CRITIQUE OF DENIS ALEXANDER’S BOOK ‘CREATION OR EVOLUTION’

Leslie McFall

29 October, 2008

Denis R. Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? Oxford, UK & Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 2008. Pp. 382.

SUMMARY CRITIQUE OF DENIS ALEXANDER’S BOOK ‘CREATION OR EVOLUTION’.

The theology of this book differs significantly from Reformed Theology with respect to the origin of Adam and Eve and the integrity of God’s revelation to mankind in the form of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. The reason for this is that the theology is shaped by the biology of the author, not by the text of Scripture. Biology takes precedence over Scripture. Biology has to be understood first, before a theology of Creation can be formulated. Biology shapes the theology of theistic evolutionists. So a course on biology is a pre-requisite to a correct understanding of how to read Genesis. The strong message coming out of Denis Alexander’s book is ‘Read your biological handbook first, before you attempt to read Genesis on its own.’ Or: ‘To attempt to understand Genesis without understanding biology is like trying to paint with a canvas.’ So the young Christian is presented with a formidable barrier before he can begin to understand Genesis. He must become proficient in biology, not theology, first. Failure to follow this order will lead to a wrong interpretation of Genesis, he is warned.

But there are some theistic evolutionists who would place a second barrier between the young Christian and his Bible. He is told that not only must he get a good grasp of evolutionary biology, but he must also become proficient in understanding the theology of Near Eastern cultures, because their mythical stories were the raw material that the Bible writers took up and purified and reshaped according to their own developing theology.[1]

With respect to the Creation/Evolution debate, there are two main categories of theistic evolutionists. There are those who attribute to God the creation of the spark of life, and nothing else. This spark was left to develop randomly with natural selection weeding out life forms that could not adapt to survive. These evolutionists are Classic Darwinian evolutionists. God is excluded from His creation once He ignites the spark of life. He stands back and lets evolution do the rest. These theistic evolutionists are, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from their atheistic colleagues. They bond well with all atheistic research, and can, and do, take their lead from them.

Because the only difference between the atheist and the theist is the origin of life itself, the faith of this type of theistic evolutionist is vulnerable to the atheist discovering the origin of life without reference to a Creator God whom the theist believes was there ‘in the beginning’. If the goal of the atheist is ever achieved the faith of this theistic evolutionist is left hanging by a very thin thread, and he will have to debate the atheist’s scientific ‘discovery’ that there was no god ‘in the beginning’. But because the theistic evolutionist has been following the trend of scientific discoveries for all of his adult life, and he is steeped in his ways, his outlook, his mindset, and has bought into his worldview, his faith in a Creator God becomes very tenuous, and his faith in the Genesis record (if it ever existed) finally evaporates into atheism. There is an inevitability about evolutionary biology that tends toward (some say, ends in) atheism.

But there is a serious knock-on effect with respect to the position that Scripture can hold in the life of a theistic evolutionist. If the TE[2] discovers that the biblical record is false in an area that he can test it, then he becomes very wary of accepting anything recorded in the Bible at its face value. A huge distrust penetrates deeply into his mind and soul, and he is never the same again in taking the Bible at face value. He is unlike Jesus and Paul in respect of their acceptance of the Genesis record at face value. The TE feels he has one over Jesus in this respect because Jesus was ignorant of the scientific knowledge that he has acquired.

The other kind of theistic evolutionist is the one who attributes to God the creation of the spark of life and this spark was left to develop randomly with natural selection weeding out life forms that could not adapt to survive, but God directed the natural selection process toward viable forms that would eventually produce homo sapiens, which was the ultimate goal of creation. It is to this class of theistic evolutionism that Denis Alexander belongs, but he brings his own adaptations into his viewpoint. The following are his key departures from Reformed theology.

1. THE SOLIDARITY OF THE HUMAN RACE

The author, Denis Alexander (hereafter DA), believes all human beings are descended from Adam and Eve. But Adam and Eve did not have a distinct, separate, beginning as recorded in Genesis 1-2. Adam and Eve were two, unmarried, Neolithic farmers. They were two out of millions of human-like beings. What separated them off from their fellow Neolithic relatives, was that they had an encounter with God, which was denied to the rest of their community. This encounter was of a spiritual/mental character. Adam and Eve sinned against this spiritual experience by disobeying God, which resulted in their being ‘expelled from the Garden of Eden’, which was a figurative concept. Cain got his wife from the same Neolithic community that Adam and Eve belonged to, thus there was no biological difference between them. DA believes that homo sapiens are the direct descendants of Neolithic man, and eventually replaced, or transformed, or metamorphosed, Neolithic man into the new, homo sapiens sub-species. This division of the human species into ‘image of God’ holders, and ‘non-image of God’ holders, contradicts the Reformed doctrine of Man that all human beings are ‘image of God’ holders, and have descended solely from Adam and Eve. “As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” There is a direct contradiction between Adam being a Neolithic Man, and Adam being a ‘son of God’ from the moment of his existence.

2. THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE

Animals do not marry, only human beings marry. Marriage is unique to the human species. It had its origin when God made Adam and Eve, and when He brought her to him and announced the pattern that would characterise all human society from that point onwards. Jesus noted that the words spoken in Genesis 2:24 were the words of God Himself, and that they were spoken ‘in the beginning’, thus He accepted the statements of Genesis 1 at face value. They were not the words of Moses or some earlier, social reformer. Jesus read Scripture at its face value. DA believes that two, almost human-like creatures, but not homo sapiens as we know them today, somehow instituted a life-long, monogamous relationship which somehow resulted in a new species we know as homo sapiens, and the Neolithic stock from which Adam and Eve are direct descendants somehow died out, or were merged biologically with the ‘new’ Adamic strain of Neolithic Man. DA believes that Cain and Abel married Neolithic women, rather than the offspring of Adam and Eve, which degrees of union were only later discouraged. But when God made pairs of all animals, interbreeding was ‘normal’ to continue each species, so that each could reproduce ‘after its kind’. So what applied to the increase of the human stock applied to all species of all animals ‘in the beginning’. Acts 17:26 informs us that: ‘He [God] made also of one blood every nation of men, to dwell upon all the face of the earth — having ordained times before appointed, and the bounds of their dwellings.’ The reference to ‘one blood’ is a direct link back to the ‘one flesh’ union which began with the marriage of Adam and Eve. Neolithic man did not exist when Adam and Eve were created, or if they did, they were not ‘sons of God’, and they were not human. Therefore for Cain to ‘marry’ a non-human is equivalent to him having sex with an animal. The two scenarios are incompatible. DA never comments on the origin of the institution of marriage.

3. THE IMMORTALITY OF ADAM AND EVE

DA rejects the idea that Adam and Eve had immortality. He infers that theologians of the past misunderstood Genesis 1-3 when they took the ‘religious story’ as a description of a factual event. They confused theology with biology, he believes. DA never comments on the 930 years that Adam lived, nor does he ever make any reference to the longevity of the patriarchs who followed Adam. Nor does he take into account the gradual decline in longevity following Noah’s Flood. Presumably these, too, are a ‘religious story’ because of the biological impossibility of homo sapiens living to such great ages. The Bible and evolution are incompatible when it comes to the longevity of Adam and his descendants. The Christian rightly demands a considered response to this incompatibility because it impacts directly on the integrity of Scripture. Is it telling the truth, or is it telling a lie about Adam’s age?

4. DEATH IS A NATURAL NOT AN UNNATURAL EVENT

DA rejects the idea that death among human beings came through sin. Death is inevitable in evolution, he insists. Death is a natural stage in the evolution of all species, especially the human. Indeed, evolution requires the death of the imperfect to allow the more perfect to dominate. Consequently, death is not an unnatural event in creation. DA never comments on the coupling of nakedness with the first sin of Adam and Eve. The inference is that nakedness was due solely to a disadvantageous mutation. The same would explain the excruciating pain that women now experience when giving birth. This also is a disadvantageous mutation. These mutations were each encapsulated in a ‘religious story’ in order to teach spiritual truths. It is ludicrous, declares the TE, to see any physical or biological connection between the sins of Adam and Eve and the fact that they were naked, that Eve experienced pain in childbirth, that thorns and thistles and that death resulted from their eating an apple or two! One can hear the stifled scorn in this comment. How different is this reaction to that of the atheist?

5. THE ORIGIN OF THE FALL

DA believes that God took two Neolithic farmers, whom he identifies as Adam and Eve, and brought them into a special relationship with Himself. This relationship depended on doing the will of God, which required submission and obedience. ‘Sin’ came about through disobedience to this special calling and relationship. The descendants of Adam and Eve naturally intermarried with their contemporary Neolithic community, and this would explain where Cain got his wife from, and his fear of being killed after he killed Abel. DA believes that the Fall affected only Adam and Eve, and was not inherited by their descendants. All men experience their own Fall. There is no such thing as Adam’s fall being inherited biologically by all his descendants. In other words, there is no such thing as inherited ‘original sin’. ‘Adam’ has been developing upwards through all time, and he is still evolving upwards. He will keep evolving upwards to the end of time.

6. EVOLUTION IS COMPATIBLE WITH CREATION

Common to all TEs’ belief system is the assumption that Evolution is compatible with the creation account in Genesis 1-3. DA believes that the fact of evolution is never ruled out or denied, either explicitly, or by implication, or by inference, anywhere in the Bible. They are totally compatible truths, he firmly believes. God created all things using evolution as His single, most powerful tool to bring about Adam and Eve, you and me, and all living matter in the world. We are here by chance. We were brought about by chance mutations under God’s superintendence. The biblical idea that at one time Adam did not exist, and that suddenly he appeared fully formed, and fully developed, is a myth if taken at its face value, DA warns. TEs, and their atheistic colleagues, roll about in uncontrollable laughter at the suggestion that Eve could have been created out of Adam’s rib. TEs are embarrassed at the thought of having to accept the record of Eve’s creation at its face value, so they create an escape clause for themselves.

7. THE BIBLE IS ONLY A RELIGIOUS BOOK

DA believes that the primary purpose behind the writing of Genesis 1-3 was to convey theological, not scientific, truths. The Bible is a religious textbook. It is not a scientific textbook. The two operate in different worlds. They complement each other when they are kept distinct. By compartmentalising the Bible and Science, the hope is that the Christian will rely totally on Science when it comes to origins, and deny the Bible any authoritative statement in this area. TEs are happy to hand over the ‘religious’ bit to the Bible, and keep science out of it. The clear inference is that the Bible contains poor scientific knowledge but excellent moral teachings, and it should only be consulted for ideas, religious ideas, philosophical ideas, and the like.

8. INTELLIGENT DESIGN

DA rejects the conclusion of the Intelligent Design section of academia that there are certain complex organisms which can only have come into being in a given instance, because all the parts require the other parts in order to have a purpose/function. Purpose belongs to the full complement of the parts working together. If one part is missing, it destroys all the other parts from carrying out their designed function. They have no function or purpose as individual parts; much like the major organs of the body which are closely interdependent in order to keep the body alive. One detects an innate fear of the implications of the Intelligent Design approach and explanation for certain perceived phenomenon at the microscopic level. Great care is taken by Denis Alexander to distance himself from the implications of the Intelligent Design approach. One suspects that anything that would produce a gap or rift between him and his Classic atheistic evolutionists is not to be welcomed. It is important for him to be seen to keep company with the Darwinists than with Christians who see in the revelations that are coming to light, evidence for something greater than random evolution to account for the present creation.

The rather lame reply of DA to the intricate, flagellum motors that power sperm toward conception is that in some instances, some of the parts of the complex organism, are similar to parts in other, less complex, organisms, and therefore, the more simple organism might have evolved into the more complex organism by some chance mutation! Note the cautious (some would say clever) introduction of ‘might’ here. Evolutionists are never lost for a dreamed up scenario to keep the theory afloat. There is no difficulty or problem with the theory of evolution which cannot be countered with a dreamed up scenario. Whether the scenario is plausible or not, is irrelevant. It is the fact that no vacuum is left in the debate which would allow the ID approach to gain the slightest toe-hold of respectability. If it can be trumped with any plausible scenario, the plausible scenario will defeat it.

The ID approach is going to be the biggest headache for theistic evolutionists for the foreseeable future. The ID researchers have opened up a Pandora’s Box whose lid can never be shut tight again. The cat is out of the bag. The horse has bolted. Science will never, and can never, be the same again. At the moment great efforts are being made by Classic, theistic evolutionists to squash this movement as quickly as possible using every means at their disposal. Oddly, one of the main arguments used to dismiss the ID approach is that it has minority following. Haven’t we heard this before about Galileo’s approach? Every breakthrough usually begins with an individual battling against the Establishment or against the scholarly consensus. It is a very poor objection and unworthy of any credible scientist to use a head count to settle an argument. Jesus was in a minority of one, but he was right, and the Establishment of His day were wrong.

Possibly the greatest disappointment I had with this book, apart from knowing the standard weaknesses in the handling of the Genesis record by theistic evolutionists, is the failure to take a closer look at the Intelligent Design approach. This is dropped as if it were a hot potato. I detect a real fear among professing Christians that ID has become a watershed issue for them—a time to come off the fence and acknowledge the hand of God in all that He has made, and especially in the design of the flagellum motor. It is a dilemma for them, because to acknowledge that God is Intelligent and a Designer would result in a divorce between him and his atheist colleagues. So the compromise is made to stay married to the unbeliever. Coming from a lifetime commitment to the Classic Darwinian theory where they (and their atheist colleagues) had never seen any need for God at any stage in the formation of anything, they are not going to depart from this position without seriously considering the consequences, one of which was to stand back and admire the impossibility of producing a flagellum motor of precisely the optimum dimensions and parts to do the precise job that was required. The impact of these ID discoveries has pointed Christians to an intelligent God, and a God who was the supreme designer of all that exists.

Paul pointed out that the same impact strikes all men coming into the world when they contemplate what God has created (Rom 1:19-21). It is no wonder that the scientist experiences the same impact when looking at the same creation though a microscope or through a telescope. So it comes as a surprise to me to find that some so-called Christians in science deny being able to see the hand of the Intelligent Designer in anything He has made, and instead of giving thanks and praise to God, they divert their sense of wonder and awe to a mistaken theory of evolution. And God is dishonoured in the presence of the angels by His own offspring. The intelligence of the scientist has blinded his mind so that he cannot see God. And what he cannot see, he cannot convey to others. He becomes a blind leader, for whom Jesus had little respect. It should be remembered that once an evolutionist, always an evolutionist. It is not possible for a theistic evolutionist to disentangle himself from a life-time of spinning a silky cocoon of evolutionary scenarios around every facet of biology, and then to throw this safety net off. Even if a few strands have to be undone, the comfort and security of the cocoon cannot be abandoned. The only alternative is that God created each species directly using His powerful DNA tool to create specific creatures for specific niches, as He has revealed in His Word. But that is too simplistic for these ‘wise men’ to accept by faith. They have no faith, so they fill the vacuum with Evolution instead. Evolution and Creation are incompatible ways of explaining the reality we see all around us today.

It is hoped that any future work by a theistic evolutionist will take each of the eight issues summarised above into account and explain how their position can still be compatible with Scripture in the light of these and the following, detailed criticisms.

MY ADVICE

The way forward is for the Christian to accept that the planet on which God created Adam and Eve is an extremely old creation. Next, that God produced many, many creations on this ancient planet, of which the fossils bear record. Next, that all life on this planet was extinguished, exterminated, and remained so up until God spoke at the start of Day One and uttered the words, ‘Let there be light.’ At that moment we can date the start of the present creation. In terms of Earth’s past history, the present life forms are extremely young, probably no longer than 15,000 to 17,000 years (to go by the genealogical records of the Bible).

The sum of the matter is that we are an extremely young creation sitting on top of an extremely old crust. On this combined revelation of science and the Bible, both can be reconciled and can complement each other. God’s word and God’s world meet in both.

TEs will never be able to take away from every man born into this world the sheer wonder of creation by saying “. . . and all this came about by sheer chance.” There is an instinctive recognition in every man that nothing of this beauty and wisdom could have ‘just happened’ by chance. It is for this reason that he can never win. He is going against the evidence that God Himself has infused into all His works. There is intelligence and design in all of God’s works, because He is supremely a God of order, and the DNA[3] molecule epitomises this. The TE thinks his specialised ‘scientific’ knowledge allows him to brush aside the evidence of his eyes and of AIK-biology and dogmatise that all things came into existence through chance mutations; that there is no intelligence directing any mutation, and that there is no purposeful design in any mutation. I have countered every argument put forward by TEs in order to show that the face value reading of Genesis 1-3 is the one to follow, because it is the one followed by Jesus and His Apostles. It requires trust in God, and trust that all Scripture has been given by inspiration of God, including Genesis 1-3. I have shown that the face value reading of Genesis is compatible with the revelation we can glean from geology, biology and Scripture. So intimate is God involved in every creature that He has created that Jesus could reveal that no sparrow falls to the ground without His Father’s involvement in its fate. And if He shows such intimate connection with His lower created beings how much more in those of His own offspring, of which every human being is reckoned?

The bottom line of the approach of TEs is that it drives God out of His creation, and it drives a wedge between the young Christian and his Bible. The TE approach can only be detrimental to the spiritual health of every Christian who falls for it. No TE should be permitted to be a leader at any level in Christ’s Church. He is blind to God’s creative hand, and thus he is a blind leader of the blind.

The title of this book, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? betrays a confusion that can only be detrimental to the faith of the immature Christian. The question assumes what needs to be proved, namely, that evolution was the means God used to bring all life into existence. The question assumes that ‘creation’ and ‘evolution’ are interchangeable terms; evolution is creation, and creation is evolution. But the question also reveals a carelessness about how the young Christian is to read his Bible. If Genesis 1-3 is not to be read at face value, then it ceases to be trustworthy. So it is very important that the young Christian never abandon his right to take God at His word and that He means what He says, and says what He means. It is this right that theistic evolutionists set out to rob the young Christian of, and make him their disciple.

There is one deceit practised by TEs which I utterly detest. They are ashamed of the idea of random mutations and that man is the result of millions of freak mutations, so they cover up this aspect of evolution by pointing to ‘natural selection’ as nature’s engine which will determine what will survive and what will not survive. But again, that is a chance event. It is to no avail to play down random mutations just because the vast majority of these do not survive the rigours of the environment in which they first appear. The whole process from mutation to viability is a random process. They are fully aware of what they are doing by denying the driving force that uncontrollable mutations exert on all living things. The deception lies in drawing away the young Christian’s attention from this fundamental engine that is driving evolution and playing down its randomness by passing on to the next stage in evolution, namely, the viability of any mutation to survive. This is called ‘natural selection,’ when really they mean ‘natural culling’ of the unviable offspring of the healthy.

There is no glory for God in such a picture of creation. They are ashamed to state clearly that just as Jesus commanded miraculous healings and instantaneously the forces of nature obeyed His voice, so likewise the Psalmist could look out into space and look around on all created things and declare that ‘He [God] commanded and they were created’ (Ps 148:5). He took the face value of what he read in Genesis as a historical fact on the same level as the mighty acts of God when He brought His people out of Egypt. Man (i.e., scientists) can only deal with the aftermath of a miraculous happening. The miraculous is outside their purview. They overstep the mark when they declare that miracles cannot occur. And the creation of all life from the dust of the earth is just such a series of miraculous events. The flagellum motor is just such a miraculous event. Its origin cannot be explained in an aftermath situation. It is in the same category as the creation of gnats out of the dust of Egypt (Exod 8:17-19). In a post-event laboratory these gnats would not be traceable to the dust of the ground. Scientists can only come on the scene after the miraculous has come into existence. They—any more than Joe Bloggs is—are not in a position to deny God the power to bring anything into existence by commanding it. When Pharaoh’s ‘scientists’ attempted to replicate the dust-to-gnat miracle they failed and confessed to Pharaoh, ‘It is the finger of God’ (Ex 8:19). You will never hear a theistic evolutionist say this of the flagellum motor. He is too concerned to be numbered among the wise men of this age to be that honest. He will set about to try and replicate the flagellum motor, just as the Egyptian ‘scientists’ attempted to replicate many of Moses’ miracles. Just the attempt by Pharaoh’s ‘scientists’ to replicate would be sufficient to undermine Moses’ miracles. When Aaron turned his staff into a snake, so did the Egyptian ‘scientists’ (Exod 7:12). Aaron’s miracle was cancelled out by the Egyptian ‘scientists’. This heartened Pharaoh to suspect that Aaron was indulging in trickery of some kind, and pretending to be a miracle-worker when he was a fake, like his own ‘scientists’. When Aaron turned the Nile waters into blood, Pharaoh’s ‘scientists’ were able to duplicate this ‘miracle’. We are told that this heartened the heart of Pharaoh and he refused to let Israel leave Egypt (Ex 7:22). His ‘scientists’ had trumped or cancelled out God’s first country-wide miracle. God commanded Moses to produce frogs throughout the land of Egypt. Pharaoh’s ‘scientists’ were able to duplicate this ‘miracle’ (Exod 8:7). Yet again, his ‘scientists’ had cancelled out God’s second country-wide miracle. But when it came to the third miraculous plague of turning dust into gnats, Pharaoh’s ‘scientists’ were stumped and unable to duplicate the miracle of producing life from non-living matter. Only God can do this, and Pharaoh’s ‘scientists’ acknowledged this when they confessed, ‘This is the finger of God’ (Ex 8:19). The same finger that the Psalmist refers to: ‘For I see Your heavens, a work of Your fingers, moon and stars that You did establish.’ (Ps 8:3).

The same applies to every evidence that the ID scientists bring forward to show that a given multi-part mechanism cannot be assembled by accident. TEs are quick to cancel out the ‘finger of God’ by bringing forward some counter-argument to cancel out any evidence of God being behind its creation. TEs have more in common with Pharaoh’s ‘scientists’ than they have with the faith of Aaron and Moses that God ‘commanded and it was created’. The lesson from Scripture is that there is a counter-truth for everything that is true. There is a false prophet to counter the true prophet. There are false tongues to counter the true tongues. There is the false teacher to counter the true teacher. Satan has ensured that nothing that is true is left on its own. He will always put up a contender or opposite case to counter it. Evolution is his counter to God’s miraculous creation of millions of individual species, each reproducing after its kind. And, unfortunately, Christians across the world have been hood-winked into believing Pharaoh’s ‘scientists’ have got the truth, and they despise those who follow the true servants of God, namely, Moses and Aaron.

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[1] This barrier is best exemplified by Ernest Lucas, Can We Believe Genesis Today? The Bible and the Questions of Science (3^rd edition. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2005. (1^st edition. 1989)). For a critique of this work see my web-site: www.btinternet.com/~lmf12

[2] Throughout this work TE stands for the theistic evolutionist.

[3] DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid.