|
|
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
~ Genesis 1:1
Or did He? |
The "Scopes Monkey Trial"
of 1925 pitted lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow (the
latter representing teacher John T. Scopes) against each other in an American
court case that tested a law (the Butler Act) passed on March 13, 1925,
which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment
in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation
of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended
from a lower order of animals." In other words, the law forbade the teaching
of any aspect of the theory of evolution.
After eight days of trial,
it took the jury only nine minutes to deliberate. Scopes was found guilty
of teaching evolution on July 21 and ordered to pay a $100 fine. Ironically,
it was attorney Bryan who offered to pay it. The case was eventually
escalated and tried before the US Supreme Court. However, having
found the statute to be constitutional, the Court set aside the conviction
on appeal due to a technical issue: the jury should have decided the fine,
not the judge, as Tennessee judges could not at that time set fines above
50 dollars. The prosecution did not seek a retrial.
Not until 1968 did the Supreme
Court rule in Epperson v. Arkansas 393 U.S. 97 (1968) that such bans contravene
the Establishment Clause because their primary purpose is religious. (Tennessee
had repealed the Butler Act the previous year.)
Since then, the theory of
evolution has become the accepted "scientific" explanation for the existence
of the universe. The current popular thought is that a "Big Bang"
hurled all of the matter that now makes up the universe into the cosmos.
Carl Sagan (the original "Cosmos" television series) was often quoted for
his reference to this process supposedly having to take "billions an billions
and billions of years."
According to the theory,
our own Earth is but one tiny speck in a vast ocean of suns, planets, etc.,
and was left to evolve by itself. In time (millions and millions
of years), a combination of chemical substances that formed the first microscopic
life evolved into more complex forms; thus, the journey of humanity from
mammal to monkey to man was completed. Then, again, man may one day
evolve into an even higher form of life in another million years--or so
goes the theory.
Of course, Baptists hold
to the Biblical account of the Creation as recorded in Genesis 1.
It is God who summoned the stars and the worlds into existence. It
is He who created this beautiful planet. It is He who created man
in His own image.
Furthermore, all scientific
factual evidence points to something that demonstrates that the world not
evolving. In fact, the rate of extinction is greater than it could
ever possibly support the concept of being in a process of evolving.
This planet once teamed with
life. Archeology has proven that dinosaurs once walked the Earth.
They only exist now as bone fragments in museums. Saber toothed tigers
and giant sloths once roamed the landscape. They and tens of thousands
of other species like them are gone. If they did not die out on their
own accord, then it is man has helped them disappear due to his ignorance
and sometimes uncontrollable greed. Only in recent years, have we
become concerned about our environment and protecting those species whose
very existence is endangered.
The United Nations Environment
Program (UNEP) report on the global environment published in May 2002 concluded
that over 11,000 species (including almost a quarter of all mammals) face
extinction within 30 years. In total more than 5,000 plants, 1,000 mammals,
and 5,000 other animals (including one in eight birds) are endangered,
mostly due to habitat destruction and invasion by non-native species, including
man. The report states that factors that caused previous extinctions are
operating with "ever-increasing intensity."
When one considers the evolutionist's
stance that everything is in the process of evolving while, in fact, species
that supposedly took millions and millions of years to evolve are continuously
being snuffed out of existence, more questions arise than there are answers.
The theory of evolution is frought with chaos. Order does not come
out of chaos.
Conversely, the Biblical
account of creation maintains that there was and is a supreme intelligence
who created this universe in an organized and orderly fashion. It's
geological periods, eras, and history is under God's control, He
thought it into existence and it is He who maintians the harmony and order
of the universe. It is He who call's us to account for how we have
treated that part of His creation which He entrusted to us.
Therefore, the real issue
has to do with man's tendency to accept theories which excuses him of any
accountability to a higher power. By accepting the theory of evolution
as fact, those who do so while denying God's existence are able to justify
their own actions and deeds outside of the will of God. Can there
be any doubt that those who accept evolution generally fall inside the
camps of those proclaiming atheism and agnosticism?
If they are right and there
is no God, then it would seem that all of us will simply die and cease
to exist.
However, if they are wrong,
then someone is in for a rude awakening once their lives are over on this
side of eternity.
"And as it is appointed
unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:"
~ Hebrews 9:27 |
|
|
