Theistic Evolution - Introduction

The belief that God created the first speck of life on earth and then directed its evolution to generate man is known as theistic evolution. In other words, Theistic Evolution: The belief that God works through the natural process of evolution. To hold such a position, Christians must take substantial liberties in interpreting the Bible. However, they also face some of the most same weaknesses as proponets of atheistic evolution. To be honest though, there is no difference between theistic and atheistic evolution, except that theistic evolutionists argue that God used evolution to generate the diversity of life thoughout history.

Theistic evolutionists interpret the Bible in accordance with their view of evolution. For example, Jesus Christ declares in Mark 10:6," But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'" Theistic evolutionists interpret this verse and some others such as Luke 11:50; Acts 3:21 to support the evolutionary position that the term creation simply means God created the first speck of life and then continually directed His creation through the vehicle of evolution from that first speck to human beings. Thus, some Christians even go as far as saying and believing that the Bible can support evolutionary theory as an explantion for origins. This makes me sad. This can lead to a tenable postion when discussing only verses concerned strictly wit hthe question of origins. However, when we examine the entire message of the Bible, the theory of theistic evolution severely undermines the Christian understanding of God's place, true doctrine, and our place in His universe.

It's true that God is all powerful - so that He could have used evolution to generate all species - I contend that He did not employ such an inefficient (and often totally ineffective) mechanism for design. If our God designed the world to operate according to specific natural laws requiring minimal interference, why would He use an evolutionary mechanism that would require Him to constantly meddle with the development of life? Futher, such a mechanism seems an espeically cruel method for creating humans, since it involves a "survival of the fittest" or "destruction of the weak and unfit" mentality. As Jacques Monod notes, natural selection is the "blindest and most crual way of evolving new species"

More importantly, if evolution is true, then we must view the story of the Garden of Eden and original sin as nothing more than myth or a allegory. This viewpoint, however, severely undermines the accuracy of the Bible, the significance of Christ's sinless life and sacrifical death on the cross because the Bible presents Jesus as analogous to Adam. The condemnation and curruption brought on by Adam's sin are the counterparts of the justifcation and sanctification made possible for us by Christ's righteousness and death (Romans 5:12-19). If Adam were not a historical individual, and if his fall into sin were not literally true, then the bibical doctrines of sin and redemption collapse. This conclusion is horrible and unacceptable to Christians...

The proper Christian worldview requires a belief in the Creator as He is literally portrayed in Genesis. A thoughtful reading of Genesis 1 depicts a very literal sounding creation story, although we often hear the caveat "you can't take Genesis literally." Genesis 1 introduces the sun, moon, and starts along with birds in the air and fish in the sea - these physical objects and living creatures are literal. The mention of the day, month, and year seem literal in the context of Genesis 1. Adam and Eve are depicted as literal people whose descendants continue through the history of the biblical narrative up to the birth of Jesus. If Adam and Even were mythical, it would be difficult to determine where myth ends and history bbegins n the genealogy of the human race.

Because evolution appears to be unassailably scientific, Christians who continune to believe in creationism seemed to be taking a radical, almost backward stance. Understandably, many Christians turn to theistic evolution as the only means of reconciling science with their Christian faith. However, more recent discoveries have undermined the foundations of evolutionary theory and provided a rich soil for the development of a robust theory of creation. For example, Jonathan Wells has examined the ten most popular "proofs" for the theory of evolution (peppered moths, Darin's Finches, fossil record, Haeckel's embryos, ape to human, etc.) and found that each one lacks scientific rigor. With so much new and compelling information coming to light, Christians who wish to integrate science and their Christian faith would do well to abandon evolution as a rational explantion for the origin of species and explore instead - the creation model.


But before we examine the latest scientific discoveries related to the origin of life, we need to make a distinction between two aspects of evolutionary theory. The main idea that living things incorporate small, adpative changes over time is termed "microevolution". These minor changes within a species have produced a wide variety of dogs and breeds of cows that produce more milk. These are well-established, observeable facts of science. However, scientists extrapolate on this theory to posit that micro-adaptive changes can produce novel features and new species. This is called "macroevolution" - the idea that a first speck of life that emerged from non-living material slowly evolved into one-celled organisms, natural selection, eventually turned into homo sapiens.

This grand scheme of amoeba-to-man (or better yet, of spontaneous generation-to-man) is what is commonly understood when we use the term "evolution." Yet, large scale changes leading to new species have never been observed and, therefore, cannot technically support a "scientific" theory, much less fact, as the evolutionists would have us believe. Rather, evolution is an extrapolation from microevolution based on naturalistic assumptions.

Failure to distinguish (or to understand the distinction) between micro-and macroevolution in public discussions can make Christians look foolish if we give the impression that we do not agree with microevolution, a clearly established fact. To clarify this issue, throughout these next coming posts of mine, when I use the term "evolution," I will be referring to macroevolution, commonly called Darwinian evolution or Neo-Darwinism. In reality, evolution as it is taught today in most public schools teaches spontaneous generation to the human race within a period of 3.5 billion years.

So with these distinction in mind, lets turn our attention to seeing a scientific view of life's origins consistent with biblical account described in Genesis 1 and 2.