Creationism vs. Evolution: Can They Both Be True?

If you don’t fully believe in creationism, or that God made the world and everything in it, and you don’t fully believe in the theory of evolution, that time and natural selection eventually led to the birth of humanity, then you might believe in “theistic evolution.” That’s an attempt to meld creationism with evolution, as if God created all but let evolution carry out His final wishes. It is a view firmly held by popular pastors like Tim Keller and popular theologians like N.T. Wright.

However, I firmly believe that creationism and the theory of evolution cannot coexist. They negate each other from the very start. Creationism and evolution are mutually exclusive.

Question the Assumptions Behind the Theory of Evolution

As I encourage my congregation to do with my sermons and those they hear elsewhere, question the speaker’s assumptions. As critically thinking humans, we ought to do this anyway, but it’s even more imperative when the assumptions are so culturally pervasive so as to be taken as truth without much personal research or pushback. And when one begins to question the assumptions that our science textbooks present today, the answers barely hold water.

The Problem of Life

For instance, if any form of evolution is true, how does a Christian still believe that God made a literal man and woman He named Adam and Eve? If they descended from monkeys, as the theory of evolution would have us believe, then how would we know which Missing Link was more human than monkey? And how come we’ve had billions of monkeys and billions of humans live on this earth but no link after link after link between the two?

Additionally, when you begin pulling the dangling threads of theistic evolution, such belief unravels rather quickly. If evolution is correct, Adam and Eve were born, not created. Even worse, instead of being created by God, they were essentially born of monkeys. The Imago Dei is suddenly transformed into an Imago Simia. Humanity is no longer a pinnacle of God’s creation but a causal result of survival-of-the-fittest impulses.

If evolution is correct, humanity doesn’t share common ancestry. Instead of all of us being related to one man and one woman, we’d be related to many different semi-monkeys. What’s the problem with that? As Paul wrote in Romans 5:19, “For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” If we negate our common heritage through Adam and Eve, we negate our need for salvation through Christ. For the gospel to have any relevance or effect on our lives, we must be related to Adam and Eve, through whom sin entered into the world.

If evolution is correct, Adam’s sin may not have even been the first sin. After all, how would we know? It’d be very unlikely for evolution’s supposed passing of billions and billions of years to not have witnessed at least a few sins.

The Problem of Death

If evolution is correct, then the curses of sin and death that occur in Genesis 3 mean nothing. If a Christian believes in theistic evolution, then he or she (often inadvertently, because they may not have given thought to the repercussions of their beliefs) is essentially agreeing that death existed for the billions of years prior to Adam’s existence. And if that’s the case, what’s the big deal about death being introduced in Genesis 3? Put another way, to convincingly tie creationism to evolution, you must believe in a deathless evolution that existed for many millennia. But evolutionists firmly believe that death occurred. After all, that’s how they discovered who the fittest were.

For but a brief moment, let’s assume that billions of years of evolution occurred prior to Adam and Eve’s introduction to Earth. Let’s assume that the six days of creation meant six eras of undisclosed time. Let’s assume that death occurred as we experience it today. Let’s assume that animals fought animals and that humans—or what passed for humans back then—were just as vicious as we can still be to one another today. Let’s assume sickness ravaged bodies because medicine wasn’t even a word. Let’s assume a life’s existence, whether human or animal, was brief, bloody, and barbaric.

Then God comes onto the scene and declares it “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

This is the madness that theistic evolution offers.

In Evolution vs. Creationism, Only One Side Wins

Rather, the biblical worldview holds that creationism and the theory of evolution are mutually exclusive. When God made the world, it was “very good” because sickness, sin, and death were unknown entities until a conniving serpent slithered his way into the hearts of men and women forever.

Today, take some time to consider your actual stance on creationism vs. evolution. You must fall on one side or the other.

The preceding post is an adapted excerpt from my upcoming book, 30 Things You Need to Know about Your Bible (If You Claim to Know Your Bible).