Meme Response: Super Religious/Still Understands Science
While the articles have sufficiently made their rounds through Facebook, the attention Pope Francis has earned now appears in the form of an internet meme. This meme represents evolutionists’ attempt to shame fundamental or evangelical or orthodox or historic or any other conservative Christian. First let’s look at what the Pope said. Then consider where this fits into Christianity. Finally, I’ll weigh in on whether this even makes any sense.
“The evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve,”
“When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining that God was a magician, with such a magic wand as to be able to do everything,” he said. “However, it was not like that. He created beings and left them to develop according to the internal laws that He gave each one, so that they would develop, and reach their fullness.”
The creation of the universe, Francis said, was not a singular event, but rather “went forward for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia until it became what we know today.”
The simplified term for this is “Theistic Evolution,” the idea that there is a God (theism) who created the entire universe and created life, but let “nature take its course” through evolutionary changes to get us to where we are today biologically.
Let’s clear the air with a few things right off the bat:
- If you are an atheist, the entire theism part is nonsense and you won’t consider what I have to say in this middle section. I urge you to skip to the bottom and consider my claims against evolution first.
- If you are a Christian, know that the Pope’s comments are not new. Numerous articles are bemoaning the fact that many Catholics and Protestants believe just like the Pope does, so what’s the big deal?
While it is true that many Christians would agree, that still does not get us one step closer to the truth. People have agreed about error for centuries. Even well-meaning people.
Therefore, we now consider for the sake of argument “What if evolution were true?” In other words, what happens to Christianity?
First, Adam and Eve never happened. Not individually and not remotely in any way as indicated by Genesis.
Second, because of no Adam and Eve, we have no idea how sin entered the world, how humanity fell into sin, or even really how to fix the problem. Note, this is not the same as arguing about the length of creation or whether “day” meant a literal day.
Third, Paul was wrong because he treats Adam as a real person calling him the first Adam using his existence and his personal, individual failure as a basis for the last Adam, which is Jesus. 1 Corinthians 15:45 as well as Romans.
Fourth, Jesus was wrong because he bases marriage on the reality and individuality of Adam and Eve in Matthew 19:5 referring to the quotes in Genesis.
Fifth, if Jesus was wrong we might as well throw in the Christian towel.
Sixth, Christianity and its views of the soul make no sense as we share a common ancestry with monkeys, elephants, and sea sponges. We differ from other life only in degree, not essence.
I make a stand that evolution and Christianity are not compatible, not if the Bible is true. No amount of hermeneutical gymnastics will clear this hurdle. The reader must accept blatant contradictions and/or simply disregard entire sections of Scripture creating a faith-based on Swiss cheese doctrine. This is not to say that a Christian cannot HAVE faith and be a theistic evolutionist. But it is to say that the object of their faith, meaning God, has been created in their own image.
Evolution as presented is simply insufficient as a theory. Evolution is a forensic theory of origins explaining how things happened in the past to bring us to our current biological state. So let us quickly look at the current state of things and see if the theory can get us from goo to you.
The problem with an atheistic evolution is that they must explain how the entire universe came to exist as it does now from a big bang, when the only natural forces in existence are 1. gravity, 2. strong nuclear force, 3. weak nuclear force, and 4. electro magnetism. Those forces working together to produce a planet with a perfectly tweaked environment to work together again to perfectly tweak the first life is nothing short of miraculous.
The vehicle from goo to you is natural selection. Let’s consider evidence and not theory.
#1: Genetic Limits. When creatures reproduce, they reproduce the same kinds of creatures. There can be great variety within a species, but those characteristics are accidental to what makes it a species. Otherwise, some animals represent more perfectly a species than other breeds or kinds within that species. Are evolutionists really ready to apply this to human beings?
#2: Change is Cyclical not Directional. When species do change, the changes occur with the species. The changes are never directed towards a new species.
#3: Irreducible Complexity. Darwin himself said, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight changes, my theory would absolutely break down.” I could list many human organs from eye balls to grey matter that cannot evolve, but the best is the single cell organism. Evolutionists wave the magic wand of science when it comes to explaining how all the necessary materials for a living cell magically came together inside a cell wall for the first time to produce the first single cell organism.
#4: Transitional Forms wouldn’t Survive. As creatures evolve, their highly adapted bodies go through thousands of years of not being adapted for anything. This leads to extinction, not evolution.
#5: Molecular Isolation reveals no ancestral relationships between species on a molecular level. You think we would be more like monkeys since we look like them. It turns out we have as much molecularly in common with fish as monkeys. Again, Darwin made the mistake of basing ancestry on features accidental to the species.
#6: The fossil record fails to give proof of evolution. The fossil record shows sudden bursts of species that disappear from the record looking much the way they did when they appeared. To look at the fossil record and see a gradual evolving of the species is a commitment to a system, not good science.
Where does this leave us?
Pope Francis, like C.S. Lewis, like others, bowed his knee to the faith of science. Evolutionists make their theory look good, they make others look bad by calling them mean names and treating them like they are stupid, but none of that gets them closer to the truth. Christians who give in and take the politically correct atheistic view of evolution throw baby Jesus out with the bath water in favor of the evolutionary goo.
Personally, I believe the exact opposite of the internet meme above: Pope Francis does not understand science which is exactly why he made the statements he did.