God Exists; Therefore I Think

Old news came across my Facebook feed the other day about how Pope Francis boldly declared support for evolution saying, “When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,”  I believe the Bible provides evidence God is far greater than a magician using sleight of hand who seems able to do everything - without waving a "magic" wand.  That fact God can do everything is the precise conclusion Job came to when God revealed Himself in Job 42:1-2:  "Then Job answered the LORD and said: ² "I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You."  A god who cannot do everything is not God, and certainly not worthy of worship.

The words of the Pope do not affect my beliefs in the slightest, but unfortunately much of the world sees him as speaking for the church with a degree of authority.  My entire life has been lived in a season during which Darwinian evolution is widely believed to be a reasonable means to explain the origin of species, and consequently anyone who believes in the literal creation of the world by God according to the Bible account is often ridiculed or at least seen to be a bit soft in the head.  Now G.K. Chesterton was a Catholic, and he spoke a lot more rational sense in his book Orthodoxy concerning evolution than Pope Francis from a philosophical vantage point on this subject.  Pope Francis reasoned evolution does not contradict scripture, yet Chesterton claimed evolution suicidal to reason.  Consider carefully this excerpt from a brilliant chapter titled, "The Suicide of Thought:"

"Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself.  Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself.  If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism.  If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time.  But if it means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him to change into.  It means that there is no such thing as a thing.  At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything and anything.  This is an attack not upon the faith, but upon the mind; you cannot think if there are not things to think about.  You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought.  Descartes said, "I think; therefore I am."  The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram.  He says, "I am not; therefore I cannot think," (Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy. New York: Lohn Lane, 1909. 39-40. Print.)

I do not find it particularly troubling in itself that people see evolution as intelligent and creation by God as idiotic, but I am greatly concerned when professing Christians yield to evolutionary dogma for a second.  All people have a prerogative given by God to think and believe what they want.  If you are a Christian, consider this:  we can only be Christians through the reasonable rock-solid doctrines contained in scripture.  We are beneficiaries of real promises in the Bible and transformational power from God - not metaphors or poetry from which we can draw superficial comfort or peace.  God's Word claims He spoke the world into existence, and thus God's Word has power beyond compare.  If Christians do not believe what is plainly written in the Bible, that God created all things to bring forth after their own kind, how can they believe in heaven, hell, sin, or that they are even saved?  Evolution does not need God, so why does God need evolution?  I need God as truly as I need the light and warmth of the sun, air to breathe, and water to drink.  If this makes me weak, stupid, and pathetic I will accept that gladly, for in my God there is strength, wisdom, and truth.  Darwinian evolution offers nothing but blind determinism, no freedom of thought or will.  Evolution commonly believed thrives on death, but God is the One who supplies life - and eternal life at that.