PEPPERDINE EVOLUTION
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How many students will lose their faith because of the theory of Marco Evolution?

Clint Loveness
Video Producer at Bluefish TV
Founder of www.ProvetheBible.com

My name is Clint Loveness, a 2007 Pepperdine alumnus. I am concerned about the theistic evolution classes that were taught at the Pepperdine Lectureships this past spring. I want to share a little bit of my story in an effort to communicate why this is an important issue to me. My brother and I grew up going to church our whole lives: we were leaders in the youth group and my brother even preached some sermons at our church. About five years ago, I realized that my brother stopped going to church while he was going to Pepperdine; later on, I found out that he had doubts about the Bible. One of the questions "out of many others" that he struggled with was with the topic of evolution and the idea that everything took millions of years to become what it is now. He came back from Pepperdine with a post-modern worldview. My brother would have been the last person that I would have imagined losing his faith, and I was very shocked to hear my brother doubting that Jesus was the Son of God; I became more and more grieved because he got to the point where he could not talk about God without getting upset. I started to seek counsel from my minister and my church, and I read the book called The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel. It introduced me to the branch of study know as apologetics, the definition of which is having the ability to defend the Christian faith with logical, persuasive reasons regarding why the Bible is true. After I read that book, my most pressing thought was, “Why was I not taught any of this before?" This changed my whole life because I learned about all of the evidence that supports the Bible. In the past I was shy to share my faith because I was intimidated by not having all of the answers. But studying apologetics gave me a new excitement to talk with strangers and atheists about my faith because I can give them intelligent reasons to believe the claims of Christianity, and I can use logic to explain why the Bible is true. Inspired by my passion for apologetics and the defense of my faith, I made a website called ProvetheBible.com to help people like my brother obtain answers to their hard questions.

At the Lectureships they mentioned that there is a shortage of preachers because the younger generation is not interested in the church. I believe that one reason for this lack of interest is that we are not teaching them how to personally defend their faith. I was excited to hear that Jeff Walling will be working at Pepperdine to train future preachers. I enjoyed his class on apologetics called "Faith in a Post-Christian World: Is it stupid to still Believe?” This was an outstanding class on defending the faith and I believe we need to teach more classes like that giving us reasons to believe in a culture that is very postmodern.

I was surprised that the Bible lectureships hosted so many classes on theistic evolution, which is very controversial in Christian circles. There were a total of six classes taught by these Pepperdine professors: Chris Doran, Chris Heard, Rodney Honeycutt, Jeanine Thweatt-Bates and Donna Nofziger. Theistic evolution is dangerous because it forces you to compromise scripture, which I will show you by sharing some examples. Chris Doran and Chris Heard said that they did not believe in a literal Adam or Eve.

After the class Tim Brinley and I both asked Chris Heard, an Old Testament Bible professor at Pepperdine, if Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, and the world wide flood were literal events; my mouth dropped open when he said, "No, they were not real people or events." Right then and there, I realized that it’s no wonder that people like my brother do not believe the Bible anymore when their own Bible professors refuse to believe that the book of Genesis is a literal, historical account. Chris Heard also stated that he believes that the first historical person started with Abraham; this means he is skipping nineteen generations of people that are an important part of Christ's genealogy. Jesus quotes Noah as being a true event, so for Chris Heard to NOT take it literally is to doubt the words of Jesus, which puts the entire foundation of Christianity on a shaky basis!

In addition to my shocking encounter with Professor Heard, I met another student who doubted the Bible’s trustworthiness. When I asked him about the reasons for his doubts, he said that some elders at the Conejo Church of Christ did not take Genesis literally; because of them, he said he couldn’t trust the rest of the Bible. Those elders were Pepperdine professors. If we don't believe Genesis—the foundational book of our world’s entire history—we start doubting the rest of the Bible, and when that happens, our entire Christian foundation becomes extremely unstable.

According to many recent statistics, 75% of students leave the faith when they reach college. Why is this the case? I love the church, but the church teaches people what to believe instead of the reasons why they should believe it. If we teach critical thinking skills to our students, presenting them with both sides of a particular argument or worldview, they can then compare different worldviews and thereby strengthen and develop their own faith, which is something that I believe will help them want to evangelize and share their faith with others. As things stand right now, however, I feel that Pepperdine is forcing students to only hear one worldview, that of theistic evolution, and they are being narrow-minded by refusing to teach the facts supporting creationism or the flaws of evolution, of which there are many. Once the word gets out that Pepperdine is essentially indoctrinating students with theistic evolution, this will potentially divide Christians and stop students from coming to a school that is teaching these decidedly unbiblical, faulty views. Most Christians believe in creationism and will, quite possibly, be highly offended when they hear about what these new professors are teaching the students. I believe the solution to this potential division is to teach both creationism and evolution just as they are, and let the students make up their own minds. I believe that instead of teaching students why we HAVE to believe in evolution, we need to also offer more classes on apologetics to teach us why we can trust the Bible by examining fulfilled prophecy, archaeology, early manuscripts, reading outside secular historians that confirm the Biblical accounts, etc. As an example of the kinds of classes and materials I’m suggesting, you can find my top ten list on why we can trust the Bible by clicking on this link. For the sake of students’ belief in the validity of Christianity, we should be more worried about students learning this type of information rather than simply cramming the unscientific, faulty teachings of evolution down their throats.

I believe you will see that macroevolution is the doorway to atheism. We absolutely cannot compromise when it comes to teaching the credibility of God’s Word, because intelligent people like my brother know that evolution goes against the Bible and you cannot mix the Bible and the teachings of evolution without compromising. For example, Exodus 20:11 is one of the places in the Bible that describes the Ten Commandments; in the middle of listing the Commandments, it says that God made all of creation in six days and rested on the seventh, and God uses that as an example for our workweek. However, if you do not believe the verse about God creating all of creation in six literal days, why should you believe the rest of that same Chapter when it describes the Ten Commandments? Does that mean we should think that God was wrong about the Commandments too?