Evolutionism the Antithesis of Creationism

Prof. Reu E. Hoen spent fifteen of his thirty-nine years as seminary and college professor, in the fields of science and mathematics as head of the Department of Chemistry at Pacific Union College, Angwin, California. For eight years previous to that he served as head of the Science Department of Emmanuel Missionary College.

With the exception of his ten-year program of graduate study in education and chemistry at the University of Chi­cago, from which institution he received his Master's degree in 1928 and his doctorate in 1933, Professor Hoen is a prod­uct of Christian home and church school education. He tells us he never spent a day in public school in his life. His mother, a schoolteacher, taught him until he was eleven years of age. and his high school and college training was taken in Adventist educational institutions.

Author of the book The Creator and His Workshop, Dr. Hoen in his teaching and writing has ever sought to present a rational, Biblical correlation of nature and revelation.

We are deeply indebted to Dr. Hoen for providing us a series of articles on science and religion, of which this is the first.—Editors.

Manifold and sometimes even harsh have been the discussions concerning the relation of religion and science. Some scientists have accused theologians of ex­treme dogmatism, while certain religion­ists have decried science as the handmaid of atheism. It is unfortunate that too fre­quently the problem has been described as a battle between science and religion. In­stead, the differences in belief and doctrine have been between certain groups of reli­gionists and scientists.

Just as true religion is not necessarily the teaching of a particular brand of the­ology, so also the theories of one or several scientists do not constitute science. Since theologians differ widely among themselves concerning interpretation of the basis of their creeds, and scientists likewise pro­pound quite diverse theories, it is not sur­prising that there should be marked dis­parity of belief between large segments of these two groups.

Nevertheless, compromise is not a condi­tion of agreement between true religion and verifiable science.

Since the book of nature and the book of revela­tion bear the impress of the same master mind, they cannot but speak in harmony. By different methods, and in different languages, they witness to the same great truths. . . . The book of nature and the written word shed light upon each other.'

He who has a knowledge of God and His word through personal experience has a settled faith in the divinity of the Holy Scriptures… He knows that in true science there can be nothing contrary to the teaching of the word; since both have the same Author, a correct understanding of both will prove them to be in harmony.²

When apparent discrepancies are noted between theories advanced by scientists and interpretations of Scripture adopted by theologians, it is necessary to examine both views critically. One or both may be in error. In the days of Galileo, churchmen erroneously interpreted certain Biblical texts as implying that the earth is fiat and that the sun actually revolves around it. Verbally, Galileo compromised. Though he retained faith in the Scriptures, he was con­vinced from his observations of the heavens that the round earth rotated. Now, as it was then, it is unwise to adopt or promote dogmatic, of ttimes unwarranted and irra­tional, interpretations of Scripture that obviously contradict the positive, unequiv­ocal facts of God's other book, the book of nature. On the other hand, debatable the­ories based on certain scientific observa­tions must be scrutinized carefully and thoroughly in the light both of revelation and of other pertinent facts of nature.

No area in which the divergent views of scientists and theologians have been dis­cussed has been so widely publicized as that of creation versus evolution. In more or less literal fashion creationists accept the Mosaic record in the book of Genesis. Evo­lutionists on the other hand almost or en­tirely ignore the Biblical account of crea­tion in favor of the idea of spontaneous origin and development of the presently observable physical and biological features of nature from remotely ancient forms of unorganized matter and/or energy.

Interpretations of the Genesis Record

The line of demarcation between these two philosophies, however, is not every­where so sharply drawn. Some who accept the Genesis record interpret it in terms of ultraprophetic "days," and presume that the organizational acts performed during creation "week" were divinely accomplished through long ages in an evolutionary fash­ion. Other religionists envisage a Creator at whose behest the universe was set in motion, organized in primitive fashion, and left to develop itself through the agency of implanted urges. The most severely literal proponents of the Biblical account insist that no material in the universe antedates the first day of creation week, some six thousand years ago, and believe that each day of that week witnessed the absolute origin at the hand of the Creator of new materials and functions, both nonliving and living.

Lack of Unanimity in Evolutionary Hypothesis

Evolutionists likewise are far from unan­imous in their concepts of origins. Some would have the universe begin with uni­formly distributed matter, which by attrac­tion or repulsion congregated in cosmic units. Others presume that diffuse energy units ultimately became masses of matter throughout space. A few even think that the universe began as a giant cosmic mol­ecule that at some fortuitous instant in the long ago disintegrated to form varied celes­tial masses. Nevertheless, all evolutionists concur with some sort of theory of terres­trial biological development leading from the inorganic materials of earth through various simpler and intermediate stages of living forms to man himself.

Christian Scientists and the Genesis Creation

Scientists, however, who are sincerely Christian and who accept the Bible as God's revelation to man hold that the Genesis record is literally true. As such a scientist, I firmly believe upon adequate foundation that the day-by-day record, beginning with the divine fiat on the first day of creation week, "Let there be light," upon the erst­while dark, cloud-enshrouded earth mate­rials, and ending with the completion of terrestrial creative work when the seventh-clay Sabbath was sanctified as a memorial of that finished creation, is an authentic account of earthly origins. How long be­fore, in the eternal existence of God the Father and His Son, they chose to create the materials of the universe, the innumer­able suns and stars and systems, and all the heavenly host, is not revealed in the Scriptures, nor is it within our province to know or to speculate upon the time of their origin.

There is Biblical information, however, as recorded in the New Testament by the apostles John and Paul, that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, was the immediate agent in carrying out the will of the Father in creative activities. "Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist." "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only son from the Father." "He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth . . . —all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." ' "In many and var­ious ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he ap­pointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world." ⁶ All these Scriptures are in perfect accord with the words, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." ⁷

Creation by Evolution a Misnomer

There seems to be but one point of even partial agreement between evolutionists and creationists; namely, that at the outset of earth's history the entire mass of the earth was unorganized and empty, homo­geneous and unpopulated, as the common version of the Bible states: "without form, and void." Anyone who continues to think that evolutionism and true Biblical reli­gion are compatible surely is blind to the studied efforts of evolutionists to side-step or entirely ignore the creation record of Genesis. In spite of the personal claim of Henry Ward Beecher, there can be no such individual as a "cordial Christian evolu­tionist." Creation by evolution is a mis­nomer, a catchy phrase intended to lure the unwary into a path of materialism or atheism.

"For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for them­selves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths."

Education Exploited in Favor of Evolution

In practically every field of learning, evolution either is taught as a fact or is tacitly assumed to be true. The entire edu­cational program of most public and pri­vate schools is being exploited in favor of evolutionism through the textbooks in use and through teacher-training programs. Progressively, the teaching profession has been brought practically to a lock-step procession by certain leaders in the scien­tific world. With the doctrine of evolution considered as the only acceptable philoso­phy of life, it is small wonder that the youth of the growing generation have all but forgotten the Bible and the principles of the golden rule.

Is it really true that educators are being coerced into the teaching of evolution as the basis of instruction? Let us consider some facts:

While attending the University of Chi­cago some years ago, I had opportunity to listen to a lecture by Dr. Downing, onetime professor in the field of secondary science education. His theme was methods of pro­moting the teaching of evolution in science courses in high school. When the lecture was finished he was asked, "What would you do if in your locality the teaching of evolution was forbidden, as it once was in Tennessee?" His reply was, "As a law-abid­ing citizen I would obey, but I would move just over the line from that area and pro­claim evolution as loudly as possible." His zeal for evolutionistic promotion was com­parable to that exhibited by the most ar­dent missionary for the gospel.

In a periodical supplied without charge by a large educational supply house, with a circulation that reaches practically every biology classroom in the United States, there have appeared such statements as the following:

Though the beginning student thinks he knows of man, biologically he knows nothing of him, can know nothing of him without all the background that the true evolutionary approach includes. . . . We do not believe that each student must check every fact and personally evaluate all the evidence to be able to understand the phylogenetic picture [developmental race history]. Indeed, such an un­dertaking is impossible for the professor, who ac­tually takes much of his teaching material on trust. . . . But it is our thesis that the student can and does better understand the branching and multi-branching Animal Kingdom—tremendous, fascinat­ing, all-important—if he has a clear picture of the evolutionary pattern.'

In another issue of the same publication, in an article entitled "Evolution by Accu­mulation," was the following:

Thanks to the popular press and to the gradual accumulation of knowledge, our college freshmen of today are not shocked by the idea that man was created through a process of evolution. Neverthe­less, the problem of developing the concept of evo­lution is one of the major challenges of the biology teacher. . . . My purpose here is to describe one of the several tricks which I find useful in the teach­ing of organic evolution?'

Evolution Promulgated by Press and Pulpit

Not long ago a popular magazine pub­lished a series of colorful articles devoted to the evolutionary development of man. In connection with the introductory chap­ter of the series, the editors suggested that "modern Sunday school courses, if they mention them at all, have little to say about Adam and Eve. When they look at the pictures of their ancestors (in this ar­ticle) not many kids will miss these two." Further editorial comments indicated that the trend is to consider Adam as a special member of the evolutionary sequence, a hominid into whose nostrils God breathed His spirit, thus placing "a moral restric­tion on his animal liberty," and bestowing upon him a "conscience—the sign of hu­man divinity." "

It is evident that evolutionism is being promoted through every possible medium, even the pulpit in some instances, and most people accept it as a scientific truth though often they do not recognize to where it leads.

Premises of Biological Evolution

Some of the assumptions upon which theories of biological evolution are based are the following:

1.  Uniformitarianism, the postulate that the rates at which changes are observed to occur at the pres­ent time constitute a criterion for all past time.

2.  Chance, by which almost any type of chemical compound or simple form of living creature could have resulted by the accidental union of other com­pounds or of simple elements.

3.  Accidental but progressive elaboration and ad­dition of functions and structures in living creatures as need or opportunity arose.

4.  Natural selection, a process that presumably limits the accidentally produced plants or animals to those fitted to survive in a given environment.

5.  "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," the idea that the embryonic development of an individual animal proceeds through stages similar to those in evolution of higher creatures from simpler ones.

6.  Stratigraphy, a study of the biological content of deposits laid down by water or otherwise, by which the relative "age" of a stratum is indicated.

7.  Mineral content of a fossil as a clue to the age of the fossil.

8.  Further criteria for the "age" of a fossil asso­ciated with radioactive materials, dependent on the radioactivity of uranium, potassium, carbon, et cet­era, found within or in the proximity of the fossil.

Our attention in this article is directed to the first of these assumptions.

Though uniformitarianism is the corner­stone of evolutionary philosophy, evolu­tionists themselves obviously recognize that many catastrophic changes have oc­curred during earth's past, vastly different in kind and degree from phenomena now in progress. In tacit contradiction of their own philosophy, they freely refer to enormous uplifts and depressions in the course of mountain building, of tremendous glacial movements of subcontinental scope, and of unprecedented volcanic action producing igneous rocks. But almost to a man they have distinct qualms about admitting the possibility of a universal deluge such as is depicted in the Bible. The attitude dis­played in both these respects is clearly set forth in the prophecy given through the apostle Peter:

Scoffers will come in the last days . . . saying, "Where is the promise of his cooling? for ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation." They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.'²

Note the uniformitarian doctrine that was predicted—"all things have continued as they were from the beginning [not the end or close] of creation." Also note the de­nial of a worldwide catastrophic deluge. The significant increase in such professed beliefs is one of the positive signs of the approach of the day of God's judgment.

Uniformitarianism Unsupportable

In no particular can uniformitarianism in its larger aspects be supported by field observation. Extensive populations of ani­mal and plant life are not being buried and fossilized under conditions prevailing at present. A century ago millions of bison roamed the Midwestern prairies of North America. Now scarcely a single bone of these abundant recent creatures can be found in all that area, for predatory ani­mals and decay have utterly destroyed their carcasses. To have fossilized such remains would require sudden and extensive burial such as has not occurred in recent times.

Uniformitarianism would require that spontaneous generation of living forms should still be in progress. But even ardent proponents of the theory admit freely that such is not observed nor possible under present conditions. The same uniformitar­ian philosophy would demand present-day spontaneous appearance of new forms of life, both new species and new genera as well as still more diverse variants, as modi­fications and improvements upon these al­ready known throughout the entire histori­cal period. However, dogs are still dogs with the same habits as in the heyday of ancient civilizations, horses still are horses, and men are still indubitably men. True, there are wide variations of breed or race in each species or genus, but these variants are all clearly within the same classifica­tions as formerly.

Attempts have been made to incite or accelerate an evolutionary process in cer­tain insects, notably in the fruit fly, Dro­sophila, by radiation or by chemical treatment. In thousands of generations, in un­told numbers of experiments and ob­servations, much has been learned about heredity. Countless variant forms have been discovered, but every one of the new insects is still a member of the genus Drosophila. The variations have been only in such re­spects as eye color, banding, wing wize, and the like. lf, as has been claimed, the pres­ent is the index of the past, there is no evidence that evolution ever occurred.