Theistic Evolution

It is as old as the proverbial question “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” I’m talking about the question of the cosmos and life. How did it all come about, through evolution or divine creation? For a long time there were only two answers: random, natural evolution and “In the beginning God created…”

But now within the creation debate there is a theological and scientific middle ground known as Theistic Evolution. Natural or atheistic evolution says there is no God. Life can and did come about naturally from perhaps nothing into preexisting, non-living building blocks under the influence of natural laws like gravity.

Theistic evolutionists believe there is a God, but He was not directly engaged in the origin of life. He might have created the building blocks, He may have created the natural laws and He may have created these things knowing that they would evolve into the forms of life we have today, including human beings, but at some point God sat back in his chair and let nature do her thing.

William Dembski, an American philosopher, mathematician and a Research Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Cultural Engagement at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, explains. “For…creationists, humans bearing the divine image were created from scratch. In other words, God did something radically new when he created us—we didn’t emerge from pre-existing organisms. On this view, fully functioning hominids having fully human bodies but lacking the divine image never existed. For most theistic evolutionists, by contrast, primate ancestors evolved over several million years into hominids with fully human bodies (God and Evolution, p.91).”

Theistic evolutionists suggest that Genesis 2:7 is really presenting us with the record of God simply singling out one of many humans to put His image upon. Therefore Adam was not the first human being. “According to [this] preferred model, anatomically modern humans emerged some 200,000 years ago, with language in place by 50, 000 years ago. Then around 6, 000-8, 000 years ago, God chose a couple of Neolithic farmers, and then he revealed himself for the first time, so constituting them as Homo divinus, the first humans to know God (Should Christians Embrace Evolution, p. 47).”

So what’s wrong with this theistic evolutionary theory? Why can’t we say that Adam was a real person but not the first person on the planet? First, it contradicts Scripture. The Bible clearly says that “In the beginning God created” and that everything was created “according to its kind (Genesis 1:1, 11, 12, etc.). In other words when God created life on earth each plant and animal reproduced the same species. There could be red tulips and yellow tulips but the tulip could not transform itself into an oak tree. Adam did not evolve from some ape like creature, he came into existence, according to Scripture, by a direct creative act of God. If you are calling yourself a theist who believes in God, then why not take Him at His Word?

Secondly, the theory of evolution is still just that—an unproven theory. Bang! Crash! Boom! Sorry, that was the sound of scientists falling over backward in their labs. But it is true—there has been nothing discovered in the fossil record to give evidence that one life form has ever evolved into another. In his recent book “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, Richard Dawkins boldly states that human beings are "distant cousins of bananas and turnips.” But there is no evidence of this at all. Sorry to dash your hopes of Ancestry.com adding a produce section.

In fact scientific experiment after experiment has failed to produce any evidence of evolution. One example is Richard Lenski's experiments at Michigan State University. In one project Lenski raised E. coli bacteria in jars for 55,000 generations. The bacteria are subject to selection pressure from each other. But Lenski's E. coli have to date remained (drum roll please!) E. coli; no new species has ever been produced. Meanwhile mutations have subjected the bacteria to loss of function.

In next Monday’s blog I will present why I believe it is essential that we take the Bible’s account of the special creation of Adam as theologically sound and historically reliable. Stay tuned!