"Believing in evolution is believing in the unproved, while believing in Christ is believing in the proven"
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Edwin Louis Cole, a Pentecostal minister and founder of the Christian Men’s Network, crafted aphorisms that drew sharp lines between secular and sacred worldviews. The assertion sets up a stark contrast: evolution, associated with scientific naturalism, is labeled unproved, while Christ, associated with revelation and personal transformation, is called proven. The force of the claim lies less in adjudicating laboratory evidence and more in redefining what counts as proof. Cole appeals to an experiential and moral epistemology: a life changed by faith, the coherence of Scripture, and the testimony of believers function as reliable confirmation. By that measure, Christ is proven in the crucible of lived experience.
The other side of the contrast treats evolution as a symbol of a broader worldview that, in Cole’s perspective, lacks moral grounding. For many evangelical audiences, evolution is not just a biological theory; it represents an explanatory system that excludes God and devalues purpose. Calling it unproved is a rhetorical move to undercut its authority at the level of meaning, not merely data. Cole is not engaging the technical evidences of common descent or fossil records; he is challenging the claim that such evidence suffices to explain human origin, identity, and destiny.
The statement also echoes the tradition of presuppositional apologetics, which argues that Christian theism provides the necessary preconditions for logic, morality, and science itself. Within that frame, belief in Christ grounds rational inquiry, whereas evolution, taken as a totalizing worldview, cannot account for the very standards of proof it invokes. Critics will counter that evolutionary theory is empirically robust and that personal experience is not the same as scientific verification. Cole’s audience, however, hears a different register: proof as faithfulness, transformation, and the reliability of revelation. The power of the line is its reversal of modern expectations, claiming that ultimate certainty lies not in nature’s mechanisms but in the person at the center of Christian faith.
The other side of the contrast treats evolution as a symbol of a broader worldview that, in Cole’s perspective, lacks moral grounding. For many evangelical audiences, evolution is not just a biological theory; it represents an explanatory system that excludes God and devalues purpose. Calling it unproved is a rhetorical move to undercut its authority at the level of meaning, not merely data. Cole is not engaging the technical evidences of common descent or fossil records; he is challenging the claim that such evidence suffices to explain human origin, identity, and destiny.
The statement also echoes the tradition of presuppositional apologetics, which argues that Christian theism provides the necessary preconditions for logic, morality, and science itself. Within that frame, belief in Christ grounds rational inquiry, whereas evolution, taken as a totalizing worldview, cannot account for the very standards of proof it invokes. Critics will counter that evolutionary theory is empirically robust and that personal experience is not the same as scientific verification. Cole’s audience, however, hears a different register: proof as faithfulness, transformation, and the reliability of revelation. The power of the line is its reversal of modern expectations, claiming that ultimate certainty lies not in nature’s mechanisms but in the person at the center of Christian faith.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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