Ecclesiastes

The Preacher�s findings at variance with the thinking of Evolutionists

This is not perhaps a book one would think of as a place to go to find information to rebut the theory of evolution by natural selection. However, there is a good deal in it which is contrary to that theory. Consider the following:-

Chapter 1:3

This verse as well as others speaks about what is "under the sun". It is man's sphere. The evolutionist does not consider that there is anything outside of his sphere of investigation. The existence of an intelligence (God) above that sphere who was the creator of it is usually denied. Gordon Rattray Taylor (himself an evolutionist) says: " While some scientists have felt forced to postulate some directive influence in evolution, others froth at the mouth at the mere idea. This is because they fear that we shall revert to believing in a divine plan" (The Great Evolution Mystery pages 5/6).

Chapter 1:4-11

These verses show that the natural world operates in a closed circuit. Everything goes round and round. Things are not evolving into something else. There is a fixed pattern. It is a bit like an escalator. It goes round and round. However, people get on one floor and get off at another, just as we enter life at birth and leave it at death. We do not get off at the same place where we got on. We do well though to heed the words of Proverbs 15:24 "The path of life is upwards for the wise, that he may depart from Sheol beneath" and ensure that we are on the escalator going in the right direction.

Chapter 1:13-14

These verses tell us of the grievous occupation that God has given to the children of men to: "search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under the heavens". Today we hear about the search for a theory of everything. This is really a fruitless search. The theory of evolution is all part of this effort to explain everything by naturalistic processes. What we have to learn is that man has his limitations; there is a limit to what he can find out by searching (by scientific investigation). For what is beyond that he must have divine revelation and this is limited by what God is pleased to reveal to him and, we may say, by what his mind is capable of understanding. "The hidden things belong to Jehovah our God; but the revealed ones are ours and our children's for ever." (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Chapter 1:15

This verse says "That which is wanting cannot be numbered". The evolutionist talks about chance, but it should be remembered that though there is a probability, however minute, that when a dice is thrown one will always get a six, there is no chance at all that a seven will ever be thrown because there is no seven there. Similarly, nought times a hundred or whatever is still nought. For anything to be produced by reaction, the test tube, so to speak, must have the ingredients. If it has not, change is not simply improbable but impossible. There must be something to work on as in more than one place Dr. Richard Dawkins admits (The Blind Watchmaker pages 92 & 128), although in another he claims that eyes evolved from nothing (The Blind Watchmaker page 40) ! However, God can create something new when he so wishes (Jeremiah 31:22) and his Spirit can write informatively as he has done in the past (Exodus 31:18; 2 Corinthians 3:3). In these cases something (that is,God) is working from outside man's sphere of investigation.

Chapter 2:13

"And I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as light excelleth darkness." It is important to remember that one conception is not to be assumed to be as good as another. Truth and falsehood are not the same thing. A plane made on the basis of false dynamic principles would not fly. Saying evolutionary ideas are all right for some people and creationist ones are all right for others is not reasonable. Evolutionary ideas, although they may not have direct physical consequences, have been used to justify Nazi and Communist political systems, both of which have now been generally discredited. The survival of the fittest idea was used to justify the former; atheistic materialism inherent in Darwinian evolution was used to bolster the latter. Today the idea that we are just superior apes is used to justify the often violent animal rights movement.