Introduction
When you think about antonyms, some of them are obvious. The opposite of capitalism is communism, the antonym of dog is cat and the antithesis of wisdom is foolishness. For far too long, we have said that the opposite of creationism is evolution, but actually it is not. The opposite of creationism is atheism.
Six-Day Creationism Summarized
According to Genesis 1, God created the world in six, literal days, ending His creative work with the special creation of man from the dust of the earth and a declaration that everything that He made was all very good. This is the creationist position and the alone reason for this conclusion is because it’s what the Bible says. Allow me to sum up my reasons for this interpretation by posing one question: Supposing you wanted to find a literal, historical account of the creation of the world; what sorts of details would you hope to see in such an account? Time stamps (“evening and morning” vv. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31)? A chronological, orderly record (an account is given of days 1–7, vv. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31)? An account without gaps in it (the conjunction “and”/ו [sometimes translated as “then” and sometimes missing in the English text although present in the Hebrew] links many verses in the chapter to each other, even between vv. 1 and 2 where a gap is sometimes thought to be)? Specified mechanisms of creation (God’s vocal speech, vv. 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26)? Specified materials used (nothing-ness Hebrews 11:3; dust, Genesis 2:7)? Details on what was said or done immediately following the work (naming things, seeing that things are good and/or blessing those things, vv. 5, 8, 10, 12, 18, 21, 22, 25, 28, 31)? We find all of these in Genesis 1 and 2, and I contend there is no way to improve on this account in demonstrating to a reader that it is meant to be a literal, historical account of creation.
But to argue for a literal reading of Genesis is beside the point. What I’m arguing is that the evolutionary hypothesis of creation is in actuality the atheistic hypothesis of creation.
Evolutionism Summarized
If you were to step back and think about the materials and mechanisms of the evolutionist story, you will see that the entire point is to explain things naturalistically. It is literally godless at every point since God has no part in its summary of creation’s history—and this is no bug, but the very point itself.
To the evolutionist, the universe somehow just so happened to explode into being around 14-billion years ago in the Big Bang event. Something happened in the void that was there and where nothing once was came everything. Scientists tell us that much later, life began in a pool on a very lucky planet we call “Earth,” because somewhere just the right materials in just the right environment bumped into each other, thereby creating proteins and thus the building blocks of life were formed. As chance would have it, some cells formed from those proteins and those cells grew in that pool and eventually reproduced into more complex organisms over great periods of time, eventually producing other various cells and humans and trees and bacteria like we have now. That’s the whole story (if simplified). But did you notice the mechanisms? All this happened by simple time and chance… Their entire storyline of creation is one totally absent of God. It is entirely naturalistic. In fact, evolutionists believe in “nature” much more than they do in “creation” because the term “nature” just feels godless, like it just has always existed or at least that it came into being of itself. This while the very term “creation” necessitates a Creator like the term “building” necessitates a builder. Evolutionists, therefore, attempt to explain all things without this Creator. Their account, therefore, is inherently godless, their account is atheistic. Thus, I conclude that the opposite of creationism is not evolution, but atheism.
But why make this point at all? Aren’t these terms that basically mean the same thing? Let me answer by proposing a hypothetical situation. Ask a professing Christian what he thinks of evolution, and he’ll “hmm” and “haw” a bit about how he respects science and didn’t get his masters degree. But ask him what he thinks of atheism and there is no hesitation in his rejection of it. So no, these aren’t understood to be the same thing and they need to be understood in that way. And I know, everyone is going to be asking about “micro-evolution” and “can’t a broken clock be right twice a day?” That’s entirely beside the point. What I’m saying is that evolutionism’s attempt to explain the origin of the world is by definition to explain the world apart from the work of God. To be evolutionistic is to be atheistic.
Some Conclusions
What I’m contending, therefore, is that a theistic evolutionist is a poor, sad, contradiction of a man. Unfortunately, he believes himself to be very clever since he has found a way to appease both his need for religion and the vanity of his smarts. He claims to believe in God but at the same time he is listening to the account of atheists tell him how his professed God created the world. He is a man who says he is a theist but throws in a little bit of atheism into the mix — trying to explain how “nature” accomplished such creative feats. In the truest sense of the term, this is a very foolish thing to do.
What I’m saying, therefore, is that when a university student evaluates the very clever arguments for naturalistic evolution of species (and yes, they are clever), he is inherently evaluating the claims of atheism. His/her professor by definition, took God out of the way and explained this question of origins and made this claim of science all very wonderfully without having to appeal to an invisible Being. That student is considering atheism.
What I’m arguing, therefore, is that Bible-believers must be not only for creationism, but anti-evolutionism. This is very unpopular today because no one wants to be negative. We’ve all heard it and (if you’re like me) you likely even said it, “We should be positive. It’s not what you’re against that counts, it’s what we’re for.” But the inspired author of Scripture says in unyielding binary, “Through Thy precepts I get understanding, therefore, I hate every false way” (Psalm 119:104). That’s what the psalmist believed; do you?
What I’m claiming, therefore, is that when a person capitulates to evolution and to its scientists, he commits blaspheme against God because he weighs the Word of the eternal God against the word of vaporous man and in choosing the second, he does not merely ignore the first, but rejects it and so blasphemes God as a liar. I’ve been tempted to call Evolution a thief, but it’s no thief. The devil is the thief and he uses things like atheism in the form of scientific hypotheses to steal glory from God and credit the glory of “nature” to created things like “time and chance.” Further, evolution is an evil worldview because by it, men willfully blind themselves to their Creator’s glory and excuse their allegiance to what is no god…themselves.
Evolution is atheism, friends. We need to get this into our heads and into our mouths. We cannot allow atheists to inform us how our God created the world. That task belongs to those who know Him and read His Word. Hold fast to the written Word; hold fast those sure evidences of invisible things (Hebrews 11:1) and prove the living God who has revealed Himself in the Bible and you shall never fall. By contrast, we all know that the claims of scientists have always shifted. With the rise of each generation comes the correction of what was once believed so certainly, for “All flesh is grass…[and] The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God shall stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
