Sometimes Christians attempt a hybrid between evolution and God (that is, “theistic evolution”) as a way to explain the origins of life on the earth; however there is a contradiction between the basic “mechanisms” (if you will) of the two:
On the one hand, God is described by John (I,4:8-10) as:
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this God’s love was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The instruction presented in Jeremiah 22:3 is a frequent theme among the prophets:
Thus says the LORD: “Execute judgment and righteousness, and deliver the plundered out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong and do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow, nor shed innocent Blood in this place.”
God is described as identical to love – a self-giving, ultimately self-sacrificing love –, and He demands of His People protection for the helpless and against innocent Blood being shed. This attitude of God would seem to stand in abrupt contrast to the merciless “survival of the fittest” of evolution, where rather than the weak and helpless being protected, they are to be eliminated in order for creation to “progress.” Although modern “spin doctors” might make it sound all right, there really appears to be an irreconcilable ideological difference between the two sides. “Does a stream give forth sweet and brackish water at the same time?” [James 3:11].
[In evolution, t]here is no place for the weakling and therefore no place for real Christian love. Indeed, there are many who believe that man is making a serious mistake in keeping alive the physically weak, the helpless, the unwanted, and in that way keeping their defective and unwanted genes in the gene pool of the species.
The Christian ethic depends on love – love to God and love to fellow man. … There is no such thing as Christian love in any scheme of survival of the fittest. Evolution is a dog-eat-dog struggle. If evolution is correct, this attitude is not only permissible but is entirely proper…
… To the modern evolutionist the individual is unimportant. His survival does not count. … Whether his life is a long one or a short one is not important; whether he is happy or oppressed does not really count. The important thing is the number of his offspring and therefore the frequency of his genes in the gene pool of the next generation. …
Because I accept the Scriptural account … I am impressed with the dignity and worth of the individual. He is important as an individual, not as a part of the gene pool … Every human being has not only worth but he also has dignity … There is also a dignity and a worth to be assigned to the unborn, the handicapped, and the disabled. They, too, are creations of God, who loves them and cares for them as He loves me and cares for me. I cannot regard them as a cross …[but] as a challenge. [John W Klotz, “Creation/Evolution Controversy,” Concordia Journal (7/1984) pp 124-30]
Crossing evolution with Jehovah creates an interesting paradox for those who wish to make man merely a continuation of the primates. Psychology, in full step with evolution, looks to the animals in order to explain man. Man is merely a product of his environment (genetic, social and otherwise), so said Freud, Skinner, and others. Is the animal really the measure of man? Or does the human have such a large difference from the animal that it takes a specific creation by God to make the human being?
Though a physical being, a human is not just a physical being but also possesses a nonphysical soul/spirit. Evolution of physical beings, no matter how completely guided by divine omniscience, could never produce biblical man, who is also spirit. Not only so, a human is a unique and mysterious unity of matter and spirit made, unlike the plants and animals, in the image of God, and made specially by God to be like himself for fellowship with deity. This relationship, with all it implies for human knowledge, moral nature, role in the universe, and final destiny, constitutes the uniqueness of man. … [“Guideposts for the Current Debate over Origins” editorial Christianity Today (10/8/1982) pp 22-26]
In addition, there is the question as to what constitutes the idea of “the fittest,” which actually is at best a value statement. Yet evolutionists will tell us that evolution has no sense of values, no sense of progress, no sense of a goal. A survivor is “fit” simply because it survived, and that does not necessarily indicate that it was “better” equipped than anything else – it just merely won. The animal that escaped the army ant march – or the asteroid impact – may not have been more “fit” than its brothers, but rather just more lucky. Theistic evolution attempts to place values, goals and progress into a system that has no place for such luxuries.
The Jehovah Who is incarnate self-giving, self-sacrificing Love, Who is the Protector of the helpless, Who has the power to create – as He said He did – simply by command [Psalm 33:5-6; 148:1-5; II Peter 3:5], repeatedly described His work as “and it was good” [Genesis 1]. “Goodness” is a hallmark in the description of His Glory in Exodus 33:19, along with His Covenant relationship, His grace and mercy, and His steadfast love (see my blog, Show Me Your Glory).
Can His “and it was very good” [Genesis 1:31] actually then be the summation of using a destructive process to accomplish His finished product, and that He is simultaneously the Author of a blind and cruel method of eliminating “the unwanted”? There is definitely something much too contradictory with the theistic evolutionist picture.