In this thought-provoking episode, Adrian Rogers tackles one of the most profound questions: Did God make man, or did man create the concept of God? Delving into the widely debated topic of evolution versus creation, Rogers examines the implications of Darwinian evolution on human value and morality. Through a series of logical arguments and insights from notable scientists, he challenges the mainstream acceptance of evolutionary theory, highlighting the lack of evidence supporting transitional forms and spontaneous generation. Rogers goes on to expose the philosophical biases that underpin the theory of evolution, suggesting it serves as a means of rejecting
This message is given by Adrian Rogers and Loveworth Finding Ministries.
SPEAKER 02 :
If you were to reduce all of the questions in the world down to one question, it would simply be this. Did God make man or did man make God? Is man the special creation of Almighty God or is God in the figment and the imagination of man? Now look at our verse. 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 20. O Timothy, keep that which is committed unto thy trust. avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen. Now, what are we talking about when we talk about Darwinian evolution? What is this? Well, let me tell you what our students are subjected to day by day and what is found in most all of our libraries. The Time Life book series has this advertisement. Actually, the series is called The Emergence of Man. The emergence of man, and this series is found in almost all public libraries, in almost all high school and junior high school and elementary schools across America. Let me read from that ad. Let me just show you what children are being taught. And this is not universal, but I would say it is very typical. I’m reading now from the Time Life book series, The Emergence of Man. Quote, Today, that creature who first began to raise himself above other animals no longer exists. He has become you. Unique, set apart from the two million other species living on the planet by a thumb that makes your hand the precision tool by a knee that locks you into a comfortable upright position and by your capacity for abstract thought and speech now that’s what makes you different boys and girls your thumb your knee and the ability to think abstractly that’s what makes you a significant other from an animal all this and more has enabled your species to dominate the earth and yet you share with every other creature that ever lived the same origin The same accident that led to the spontaneous generation of the first-celled slimy algae three and one-half billion years ago. Now notice, no stutter, no stammer, no equivocation. This is it, kids. Thank God for your thumb. Thank God for your knee. Thank God that you can think abstractly because that’s all that separates you from everything else that came from slime. And they know exactly when it happened. They can give you the date it happened one and a half billion years ago. Now, if that is true, just right away, if that is true, think what that says, number one, about the value. human life you’re not made in the image of God you are simply a creature of accident what does that have to say about morality if there is no creator there is no fixed standard of right or wrong and therefore if you are an accident simply akin to other living creatures And if there is no fixed standard of right or wrong, what does that say about the meaning of life and the purpose of life? Well, let’s go back to this article again. They ask, how did it all happen? What was the evolutionary process that led man to his conquest of a harsh and hostile environment? They didn’t say, could it have been by evolution? They say, what was the evolutionary process? And then they go on to say, you find the amazing story in Time Life Books’ new series, The Emergence of Man, your introductory volume, The Missing Link, shows the stranger than science fiction world of Australopithecus, the ape man. You will feel a sense of immediacy in visual adventure, in incredible lifelike pictorial technical photo painting. And then they have all these pictures. This lifelike pictorial technical photo painting. I want you to understand that’s just another way of saying the figment of someone’s imagination. And they’re the pictures. And the kids look, wow, it must be real. They’ve even got pictures. Well, what is evolution anyway? It’s a theory made popular by Darwin, espoused in his famous volume, The Origin of the Species. Now, let me tell you what Darwin himself said. And I’m quoting on page 23. Analogy would lead me to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. All animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. All organisms start from a common origin and from some low and intermediate forms both animals and plants may have been developed. All organic things which have ever lived on the earth may be descended by some one primordial form. So what does that mean? Well, we all started out somehow as a speck of protoplasm in green algae, and ipso facto, everything developed out of that. Now, the prime tool is mutation plus natural selection. Mutation means that things just change as they adapt and naturally select themselves out of their environment. So, they believe that, first of all, there was… primitive protozoa. That just simply means original life. And somehow that primitive protozoa became an unsegmented worm. And then that unsegmented worm evolved into a fish. And then that fish turned into an amphibian. And that amphibian turned into a reptile. And then the reptiles became birds. And then the birds became mammals. And then finally the mammals became men. Now, that’s what you’re supposed to believe. That nothing plus time plus chance equals everything. That time plus chance turns amoebas into astronauts and molecules into monkeys and men. Now, what it is, folks, it’s a fairy tale for adults. I mean, in the nursery school, we talk about fairy tales where frogs turn into princes and But we call that a fairy tale. But when we carry it into the classroom, it’s the same fairy tale, only now it is for adults. I like Dr. Criswell’s little saying that he uses sometimes. Once I was a tadpole beginning to begin. Then I was a frog with my tail tucked in. Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree. And now I am a professor with a Ph.D. And you just simply go from step to step. I want to tell you why I reject evolution. I want to give you three reasons why I reject evolution. And I want you to think about these reasons. I don’t want to argue with you, but I do want to state them clearly, hopefully that you can understand why many intelligent and well-trained people reject evolution. I do reject evolution, first of all, for logical reasons. It is not logical. And many intelligent people, And well-trained scientists, now listen, I’m not talking about Baptist preachers now. I’m talking about intelligent and well-trained scientists are moving away from evolution because it does not answer the questions. Dr. Newton Tomasian, a physiologist for the Atomic Energy Commission, has stated this, and I quote, Scientists… who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life, are great con men. And the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one. iota of fact. Now that’s an Atomic Energy Commission scientist. That’s not Adrian there. And then a Dr. Etheridge of the British Museum of Science, which I have recently visited, said this. Listen to it. Nine-tenths of the talk of evolution is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation, and wholly unsupported by fact. This museum is full of proofs. of the utter falsity of their view. Again, that’s not some raving religious lunatic who said that. Listen to Dr. Ambrose Fleming. He was president of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain. Here’s what he said. The evolution theory is purely the product of the imagination. Again, who is this saying this? These are brilliant men, learned men, men who’ve been honored. Dr. Cecil Wakely, leading British surgeon and the late president of the Royal College of Surgeons said this, when I was a medical student, I was taught the theory of evolution, but I never believed it. Swedish embryologist Soren Lovtrup wrote this, I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science. When this happens, many people will pose the question, how did this ever happen? Again, we’re not talking now about a Bible thumper. We’re just talking about a scientist who says, this doesn’t make sense. The great scientists have not all been evolutionists. Michael Faraday, which many acclaim as one of the greatest scientists ever lived, was a Bible-believing Christian, Lord Kelvin, Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton, Kepler, Sir William Ramsey, Lord Francis Bacon, Samuel Morse. These were all creationists. Were they fools? Now, when a scientist says he believes the Bible, it doesn’t give me any more faith than the Bible. It just gives me more faith than the scientist. I mean, we don’t need science to prop up the Word of God. But what I am saying to you is that logically, you don’t have to put your brains behind the door. to believe in creation, or at least to repudiate evolution. Some have said that Sir Isaac Newton was the greatest scientist of all time. He wrote this, this most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. Now, I said I reject it for logical reasons. Let me give you four bridges that no evolutionist can cross. Four things that the evolutionist has no answer to. And therefore, he should not stand in the school and say, this is fact. The first question the evolutionist has no answer to is simply, folks, the origin of life. The origin of life. From whence is life? Now, they’ve tried to wrestle with this and one person said, well, perhaps the origin of life is some germ came and hit the earth. It was riding a meteor from outer space. Well, that just moves the question back to where did it begin in outer space before it came to this earth. But most push that aside as only pushing the question back. And so what the evolutionist has to believe is that life arose by spontaneous generation. That is that in organic matter, prebiotic soup, green gum, slime, something, turned into life. It’s what they call a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Now, doesn’t that bless you? A fortuitous concourse of atoms, a flash of lightning through some kind of green scum. Now let me tell you something. Here’s one of the greatest quotes. I want you to listen carefully word for word to what I have to say here because it’s a great quote. We’re talking now about the first bridge that cannot be logically crossed and that is the origin of life. And here’s what Dr. George Wald, W-A-L-D, had to say. Now, who was George Wald? Well, he was professor emeritus of biology at Harvard University. Well, you don’t get to be professor of emeritus at Harvard just by flunking out. Also, he won the Nobel Prize in Biology in 1971. So I would say he is a notable scientist. Now he wrote something in Scientific America that I want you to listen to. He’s dealing now with the origin of life. He’s dealing with the question, from whence comes life? Listen, don’t miss this. He says there are only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution. The other is a supernatural creative act of God There is no third possibility. I think we’d all say you’re tracking good, doctor. That’s fine. And then he says spontaneous generation that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. He says that’s a scientific impossibility. We’ve known that for 120 years. He says that leaves us with only one possible conclusion, that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God. So far, so good. But don’t get too excited yet. I want you to listen to what Dr. Wall goes on to say. Now he says you’ve got two possibilities. One possibility. A spontaneous generation. Impossible, he says. The other, that God did it. Now, concerning the fact that God did it, I want you to listen to what he says. I will not accept that. What? Creation. He said, I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, listen, listen. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible. Spontaneous generation arising to evolution. He said, I don’t want to believe in God. So I’m going to force my mind to believe what I believe is impossible because I will not believe in God. I want to tell you something, folks. Evolution is a philosophy. It is a bias. It is the next best guess of the mind that cannot accept God. Even an evolutionist, Sir Arthur Keith, confessed, the only alternative to some form of evolution is special creation, which is unthinkable. He said, that’s the only alternative. That’s unthinkable. D.M.S. Watson, a scientist, displayed his prejudice when he wrote, evolution is a theory universally accepted not because it can be proved, but by logical, coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible. He said, I believe in evolution, not because I can prove it, no. I just cannot believe there’s a God who did it all. You see, it’s a philosophy. It’s a philosophy. It’s a philosophy. Spontaneous generation? That was believed by ignorant people 2,000 years ago. They would see some refuse, some dung, some carrion, and after a while they would see maggots come out and they would say, would you see that? Life has arisen spontaneously. They would see some rags that had been wrapping cheese and after a while there would be mice there and they would say, you see that? That’s where life comes from. But then Pasteur and others said, no, that’s impossible. And every scientist knows that spontaneous generation is impossible. And there’s no answer, there is no answer as for the creation of life apart from the act of God. Now here’s another problem every evolutionist has, and that is the fixity of the species. The fixity of the species. The idea that one species can become another. Now what does the Bible have to say? Genesis chapter 1, verses 11 and 12, God says this, And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, and the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit, now listen to this phrase, after his kind. whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind, and God saw that it was good. What is the key word there? After its kind, after its kind, after its kind. And as you read Genesis, this little phrase occurs ten times. Now, be very careful here. We certainly believe that there can be varieties within species. You can have all kinds of roses. You can have all kinds of felines. You can have all kinds of canines. You can breed and crossbreed. But you cannot turn a cantaloupe into a kitten. You just can’t do that. You cannot go from one species to another. I heard about a marine biologist who thought he would take that beautiful shell animal there on the west coast, an abalone, and somehow mix that with a crocodile. He even had a name for it. It was going to be an abodile. but he turned up with a crock of bologna. You cannot, you cannot mix these species. Now, if there was these transitional forms, if these primitive protozoa became unsegmented worms and these unsegmented worms became fish and reptiles and on and on and on, you would expect to find the fossil remains. Now, folks, it’s not that we don’t have fossils. We’ve got billions of fossils. Billions of fossils. In not one will you find a legitimate transitional form. Not one. Folks, they are telling you that we’re looking for the missing link. I am telling you the chain is missing. The entire chain. When life first appears, it appears. Well, then what was beneath that? What you have is a tree without a trunk and no limbs. The evolutionist cannot cross this. He’s coming up now with weird theories because he had some idea that somehow he would be able to find these transitional forms. But you say, Pastor… Don’t we see these in Time Live magazine? I mean, don’t we see these half-men, half-apes? I mean, haven’t we seen the pictures? Haven’t we gone to the museums? Haven’t we seen the plaster of Paris molds? Yes, you have seen them. But you haven’t seen reality, you’ve seen imagination. The first Scopes trial that took place here in Tennessee, it’s called the Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee. William Jennings Bryan versus Clarence Darrow. Clarence Darrow was a brilliant man, sort of a, I guess, a skeptical lawyer. William Jennings Bryan was a golden-tongued orator and a Bible believer. And Darrow, trying to prove evolution as a fact, brought up in that court trial the Nebraska man. And he asked William Jennings Bryan, how do you explain evolution? Nebraska Man. Nebraska Man was discovered by a man named Harold Cook. Nebraska Man was said to be one million years old. And there was Clarence Darrow saying to William Jennings Bryan, there is Nebraska Man, there is your ape man. Well, what had Mr. Cook discovered? Are you ready for this? A tooth. I said a tooth. And out of a tooth… An artist devised a race, both male and female. What about the Java ape man, Dr. Eugene Du Bois? Found in Java, the top of a skull, the fragment of a left thigh bone, and three teeth. He announced he’d found the missing link 750,000 years old. These bones weren’t even found together. They were found over a space of a year. And eminent scientists, 24 of them, were brought together to look. Ten said that they were the bones of an ape. Seven said they were the bones of a man. And the seven said they were a missing link, that is, half man and half ape. Later, Dr. Du Bois himself had to confess that what he had found were the remains of an ape. But you go to the museum, he’s Pythagoras Erectus, the ape man who stands up. He’s just an ape. You know, it’s amazing how a man wants to make a monkey of himself, isn’t it? Amazing. and the Piltdown Man. When I was in college, we studied the Piltdown Man as a fact because Charles Dawson in Piltdown, England, found in a gravel pit a piece of a jaw, two molar teeth, and a piece of a skull. For 50 years, he was known as the Piltdown Man, but later on, it was shown to be a hoax, and even the Reader’s Digest said in 1956, the great Piltdown hoax was an ape only 50 years old. Its teeth had been filed down and artificially colored. I’m telling you, this is what the scientists looked at. This is what they studied. It was a hoax played by a student on his professor. A hoax. Well, you say anybody can be misled. Yes, but what I’m trying to show you is how easily. these great scientists can be misled. What I’m trying to show you is how willingly they are misled. A leading, well-known biologist of the Smithsonian Institute said this, there is no evidence which would show man developing step by step from lower forms of life. There is nothing to show that man was in any way connected with monkeys. He appeared suddenly and substantially in the same form as he is today. There are no such things as missing links so far as concern the major groups of animals. The creationists appear to have the best argument. There is not the slightest evidence that any one of the major groups arose from any other. Hey folks, it’s an argument without evidence. It’s the fixity of the species. Now here’s the third bridge in which they can’t cross. The first one is the beginning of life. The second is the fixity of the species. The third one is the second law of thermodynamics. Now what is the second law of thermodynamics? The second law of thermodynamics is this. That energy can never be destroyed, but it continually becomes less available for further work as it unravels. In plain English, everything tends to wear out and to run down. Have you found that out? Sure. I mean, everything tends to wear out and run down. A garden? Leave a garden by itself. Is it going to get to be a better garden? Of course not. Your body… Man, I found myself yesterday walking a couple of miles and last night rowing on some crazy thing. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because friend, the second law of thermodynamics has got me. Your car. You drive your car out into the woods and leave it out there and just park it. And I’ll tell you what will happen. The second law of thermodynamics will begin to work on that car and the mossy fingers of time and rust will begin to work on that thing and it will disintegrate or just go take a look in your boy’s bedroom if you don’t believe this. What I’m telling you is that everything is marked by death and decay and disintegration. Why would a God who created everything make it that way? Because of sin. The Bible says in Romans 8 verse 22, we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. There’s a curse upon creation and it tends to wind down. The evolutionist, however, has to say that things get more complex. Things move toward precision. Given enough time, disorganized things become organized. Frankly, that doesn’t make sense. If you were to take a 747 and load in the cargo bay the parts of a Cadillac automobile and climb to 5,000 feet and shove them out, would you think that they would assemble themselves into a car? by the time they hit the ground. Well, the evolutionist says, of course not. You need more time. You need more time. You need more time. Okay, let’s take the airplane up to 20,000 feet and then shove them out. then are they going to be more assembled? They’re going to be less assembled than ever. You see, the longer it goes, the more disintegration you have. Let me tell you the fourth bridge that they cannot cross. They cannot explain how certain properties exist that have nothing to do with the survival of the fittest. Where did music come from? What does that have to do with the survival of the fittest? Where did love come from? Where did honor and dignity come from? Where, my dear friend, did we get the concept of Almighty God? Where did these things come from? You can’t explain those by the survival of the fittest. Now, I want to say I reject it for logical reasons. Let me tell you another reason I reject it. I reject it for moral reasons. It’s immoral. Let me tell you something. When you tell young people that they are an accident, that they simply happen, what does that do? It takes away dignity. It takes away purpose. It takes away morality. Nietzsche and Darwin both hated their fathers. Nietzsche was a sexual pervert. He died of syphilis. He was the one who wrote Man and Superman. Hitler read Darwin. Hitler read Nietzsche. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Hitler was the one who fired up the gas ovens. Together Hitler and Stalin, who believed that man is merely an animal, put to death 57 million people. Why? He’s an animal. He’s disposable. Therefore, children are sent to school to study values clarification, to make up their own minds what kind of values they have. No wonder we have euthanasia today and Dr. Kevorkian doing his thing. No wonder we’re killing little babies in the womb and even partially born today. No wonder sexual perversion is accepted as an alternate lifestyle. Why? Because we’ve taught our children that they’ve come from animals and now they’ve finally begun to live like and act like animals. I reject it for moral reasons. Folks, I want to tell you I reject it for theological reasons. H.G. Wells, who wrote the outlines of history, said this. He said, If all animals and man evolved, then there were no first parents, no paradise, no fall. And if there had been no fall, then the entire historic fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for the atonement, collapses like a house of cards. You see, listen, if evolution is true, there was no Garden of Eden, there was no original sin, there is no depravity, man is always onward, upward, going up, then he doesn’t need to be born again. He doesn’t need a birth from above, he just needs a boost from below. He just needs to get better and better and better. And if Genesis 3 is a myth, John 3 is a farce that says you must be born again. I reject it for theological reasons. May I tell you that there’s something behind this whole idea of evolution? Why is it such an emotional issue? Why can we not just simply say, yes, you cannot have creation without a creator. Out of nothing, nothing comes. Why can we not say that? Listen to Algis Huxley, leading humanist, Brilliant thinker. Brilliantly stupid. Listen to what he said in his book, Ends and Means. And this will clear it up. I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning. For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain system of morality We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. We objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning, a Christian meaning, they insisted, of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justify ourselves in our political and erotic revolt. We could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever. That’s what he said. We didn’t want government and we did not want morality. So we chose evolution to shut the mouths of of those who believe in special creation. Listen to me. I’m going to tell you, you are not an accident. You are made in the image of God. And I’m going to tell you that you are precious to Him. So precious to Him that He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, to suffer, bleed, and die for you. He was buried. He rose again the third day. And He invites you to come to Him. And the Bible says, if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation. Oh, he made the first world with a word. But when he saves you, he does it with his precious blood. You’re precious to him. You have dignity. You have a heavenly father who loves you and cares for you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. In the U.S., you can place Visa or MasterCard orders by calling 1-800-274-5683 Monday through Friday from 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Central Standard Time. Thank you, and may God richly bless you.
