First of all I want to very briefly summarize the two principal world-views that are in conflict in our society today. A “world-view” is a basic way of looking at and explaining the world we live in. One world-view is naturalistic evolution...basically atheism...and the other is a biblical one.
In the evolutionary world-view there is no God, or at least not one who is involved in the natural world. Everything is the product of time and chance. Around 13 billion years ago or so everything in our universe including space itself existed in a “singularity,” an infinitely dense, infinitely small “point” that suddenly expanded. (Where would such a point come from?!) From this “big bang” stars, galaxies, and planets gradually formed, including earth in a primitive form. Somewhere in the dim distant past...by pure chance...just the right combination of chemicals and energy combined and became living, reproducing cells. Over immense amounts of time, guided only by the hand of “Chance,” small changes in living things occurred. Good changes were kept and bad changes were lost and, to make a long story short, here we all are! As some have put it, this is the “goo to you by way of the zoo” theory. To put it another way, we are all simply slime plus time.
In such a world there is really no logically defensible answer as to where we come from (just a nice story), no meaning to life, no logical basis for right and wrong, and no rational hope for the future. Why, for example, in a meaningless world of chance would it be wrong to walk up to someone and shoot them? By what rational standard based on such a world-view would that be either right or wrong? On top of that, the evolutionary world-view actually values “survival of the fittest” (the one with the gun!?) in which the strong triumph over the weak. The rapid spread of this world-view explains a lot that we see in our daily news.
The biblical world-view is radically different. A good and loving God created a perfect world, a paradise in which he pronounced everything “very good.” There was no suffering, no pain, no death. He put this paradise under the charge of the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve. Only one thing was forbidden: fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Partaking of that fruit would be an act of rebellion leading to death. Nevertheless they were tempted and seduced into that act by a rebellious former servant of God and thus death entered the heretofore perfect creation.
It only took one generation for the first murder to occur. Over the next centuries the trend of humanity was downward into sin and darkness. Only a few remained faithful until finally it was only Noah and so God determined to destroy the corrupted race with a global flood. Noah and his family were saved along with representatives of the animal kinds so life could begin again.
After the flood, Noah and his family landed in a radically altered world and, after God forced men to separate by confusing their languages, the roots of all of our nations and peoples of today were laid as men spread across the earth.
Spiritual darkness quickly reasserted itself and God began unfolding His great plan of salvation ultimately brought about by His Son, the very instrument of our creation, coming to earth to live as a man and to die that we might live. And scripture not only tells us our history and the “why” of our world but shows us our destiny. The world is destined for fire but there is a new creation brought about through the resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ. And those who lay down their arms of rebellion, turn their back on the world, and put their trust in Christ and what He did for them on the cross have a share in the new creation...forever!
How can two such radically world-views be mixed? Yet that is what so many Christians seem to feel they must do...what I once did.
The real rationale behind atheism with its belief in an old universe is the desire to be rid of God. Many leading atheists have not been shy about this. One example is Aldous Huxley who said, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do.... For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” (Notice the word “assumption”!)
After all, an all-powerful Creator would be Someone to Whom we must answer and men don’t want any interference in their efforts to live as they please, gratifying their lusts. And trying to contend that there is no God AND that the earth is only a few thousand years old would go far beyond intellectual suicide. It would merit a one-way trip to an insane asylum! But add vast amounts of time and...magically...anything seems possible! Any problem, any scientific difficulty can be overcome if only we add enough time. It is not difficult to understand how influential thinkers can so stubbornly insist upon millions and billions of years: they simply must. It is a matter of will, a will that refuses to acknowledge its Creator. Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3:5 of those who “deliberately forget” the facts of creation and the flood.
I believe that any reasonable person would have to admit that the idea of millions of years would never occur to anyone based on the biblical record alone. It is an idea that has come entirely from outside the Bible. More than that it is an idea rooted in atheism and naturalism. Why in the world do Christians feel it is necessary to interpret scripture in the “higher light” of atheistic ideas?! Why not, for example, reinterpret the Bible to accommodate the ideas of modern psychology or psychiatry? Why, then, is evolutionary science allowed to sit in judgment of God’s Word?
No doubt a major problem concerns the image of science and scientists that so many have. We tend to think of scientists as very smart men in lab coats devoted to an unbiased pursuit of truth. We frequently hear the claim that science deals with facts whereas religion deals with beliefs. And yet Darwinism...a belief...is rarely allowed to be challenged, even on purely scientific grounds, in our public institutions today. One could easily assemble an extensive chronicle detailing the intimidation and brainwashing that occurs daily in our society over evolutionary theory. Unbiased? Hardly!
Mano Singham, a university science professor writes about the trust placed by students in their highly-educated professors: “And I use that trust to effectively brainwash them. We who teach introductory physics have to acknowledge, if we are honest with ourselves, that our teaching methods are primarily those of propaganda. We appeal...without demonstration...to evidence that supports our position. We only introduce arguments or evidence that support the currently accepted theories, and omit or gloss over any evidence to the contrary.” Singham may not have been so much advocating such methods as he was stating a fact, but the context of his words makes it evident that he believes himself to be doing right, acting in the best interests of his students.
In such a climate it is no wonder that many Christians have simply “thrown in the towel” and tried to fit the pronouncements of modern science into the Bible. After all, very smart, and seemingly unbiased men have “proven” all these things. Who are we to say differently? And what difference does it make anyway?