of the educated West. How tragic!

Christian Oppression and Our Responsibility

According to Christianity Today, “An average of 159,960 Christians worldwide are martyred for theirfaith per year.”

Author Toby Westerman adds:

• A silent holocaust of Christian martyrs is taking place around the world. While individual instances of murder and mayhem are sometimes reported, the general pattern of violence is ignored by the media, the United Nations, and most national governments. The perpetrators belong primarily to one of two groups: fundamentalist Islamists or Communist-controlled governments.

Westerman lists some examples of this holocaust from 2009 and before:

• The burning of several Catholic Churches in Malaysia, the deaths of Coptic Christians shot following midnight Mass outside their church, police raids in Saudi Arabia against private prayer groups, all testify to the type of "toleration" employed by Muslim fundamentalists.

• In Egypt, allegations that a Christian man raped a Muslim woman resulted in the murder of seven Coptic Christians and an attempt to kill the area's Coptic bishop. The deadly assault took place about 60 miles from the ancient temple site of Luxor, a popular tourist attraction.

• In Saudi Arabia, a nation where no Christian church is allowed, the country's religious police are ever on the alert for non-Muslim religious activity, including private expressions of prayer. Private group Bible readings and praying run afoul of strict religious edicts. Even Filipino guest workers, who perform menial tasks for wealthy Saudi families, are in danger if they attempt to pray as they did in their homeland.

• While instances of Muslim persecution of Christian believers are documented from Nigeria to Indonesia, no where is Christian martyrdom more tragic and ironic than in post-Saddam Iraq. After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 the Christian population was estimated at about one million. Unfortunately for Christians, the post-Saddam era gave the Muslim majority a taste of democratic rule without the American provisions of a popularly accepted version of the U.S. Bill of Rights. Unrelenting attacks on Iraqi Christians have caused between 400,000 and 500,000 Iraqi Christians to flee Iraq, and many of those remaining are internal refugees - displaced citizens in their own nation, fearful of returning to their homes.

And now the Western media are ignoring the fact that the “Free Syrian Army” are killing Christians in Syria. Oppression in Communist nations is equally egregious. Westerman  also indicts the media:

• It is time for the U.S. mass media to acknowledge the persecution of Christians around the world, and to identify those who commit these crimes. We must recognize that the persecution of vulnerable Christian populations by militant Islamists and Communists is a herald of things to come for the remainder of humanity.

While the Western media are ready to uphold humanitarian causes, Christian martyrdom is not one of them. For one example, World magazine laments that:

• Google is hot for homosexual rights, but where’s the global campaign to support Christians, who are persecuted in dozens of countries? (August 11, 2012)

This is none! What Western nation is threatening these abusing countries for their flagrant violation of human rights? I am aware of none.

Meanwhile, the churches remain silent, convinced, for one reason or another, that they have to stare clear of politics. However, this position finds absolutely no support within the pages of Scripture. Instead, we are repeatedly warned to stand against oppression, especially the martyrdom of our brethren:

• Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked. (Proverbs 25:26)

When a Christian is silent or unresponsive, he “gives way to the wicked.” Instead, we are to expose wickedness:

• Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. (Ephes. 5:11).

Silence is not an option. If we don’t extend ourselves to the broken and the dying, it is sin:

• Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. (James 4:17)

We cannot turn our backs. While many pastors insist that by taking a “political” stance, we turn people away from hearing the Gospel, Scripture would argue the opposite thing. Jesus prayed that His disciples would love one another so that the world would know that they belong to the Messiah – the Savior:

• "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:34-35)

• "My prayer is…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me…May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:19-24)

How can the world see our mutual love, if we turn away from the oppression of our brethren? However, if they see us pouring ourselves out for our brethren  – whether they are in Africa, the Middle East or Asia – they will marvel at our love and self-sacrifice and wonder at the God who motivates such self-sacrifice.

Genocide, Moderate Islam and Western Silence

The gunman, with reported ties to al Qaeda, and suspected of killing seven people, including three children at a Jewish school, has seemingly confessed to the shootings. Understandably,

·        Dalil Boubakeur at the main mosque in Paris told Europe 1 radio that no one should link the Toulouse events and the Muslim religion, which is "99 percent peaceful, responsible, non-violent and well-integrated into the country".

This assertion raises several questions:

1. Are "99 percent peaceful, responsible, non-violent?”
2. If this is so, why are religious minorities in all Islamic nations either persecuted and/or diminished by Shariah law?
3. If Islam is a peaceful religion, why is the Islamic world so prone to violence and coercive attempts to impose Shariah?
4. Why aren’t there any examples of Islam coexisting as equals with religious minorities?

Sadly, the French assassin seems to be just one of many instances of Islamic terror. Muslim-turned-atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, reports:

• Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm…In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.

• But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

• As Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, pointed out in an interview with Newsweek, Christian minorities in many majority-Muslim nations have “lost the protection of their societies.” This is especially so in countries with growing radical Islamist (Salafist) movements. In those nations, vigilantes often feel they can act with impunity—and government inaction often proves them right. The old idea of the Ottoman Turks—that non-Muslims in Muslim societies deserve protection (albeit as second-class citizens)—has all but vanished from wide swaths of the Islamic world, and increasingly the result is bloodshed and oppression.

As an example of what Christians are facing in Islamic territories, the latest issue of World Magazine (March 10) cites the 12 northern provinces of Nigeria, under Sharia law since 2000. Boko Haram, the terror organization, meaning “Western Education is Sinful,” intends to drive Christians out of the north and to impose Sharia on all of Nigeria:

• Christians throughout the Sharia states in the north faced post-election [April 2011] violence. In the Kaduna state [alone], Muslims destroyed 409 churches and pover 2,000 homes, killing 137. In Gombe state, they destroyed 39 churches and 74 homes, killing 20. (54)

• In a Jan. 25 video on YouTube, Boko Haram leader Imam Abubakar Shekau took responsibility for the Jan. 20 attacks and said: “I am not against anyone, but if Allah asks me to kill someone, I will kill him and I will enjoy killing him like I am killing a chicken”…A Boko Haram posting from late last year says…nine…Christian denominations in the north, “must be bombed and leveled.” It also cites eight pastors, most Muslim converts to Christianity, as targets “to be eliminated.” (52)

In light of the fact that the 12 northern districts are already under Sharia and Christians have been made to submit to Sharia, it is hard to understand why the terror would continue. Already:

• In those 12 states authorities prohibit Christians from holding office, discriminate against them in property and business activities, and subject them to Islamic law. Some districts in Kano state have Christian majorities, but district governments are run under the state’s Sharia system. That makes Christians subject to the Islamic court system and requires students to take Islamic courses.

Nevertheless, since the imposition of Sharia in 2000,

• Over 13,000 mostly Christian Nigerians have been killed in religious-related violence, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom…”Boko Haram is not doing anything new,” said Peter Akinola, the retired archbishop of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. “More than terror attacks, this is part of an ongoing attempt to Islamize Nigeria. This country began as a democracy, but now in my own country I cannot live freely.” (52-53)

If world domination is the goal of Islam, perhaps we will soon be saying the same in the West. Even now, those who are doing ministry among the Muslims are facing intimidation and threats of violence. Consequently, if there are peace-loving Muslims who believe in a world where all religions can live at peace in equality, they need to speak up in a meaningful way. It is not enough to merely say, “Well, these terrorists aren’t really Muslim,” especially in light of the Islamic doctrine of “Taquiyya” which authorizes Muslims to lie to the non-believer on behalf of Islam. (See www.koranqa.com, fatwa 59879, where the Muslim can only have contempt for the non-believer). Therefore, we can’t help wondering if the claim to be peace-loving is merely a ploy.

We have not seen where peace-loving Muslims confront the extremists to insist that Sharia should allow religious freedom. Nor have we seen the Mainstream Western Media

confront those committing the atrocities done in the name of Islam. Mark Lipdo, director of the Stefanos Foundation, claims that,

• “They have misrepresented violence as a clash when it was an outright attack from the Muslim minority.” Lipdo himself was on hand in 2010 when Muslim gangs raided three predominantly Christian villages near Jos on March 7, slaughtering hundreds of mostly women, children, and the elderly.

Lipdo claims that the Western media – they derived their information from Muslim sources - has wrongly reported that the various attacks were in reprisal for the killing of 150 Muslims. However, none of the media outlets were “able to provide eyewitness accounts of the attacks that killed 150 Muslims.” Instead, Lipdo reports:

• “We were there when the whole conflict started. We saw the Muslim military commander release people caught carrying out the attacks with their weapons”…Local media reported police on the scene who did nothing to stop the Muslim attackers.” (56)

One victim had commented to the Daily Champion, “As they were killing and burning our homes, they were chanting, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ meaning ‘God is great.’” If this isn’t the real Islam, then the moderates have to publicly reclaim their religion, especially if we are to take them seriously. Likewise, the media, as well as the Western nations, have a responsibility to bring genocide to light. However:

• The reporting slant shows up in the U.S. policy, as well. The 2011 report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom describes “sectarian violence” in Nigeria driven by “religiously motivated actions” without ever saying that the overwhelming number of deaths involve Christians. (56)

If we are really concerned about peace and deeply troubled by genocide, then we have to speak up and shed light on the evil. If we fail to do this, then our silence speaks in favor of approval.

What Do We Trust in Most?

What do you find more trustworthy: 1) Scripture or 2) the latest scientific consensus regarding evolution? Well, before you answer #2, I just like you to consider a few things. I won’t bore you with the fact that we all know that this consensus is ever-changing as we acquire new data. Instead, I’d like to focus on another problem that might be more serious than you had previously thought.

In his article entitled “Laboratory Lies,” Daniel James Devine reports:

• The British Medical Journal reported that 13 percent of UK scientists say they’ve seen colleagues “inappropriately adjusting, excluding, altering or fabricating data,” indicating widespread research fraud. “The BMJ has been told of junior academics being advised to keep concerns to themselves to protect their careers, being bullied into not publishing their findings, or having their contracts terminated when they spoke out,” said BMJ editor. (World, Feb 11, 2012, 64)

Evidently, “13 percent” just represents the tip of the iceberg – just those who were aware of fraud and had the courage to admit it. Also, the very fact that of “contracts terminated” and bullying suggests that fraud might be endemic to this system. In addition to this finding:

• A survey of U.S. researchers a few years ago found that 9 percent had seen colleagues engage in scientific misconduct.

• A 2009 meta-analysis of multiple surveys determined about 2 percent of scientists have engaged – by their own admission – in fabricating, falsifying, or modifying data at least once. Up to a third have admitted to practices some would call questionable.”

Although “2 percent” doesn’t sound like much, we might assume that there are many more who understandably are unwilling to jeopardize career and reputation by making such a disclosure. Combine this with the obvious professional systematic bias against any who break with the theory of evolution, and we come up with a reasonable concern about the sermons emanating from the science community.

Our foundational presupposition about who to trust – Scripture or the science community – determines all of our subsequent beliefs. When we start buttoning our shirt with the wrong button, every subsequent button will be misplaced. Our only recourse is to return to the first button.