J. Early Arceneaux
One of the favorite illustrations used by the evolutionists has to do with the automobile. They point to the modern automobile as an example of how evolution works—there was first the two-cylinder horseless carriage, then came the four cylinder car, the six, the eight, and finally the twelve. As the car developed from a crude, primitive buggy into the modern gleaming twelve-cylinder machine, so man developed from his crude, animal existence into the modern creature of intelligence and understanding.
But was the development of the car evolution? Not at all. The car did not evolve; it was developed. Each one of those improvements was the result of intelligent oversight and planning; each new bit of progress in the automotive field came about by the invention of intelligent men, not by chance at all. Now here would be how it would have to happen to make it fit the evolutionists picture:
If you had one of those old two-cylinder cars, and one day it simply ceased to be a two-cylinder car and automatically, spontaneously, and without a single reason for doing so, became a four-cylinder car; and then the four-cylinder car should one day of its own accord, and without the intervention of a single tool in anybody’s hand become a six-cylinder car; and then an eight, and a twelve—well, if you can conceive of that happening, then you’re probably a ripe prospect to join the school of the evolutionists. For that’s the way they think.
There is a difference between evolution and development. Nobody questions the idea of development. We all recognize that it is true. A man first built a canoe out of a log; that was his original boat. Then one day he stuck a pole up in that log, and put a sail on it. That was the sailboat. Still later on he built a steam engine, and put that engine in the boat to give it power. That was the steamship. After a while he developed a gasoline engine, and put that engine in a different kind of boat—one that would sail in air rather than in water. That was the airplane. Then he developed jet motors and rockets. But each stage of development was brought on by intelligent supervision and intervention, not by a spontaneous process of fortuitous forces, as evolution would have us believe.
Age of the Earth
The age of the earth is another of those matters on which the unbeliever thinks he can confound the Bible student. They boldly declare that geology contradicts the Bible as to the age of the earth. But just where in the Bible is there any indication as to the age of the earth? Do you think the Mosaic account of creation tells when the earth began? Read it again. Let the atheist set the age of the earth’s beginning as far back in antiquity as he wants to—a million years, a billion, a trillion, a quadrillion—and there is not one word in the Bible that says it did, or did not, begin at that time.
When does the Bible say the earth began? It doesn’t “In the beginning God…” That’s the first expression in the Bible. I dare any geologist, evolutionist, or anybody else to go one minute back of that! Let them put “the beginning” as far back as the human mind can conceive it, and still God was the One who began it. Does anyone think the earth started before “the beginning?”
“In the beginning God created…” We look about us. Everything we see or can imagine to exist shows us the hand of a Creator. Even the material, manufactured, things of this earth show clearly that there was intelligence and planning back of their creation. The thought, the idea, the mind is behind every gadget of civilization. Take a simple watch for an illustration. Here is a human invention, a piece of workmanship. Ask an atheist how this watch came to be. And listen as he tells you that nobody made the watch, that it simply “evolved.” let him describe to you how the watch was once a turnip, and just kept on growing, and growing, and turned into a tomato, and then into an ear of corn, and then into a pocket knife, and then into a watch!
Then ask this unbeliever about how the earth came to be. And listen as he tells you how this great universe (infinitely more intricate and delicately balanced than the finest watch ever made) wasn’t made at all, but just “evolved.” He will laugh at the idea of design, order, or purpose in the universe. To him it seems perfectly rational and reasonable that the great universe should evolve out of nothing at all, that its great bodies should move through the heavens in breath taking precision and regularity, keeping each its own orbit and each its own sphere with split-second timing, and that all of that “just happens!”
When we gaze into the heavens we look upon stars that are incredible distances away. Astronomers tell us that some of these stars we see are so distant that it takes millions of years for their light (traveling at 186,000 miles per second) to reach us. Space is literally sown with suns, planets, moons, and heavenly bodies, some of them of such magnitude as to stagger the imagination. I was reading only recently of one of these stars so big that if it were placed in our solar system, it would engulf our whole sun, reach to the earth, and clear out to the orbit of Saturn. Our earth is 92 million miles from the sun, yet this one planet is bigger than our sun, earth, and all the planets revolving around the sun put together! It takes our earth 365 days to make a complete circuit around the sun. Yet Neptune is so far away that 164 years (not days) must elapse for Neptune to complete its orbit. And the whole solar system is just a pinpoint in the universe. There are millions and millions of other solar systems like this—suns like our sun (which is a very small star) and stars without number. Yet space is so immense that these heavenly bodies are about as crowded as would be three gulls having the whole Pacific Ocean to themselves.
But David said, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psa. 14:1). The psalmist didn’t say how big a fool such a man is, but we can pretty well imagine. Here he stands on this tiny grain of sand, our earth, struts and boasts, and says, “There is no God!” You know what he does? He assumes that there is no God. That assumption is based on his fantastic egotism—the opinion that he knows everything, that he has all knowledge. For if there is one single truth that he does not know, that truth might be the fact of God’s existence. If there is one single spot he has not explored in all the heavens, that spot might be God’s habitation. Only a fool can be an atheist. There is no other explanation for atheism.
