God’s Truth
Why Darwin was Wrong 2
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, July 25, 1999
Man
And so Phibber brings us to the point of it all—the evolution of man. He calls the evidence of Sir Julian Huxley, an evolutionist, that it is improbable that an intelligent being would evolve again if man were destroyed. Huxley was writing in 1942 when mankind still believed he was a considerable cut above the beasts. We now know it is not true—in terms of genetic material at any rate. We have almost exactly the same genetic make up as the chimpanzees. Geneticists tell us that there is more genetic variability among human beings than there is between the average of apes and men.
I am not a zoologist and, off hand, do not know to what extent, if any, humans and apes can interbreed. But novels have been written suggesting human/ape hybrids are possible and it would not surprise me. Obviously it is a subject which is taboo. No one would admit doing the experiment even if they had—the outcry would be tremendous. Nevertheless humans and apes are so close together that apes are really part of the genus Homo. This must really hurt Phibber.
The Reverend Phibber does not consider genes to be any criteria. Instead, the criteria of the superiority of mankind are the power of abstract thought, moral and religious sense and language. Phibber should try a bit more of the first at the expense of the second because he now gets even sillier. He tells us that philosophy, logic, higher mathematics and even the theory of evolution have not helped our ancestors to survive. Nor has moral sense. He’s doing his old trick of setting up Aunt Sallys so that he can knock them down.
In fact, his three factors are all advanced manifestations of intelligence. There is no way even Phibber can suggest that intelligence is not an advantage in the evolutionary stakes so instead he particularises it in the form of quite late displays of it like mathematics and a religious sense to make it seem absurd. Ultimately Phibber is the absurd one.
Language
Language is his last throw in this section. Why does it seem to evolve from more complex to less complex forms? It is because the bible says God gave us language and, perverse as ever, God decided to mess it up. Language is, of course, even less amenable to study than evolution. Language leaves no fossils at all. Analysis of the languages we know and human capabilities followed by conjecture is all we can resort to. It might be that Phibber has a point in maintaining that language was given by God.
At some point in the distant past of pre-history, after religion and language had developed, a priestly cast decided to construct a holy language for conversing with God. Until then there had been lots of languages spoken by almost every localised tribe and they probably had many and irregular grammars.
The priests of some well developed religion probably reasoned that God sought an orderly means of communication and they therefore constructed a sort of holy Esperanto. This was one of the mysteries maintained by the priesthood who kept the secret and kept the language pure just as Jewish scribes kept the scriptures pure. It was fairly easy because the language was not in everyday use.
But there came a time when the priests began to use it between themselves to communicate secretly. No one but the priests understood this formalised and arcane language. The secret could not be kept though. Noblemen or warriors would have forced it from the priests and it became used by the nobility but still guarded and taught by the priests who kept it pure. Its superiority over the languages which had grown ad hoc meant that by degrees it replaced them at all levels in our imaginary society.
Then, at some stage mass migrations akin to those in the fifth century occurred and the priestly language was released into the world. From it came the older structured language and from them the looser modern languages. The priesthood and scholars had lost control so the language could no longer be kept pure and it has increasingly simplified.
This is a non-scientific theory like most when we get into the realm of the unrecorded past. It is unfalsifiable but has the advantage, to me, of not requiring the intervention of a supernatural being—except as a figment of mankind’s imagination.
As a final bleat, Phibber brings us back to species evolution. He cannot understand how the many different forms of life on earth could have arisen without the intervention of God. “How could they have evolved on their own?” he wonders pathetically.
For my part it is easier to imagine them evolving on their own over a period of a thousand million years, occupying each environmental niche which came available in an appropriate form, than to imagine someone however supernatural thinking, “How can I alter this little fellow to get something a bit different? And where will I put him? Oh, it’s all so difficult! I wish I had invented evolution to save me the bother”.
Biggest Contradiction
The biggest problem Phibber admits he has to face is the contradiction between the story of Adam and Eve and the evidence we have that humans have evolved over millions of years. His conclusion is that Adam and Eve were real. Not only does the bible say so in the Old Testament story but the New Testament confirms it. Since Phibber has the principle, “If in doubt, let the New Testament decide”, he has no doubt. Adam appears in Luke’s genealogy, is apparently, though not explicitly referred to in Matthew 19:4-5 and bobs up regularly in Paul’s epistles (Rom 5:12-17; 1 Cor 15:20-23; 45-49).
Paul expounded the view that Jesus was the second Adam—the missing bookend. Adam introduced sin into the world, Jesus offers to rid the world of it. Adam brought death into the world, Jesus brings everlasting life. This is why Adam is so important to Phibber—he is the first bookend. The second looks silly without the first, and all Paul’s theorising is for naught. So Adam cannot be a myth.
How then to explain the discrepancy between real life and the bible? It is entertaining to find Phibber, having criticised the many theorists of Darwinism for not being sure about evolution, admitting that there are many Christian explanations for the Eden story. “Most of them have serious snags attached”. So how do we know which theory is correct? Well, after all the beefing over evolutionary theory and all the boasting about his scientific credentials, you would have thought Phibber could have done better than this:
The one I shall describe is the one that seems most reasonable to me.
Earlier Phibber briefly mentions that Desmond Morris listed six theories as to why the human animal was naked. Phibber continues, “Dr Morris helpfully explains which five of these theories are wrong, and why the one he believes in is ‘right’. You should read stuff like this occasionally. You will find it entertaining”. Phibber is quite blind to his inconsistency. He always is. So we come to his theory.
First, the idea that Adam lived in the Garden of Eden around 4000 BC is quite wrong, because the biblical genealogies on which it is based are wrong. Is it not remarkable how many mistakes we are now finding in the infallible book? They often miss out generations and they do not link father to the eldest son. It is therefore impossible to date Adam from the bible.
Second, modern anthropology is wrong. It is “the most dubious branch of science there is”. He gives a couple of quotations and a couple of drawings of an ape man to prove his assertions.
Third, dating methods are all inaccurate. They assume uniformity of conditions but, if God has been delving at some time in the past, conditions might not be the same, so all the timing methods are wrong. Evidently God is trying to fool us again. To listen to Christians like Phibber you would imagine that God had a great time fooling us all, or scientists anyway, though Dr Ernest specifically excluded the possibility with a quotation from Believing the bible by Dr A D Norris: “God is not the author of a lie—even a white lie”. But whatever you do, do not expect consistency from exponents of God’s Truth.
Explaining Adam
Anyway, Phibber now believes he is in a position to explain the biblical Adam. Man was made in the image of God and so he could never have been an ape or an ape-man, Phibber tells us. He must have been a modern man capable of worshipping God. Phibber believes therefore that the creation of man occurred about 12000 years ago. Ape-like animals before might have used tools in a simple way just as modern apes do, but they were not men, and men were not descended from them.
I need say little about this “theory”. Suffice it to say that skeletons of beings that are in every anatomical way identical to ourselves are found before 12000 BC. If these are not “men”, God is playing his silly games with us again. Though evidence of the “men” who diverged from an ape-like stock millions of years ago is sparse, the evidence of modern men carrying out human activities before 12,000 BC is plentiful. That “men” of a similar but more robust build were active also in human-like ways about 100,000 BC is also plentiful.
There is plenty to convince anyone other than a Christian that we are the outcome of a long history of evolution going back before 12,000 BC and that Phibber’s arbitrary “theory” that we were created then is bunkum. Phibber concludes, “This explanation [Adam and Eve] satisfied men and women three thousand years ago. It is still eminently sensible today. It can stand up to the critical scrutiny of our scientific age”. I leave you to wonder at this man’s sanity.
Why Does God Allow Suffering?
Chaplain Phibber now addresses a very important question. Why does a loving God allow suffering in the world? The answer begins in the Garden of Eden where these real people, Adam and Eve, lived a long time ago. Adam disobeyed God introducing sin into the world and for it God punished mankind with suffering and death. All of Adam’s descendants have the same sinful traits and therefore must endure the same punishments.
Why though didn’t God in His infinite wisdom foresee the result and ensure that Adam did not sin? Phibber believes it is because God wanted men to love Him and they could only do that voluntarily. It would be meaningless if they had to love God because they were made that way. Consequently, God had to give human beings free will to get them freely to love Him. Phibber does not explain why God didn’t change His mind as soon as he foresaw the result unless he is really saying that God was a sort of love junky who could not do without being loved partly, even though people spend most of their time sinning.
Or perhaps He is really a megalomaniac Sadist who created mankind with free will knowing that they would disobey Him and therefore that He would punish them with suffering and death. Perhaps its the suffering and death rather than the love that He enjoys. Christians will consider this remark in bad taste but nearly 2000 years ago they didn’t. Gnostics were a variety of Christian who actually thought the God Yehouah was evil! Makes more sense of human experience since, you have to admit.
Anyway Phibber tells us God is merciful because He does not usually sentence new people to instant death, He lets them enjoy life for awhile. And what’s more during this little bit of our “unearned and undeserved gift” from God we can learn that we should love him properly. If we do then we get the gift of eternal life! If not then we are destroyed forever.
What then about Hell? Don’t we get eternally tortured there for our sins? “No”, says Phibber. Jesus has made it clear that we should “fear Him which is able to destroy both the body and soul in Hell”. God does this to sinners. It is not a reference to Satan. So God does not allow perpetual torture in Hell but destroys body and soul there. Nonetheless it seems out of character for Jesus to be telling people to fear the loving God.
We learn that pain is part of suffering but serves the necessary function of telling us when we are damaging ourselves. Phibber assures us that suffering also helps us develop character and becomes more bearable when others who have suffered are thought of, especially Jesus who suffered unjustly.
Eventually, Phibber concludes, Jesus will come back to set up an everlasting kingdom, a belief of a Jewish sect 2000 years ago but still believed today. And Phibber complains that evolution is too slow.
