Sincere believers in the Word of God often differ in their interpretation of the creation. But Seventh-day Adventists wherever they are found can be classified as special creationists, and opposed to the idea of the evolution of any new basic types of plants and animals since creation week. That much is clear with regard to their belief, but because there are so many varieties of creationism today, it is necessary to add a few statements of explanation in order to clarify the Adventist position. A general classification would place Adventists among the fundamentalists. However, with regard to the problem of origins, they actually stand with a small minority of the fundamentalists because of their belief that the days of creation week were solar days of twenty-four hours, such as we experience today. Fundamentalists are now generally swinging to a sort of "progressive creationism," which maintains that the days of creation week were geological periods, each consisting of millions of years. Thus in the matter of past duration most fundamentalists are now falling into step with evolutionists.
Adventist scientists agree that the Bible is not, and does not claim to be, a textbook of science. It is essentially a book that tells men how to conduct themselves in this life and how to prepare for the life to come. And yet every expressed thought of the Bible is true. Jesus Christ, who declared that He was the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), said of the Bible: "Thy word is truth" (John 17:17).
The Adventist believes that the statements of the Bible are to be taken in their everyday meaning unless internal evidence makes it clear that some portion is to be understood figuratively. According to this inspired Word of God, the many basic types of living things in all their complexity were produced by fiat creation during creation week. This story of origins in the first chapter of Genesis gives every indication that it should be understood literally, and that the days of creation week were twenty-four-hour days. Sound principles of Bible interpretation require that we accept this "day" as being an ordinary day. In the Old Testament where the word yom is associated with a definite number, it is always used to indicate a day of twenty-four hours. Thus here the expressions "the first day," "the second day," and so on, make clear that these were ordinary days. This same idea is given in the expression "evening and morning." If these days were geological periods, and each was divided into a light portion and a dark portion, then the sun, which was created "to rule the day," would have shone upon the earth continuously for many years without setting, and the green plants would have died in the extended dark period that followed their creation. Plants appeared on the third day, but those numerous forms that are dependent upon insects would have become extinct before the insects, which were created no sooner than the fifth day, could have accomplished the vital pollination of the flowers. These and other items of internal evidence in Genesis I make clear to the Adventist that the days of creation week could not be geological periods but must rather have been twenty-four-hour days.
Schools of Evolutionistic Thought
In order to understand the differences between the beliefs of Adventists and evolutionists it is necessary first to understand that there are many schools of evolutionistic thought. In fact, seldom do two evolutionists agree in the historical aspects of their theories.
3. Theistic evolutionists and Adventists believe alike as far as theism is concerned. They both accept the inspiration of the Bible and believe that God created our earth and life upon it. They both believe that natural laws are manifestations of God's upholding power. They part company over the length of days of creation week and the manner of creation of living forms. The theistic evolutionist believes the days of creation week were geological periods and that God brought the modern complexity among plants and animals into being through processes of evolution. To the theistic evolutionist, man is a descendant of the beasts and was adopted by his Creator after reaching the level of modern man. To the Adventist, man was created from the dust as the son of God (Gen. 2:7; Luke 3:38). To the theistic evolutionist, man by his heredity is at best a noble beast, while to the Adventist, man by his heredity is a created member of the household of God and has not a drop of bestial blood in his body. Christ died, not to bring salvation to a noble beast, but to redeem a fallen being who was created from the dust in God's image.
Adventist scientists believe that one reason why the Bible was given to man was to supply him with certain basic facts that he possibly could not have discovered by himself. The problem of the origin of plants and animals is one that is not amenable to laboratory demonstration. Neither evolution of basic types nor their creation can be demonstrated in the laboratory. Therefore, God told man that their origin was by special creation. In the solution of all problems of science that are not cleared by Biblical assertions, Adventist scientists open-mindedly employ the same scientific methods used by evolutionistic scientists.
Through mental confusion with regard to the difference between true empirical science and speculative science, evolutionists assert that creationists "must refuse completely established scientific findings" in order to hold to the theory of special creation. In order to qualify as a completely established scientific finding, a phenomenon must be capable of demonstration in the laboratory. The cold facts are that no item of empirical, demonstrable science is in conflict with the theory of special creation. But when we enter the realm of speculative science, that is, when we come to the explanation of scientifically established facts, more than one reasonable explanation may be possible and who has the authority to say which is the correct one?
This situation is one that evolutionists commonly overlook. Most scientists of our day are evolutionists, and this majority gives them confidence to the extent that they become autocratic and dogmatic in their beliefs to such a degree that they repeat the very same situation that caused the Dark Ages. In those sad times a few individuals set themselves up as authorities, and the strange fact is that the students of that day made obeisance to them and respectfully fell upon their faces before the dogmatic utterance, "The master has spoken!" Those times were days of stagnation in learning because of a lack of intellectual activity.
Interestingly, the autocratic authorities of those days called themselves special creationists, and those schoolmen are today soundly and justly criticized by evolutionists because of their requirement that their inaccurate opinions be respected as authority. But the tragedy of today is that modern evolutionists have in turn such overmastering faith in their own particular explanations of subjective evidence as to demand that all peoples likewise accept their explanations of scientific findings. If students do not accept the evolutionistic faith, but choose the creationistic explanation instead, they are declared by evolutionists to be unscientific, and they are described as naive, or they may be likened to inmates of mental institutions (see the review by W. C. Tobie of Life, Man, and Time in the Quarterly Review of Biology for September, 1957), and not uncommonly are refused candidacy for academic degrees in advanced schools of learning. This unfortunate demand by evolutionists that all students accept the evolutionistic interpretation of all subjective evidence bearing on the problem of origins is sure to bring a return of the intellectual stagnation of the Dark Ages—or a philosophical revolution. The conclusions of the evolutionists can be wrong, because the evidence upon which they base them is merely subjective and not in the least coercive. Scientists characteristically change their interpretations of subjective evidence every now and then.
When the evolutionist declares that special creationists "reject completely established scientific findings" in order to hold to their theory (see Theodosius Dobzhansky in Genetics and the Origin of Species, 1951, 3d ed. p. 11), he is forgetting that evolutionistic explanations of scientific findings do not qualify as "completely established scientific findings." Only items of empirical, demonstrable evidence can so rate. Actually, Adventist creationists accept every item of empirical, demonstrable evidence. In not one case do these data disagree with the teachings of the Bible. The God of nature and the Author of the Bible are one Being; therefore Bible and nature should agree. That the Bible and demonstrable science do agree is one of the reasons for the Adventist's faith in the inspiration of the Bible. The only conflict between the Bible and science occurs in the speculative portions of the latter. In the current demands of leading scientists that we must give up the idea of special creation and accept the bestial origin of man, the Adventist sees the subtle influence of the god of deceit. Modern evolutionist scientists are sincere but they are also deceived.
Because many very fine religious folks are found among evolutionists, we sometimes hear it said that it really does not matter religiously whether we are evolutionists or special creationists. However, to believe in evolution and its teaching of the bestial origin of man, we must go directly against the clear teaching of such Biblical assertions as are found in Genesis 1 and Luke 3:38—references which teach clearly that man did not evolve through beasts but, as already observed, was created the son of God directly from dust. In the light of the Scriptures, therefore, the teaching of the bestial origin of man would be the perpetration of a lie, and we read in Revelation 22:15 that "whosoever loveth and maketh a lie" will in the final separation find himself outside the city of God.
Varieties, but No New Bask Types
Among special creationists of the Dark Ages were the schoolmen who taught in the great universities of Oxford, Paris, and Leipzig. These men taught that the doctrine of Genesis on the reproductive performance of organisms was such as to permit no development of varieties within the Genesis "kinds." This extreme-fixity interpretation of the Genesis "kind" was still taught in Cambridge University as late as 1831 when Charles Darwin was graduated from the theological course in that school. It is a common opinion among modern evolutionists that creationists today likewise believe in this extreme fixity in nature. When an evolutionist who is of this opinion hears a creationist assert that he believes in the origin of new varieties among plants and animals, the evolutionist proclaims that in such a belief the creationist becomes an evolutionist. However, this conclusion reveals that the evolutionist should think a little deeper, because the development of new varieties is not the development of new Genesis "kinds," that is, new basic types. In order for evolution to occur there must be a development of new basic types of organisms. A vast amount of research has been done on variation among plants and animals, and it is now known to all informed biologists that in no case can these processes of change be shown to produce even one new basic type. The evolutionist becomes a creature of faith when he believes that, if given enough time, processes of variation could produce evolution of new types. This faith causes him to refuse all methods of age-dating of rocks and organic materials that cannot be construed to indicate that vast stretches of time have elapsed since life first appeared on our earth. All of this study of variation has merely served to demonstrate the truth of Genesis that each basic type, the Genesis "kind," always produces new individuals that belong unquestionably to their parental type. The evolutionist misplaces his faith because apparently there are in nature no mechanisms whereby one basic type of organism can produce a new basic type.
That fact poses a tremendous problem for evolutionists, and when pressed for an explanation, they say that the student has to go into the field of paleontology to find real evidence of the evolution of new basic types. However, when we go to the paleontologist to learn of this evidence, we are told by authorities in that field that the same discontinuity that exists among living forms and makes a demonstration of evolution impossible also exists among the fossils. It is a source of great satisfaction to the creationist to find the close agreement between the story of the origin and manner of increase of living things, as given in Genesis, and the actual reproductive behavior of fossil and living forms. They not only have brought forth but still do bring forth after their "kind." There is no real evidence of new basic types having occurred.
Because the evolutionist believes that great stretches of time could make possible the evolution of new basic types through natural variation, it is understandable that he should hope to find natural evidence that billions of years have elapsed since our earth came into being. This wishful thinking has led him to reject evidences that our earth is only a few thousand years old and substitute for these the radioactive time clocks which, when explained in the light of certain undemonstrable assumptions, would suggest an age of several billions of years for our earth.
However, the unreliability of these clocks is indicated by such facts as the impossibility, in the case of the uranium 238-lead-206 method of age-dating, of knowing how much of the lead-206 in the mineral has originated from the decay of the uranium and how much of it appeared in the mineral when the mineral was first formed. Carbon-14 datings on the more ancient organic materials are likewise unreliable, because we have good reasons for believing that the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 has not continued in its present proportion back to the time when this organic substance was a part of a living plant or animal. Because of the unjustified assumptions upon which these age determinations are based, the ages obtained by these methods are invalid. The creationist marvels that the very evolutionists who demand an open-minded approach to all natural phenomena allow their belief in evolution to close their minds to such an extent that they do not recognize the undemonstrable and unjustifiable nature of the assumptions that are the basis of all their age determinations. Practically all Adventist scientists today recognize that there is no natural necessity for assuming that even the raw materials of our earth are older than seven thousand years. The Bible story of the origin and development of the human race requires no more than this.
