Can You Believe in the Bible and Evolution?

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. I'm Gary Carmichael. We're glad you could join us! In today's program, we begin a series of classics from our Search the Scriptures Daily archives first broadcast in 1999, with the late founder of The Berean Call, Dave Hunt and TBC executive director Tom McMahon. This week, they address the question: Can You Believe in the Bible and Evolution? And now, here's Tom. 

Tom: We’re continuing our discussion of Dave Hunt’s book Occult Invasion: The Subtle Seduction of the World and the Church. Now, Dave, for the last couple of weeks we’ve been underscoring the fact that the theory of evolution is not unique to Darwin or modern science, but its origins are religious and is, in fact, found in the lie Satan offered to Eve in the Garden of Eden, and is foundational to all false religions, especially Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

Then we covered theistic evolution, which we find among many professing Christians as an attempt to reconcile evolution and the Bible. Before we address the basic problems with evolution, let’s remind our audience why it cannot be compatible with what the Bible teaches.

Dave: Well, the Bible says that God created the world in seven days. It says He created man out of the dust of the ground. He formed him and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And then it says that He found that man – not that God needed to find it out, but He was demonstrating to man that he was lonely; he needed a helper. We don’t know how long Adam had been on this earth. He had named the animals and been here for some time, at least. And then God put him to sleep, and out of a rib He created a woman. Now, that cannot be reconciled with an evolutionary process over many years of time. And two critters, male and female, evolving up to humanoid status and then being zapped with human soul and spirit, which theistic evolution attempts to do…. Evolution, of course, is atheistic. Life began by chance, which is ludicrous. It couldn’t possibly happen. It doesn’t reconcile with the Bible at all. But when they try to – and of course the whole purpose of evolution is to prove that we don’t need God for our existence…

Tom: We’re going to have some quotes by many evolutionists to that effect.

Dave: …right, but we came by chance, so that is absolutely irreconcilable with the Bible. Now, theistic evolution attempts to reconcile it, and says that while God used evolution to bring these anthropoid critters up to the point – two of them, male and female – up to the point that they were close enough to what He wanted, and then He put a human soul and spirit in them, and this is supposedly Adam and Eve. That does not reconcile with the Scripture.

Jesus, of course, believed in the story of Adam and Eve. He quoted from it, so Jesus isn’t God if He believed that. The Bible says in Romans:5:12Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
See All..., “By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin; so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned….” But if death was here, these critters are dying and evolving and dying and evolving for millions of years before Adam sinned, then we have a major contradiction in the Bible. So there are many biblical reasons why evolution is not true. And there’s no way that you can reconcile theistic evolution with the Bible. Now, the only reason I would presume that our major seminaries – even evangelical seminaries, evangelical Bible colleges, universities, Christian universities – do this is because they’re intimidated by science, and they think that science has somehow proven that evolution is true. And therefore, in order not to contradict science, they try to make the Bible fit. But scientifically it is not proven; it is ludicrous.

We have a little pond on our property, because that’s how we water our lawn. Everything is pumped out of the pond. Everybody has a pond, and it flows in from the river. We have a lot of ducks, and all kinds of things from nature. I sometimes think – well, we’ve got a lot of little ducklings around now; they just hatched – and I sometimes think of an egg. Now, how are you going to evolve an egg? It’s either an egg or it isn’t an egg. I mean, it either has that shell around it, the whole thing holds together, and inside is something that is sufficient to produce a little baby duck, or it isn’t. You can’t have a half-way egg, or a quarter-way egg. You can’t have eggs built by stages. They wouldn’t work. So the idea that you can somehow evolve, or that you can evolve the human eye is ludicrous. How did the duck learn to sit on the egg? You know, the ducks don’t sit on the eggs until they’ve got them all laid, or a chicken. So they all hatch at once. Otherwise, they would hatch in stages. So they wait until they’ve laid them all and then they sit on them, and they all hatch at the same time. How did they learn to do this? 

How did the first spider that got the capability somehow evolve? I mean, you can either produce a web or you can’t. How are you going to evolve this by stages? How did it learn what to do with this web that suddenly it finds coming out of its body? How did it pass on to its progeny? Or how did the first bat that somehow got this capability of sending out a sound, and…

Tom, when I was in university, I just wouldn’t let the professors get away with that. I would just challenge them and say, “You’ve got to be kidding! Are you going to tell me [this is what they tried to say] that the eye…how did the eye develop?”

“Well, some primitive organism back there had an irritation on its skin, and gradually over billions of years it finally…”

“Wait a minute! An eye won’t help you to survive unless it can see. How are you going to evolve this thing in stages just from that standpoint?” It’s ludicrous, but mathematically it’s impossible.

Tom: Well, we’re going to get into that, Dave, but let’s just back up a little bit. You’d expect that kind of battle at a secular university. But our concern here, and this is what we really referred to last week, our concern is that evangelicals are moving into this. Let me quote from your book: “This issue was discussed at a gathering of mostly professing evangelicals at Biola University in Southern California in mid-November of 1996. There were scientists from various fields along with journalists, theologians, and educators ‘representing 58 state colleges and universities, 28 Christian academic institutions, and 18 other organizations.’ While all agreed that God was involved in the process which Darwinism denies, there was a wide disagreement on the extent of that involvement, all the way from a strict biblical creationist view to the belief that God used evolution to create various species over a period of millions of years and finally infused the pair of them with human souls.” That’s a forum at a Christian school.

Dave: Right. Tom, you said you would expect this in a secular university. I wouldn’t even expect it at a secular university, except they don’t want to believe in God. Rationally, it makes absolutely no sense. Mathematically, it’s impossible. I only have to talk about fossils and so forth. But now for Christians to say that God used evolution – why would God use a hit-or-miss chance to somehow eventually, over millions of years, produce something?

Tom: And get it right.

Dave: Yeah, why doesn’t God just create it? That’s what the Bible says. I mean, why would God leave it to chance? And chance isn’t going to do it! Because most of the innovations or the mutations that come about through radiation or whatever are harmful. I mean, it is ludicrous; I’m sorry. And it is a libel on the character of God that He would leave things out there…

Well, you say, “Well, He leaves things to chance now.” Well no, it’s man that has the opportunity to make his choices, and we live in a world of that nature. But to produce the human eye by chance? 

Tom: Well, we’re going to give our listeners some particulars to this, but let me – you know, there may be some out there who really are not familiar with evolution – with the teachings, the belief really. So what we want to do is give them just a little refresher, some ideas about it.

First of all, it’s important to understand that evolution is not a scientific theory. It’s a belief system about the past, the origin of the universe, how life forms came to be, and how they reach their present state. The fundamental concept is that life evolves from inorganic chemicals around three billion years ago, ascending from simple to complex life forms, from simple living cells to complex human beings with all the necessary stages in between. And all this came about (as you said, Dave) by chance, slowly and gradually over billions of years, or at least that’s what’s alleged. The idea is called – that particular idea is called Uniformitarianism.

Now that’s just a basic idea of what the claim is according to evolutionists. Now, you say in your book that the theory should be discarded. Now, you’ve given us some reasons, but let’s get into it. Why should this theory, which is in all of our academic institutions, why should this be discarded?

Dave: Well, Tom, again, just as a rational human being, you couldn’t produce the human eye in stages. Why? They say survival of the fittest. I mean, what would be the guiding factor behind this? When you think of an eye, we can’t even build one with our computers. I mean, it’s beyond any camera that we can build. It’s incredible. The human brain – this is going to develop in stages? But it doesn’t help you survive until it works, until it’s complete. So just rationally, it’s absolutely impossible for this to come about. Mathematically, it’s impossible.

Look, let’s take it like this: We don’t have time, but as quickly I can, we have 26 letters in the alphabet. How many combinations of those letters are there, taken 26 at a time? Well, if you know your mathematics, it’s 26 factorial. Twenty-six times 25 times 24 times 23 and so forth on down to two. That’s a long number – I don’t know, 400 and some septillion, or…I don’t even know how to name the number. But that’s just 26 letters at a time.

Now, Richard Dawkins, who is one of the world’s leading evolutionists, a proponent of this, in his book The Blind Watchmaker says that the nucleus of every cell – that’s just the nucleus now of every cell, animal or human – has an organized database larger than the 30-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Now how are you going to get all of those letters lined up in the right order by chance? And if one of them is out of order, it doesn’t work. Now, Sir Fred Hoyle…

Tom: Now, let me just add another one. Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize winner: he states that the smallest – a single cell, the smallest living unit, is more complicated than New York City. I mean, we can talk about volumes, but this is incredible complexity.

Dave: How are you going to put this together by chance? It’s just a matter of mathematics. Like flipping a coin: 50 percent chance every time. But if you are trying to get trillions of things lined up, or millions, or even thousands lined up, then the odds are very small. In fact, they’re impossible. So Sir Fred Hoyle said, “Let’s assume that the whole…” He’s a mathematician and an astronomer, not a Christian by any means, and he said, “Let’s assume that the whole universe is made up of the primitive stuff of life, and let’s stir it around for billions of years, and let’s just take the mathematical probability that you could get the basic enzymes of life by chance – just get them lined up in the right order. Well,” he said…I mean, it’s a matter of mathematics: how many things you have to line up in the right order, and then go to your computer and calculate it. He said it was one chance in one with 40,000 zeros after it. Okay? We don’t even know what that number is. I’ll try to give you some idea: What is the likelihood that by chance you can reach out and pluck a particular electron out of the universe as we know it? 

Well, that’s one chance in one with 80 zeros after it. All right, then let’s take every electron and make another universe out of it. Now what is the likelihood that by chance you can reach out and pluck a particular electron out of all those universes? That’s one chance in one with 160 zeros after it. Then you better believe that one chance in one and 40,000 zeros after it will never happen. Mathematically, evolution is a joke! It’s impossible! Mathematically it couldn’t possibly happen by chance. Period.

Tom: But, Dave, haven’t we been told that scientists have actually produced life from inorganic material in a laboratory?

Dave: You may have been told that, but it hasn’t happened. We don’t even know what life is. But scientists are trying to work at it, you know. I mean, what scientist was guiding evolution?

Tom: In your book, you quote Klaus Dose, a prominent evolutionist, and he states, “More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on earth rather than to its solution. At present, all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stale mate or are in a confession of ignorance.” I mean, it didn’t happen.

Dave: No, it hasn’t. It hasn’t happened.

Tom, let me quote Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History. He’s not a dummy. He says, “I’ve been working on this stuff for more than [he was an evolutionist; on this stuff, he means evolution] for more than twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. It’s quite a shock to learn that one can be misled for so long.” So he starts asking his fellow evolutionists, “What do you really know about this?” He said, “I don’t know anything. What can you really know for sure about evolution?”

Tom: In other words, the fossil record. Where do we have something – is that what he’s referring to?

Dave: Well, he’s asking – anything! He just says, “Give me one piece of evidence.” He says, “Biologists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York had no answer.” Now I’m quoting him: “I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time. And eventually one person said, ‘I do know one thing, it ought not to be taught in high school.’”

They don’t know anything. This is a theory, as you’ve said, and it’s really a religious theory. It gives them a substitute for God. It’s a way of saying “God does not exist.”

Now, going back to Sir Fred Hoyle for a moment, he gives us these impossible mathematical odds, and then he says, “And everybody knows it! Everybody knows that it’s impossible.”

Tom: Right.

Dave: So then he says, “Well, how come they still keep teaching it?” Because it’s academically respected. You can’t even talk about the other possibility that God created this universe. They won’t allow it in our public schools. I think that that is reprehensible!

Tom: Right. You know, Hoyle says that most scientists still cling to Darwinism because of its grip on the educational system, and I’m quoting him: “You either have to believe the concepts or be branded a heretic.” That’s the state.

Dave: And I am saying that it is absolute stupidity. I’m sorry, Tom, but it is absolute stupidity to believe that this human brain or the human eye or anything could have evolved by chance. And there is absolutely no evidence that it ever happened, but it is a matter of faith, because they don’t want to believe in God. And tragically science, so-called, has intimidated the church. The pope goes along with it. Christianity Today in an editorial goes along with it. New Man Magazine way back there, Promise Keepers, they went along with it, because they want to be academically respected as well. But it doesn’t make sense, and it is not biblical.

Tom: You know, you would think in the face of some of these renowned evolutionists and what they have to say, that evangelicals would take stock of this.

For example, Thomas Huxley, I mean, he really was Darwin’s major promoter.

Dave: Right.

Tom: He writes, “It is clear that the doctrine of evolution is directly antagonistic to that of creation. Evolution, if consistently accepted, makes it impossible to believe the Bible.”

Dave: Right.

Tom: Now his grandson, Julian Huxley: “Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion. Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed since natural selection could account for any known form of life. There was no room for a supernatural agency in its evolution. I think we can dismiss entirely all idea of a supernatural overriding mind being responsible for the evolutionary process.”

Now that’s Thomas Huxley’s grandson…

Dave: Well, let me interrupt for a second.

Tom: Okay.

Dave: I would say that a supernatural mind would not use evolution. I will agree with him: a supernatural mind did not oversee evolution. But you can’t get evolution by chance, okay? And a supernatural mind would not use evolution, he would create. But anyway, sorry I interrupted you.

Tom: Yes, but the bias is unbelievable. And sometimes showing…you know, I had just quoted Julian Huxley. Well, here’s another quote from Julian Huxley which may be more to where the problem lies. He says, “I suppose the reason we leaped at The Origin of Species [Darwin’s thesis] was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.” I mean, really what we want to do is throw out a God that we’re accountable to, and this was the device. Right?

Dave: Exactly. Well, that’s an honest admission.

Tom: And the bias, you know – one more quote that I think is worthwhile…This is from Sir Arthur Keith, a prominent evolutionist: “Evolution is unproved and unprovable.” We’ve been saying that! But then he goes on to say, “We believe it because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.

Dave: Right.

Tom: That’s the bottom line.

Dave: Yeah, it’s as simple as that, Tom. But I think you’ve got to be very stubborn to reject God and to say evolution – it all happened by chance. No rational person could support that thesis. And I would challenge anybody – and they’ve been trying and trying and trying, and the more…you know, the more they get down – when we discovered electron microscopes and we got down to the molecular level of life, we found that it was far more complex than Darwin realized. It’s like Darwin is looking at superficial similarities in the outward form of creatures on this earth. He knew nothing of the complexity of the eye. He knew nothing of the complexity at the molecular level, and had he known that, I don’t think Darwin would have had the courage to come up with a such a ridiculous theory.

Tom: Yeah, well, he offers this challenge: He says, “If it could be demon-…” I’m talking about Darwin…

Dave: Right.

Tom: He says that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

Dave: Yeah, and he didn’t know the complexity.

Tom: No!

Dave: Yeah, it can’t possibly happen by chance.

Tom: Yeah. You know, Dave, we’re touching upon this because this really is related to, as we’ve talked about in previous programs, this is related to occultism. Evolution is at the heart, which we discussed weeks before, so we won’t go over that. But there are many ministries out which are doing a terrific job in explaining how false evolution is and how true creation is. You know, God said, “In the beginning God created….”

Dave: But, Tom, as you said, it causes people to believe there is some kind of a force, Star Wars force behind all of this that’s guiding evolution, and that does open the door to the occult; and evolution is related to the occult, and it’s related to reincarnation. What’s the point of being reincarnated back again and again unless we’re evolving higher upward to godhood? And in fact Robert Jastrow, one of the world’s leading astronomers, the founder and director for years of the Goddard Space Institute in New York that sent up Pioneer, Voyager and so forth, he said – he’s an agnostic – he said evolution could have been going on on some planets out there 10 billion years longer than on planet earth, and those beings would be as far beyond man on the evolutionary scale as man is beyond the worm. In fact, he says they would seem like gods to us, they would have such amazing powers. And then he says, “And some of them could have evolved beyond the need of bodies, and they would be what religious people call ‘spirits.’” So now the evolutionist has gods. This force of evolution somehow has produced gods who don’t even have bodies anymore, so we’ve got spirit beings out there, highly evolved extraterrestrials, supposedly, that our scientists are trying to contact. What a setup for demons. And again, it opens the door to the whole world of the Occult.

Tom: And the door is open. You have one last quote as we close. Mathematics professor Wolfgang Smith says, “Evolution is a metaphysical myth totally bereft of scientific sanction. If that’s the case, then anything goes.”

Gary: You've been listening to a special edition of Search the Scriptures 24/7 with Dave Hunt and T.A. McMahon, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. The complete radio discussion of Dave's Occult Invasion is available from The Berean Call. We offer a wide variety of resources to help you in your study of God's Word. For a complete list of materials and a free subscription to our monthly newsletter, contact us at PO Box 7019 Bend, Oregon, 97708. Call us at 800-937-6638, or visit our website at thebereancall.org. I'm Gary Carmichael. Thanks for being here, and we invite you back again next week. Until then, we encourage you to Search the Scriptures 24/7.