Anthropology - Origin of Man

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You want to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 1.
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We're going to go to verse 26 and 27.
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This passage is probably very familiar to you all.
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This is the passage where we learn about the creation of man.
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We are beginning tonight the subject of anthropology as part of our larger study of systematic theology.
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Anthropology, as we will learn tonight, is the study of man.
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And man in his origins, man in his creation, his nature, and his purpose.
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We learn this beginning in Genesis 1 and verse 26 which says, Then God said, Let us make man in our image and after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
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So God created man in His own image.
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In the image of God, He created him, male and female.
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He created them.
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So ends the reading of God's Word and may God add His blessing to the reading of His Word.
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In 1988, the Human Genome Project began with a group of scientists assembled by National Institute of Health Director James Weingartner.
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And by 2003, an accurate and complete genome sequence was finished and made available to scientists and researchers two years ahead of the original schedule.
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So from 1988 to 2003, this massive undertaking of project to map the human genome was undertaken.
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And I want to quote to you from genome.gov.
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This is actually the site where the information from the study is held.
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And this is what it says, quote, The Human Genome Project was one of the great feats of exploration in history.
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Rather than an outward exploration of the planet or the cosmos, the HGP was an inward voyage of discovery led by an international team of researchers looking to sequence and map all of the genes, together known as the genome, of members of our species, Homo sapien.
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Completed in April 2003, the HGP gave us the ability for the first time to read nature's complete genetic blueprint for building a human being.
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Oh, that's the quote.
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This investment of both time and money demonstrates the interest that human beings have in knowing about themselves and about their origins.
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I mentioned in my sermon on Sunday that we have a similar proof when we look out at all of the advertising for companies like 23andMe, Ancestry.com, and MyHeritage and companies like that.
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Those are places where you can send in a sample of your DNA, usually the saliva in your mouth, and they're able to take that and run a test and determine who your ancestors were, where you came from, of what nationality you are, or at least your ancestors were.
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And the reason why those places are making money, and they are, hand over fist, the reason why those places are making money is because there is a natural yearning among people to know where we come from.
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So that is the subject that we're going to be studying for the next several weeks.
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This is the doctrine of anthropology.
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Now, some of you probably know this.
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Anthropology is a Greek phrase.
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Well, it's taken, rather.
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It's an English word taken from a Greek phrase.
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The word anthropos is the Greek word for man.
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And then when you add ology to the end of a word, you get that word's meaning, the study of that, like theology is the study of God, Christology is the study of Jesus Christ, pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit.
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So when we get here, anthropos comes from the Greek word anthropos or anthropoi, depending on how it's used, and we have the word anthropology.
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This deals with the questions of where did we come from? What is our nature? Why are we here? I've broken this into four parts.
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If you look at your notes, you'll see that there are four parts to our study of anthropology.
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We are going to look at the origin of man.
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That's tonight.
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We are going to look at the nature of man.
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That will be next week.
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We are going to look at the unity of man.
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That will be in the third week.
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And then finally, our fourth week will be the constitution of man.
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Now there is a possibility that some of these may go into a second week, so I can't promise.
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Oh yeah, it would be real surprising if I did that.
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But I really have worked very hard to try to put these into component studies where we are doing one week at a time.
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I've learned a little by doing Sovereign Grace Academy because in Sovereign Grace Academy, I don't have the luxury of going another week.
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So I have to manage my time.
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So I'm going to try to manage our anthropology study into these four core sections.
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And so we are going to move on now to the origin of man.
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Where did we come from? And certainly we've already read the Scripture tonight that tells us where we came from.
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But I want to ask this question because even though the Scripture seems to me to be very clear, there are still some who seem to be confused about this.
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And that is the question of, is man created by God or did man come about through some other means? Is man directly, miraculously, and immediately created by God? Or did he come about by some other way? Okay.
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How many of you have ever heard me mention the name Richard Dawkins? Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous atheist biologist in the world.
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That sounded kind of funny.
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He's an atheist and he's a biologist.
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It sounded like I put those two together.
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He is probably the most famous atheist in the world, or at least one of them.
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And he wrote a book.
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His book was entitled The Selfish Gene.
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In that book he says this, We are survival machines, robot vehicles, blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.
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End quote.
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So notice how he frames the human life.
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He first says, they're machines.
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Survival machines.
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Machines just intent on making it.
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He also says they're robots, vehicles for the genes, blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules.
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And what's interesting about this, if you hear him say that and then later him say, I'm a free thinker.
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Not if you're a blindly programmed machine.
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You're not a free thinker.
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You're blindly programmed.
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This is what always gets me when I have the conversation.
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They say, well, you're just a religious zealot.
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And I'll say, well, if you're right, and my genes have programmed me to be this way, I don't have a choice.
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So what's your problem? You're not a free thinker.
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You're just doing what your programmed genes are making you do.
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It doesn't sound like he thinks too much of man.
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He doesn't.
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In fact, if you listen to secular speakers and thinkers, they think man is a mistake.
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That's one phrase I've heard.
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They talk about man as being not very special at all.
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He's made of the same stuff as everyone else.
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And we're going to talk about that in a few weeks.
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Because we are.
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In our physical nature, we're made of the same stuff everything else is made of, which makes sense.
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We're made of the dust of the ground.
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It makes sense that we would share the same elemental components of everything else.
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But that's not what makes us special.
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What makes us special is the immaterial part.
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We're going to talk about that in week four.
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But still though, yeah, they don't think much of man.
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You're right about that, Dan, for sure.
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He also stated, I want to quote again from Dawkins, he also stated in an interview with PBS, quote, anybody who is not ignorant or a fool can see that evolution is true.
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End quote.
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Well, yeah, I mean, honestly, anybody who is not ignorant or a fool, that's, from where I come from, them fighting words.
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You know what I mean? That's not a nice thing.
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That's a pretty heavy assault.
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He goes on to say, quote, the whole point, the whole beauty of the Darwinian explanation for life is that it's self-sufficient.
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You start with nothing, essentially.
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You start with something very, very simple, the origin of the earth, like that simple, but I digress.
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And from that, by slow, gradual degrees, as I put it, climbing mount improbable, by slow, gradual degrees, you build up from single beginnings and simple needs, easy to understand, up to a complicated ending like ourselves and kangaroos.
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Yeah, he compares humans to kangaroos.
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He basically says everything started simple and by climbing mount impossible or improbable, we have arrived at all of the grandeur that we see around us.
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Question.
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Yes.
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Did he say where earth come from? No.
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In fact, evolutionists will often tell you they have no reason to tell you where the earth came from.
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That's not their point.
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They simply tell you how life evolved, which is a great way to escape the big question.
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But yeah, they often will say we're not about origins.
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We're about evolution.
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Dawkins is one of the world's foremost proponents of Darwinism.
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This is the theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin who lived in the mid-1800s.
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And it states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.
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According to a Gallup poll in 2017, the number of people who believe in evolution as the method for mankind's creation was about 60%.
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With about half of those people believing God guided evolution and the other half believing it was just naturally guided.
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So, think of that in pure numbers, right? Out of 100, right? And I'm going to show how bad I am at doing math here for a second.
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But out of 100, you say about 60% believe in evolution and about half of those would say God did the evolving and the other half would say nature, unguided, did the evolving.
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But still, that leaves only the remaining 40%, that's right, right, would say there was no evolution.
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So it's actually interesting, a pretty high number that would say no evolution at all, 40%.
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But still, 60% would say evolution had something to do with the origin of man, whether they believe God guided the process or whether they believe it simply was something that nature, unguided nature, did.
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Yes, sir, Don.
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60% of everybody in the world because there's religions that...
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Gallup is probably doing a United States survey.
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I believe that.
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I would have to go back and check.
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I have the website here.
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I can go back and look at it.
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But normally, it's a United States survey.
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I remember growing up in school and seeing the pictures of the ascent of man where it started out, remember I talked about this Sunday, started out with the primate and then it started to get bigger and bigger and then eventually you have this erect person which they would refer to as homo sapien.
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You remember that? You go down to the museum right now, you can see.
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Sometimes they have it done with pictures.
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Sometimes they have it done with wax figures.
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And most of us have been taught that at some point in school.
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And we've all heard the arguments.
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And that's the reason.
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Yes, it's taught.
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It's simply something that is assumed.
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It is assumed that this is true.
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And why is it assumed? Now, I want to go over some of the arguments for Darwinism.
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To be fair, and because we're discussing origins, why would someone believe in the Darwinian evolutionary model? I want to give you six reasons why people assume Darwinism.
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The first is comparative anatomy.
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If you look at the structure of all vertebrate animals, they're all basically the same.
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Now, some are erect, some are not, but they all have a very similar structure of build.
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And as I already noted, they're all made of the same stuff.
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We're all made of the same elemental structure.
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And so because of that, that comparative anatomy, in fact, if you've ever seen the picture, maybe you have, maybe you haven't, how they'll take the whale model and they'll show how the whale's fins look almost like hands, if you look at the bones of the fins, and they'll say, see, this is how the hand evolved.
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It started out as a flipper, or a fin, and it went from fin to phalange, from flipper to hand.
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And again, if you're a person who is moved by that, you say, yes, of course, it makes perfect sense.
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They have the right look, and when things look alike, they must have a similar origin.
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That's one argument.
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And again, that can be compelling to some people.
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Another argument is something called the vestigial organ.
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Vestigial organ are those organs in your body that seem to have no purpose other than to make you have to have surgeries at a really young age, such as your appendix.
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How many of you lost your appendix? Maybe you don't want to share.
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My cousin had his appendix burst and almost died.
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And the question, well, why do we have such an organ that doesn't seem to do much except bring us the possibility of an early death? And the evolutionists would say that is the testimony of the fact that we used to need it.
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Now we don't.
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And so that's proof of evolution.
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Remember what evolution simply means? Change, right? So we used to need it.
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We've changed.
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We don't need it anymore.
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And there are other things, such as the extension of the tailbone, which they say used to be connected to a tail.
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There is the wisdom teeth, which obviously a lot of us have those removed because if we don't, they cause pain and jaw problems.
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And so they'll say these are proofs that man has changed because we have these evolutionary holdovers.
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That's a second argument.
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Number three, embryology.
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Embryology is the study of the human fetus.
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How many of you have ever seen the picture? And by the way, when I say fetus, it's a baby.
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I'm not distinguishing and saying it's not a human baby.
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But I say fetus simply so you know I mean the in-the-womb baby versus the out-of-the-womb baby.
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How many of you have ever seen a picture of the fetus at about eight to ten days? It looks like not much.
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And then about eight weeks in, it looks very similar to most other embryos.
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If you look at the embryo of a pig and the embryo of a human baby, there's not much difference in how they look.
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So that's an argument from the evolutionists.
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Well, we all look the same from the beginning.
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But you understand, I'm not making these arguments myself.
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I'm simply explaining why people would believe this.
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They say, well, see, we all have the same beginning.
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It's just what changes occur after that.
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And again, I've seen these arguments in the textbook.
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Look, here's a picture of a pig fetus.
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Here's a picture of a sheep fetus.
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Here's a picture of a human fetus.
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And they all look the same.
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Therefore, we're all the same type of evolutionary creature.
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Just after the growth begins, you see how evolution has changed us.
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Another of the arguments is from biochemistry.
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And I've already mentioned this one.
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But the biochemistry argument is this.
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All living things have the same biochemical makeup.
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Therefore, all living things must have the same origin.
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That's the argument.
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If all things have the same makeup, they must all have the same origin.
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I'm not arguing this.
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I'm just saying these are the arguments.
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Paleontology is number five.
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This is the study of fossils.
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And we've all heard about them finding the fossils of pre-Homo sapien man-like beings, such as the Neanderthal man, the Piltdown man, and all of the rest of these different types of beings.
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I remember once hearing, and this is an interesting aside, they found a tooth.
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And they reconstructed an entire human body off of this tooth.
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And it was supposed to be the missing link.
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It was supposed to be that one type of creature that was the bypass between ape and man.
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Later, DNA testing showed the tooth was the tooth of a pig.
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But they had created an entire myth around the origins of this miraculous tooth.
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But paleontology is used as an argument for evolution.
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And then finally, genetics, which I mentioned earlier.
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Genetics, recognizing heredity and variations among related organisms, they'll say we're all genetically linked.
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Therefore, evolution must be true.
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You're aware that as far as DNA goes, you are within just a few percentage points of apes, right? Do you understand that? No, you are.
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DNA...
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I'm not insulting.
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You know you're a bunch of apes, don't you? If it came out that way, I apologize.
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I ate a banana today.
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I did too.
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I'm going to talk about this in week three, but we are all...
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You are 99.999% the same as the person next to you, genetically.
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And it's 99% the same as an ape.
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Yes? Sometimes I wonder if God didn't give us all these extra parts that we don't need and all that just to confuse the wise.
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Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, I know that's not the right answer, but if I can't find, that's how I feel.
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I do know God does things to confound the wise.
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I don't think we have anything we shouldn't have.
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Even now, scientists have found reasons why the appendix exists and that it does serve a purpose.
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I'm sure that the wisdom teeth serve some type of a purpose.
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I don't disbelieve that there has been a change in mankind since the fall and even over the last several thousand years.
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I mean, if you look at...
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Just this one thing is proof enough to prove that we are changing, at least in a sense.
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If you look at who won the Olympics in the 1900s and the times that they did their distance running, high school students now are outrunning the guys who won the gold 100 years ago.
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So there is a type of change that's happening.
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But it's not molecules to man evolution.
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That's the type of evolution that's the issue, right? And so, yeah, I think that there are...
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I think that God does do things to confound the wise.
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Dan, I don't disagree with you there.
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But I think also there are changes that happen and we shouldn't deny that.
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I mean, think about Michael Phelps, how fast he can swim.
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There's never been another human being in the world that swims as fast as him.
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Now there is, now though, a high school student that's meeting his record.
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Isn't that amazing? Huh? Oh, yeah, I didn't know that.
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But the point is it's just going to keep happening as these amazing things occur.
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So we have these reasons for the evolution of man.
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I've given you six.
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There are more, but I've given you the ones that normally we've heard about in school.
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But I want to mention something.
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Even with all this evidence, even with all these six things, and the other things that are piled on in school, we still got 40% of people who don't believe it.
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And 30% of the people who do believe it don't believe it happened accidentally or on its own.
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Why do you think that is? Well, I think it has to do with the fact that we can't look at the human body, the machine, if you want to call it that, and think this machine didn't have some type of designer.
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It's such a complex and amazing machine, if it is a machine, if we want to use that language.
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And so this argument of evolution versus creation is an argument that is really based on are we an accident or are we on purpose.
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Because those who would say naturalism caused the evolution which brought about man would say that it happened by chance or by random mutation.
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That's the phrase that's usually used.
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Random mutation brought about all of the amazing things that are Dale Springer.
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You are the byproduct of random mutation over billions of years.
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You're an exception.
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I want to remind you of something that some of you probably know but some of you may not.
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And that is that in 1925, we're coming up on the 100 year anniversary.
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In 1925, Tennessee State's legislature banned the teaching of evolution in school.
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The new law made it illegal for instructors to discuss any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible or to teach that man has descended from a lower order of animals.
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You guys remember what that was called? The Scopes Trial.
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The Scopes Trial.
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And it so happened that the American Civil Liberties Union, yes, the ACLU has been around for a long time, representing teacher John Scopes sued to overturn that law.
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The creationist law was upheld though many on the evolutionist side consider the cross-examination from Clarence Darrow to William Jennings Bryan, who was the defending creationist, to have been a loss for the creationist.
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They feel like Clarence Darrow's arguments outdid the arguments of the creationist, even though they did win the case.
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The area of questioning involved the book of Genesis, including questions such as if Eve was actually created from Adam's rib, where did Cain get his wife, and how many people lived in ancient Egypt.
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Darrow used these examples to suggest that the stories of the Bible could not be scientific and should not be used in teaching science, with Darrow telling Bryan, you insult every man of science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool religion.
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That was stated in the transcript of the court case.
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Bryan's declaration in response is, the reason why I'm answering is not for the benefit of the superior court.
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It is to keep these gentlemen from saying I was afraid to meet them and let them question me.
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And I want the Christian world to know that any atheist, agnostic, unbeliever can question me any time as to my belief in God and I will answer him.
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That was a good response.
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But it went on, and again the creationists won the day, but they certainly didn't win the battle, because as time progressed, evolution became more and more taught in schools, and creation became relegated to not even being allowed to be discussed.
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It's not even allowed to be discussed today.
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You can't even talk about what's known as intelligent design.
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You know what ID is? You've heard of ID theory? Intelligent design theory is not the same as creationism.
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Creationism says God created man, and Christian creationism says God created man in his own images, according to what the Bible says.
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Intelligent design is the statement that the universe and man and the earth are demonstrating such powerful examples of design, and I'm going to preach on this in a few weeks.
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I'm going to preach on a sermon called The Impossible Planet.
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Our planet is impossible, not improbable.
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It's impossible without the hand of God.
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There are so many variables that have to be held right at all times.
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Do you realize the amount of aluminum in this world matters to your survival? The amount of helium in this world matters to your survival? You don't even think about that, and yet it does.
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And all of those things are on this one impossible planet.
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Intelligent design says it could not be that this earth would be were there not some intelligence that created it or designed it.
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Now, my problem with intelligent design is they don't go far enough.
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They say there was an intelligence, but we don't know who or what it was, and I'm not willing to say that.
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I'm willing to say it's the God of the Bible, and he is the creator of all things, including man.
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So that's the difference between ID and creationism.
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Now, I want to mention a few other things.
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The Scopes Trial was not the only one of its kind.
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In 1965, Arkansas still had a law, also dating to the 20s, forbidding the teaching of evolution.
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So that year, 1965, how many of you are alive? No, you don't have to raise your hand.
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In 1965, the Arkansas Education Association, allied with science teacher Susan Epperson, challenged the measure, and after a brief trial, the presiding judge found that the anti-evolutionary law violated the U.S.
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Constitution, which says the government shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, and the verdict was overturned by the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1967.
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But on appeal, the U.S.
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Supreme Court agreed with the original decision, and in 1968, it was declared illegal to ban the classroom science, to ban classroom science for reasons of conflict with a particular religious doctrine.
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So it was in 1968 that the Supreme Court said that evolution could be taught.
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And again, that was where the main things began to happen.
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In 2005, the School Board of Dover, Pennsylvania mandated that classes on evolutionary science commence with an announcement supporting the study of intelligent design, what I just mentioned.
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A group of parents filed suit to overturn the new policy, and after a lengthy trial, presiding judge John Jones found for the parents, declaring that intelligent design is a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism, and is not a scientific theory.
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So here's the change in 100 years.
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We went from, you can't teach evolution, you must teach the Bible, to, okay, 1968, okay, you can teach evolution.
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Now, you can't teach creation.
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What a mighty shift from one to the other.
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Recently, this issue has become more of a pop culture issue, with influential personalities becoming almost like pseudo rock stars.
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Guys like Bill Nye, who has come out against creationism.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who comes out against creationism.
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Some have accepted Darwin's theories, rather, excuse me, let me back up a second.
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These men are rock stars for the anti-creation crowd.
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But there's another problem, and that is that some have accepted Darwin's theories as being in accord with Christian belief, and they seek to teach evolution as the Christian view of the origin of man.
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So, that's a whole other animal, isn't it? It's one thing to say that the public school has allowed for the teaching of evolution, and has disallowed the teaching of creation, or even intelligent design.
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But, the churches have allowed the teaching of Darwinism, and have began to propose it as the answer to the Genesis question.
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I want to introduce you to a group, and I would encourage you, if you are interested, you may go and look this group up.
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The group is called Bio Logos, and the website is biologos.org.
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Now, again, I like breaking down words.
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Bios, or bio, is the Greek for life.
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Logos is the word for word.
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And this is their site about life, and about the origins of life.
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And they seek to propose a union between Christianity and evolution.
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I want to read from their website for you.
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Quote, Properly understood, evolution is a scientific theory about the development of life, and is consistent with Christian theology.
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We call our position on origins evolutionary creation.
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That is to say, we believe God is the creator, and accept that evolution is the best scientific description for how life has developed.
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This is similar to saying we believe God provides for the growth and development of plants, while we also accept that the theory of photosynthesis is the best scientific explanation for that process.
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End quote.
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So, they compare a belief in evolution to a belief in photosynthesis.
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Essentially saying they're on the same footing in scientific terms.
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Groups like Biologos are not denying that God created man, but I still believe that they are not only dangerous, but heretical.
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And I'll tell you why.
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They don't deny that God created man, but they do deny that God created man as an immediate creation.
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Now, you say, wait a minute.
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Immediate just means fast.
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No.
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The word immediate means something that does not have a secondary cause.
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Immediate means without a mediator, or without mediation.
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When God does something immediately, it means He does it.
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He doesn't use something else to make it happen.
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For instance, I'll give you the best example I can.
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Imagine there's a jug of water sitting on a table, and God wants that water to be gone.
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He can immediately make it vanish, or He can bring in a group of thirsty football players and have it drank.
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God's still the one doing it, but one He does immediately, and one He does through a mediator or some kind of mediation, that being the football players.
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So, creation via evolution is not immediate creation.
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It is creation through the medium of natural selection.
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Do you understand? It's a different understanding of how God created man.
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We believe what the Bible teaches, that God Himself formed man from the dust, and God Himself breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
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Not through thousands or millions of years of mediation, but immediate creation.
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That is the difference between the evolutionary creationist and the biblical creationist.
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And I will say it's biblical.
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Their argument that they are biblical is to me a great fallacy, because they do not have any biblical ground upon which to stand to make the argument that man came about through evolution.
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There are tons of bits of information on the site.
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I don't mind telling you, go read it if you think it will help you.
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For me, learning about these things allows me to have the conversation with people who believe it, because I don't simply get blindsided when they say some of the things that they say.
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I've already heard it.
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So go to Biologos and see what you want to see there.
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But I want to read to you just a few quick quotes.
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One, at Biologos we are persuaded by the scientific evidence that Homo sapiens evolved, arising about 200,000 years ago and sharing common ancestors with all other life on earth.
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Furthermore, it increasingly appears that the genetic diversity among humans today could not have come from just two Homo sapiens individuals, but a population of thousands.
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Notice what they are denying there.
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They are not only denying that man is created as an immediate creation of God, they are denying the existence of a historic Adam and a historic Eve, saying that all people are from many, not from two.
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Again, there is a lot here.
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I don't have enough time to get through it all.
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Because all of this leads to a crucial question.
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This is where I am going to draw to a close.
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This is the crucial question.
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Is Darwinian evolution the best way to interpret Scripture? My answer is an emphatic no.
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In fact, I would argue that Darwinian evolution is in direct conflict with the Bible's testimony.
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The Bible does not describe a process for creation, but rather a direct, immediate, miraculous act of God.
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We see this in Genesis 1.26, Genesis 2.7, Genesis 2.21 and 2.22, Deuteronomy 4.32, Isaiah 45.12, 1 Timothy 2.13, 1 Corinthians 15.39.
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If you want those Scriptures, I will go back and give them to you later, but I am running low on time.
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But just the point of it is, there is too much evidence.
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Jesus Christ spoke of the historic Adam as a real person.
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The Bible gives Adam as the starting point of all genealogies, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.
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You can go to the New Testament and see the genealogy of Jesus Christ starting with Adam.
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So we have a reason to believe in a historic Adam as an immediate creation of Almighty God.
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Furthermore, as we will see in the weeks ahead, not only is Adam necessary because he is listed among the genealogies, he is also necessary because he is listed as the one who brought sin into the world and the need for a Savior.
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It stands to reason why unbelievers would be moved to accept Darwinism.
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Don't you understand why people accept it? Because it is the best answer they have when they don't want the real answer.
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It is the best answer they have when they don't want the truth.
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Dr.
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Albert Mohler said this, At the end of the day, the theological modifications required by the acceptance of evolution are vast and utterly disastrous for biblical Christianity.
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Basically saying this, if you take evolution and try to cram it into the Bible, the results are disastrous.
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As I say, I draw to a close, the biblical account of the origin of man is simple.
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Man was created immediate, man was created direct, and man was created miraculous.
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That is the origin of man.
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Immediate, direct, and miraculous.
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Next week, we are going to move and look at the nature of man.
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What kind of being is this being which is called man? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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May it be that Your Word would empower us to stand for and stand on the truth.
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That we are not just cosmic mistakes, but that we are created in the image of Almighty God.
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And that we are special creations, not simply the byproduct of some process.
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Thank You God for giving us the truth of Your Word.
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May we rest upon it in Christ's name.
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Amen.