Reason 3: The Problems of Evolution

Ten Reasons to Believe in the Existence of God

Reason 3: The Problems of Evolution

CA203 LESSON 03 of 10

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Some have assumed that an evolutionary explanation of life would make God unnecessary.

Ray Bolin: Darwin did get quite a few things right. I mean he was the observer, and he quantified what natural selection is, how it works, as a real process. And so many of his observations were excellent. The Darwin's finches and the tortoises and so forth, all those were very good.

Where he went wrong is that he overextrapolated. He went beyond his own data. He was arguing against at that time the notion of the fixity of species, that God had created each individual species. And so when he got to those Galapagos Islands, and he saw the slightly different forms of tortoises and finches on each island, and he said, Oh, why would God create a different tortoise for each island? That's kind of silly. They probably all evolved--in other words, from one major form. Well, he was probably right. But that doesn't mean that everything came from one initial ancestry, that everything has a common ancestry. He took from the small observation, and he extrapolated to the big time. And that's where I think he made his major mistake.

Even if we assume that scientists will someday find enough "missing links" to confirm that life appeared and developed gradually over great periods of time, laws of probability would still show the need for a Creator. As a result, many scientists who believe in evolution believe also that the universe in all of its immensity and complexity did not "just happen." Many feel compelled to acknowledge the possibility or even likelihood of an intelligent designer who provided the ingredients for life and set in motion the laws by which it developed.

Dr. Dallas Willard: And so I encourage people to try to think through the issue of origins very carefully. And I don't just refer to the evolutionist issue, by the way, that's a subheading, a very

Transcript - CA203 Ten Reasons to Believe in the Existence of God ? 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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Lesson 03 of 10

Reason 3: The Problems of Evolution

important one. But the real issue is not evolution, but how did you get a world in which evolution could even occur? Which is a prior question. And evolution cannot logically give you a theory of origins. Because it presupposes things already in existence. So you have to go more deeply.

Jerry Solomon: In interacting with God concerning the existence of God, I think it's very important to help people think through whether or not, first of all, something is eternal. Now sometimes that's an issue they're not used to dealing with. Is something eternal? Well, not all people have necessarily thought about that. So we might have to grapple with that a little bit. Is there something that's always been? And most people would agree yes, that something has been forever. Something is eternal. Otherwise something as it exists now must have come from nothing. And most people wouldn't say that's the case, even the writers of The Sound of Music understood that, when they sang in the gazebo-- they put the words to the song in the gazebo, if you remember-- "Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could." Well, yeah, nothing comes from nothing. So something has always existed; something is eternal.

Second, if we can agree with that, we want to ask, Is it more legitimate to say then that this something that's eternal is matter or mind? (If we can agree that there's such a thing as a mind.) If we can agree that there's such a thing as a mind, it would seem more legitimate, if we really stop and think about it, to say that the existence of matter came from a mind as opposed to saying that a mind, as we know it, comes from matter.

So if we can agree then on that, then thirdly we begin to talk about whether this mind resides in a person. Of course it does. A mind is not off by itself somewhere, at least most of us wouldn't say so. So if a mind resides in a person, who is this person? Well, this is an eternal person that we call God. And, by the way, it's important to emphasize person, that God, I believe, is a Person. God is not an amorphous thing, an energy, or some kind of nondescriptive concept. This is a Person with personality, who has a mind with which He created the universe. And put things in order.

Frank Pastore: The first step would be to argue that there's got to be a beginning of time, matter, and space. Almost everyone, evenly, uncritically acknowledges there's got to be a big bang. But a singular big bang doesn't cut it. The big bang that most people talk about gets you matter and motion, OK? Now that's all it does,

Transcript - CA203 Ten Reasons to Believe in the Existence of God ? 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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Lesson 03 of 10

Reason 3: The Problems of Evolution

when I think about myself I realize I'm not my parts. I'm the thing that has the parts. I'm not just a brain and central nervous system. I'm not just the parts of the car. I'm the driver of the car. Or as Descartes said [paraphrase], "I'm the pilot of the boat." And so there's more to reality than just the physical world.

So there's a second big bang. We've got to get life as opposed to nonlife popping into existence. So the first big bang is matter. The second big bang is life popping into existence out of nothing, because you and I are different than a rock. And then lastly, another way in which you and I are different than a fern is the fact that, contrary to what a lot of teachers would say today, plants are not conscious. And so I differ from a plant in the fact that I'm conscious.

In summary now, you don't have just one big bang. You've got a big bang where matter pops into existence out of nothing, but of course there's no evidence of something coming from nothing and all of those problems. Then you have life popping into existence out of nothing. All the developments we've made and advances we've made in understanding genetic research and DNA is that DNA has information in it. Information only comes from a mind, you can't get a rational effect from a nonrational cause. And so there's got to be a mind behind the information that's in DNA. Then lastly, you've got consciousness. And consciousness is something that is a nonphysical concept entirely. And so you've got all these three bangs. That's the first step. You've got to realize that only a personal Creator can account for this.

Genesis 1:1-3 (NKJV)

And so the biblical account of the origins of earth says,

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Christ-Centered Learning-- Anytime, Anywhere

Transcript - CA203 Ten Reasons to Believe in the Existence of God ? 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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