By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

---

For many years we have been gathering material for a book of Christianity. We are now happy to announce that this work has been completed and is now available. In this book we devote over twenty pages to a discussion of evolution and creation. We show, for instance, that while men like Julian S. Huxley and Bertrand Russell questioned the existence of a Creator, Thomas Paine, an avowed enemy to Christianity, was forced to acknowledge that there must be a God. In his book, The Age of Reason, he made these statements:

But some, perhaps, will say: Are we to have no word of God—no revelation? I answer, Yes; there is a word of God; there is a revelation.

The Word of God is the creation we behold and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man . . . The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they maybe. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. . . .

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. . . .

The only idea man can affix to the name of God is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And incomprehensible and difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. . . .

In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence to himself that he did not make himself; neither could his father make himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising from this evidence that carries us on, as it were, by necessity to the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally different to any material existence we know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this first cause man calls God.

. . . Canst thou by searching find our God? Yes; because, in the first place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by searching into the nature of other things, I find that no other thing could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search, that there is a power superior to all those things, and that power is God. (The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. pages 31-35)

[Bold in quotations is added for emphasis and does not appear in originals.]

In his book, Man Does Not Stand Alone, A. Cressy Morrison wrote the following:

So many essential conditions are necessary for life to exist on our earth that it is mathematically impossible that all of them could exist in proper relationship by chance on any one earth at one time. Therefore, there must be in nature some form of intelligent direction. If this be true, then there must be a purpose. (Man Does Not Stand Alone, page 13)

The lens of our eye varies in density so that all rays are brought into focus. Man finds this unattainable in any homogeneous substance, such as glass. All the marvelous adjustments of lens, rods, cones, nerves, and all else must have occurred simultaneously, for before each of them was complete, sight was impossible. How could one necessary factor know and adjust itself to each of the requirements of the others? . . . Nature would have had a job in developing the science of optics unless somewhere along the line there was a little help from intelligence. (Ibid., pages 51-52)

Sir Arthur Keith, who was one of the world’s most noted anthropologist, admitted that the development of their eye was hard to explain:

What are we to say, then, about such a complicated and efficient instrument as the human eye? If it had been made of wood, brass, and glass, it would have been said to have been planned for a purpose, but because it has been “evolved,” is made up of living tissues, and came into existence without a preliminary “blueprint,” it is not purposive. Are not my critics, by the use of a verbal quibble, seeking a sophist’s escape from a real difficulty? Would it not be more honest to say that the finer purposive adaptations we see in plants and animals remain, as yet, unexplained? The eye has been evolved; that much is quite certain; the living vital forces which have molded it are probably still at work, but as yet we have not isolated them. I could as easily believe the theory of the Trinity as one which maintains that living, developing protoplasm, by mere throws of chance, brought the human eye into existence. (Evolution and Ethics, by Sir Arthur Keith, 1947, page 238)

Even the simple cells of which the human body is composed have been found to be extremely complex. On June 2, 1970, the Salt Lake Tribune printed this statement:

The cell is the basic unit of all living matter. Only a few generations ago it was thought of as mostly an enclosed sac of protoplasm or living jelly, with only a few finer structures outside the cell nucleus. Today, as a result of electron microscopy, biologists know the cell is no empty blob but a densely occupied factory, with many structures doing many jobs.

Since even the simplest cells are extremely complex, it is very difficult to believe that the human body, with all its organs, could have been developed by mere chance. In his book of the evolution of man, William Howells has to admit that “man must be looked as an extraordinary achievement of design and organization” (Mankind in the Making, New York, 1967, page 349).

We feel that the design found in living matter and throughout the universe shows that there is a Creator.

Anthropologists use the argument of design in their attempt to prove the antiquity of man. For instance, a stone which has been chipped in a purposeful way might be considered to tool of an ancient man. Hartmut Bastian states: . . .

he [Boucher de Parthes] also unearthed a number of very oddly shaped stones such as had always been found here and there and had been dismissed casually as freaks of Nature . . . Suddenly these stones caught his attention: their shaping was no “freak of nature,” but the result of purposeful work by the hands of men . . . A stone fashioned as an implement presupposes a prehistoric man who must have made it. But acceptance of this fact only gained ground during the second half of the last century. (And Then Came Man, New York, 1964, page 308)

It is true that a stone “ fashioned as an implement “ seems to show that it has been made by an intelligent creature, and the more complex the design of the tool the more unlikely that it is a “ freak of nature.” Now, using this same type of reasoning with regard to living matter, we feel that the brain, eyes and other complex organs found in man “presupposes” a Creator. Are not these organs the “result of purposeful work by the hands” of God?

In our new book A Look At Christianity we have a great deal to say about this matter. We also deal with such subjects as:

• The age of the earth and of life
• The earliest man
• The Flood, the report of the discovery of Noah’s Ark
• Egypt and the Bible
• Evidence from Palestine
• The Moabite Stone
• Assyrian records
• The Dead Sea Scrolls
• The importance of love, the destructive effects of hate
• Reconciliation with God
• Our own testimony
• The historicity of Jesus
• Early writings concerning Christianity
• Manuscripts of the New Testament, recent papyri discoveries
• The historical setting of the New Testament, and many other important matters

---

---