Couldn't Evolution be Part of Creation?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here is this week’s question.  “Dear Dave and Tom, I have been listening to your program for a while now and I have learned a lot, yet I struggle with my science background and my bias toward evolution.  Isn’t it possible that God may have used evolution as a vehicle of creation?”

Tom:

Dave, I know you are going to just launch off here, but first I have talked to a lot of people, for example, we are going to be offering a video that deals with creation/evolution and this is Dr. Jobe Martin’s video and that was one of the things he mentioned.  He was a Christian, I think, for five or six years but he was teaching science or actually teaching courses, he has a dental background, but he was teaching courses at Baylor University and some of his students came to him and said, Wait a minute, Doctor, would you check this out, would you check that out and he talked about the struggle that he went through resolving, and he would admit a science bias, or bias with regard to science, with now a biblical view.

Dave:

Well, first of all, Tom, a bias toward science.  Evolution is not scientific.  I mean, I could rip that apart so badly—but we don’t have time for it.  There is no scientific evidence for evolution and mathematically it is absolutely impossible.  You could not line up the molecules, the millions of molecules, in the right order, by chance, never, ever would it happen.  But then they say, but God could have done this you know, God could have used evolution.  Well, why would God use evolution?  There is no evidence that He used it.  You can’t find any fossil evidence of it at all.  They are dreaming and trying and they have been digging and digging for how many decades, hoping to come up with something and they don’t come up with anything and ever now and then they fake a few things to make it look like there is something.  Why would God use evolution?  Survival of the fittest, chance, just think of all the mistakes that had to be made and how many—

Tom:

You are talking about things that—mutants, for example.

Dave:

Yeah.  When that first bat suddenly realized, somehow or other, that it had the ability to send out a sound and to pinpoint where insects were because it would bounce back.  I mean, it had this incredible mechanism of the first spider, suddenly wow!  Out of its body comes this thin thing that it can spin a web with and how does it know how to do it?  I mean, it’s just so inefficient.  God, who can create everything out of nothing, is going to use evolution and survival of the fittest and somehow going to work its way through to come up with better species by—Tom, it doesn’t make sense.

Tom:

Yeah, but what, Dave?

Dave:

Biblically.

Tom:

There’s the rub here.  This man claims to be a Christian, I’m sure he is, but now he has to begin to interpret the scriptures based on an evolutionary mind set.

Dave:

You can’t.  Evolution contradicts the Bible.

Tom:

Some examples—for example, you are talking about fossils.  Adam and Eve are standing in the Garden; beneath them then, are millions and billions of years of fossils.  How do you explain that death had never entered in until sin came along, yet there are fossils, supposedly?

Dave:

Well, you can’t.  It’s a contradiction.  In other words, you cannot reconcile two critters, male and female evolving side by side for millions of years and finally they get close enough to humanoids and God puts a human soul and spirit in them.  I mean, that doesn’t make sense but you can’t reconcile that with what the Bible very clearly says:  God created Adam out of the dust of the ground.  He was here for some time—he was lonely and God put him to sleep, took a rib and made a woman.  You can’t reconcile that with two critters, male and female, evolving side by side.  Now, Jesus believed in Adam and Eve.  He quoted about it, so he is not the Son of God if He believed this and you just quoted the scripture from Romans 5: “By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin.”  So, it was through Adam that death was introduced into this world.  Then, how can you have these critters dying and evolving and dying for millions of years before Adam sinned.  Now, if I cannot take literally what the Bible says—

Tom:

Where it’s clearly literally.

Dave:

Very clear—what it says about the origin of man, why should I believe what the Bible says about the destiny of man?  Maybe that should be allegorized or whatever.  If I can’t take what the Bible tells me about sin and death and that this is God’s judgment upon man because of His rebellion and disobedience, why should I believe what the Bible says about man’s redemption and his reconciliation to God?  So perhaps this man, if he is a Christian has not thought that through.  He seems so in awe of science, but this is not scientific number one.  Number two, it’s not biblical.  Number three, it isn’t even rational, it doesn’t make sense.

Tom:

Dave, we have seen it time and time again where people bring a mind set, a system, whatever it might be, and try to impose it on the scriptures.  The problem with that is you’re never really going to understand what the scriptures are saying, what the scriptures teach.  It can’t happen.

Dave:

The Bible is supposed to teach us.  It’s not supposed to confirm what we already think, but it is supposed to change our thinking to bring it in conformity with God and with His Word.

Tom:

And that’s what we are encouraging all of our listeners to do.Search the scriptures daily, check these things out.  But you start with God’s Word, that’s our heart.

Dave:

Amen.