Worshipping An Imaginary Man In The Sky
I was thinking about the impossibility of human evolution by natural selection, which is based on chance interacting with various natural processes that have the effect of selecting those 'chances' that are retained and those that are lost. I won't elaborate too much because most of us who are interested in this subject have already given it a lot of thought and understand the concept. It is however important to note that the idea, simple in itself, is used to explain massively complex transformations for which no viable mechanism has ever been proposed, via the obfuscating factor of billions of years.
"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." Eccl 3:11
It is simple enough to imagine that a fish spawned with a mutant gene that resulted in a slightly modified eye shape and which gave it an increased vision range, making it more likely to find an abundance of food and thus more likely to survive to pass on its modified eye shape to its progeny. Of course, the vast majority of mutations are deleterious, and furthermore, even the rare positive mutation is not necessarily going to be incorporated into a successful gamete, meaning that even if there's a positive mutation, it might not make it into the next generation. But, in theory, it might, and so it's possible that this genetic mutation might spread throughout the population and in successive generations become so widespread as to define the new normal of the species. In this way, a species is thought to change over time, becoming better adapted to its natural environment. Once enough such changes accrue, the species might become different enough from its former identity to become a new species.
This is a hypothetical example of evolution by natural selection and even as I write it I realize it is impossible for many reasons. This example, which was chosen to be as reasonable as possible, reminds me that changed eye shape in humans is called astigmatism and it causes headaches. So if a fish has an astigmatism that actually improves its underwater vision, might not the fish's brain, which is not adapted for the mutant eye shape, be adversely affected? In other words, this one change, while possibly advantageous in itself, is counterbalanced by the disadvantage of the constant headache due to the same cause. The pain and distraction of the headache could make it more likely that the mutant fish gets gobbled up by a predator. This is assuming fish can have headaches! But you see my point: because of the random nature of mutations, there is no reason to assume that a mutation in any organ is going to be simultaneously accompanied by a corresponding mutation in the brain or other organ that depends on the already-established functioning of the first organ. So the simple idea of evolution by natural selection quickly becomes restricted by any number of limits and requirements as soon as a real organism is considered.
Now let's consider, not a mere modification of the shape of the eye but the addition of an eyeball. This would also require a corresponding change in the brain in order for the new data to be interpreted properly. If you add a new sensor to a car or you change the way one works, you need to also make a change to the car's computer or it can't take advantage of the new sensor. If you add a piece of hardware to your home computer you need to add a driver to interpret the new functionality. Without the driver the new functionality will be inaccessible or it might even render the device inoperative! You can't just plug in a new eyeball on the back of someone's head without an evolution in the brain also because otherwise how would the brain process this new visual perspective? Now someone might point to Plug and Play, whereby you can simply add new hardware and the operating system will automatically configure it. Why couldn't such a system evolve for the human body? Plug and Play eyeballs. Well, even in this case, the device itself needs to be capable of automatic configuration, so Plug and Play requires a development in both the device and the OS, both the eyeball and the nervous system. How did that evolve by chance? I can see how it might be intelligently designed, after all, we did invent Plug and Play.
Now someone might say this is using an extreme transformation as an example, but I suggest to you that the history of evolution must be full of such extreme examples. At some point, a species must have gone from an absence of sight organs to sight, and not merely the presence of sight organs but their functioning, since devoting resources to constructing useless organs is not an evolutionary advantage but a disadvantage since it is an investment with no present payoff. And evolution cannot look ahead to envisage a future payoff because evolution is a mindless process. So somehow not only did the sight organs have to evolve but so did the central nervous system of the organism at the same time by coincidence.
Darwinism, or evolution by natural selection, sounds to me like the infinite monkey theorem. This logico-mathematical idea states that a monkey hitting random keys on a keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely produce every possible finite text an infinite number of times. However, a few billion years is not an infinite amount of time, and the likelihood of monkeys filling the observable universe producing even one work of Shakespeare in a time period hundreds of thousands of magnitudes longer than the age of the universe is still vanishingly small. Let that sink in and you will realize how absurd it is to think that our DNA could ever have evolved by chance.
This kind of thing is why non-Christian scientists like Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, and before them, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, Francis Crick, all suggest alien-directed design of human beings. Design is obvious but they don't want to accept that it is the God of the Bible who has designed us. It is either mindless nature that has produced us as an epiphenomenon, or aliens who have designed us for unknown reasons. They are either deifying nature or making aliens gods of science.
I think it is very important to look closely at just what has to happen to produce evolution by natural selection and get away from this simplistic bird's eye view that makes it seem plausible especially with the obscuring factor of billions of years. After all, almost anything can happen if you give it time like that, can't it? This is the problem that synthetic organic chemist James M. Tour has with evolution: it has no proposed mechanism. I would like to include a link to his entire statement regarding evolution and creation, as well as posting an excerpt that speaks particularly to the matter under discussion.
"As a chemist, and one that builds functional molecular nano-systems, I can give some informed input. For several decades I have been building molecular cars with functional motors, wheels, axles and chassis, and molecular nanosubmarines with light-activated motors and fluorescent pontoons, where many parts have to work in unison, and be planned to work in unison during redesign of major features. Even small changes in desired function can send the synthesis all the way back to step 1. In biology, the mechanisms for such transformations are complete mysteries. I posit that the gross chemical changes needed for macroevolution (defined here as origin of the major organismal groups, i.e., of the body plans) are not understood and presently we cannot even suggest the mechanisms, let alone observe them. Any massive functional change of a body part would require multiple concerted lines of variations. Sure, one can suggest multiple small changes ad infinitum, but the concerted requirement of multiple changes all in the same place and at the same time, is impossible to chemically fathom. One day the requisite chemical basis might become apparent so that the questions can be answered. But present-day biology is far from providing even a chemical proposal for body plan changes, let alone a data-substantiated chemical mechanism."
James M Tour Group
In the above passage from James Tour's writing on the subject, he establishes the range from tiny molecular nano-systems up to changes of body plans, explaining that biologically, the mechanisms for such transformations are complete mysteries. If even the mechanisms for transformations on a molecular scale are unknown, how can we glibly attribute macroscopic transformations to evolution?
James Tour is being cautious by saying that these mechanisms are unknown but the reason they are unknown is because no one has been able to imagine (hypothesize) a mechanism by which the complexity we see could have resulted from the transformation of something else that was less advantageous but also stable.
In other words, show us a precise chemical pathway by which a present day biological process could have evolved. Or show us how to improve an existing biological process! And keep in mind, because of the interdependent nature of the many assembly lines within the super-factory of the cell, evolution must have occurred across these processes in tandem and without disabling any function depended upon by other processes in the cell. And not only on the level of processes happening within organelles, or the evolution of the organelles themselves, but also on up the hierarchy of tissues, organs, and organ systems, which are interdependent at every level. Yet how are corresponding changes possible when the basic mechanism of Darwinism is random mutation? How can processes evolve in tandem, like the gears of a watch (as one gear turns, its turning turns the next) when every change is due to independent, random chance? The fearful and wonderful harmony of the body, necessary for life and evinced on all levels from the molecular to the overall body plan, is simply inconsistent with the idea that it evolved out of nature by chance. It makes me think of debugging: when one change is made to eliminate a bug, many others spring up because of unforeseen consequences of the change, due to the incredible complexity of interrelationships in the code. And the code for a human being or indeed any animal or plant, is much more complex than any computer program. If debugging is this difficult for the rational, experienced human being operating with intention, how unlikely it must be to occur by random chance alone!
I didn't intend to get this deep into a consideration of the impossibility of evolution by natural selection. I wanted instead to look at the implicit spirituality of evolution by natural selection. That is, what is man and his relationship to the universe in this view? I've already hinted at it above.
If man has evolved by chance with the mindless workings of nature as the sole discriminating factor between which changes persist and which are lost, then man is not separate from nature in any way. Man is a secondary phenomenon that has arisen alongside the normal functioning of nature. By 'normal functioning', I mean the operation of so-called natural laws and interaction with other organisms. Man is not the primary end of nature but rather nature's continued operation according to its own so-called laws should be judged its primary end, therefore the appearance of man on the scene is an epiphenomenon. Yet since man is in no wise separate from nature/the universe according to this viewpoint, the awareness of man, both of his world and of himself, makes man the self-awareness of nature. Through man, nature perceives itself, including man himself.
To make an analogy, if the universe were an ocean of waters with earth underneath, and through the natural processes of this universe, a mountain formed and the peak rose above the waters, that vantage point would be man. It is the universe's vantage point from which to survey itself. Man is thus the LOGOS of nature. Logos means reason or word. It is the Greek word used to refer to Jesus Christ in Heaven in John 1:1,
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
Then God sent His Son into the world (v.14):
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."
So those who believe in evolution by natural selection have a counterfeit version of this Biblical truth, though they don't know it. They forget God and rather than glorify Him and thank Him, they put nature in His place. And so they themselves become the Logos of nature, the Word of their god. But we should remember that a mountain peak that rises out of the universal ocean is no more able to give meaning to it all than the ocean itself or the earth beneath. It may be distinctive as the high point of the universe but it is still part of the whole, it does not transcend the universe in any way.
The Bible reveals a transcendent God, whose transcendent Word has been made flesh and come down to dwell with us. So God is both transcendent and imminent. But when evolutionists forget God, they inadvertently and perhaps unwillingly make an idol of nature and this god is imminent but not transcendent. And so it cannot save them from the futility of nature, the bondage to cyclicality.
Here is a table showing the subtle counterfeit.
* The knowledge of the universe and himself that the natural man comes to is different from the knowledge of the man in Christ. For example, when Job saw God he said of himself:
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Job 42:5-6
The man who is brought into the place of knowledge of God, i.e. in Christ, is one who has everlasting life and thus he shall also know the universe when it is liberated from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. The natural man who does not believe in Jesus Christ shall not see life and therefore can only know the universe as it presently is, i.e. in bondage to cyclicality, and himself as a particular manifestation of that universe.
The third point, a consequence of the evolutionist view of man, that he is part of the universe and has no transcendence, versus the truth taught by Jesus Christ that He has come down and also transcends, is perfectly and precisely expressed in these His words:
"And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." John 3:13
Jesus Christ is the image of God and thus has seen God. As He died for us and rose again, through faith in Him we can be created new in Him, and He becomes the vantage point from which we too might see God. Note what God said to Moses when Moses asked to see His Glory. The Rock in this verse is Christ, and the clift in the Rock is the vantage point made by Jesus' death on the cross for us.
"And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: and I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen." Exodus 33:18-23
Moses could not see the face of God but one day we who believe shall see Jesus Christ as He is, for we have already passed from death to life.
So it is a trap, a miserable idolatry, to believe in evolution. This man of evolution, the logos of the universe, who is a vantage point rising out of the waters and into the sky, nonetheless offers no hope of transcendence. If he is a man in the sky of our imagination, still he is not the Man in Heaven. In Biblical language, we might say that this idol, like all idols, is not alive and therefore cannot offer life. It has no power to save. The first step back from this is to acknowledge the Living God as the true Creator of the universe and all life, including plants, animals, and man.
Lastly, what about Directed Panspermia, that is, the belief that aliens designed us and seeded the earth with our recent ancestors. Here we have a variant on the imaginary man in the sky, not only the goal of our evolution but also the starter of it. But it only serves to generate the question of its own origin: how did the aliens come to be? Who made them? Are we to suppose there is an infinite regression of Imaginary Men in the Sky? The alien man is thus no more transcendent than the natural man. This hypothesis is just a shallow attempt at obfuscating this fact by pushing the question of ultimate creation back a step.
In closing, I want to emphasize the issue of transcendence. This is the hope that every reasonable person should be seeking yet we must be aware that there is a deceiver who wants to lead us to place our hope in a lie, a route that cannot lead to transcendence, what the Bible calls eternal life and the knowledge of God. Ultimately the true way can be found in the pages of Scripture, it is plainly described. What I am trying to do here is to show how the lie is a lie so as to help anyone believing the lie by destroying their confidence in it.
Non-Christian people too have a desire for transcendence! Evolutionists, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, they all seek transcendence, however they express that concept in their own terminology. Man hopes to evolve, now through artificial selection, to complete knowledge and to transcendence of his own natural state. To escape the cycle, to elevate himself beyond samsara and in his transcendence to elevate the universe with him. This would be analogous to the new heavens and the new earth which shall come based upon the triumph of Jesus Christ. But man without faith in Christ, that is, man by himself, can never achieve his goal of transcendence because he is simply an ephiphenomenon of this present world. As part of nature he cannot elevate nature above itself. That is like trying to ascend to heaven by pulling upwards on your own hair. It is pulling oneself up by the bootstraps! Impossible! Laughable! And contrary to Newton's Third Law of motion: as you pull up with your hand, your arm pushes down on your body with equal force.
Yet it is the lie of the devil, which deceives the whole world. The antichrist has said in his heart, I will be like the Most High (Isaiah 14:13-14).
"I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:
I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation,
in the sides of the north:
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will be like the most High."
The devil is not willing to accept that he is only a creature who came from nothing, so the antichrist is not willing to accept that he is only a man, and not God. How can anyone think that any process of evolution from a starting point, and a starting point in nothing no less, can lead to one becoming eternally existent?! For that is what transcendence is: eternal life, God is the Great I AM. And that is why evolutionists postulate billions of years. The factor of billions of years is meant to obscure an origin out of nothing. It is the reason why samsara in Buddhism is claimed to be a cycle without beginning, although in fact there was a beginning: when man sinned and God cursed the ground because of him; that is when the creation was subjected to futility (Gen 3:17-21).
This belief in evolution to transcendence, which is the ultimate end and meaning of the biological theory of evolution, is indeed the service of an imaginary man in the sky. Yet though this idol man exalts itself against the knowledge of God,
"Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell,
to the sides of the pit." Isaiah 14:15
If man is merely an ephiphenomenon of nature, he can never transcend the futility of nature itself. But if man is created in the image of the transcendent God, then man can transcend nature if God reaches down to help man.
And that is exactly what God has done in the Person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, "God with us".
How did God provide us this sure hope of transcendence?
Remember that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose again from the dead on the third day. He ascended to Heaven and sat down on the right hand of God, having received of His Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, which He gave to them that believe, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.
This means for us that by the offering of himself He has taken away our sins, sanctified and perfected us forever.
At first we were created from the dust of the ground but we were created in God's image and given life by His breath. However we sinned by disobedience and death entered through sin. Death passed upon all men because all have sinned. Jesus is God's image and came from heaven being made flesh and suffering to be tempted in all points as are we, yet as without sin. So He was like the opposite of us in a way but nevertheless identified with us. So when He died it wasn't for Himself since He never sinned. It was in our place that He died and for our sins. He took our 'cause of death' upon Him, as the Bible says, "that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9b). Those who believe are identified with Him in His death and also in His burial and resurrection from the dead. So our old man, our sinful and earthy nature is dead and buried with Christ but a new man has been created in his place, the identity that we lost when Adam our first father sinned. The new man created in God's image with His breath to give us spiritual life! This is the transcendent man. Receiving Jesus is receiving the right to become the sons of God. We become heirs with the pledge of transcendence, and one day we will see Jesus as He is and it will result in the full experience and even the elevation of the universe into our glorious liberty.
I pray that you do repent and ask the Lord to come into your life and save you, today.
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." John 14:6
In Jesus Name.
"For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." 2 Tim 1:12
"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." Eccl 3:11
It is simple enough to imagine that a fish spawned with a mutant gene that resulted in a slightly modified eye shape and which gave it an increased vision range, making it more likely to find an abundance of food and thus more likely to survive to pass on its modified eye shape to its progeny. Of course, the vast majority of mutations are deleterious, and furthermore, even the rare positive mutation is not necessarily going to be incorporated into a successful gamete, meaning that even if there's a positive mutation, it might not make it into the next generation. But, in theory, it might, and so it's possible that this genetic mutation might spread throughout the population and in successive generations become so widespread as to define the new normal of the species. In this way, a species is thought to change over time, becoming better adapted to its natural environment. Once enough such changes accrue, the species might become different enough from its former identity to become a new species.
This is a hypothetical example of evolution by natural selection and even as I write it I realize it is impossible for many reasons. This example, which was chosen to be as reasonable as possible, reminds me that changed eye shape in humans is called astigmatism and it causes headaches. So if a fish has an astigmatism that actually improves its underwater vision, might not the fish's brain, which is not adapted for the mutant eye shape, be adversely affected? In other words, this one change, while possibly advantageous in itself, is counterbalanced by the disadvantage of the constant headache due to the same cause. The pain and distraction of the headache could make it more likely that the mutant fish gets gobbled up by a predator. This is assuming fish can have headaches! But you see my point: because of the random nature of mutations, there is no reason to assume that a mutation in any organ is going to be simultaneously accompanied by a corresponding mutation in the brain or other organ that depends on the already-established functioning of the first organ. So the simple idea of evolution by natural selection quickly becomes restricted by any number of limits and requirements as soon as a real organism is considered.
Now let's consider, not a mere modification of the shape of the eye but the addition of an eyeball. This would also require a corresponding change in the brain in order for the new data to be interpreted properly. If you add a new sensor to a car or you change the way one works, you need to also make a change to the car's computer or it can't take advantage of the new sensor. If you add a piece of hardware to your home computer you need to add a driver to interpret the new functionality. Without the driver the new functionality will be inaccessible or it might even render the device inoperative! You can't just plug in a new eyeball on the back of someone's head without an evolution in the brain also because otherwise how would the brain process this new visual perspective? Now someone might point to Plug and Play, whereby you can simply add new hardware and the operating system will automatically configure it. Why couldn't such a system evolve for the human body? Plug and Play eyeballs. Well, even in this case, the device itself needs to be capable of automatic configuration, so Plug and Play requires a development in both the device and the OS, both the eyeball and the nervous system. How did that evolve by chance? I can see how it might be intelligently designed, after all, we did invent Plug and Play.
Darwinism, or evolution by natural selection, sounds to me like the infinite monkey theorem. This logico-mathematical idea states that a monkey hitting random keys on a keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely produce every possible finite text an infinite number of times. However, a few billion years is not an infinite amount of time, and the likelihood of monkeys filling the observable universe producing even one work of Shakespeare in a time period hundreds of thousands of magnitudes longer than the age of the universe is still vanishingly small. Let that sink in and you will realize how absurd it is to think that our DNA could ever have evolved by chance.
This kind of thing is why non-Christian scientists like Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, and before them, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, Francis Crick, all suggest alien-directed design of human beings. Design is obvious but they don't want to accept that it is the God of the Bible who has designed us. It is either mindless nature that has produced us as an epiphenomenon, or aliens who have designed us for unknown reasons. They are either deifying nature or making aliens gods of science.
I think it is very important to look closely at just what has to happen to produce evolution by natural selection and get away from this simplistic bird's eye view that makes it seem plausible especially with the obscuring factor of billions of years. After all, almost anything can happen if you give it time like that, can't it? This is the problem that synthetic organic chemist James M. Tour has with evolution: it has no proposed mechanism. I would like to include a link to his entire statement regarding evolution and creation, as well as posting an excerpt that speaks particularly to the matter under discussion.
"As a chemist, and one that builds functional molecular nano-systems, I can give some informed input. For several decades I have been building molecular cars with functional motors, wheels, axles and chassis, and molecular nanosubmarines with light-activated motors and fluorescent pontoons, where many parts have to work in unison, and be planned to work in unison during redesign of major features. Even small changes in desired function can send the synthesis all the way back to step 1. In biology, the mechanisms for such transformations are complete mysteries. I posit that the gross chemical changes needed for macroevolution (defined here as origin of the major organismal groups, i.e., of the body plans) are not understood and presently we cannot even suggest the mechanisms, let alone observe them. Any massive functional change of a body part would require multiple concerted lines of variations. Sure, one can suggest multiple small changes ad infinitum, but the concerted requirement of multiple changes all in the same place and at the same time, is impossible to chemically fathom. One day the requisite chemical basis might become apparent so that the questions can be answered. But present-day biology is far from providing even a chemical proposal for body plan changes, let alone a data-substantiated chemical mechanism."
James M Tour Group
In the above passage from James Tour's writing on the subject, he establishes the range from tiny molecular nano-systems up to changes of body plans, explaining that biologically, the mechanisms for such transformations are complete mysteries. If even the mechanisms for transformations on a molecular scale are unknown, how can we glibly attribute macroscopic transformations to evolution?
James Tour is being cautious by saying that these mechanisms are unknown but the reason they are unknown is because no one has been able to imagine (hypothesize) a mechanism by which the complexity we see could have resulted from the transformation of something else that was less advantageous but also stable.
In other words, show us a precise chemical pathway by which a present day biological process could have evolved. Or show us how to improve an existing biological process! And keep in mind, because of the interdependent nature of the many assembly lines within the super-factory of the cell, evolution must have occurred across these processes in tandem and without disabling any function depended upon by other processes in the cell. And not only on the level of processes happening within organelles, or the evolution of the organelles themselves, but also on up the hierarchy of tissues, organs, and organ systems, which are interdependent at every level. Yet how are corresponding changes possible when the basic mechanism of Darwinism is random mutation? How can processes evolve in tandem, like the gears of a watch (as one gear turns, its turning turns the next) when every change is due to independent, random chance? The fearful and wonderful harmony of the body, necessary for life and evinced on all levels from the molecular to the overall body plan, is simply inconsistent with the idea that it evolved out of nature by chance. It makes me think of debugging: when one change is made to eliminate a bug, many others spring up because of unforeseen consequences of the change, due to the incredible complexity of interrelationships in the code. And the code for a human being or indeed any animal or plant, is much more complex than any computer program. If debugging is this difficult for the rational, experienced human being operating with intention, how unlikely it must be to occur by random chance alone!
I didn't intend to get this deep into a consideration of the impossibility of evolution by natural selection. I wanted instead to look at the implicit spirituality of evolution by natural selection. That is, what is man and his relationship to the universe in this view? I've already hinted at it above.
If man has evolved by chance with the mindless workings of nature as the sole discriminating factor between which changes persist and which are lost, then man is not separate from nature in any way. Man is a secondary phenomenon that has arisen alongside the normal functioning of nature. By 'normal functioning', I mean the operation of so-called natural laws and interaction with other organisms. Man is not the primary end of nature but rather nature's continued operation according to its own so-called laws should be judged its primary end, therefore the appearance of man on the scene is an epiphenomenon. Yet since man is in no wise separate from nature/the universe according to this viewpoint, the awareness of man, both of his world and of himself, makes man the self-awareness of nature. Through man, nature perceives itself, including man himself.
To make an analogy, if the universe were an ocean of waters with earth underneath, and through the natural processes of this universe, a mountain formed and the peak rose above the waters, that vantage point would be man. It is the universe's vantage point from which to survey itself. Man is thus the LOGOS of nature. Logos means reason or word. It is the Greek word used to refer to Jesus Christ in Heaven in John 1:1,
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
Then God sent His Son into the world (v.14):
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."
So those who believe in evolution by natural selection have a counterfeit version of this Biblical truth, though they don't know it. They forget God and rather than glorify Him and thank Him, they put nature in His place. And so they themselves become the Logos of nature, the Word of their god. But we should remember that a mountain peak that rises out of the universal ocean is no more able to give meaning to it all than the ocean itself or the earth beneath. It may be distinctive as the high point of the universe but it is still part of the whole, it does not transcend the universe in any way.
The Bible reveals a transcendent God, whose transcendent Word has been made flesh and come down to dwell with us. So God is both transcendent and imminent. But when evolutionists forget God, they inadvertently and perhaps unwillingly make an idol of nature and this god is imminent but not transcendent. And so it cannot save them from the futility of nature, the bondage to cyclicality.
Here is a table showing the subtle counterfeit.
| Natural universe in place of God as Creator | God is Creator |
|---|---|
| Man is the logos of the universe | Jesus Christ is the Logos of God |
| Man can know the universe and himself* | In Christ, men can know themselves* and God |
| Man is part of universe and has no transcendence | Christ has come down and also transcends |
* The knowledge of the universe and himself that the natural man comes to is different from the knowledge of the man in Christ. For example, when Job saw God he said of himself:
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Job 42:5-6
The man who is brought into the place of knowledge of God, i.e. in Christ, is one who has everlasting life and thus he shall also know the universe when it is liberated from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. The natural man who does not believe in Jesus Christ shall not see life and therefore can only know the universe as it presently is, i.e. in bondage to cyclicality, and himself as a particular manifestation of that universe.
The third point, a consequence of the evolutionist view of man, that he is part of the universe and has no transcendence, versus the truth taught by Jesus Christ that He has come down and also transcends, is perfectly and precisely expressed in these His words:
"And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." John 3:13
Jesus Christ is the image of God and thus has seen God. As He died for us and rose again, through faith in Him we can be created new in Him, and He becomes the vantage point from which we too might see God. Note what God said to Moses when Moses asked to see His Glory. The Rock in this verse is Christ, and the clift in the Rock is the vantage point made by Jesus' death on the cross for us.
"And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: and I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen." Exodus 33:18-23
Moses could not see the face of God but one day we who believe shall see Jesus Christ as He is, for we have already passed from death to life.
So it is a trap, a miserable idolatry, to believe in evolution. This man of evolution, the logos of the universe, who is a vantage point rising out of the waters and into the sky, nonetheless offers no hope of transcendence. If he is a man in the sky of our imagination, still he is not the Man in Heaven. In Biblical language, we might say that this idol, like all idols, is not alive and therefore cannot offer life. It has no power to save. The first step back from this is to acknowledge the Living God as the true Creator of the universe and all life, including plants, animals, and man.
Lastly, what about Directed Panspermia, that is, the belief that aliens designed us and seeded the earth with our recent ancestors. Here we have a variant on the imaginary man in the sky, not only the goal of our evolution but also the starter of it. But it only serves to generate the question of its own origin: how did the aliens come to be? Who made them? Are we to suppose there is an infinite regression of Imaginary Men in the Sky? The alien man is thus no more transcendent than the natural man. This hypothesis is just a shallow attempt at obfuscating this fact by pushing the question of ultimate creation back a step.
In closing, I want to emphasize the issue of transcendence. This is the hope that every reasonable person should be seeking yet we must be aware that there is a deceiver who wants to lead us to place our hope in a lie, a route that cannot lead to transcendence, what the Bible calls eternal life and the knowledge of God. Ultimately the true way can be found in the pages of Scripture, it is plainly described. What I am trying to do here is to show how the lie is a lie so as to help anyone believing the lie by destroying their confidence in it.
Non-Christian people too have a desire for transcendence! Evolutionists, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, they all seek transcendence, however they express that concept in their own terminology. Man hopes to evolve, now through artificial selection, to complete knowledge and to transcendence of his own natural state. To escape the cycle, to elevate himself beyond samsara and in his transcendence to elevate the universe with him. This would be analogous to the new heavens and the new earth which shall come based upon the triumph of Jesus Christ. But man without faith in Christ, that is, man by himself, can never achieve his goal of transcendence because he is simply an ephiphenomenon of this present world. As part of nature he cannot elevate nature above itself. That is like trying to ascend to heaven by pulling upwards on your own hair. It is pulling oneself up by the bootstraps! Impossible! Laughable! And contrary to Newton's Third Law of motion: as you pull up with your hand, your arm pushes down on your body with equal force.
Yet it is the lie of the devil, which deceives the whole world. The antichrist has said in his heart, I will be like the Most High (Isaiah 14:13-14).
"I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:
I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation,
in the sides of the north:
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will be like the most High."
The devil is not willing to accept that he is only a creature who came from nothing, so the antichrist is not willing to accept that he is only a man, and not God. How can anyone think that any process of evolution from a starting point, and a starting point in nothing no less, can lead to one becoming eternally existent?! For that is what transcendence is: eternal life, God is the Great I AM. And that is why evolutionists postulate billions of years. The factor of billions of years is meant to obscure an origin out of nothing. It is the reason why samsara in Buddhism is claimed to be a cycle without beginning, although in fact there was a beginning: when man sinned and God cursed the ground because of him; that is when the creation was subjected to futility (Gen 3:17-21).
This belief in evolution to transcendence, which is the ultimate end and meaning of the biological theory of evolution, is indeed the service of an imaginary man in the sky. Yet though this idol man exalts itself against the knowledge of God,
"Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell,
to the sides of the pit." Isaiah 14:15
If man is merely an ephiphenomenon of nature, he can never transcend the futility of nature itself. But if man is created in the image of the transcendent God, then man can transcend nature if God reaches down to help man.
And that is exactly what God has done in the Person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, "God with us".
How did God provide us this sure hope of transcendence?
Remember that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose again from the dead on the third day. He ascended to Heaven and sat down on the right hand of God, having received of His Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, which He gave to them that believe, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.
This means for us that by the offering of himself He has taken away our sins, sanctified and perfected us forever.
At first we were created from the dust of the ground but we were created in God's image and given life by His breath. However we sinned by disobedience and death entered through sin. Death passed upon all men because all have sinned. Jesus is God's image and came from heaven being made flesh and suffering to be tempted in all points as are we, yet as without sin. So He was like the opposite of us in a way but nevertheless identified with us. So when He died it wasn't for Himself since He never sinned. It was in our place that He died and for our sins. He took our 'cause of death' upon Him, as the Bible says, "that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9b). Those who believe are identified with Him in His death and also in His burial and resurrection from the dead. So our old man, our sinful and earthy nature is dead and buried with Christ but a new man has been created in his place, the identity that we lost when Adam our first father sinned. The new man created in God's image with His breath to give us spiritual life! This is the transcendent man. Receiving Jesus is receiving the right to become the sons of God. We become heirs with the pledge of transcendence, and one day we will see Jesus as He is and it will result in the full experience and even the elevation of the universe into our glorious liberty.
I pray that you do repent and ask the Lord to come into your life and save you, today.
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." John 14:6
In Jesus Name.
"For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." 2 Tim 1:12
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