The new exhibit at the creation museum includes a sign, “Did God use Evolution?” which asks the following question:

“Could God have used evolution? God is holy and loving and tells us that death is an enemy. So how could He create all life using a process like evolution, a philosophy of death that requires the suffering, disease and death of trillions of creatures for billions of years?”

The weird 70s cool kid concludes that no, God could not have used evolution. This is strange, because the entire Bible is filled with examples of God using death to accomplish his mysterious goals! He uses death to punish disobedience in the flood, and in Sodom and Gomorrah. He uses horrific slaughters to give his chosen people their promised land, and lets the enemies slaughter them back whenever he decides they’re not obedient enough. He demands the death penalty for crimes as slight as children disobeying their parents. Sure, those are all examples of death as a punishment, and the punisher can think the punishment is bad but necessary. But He could also presumably think evolution was bad but necessary.

But then there are the sacrifices. Their argument that death is evil obviously applies to animal death, because even theological evolutionists don’t believe in human death before sin. Sacrifices involve killing animals to make sins better. I’m not going to pretend to understand how that’s supposed to work. But it seems in this case that God is actively enjoying the animal death. The sacrifices produce an “aroma pleasing to the Lord”. And that makes sense, because normally you do something good to make up for something bad. Any argument that death is bad in this case implies that two wrongs somehow do make a right. Although in general, Christians believe that Jesus’s crucifixion was the final sacrifice, and I’ve never heard anyone imply that was pleasing to the Lord. Regardless, that means that the entire story of Jesus just God using the torture and death of an innocent man as a means to an end.

Furthermore, even if the Earth is only 6000 years old, there has still been a ton of animal death in that time. An omniscient God would have known that lots of animals would suffer and die. They can say that was a result of sin, but they can’t say that it was unforeseen. It was part of the plan.

So in what way would using death as a means to create people go against God’s nature? I’ve asked this question, and the answer revolves around a subtlety usually hidden in the text. Let’s look at the book the exhibit is based on, The Lie.

In the appendix “Twenty Reasons Why Genesis and Evolution Do Not Mix” the eighth reason, “God is Good”, says “think about the methods of evolution: elimination of the weak, survival of the fittest, death and struggle in an evolutionary progression, elimination of the unfit, and so on. Would God have used this method in bringing all life into being and then describe it as good? Of course not—this would be totally inconsistent with God’s nature as revealed in the Scriptures. Christians who believe that God used evolution must consider Him an ogre!”

How is that different? The key words are “and then describe it as good”. The problem isn’t that using death is out of character for God, it’s that describing death as good would make him an ogre!

But on the new sign, it doesn’t say anything about God calling it good. It just says that God couldn’t use a process involving death to create life. So how could God have used the death of Jesus to redeem life? God is holy and loving and tells us that death is an enemy. So how could He redeem all life using a process like substitutionary atonement, a philosophy of death that requires the suffering and death of an innocent man?