Adrian Rogers - Evolution, Fact or Fiction?
Turn to God's Word. And I'd like for you to find First Timothy chapter 6 and verse 20. When you've found it, would you please look up here? First Timothy chapter 6 and verse 20. I want you to listen as we talk about this subject; Evolution: Fact or Fiction. You see, really, if you were to reduce all of the questions in the world down to one question, it would simply be this: did God make man, or did man make God? Is man the special creation of Almighty God, or is God in the figment and the imagination of man?
Now look at our verse. First Timothy chapter 6 verse 20, "O Timothy, keep that which is committed unto thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen". Now, what are we talking about when we talk about Darwinian evolution? Oh, what is this? Well, let me tell you what is out there in the air today, what our students are subjected to day by day, and what is found in almost all of our libraries. Time magazine has this advertisement. Actually, the series is called, The Emergence of Man, and this series is found in almost all public libraries, in almost all high school and junior high school and elementary schools across America.
Let me read from that ad. Let me just show you what children are being taught and what this is only typical. This is not universal, but I would say it is very typical. I'm reading now from the Time-Life book series, The Emergence of Man. Quote; "Today that creature who first began to raise himself above other animals no longer exists. He is become you. Unique, set apart from the 2 million other species living on the planet by a thumb that makes your hand the precision tool, by a knee that locks you into a comfortable upright position, and by your capacity for abstract thought and speech". Now that's what makes you different, boys and girls: your thumb, your knee, and the ability to think abstractly. That's what makes you a significant other from an animal. "All this and more has enabled your species to dominate the Earth, and yet you share with every other creature that ever lived the same origin, the same accident, that led to the spontaneous generation of the first-celled slimy algae three and one-half billion years ago".
Now notice; no stutter, no stammer, no equivocation. "This is it, kids. Thank God for your thumb. Thank God for your knee. Thank God that you can think abstractly, because that's all that separates you from everything else that came from slime," and they know exactly when it happened. They can give you the date. "It happened three and a half billion years ago". Now if that is true, just right away, if that is true, think what that says, number one, about the value of human life. You're not made in the image of God. You are simply a creature of accident. What does that have to say about morality? If there is no Creator, there's no fixed standard of right or wrong. And, therefore, if you are an accident, simply akin to other living creatures, and if there's no fixed standard of right or wrong, what does that say about the meaning of life and the purpose of life? Well, let's go back to this article again.
They ask, "How did it all happen? What was the evolutionary process that led man to his conquest of a harsh and hostile environment"? They didn't say, "Could it have been by evolution"? They say, "What was the evolutionary process"? And then they go on to say, "You find the amazing story in Time-Life's Books new series, The Emergence of Man. Your introductory volume, The Missing Link, shows stranger-than-science fiction, the stranger than science fiction world of Australopithecus, the ape man. You will feel a sense of immediacy in visual adventure, in incredible, lifelike, pictorial, technical photo painting". And then they have all these pictures. This lifelike pictorial, technical photo painting. I want you to understand that's just another way of saying, "The figment of someone's imagination". And there are the pictures. And the kids look, "Wow! It must be real! They've even got pictures"!
Well, what is evolution anyway? It's a theory made popular by Darwin and espoused there in his famous volume, The Origin of the Species. Now let me tell you what Darwin himself said, and I'm quoting on page 23, "Analogy would lead me to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. All animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. All organisms start from a common origin, and from some low and intermediate forms, both animals and plants may have been developed. All organic things which have ever lived on the earth may be descended by some one primordial form". So what does that mean? Well, we all started out somehow as a speck of protoplasm and green algae, and, ipso facto, everything developed out of that.
Now the prime tool is mutation plus natural selection. Mutation means that things just change as they adapt and naturally select themselves out of their environment. So they believe that, first of all, there was primitive protozoa. That just simply means original life. And somehow that primitive protozoa became an unsegmented worm. And then that unsegmented worm evolved into a fish. And then that fish turned into an amphibian. And that amphibian turned into a reptile. And then the reptiles became birds. And then the birds became mammals. And then finally the mammals became men. Now that's what you're supposed to believe; that nothing plus time plus chance equals everything. That time plus chance turns amoebas into astronauts and molecules into monkeys and men.
Now what it is, folks, it's a fairy tale for adults. I mean, in the nursery school, we talk about fairy tales where frogs turn into princes, but we call that a fairy tale. But when we carry it into the classroom, it's the same fairy tale, only now it is for adults. I like Dr. Criswell's little saying that he uses sometimes, "Once I was a tadpole beginning to begin. And then I was a frog with my tail tucked in. Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree. And now I am a professor with a Ph.D". And you just simply go from step to step. I want to tell you why I reject evolution. I want to give you three reasons why I reject evolution, and I want you to think about these reasons. I don't want to argue with you, but I do want to state them clearly, hopefully that you can understand why many intelligent and well-trained people reject evolution.
Now I do reject evolution, first of all, for logical reasons. It is not logical, and many intelligent and well-trained scientists, now listen, I'm not talking about Baptist preachers now, I'm talking about intelligent and well-trained scientists, are moving away from evolution because it does not answer the questions. Dr. Newton Tahmisian, a physiologist for the Atomic Energy Commission, has stated this, and I quote, "Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact".
Now that's an Atomic Energy Commission scientist. That's not Adrian there. And then, Dr. Etheridge of the British Museum of Science said this, listen to it, "Nine-tenths of the talk of evolution is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by fact. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their view". Again that's not some raving religious lunatic who said that. Listen to Dr. Ambrose Fleming. He was president of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain. Here's what he said, "The evolution theory is purely the product of the imagination". Again, who is this saying this? These are brilliant men, learned men, men who have been honored. Dr. Cecil Wakeley, leading British surgeon and the late president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said this, "When I was a medical student, I was taught the theory of evolution, but I never believed it".
Now this is not a 6 or 7 doctor; this is a number 10 doctor! Swedish embryologist Søren Løvtrup, wrote this, "I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science. When this happens, many people will pose the question, 'How did this ever happen?'" Again we're not talking now about a Bible-thumper. We're just talking about a scientist who says, "This doesn't make sense". The great scientists have not all been evolutionists. Michael Faraday, which many acclaim as one of the greatest scientists to ever live, was a Bible-believing Christian. Lord Kelvin, Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton, Kepler, Sir William Ramsey, Lord Frances Bacon, Samuel Morse, these were all creationists. Were they fools?
Now when a scientist says he believes the Bible, it doesn't give me any more faith in the Bible; it just gives me more faith in the scientist. I mean, we don't need science to prop up the Word of God. But what I am saying to you is that logically you don't have to put your brains behind the door to believe in creation, or at least to repudiate evolution. Some have said that Sir Isaac Newton was the greatest scientist of all time. He wrote this, "This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being". Now I said I reject it for logical reasons.
Let me give you four bridges that no evolutionist can cross. Four things that the evolutionist has no answer to, and therefore he should not stand in the school and say, "This is fact". The first question the evolutionist has no answer to is simply, folks, the origin of life, the origin of life! From whence is life? Now they've tried to wrestle with this, and one person said, "Well, perhaps the origin of life is, some germ came and hit the Earth. It was riding a meteor from outer space". Well, that just moves the question back to where did it begin, how did it begin in outer space before it came to this Earth? But, most push that aside as only pushing the question back. And so what the evolutionist has to believe is that life arose by spontaneous generation. That is, that inorganic matter, prebiotic soup, green gum, slime, something, turned into life. It's what they call, "a fortuitous concourse of atoms".
Now doesn't that bless you? "A, a fortuitous concourse of atoms," a flash of lightning through some kind of green scum. Now let me tell you something, folks. Evolution is a philosophy. It is a bias. It is the next best guess of the mind that cannot accept God. D.N.S. Watson, a scientist, displayed his prejudice when he wrote, "Evolution is a theory, universally accepted not because it can be proved by logical, coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible". He said, "I believe in evolution not because I can prove it, no. I just cannot believe there's a God who did it all".
Folks, you see, it's a philosophy. It's a philosophy. Spontaneous generation; that was believed by ignorant people two thousand years ago. They would see some refuse, some dung, some carrion, and after a while they would see maggots come out, and they would say, "Would you see that? Life has arisen spontaneously". They would see some rags that had been wrapping cheese, and after a while, there would be mice there, and they would say, "You see that? That's where life comes from". But then Pasteur and others said, "No, that's impossible". And every scientist knows that spontaneous generation is impossible. And there's no answer, there is no answer as for the creation of life apart from the act of God.
Now here's another problem, a logical problem every evolutionist has, and that is the fixity of the species, the fixity of the species; the idea that one species can become another. Now what does the Bible have to say? Genesis chapter 1 verses 11 and 12, God says this, "And God said, 'Let the earth bring forth grass, and the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit,'" now listen to this phrase, "after his kind whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind.' And God saw that it was good". What is the key word there? "After its kind, after its kind, after its kind". And as you read Genesis, this little phrase occurs ten times.
Now, be very careful here. We certainly believe that there can be varieties within species. You can have all kinds of roses. You can have all kinds of felines. You can have all kinds of canines. You can breed and cross-breed, but you cannot turn a cantaloupe into a kitten. You just can't do that. You cannot go from one specie to another. I heard about a Marine biologist who thought he would take that beautiful shell animal there on the West Coast, an abalone, and somehow mix that with a crocodile. He even had a name for it. It was going to be an abodile. But he turned up with a crockabalone. You cannot mix these species. Now, if these transitional forms, these primitive protozoa became unsegmented worms, and these unsegmented worms became fish, and reptiles, and on and on and on, you would expect to find the fossil remains.
Now, folks, it's not that we don't have fossils. We've got billions of fossils! Billions of fossils. In not one will you find a legitimate transitional form. Not one. Folks, they are telling you that we're looking for the missing link. I am telling you the chain is missing. The entire chain! When life first appears, it appears. Well, then, what was beneath that? What you have is a tree without a trunk and no limbs! The evolutionist cannot cross this. He's coming up now with weird theories, because he had some idea that somehow he would be able to find these transitional forms.
But you say, "Pastor, don't we see these in Time-Life magazine? I mean, don't we see these half-men, half-apes? I mean, haven't we seen the pictures? Haven't we gone to the museums? Haven't we seen the plaster of Paris molds"? Yes, you have seen them. But you haven't seen reality. You've seen imagination. The first Scopes trial that took place here in Tennessee, was called the Monkey Trial, in Dayton, Tennessee, William Jennings Bryan versus Clarence Darrow. Clarence Darrow was a brilliant man, sort of a, I guess, a skeptical lawyer. William Jennings Bryan was a golden-tongued orator and a Bible believer. And Darrow, trying to prove evolution as a fact, brought up in that court trial the, "Nebraska Man". And he asked William Jennings Bryan, "How do you explain Nebraska Man"?
Nebraska Man was discovered by a man named Harold Cook. Nebraska Man was said to be one million years old. And there was Clarence Darrow saying to William Jennings Bryan, "There is Nebraska Man. There is your ape man". Well, what had Mr. Cook discovered? Are you ready for this? A tooth. I said a tooth! And out of a tooth an artist devised a race, both male and female. As a matter of fact, a creationist visited the University of Nebraska where they have Nebraska Man on display. He went into their museum, and he said, "Oh"! He said, "This is wonderful". Of course, it was tongue-in-cheek. There they had the skull and the skeleton of Nebraska Man.
And this man mischievously asked, "Is this the real Nebraska Man or only a replica"? "Oh," he said, "this is only a replica". He said, "Well, would you tell me, where are the actual bones of Nebraska Man, so I may go see the actual bones of Nebraska Man"? He says, "Well, we don't have the bones. These are plaster of Paris replicas". He said, "Yes, I understand that. But what are they replicas of? Where can I go? You must have had the bones in order to make this replica, to make this cast". And the curator had to drop his head and say, "Well, all we had was a tooth". One tooth! And with a tooth, they made the head, the body, they glued on some hair, and then they made a whole civilization out of one tooth!
What about the Java ape man? Dr. Eugene Dubois found in Java the top of a skull, the fragment of a left thigh bone, and three teeth. He announced he had found the missing link seven hundred fifty thousand years old. These bones weren't even found together. They were found over a space of a year, and eminent scientists, twenty-four of them, were brought together to look. Ten said that they were the bones of an ape. Seven said they were the bones of a man, and seven said they were a missing link; that is, half man and half ape. But you go to the museum, he's Pithecanthropus Erectus, the ape man who stands up. He's just an ape. You know it's amazing how man wants to make a monkey of himself, isn't it? Amazing. And the Piltdown Man.
When I was in college, we studied the Piltdown Man as a fact, because Charles Dawson in Piltdown, England, found in a gravel pit a piece of a jaw, two molar teeth, and a piece of a skull. For fifty years he was known as the Piltdown Man, but later on it was shown to be a hoax, and even the Reader's Digest said in 1956, "The great Piltdown hoax was an ape only fifty years old. Its teeth had been filed down and artificially colored". Now I'm telling you, this is what the scientists looked at. This is what they studied! It was a hoax played by a student on his professor! A hoax! Well, you say, "Anybody can be misled". Yes, but what I'm trying to show you is how easily these great scientists can be misled. What I'm trying to show you is how willingly they are misled.
A leading well-known biologist of the Smithsonian Institute said this, "There is no evidence which would show man developing step-by-step from lower forms of life. There is nothing to show that man was in any way connected with monkeys. He appeared suddenly and substantially in the same form as he is today. There are no such things as missing links. So far as concern the major groups of animals, the creationists appear to have the best argument. There is not the slightest evidence that any one of the major groups arose from any other".
Hey, folks, it's an argument without evidence. There's the fixity of the species. Now here's a third bridge in which they can't cross! The first one is the beginning of life. The second is the fixity of the species. The third one is the second law of thermodynamics. Now what is the second law of thermodynamics? The second law of thermodynamics is this; that energy can never be destroyed, but it continually becomes less available for further work as it unravels. In plain English, everything tends to wear out and to run down. Have you found that out? Sure.
I mean, everything tends to wear out and run down. A garden? Leave a garden by itself. Is it going to get to be a better garden? Of course not. Your car; you drive your car out into the woods and leave it out there and just park it. And I'll tell you what'll happen. The second law of thermodynamics will begin to work on that car, and the mossy fingers of time and rust will begin to work on that thing, and it will disintegrate. Or just go take a look in your boy's bedroom, if you don't believe this. What I'm telling you is that everything is marked by death and decay and disintegration. Why would a God who created everything make it that way? Because of sin.
The Bible says in Romans 8 verse 22, "We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now". There's a curse upon creation, and it tends to wind down. The evolutionist, however, has to say that things get more complex. Things move toward precision. Given enough time, disorganized things become organized. Frankly, that doesn't make sense. If you were to take a 747, and load in the cargo bay the parts of a Cadillac automobile and climb to 5,000 feet and shove them out, would you think that they would assemble themselves into a car by the time they hit the ground? Well, the evolutionist says, "Of course not. You need more time. You need more time! You need more time"!
Okay, let's take the airplane up to 20,000 feet and then shove them out. Then are they going to be more assembled? They're going to be less assembled than ever. You see, the longer it goes, the more disintegration you have. I wish I had more time to talk about that, but let me tell you the fourth bridge that they cannot cross. They cannot explain how certain properties exist that have nothing to do with the survival of the fittest. Where did music come from? What does that have to do with survival of the fittest? Where did love come from? Where did honor and dignity come from? Where, my dear friend, did we get the concept of Almighty God? Where did these things come from? You can't explain those by the survival of the fittest.
Now I want to say I reject it for logical reasons. Let me tell you another reason I reject it. I reject it not only for logical reasons, but I reject it for moral reasons. It's immoral. Folks, let me tell you something. When you tell young people that they are an accident, that they simply happen, what does that do? It takes away dignity, it takes away purpose, it takes away morality. Nietzsche and Darwin both hated their fathers. Nietzsche was a sexual pervert. He died of syphilis. He was the one who wrote Man and Superman. Hitler read Darwin. Hitler read Nietzsche. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Hitler was the one who fired up the gas ovens. Together Hitler and Stalin, who believed that man is merely an animal, put to death 57 million people. Why? He's an animal! He's disposable!
Here's a quote by Darwin that you'll very seldom hear; "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes will no doubt be exterminated". When he says, "Anthropomorphous apes," he means those people that you meet on the streets. He's talking about what he considers to be inferior races. What he considers to be, not what I consider to be. He says, "The anthropomorphous apes will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state as we may hope. Even the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla".
Now I wonder what our precious black friends would say about Mr. Darwin now. Why, he was the original racist! He is saying that there is a superior race of men, and some others are on their way up, but they haven't arrived where we are today. You can understand why Hitler said, "I have the right to exterminate an inferior race that breeds like vermin". He was talking about the Jews. You see, if there is no God, if man is an accident, there can be no Ten Commandments, there is no fixed standard of right and wrong. Therefore, children are sent to school to study values clarification, to make up their own minds what kind of values they, the little animals, have. No wonder we have euthanasia today. No wonder we're killing little babies in the womb and even partially born today. No wonder sexual perversion is accepted as an alternate lifestyle. Why? Because we've taught our children that they've come from animals, and now they've finally begun to live like and act like animals. I reject it for moral reasons.
Folks, I want to tell you, I reject it for theological reasons. H.G. Wells, who wrote The Outlines of History, said this, and he was an evolutionist, I believe. He said, "If all animals and man evolved, then there were no first parents, no paradise, no fall, and if there had been no fall, then the entire historic fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for the atonement, collapses like a house of cards". You see, listen, if evolution is true, there was no Garden of Eden, there was no original sin, there is no depravity, man is always onward, upward, going up, then he doesn't need to be born again. He doesn't need a birth from above; he just needs a boost from below. He just needs to get better and better and better, and if Genesis 3 is a myth, John 3 verse 3 is a farce that says, "You must be born again".
I reject it for theological reasons. I wish I had more time to talk about this, but may I tell you that there's something behind this whole idea of evolution. Why is it such an emotional issue? Why can we not just simply say, "Yes, you cannot have creation without a Creator. Out of nothing, nothing comes"? Why can we not say that? Listen to Aldous Huxley, leading humanist. Listen to what he said in his book, Ends and Means, and this'll clear it up, "I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning. For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality, because it interfered with our sexual freedom. We objected to the political and economic system, because it was unjust.
The supporters of these systems claim that in some way they embodied the meaning, a Christian meaning, they insisted, of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and the same time justify ourselves in our political and erotic revolt. We could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever". That's what he said. He said, "We didn't want government, and we did not want morality, so we chose evolution to shut the mouths of those who believe in special creation".
Listen to me. Young people, you listen to your Pastor today. I'm going to tell you, you are not an accident. You're made in the image of God. And I'm going to tell you that you are precious to Him. So precious to Him that He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, to suffer, bleed, and die for you. He was buried, He rose again the third day, and He invites you to come to Him. And the Bible says in Second Corinthians 5 verse 17, "If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation".
Oh, He made the first world. He made it all, but when you're saved, how wonderful. He made the first world with a Word, but when He saves you, He does it with His precious blood. You're precious to Him. You have dignity. You have a Heavenly Father who loves you and cares for you. And I stand here to tell you right now that if you do not trust Him as your Lord and Savior, He is still your Creator, and you'll rise in the judgment to meet Him and to answer. And Sir Huxley and others cannot dodge the fact that there is a God that made us. We'll either be redeemed by Him or we'll face Him in judgment. But we'll meet our Creator someday.
Let's bow in prayer. Heads are bowed, eyes are closed. Now today, if you've not received Christ as your personal Savior and Lord, I want you to do so right now. And I want to tell you some wonderful news, that where you are this moment, you can be saved. I mean, right now you can be saved if you'll ask Christ to come into your heart. Would you pray like this?
Thank You, Lord, that I am special. Thank You that You made me. And thank You, Lord, that You died for me. Lord, I'm a sinner. I need to be saved. My sins deserve judgment, but Jesus, You died to save me. You paid my sin debt with Your blood on the cross. Thank You for taking my place. Thank You for being my substitute. I now receive You as my Lord and Savior. Come into my heart. Forgive my sin. Save me, Lord Jesus. Come into my heart. Forgive my sin. Save me, Lord Jesus.
Did you ask Him? Then I want you to pray this prayer:
Lord Jesus, I thank You for saving me. Begin now to make me the person You want me to be. And Lord, give me the courage to make this public and not to be ashamed of You. Lord, give me the courage to make it public. Not to be ashamed of You. In You name I pray, Amen.