While reading a magazine, I came across a “true or false” quiz. Question number 4 was this statement: “Human beings developed from earlier species.”
The answer to that question being on page 20, I quickly flipped through the magazine, curious of finding a proven answer this time, but the answer read as follows: “True. It is broadly assumed by scientists that the human line of evolution split from apes around five million years ago and the modern human emerged around 100,000 years ago.”
Alas. Here I am, ending up with an assumption which is not only too abstract for a common mind to conceive, but it is also one which is lacking finality, offering no hope after the material existence. You could see in it much of the tenets of Epicureanism, a philosophy which had its roots back between the fourth and the third centuries B.C. The cosmology of Epicureanism is similar to that of modern materialistic evolution.
The latter’s “Big Bang” theory brings to mind the teaching of the former that the world began in a shower of atoms, some of which by pure chance, moved a trifle obliquely and collided with others, whereby these collisions produced other collisions, until finally the ensuing movement brought into being the present universe. It is evident that in such a world of chance there could be neither purpose nor design. There could not be, therefore, any final or absolute good. The highest possible good, they taught, was pleasure.
And just as Epicureanism was quite popular then, so is evolution today. It appeals to emotional considerations, for it supplies a philosophic justification for doing what most people do anyway – make pleasure the chief goal of life. It brushes aside all thought of sin or accountability at a final judgment, because it predicts neither purpose nor terminus for the present world process. Evolution is essentially anti-religious.
If the world originated with matter and chance, no creative power was necessary. If chance dominates the outcome of cosmic affairs, there is no room for directive, purposeful mind. It is evident that evolutionism has drifted to a point of no return, in that it has created for itself a powerful economic enterprise for its adherents. But, strictly speaking, where is their ultimate hope in eternity? They have none.
On the other hand, the hope of the Christian is unique! “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14); “…nor is there salvation in any other…” (Acts 4:12). “These things have been written to us that we may know we have eternal life…” (1John 5:13), and “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live” (John 11:25).
The amazing thing is that the door to salvation is open to everyone at all times: to believe, to repent, to confess Christ, and to be baptized – and it is so, even to evolutionists!
So we need to soak our minds with the fact that evolution is a philosophy, only a theory, and, in any case, philosophy never depended upon a revelation from God. It has always assumed the potential adequacy of man to understand his own world and to decide his own fate.
But what about Christianity? “Knowing this first, that no prophesy of scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophesy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2Peter 20, 21).
“Truly, this only I have found: that God made man upright, but they have sought many schemes” (Eccl. 7:29; see also Gen. 1:27; 3:6, 7). – By Steven Marias.
