Evolution – Lesson 2

Preliminary /definitions; Philosophical backgrounds

The big ideas of macro and cosmic evolution have been built upon presuppositions entirely alien to the Scripture. In other words, what’s happened here is men have gone over to propound these great ideas of macro evolution and cosmic evolution; they have brought in building blocks from non-Scriptural areas; they have brought in ideas that cannot be at all harmonized with Scripture. So the second reason for rejecting cosmic and macro evolution, in addition to my first reason, that it clashes with the face value of the text, a second reason and I think more profound, is that it not only clashes with the face value of the Scripture, but it clashes with the great doctrines of the Scripture. In other words, we have a conflict here at two levels. We have it at the face value and we have a conflict at the level of the ideas, the level of the doctrine, the philosophical world view of Scripture. There’s a conflict here.

And then finally my third reason for rejecting both macro and cosmic evolution is that when we really dig into the material, and no one can dig into all the material, obviously, but if you select out that material which is closest to your own area of study, my own area of study being meteorology, earth sciences and physics. Now I’m not a biologist, I don’t pretend to be, I’ve done extensive reading in the field but I’m not a qualified biologist, but I can at least understand a little bit about evolution when it impinges upon my own areas of study. And I find scientifically that evolution leaves a lot to be desired. Evolution leaves a lot to be desired scientifically.

So for these three reasons: (1) it clashes with the face value of Scripture. (2) It clashes with the great doctrines of Scripture. (3) It has very great scientific weaknesses from my viewpoint. For these three reasons I reject cosmic and macro evolution; I label them as pagan theory. Now I don’t mean to decry those who hold them, I simply label them for what they are; I feel this is an honest label, I think it fully brings out the nature of the issue, that those people who believe in cosmic and macro evolution are people who are either consciously or unconsciously adopting a pagan worldview. Micro evolution I accept. As we begin our series, as we begin our discussion, we’ve have to take time to clarify how we intend to use the word “evolution.” Cosmic evolution, macro evolution, micro evolution; micro evolution we accept, macro and cosmic evolution we reject.

I want to go to the second block of material, you’ve just heard the introduction and the preliminary definitions and now I wish to discuss the second reason why I rejected cosmic and macro evolution. I wish to discuss the philosophical backgrounds that are at stake, and from this we’ll then move to the third block of material, the Scripture. What do the Scriptures say? Then fourthly we will move over to the scientific problems of evolution. Therefore we will have three reasons, three great blocks of material, all patterned after my three reasons for rejecting cosmic and macro evolution. The first great block of material, philosophical background; after this we will discuss the Biblical background, and finally we will discuss the scientific problems in evolution. I want to discuss them in this order; philosophical background, Scripture and scientific weaknesses.

Let’s go to the philosophical background. I want to remind you again of the struggle that every Christian faces, the struggle between divine viewpoint and human viewpoint, a struggle which every Christian has to face and which if he doesn’t, he’s not really fighting the war that he should be fighting. We distinguish here at Lubbock Bible Church between what we call divine viewpoint and human viewpoint. We mean by divine viewpoint the worldview of all things given to us in Scripture, in other words, the framework of Biblical thinking. We view the Scriptures as the inspired and inerrant revelation from God. We don’t buy the modern jazz that the infinite God somehow, who made creation, somehow made it so finite that He couldn’t communicate with it; that the infinite God made creation finite and then creation goes on by itself, merrily along, God totally excluded from the system because somehow he, as infinite God, can no longer communicate to finite creation.

We build our view of divine viewpoint against this axiom of unbelief. We say that God, the infinite God, reveals Himself to His creatures and can because they are both personal. Man has been made in the image of God and at the point of creation God was omniscient, as He is now, but God in His omniscience knew what man would face. God, in omniscience knew the problems man would have. God, in omniscience knew what He wanted to do with man in future history. God, in sovereignty and omnipotence therefore built man in His image. This is the basis for our belief in verbal revelation from the infinite God, that God communicates really with real words with man and He communicates them and can communicate them because man is made in the image of God. He communicates because He made man to be a receiver for His messages.

So we have no philosophical difficulty whatever in accepting the idea of a verbal revelation. On our own premises we have perfect explanation for verbal revelation. Man is made and created in the image of God, and since man is made in the image of God, God can therefore reveal things, words to him, throughout history. True, God utilizes culture; true, God utilizes languages; true, God utilizes personal background, but the doctrine of God’s sovereignty sets God over all the environment. Environment is not an uncontrolled entity that God somehow walks into the room and grabs a piece from here and a piece from there and puts it together and says here, here’s an incomplete halfway decent revelation. No-no! God is sovereign over all elements in the creation: culture, language, the entire physical environment are under God’s sovereignty. Therefore we have no need to worry that the environment somehow is uncontrolled, somehow God can’t use it. God can; God guarantees the environment is under His control at all times and so therefore environmental factors cannot be an argument against verbal revelation. This is absolutely critical for you to realize this.

Some of you don’t appreciate the base of verbal revelation but here’s where modern theology parts company, right at this point. Modern theology says that what you read in the Bible isn’t really the words of God; what you read in the Bible is just a series of experiences with God that men have related down through the centuries. It is as like God came to them, didn’t say anything to them, and they had this great experience so this their analysis of their experience. The Bible is not just men’s analysis of their religious experiences. That’s not orthodox Christianity. The Bible says that it’s more than just man’s analysis of their experiences. It is true, by the way, that men do analyze their experience in Scripture. But the Bible says that this analysis is performed under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit so that their analysis, in the end, is true.

An example, perhaps, that would clarify exactly what I’m talking about, would be Genesis 12:1-3. God speaks to Abraham; now the modern view would be that Abraham had a religious experience, some people would call it a final experience or an ultimate experience in Ur. But Abraham had an experience, modern thinking would say, and he thought God said to him, “Get the out Abraham, from the country.” And so since Abraham thought God said that to him, Abraham wrote that down and it’s been related on down through tradition. You see, in other words, it’s Abraham’s analysis of this great experience that he had, but his analysis, being his own, is fallible and therefore it is not inerrant. Therefore, we really in the end don’t know anything more about God than Abraham thought about God; what we have, therefore, is Abraham’s personal impression, Abraham’s personal reaction, but nothing truly objective about God. This is totally unbiblical and I part company with you at this point. If you think this way, I’m sorry, we part company right here because I think in the orthodox framework; in other words, God literally spoke to Abraham. What Abraham heard was the words of God.

We come down to Exodus 19 and 20 and when God speaks the Ten Commandments so the crowd can hear, I believe that if you were there you could have heard God speaking in Hebrew language. That’s what I mean by verbal revelation, that God literally spoke to the people in the Hebrew language and that if you were there with a tape recorder, unless God intervened, you could have recorded the very words of God as He spoke. This is what I mean by God breaking in with real revelation. So the information we now have about God, although it’s not total, we’re not arguing that we have total knowledge of God. Our knowledge is only partial, that’s carefully explained in Scripture, Deuteronomy 29:29, “the secret things belong unto the LORD, our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children, that we may obey them.”

So this is the issue, we believe that we do not have total knowledge of God; we have partial knowledge, we are limited to what He has told us of Himself, but what He has told us of Himself is absolutely true; this is absolute truth of the infinite God, from the infinite God to finite personality. And it is absolutely true and it can be true because we share personality with God; God is a person and He has made us in His image, we are persons. So we can communicate as people, and therefore communication is true and real. It is not total, but what we have is true.

I want to lay this down because I feel that some of you who many listen to this tape may not understand why we insist on verbal revelation. I think once you see what we’re saying here by verbal revelation the rest of our point will be quite obvious to you; why we are sticklers in this area of evolution, for example, will be obvious to you, because it’s axiomatic that if the Creator really did speak to us then we ought to heed what He says. This sounds trivial but you think about it for a while. If the Creator, God, really spoke to us so we can understand what He is saying, then isn’t it quite obvious that we should listen to what He says, that somehow His words really authoritative, perhaps more so than our own words. See, this really follows very natural and so you want to understand this very carefully before we go further.

So divine viewpoint as we view it at Lubbock Bible Church, we’re discussing the philosophical backgrounds of evolution, and we’re discussing in particular the human viewpoint versus divine viewpoint conflict and we said that divine viewpoint is the way God looks at things, it is a worldview that we can have with God as its center. Think of a wheel with a hub in the middle, divine viewpoint would have God ad the hub; human viewpoint would have us at the hub. This is the essential difference, human viewpoint is man-centered viewpoint; divine viewpoint is God-centered viewpoint. And we pay very serious attention to the admonition of Proverbs 23:7 when it says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” As a man thinks in his heart, so is he!

You see, how you think determines what you are. We often hear it said by Christians, oh, I can’t trust the Lord, or I can’t believe. This is really nonsense; every person can do it. What they’re really saying and they don’t know how to express it so it sort of comes tumbling out in that very confused expression, “I can’t believe.” What they really mean is that inside, in my mind, I don’t have enough divine viewpoint to respond to it. See, “think” is a response and you can’t respond to a vacuum, you’ve got to respond to something and when a person tells you they can’t believe it means simply they haven’t got enough to respond to, there’s not enough inside their brain to respond to spiritual things. And the solution is not to try to go through some system of ecstatics or mysticism; the answer is more objective rational input of information from God’s Word. That’s the solution to faith; faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the Word of God, Paul says.

We must look at human viewpoint and I want to point out a few things about it. In this course I want to point out that although we can say many things about the conflict between human and divine viewpoint we want to simply say that human viewpoint today, the man-centered viewpoint today has certain characteristics, three in particular. The present modern form of human viewpoint that’s all around us in our environment, it’s like a dust storm in west Texas, you can shut the windows and shut the door but the dust still comes in. This human viewpoint atmosphere in which we live seeps in, it seeps into Christians and we get bombed with it all the time, radio, TV, newspaper, conversations, it’s all around us. But I will say that there are three basic assumptions underlying human viewpoint today and I would like to point out these three basic assumptions and I would like to relate them to the philosophical background of the evolution-Bible controversy.

The first great axiom, or first great assumption, or presupposition underlying modern human viewpoint deals with the question, what is the universe? What is the universe! What is the external world around us? Or, what is the world including me? What is the universe? What is it like? What is it made of? What is it? In answer to this question I will say that most modern thinking would answer: the universe is an independent machine, closed to divine manipulation, and is run by law or chance. I’ll repeat that, it’s very important we understand these elements. Let me explain it. I would say that human viewpoint answers the question, what is the universe, by saying this: the universe is an independent machine…it is an independent machine, it’s not dependent upon anything, it’s a self-feeding machine, it just goes on by itself; it is an independent machine.

Furthermore, it is closed to divine manipulation. This machine goes on by itself; God does not interfere with the natural physical processes. It is closed to divine manipulation. Thirdly, it is run by a system of Law, with a capital “L,” or Chance with a capital “C”. We’ll discuss the implications of this later on but at this point let me say that the issue in human viewpoint where you get to the question, “what is the universe,” is that it is an independent machine, closed to divine manipulation, run by Law or Chance, “Law,” capital “L,” Chance” capital “C.” I want to do that capitalization so that you’ll see that they’re imputing sort of an almost godly character to Law or Chance. But anyway, this machine sits here and runs by itself, God doesn’t bother it but nevertheless it’s run by something and this something is either Law or Chance.

Now in contrast to this almost universally accepted assumption, a working assumption, I don’t mean that everybody would admit they believe this, but in practice they do. This is a working assumption of the every day world. In contrast to this we have divine viewpoint; instead of an independent machine closed to divine manipulation run by Law or Chance, divine viewpoint says that the creation of the universe is a creation of God, not an independent machine; it is a creation of God. It is open to His moment by moment manipulation, not closed to His divine manipulation. It is open to His moment by moment manipulation and it is run by His providence, not by Law or Chance, the universe is run by God’s providence. Of course, there are intermediate physical laws and secondary causes, but divine viewpoint would say the universe is a creation of God open to His moment by moment manipulation run by His providence.

Now get these two ideas down; I want you to take these down, I want you to understand them. I have given the teenagers here an exam, I have given them several statements from modern books, Philosophy of Science and a number of others, and I have given them a paragraph out of this book and asked them to spot the human viewpoint idea in this paragraph. I would say in answer to the question, “what is the universe,” the human viewpoint versus divine viewpoint immediately produces a clash…immediately produces a clash!

Something else that I think we should be aware of is that if human viewpoint is followed out with all due honesty to its logical conclusion, we are going to face a pile of rubbish at the end of the line. In other words, what we have to do with human viewpoint is not just consider the idea but consider the implications of the idea and find out where it goes. I think if you think of it for a while and you see the universe as an independent machine, closed to divine manipulation, run by Law or Chance, and you reject the idea that the universe is a creation of God, open to His moment by moment manipulation and run by His providence, if you reject that and prefer the first, human viewpoint, then I think you have some garbage at your back door that’s been dropped there. And I would prefer that you take it away, and I’m not going to take it away. In other words, I want you to recognize that this human viewpoint idea necessarily leads to some things that most people don’t like to accept. They’re willing to accept the idea but not its implications. And I think that we ought to force the unbeliever to reckon and come to terms with the implications of his own system.

It seems to me one of the immediate implications of this belief that the universe is an independent machine is the idea that what is, is right. In other words, there’s no such thing as moral responsibility; there’s no such thing as moral responsibility if it’s a machine. If it’s really a machine then how the machine is right, you can’t blame the machine for being bad or being good because it’s only being a machine. And illustration of this would be Dr. Kinsey’s sex report; a while ago the public was in an uproar about Dr. Kinsey’s surveys that he had done on the sexual behavior of the human female and the sexual behavior of the human male and a great uproar was caused by this. But I think this is a beautiful illustration of taking human viewpoint to its logical conclusion. Basically the reasoning behind Kinsey’s report seems to be that if 50% of the people commit adultery that’s okay. In other words, there aren’t any standards; what is, is right, and if 50% of the people commit adultery, fine, adultery is okay, 50% of the people commit it. If 15% of the people are homosexual, fine, that’s all right, 15% of the people are homosexual. In other words, there’s no personal responsibility, no standards, just what is, is right. And I don’t see how you can defend against this; if you’ve accepted the idea that the universe is an independent machine it seems immediately you have to face the problem, that’s okay, then you have no right to condemn immorality.

Now I’d like to move to the second major axiom of modern human viewpoint. We’ve touched on the first one and that concerns the question, “what is the universe,” and human viewpoint’s answer to that question. Now there’s a second question that everyone asks and I think modern human viewpoint gives an equally specific answer to this question. And that is: how does man know? How do you know something is true? And modern human viewpoint would say that man perceives by the authority of his own mind outward from himself. One thinks immediately of Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes starts with himself and moves out, sort of a circle with an expanding radius, and the circle gradually gets bigger and bigger, and at the center of the circle you stand, you move out and try to synthesize all the environment around you into a system of thinking, and you move out and you’re the one that basically makes the decisions whether something is right or wrong, whether something is true or false. And really you are your own reference point.

Now in contrast to this the divine viewpoint of Scripture says that mans starts within a basic Scriptural framework; in other words, we’re dependent creatures. We’re not autonomous things that just sort of float around the universe and we work up our own system of knowledge, rather, man cannot have himself as a point of reference. He can’t be at the center of the circle, God has to be there. And so therefore when God is at the center of the circle, since we have revelation from Him, we are given free, absolutely free, no strings attached, we’re given from Him a framework within which to work. Man starts within a basic Scriptural framework; the idea of creation, the idea of destiny, the idea of purpose, idea of historical meaning, all of these given inside a Scriptural framework. And then having been given this framework we go outside and pick up all the pieces of data and build our house on this framework. It’s as though someone built the frame of the house and we take the bricks and build around the frame and make the walls. We take all the data of our life and build them and erect them around the framework that we’re given in Scripture.

Human viewpoint rejects this idea; human viewpoint wants to build not only the house walls out of brick but wants to build the wooden framework underneath, and since it doesn’t know how to build the framework, first one man builds the framework then the next man comes and tears it down and nobody is sure of anything until today when we come right down to it we’re very pessimistic. Most of the philosophy today is pessimist, very cynical, very mystical, very irrational simply because over the centuries man has not yet been able to build out from himself. A book I would recommend for those of you who are interested in reading in this area would be Frances Schaeffer’s book, The God Who is There, put out by Intervarsity Press, 1968, a very good work; Schaeffer really goes through this in very good detail.

It seems to me that this human viewpoint on how does man know, the second great idea, leads to pessimism, it leads to discouragement. And more importantly than that, it leads to suspended judgment. Since man really can’t be sure of what he knows, he can’t really be sure that what he knows is true, then he really can’t commit himself to anything. And really, this develops almost into a nihilism. So here we have the second great concept and that is how does man know? Human viewpoint says man perceives by the authority of his own mind, outward from himself. Divine viewpoint says man starts with a basic Scriptural framework and moves outward interpreting all data and experience inside this framework. And the second great human viewpoint idea in answer to the question, “how does man know,” will lead to pessimism, discouragement and suspended judgment. It seems that this is the logical conclusion if you start with human viewpoint.

And finally, the third great modern presupposition or assumption or axiom of unbelief is the answer given to the question what is the nature of suffering? What is the nature of the decay we observe around us, both in man and his environment? What about the death? What about the hunger? What about the starvation? What about the blood-red claw in the animal creation? What about all these things. Human viewpoint would say that the suffering that we observe around us is an inherent part of nature, there’s no escape from it, it’s an inherent part of nature. On the other hand, divine viewpoint would say that no-no, this suffering that we observe around us is not an inherent part of creation, it is an abnormality caused by the fall of man. In other words, the suffering we observe around us is caused by a moral decision on our part, not by a creative act on God’s part. That’s very important to see.

It seems to me that this human viewpoint that suffering and decay around us is an inherent part of creation leads to the following dilemma, expressed very well by Archibald MacLeish his play, J.B. (Quote) “If God is, He can’t be good; if He is good He can’t be God.” I think MacLeish here has summed up the logical extension of the idea that suffering and decay are an inherent part of nature. If you assume this, if you take this to heart, then you have to say that God is not a good God, because if God made the mess like He did, if God really created the world like it is today, we have every right in the world to question His goodness and we really wind up with absolutely no explanation of suffering. We wind up with no explanation for hope; we have no basis of hope, we’re just stuck, God made us, God created us, and here we are in a suffering creation and we are and we have to go on suffering forever. If I really believed this way I would be one of the proponents for absolute nuclear warfare, let’s blow up the whole planet and be done with it. It seems to me this is a logical conclusion.

What I’ve tried to do here in presenting human viewpoint, I’ve tried to show you that as we begin our discussion of evolution and the Bible we have to recognize that we’re engaged in a great philosophical conflict and as Christians we have to say that we’re not the only people that have a defined creed. The world around us has a defined creed. As I tried to show, this creed of belief has three parts. The universe is an independent machine closed to divine manipulation, run by Law and Chance. Man perceives by the authority of his own mind outward from himself. And suffering and decay are an inherent part of nature, there is no escape from it. These are the three working hypothesis, the three working assumptions of all of the unbelieving environment around us. And if you don’t recognize this you’re going to be fighting the battle in the wrong way. You’ve got to fight the battle where the strategic point of conflict is. And the point of conflict is in the very presuppositions of present day unbelief. We attack these; we disagree with all three of them in a fundamental way. And when you discuss with an unbeliever, when you discuss human viewpoint, you cannot grant it its own assumption; you’ve got to hit the assumptions right at the start, otherwise you don’t get to first base and if you do get to first base you get stranded.

So you’ve got to deal with these three presuppositions, you’ve got to see that underlying the great excitement, the great acceptance of evolution today, underlying all of this activity are these three ideas. I’m reminded of a statement that is often attributed to Martin Luther. I think we have to listen to Martin Luther as he says this because it applies to the human viewpoint that I’ve just mentioned. Martin Luther is professed to have said, (quote) “If I profess with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.” And then he adds this sentence, and this sums up very beautifully what I’ve tried to say. “Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady in all the battlefields besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at just that point.” Do you see what Martin Luther said? He said look, if you shout and fight the battle of the unlimited atonement of Christ, the battle of justification by faith and the world is…that doesn’t bother the world because the world is over here in left field some place and you’re over in right field, you just aren’t fighting the battle. You’re not being a good soldier. If the world is fighting over in left field you go over there and fight with them. That’s where you fight. The location has to be kept clearly in mind.

And it seems to me as we start off this series of evolution and the Bible we have to be alert to the fact that we’re not discussing a piece of evidence here and a piece of evidence there, we’re not discussing a set of cavemen’s bones discovered in South Africa some place and just that. No! We are coming into head-on collision with an entire system of thinking, with an entire worldview, built and erected on these three basic ideas and all our picking at details will lost unless we, at the same time as we pick at the details, we also take a sledge hammer and eat away at the foundations of these three assumptions. We have to beat up the cement and crack it with sledge hammer blows along with our picking at the details or we’ve just wasted our time. So as we consider evolution and the philosophical issues involved, let’s be clear in our minds that we’re dealing with a human viewpoint situation, a situation which must be challenged, a situation which must be identified and clarified, and this is why we spend so much time in these three basic ideas.

I want in conclusion to our second block of material in the course, the philosophical background, I want to give you three quotes that to me underscore what I’ve tried to tell you and that is that we’re dealing here with an entire conception, an entire idea that it’s utterly antithetical to the world around us; we’re in total rebellion against the world at this point.

The first statement; and all of these statements concern the issue of creation. The first one I quote from page 15 of Professor Gordon Clark’s book, From Thales to Dewey, “The idea of Almighty God was entirely foreign to the Greeks; all the more so was the concept of creation. That an Almighty God could call the world into being from nothing was not a thesis they rejected, it was something they never thought of. Creation,” and notice this now, listen to this very carefully, “Creation is an idea found only in Hebrew thought.” Professor Clark, a professor of philosophy, is saying that you will not find creation in any other system of thinking in the world in history except in the Bible. Only in the Bible! Isn’t that interesting? The doctrine of creation is found in no other system of thought, no other religion, no other areas except in the Bible.

The second quote, by Professor Fuller, who for many years was a Professor of Philosophy at UCLA, in his book, A History of Philosophy, page 5, “All the pagan creation stories tell of development by four stages out of earlier more chaotic conditions. The Christian notion of a world created by divine fiat never occurred to the Greeks.” Notice again, “The Christian notion of a world created by divine fiat never occurred to the Greeks.” You see, when you deal with the Bible and you deal with the doctrines of the Bible you can’t compare them with the thinking of the world; they’re just utterly different.

And the third quote, by Professor Cornelius VanTil, who is one of the leading fundamentalist apologists in the world, in his book, The Defense of the Faith, page 30, (quote) “Our conception of the nature of reality goes counter to every theory of reality that the history of philosophy affords.” (end quote)

Now do you see the issue? Do you see that we’re engaged in a war? Do you see that as we begin our discussion of evolution, do you see that we’re rebels? We’re rebels on a total front. We are in a head-on collision with every religion and every system of thinking on earth and this is why it is so important, particularly for young people, to be grounded again and again and again in the Word of God. Young people today cannot get enough of the Word of God. They need the Word, the Word, the Word, the Word, over and over and over and over and over again that they may understand their position, they may understand that true rebellion against the world and be intelligent saints of the faith.

As we conclude I want to give some practical application. I want to give some exhortation that you may, as in a laboratory enter into the course, that you may actually partake, actually perform the experiment yourself. I would like all of you who are listening to start a personal campaign, appoint a committee of one, yourself, to do something and I think you’ll have a lot of fun as you do this. Do two things; first, transform certain words in your vocabulary. I know you use the word “nature,” “chance,” and so on, these words. “Nature” and “chance,” just take those two words. If you will covet with yourself never to use those words again, but always to replace them with the words “creation” and “providence,” toss in the word “fall” every once in a while, and these will have seed thoughts in your conversation.

You see, words carry tremendous connotation. Words are weapons and liberalism has used these words and used words to fool fundamentalists, who many times are very easy to fool. Liberalism has used words to attract people to its cause in a very deceiving fashion because of the connotation that words have. People think I believe in Jesus Christ, they may not do so in the sense you do, but nevertheless it sounds good and so people respect them, and they use the word as a weapon. But I want you to use the word as a weapon also, but this time I want you to strike out at the unbelief around you and spice up your conversation with words like creation, providence. If someone says well nature did this, well, that’s nonsense, that’s paganism. It sounds like nature is a person with a capital “N,” Nature did such and such—nonsense! God did such and such. Nature says this; nonsense, God says this. And in your very conversation… and if you will get into the habit of using these words, don’t use Chance, use Providence; don’t use Nature, use Creation.

Every time you’ll do this, if you’re in school and you write essays, use them on your essay. If the teacher challenges you say sorry, this is my vocabulary, this is the way I intend to express myself. You can do this with all due respect, we respect our teachers and you’re out of line with respect to the Word of God if you don’t respect your teachers. We’re to submit to authority but we are also to obey the Word of God. Now you can simply explain to your teacher that you reject the concept of Nature, you reject the concept of Chance, and you accept the concept of Creation and Providence and this is a religious commitment that you have made. I think this will produce some interesting confrontations. I like to do this with people because if you use this often enough in the right company you’re bound to precipitate conversation; you’re bound to precipitate an issue here and there. And frankly I think you may have some opportunities to witness for Christ in so doing. You don’t have to be an ass about this thing and just completely be a fool in how you do this. I don’t mean that. I mean in good-natured fashion, politely, courteously, without being a religious fanatic…you know when to use words when you want to get someone’s attention. You know how to annoy people, to use a word that will annoy them, everybody knows that. So just use these in a reverse sense, when you want to prick unbelief toss these words into your conversation. I leave it to your intuition to use this.

Then the second practical application is that you start mocking the logical implications; force the unbeliever to accept the logical implications of his system. If he believes in evolution, fine, then what right does he have to make moral judgment? Ask him that, put him on the defensive. Ask him how does he justify morality; if he rejects Biblical concepts then let him get stuck with the garbage of his own system. It’s his garbage, not yours; make him take it off your lawn, he dumped it there, you haven’t left it there, he has. So the second thing you can do, besides spicing up your vocabulary and pricking unbelief around you, irritating it a little bit but doing it politely and courteously, in love, the second thing you can do also in love, but in sincerity and in intensity of commitment, and that is to let the unbeliever see just exactly what kind of a monster he believes in. Let him see the logical implications of his faith as we’ve explained them.

Now let me summarize as we conclude this section. We have done two things so far in this tape. We have introduced our course with the three definitions of cosmic, macro and micro evolution. We’ve discussed why we reject cosmic and macro and why we accept micro evolution. Then we have discussed the philosophical background giving you human viewpoint, what it is, and the three basic pillars in modern human viewpoint, and we’ve concluded by two practical applications that you can make and put these things into action in your life.

Our next discussion will be on the text of Scripture, what does the Scripture say and this will involve an extended series of lectures on just what is the Scripture teaching in this area of science and the Bible, and Genesis.