If evolution is true, the world is indeed a hopeless place.
As we come into the Christmas season (around much of the world) our thoughts turn to lofty ideas like “hope” and “peace” and “love.” Words like these take center stage for a short while, and this is good. In fact, in the Christian tradition such words often attach to one of the four Sundays before Christmas in a season of “Advent.”
This year, hope is the central theme of the first Sunday of Advent. Christians are reminded of the foundation of hope resulting from Jesus’ first coming, and the anticipation of his second.
And it is truly a great hope: Darkness is displaced by light now and will be forever banished in the future. Christmas comes as a reminder of that time we were separated from Christ, without hope and without God in the world.
Without hope and without God. Do the two always go together?
Lofty thoughts, indeed. Philosophers attribute to hope an important role in regard to human motivation, religious belief or politics. Some even say it springs eternal.
But what if evolutionary theory conforms to the true creation story for human beings? What does hope look like for human beings created not by a God of hope, but by nature for which hope is merely an invented word among such humans?
Imagine that you had no hope and were in the world without God. And now imagine that this state of being is permanent, unchangeable, and final.
If evolution is true, both statements above are true and your imagination conforms to reality. If evolution is the true creation story that follows from the Big Bang, then hope cannot possibly exist. Because if naturalistic evolution is true, nothing exists now that did not exist at the Big Bang, including hope.
However, if evolution is not true, and God created the world including humans in His image, the first statement above may be true about you, but the second statement is definitely not true about the universe.
It is time we see evolution for what it is: a creation story based on purposeless processes of unguided nature such that its creations are meaningless and equally purposeless. This is the world evolutionists wish us to believe is real. And this is a world without even a concept of hope, much less any actual hope.
You may be a person who believes in evolution but believes God was guiding it all. If so, you are not an evolutionist; you are a creationist with an odd view of creation. Your view of God as creator is neither supported by scripture nor set forth by science. So the question is why do you believe such a thing?
The fact is, either purposeless processes of evolution created humans or God purposely created humans in His image.
And the substance of a true hope hangs in the balance of one’s belief.
Consider the implications to the Gospel if evolution is true. If evolution is true Jesus is not who he claimed to be. How could He? He would have been just one more unintended walking bag of genes in a long line of gene-bags going back to a bacterium, we are told. And his life—even if he was born in a manger—has no meaning, it is simply another that failed in a survival of the fittest and succumbed to natural selection before he could pass his genes to another hopeless gene-bag.
Can we who look for hope in the world by critically examining evolution’s truth claims? Is it possible that evolution cannot explain the origin and existence of human beings, for example? And if evolution fails as an explanation can we find our hope elsewhere?
The answers are yes, yes, and yes. We have shown that natural selection plays no role in the explanation of the origin, development, or existence of human beings. We do this easily and conclusively in The Natural Selection Paradox. If natural selection played no role, then how is the theory of evolution “by” natural selection to be relied on to explain our creation?
Most people know in their heart of hearts that evolution is not the explanation for their existence. Most people can look around at the evidence at hand and consider the world in the light of pure reason to understand, at a gut level, that the world is more than just atoms set in motion from the Big Bang. For these people there is hope in understanding. Hopefully, that is you.
It’s time for people of good will to follow their minds and hearts on this issue and reject evolution as being not only untrue with regard to the creation of human beings, but also as leading to false notions of purpose and meaning in the minds and hearts of people.
Are we surprised that a theory that explains progress as the result of hopeless death and destruction leads to thoughts of hopeless death and destruction in young people? We see the effects of hopelessness growing more and more all around us every day in people who we might say have been taught a worldview that values death and destruction. This worldview necessarily fosters people who live in the world without hope and without God.
But there is a true hope. True hope accompanies the truth of creation that is necessary for the truth of the Gospel. The Gospel message is a message of light in the darkness and recognizes that before being reconciled to God our creator we are all in this world with no hope and without God. But this state of affairs can be changed. There is no reason to live without hope. Hope for today and hope for the future is offered in the person of Jesus Christ who was not an unplanned product of nature but the son of the living God and God Himself.
And we celebrate Christmas as a result of Jesus’ coming. And he came not merely as another animal in a long line of evolution from first life. He came as Emmanuel—God with us—as the savior of human beings created in God’s image. And it is in the Jesus that we find true hope.
Atheists, rationalists, evolutionists, naturalists–all the ists that deny God or His involvement in this world– will never find this hope. Do you know why? Because they can’t! Their adopted philosophy of the world prevents them from ever being able to believe anything but the dark, empty world of evolution.
But you, if you are a Believer, can. You have the choice to reject darkness and choose light. And if you do you will find you chose a belief that conforms better with reality as we know it. And the hope it brings will be permanent, unchangeable, and final.
Not just for the first week in Sunday, but forever.
It’s time to choose.
Think about it.
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