March 8, 2007

• Condensed from John MacArthur's "The Battle for the Beginning" 

  The naturalist's formula for the origin of the universe is that "nobody times nothing equals everything." There is no Creator; there is no design or purpose. Everything we see simply emerged and evolved by pure chance from a total void.

  The array of problems for the naturalist begins at the most basic level. What was the first cause that caused everything else? Where did matter and energy come from? What holds everything together and what keeps everything going? How could life, self consciousness, and rationality evolve from inanimate, inorganic matter? Who designed the many complex and interdependent organisms and sophisticated ecosystems we observe? Where did intelligence originate? Are we to think of the universe as a massive perpetual motion apparatus with some sort of impersonal "intelligence" of its own? Or is there a personal, intelligent Designer who created everything and set it all in motion?

  Those questions must be answered if we are to understand the meaning and value of life itself. Philosophical naturalism, because of its materialistic and antisupernatural presuppositions, cannpt answer those questions. In fact, the most basic dogma of naturalism is that everything happens by natural processes; nothing is supernatural; and therefore there can be no personal Creator. That means there can be no design and no purpose for anything. Naturalism therefore can provide no philosophical basis for believing that human life is particularly valuable or in any way significant. The naturalist, must conclude that humanity is an accident without any purpose or importance. Naturalism is therefore a formula for futility and meaninglessness, erasing the image of God from our race's collective self image, depreciating the value of human life, undermining human dignity, and subverting morality.

  Evolution is Degrading to Humanity

  The drift of modern society proves the point. We are witnessing the abandonment of moral standards and the loss of humanity's sense of destiny. Rampant crime, drug abuse, sexual perversion and rising suicide rates are all symptoms that human life is being systematically devalued and that futility is sweeping over society.

  If evolution is true, humans are just one of many species that evolved from common ancestors. We're no better than animals, and we ought not to think that we are. If we evolved from sheer matter, why should we esteem what is spiritual? In fact, if everything evolved from matter, nothing "spiritual" is real. We ourselves are ultimately no better than or different from any other living species. We are nothing more than protoplasm waiting to become manure. If we really evolved from animals, we are in fact just animals ourselves.

  If man is merely a product of natural evolutionary processes, then he is nothing more than the accidental byproduct of thousands of haphazard genetic mutations. He is just one more animal that evolved from amoeba, and he is probably not even the highest life form that will eventually evolve. So what is special about him? Where is his meaning, his dignity, his value or his purpose? Obviously he has none. It is only a matter of time before a society steeped in naturalistic belief fully embraces such thinking and casts off all moral and spiritual restraint.

  Evolution is Hostile to Reason

  Evolution is as irrational as it is amoral. In place of God as Creator, the evolutionist has substituted as the engine that drives the evolutionary process. Naturalism teaches that over time and out of sheer chaos, matter evolved into everything we see today by pure chance without any particular design. Given enough time and enough random events, the evolutionist says, anything is possible. And the evolution of our world with all its intricate ecosystems and complex organisms is therefore simply the inadvertent result of a very large number of indiscriminate but extremely fortuitous accidents of nature. Chance itself has been elevated to the role of creator.

  Matter, time, and chance constitute the evolutionists' holy trinity. Together they have formed the cosmos as we know it. The evolutionary idea not only strips man of his dignity and his value, but it also eliminates the ground of his rationality. If everything happens by chance, then in the ultimate sense, nothing can possibly have any real purpose or meaning. It's hard to think of any philosophical starting point that is more irrational than that.

  Chance simply cannot be the cause of anything, because chance is not a force. The only legitimate sense of the word chance has to do with mathematical probability. "Chance" cannot actually flip a coin. Mathematical probability is merely a way of measuring what actually does happen.  Yet in naturalistic and evolutionary parlance, "chance" becomes something that determines what happens in the absence of any other cause or design. Naturalists have iimputed to chance the ability to cause and determine what occurs. And that is an irrational concept.

  There are no uncaused events. Every effect is determined by some cause. Even the flip of a coin simply cannot occur without a definite cause. And common sense tells us that whether the coin comes up heads or tails is also determined by something. A number of factors (including the precise amount of force with which the coin is flipped and the distance it must fall before hitting the ground) determine the number of revolutions and bounces it makes before landing on one side or the other. It is those forces, not "chance," determine whether we get heads or tails. What may appear totally random and undetermined to us is nonetheless determined by something.  It is not caused by mere chance, because chance simply does not exist as a force or a cause. Chance is nothing.

  Where did matter come from in the first place? The naturalist would have to say either that all matter is eternal, or that everything appeared by chance out of nothing. The latter option is clearly irrational.  Suppose the naturalist opts to believe that matter is eternal. An obvious question arises: What caused the first event that originally set the evolutionary process in motion? The only answer available to the naturalist is that chance made it happen. It literally came out of nowhere. No one and nothing made it happen. That, too, is clearly irrational.

  In order to avoid that dilemma, some naturalists assume an eternal chain of random events that operate on the material universe. They end up with an eternal but constantly changing material universe governed by an endless chain of purely random events all culminating in magnificent design without a designer, and everything happening without any ultimate cause. At the end of the day, it is still irrational. It eliminates purpose, destiny, and meaning from everything in the universe. And therefore it leaves no ground for anything rational.

  In other words, nihilism - a belief that everything is entirely without meaning, without logic, and without reason - is the only philosophy that works with naturalism. The universe itself is incoherent and irrational. Reason has been deposed by pure chance.

  Such a view of chance is the polar opposite of reason. Common sense logic suggests that every watch has a watchmaker. Every building has a builder. Every structure has an architect. Every arrangement has a plan. Every plan has a designer. And every design has a purpose. We see the universe, infinitely more complex than any watch and infinitely greater than any man made structure, and it is natural to conclude that Someone infinitely powerful and infinitely intelligent made it. "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made" (Romans 1:20nasb).

  But naturalists look at the universe, and despite all the intricate marvels it holds, they conclude no one made it. Chance brought it about. It happened by accident. That is not logical. It is absurd.

  Abandon logic and you are left with pure nonsense. In many ways the naturalists' deification of chance is worse than all the various myths of other false religions, because it obliterates all meaning and sense from everything. It is also pure religion of the most pagan variety, requiring a spiritually fatal leap of faith into an abyss of utter irrationality.

  What could prompt anyone to embrace such a system? Why would someone opt for a world - view that eliminates all that is rational? It boils down to the love of sin. People want to be comfortable in their sin, and there is no way to do that without eliminating God. Get rid of God and you erase all fear of the consequences of sin. So even though sheer irrationality is ultimately the only viable alternative to the God of Scripture, multitudes have opted for irrationality just so they could live guilt - free and shamelessly with their own sin. It is as simple as that.

  Either there is a God who created the universe and sovereignly rules His creation, or everything was caused by blind chance. The two ideas are mutually exclusive. If God rules, there's no room for chance. Make chance the cause of the universe, and you have effectively done away with God.  If chance as a determinative force or a cause exists even in the frailest form, God has been dethroned. The sovereignty of God and chance are inherently incompatible. If chance causes or determines anything, God is not truly God.

  But again, chance is not a force. Chance cannot make anything happen. Chance is nothing. It simply does not exist. And therefore it has no power to do anything. It cannot be the cause of any effect. It is an imaginary hocus - pocus. It is contrary to every law of science, every principle of logic, and every intuition of sheer common sense. Even the most basic principles of thermodynamics, physics, and biology suggest that chance simply cannot be the determinative force that has brought about the order and interdependence we see in our universe - much less the diversity of life we find on our own planet. Ultimately, chance simply cannot account for the origin of life and intelligence.

  Someone once estimated that the number of random genetic factors involved in the evolution of a tapeworm from an amoeba would be comparable to placing a monkey in a room with a typewriter and allowing him to strike the keys at random until he accidentally produced a perfectly spelled and perfectly punctuated typescript of Hamlet's soliloquy. And the odds of getting all the mutations necessary to evolve a starfish from a one - celled creature are comparable to asking a hundred blind people to make ten random moves each with five Rubik's Cubes, and finding all five cubes perfectly solved at the end of the process. The odds against all earth's life forms evolving from a single cell are, in a word, impossible.

  There is no viable explanation of the universe without God. So many immense and intricate wonders could not exist without a Designer. There's only one possible explanation for it all, and that is the creative power of an all wise God. He created and sustains the universe, and He gives meaning to it. And without Him, there is ultimately no meaning in anything. Without Him, we are left with only the notion that everything emerged from nothing without a cause and without any reason. Without Him, we are stuck with that absurd formula of the evolutionist: Nothing times nobody equals everything.

  Evolution is Antithetical to the Truth God has Revealed

  The actual record of creation is found in Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It would be hard to state an answer to the great cosmic question any more simply or directly than that.  The words of Genesis 1:1 are precise and concise beyond mere human composition. They account for everything evolution cannot explain. Evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer, one of Darwin's earliest and most enthusiastic advocates, outlined five "ultimate scientific ideas":  time, force, action, space, and matter.  These are categories that (according to Spencer) comprise everything that is susceptible to scientific examination.  Everything that can be known or observed by science fits into one of those categories, Spencer claimed, and nothing can be truly said to "exist" outside of them.

  Spencer's materialistic world - view is immediately evident in the fact that his categories leave room for nothing spiritual. Something as obvious as human intellect and emotion do not quite fit into any of Spencer's categories.  Evolutionary principles still cannot account for the actual origin of any of Spencer's categories. The evolutionist must practically assume the eternality of time, force, action, space, and matter and how things have developed out of an originally chaotic state.

  But Genesis 1:1 accounts for all of Spencer's categories. "In the beginning" - that's time. "God" - that's  force. "Created" - action. "The heavens" - that's space. "And the earth" - that's matter. In the first verse of the Bible God laid out plainly what no scientist or philosopher cataloged until the nineteenth century. Moreover, what evolution still cannot possibly explain - the actual origin of everything that science can observe - the Bible explains in a few succinct words in the very first verse of Genesis.

  About the uniqueness of the Bible's approach to creation, Henry Morris writes:  "Genesis 1:1 is unique in all literature, science, and philosophy. Every other system of cosmogony, whether in ancient religious myths or modern scientific models, starts with eternal matter or energy in some form, from which other entities were supposedly gradually derived by some process. Only the Book of Genesis even attempts to account for the ultimate origin of matter, space, and time; and it does so uniquely in terms of special creation."

  In that very first verse of Scripture, each reader is faced with a simple choice: Either you believe God did create the heavens and the earth, or you believe He did not. If He did not, He does not exist at all, nothing has any purpose and nothing makes any sense. If on the other hand there is a creative intelligence - if there is a God - then creation is understandable. It is possible. It is plausible. It is rational.  Either the vast array of complex organisms and intelligence we observe reflect the wisdom and power of a personal Creator (and specifically, the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture), or all these marvels somehow evolved spontaneously from inanimate matter, and no real sense can be made of anything.

  God did create the heavens and the earth. And there is only one document that credibly claims to be a divinely revealed record of that creation: the Book of Genesis. Unless we have a creator who left us with no information about where we came from or what our purpose is, the text of Genesis 1 - 2 stands for all practical purposes unchallenged as the only divinely revealed description of creation. In other words, if there is a God who created the heavens and the earth, and if He revealed to humanity any record of that creation, Genesis is that record. If the God of Scripture did not create the heavens and the earth, then we have no real answers to anything that is truly important. Everything boils down to those two simple options.

  We can either believe what Genesis says, or not. If Genesis 1:1 is true, then the universe and everything in it was created by a loving and personal God and His purposes are clearly revealed to us in Scripture. Further, if the Genesis account is true, then we bear the stamp of God and are loved by Him - and because we are made in His image, human beings have a dignity, value, and obligation that transcends that of all other creatures. Moreover, if Genesis is true, then we not only have God's own answers to the questions of what we are here for and how we got where we are, but we also have the promise of salvation from our sin.

  If Genesis is not true, however, we have no reliable answer to anything. Throw out Genesis and the authority of all Scripture is fatally compromised. That would ultimately mean that the God of the Bible simply doesn't exist. And if some other kind of creator - god does exist, he evidently doesn't care enough about his creation to provide any revelation about himself, his plan for creation, or his will for his creatures.

  There are, of course, several extrabiblical accounts of creation from pagan sacred writings. But they are all mythical, fanciful, and frivolous, featuring hideously ungodly gods. Those who imagine such deities exist would have to conclude that they have left us without any reason for hope, without any clear principles by which to live, without any accountability, without any answers to our most basic questions, and (most troubling of all) without any explanation or solution for the dilemma of evil.

  Therefore if Genesis is untrue, we might as well assume that no God exists at all. That is precisely the assumption behind modern evolutionary theory. If true, it means that impersonal matter is the ultimate reality. Human personality and human intelligence are simply meaningless accidents produced at random by the natural processes of evolution. We have no moral accountability to any higher Being. All morality - indeed, all truth itself - is ultimately relative. In fact, truth, falsehood, goodness, and evil are all merely theoretical notions with no real meaning or significance. Nothing really matters in the vast immensity of an infinite, impersonal universe.

  So if Genesis is false, nihilism is the next best option. Utter irrationality becomes the only "rational" choice.

  Obviously, the ramifications of our views on these things are immense. Our view of creation is the necessary starting point for our entire world - view. In fact, so vital is the issue that Francis Schaeffer once remarked that if he had only an hour to spend with an unbeliever, he would spend the first fifty - five minutes talking about creation and what it means for humanity to bear the image of God - and then he would use the last five minutes to explain the way of salvation.

  The starting point for Christianity is not Matthew 1:1, but Genesis 1:1. Tamper with the Book of Genesis and you undermine the very foundation of Christianity. You cannot treat Genesis 1 as a fable or a mere poetic saga without severe implications to the rest of Scripture. The creation account is where God starts His account of history. It is impossible to alter the beginning without impacting the rest of the story - not to mention the ending. If Genesis 1 is not accurate, then there's no way to be certain that the rest of Scripture tells the truth. If the starting point is wrong, then the Bible itself is built on a foundation of falsehood.  Believing in a supernatural, creative God who made everything is the only possible rational explanation for the universe and for life itself. It is also the only basis for believing we have any purpose or destiny.

   

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