When the Apostle Paul wrote to Christian believers in Rome, the most important city in the world in his day, he confirmed that the earth’s inhabitants have no excuse if they try to deny God’s existence: “What can be known about God is plain … clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:19–20, RSV). Anything that betrays thought, consideration, planning or design in its existence demands also the existence of a Mind, a Designer or Inventor. Viewed at any level – from the smallest insect, to the galaxies themselves – the natural world issues the same challenge. We can ask the questions about any natural being or feature: Where does this come from? Who determined that it should exist? Or to extend the enquiry, Why is there so much interdependence between different creatures, each seemingly fitted for its own purposes, but also supplying or assisting in the needs of others? From the myriad examples that teem in the waters, or thrive on the land, David Pearce selects just a handful of well-known situations. Each of them poses the same question: How did this come into being, unless there was first a Great Mind, a Designer? Challenging evidence always demands a verdict. Honest readers of this short work must answer for themselves, but the author and publishers have no difficulty agreeing with the Apostle Paul: God reveals Himself through the things He has made.
Science teaching about the natural world invariably assumes acceptance of the theory that organisms changed by an evolutionary process from simple to complex by means of improvements taking place over long periods of time. The idea is so widely accepted that it is rarely challenged. It seems obvious enough in the biology textbook, a progression from microbe to fish, from sea creature to mammal, from fern to flowering plant. Yet looking at the diagram of the evolutionary tree, it is also clear that there are big gaps in the story.
What about the microbes right at the bottom of the diagram – where did they come from? Cytology, the study of cells, shows that the tiniest microscopic unit of life, once magnified, becomes instantly a whole globe full of intricate specialised parts.
We can learn about the cell membrane, that fabulous elastic skin through which oxygen and carbon dioxide can pass, and the mitochondrion, the cell motor releasing energy for movement and growth.
We can marvel at the incredible spiral gene code helix, so neatly coiled that one metre’s length can fit into the tiny nucleus of the cell, yet it can encrypt every characteristic of an animal, from form and colour right down to the position of brown freckles on its back.
How did the microbe evolve? Was it simply by chance combinations of atoms of nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon in the presence of electricity and heat? How did this produce such complexity?
And where did the atoms come from? Even an atom, as an elementary physics course makes plain, is itself an ordered world of enormous power, with many component parts – mesons, protons, quarks and electrons, spinning round in tight orbits held in place by charges so strong that, burst apart, the energy released from a few kilograms could flatten a city and destroy a million people. How did all this energy become locked so neatly into the atom?
Every time we pose questions like these, others arise to baffle us even more.
There are also enormous problems at the top end of the diagram. If life progressed steadily from simple forms to complex ones, where are the intermediate stages now? Why cannot their remains be found in the fossil rocks? How is it that fossil bees, preserved in resin and claimed by the scientists to be many millions of years old, are recognisable as close relatives of our honey makers today? Or the squid-like nautiloid dug up when they were building the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France, which was said to have been more or less unchanged for 500 million years! Why was there no appreciable change over such a long period?
How did the butterfly manage to obtain nectar from flowers before its tongue was long enough to reach deep into the blooms? Or how do swifts and other migratory birds find their way over thousands of miles without ever having undertaken the journey before? How did the first swift do it? Where did the programme come from that compelled him to set off to find another land in which to feed? Such birds skim down aerial highways like satellites in orbit with a precision that brings them back again to the identical nest site next year. Yet no human being pre-set the computer in their brain.
The questions could be multiplied many times. Are the scientists right? Is there no better explanation for the mystery of life than the theory of evolution with all its flaws? We need to ask questions, and not take everything for granted just because the textbooks say so. It can take courage to challenge the status quo, especially when the alternative to evolution is belief in an intelligent, all-powerful Creator. We find the supernatural uncomfortable. The idea of a God out there who has the right to tell us what to do is not popular today.
But if we shut our minds to the possibility of a divine Creator we are missing the chance to know a Being who is not just a brilliant Designer, but a God who loves the people He has made, a God who is willing to find us a place with His only Son in a new world free from the problems we experience today. He invites us to prepare for His kingdom now, but leaves it to us to obey or ignore the call. He wants volunteers, not conscripts, in His kingdom.
To believe in a Creator takes faith, for we cannot see His face, only the things He has made. But when you get down to it, it takes just as much faith to believe in evolution. No scientist saw the beginning of human life. There is no first-hand evidence. All the conflicting explanations for the origin of species are no more than theories, possible explanations, to be weighed against what exists today.
And there are many, many areas where the claim that a Creator designed living creatures to suit their environment is more compelling than an explanation that depends on random mutations, chance, or natural selection. In fact, the evolutionist is often driven to speak of Nature as a designer, as if nature were some intelligent being. The biologist refers to the excellent ‘design’ of the feather, or the eye, and draws comparisons with human inventions like aeroplanes and cameras. Yet if evolution is true there was no designer. The evolutionist’s sense of logic demands a designer, but the humanist streak inside him rebels at believing in one.
There is no room for compromise between the two approaches. ‘Theistic Evolution’, the concept that evolution took place, but God guided it, contradicts what He has written in the Bible. It also introduces a string of inconsistencies. For example, the creation of Adam from the dust is a clear Bible teaching, referred to repeatedly in both Old and New Testaments. But the record of Adam is not compatible with apemen who gradually became civilised over vast periods of time. And if God was powerful enough to fill the earth with living creatures over millions of years, He could do it just as well in days, for time has no meaning for Him. To God “a thousand years is as one day”, the Apostle Peter wrote (2 Pet 3:8).
No, the choice is clear. Either the Bible is right, and God spoke and it was done, or God is a fiction, and we are here only to live for a time, and to die forever. We hope, in what follows, to show that there is no shame in believing in Creation. Indeed, compared with the great mass of humankind down through the ages, you would be in a clear majority if you accepted there is a Supreme Being in charge of the world.
Only in the last century and a half has Evolution, like some new religion, drawn people away from believing in God. You are still justified, like the apostle of old, in taking this simple line: “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (Heb 11:3).
We cannot see God, we do not understand the mechanics by which He bonded together invisible energy to make visible atoms, molecules, and men. But we can have every confidence that our faith in Him will not go unrewarded.