What the Bible Doesn’t Say About Human Origins
Hope McGovern
The modern atheist claims that religion is a cultural artifact of
ancient history. When ancient peoples spoke of “God,” they
imagined a personification of natural processes that modern
science has long since rendered obsolete. Like the Ancient
Greeks inventing Zeus to explain lightning, the Ancient Hebrew
people crafted their god, Yahweh, to explain the supernatural
origin of the cosmos. These myths were necessary to their
understanding of the natural world because they did not have
the proper conception of evolution or cosmology, and should
now be promptly discarded. They continue today only in the
hearts of those who prefer to cling to fantastical fairy-tales
rather than scientific facts about human origins.
These claims have incited rebuttals from many fundamentalist
Christians. Although this group expresses a spectrum of
beliefs, the loudest opinion in this arena belongs to six-day
Creationists such as Ken Ham and Doug Phillips, who
espouse a literalist view of creation (that the “days” described
in Genesis are actual 24-hour periods) or a semi-literalist view
(that they describe different eras of pre-human history). 1 Their
opponents are the self-dubbed “New Atheists” like Richard
Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, who believe
that statements about God’s existence as revealed in the
biblical texts can be tested (and disproved) by the scientific
method and, in doing so, adopt a metaphysical stance that
exceeds the bounds of scientific inquiry. 2 There is also a third
path, Intelligent Design, to which we will come presently.
Since the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of the 1920s first vaulted
the issue into the public eye, it has become clear that both
those in scientific communities and in fundamentalist religious
communities increasingly view science and faith as deeply
irreconcilable. In this landmark court case, the Tennessee
legislature upheld a state law which, on religious grounds,
1
2
2008.
Answers in Genesis, answersingenesis.com
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Mariner Books,
20 Fall 2019
banned the teaching of evolution in state-funded schools. 3
This same tension is painfully evident in the 2014 film, God’s
Not Dead, in which a college student defending his Christian
faith before an atheist professor feels he must first cast doubt
on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution before he can argue for
God’s existence. 4 The evolution-creation debate has become
so incendiary that it has become the “third rail” of faith
for modern Christian intellectuals. The tense atmosphere
surrounding these topics has created a dichotomy for people
in communities of higher learning who consider themselves
both scientists and Christians: they either learn to supress
what they believe the Bible claims about human origins
while learning evolutionary biology; or, finding the task of
intellectual reconciliation to be too great, they live as if they’ve
found out Santa Claus isn’t real but must play along so as not
to ruin the younger kids’ world of make-believe.
This is a brittle faith that will invariably lead to either
impenetrable ignorance or utter disillusionment. It is central
to the Christian worldview that the God of the Bible is a
creator God—if humanity is not made in God’s image, not
only does any Christian argument for intrinsic human value
fall away, but there would be no need for a Savior if humanity
as a whole has not been cut off from its source of life and
creative power. Therefore, seeing that this topic is of utmost
importance, I urge those of faith to boldly pursue answers to
questions of human origins for the simple reason that if we
believe that the biblical message holds up to scrutiny, we must
allow it to be scrutinized. Put another way, if we find the story
of God’s redemption plan for humanity through the person
of Jesus Christ to be more beautiful and more compelling
than any other explanation of the human condition and
ultimate purpose, then we should not live in fear of new
3
“The Monkey Trial.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall
Association
4
Cronk, Harold, Willie Robertson, David A. R. White, and
Shane Harper. God's Not Dead. 2014.