In dealing with this question, we must carefully define our terms, for “evolution” is used in various senses by various people. We must distinguish between evolution as a philosophy and evolution as a descriptive mechanism for the development of species from the more primitive to the higher or more complex stages in the course of geological history. Furthermore, we must establish what is meant by theistic evolution. Then we will be in a better position to deal with its relationship to the creationism of Genesis 1.
Evolution as a Philosophy
Evolution as a philosophy seeks to explain the physical and especially the biological universe as a self directed development from primeval matter, the origin of which is unknown but which may be regarded as eternally existing without ever having had a beginning. Philosophical evolution rules out any direction or intervention by a personal God and casts doubt on the existence of even an impersonal Higher Power. All reality is governed by unchangeable physical laws, and ultimately it is the product of mere chance. There is no reason for existence or a real purpose for life. Man has to operate as an end in him self. He is his own ultimate lawgiver and has no moral accountability except to human society. The basis of law and ethics is basically utilitarian that which produces the greatest good for the greatest number.
Not all these positions were advance by Charles Darwin himself in his 1859 classing The Origin of Species. And yet the consistent atheism of philosophic evolution was a position he would not espouse, for he believed that a creating God was logically necessary to explain the prior existence of the original primordial ooze out of which the earliest forms of life emerged. It would be more accurate to call him a deist rather than an atheist, even though his system was taken over by those who denied the existence of God.
But it should be pointed out that consistent atheism, which represents itself to be the most rational and logical of all approaches to reality, is in actuality completely self defeating and incapable of logical defense. That is to say, if indeed all matter has combined by mere chance, unguided by any Higher Power of Transcendental Intelligence, then it necessarily follows that the molecules of the human brain are also the product of mere chance. In other words, we think the way we do simply because the atoms and molecules of our brain tissue happen to have combined in the way they have, totally without transcendental guidance or control. So then even the philosophies of men, their system of logic and all their approaches to reality are the result of mere fortuity. There is no absolute validity to any argument advanced by the atheist against the position of theism.
On the basis of his won presuppositions, the atheist completely cancels himself out, for on his own premises his arguments are without any absolute validity. By his own confession he thinks the way he does simply because the atoms in his brain happen to combine the way they do. If this is so, he cannot honestly say that his view is any more valid than the contrary view of his opponent. His basic postulates are self contradictory and self defeating; for when he asserts that there are no absolutes, he thereby is asserting a very dogmatic absolute. Nor can he logically disprove the existence of God without resorting to a logic that depends on the existence of God for its validity. Apart from such a transcendent guarantor of the validity of logic, any attempts at logic or argumentation are simply manifestations of the behavior of the collocation of molecules that make up the thinker’s brain.
From
Gleason L.Archer Jr., New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids Michigan: Zondervan, 1982), p 55-56.
