Since people here seem to be making articulate posts about why they believe things, I thought I would add my own as to why I cannot accept the Theistic Evolutionary model of origins.
I thought I would outline some of the issues that have kept me from believing in Theistic Evolution. Note that I will not swap over to the TE side even if these things are answerable and am firmly committed to the YEC model of origins.
It is with humility and genuine interest in the overall propogation of the Christian faith that I exhort my OEC brethren (and sistren, of course) to consider carefully what they believe.
1. TE seeks to find a common ground between Christianity and Secular Humanism that does not exist. There is no common ground. Since the Fall of man, man's mind, spirit, reasoning capacity, body, and the universe around him has fallen and become unregenerate. There are only two positions, or presuppositions; God and man. Either you choose to believe that God is supreme, or you choose to believe that man's autonomous (independent) reason is supreme. Man died instantly in spirit and mind at the Fall and became unregenerate. Later, he died physically, but the process of physical death began instantly at the Fall. In fact, it was B.B. Warfield who wrote:
Man's reasoning fell at the Fall. In his unregenerate state, he is without excuse for not believing and thus must squelch and bury any reasons for believing in Christ and is committed to surplanting God's authority with his own by placing his reasoning in a superior position to God's.
Facts are not "brute" facts that exist independent of interpretation and always speak for themselves. They are interpreted through a framework of presupposition, a position of accepting God or accepting Man as highest authority before looking at the evidence. Because the fallen state is inhereted, man starts with the presupposition of man in highest authority from his very birth.
If there is no God, as autonomous man postulates, then the interpreter of facts is man and he determines what they will mean. But if there is a God, then he created the world, and thus He is the one who determines how these facts are to be interpreted, as outlined by Scripture. In accepting the autonomous man's facts, I fear that TEers are concedeing that autonomous man has the right to interprete facts apart from God.
Van Til writes:
R.J. Rushdoony writes:
4. Too often we find TEers fighting the YECs side-by-side with atheists, skeptics, scoffers, agnostics, and militant anti-Christians, using their arguments and citing their books with approval.
5. Scripture says that with the Fall came death (the term for "die" in Genesis means literally in the hebrew "diying you will die," or "dying you will start dying and continue dying until you are dead"). God, who is presented as good in the Bible becomes an evil god of the world, for nature is 'red in tooth and claw" and there "might makes right." So there is a major internal contradiction between what reality shows us, and what the Bible tells us. Too often this leads to a logical disconnect and people begin to think that the Bible is irrelevent to practical, daily life. When this happens, the church is bound to be left behind the culture in effectiveness and influence. "Yes, the Bible has all the answers, except those answers pertaining to reality, like science, history, economics, politics, etc."
6. TEers say that YECs hold to Scripture "literally." This is not so. Rather, we hold to the plain view of Scripture. Our guiding motto in interpretation and hermanutics is "If the plain sense makes perfect sense, take no other sense, lest it be nonsense." In short, the plain view of Scritpure argues:
1)since Scripture is divinely inspired and inerrent and;
2)written by God through humans, then;
3)finding the authors intention, meaning, and context will determine Gods intention, meaning, and context.
Were we really literalists, as TEers claim, then we would have to interpret these verses literally, and Jesus would really be a door:
John 10:7 Then Jesus said to them again, Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
John 10:9 I am the door. If anyone enters in by Me, he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture.
Of course, we know that this isnt what Jesus is arguing in a literal sensehes not really a door made literally of wood. Thus, we take the Bible plainly. Historical records are historical, Hebraic idiom is idiom, poetry is poetry, prophesy is prophetic, apocalypse is apocalypse, metaphor is metaphorical.
There is nothing in the creation account or in the first 11 chapters of Genesis to indicate that it is anything but an historical account no different from Exodus or 1st Chroniclesor Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, or Acts. There is nothing in the rest of Scripture to indicate that it should be interpreted in a non-historical fashion. Those who take a plain view are further justified in this position since all of the Apostles clearly taught a historical, six-day, 24-hour creation act (noting point 2). We are even further justified when we realize that Christ himself took this view, and He was the one who did the creating! And Christ asks a very important question:
John 5:46-47 - For had ye believe Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writing, how shall ye believe my words?
Furthermore, the "plainist" rejects all forms of biblical higher criticism as nothing more than a hoax, since all of the men responsible for developing the view did not believe Christ was the son of God (G. North, The Hoax of Higher Criticism, Institute for Biblical Economics, Tyler, TX, 1989, http://www.freebooks.com/docs/21c2_47e.htm
Gary North defines Higher Criticism as:
So, are TEers Christian? Yes. Are they saved? Yes. Do they still carry humanistic baggage? Yes again.
I thought I would outline some of the issues that have kept me from believing in Theistic Evolution. Note that I will not swap over to the TE side even if these things are answerable and am firmly committed to the YEC model of origins.
It is with humility and genuine interest in the overall propogation of the Christian faith that I exhort my OEC brethren (and sistren, of course) to consider carefully what they believe.
1. TE seeks to find a common ground between Christianity and Secular Humanism that does not exist. There is no common ground. Since the Fall of man, man's mind, spirit, reasoning capacity, body, and the universe around him has fallen and become unregenerate. There are only two positions, or presuppositions; God and man. Either you choose to believe that God is supreme, or you choose to believe that man's autonomous (independent) reason is supreme. Man died instantly in spirit and mind at the Fall and became unregenerate. Later, he died physically, but the process of physical death began instantly at the Fall. In fact, it was B.B. Warfield who wrote:
Because of this, an attempt to "meet the unbeliever halfway," to try lure them into the fold by telling them that evolution and Christianity are compatible, that they can maintain their secular mythologies while being a christian, will always fail.
Man's reasoning fell at the Fall. In his unregenerate state, he is without excuse for not believing and thus must squelch and bury any reasons for believing in Christ and is committed to surplanting God's authority with his own by placing his reasoning in a superior position to God's.
Facts are not "brute" facts that exist independent of interpretation and always speak for themselves. They are interpreted through a framework of presupposition, a position of accepting God or accepting Man as highest authority before looking at the evidence. Because the fallen state is inhereted, man starts with the presupposition of man in highest authority from his very birth.
If there is no God, as autonomous man postulates, then the interpreter of facts is man and he determines what they will mean. But if there is a God, then he created the world, and thus He is the one who determines how these facts are to be interpreted, as outlined by Scripture. In accepting the autonomous man's facts, I fear that TEers are concedeing that autonomous man has the right to interprete facts apart from God.
Van Til writes:
2. The Bible speaks of a creation act. Aka, God spoke, and it was so. It is the power of the creative word of God that the universe and all in it were created. Evolution, by definition, is a creative process. Processes and acts are not the same thing.
R.J. Rushdoony writes:
3. I feel that TEers marry the Bible to teachings of science which will result in the Christian left widowed, or at least divorced, since our knowledge of science is never absolutist and often changes on a daily basis, whereas the Bible is absolutist and does not change. The YEC is willing to admit that even if all of his scientific models and evidence were to end up being wrong, he would still believe his position, because it is the position Scripture holds, and Scripture is the guiding light of all understanding, the single truth that illuminates all others. It is not that I try to prove that I can see the sun, but that by it I can see at all.
4. Too often we find TEers fighting the YECs side-by-side with atheists, skeptics, scoffers, agnostics, and militant anti-Christians, using their arguments and citing their books with approval.
5. Scripture says that with the Fall came death (the term for "die" in Genesis means literally in the hebrew "diying you will die," or "dying you will start dying and continue dying until you are dead"). God, who is presented as good in the Bible becomes an evil god of the world, for nature is 'red in tooth and claw" and there "might makes right." So there is a major internal contradiction between what reality shows us, and what the Bible tells us. Too often this leads to a logical disconnect and people begin to think that the Bible is irrelevent to practical, daily life. When this happens, the church is bound to be left behind the culture in effectiveness and influence. "Yes, the Bible has all the answers, except those answers pertaining to reality, like science, history, economics, politics, etc."
6. TEers say that YECs hold to Scripture "literally." This is not so. Rather, we hold to the plain view of Scripture. Our guiding motto in interpretation and hermanutics is "If the plain sense makes perfect sense, take no other sense, lest it be nonsense." In short, the plain view of Scritpure argues:
1)since Scripture is divinely inspired and inerrent and;
2)written by God through humans, then;
3)finding the authors intention, meaning, and context will determine Gods intention, meaning, and context.
Were we really literalists, as TEers claim, then we would have to interpret these verses literally, and Jesus would really be a door:
John 10:7 Then Jesus said to them again, Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
John 10:9 I am the door. If anyone enters in by Me, he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture.
Of course, we know that this isnt what Jesus is arguing in a literal sensehes not really a door made literally of wood. Thus, we take the Bible plainly. Historical records are historical, Hebraic idiom is idiom, poetry is poetry, prophesy is prophetic, apocalypse is apocalypse, metaphor is metaphorical.
There is nothing in the creation account or in the first 11 chapters of Genesis to indicate that it is anything but an historical account no different from Exodus or 1st Chroniclesor Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, or Acts. There is nothing in the rest of Scripture to indicate that it should be interpreted in a non-historical fashion. Those who take a plain view are further justified in this position since all of the Apostles clearly taught a historical, six-day, 24-hour creation act (noting point 2). We are even further justified when we realize that Christ himself took this view, and He was the one who did the creating! And Christ asks a very important question:
John 5:46-47 - For had ye believe Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writing, how shall ye believe my words?
Furthermore, the "plainist" rejects all forms of biblical higher criticism as nothing more than a hoax, since all of the men responsible for developing the view did not believe Christ was the son of God (G. North, The Hoax of Higher Criticism, Institute for Biblical Economics, Tyler, TX, 1989, http://www.freebooks.com/docs/21c2_47e.htm
Gary North defines Higher Criticism as:
Finally, it should be noted that none of this is to accuse TEers of being non-Christian. Not at all. Creation/Evolution is not a salvation issue. It is, however, an important issue. It directly impacts how we see God and His sovereignty. Is he a powerful God who created supernaturally in six days from nothing, asserting his power and control over all things, or is he invisable, using "natural" means of evolutionary process to start with slime and end up with man, who is no more made in His image than the chimps or the snails? How we view God is incredibly important. If God acted invisably through natural means, then someonly applying ockam's razor can simply do away with God (since He is invisable and does not act outside of things which would happen anyway) and the process becomes God.
So, are TEers Christian? Yes. Are they saved? Yes. Do they still carry humanistic baggage? Yes again.
