GN Commentary: September 21, 2009 - Dawkins or Design?

To believe in evolution is to believe that you are a 3.9 billion year long accident in the making. To believe the Bible is to believe that God created you with a purpose. Which one will you believe?

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Video Transcript

If you don't believe in evolution, you are as ignorant and deluded as the fools who deny the Holocaust.

That, at least, is the stance of Dr. Richard Dawkins in his newest book, The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution. Dawkins claims that the evidence for evolution is just as concrete as the evidence for the massacre of six million Jews during Hitler's reign; he also implicitly labels those who believe that the universe was created by God as "a baying pack of ignoramuses," displaying "an exhibition of ignorant prejudice" through their continuous and "belligerent demands."  He goes on to say, "Evolution is a fact in the same sense as it is a fact that Paris is in the northern hemisphere," adding that, "No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it."

Evidently Professor Dawkins refuses to acknowledge as "reputable" scientists such as Dr. Michael Behe, a professor, biochemist and author of Darwin's Black Box, or the many  scientists interviewed in Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator, or the fifty scientists who contributed to the essay collection, In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation.

But the finer points of the evolution debate are far beyond the scope of a short commentary. Let's instead take a brief look at the endgame of two very disparate worldviews: the one presented by evolution, and the one presented by the Bible.

Evolution says that the finely tuned ecosystems all around us are the result of millions of years of infinitesimal changes in genetic structure, which against all odds managed to produce a staggering variety of life filled with molecular machinery so advanced that the greatest of mankind's technological feats pale in comparison.

The Bible says that the same ecosystems, along with the entire universe, are the deliberate and careful work of a supremely intelligent Being who does nothing without a purpose.

To believe in evolution is to believe that you are a 3.9 billion year long accident in the making. You have no reason for being; at the very best you can make a valiant attempt to enjoy your life until you die, return to the ground and pass forever from history and memory alike.

To believe the Bible is to believe that the same God who put such time and consideration into creating the universe created it and the people in it with a purpose. That we are here for a reason. That the world around us, and yes, even we ourselves are not the result of some incomprehensible genetic lottery. The apostle Paul writes that "the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope. Because the creation itself will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Romans 8:20-21, NKJV).

Two very different cosmologies. One that proposes an accidental occurrence in the evolutionary chain. The other that suggests you are here to become part of a great divine plan.

Which one will you believe?

For GN Magazine, I'm Ralph Levy.