Creation or Evolution?
Gen 1
“In the beginning, God …” says the Bible. “In the beginning, goo …” say the evolutionists. Scientist Harold Hill, rather tongue-in-cheek, suggests that we have come “from goo to you by way of the zoo”! Our school education system now requires that all learners are taught Evolution as scientific fact. Are they are trying to make monkeys out of our grandparents?
So, creation or evolution. Does it really matter? Isn’t it all just a non-issue? Is the Bible simply out of date? For many people, whether we descend from an ape or from Adam means nothing at all. But for others it means a great deal … because if the Bible can be proved wrong at one point then what else could be wrong? How much of the Bible can we really believe? Isn’t it all just a lot of stories?
And if something is taught as scientific FACT when actually it is only scientific THEORY, isn’t that being dishonest? So what do we BELIEVE – creation or evolution or something in between?
In starting, let me say that this is how I make sense of this debate. There are many Christians who would hold other views. Some Christians believe in evolution, others in creation. Some scientists believe in evolution, others in creation. So, while I usually preach with the authority of 2000 years of theology behind me, in this instance what I share is simply ideas that help me. Thoughts that I hope may be helpful to you, too, if you are also struggling with this question!
Let me also say that whether you believe in creation, or in evolution, is not going to affect your eternal salvation in the least!
Let’s start by clarifying some concepts:
The Bible is quite clear that God created the universe, and the earth and all that is in it. He shaped the earth, he separated the land from the sea. He made the plants and the animals, the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. And he did it all in seven days, according the Genesis. That’s the story of creation.
The Theory of Evolution on the other hand says that the original life developed, by accident, in the primal swamp as the earth was being formed – a simple one-cell organism that slowly, over billions of years, changed (evolved) into higher and higher life forms. Today, all of life comes from that original source.
No matter how we look at it, … these are two fairly different theories! And I’m using the word ‘theory’ intentionally. Neither is a ‘proof’. In terms of the scientific method, for something to be a ‘proof’ it needs to be repeatable – time after time after time. And, of course, neither creation nor evolution can be observed being repeated. At best, some scientists point to this or that event or occurrence which they say ‘supports the theory’. But often other scientists will dispute them.
Another concept that we need to understand is the term “Natural Selection”. Natural Selection is the process of ‘Grand Evolution’ – the way in which evolution take place. To use a very simple example: A dark rat in a dark forest is less likely to be seen by a predator than a white rat (one that stands out against the fallen leaves on the forest floor, perhaps). As a result, the life expectancy of the dark rat is longer than that of the white rat. Therefore, over a long period of time, it’s very likely that all white rats will disappear because, being caught sooner, many of them will not live to sexually reproductive age and so the white colour gene will slowly die out. Dark rats will be more likely to thrive.
Natural selection works by slowly removing the weakest, most vulnerable specimens and encouraging the adaptations and variations that are most useful and are able to survive better. As that process continues for billions of years, one species can even turn into another, Evolutionists claim – and so fish learn to walk, amphibians turn into reptiles, scaly creatures grow hair or wings and learn to fly!
And at that point my (admittedly very limited) brain says “Huh?!” (And we haven’t even got to the part, yet, about chimpanzees turning into my granny!) It starts to sound like … well, science fiction, doesn’t it?!
Now, let me say at this point that there are many scientists who agree with the idea of natural selection but not with the full theory of Grand Evolution.
Let’s consider some of the questions raised when we take natural selection to the point of apparent science fiction. Darwin himself said:
Natural selection can only act by the preservation and accumulation of in-fin-tes-imally small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being.
What he neglected to explain was how, for example, a leg could turn into a wing through an ‘accumulation of infinitesimally small inherited modifications’ and how through all those changes each one was ‘profitable to the preserved being’! Picture two dinosaurs chatting – “Hello! What’s that funny stiff growing on the back of your leg?” “Oh, those are feathers. They’re the latest thing.” “Feathers? What are they for?” “Oh, well, I don’t know really – actually they really get in the way … but I’m sure I’ll find a use for them in time.” Yeah. Right!
And then, of course, almost no fossils have ever been found showing the thousands of different stages of these modifications. Certainly many fossils have found – millions of them all around the world, but very few that could be considered to be a possible link between any two of the discontinuous groups. There are some, of course – think of Archaeopteryx – a flightless dinosaur-like/bird-like creature – but this and others like it are so few and far between in a fossil base that is so large that there are far, far more spaces than building blocks.
The point is that for Grand Evolution to work there would have to be countless millions of adaptations over billions of years between each ‘type’ or ‘kind’ – fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds and humans. Countless millions … and in all the millions of fossils there are only a hand full that could possibly indicate any development.
Or, as some scientists argue, perhaps that hand full has not developed any further because they were mutations that died rather than thrived.
And the changes that have been clearly found in the fossil record indicate an interesting thing. The horse of millions of years ago was about the size of a terrier dog. But structurally it was still clearly a horse. The mammoth and the mastodon of old had long hair and awesome tusks … but are still essentially the same design as the elephant is today.
Changes there have been, but not from one ‘type’ to another – rather changes within the ‘type’ to help it to cope better with it’s environment. That is quite logical natural selection, without the huge leap of changing from one ‘type’ to another.
While I was in Cape Town recently I met with Dr Jim Allen, emeritus Prof of Genetics at Stellenbosch U. He said:
Genesis is very clear. God created each sort of animal “after its kind” (or “according to its kind”) – for instance, He created the primal dog and natural selection has led to there being dozens of different breeds today … but they are all dogs, none have become cats and certainly none have started to fly!
For me, and for many leading scientists that world round, there is simply virtually no evidence for Grand Evolution to have occurred. There are too many gaps, and too many logicalities. And there is all sorts of evidence that the changes that have occurred have been within the ‘type’ and have not jumped ‘types’.
Many scientists today are speaking of “Specific appearances” or “Specific creations” of life forms. They tell us that the body of palaeontological research seems to point to particular life forms appearing all around the world at the same “moment of time”. In other words, reptiles appeared all around the world at the same time. Birds appeared all around the world at another time, similarly mammals, etc. And with each new appearance there is fossil record of adaptation within the ‘type’. Of more animals (more species) of that ‘type’ appearing, but no clear evidence at all of one type changing into the next type.
So for me, Grand Evolution, Darwinian evolution and its followers, is about as dead as the dodo! I think they saw natural selection and arrived at the wrong conclusions. If you presuppose that God doesn’t have the power to form a universe and speak creation into being then you have to seek some other solution. If you can accept the role of God then the answer actually becomes far simpler and the scientific evidence supports the Biblical record.
Amen!
