I’m ashamed to say it – but during my high school years at the end of the turbulent 1960s, I professed to be an atheist. I was arrogant, mentally rebellious, and headed in bad directions. In my community, I was the least likely person one would expect to become a committed Christian.
But God used two things to unsettle me, to keep me from becoming as bad as I could have been, and to – if I may put it this way – prepare me for saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
One was a profound (and I mean a PROFOUND) conviction of my own sin. But that’s for another day.
The other was that – even as a professed atheist – I simply could not accept the theory of macro-evolution: The idea (originally put forth in Charles Darwin’s 19th century book The Origin of Species) that all of life has developed over millions of years by way of natural selection – through which simpler life forms progressively became more complex; and all purely by the random forces at work in a merely material world.
In my high school biology classes, I read and heard the assumption of macro-evolution. I studied the artwork that was meant to show the progression from one type of living creature to another. I learned of studies that were said to “prove” macro-evolution. But I just couldn’t buy it. Even as a professed atheist.
Why not?
Well, first, I couldn’t accept the macro-evolutionist theory of how life came from non-life. I couldn’t be persuaded that electrical charges striking pools of primordial soup would have the ability to convert mere chemicals into a living organism. (And how that could account for the vast array of life that would come to fill the earth). I badgered my poor biology teacher by asking how and when and where this had ever been reproduced in a laboratory. (Not realizing at the time that, even if this could be done – and it hasn’t – there would have been the intelligence and planning of a very smart scientist in back of the experiment!)
In the second place, I couldn’t get away from the fact that there was (and still is) an utter lack of transitional species. If things like amphibians and reptiles eventually evolved into birds, where were (and where are) the creatures that are intermediate between the creatures of land and water and those that so marvelously and mysteriously command the skies? On every assumption of macro-evolution, I just couldn’t understand how birds evolved. Birds continue to fascinate me as defying the theory of macro-evolution.
And, in the third place, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that things just evolve – at random – from the simple to the complex. The DNA helix had been discovered in 1953; and as I studied this molecular structure that carries genetic information from one generation to another, even as a high school student it was obvious to me that the more we learned about the most basic elements of life the more we found amazing complexity – not simplicity. Things just don’t naturally go from the simple to the complex.
Macro-evolution didn’t make sense. And the wonder of life, its variety, and its awesome design didn’t square with atheism. I became an agnostic – until I heard teaching on the biblical doctrine of creation, the fall, and the meaning of the person and the work of Jesus Christ. God was at work in me; and – by what was most certainly a display of His sovereign grace – my heart was changed. I surrendered to the God in whom I (and you) live, and breathe, and have our very beings. I received and rested on Jesus Christ alone as He was freely offered to me in the Gospel; and I was converted (interestingly, while I was working in secular radio in 1970.) I’ll never forget the experience of leaving the radio station that afternoon, of seeing a snow-covered tree, and of being able to say – and this was so, so liberating – I can know the God who formed the snow and who made that tree!
Praise the Lord for His grace that frees us to see the world and human history as it truly is.
I later came to realize that macro-evolution was really a religion – a faith-commitment:
- Adherents of macro-evolution didn’t see how the world came into being or how life came from non-life. They have a religious commitment to the way they believe these things happened.
- Adherents of macro-evolution can’t give clear examples of one species evolving into another. They have a religious commitment to the belief that it does happen.
- Adherents of macro-evolution can’t explain how “simple” life is irreducibly complex, but has nevertheless evolved into even more complex life systems. They have a religious commitment that, somehow, this just happens.
A myth has been defined as a man-made story – ostensibly with an historical basis – serving to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man (and other things). Or simply Any fictitious story.
By those definitions, macro-evolution is a myth – a man-made story serving to explain the origin of the world and the beginning and development of life. It’s a counterfeit of the biblical story.
Now, we’re not talking about micro-evolution (although for various reasons some people don’t like that term): Clearly there’s development within species. There are poodles, beagles, basset hounds, greyhounds, and collies. But all are dogs. Macro-evolution means (among other things) that one species can gradually become another. Dogs, theoretically, can become cats That reigning orthodoxy of American science – macro-evolution – is what I’m calling a myth.
But, of course, I’m a pastor and not a trained scientist with a PhD after my name. And all scientists with PhDs believe in macro-evolution, right?
Wrong!
Though questioning the reigning orthodoxy of macro-evolution (otherwise known as the General Theory of Evolution) may very well jeopardize a person’s academic position or status, increasing numbers of scientists in every field are coming forward to say of that religious commitment, “The emperor has no clothes!” The theory of macro-evolution is a myth.
And for today’s Visit to the Pastor’s Study, I have two scientists – PhDs with decades of research and teaching experience between them – who are very eager to expose The Myth of Macro-Evolution.
Dr. Larry McHargue is a graduate of Occidental College. He earned his Master of Science degree in botany, began his PhD work at the University of Saskatchewan, and, in 1973, completed his PhD program (in the field of botany) at the University of California, Irvine.
Dr. Galen Hunsicker received both his undergraduate and Master’s degrees from the University of California, Riverside. He began his PhD program in Zoology at Brigham Young University, and completed it at Loma Linda University in California.
Drs. McHargue and Hunsickcer met and taught for many years at what is now known as Vanguard University. And, while they are both “retired”, they keep up on their respective fields of botany and zoology. And they’re unembarrassed about their commitment to Jesus Christ, the biblical doctrine of creation, and to exposing the myth of macro-evolution. They’ve done a lot of preparation for this Visit to the Pastor’s Study, and I let them loose on this program.
Dr. Larry McHargue, and Dr. Galen Hunsicker, welcome to A Visit to the Pastor’s Study….
Here’s a link to the full program:
Yours in the One by Whom all things were created,
Pastor Bill