10 Scriptural problems with theistic evolution

I believe the Bible so obviously tells us that Genesis is intended to be literal history that evolution believing Christians have to ignore or reinterpret whole passages of Scripture in order to make it fit with their secular understanding of our origins. A while back, I wrote a series rebutting a video titled, “10 Biblical Problems for Young Earth Creationism,” by a group called Inspiring Philosophy.  It was actually one of many examples of similar claims, where old-earth, theistic evolutionists try to convince us that the Bible really doesn’t endorse a recent, miraculous, sudden creation. 

To me, the fact that so many such claims exist are evidence that the Bible seems to plainly confirm a six day creation.  It is only for that reason that evolutionists have to go to great lengths to explain why the Bible doesn’t really mean what it so clearly seems to say.  Rather than waste my time rebutting any more of their questionable hermeneutics, I thought it would be fun to point out ten passages from the Bible that are extremely problematic to compromising Christians.

Let’s get to it.  Here they are in no particular order:

#1: 2 Peter 1:20, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”

We see here, immediately, that the Bible was written to mean what it says.  There’s no hidden meaning.  There’s no secret code that can only be uncovered with scientific inquiry.  The most obvious meaning of any passage is likely the intended meaning and there’s no need to look for a deeper meaning - especially a completely contrary meaning - every time a passage doesn’t comport with our personal beliefs.  

When Jesus was criticized by the Pharisees, who would accuse Him with some minute point of the Law, Jesus often responded by saying, “Haven’t you read….” followed by a passage relevant to the subject at hand.  In every instance, He relied on an ordinary understanding of the passage to prove His point.  He never had to say, “What that really means is….”  

Keep this first point in mind as you read through the rest of the verses on this list.  You may have heard responses to some of these points before but maybe you will see how many sound like “private interpretations” of Scripture.

#2: Exodus 20:9-11, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” 

In the midst of the Ten Commandments, when the LORD gave the Law to Moses, He commanded that His people should observe the Sabbath.  They should work for six days and rest on the seventh in the same way He worked for six days and rested on the seventh when He created the universe.  Do you think the Jews had to stop and ask themselves, “How long does God mean by a ‘day’?”  

To say this passage somehow means billions of years is the epitome of a private interpretation.  A billions of years old universe is a relatively new idea, one that has only existed a couple of centuries.  The modern methods evolutionists have used to guess at the age of the earth are methods that weren’t available to the ancients.  Theistic evolutionists must believe in an interpretation of this passage that the first readers could not possibly have known.  

#3: Genesis 1:29-30, “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.  And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.”

To believe in evolution, a Christian must believe that death, disease, and suffering existed millions of years before Adam appeared.  They mock creationists for believing the sharp teeth of T-rex would have originally been used to eat plants and not other animals.  Of course, creationists believe this because that’s exactly what this passage says.  God gave every single beast of the earth plants to be its food “and it was so!”  It is not creationists who should be embarrassed for believing this; it is the compromising Christians who should be ashamed for denying the clear words of the text!

#4: Genesis 7:21-23, “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”

Some evolutionists claim the Flood is a completely fictitious event.  Theistic evolutionists, on the other hand, aren’t so quick to completely accept that such a vividly described account is mere storytelling.  Instead, they assert that the Flood was a local phenomenon, limited to the Mesopotamian Valley.  It was only “universal” in the sense that it killed all humans - because all humans lived in just that area.  

I agree that if there were 1,000,000 people in the world, and they all died in a single catastrophe, you could say that event killed all the people in the world - regardless of how widespread it was.  However, this same passage says every animal outside of the Ark also died.  Did every beast and bird in the world also live in the Middle East?  You can see how this seems to confirm that it was the entire world that was flooded.

#5: Genesis 47:7-9, “And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”

When Pharaoh met Jacob for the first time, he apparently took note of Jacob’s great age.  At 130 years old, Jacob may have been one of the oldest people Pharaoh had ever met.  However Jacob claimed his days were “few” compared to the long lives of his forefathers.  

The Bible attests to extremely long-lived people from before the Flood.  Genesis 5:27 tells us of Methuselah, for example, who lived to be 969 years old.  Theistic evolutionists claim these seemingly long lives are actually symbolic numbers that convey some deeper meaning (i.e. some private interpretation).  In this passage, Jacob seems to confirm they’re meant to be literal.  He is saying his actual age of 130 was small compared to the antediluvian saints who lived for several centuries.

#6: Luke 3:23-38, The genealogy of Jesus

There are two genealogies of Jesus given in the Bible.  Most scholars agree one is maternal and the other paternal (by Joseph, the husband of Mary).  The genealogy in Luke traces all the generations of Jesus back to Adam, “the son of God.”  If the generations are meant to be consecutive (which I believe they are), it would be difficult to stretch them out a couple hundred thousands of years to when evolutionists claim the first modern human appeared.  Besides that, though, Luke is confirming that Adam was a literal person, created by God.  He had no ancestors before him.

Here’s the real problem that Luke’s genealogy brings to old earth interpretations of the Bible.  Most critics claim many figures of the Old Testament were fables or symbols.  My question, then, is when did these generations stop being myths and start becoming real?  Was it Adam, Noah, Abraham, or David?  Were they all myths all the way down to Jesus?  If that were the actual way to understand the Bible, how could I be sure Jesus was a real Person?  He could have been a “mythical character used to convey some deeper meaning!”  I have to shake my head.

#7: Mark 10:6-8, “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.”

When asked about divorce, Jesus answered the Pharisees by quoting from Genesis.  Not only does He talk about Adam and Eve as though they were real people, Jesus also asserts they were made at the beginning of the creation.  Adam and Eve were made during the creation week and marriage has continued since then for all of history.

According to theistic evolution, the universe has existed for billions of years and the first humans appeared only 100,000-200,000 years ago.  In other words, the “creation” happened a long time ago and humans only arrived at the tail end of history.  This secular idea is in direct contradiction to the plain words of Jesus.

#8: Romans 5:12,17, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned... For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)”

The Bible is clear that death is the consequence of sin (Romans 6:23) and that sin entered the world by one man, namely Adam.  Death has reigned since Adam but Christ has conquered death and we shall reign with Him in life in the New Jerusalem.  Amen!!

According to theistic evolution, death was in the world long before Adam.  It was not the product of sin but the deliberate method that God used to create everything.  Death reigned long before Adam because that was how God wanted it!

These two views are diametrically opposed and we must decide which is correct.  I will side with the clear words of the Bible.

#9: Acts 17:24-26, “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;”

According to the evolutionary idea of human origins, there was no literal Adam.  Homo sapiens are an evolved group that descended from a “not quite human” species of Homo and no single being could be identified as the ancestor of all modern people.  

When Paul was speaking to the Greeks on Mars Hill, he was preaching to them about the one, true God.  In this passage, he seems to confirm the creation account - that God made the world and everything in it and that all people of the world have descended from a single man.  

#10: Genesis 1:5b, “... And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

In the entire first chapter of Genesis, the Bible punctuates each day with a similar phrase - it was evening and it was morning, the first day and et cetera.  Some critics will claim the word day can mean something other than an ordinary, 24-hour day.  That’s true, but when it’s modified by the words, “evening and morning,” as well as with ordinal numbers, “first day, second day,” it becomes extremely difficult for day to mean something other than an ordinary day.  

Consider 1 Samuel 17:16 which says, “And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.”  What can this mean except that Goliath came out every morning and evening for forty days?  Consider, too, the reverse; what would the terms “evening and morning” mean if the days are meant to represent long periods of time?  

To suggest the days of Genesis are meant to be anything other than ordinary days is a textbook example of assigning a “private interpretation” to the passage.

CONCLUSION

Just as Jesus said to the Pharisees, I say to you now.  Read these passages for yourself and ask yourself what they mean.  I’m not claiming there is a secret meaning.  I’m not telling you there’s a different way to understand the plain words of the Bible.  I’m telling you the Bible speaks for itself.

There is no “real theory” of abiogenesis!

I've talked about abiogenesis many times in the past. Abiogenesis is a term used to describe the necessary beginning of life from non-living matter that would have had to have happened sometime in the earth's past. It's an idea that is virtual indistinguishable from “spontaneous generation” and was discarded by science about the same time as blood letting.

The origin of life is a conversation evolutionists probably wish they could avoid having. But if they're going to assert that all life on earth is descended from a single common ancestor, then to ask where the supposed first ancestor came from seems a rather obvious question. As much as they may want to avoid the subject, they're dragged kicking and screaming to the debate to defend their theory.

The simple fact of the matter is that secular scientists really have no evidence showing how the supposed first life form began. All they have is conjecture. Actually, even conjecture is too generous a word – it's more like story telling. They're making up possible scenarios about how life could come from non-life but, thus far, they haven't thought of any that could actually work. In light of their long history of failed guesses about abiogenesis, evolutionists are left with no other alternative than to criticize creationists for bringing it up. The usual claim is that abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution. Another tactic they sometimes take is to make a straw man out of the creationists views of abiogenesis.

I found this cartoon (I'm not going to dignify it by saying it's a chart) on TalkOrigins.org some time back. It compares the “Creationist idea of abiogenesis” to the “Real theory of abiogenesis.” Now, I always try my best to keep up with evolution in the news but I must have missed something. Since when is there a “real theory” about abiogenesis? Did they take a vote on this or something? It sounds more than a little presumptuous to say this is somehow the "real" theory when there are some many competing theories being tossed about by scientists. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that we haven't yet discovered a successful pathway from non-living chemicals to life. How can they even claim this is the path the first cells must have taken?

According to the article [bold added]:

Note that the real theory has a number of small steps, and in fact I've [author, Ian Musgrave] left out some steps (especially between the hypercycle-protobiont stage) for simplicity. Each step is associated with a small increase in organisation and complexity, and the chemicals slowly climb towards organism-hood, rather than making one big leap.

Excuse me while I have a chortle.

From Scientific American we read this: “According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” In the case of this cartoon, they're obviously being a little loose with the word “theory” (something they usually complain about creationists doing). There is no well-substantiated explanation or tested hypotheses that demonstrates how life could arise from non-living chemicals. Therefore, there can be no “real theory” of abiogenesis. What they mean to say is that it's just a “guess,” right? Ah, but this is the “real” guess. It even says so in the title! And even though there is not one shred of evidence for their guess of abiogenesis, it's still the “scientific” model because... well, because it's not the view held by creationists!

Sometimes it's difficult to take evolutionists seriously. Just where do they get off saying this is the "real" theory of abiogenesis? They usually make bad arguments but I can see they're at least sincere most of the time. When they make illustrations like this, though, I'm not sure they're even sincere. Oh, let's face it – they're not being sincere. When they invent things like this, they're just plain lying.

The Jewish New Year and a young earth

At sundown today, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins. Shalom!

Many liberal theists have made the claim that the ancient readers of the Bible never believed Genesis was meant to be literal. When I hear people make this claim, I've often asked them what literary clues are present that identify Genesis (or other relevant passages) as figurative and how can we distinguish them from simple narrative. The usual responses I get are a swift change of the subject (red herring), links to liberal scholars who have made the same claim (appeal to authority), or an avalanche of literary terms that have absolutely no substance (argument by verbosity). I intend to write a more detailed discussion of this criticism in the future but on this occasion of Rosh Hashanah, I wanted to point out a simple fact that might shine some light on the matter.

Our Gregorian calendar was intended to count the years since the birth of Christ. The AD in 2022 AD is an abbreviation of the Latin term, Anno Domini, which literally means, “year of our Lord.” There was a little goof in our math but, for the most part, it's been approximately 2,022 years since the birth of Christ (give or take a few years).

Now the Jews, of course, do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah of Scripture and so their calendar doesn't count the years since His birth. Instead, they have counted the years since creation. So, what year is it on the Jewish calendar? It's 5783.

Hmmm. Is it just a coincidence or is that not too far off from the typical creationist's understanding of the age of the earth? The claim has been made that creationists like myself are simply fanatical fundamentalists who take a hyper-literal view of Genesis that is not intended by the text. It seems to me that the Jewish calendar agrees with me. If they are counting the years since the creation, they are far closer to my estimate of the earth's age than any evolutionist's estimate. I guess that means the ancient Hebrews were also young earth creationists!

Exotic cosmology

Once upon a time, people believed the sun, planets, and stars orbited a stationary earth – an idea called, “geocentricism.” I'm sure it seemed intuitive to everyone then because we certainly can't feel the earth moving and the sun seems to move across the sky. In a real sense, geocentricism seemed to explain the “evidence” well. Some things, however, like the retrograde motion of planets, seemed to not fit the theory well.

In the second century, a Greek philosopher/astronomer named Ptolemy, tried to smooth out the difficulties with geocentricism. He believed the planets moved around the earth in an orbit called a deferent. As the heavenly bodies moved in this large circle, they also moved in a smaller circle called an epicycle around an imaginary point called an equant. These ideas seemed to address the observed problems with geocentricism well and Ptolemy's theories endured until the time of Galileo.

Today, we understand that the Sun is the center of our solar system and the earth, as well as the other planets, orbit it. The apparent retrograde motion of other planets is caused by a difference in the relative speed of planets as they are observed from the earth. Deferents, epicycles, and equants never existed at all! These things were the symptoms of a flawed theory. They seemed to answer some questions about the theory but the real problems laid in the theory itself. So as long as the underlying theory persisted, more and more fanciful sub-theories had to be invented to keep the failed theory afloat. You might call it them “fudge factors.”

So where am I going with all this? Well, when it comes to secular theories of cosmology, I've seen a lot of same behavior among scientists. There are several crazy, er... I mean, “exotic”... explanations that have been invoked in order to hammer down stubborn difficulties with their theories. Actually, I'm only using the term “exotic” to be nice. These theories are so insanely ridiculous that I suspect that deep down even their most staunch proponents don't sincerely believe them. They merely cling to them because without them their entire worldview completely fails.

A UNIVERSE WITHOUT EDGES

Imagine for a moment a very large, flat meadow of grass with a crowd of people standing in it. You are somewhere in the crowd. Through just simple observation, it would not be hard to guess where you are in the crowd. If all the people are on one side of you and no one on the other, you would be on the very edge of the crowd. If there were more people on one side than the other, you would be toward the edge. If there were about the same number of people everywhere you looked, you would be closer to the center. It's not hard, right?

As we look around in the universe, we observe about the same number of stars no matter which direction we look. Just as in my crowd analogy, it would be very reasonable to conclude from this observation that we are somewhere near the center of the universe. Of course, the universe is very, very large and since we cannot see the edge of it in any direction, it makes it hard to be sure that we're in the center. It would be like being in the ocean with no land in sight; you would really have no idea if you're in the middle of the ocean or just outside sight of the shore. To really know we're in the center, we'd have to have more information.

In the mid-19^th century, Dutch physicist, Christian Doppler noticed that sound waves changed frequency relative to the observer when the source was in motion. He dubbed this phenomenon, “the Doppler Effect” and believed it would apply to all waves including light and radiometric waves. In the beginning of the 20^th century, we were able to observe this phenomenon in the light from distant stars. The light from the stars was “redshifted” indicating that the light wave was being stretched and that the star was moving away from us. As we began to survey more and more stars, we realized that the stars uniformly seemed to be moving away from us at a constant speed.

The implications of what was being observed was huge. Obviously it meant the universe was expanding but more than that, the general movement of the stars directly away from us further seemed to confirm our position near the center of the universe. In this enormous universe, the odds of us coincidentally being in the center are mind numbingly small. If God had intended us to be in the center of the universe, then the remote odds of it happening randomly don't matter. However, scientists, because of their bias toward natural explanations will not allow themselves to consider that we're here by design. So what is the solution?

Scientists have put forth a model of the universe where there really is no center – or rather everywhere is the center. Space is a flat surface that is being stretched like the surface of a balloon being blown up. All points on the surface would be moving away from each other yet there is no edge nor center to the universe. They say space is curved, similar to the surface of the earth and if you started in one direction and headed in a straight line, you would eventually end up where you began. No matter where you are in the universe, we would observe exactly the same things in every direction.

This “Balloon Model” of the universe seems to be the epitomy of an “exotic theory.” To me it seems way more far fetched than Ptolemey's equants and epicycles. The mad genius of it is that really is no way to test it. There's no way we could fly to edge of the universe to see if it's there. We can't stand back from the universe and see if it resembles the surface of a balloon. We can only picture the universe based upon we can observe from the earth and that supports the Bible.

THE OORT CLOUD

When I was young, I used to think that comets hurtling through space were similar to meteors entering earth's atmosphere; I pictured it as a fiery ball with a long tail of flames. I know now that comets are made of ice and the long tail we see is actually ice particles being blasted away from the body of the comet as it passes near the sun.

The fact that comets lose some of their mass each time they pass near the sun has a bearing on the age-of-the-earth debate. Obviously, if a comet becomes smaller with each orbit of the sun, eventually it must disappear all together. Also, each time a comet comes near the sun, it also risks collision with a planet or the sun itself which would end its life immediately. Simple reason, then, forces us to acknowledge that comets can only exist so long. Their long tails are a visual testimony of their short livedness. Eventually, they will either exhaust all of their matter or crash into a planet. If our solar system were really billions of years old, they should all be gone by now. End of story.

One very famous comet is Halley's comet which passes by our sun once every 75 years. It is consider a “short period,” one who's orbit takes less than 200 years. Since Halley's orbit is only 75 years, in just one million years it would have passed by the sun more than 13K times! No one believes that is possible and I'm not suggesting that's what secular scientists believe. Actually, secular scientists believe the maximum life span of Halley is about 40,000 years. If the universe is less than 10,000 years old, this isn't a problem at all. However, it doesn't comport well with the idea that the solar system is millions or billions of years old. If the solar system is really billions of years old, why are there still so many short period comets left? In order to rescue their theory, secular science must find a source that can replenish comets as they are exhausted. After all, since there still are comets, and we know that most of them can't have been circling the sun for billions of years, these comets had to come from somewhere more recently.

Secular scientists are claiming a very exotic source of new short term comets known as the Oort Cloud. According to Wikipedia, the Oort cloud, “is a theoretical concept of a cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years)” [bold added]. As we read through the entire Wiki article, we see a lot of other conditional descriptions; words like “conjecture,” “thought to be,” and “hypothesized” abound. The Wiki article is brimming with “facts” about the Oort cloud – things like it's composition, size, origin, location, etc. It's amazing that we can know so much about something that we've never seen and really aren't sure even exists!

In the same article, we can read the following:

“Over the course of the Solar System's existence the orbits of comets are unstable, and eventually dynamics dictate that a comet must either collide with the Sun or a planet or be ejected from the Solar System by planetary perturbations. Moreover, their volatile composition means that as they repeatedly approach the Sun, radiation gradually boils the volatiles off until the comet splits or develops an insulating crust that prevents further outgassing. Thus, Oort reasoned, a comet could not have formed while in its current orbit and must have been held in an outer reservoir for almost all of its existence.”

You can read it for yourselves. The Oort cloud was hypothesized seemingly for no reason other than the need for a source of comets! It about as scientific as saying comets are made by unicorns. Most people agree that science is founded upon observations. Here, we are talking about a hypothetical source of comets that cannot be observed so their belief is the Oort cloud is no more scientific than my belief in God. The existence of the Oort cloud is simply necessitated by a belief in an old universe. It's akin to a faith belief except they see it as more plausible because it's a “natural” explanation rather than a supernatural one.

INFLATION COSMOLOGY

The Big Bang model of the universe is a theory brimming with difficulties – I mean difficulties beyond the obvious, “where did all the matter come from.” The problems I'm talking about are a little less obvious but still very substantial. Please note too that these aren't my objections to the theory. These are objections raised by secular scientists and discussed in this Wiki article.

The Horizon Problem: If we looked toward the eastern sky, we could see galaxies that are estimated to be 10 billion light years away. We could see the same thing in the western sky. So if one galaxy is 10 billion light years away in one direction and another is 10 billion light years in the other, then they would be 20 billion light years apart from each other. Now, secular scientists date the universe to be around 13.8 billion years old. Assuming that is true, the light from the “eastern” most region of space has not had enough time to reach the “western” region. Even though we can see both ends, they should not be able to see each other because their light could not have traveled the 20 billion light years of distance between them in only 13.8 billion years. Are you still with me? OK. Here is the problem: everywhere we look, the universe appears to be homogenous.

If I dropped an ice cube into hot water, the cube would melt and the water would cool a little. Eventually, it all becomes the same temperature. That's homogeneity and it always happens eventually once the two things begin to interact. It seems to have already happened in the cosmos. The cosmic background microwave radiation, for example is the nearly the same everywhere we look. But how could the entire universe have evened out so uniformly if all the regions have not had enough time to interact?

The Flatness Problem: Matter produces gravity. Objects in motion have kinetic energy. When the supposed Big Bang happened, matter began to expand. Once the expansion began, kinetic energy would have carried the matter forward while gravity would have been slowing the expansion. Let me see if I can explain it in lay terms.

If the rate of expansion were too slow, gravity would have quickly pulled everything back into a Big Crunch. If the expansion were too rapid, the matter would have accelerated too quickly for stars to form. From the very beginning there must have been a perfect balance, a “fine tuning,” between the expansion and the slowing or else the universe could not exist as it is now. The precise balance of 1 is represented by the value Ω (omega). The margin is so narrow as to be incredible.

These Horizon problem and Flatness problem just two problems with a Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. While either one alone could be fatal to the theory, scientists cling desparately to the belief there had to be a solution. Enter now Inflation Cosmology! It was suggested in the 1980s that in the very early seconds after the initial expansion, the universe when through short period of hyper-expansion where it figuratively exploded from about the size of a grape to trillions of miles across in just a fraction of a second. They say such an event would solve a few difficulties.

First, they suppose that the homogeneity we observe occurred prior to the hyper-expansion, while all of space was still close together. When inflation occurred, it carried the homogeneity out with it. Concerning the flatness problem, the inflation supposedly forced the value of Ω to that fine-tuned balance of 1. Some have compared it to a how a balloon smooths out as it inflates. I'm not sure how well the analogy describes the solution but most cosmologists seemed satisfied with it.

So what is the evidence for all of this? We'll, it's pretty much like the evidence for the Oort cloud – they simply need it for their theory to be viable. It's a sort of fudge factor to get around some of the serious difficulties they know exist with the Big Bang. Actually, the idea of inflation is even less credible than the Oort cloud. In the case of the Oort cloud, at least we know that icy bodies exist in the universe. We've never seen an event like the inflation epoch and there's nothing in physics that would otherwise suggest such an event could or should occur.

CONCLUSION

When we consider modern cosmology, the Big Bang doesn't sound unreasonable at first hearing. We can see the stars moving away from us. If the universe is continuously expanding, then we need only extrapolate backward to conclude that at some point in the distant past, all matter very close together. It's obvious. Yet no matter how reasonable it sounds, some things just don't add up – things like the flatness problem or the horizon problem. There's also the unsettling coincidence that we appear to be at the very center of the universe. Never mind there are still many other difficulties I don't have time to discuss.

To be certain, scientists have “explanations” for all these things. They invent exotic theories to explain their failed predictions. It's like epicycles all over again. However, unlike epicycles, we can't test these fanciful cosmologies as easily. Scientists say that there really is no center of the universe and it would look basically the same from any vantage point. Really? How do we test that? We can't even fly to the next star, let alone a star millions of light years away, to see how the universe looks from there. We only know what the universe looks like from our vantage point.

The Big Bang theory is simply a modern version of Ptolemy. It might seem reasonable at first but it is completely contrary to reality and can only be kept afloat by continuously invoking very unreasonable sub-theories. These sub-theories, though, lie outside scientific inquiry. They can't really be observed or tested. They aren't as much theories as they are stories. Secular scientists believe them not because the scientific evidence for them is overwhelming but because they refuse to consider the alternative.

Jesus wasn't plan B

Genesis 2:15-17, “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

This passage has been a puzzle to many Christians and the subject of much criticism from unbelievers. The question often asked is why would an all-knowing God put the Tree in the Garden if He knew Adam would disobey and bring the Curse on all of creation? If there were no tree, Adam could not have eaten of it so would not have sinned by disobeying God. No tree means no Fall, no Curse, and no history of death in the world. In other words, if God knows everything, why didn't He just not put the tree in the garden and spare the world generations of misery?

Critics sometimes exaggerate the dilemma, hoping to raise doubt on the omniscience of God or the plausibility of the Bible. Such criticism could have a chilling effect on the gospel. It tries to make it look like God made a mistake and then had to come up with the cross as a way to fix it. Jesus was a sort of “plan B.”

There are a few bad assumptions behind this criticism. First, it's completely non sequitur as an argument for atheism. I'm not sure exactly how it follows that, because people die, there can be no God. You could try to make a case that He's not a loving God or that He's not the God of the Bible but there's no reason we must necessarily conclude that death means there's no God. It goes back to a point I made a few months back: people have a false idea of how God should act and, when they can't find a god that acts they way, they conclude there must be no god at all.

The other flaw in this criticism is the assumption that eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was the only sin Adam could have committed. Removing the tree does not necessarily mean Adam could no longer sin. Adam still had free will and so could have disobeyed God in other ways. For example, God also commanded Adam and Eve to multiply; Adam could have refused. We have to ask if it is even possible for God to create a creature with free will but not the ability to choose to disobey Him? It's sort of like asking if God could create a square circle.

I certainly can't claim to completely understand God. Indeed, if a finite, simple man like me could completely understand Him, He wouldn't be a very big God. But after having thought about this and looking into His word, I think I have an inkling of why things are they way they are.

We like to say that God can do anything. Of course, there are things even God can't do. God cannot lie, for example. He cannot even be wrong. And here is another very important thing – God cannot stop being God. He will always be the Infinite One, the Eternal One, the Perfect One. Logically speaking, it can be no other way.

Isaiah 46:9-11 says, “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executes my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.”

Like this passages says, there cannot be anyone like God. In logic, there is an interesting paradox called the Irresistible Force Paradox. Essentially it says that irresistible force and an immovable object cannot exist simultaneously. One must yield to the other. The same is true for God. Not only must there be only one supreme power, He must also have supreme authority. You cannot have 2 beings with free will unless the will of one them yields to the other. Think about it – what would happen if one god says, “this will be blue” and the other says, “no, this will not be blue”? One of them must yield to the other.

When God made man, He could have made us like robots who only can do what He programmed us to do. That isn't what God wanted. He wanted someone with whom He could have fellowship - someone who would have emotions and reason similar to His. So, He created in His image. Yet, even though we are like God, we cannot be just like God. God wanted us to have fellowship with Him. He created us with free will and the ability to genuinely love Him. But by giving us free will, it was inevitable that we would disobey him. If we have free will, there will come a point that what a man wants will conflict with what God wants. Obviously, God would have known all this.

God is love (1 John 4:7-8). Because of His perfect love, He desired an object to love. However, His perfect justice would not allow Him to suffer the disobedience of His creation. So when He purposed to create us, He simultaneously would have had a plan to reconcile us to Himself again, once we disobeyed Him. His plan was the cross!

Revelation 13:8 refers to Jesus as, “The Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world.” In dutiful obedience to the Father, Jesus created the entire universe and shaped man with His own hands, knowing that the cost would be His own blood. It's overwhelming to think about it. It reminds me of a moving passage from that famous hymn:

And when I think of God, His Son not sparing
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing
He bled and died to take away my sin

God didn't make a mistake. He didn't create us without realizing the cost. Jesus wasn't plan B. He was always the plan!