In the mid-17th century, travelers to the island of Mauritius (near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean) reported seeing large (over 3 feet tall) odd-looking flightless birds they called dodos. By the end of that century, the reports of dodo sightings became rare and soon it was concluded that the strange species had gone extinct. The two questions people asked then was: “How did dodos and other creatures come to exist in the first place?” And, “Why did they go extinct.” We won’t try to answer the latter question here, but there are two basic answers to that first question that most people hold today: naturalistic evolution or theistic creation. In this article we will address that issue.
Evangelical Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy do not always agree on important points of theology or hermeneutics. One area where there is some contention is over the age of the universe and how long the world was created. Basically it is a disagreement over the interpretation of the first chapters of the book of Genesis. Some Bible believing Christians assert that the Bible can only be correctly understood to teach that the universe was created in six, 24 hour days (“day” is the Hebrew word yom). They say it is only about 6-10 thousand years old, and that Adam and Eve were created about 4000 BC. This is often called “Young-Earth Creationism.” Probably the best known current advocate of this view is Australian Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (www.answersingenesis.org). Another organization promoting this position is the Institute for Creation Research, founded by Henry M. Morris (www.icr.org).
Other evangelicals argue that literal Biblical interpretation allows for the creation to have occurred billions of years ago. This is often called “Old-Earth Creationism” or “Day-Age Creationism.” Its advocates maintain the Hebrew word yom in Genesis does not necessarily mean a 24 hour time cycle, but may be interpreted to mean long periods of time or “ages.” This view asserts that the universe and the earth are billions of years old and that life began on earth eons ago in simple forms. They affirm that Adam and Eve were real people and the progenitors of the whole human race, but they lived ten of thousands of years ago.
Unlike Darwinism, however, advocates of this view, sometimes also called Progressive Creationism, do not believe that natural selection operates at the level of macro-evolution. Macro-evolution is the theory that natural selection is responsible for the appearance of new species or kinds of living things. It is different from micro-evolution which is limited change within species or kinds. Nearly all creationists agree that micro-evolution has validity, but that macro-evolution does not.
Old-Earth Creationists believe that over the course of long periods of time, God miraculously created new and more advanced life-forms (plant and animal), allowed some species to become extinct, and created newer species. This all perfectly prepared the world for the eventual special creation of Adam and Eve.
Advocates of this perspective include Canadian astronomer Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe (www.reasons.org ). Another older organization (founded in 1941) of Christian scientists that also hold this position is the American Scientific Affiliation (http://network.asa3.org ). This is also the view of most of the Christian researchers at the Discovery Institute, an organization of scientists and philosophers who defend the theory of Intelligent Design over against Darwinism (www.discovery.org). (Note: not all fellows of the Discovery Institute are Christians, some are Jewish, adherents of other faiths, or agnostics).
The purpose of this article is not to settle the controversy of Old-Earth or Young-Earth creationism. It is important to understand that both of the above two positions on the age of the earth do not accept the theory of evolution as taught by Charles Darwin in the 19th century or the Neo-Darwinism of the 20th century. The key element of that theory is what Darwin called “natural selection.” That concept says that all life (including humans) originated from a single one-celled organism, and then slowly evolved by a non-directed process of minute mutations that improved the ability of living things to survive in their environments. Eventually, the millions of species of various plants and animals branched off of the ever changing tree of living things to what now exists. The highest level of that natural, totally-by-chance process is humanity.
In the past decade, a new voice has joined the evangelical debate about the origin of life and humanity. In 2007, an organization called The BioLogos Foundation (www.biologos.org) was founded by world famous biologist Francis Collins. He directed the Human Genome Project in the 1990s and is currently director of the National Institutes of Health. The current BioLogos President is Deborah B. Haarsma, a physics professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The prospective of BioLogos is what they call “evolutionary creation.”
Its premise is that Charles Darwin was essentially correct, and that all life did originate billions of years ago and evolved over time by the process of natural selection. They disagree, however, with Darwin and modern Neo-Darwinists in that they believe God (who they believe is the God of the Bible) used natural selection as His method for populating the earth with life, and ultimately with making mankind in His image. Thus they argue that evolution is the right understanding of how life began and how it developed. They would even say, as do atheistic evolutionists, that it was a non-directed process.
So how should we evaluate this new pro-evolution version of the Bible and the creation? Here are five points to consider regarding this issue.
First, it is not our purpose to cast aspersions on the sincerity or orthodoxy of the Christian faith of Francis Collins, Deborah Haarsma, or any others holding this view. Salvation does not depend on the way someone interprets the book of Genesis, but on whether or not a person has accepted the free grace of God by genuine faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. That being said, we cannot acquiesce to their hermeneutical position.
Second, we need to recognize that theistic evolution is not really that new. There have been advocates of this position since the 19th century, including even prominent conservative Bible scholar B.B. Warfield. Most liberal Bible scholars had, and have, no problem embracing Darwin’s ideas since they had little confidence in the Bible’s accuracy anyway. However, eventually as it became more evident that Darwin’s theories clashed with biblical faith, most conservative scholars rejected it.
Third, in reading some of the information published by BioLogos, it seems they unfortunately embrace some of the presuppositions of higher biblical criticism. They apparently reject the historicity of the early chapters of the book of Genesis (including Adam and Eve) and accept the critical three-story theory of Old Testament cosmology. They argue that this does not necessarily lead to rejection of the Bible’s salvation message as shown in Jesus Christ. It was, however, just that sort of compromise that led to the theological decay and decline of some of the Mainline Protestant denominations in the last century. If the consensus of evangelicals were to adopt that perspective, there is no reason to believe that the same thing would not occur in currently conservative denominations.
Fourth, it is readily apparent that theistic evolution is an attempt to hybridize two incompatible worldviews: Naturalism and Theism. If you are a regular reader of the material from this website, you know that hybrid worldviews inevitably fail. The four worldviews (Naturalism, Theism, Far Eastern Thought, and Animism) are so very different in how they perceive reality, that any attempts to synthesize two or more of them is impossible. One of the two will have to be totally compromised to accommodate the other or they will be hopelessly incoherent. Theistic evolution (or evolutionary creation) fails to accomplish its goal of harmonizing Christianity with naturalistic science. Its acceptance of the materialistic process of natural selection in macro-evolution is a denial of the biblical doctrine of special creation by God.
Fifth, theistic evolution shares the same scientific problems of Neo-Darwinism in general, as science delves deeper into the origin and complexity of life. Scientists have found no viable naturalistic explanation for how even the simplest life began. Nor have they demonstrated how undirected evolution could create the complex genetic codes that carry vast amounts of information. Coded information (sort of like bytes in a computer program) in microscopic cells is necessary for life forms to reproduce and develop.
In conclusion, I predict that in the coming decades, Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian evolution will prove to be a totally inadequate scientific explanation for the origin and great diversity of life on earth. Thus, atheistic Darwinism and theistic evolution will go “the way of the dodo.”
© 2018 Tal Davis