IT is a common argument with theistic evolutionists to say that Evolution enlarges the view of God’s creative work, and by the long drawn-out process through millions of years the work of God is seen on a grander scale than in the act of special creation. This argument has been well met by Prof. Keyser in an article in the “King’s Business” (Los Angeles), criticising a paper by Dr Rice, professor of Zoology. “Moreover,” says Dr Keyser, “we fail to see why evolution should give any man an ‘enlarged’ conception of God. What is there about the doctrine that God brought man up through, the beasts of the forests and jungle by means of the fierce and bloody struggle for existence that would give us ‘enlarged’ faith in God and His ways? What is it that is so uplifting about such a doctrine? Compare it with the Biblical teaching that God created man directly in His own similitude, made him a rational, sentient, moral and spiritual being at the start, and placed him in a garden, so that he might have a fair chance for his moral development and spiritual life. Does not this latter view give us a larger and higher conception of God, His reasonableness, His love, His justice? For example, Van Loon (another militant evolutionist) says that it ‘took man’s ancestors about a million years to learn to walk on their hind legs,’ meaning that, prior to that exploit, they were animals going about on all-fours! Suppose God did it that way—does it ‘enlarge’ our respect for Him? Wells, Conklin, Osborn, Gregory, Kellogg, and the ‘Hall of Man’ in the American Museum of Science—all represent primitive man as a very brutal and ferocious being. According to their pictures, he looks very much like the baboon and gorilla. He is even placed side by side with them—all in a row, ending with the modern man. Does such an origin and evolution of man give you ‘enlarged’ views of God? How infinitely below the doctrine of special creation in the divine image! Let us note some things said by Dr Rice, this professor in a Christian university. He says that the theistic evolutionist sees ‘in the first chapter of Genesis an inspired poetic statement of God’s creative power, but no inerrant text-book of science.’
“As is invariably the case, our evolutionist shoves the Bible to one side to make way for his theory. We have never yet found an exception to this rule: the Bible is never accepted at its honest face value by the purveyors of evolution. It is always treated as if it has said things it does not mean, or made many errant statements in its cosmogony. It contains only the ‘ideas of the Hebrews.’ It is not a real historical narrative. So all evolutionists hold. We challenge any one to point out an exception.
“Our author regards the first chapter of the Bible as a ‘poetic statement.’ We must deny this. It is not poetry: it is smooth and beautiful prose. More than that, the very style of it indicates that the writer meant it to be accepted as literal history. Poetry may be fiction; history purports to tell the truth, and to tell it without the disguise of decorative draperies. Such is the style of the original Hebrew in which the first chapter of the Bible was written.”