Creation vs. Evolution by Tom Shetler
Tom Shetler, a teacher at Bethany College of Missions, is a man of deep passion for the Lord with sensitivity towards His presence. His particular interests are in the Old Testament as well as apologetics. Both his knowledge in these fields and his passion for them are evident in the classes he teaches at BCOM. Here are his thoughts on a widely discussed topic:
Having had the beginnings of a scientific education (I have a BA in Physics), I find the debate between creationism and evolution very disheartening. I believe in a created universe on the basis of the evidence for intelligent design. My belief in creation is not just based on what the Bible says, but because of the evidence of both natural history and science.
Our world is filled with billions of amazing creatures. Evolutionists claim to “see” their development over the many eons of natural history by assuming (without any actual evidence or proof) that they are all marvelous adaptations to the changes in their environments. For example, evolutionists would claim that the sonar (the ability to make a sound, have the sound echo back from a target, and calculate the location of the target) that bats use to find the insects they eat in the dark of night is a product of this “natural” adaptation. The problem is that this “adaptation” is the product of dumb luck. It is a purely accidental development that must also accidentally coincide with a highly significant environmental condition.
Evolution would be conceivable if there were only a few instances where the accidents had to coincide in both the creature and the environment. But in nature, if evolution is true, one must account for billions of adaptations as remarkable as our example of the bat. It stretches credibility beyond the limit to believe this, for we must account for sight, flight in birds and insects, digestion, photosynthesis, blood (hemoglobin), fur, feathers, hearing, and a myriad more of organs and organisms. We could make a list that would fill a book of all the adaptations that must be accounted for by evolutionary theory, and in my view, the theory doesn’t even come close to explaining how all these things came to be.
In addition, science is built upon the use of the scientific method, and central to that method is experimental verification. Experiments to verify evolution have been going on for over 50 years with no positive results. What the experiments have proven, in actual fact, is that evolution as presently conceived can not happen. Dr Richard Goldschmidt spent 25 years trying to demonstrate evolution by performing mutation experiments on fruit flies and gypsy moths (rapidly breeding insects). After 25 years of work, he came to the appropriate conclusion. Evolution by gradual genetic changes produced by mutation does not happen in nature. His experiments had proven his conclusion emphatically. In all those years, generating mutations in all those insects, he had seen no evidence of anything even remotely resembling evolutionary change.
The people who claim that evolution is “science” cannot do so on the basis of the scientific method. Evolution doesn’t pass the test of experiment, and therefore cannot be rightly called a scientific theory.
This is what I find so disheartening. Evolutionists claim that evolution is science and creationism is religion. In truth, it’s just the opposite. Evolution is an irrational faith that is simply believed without direct observation or scientific verification, while creationism has the evidence of nature and the scientific method supporting it. The issue is actually political rather than scientific, thus the evolutionist’s resort to name calling and ad hominem (demean the person) attacks. They pull out the “religion” card to make creationism seem irrational and only built on faith. They demean those who promote creationism as “pseudo-scientists” or even anti-science. But these are the tools of propaganda and political manipulation, not of an honest scientific debate. We live in a sad day, when an irrational faith is proclaimed to be scientific while the sum of the overwhelming evidence of both science and history is rejected because it is “religious.”
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22 Responses to “Creation vs. Evolution by Tom Shetler”
After reading this, it makes me think that it would take more to believe in the theory of evolution more than a creation of God. It makes me sad to think that just because it’s a religious belief it is thought of as irrational. In my honors classes at school, most of my class chooses to believe evolution over any greater being. These are some of the brightest students in school even, and reading this makes me think about why they wouldn’t consider that evolution could be flawed.
It may be just Christians just claiming that the world was created by God because the bible says so. Maybe if people stopped looking at how religion is irrational or is what you have to believe without a second thought, actually looking at how irrational evolution can be. I think I’m going to show my class this blog, just to hear their opinions.
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Jarred Spengler Reply:
May 18th, 2009 at 7:31 am
@Morgan Coomes,
Good Idea. I think that our brightest minds in this nation may be so easily swayed to believe evolution because, regardless of how intelligent they are, they are controlled by the culture rather than a passion for the truth. Put aside the cross, Christ and Calvary for a moment. At the core, do they truly want to know the truth? You can tell by how deeply they look into things. Do they dial up their skepticism when it comes to the creationist while eating up every word of the naturalist?
The director of BCOM at one point told me this: “Intelligence is the ability to make out finer details. The more intelligent you are, the better you are at making out the finer details of life.” I think that’s true. think it over and tell me what you think.
[Reply]
After showing some of my classmates, I got varied responses, some I didn’t expect. A few were persuaded after just this blog, and some are researching to prove that evolution is the rational explantation. One of my friends, who happens to be one of the ones researching, told me he was researching because he wanted the truth. I was shocked after reading your reply and then having one of my friends repeat the same thing the next day.
I’ve thought about it for a while and I think the director hit the nail on the head. Once I learn something new, I usually try to find something I can relate it to, and it’s not very difficult to do. When you think about it, everything you learn can be related to something else, like all the knowledge in the world is connected so that we can use what we know for many purposes. It’s kind of hard to believe that something like this world was created just by accident.
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Jarred Spengler Reply:
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
@Morgan Coomes, Keep up the good work. You jarred a few people out of the brainwashed mindset of believing things just because they were told.
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Christians do themselves a huge disservice by denying the merits of evolution. Creationism, as it is today, has no scientific basis other than the fact that evolution’s scientific basis is tenuous. I’m not saying that the way that evolution is understood today is the way everything came about, there certainly are problems. But treating intelligent design as if it were some sort of improved scientific inquiry when juxtaposed to evolution, is like chasing unicorns. You can no more “prove” intelligent design than you can “prove” evolution.
[Reply]
Jarred Spengler Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
@Donutdrinkp, Well, I have no knowledge of the “scientific” methods of proving either evolution or creation. I will not lie, I have little understanding of the workings of any scientific field. I nearly failed chemistry in high school! So I cannot help you when it comes to scientific evidence proving creation or disproving evolution.
What I do want to ask you is this: Why is evolution taught in schools if it is still a theory? is a biased opinion the impetus behind advocating evolution and shunning creationism? You wrote that you can no more prove intelligent design than you could prove evolution. if this is the case than why is evolution taught as truth while creationism is taught as blind faith?
Also, I wanted to know what distinguished evolution from all other beliefs of the past. Every culture has formed some kind of belief when it came to their origin, later on that belief was regarded as foolishness. What makes the evolution theory so different? What makes us think that evolution is invincible?
The last thing I want to do is regurgitate a plethora of creationist facts. I’m not a scientist, but I do want you to ponder these questions and tell me what you think.
1. why is evolution taught in schools if it cannot be proven beyond theory?
2. what makes us think that evolution is bullet-proof?
I do have reasoning as to why I think creation is more plausible, please don’t think I’m trying to gain the victory by pointing out the idiosyncrasies of evolution. I just want to know what you think first.
thanks, I hope to hear back.
[Reply]
Donutdrinkp Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
@Jarred Spengler, I’m not saying that evolution is bullet proof. But I think there is a good amount of evidence supporting its merits. I think from a Christian perspective, evolution is problematic because of the necessity of its mechanism — randomness. But we believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God. How is it that we can’t understand that He might be able to conceive of a way to use this mechanism for his glory.
There are even Biblical examples of God’s using random chance to reveal truth (just look at Numbers 26:55,56; Joshua 14:2; Judges 20:9,10; 1 Samuel 10:19-21; Jonah 1:7; and other verses to see what I mean).
The other thing about evolution is that our records are utterly incomplete. Paleontology is a fairly new science though. Criticizing the fossil record does very little good. It’s like saying that the New Testament isn’t true because of a lack of historical data. Critics of the New Testament used to cite the lack evidence of Pilate’s existence until a 1961 discovery that bore out the Christian claim of Pilate’s gubernatorial reign. It is to say that I believe the New Testament to be true because the historical evidence seems to continually indicate that it is. Likewise, evolution seems to have a preponderence of historical evidence that further supports many of its claims.
This is how science is done. In school, we learn the theories of our time. The debate over evolution, however, has become polarizing. People have begun so staunchly defending its merits that good science sometimes falls to the wayside. That isn’t okay. But nothing yet has disproved evolution. Nor has there been an adequate alternative, despite the many valiant attempts.
You have to realize, science is a debate. It is a debate between fact and fact. Here are all the things we know, here are all the conclusions we can draw from those things. Some scientists will draw different conclusions. Their claims are then tested. Sometimes one theory is outright rejected, other times neither theory is shown to be conclusive. The fact of the matter is, evolutionists have, to date, answered eloquently many of intelligent design’s criticisms. Behe’s critiques (http://bit.ly/1a0gpG), for example, have been well criticized by Ken Miller (http://bit.ly/133S6A) a Catholic biologist out of Brown University. He also leads a discussion about the cross section of religion and evolution in his book Finding Darwin’s God (http://bit.ly/vCWjL).
Intelligent design isn’t a school of science. Rather, it is a school of criticism. It has done well to find the holes in evolutionary theory, and evolutionary biologists have worked hard to answer them. Some of their theories (after being subject to rigorous peer review) have been met with a fair amount of skepticism such as the famed Harvard biologist Stephen J. Gould’s theory known as punctuated equilibrium (http://bit.ly/u4ebY). Other evolutionary claims seem to hold up, such as speciation and adaptation. It is to say that in a good school curriculum, the evolutionary gaps are often mentioned. The reason they are not subsituted with “intelligent design” is because intelligent design isn’t a cogent set of scientifically provable claims, it’s just a laundry list of the evolutionary gaps. These might fall under the heading “scientific debate”, but they are not actually evidence of an alternative theory, just evidence that the theory we have is incomplete.
Evolution won’t fall apart because of a lack of evidence (simply because something hasn’t been discovered is not proof that it does not exist at all). As with all science, Darwinian evolution will crumble only if the empirical evidence does not bare out. And to date, it has continued to bare out. We will see how it holds up against the emerging science of genetics which will allow us to see exactly what changed where and when. Ultimately, I believe that genetics will be the arbitor of evolution’s merits. It will likely go a long way to describing the precambrian explosion and
So at this point in the discussion, many evangelicals will point out that if evolution is true, if we evolved over the course of hundreds of thousands and even millions of years then the Old Testament stories aren’t true. And if they aren’t true, one’s faith must be rejected. This is without consideration for how the Bible is meant to be read. What I’m saying isn’t anything new. Only that the Psalms are poetry, they must be read as such. They employ literary devices such as hyperbole to convey truth. It is art. The story conveyed in Genesis has merit only insofar as we understand how it ought to be read. From a New Testament perspective, it ought to be understood as setting us up for Jesus. The story of Adam and Eve shows us that man is fallen of his own volition, that man’s sin separates him from God, and that man’s separation from God is permanent without atonement for what humanity has done. Whether or not God created the earth in 6 days or 2 million years is unimportant. It’s a bit like the debate about a heliocentric universe which is fully rejected by any rational member of the church. And yet, the Bible was used to support the theory.
The reality is that the Bible’s dates as stated in Genesis aren’t supported by the science. This means one of three things for Christians. 1) We are wrong about all of it and we should reject the Bible. Paul tells us that if we are wrong we are to be pitied. So, frankly, this should be a relief. 2) We are right about who Jesus is. We also believe that science reveals a bit about God’s nature. Thus, when one contradicts the other, we must find synthesis. Therefore we must understand that the way we read the creation story is incorrect. It is to say that the creation story may not be a historical account of two people, but rather a myth describing why man needs a savior. 3) We must bury our heads in the sand and ignore what we think contradicts what we believe. This is what the church has done. Evangelicalism has, largely, argued that it is necessary to believe in God’s 6-day creation in order to be a good Christian. I often hear the phrase, if the first chapters aren’t true than you can’t trust the rest of it. The argument is illogical. It would be more accurate to say if there are elements of the Bible that are untrue than perhaps the Bible isn’t a completely, historically accurate account of what happened. And that’s a fact; it isn’t. While I believe the Bible to be God’s 100%, unerrant true, I do not believe that it is historical literature. I would say that same thing whether or not the evidence supported a 6-day creation. The Bible was written by men (it did not fall from the sky), through the relevent lens of their day. It spoke to the people to whom it was written, and it has application even today 2000+ years later. The Bible is not meant as a guidebook to Newtonian physics or the geological sciences. It is a book that is meant to reveal truth about God. And to that end, it does very well.
Thanks for expounding, I had a few other questions:
How do we determine what is true and isn’t true about the bible?
How do we determine what we take literally and what we take figuratively about God? Do we take all of it figuratively?
How do we handle the fact that people of the old testament, the people of Israel, regarded the 6 day creation as historical? It was placed in the first 5 books, penned by Moses and regarded as the origin of the race of Israel. it has lineage leading from Adam to to Abram.
How do we handle the genealogical account in Luke 3:21-38 leading from Adam to Jesus?
How do we know when we are being influenced by our culture?
Lastly, How do we handle Darwin’s statement that Evolution and intelligent design according to the bible are not compatible? I’m sorry, I don’t have the resource on hand, but I can confidently tell you that it is true. The bible says that God made all things and saw that they were good, while evolution states that this process of perfecting the creature took a long time. Evolution was much like weeding a garden, you take out the unnecessary and harmful plants while leaving the good ones in.
[Reply]
Donutdrunkp Reply:
June 20th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
@Jarred Spengler,
How do we determine what is true and isn’t true about the bible?
* We do this everyday. And interestingly, everyone has different opinions about what to take seriously and what not to take seriously.
How do we determine what we take literally and what we take figuratively about God?
*We take Biblical elements literally and figuratively all the time. You know that.
Do we take all of it figuratively?
*No
How do we know when we are being influenced by our culture?
* We are always being influenced by our culture. Like, for example, the modernday evangelical rejection of all things scientific. It’s a modern, American, Evangelical element of culture.
How do we handle the fact that people of the old testament, the people of Israel, regarded the 6 day creation as historical?
* How do we deal with the fact that the people of Israel practiced polygamy? We live within the reality of the present. While I don’t fully agree with him, Max Weber put it well in describing culture as an iron cage. We are victims (not necessarily in a bad way) of our surroundings. It’s the same thing I wrote about culture, we are always influenced by it. Basing modern Christian theology on the beliefs of a bunch of pre-modern tribal savages is a bit like a father deferring to his 4 year old on household financial decisions.
How do we handle the genealogical account in Luke 3:21-38 leading from Adam to Jesus?
* I never said Adam wasn’t a real person. Just that it’s unreasonable to believe that he was actually the first person and that the earth is like 8,000 years old.
Lastly, How do we handle Darwin’s statement that Evolution and intelligent design according to the bible are not compatible?
*This is a ridiculous question. It’s like saying that because Watson or Crick is a racist, anyone who believes in their theories regarding genetics is also a racist. A person’s science and their beliefs about their science are two entirely different things.
The problem with your argument for creation is that it asks entirely the wrong questions. In your questions to me, you are basically asking me how the Bible influences what I believe about science. I think it is far more interesting to determine where science and the Bible intersect. Things change. Scientific discoveries that seem to contradict the Biblical record have always caught Christians off guard. And always, Christians have denied such science at the expense of their own integrity.
[Reply]
I admire your writing style. Your vocabulary is also quite extensive. you have taught me a couple of new words that I have been putting into use.
With the utmost respect I will say that it seems you have boxed all Christians into a stereotype our culture has advocated, swallowing a lie. I know that there are people out there who regard themselves as Christians, yet are in essence just minions of a religious order. Because of this I am not terribly offended at all, but I would like to write this on behalf of the followers of Jesus out there who actually have brains in their heads.
as long as you immediately associate science with evolution and creationism with stupidity, we will get nowhere.
I feel that both of us can agree with this definition of science:
A systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
I do believe in science, please don’t associate me with a religious stereotype. Science is comprised of recordable observations of the patterns of our world. If I drop an apple out the window I can observe the law of gravity.
Theoretically speaking, strata layers are said to have formed over hundreds of millions of years and distinguish one time period from the other (Triassic, Jurassic, etc.). we also have fossils differing one from another in their complexity. the more complex ones being found in the higher strata layers while the less complex ones are found in the lower strata layers. So it seems theoretically possible, though not scientifically recordable, that a slow development of a living organisms occurred over millions of years.
What about polystrata fossils? These are fossils that intercept more than one strata layer said to distinguish one era of time from another. Are there such things as polystrata fossils? if so, is that a recordable observation that the strata layers aren’t millions of years apart? Could it be evidence towards something other than a slow development?
Thanks, hope to hear back.
[Reply]
I promise you Mr. Spengler, I have not swallowed any lies, nor have I boxed Christians into any sort of box. I speak to you with the utmost integrity based upon empirical observation, and many years of study and experience. Nor do I immediately associate science with evolution and creationism with stupidity. Rather, I say that creationism, in and of itself, is not science. Science is an argument. We see things, we do our best to explain it. Creationism has a place in that argument, but only insofar as it is studied legitimately. Once again, you ask me questions about flaws you see in evolutionary theory. These are legitimate concerns. But it is not science to say because the current theory doesn’t explain everything, we must automatically reject it and come up with another theory.
None of these questions disprove evolution. Rather, they raise questions about its overall efficacy. I’m not a paleontologist, but I’m sure that they are good questions. If you want a good answer, I recommend you ask a paleontologist. If the concerns you raise aren’t big enough to dissuade them that evolution is still the best explanation, I’m sure that they can do much to assuage your curiosities.
Remember, this evolution thing is not a grand conspiracy. For any person who can come up with a better theory than evolution there is fame and fortune on the horizon. I promise you, it is every scientist’s wet dream to come upon some discovery that renders flaccid the theory of evolution. But, it hasn’t happened yet.
[Reply]
Taylor Kauffman Reply:
May 12th, 2010 at 6:49 am
@Donutdrinkp,
I apologize for being extrememly late to this discussion but I do have a few questions that I feel you have failed to answer.
And I apologize ahead of time but large words are not my strongsuit so if you could “dumb down” your answers that’d be great.
1. When you say that the Bible is half Figuretive, and Half literal can you list an example of Figuretive scripture then bring in a literal one for me?
From your responses I interpret the fact that you believe in a God. Which is good, I guess.
But for the record the Bible, The creation story clearly does go against evolution. Even if you take the approach of the 6 days being figurative, It still makes evolution impossible.
heres why
For evolution to work, you need Natural Selection. Agreed?
For Natural Selection to work you need creatures to die. Agreed?
In the Creation story Death and SIn do not enter the world until after the fall. If Death and Sin do not exsist until after ALL OF CREATION is made, how do you suggest Evolution happened during the days where no death occured.
Also to bring the point of 6 literal days, in case your reading it incorrectly plants are made the day before the sun……Tell me, how do plants live for however long you say the days really were without the sun. I believe plants can exsist for a day without sunlight, in fact im pretty sure they do.
The fact is, The Bible is the Physical Word of God, I can get you scripture for this, but I think you are intelligent enought to figure it out yourself.
If the Bible is wrong, if you can actually prove it with physical evidence, then the Living God, Jesus Christ, does not exsist and is a complete lie that supposedly men died for. I dont know about you but I dont know of men who make up their own lie and get tortured for it and do not admit its a lie. I just dont think it happens.
I look forward to your reply
[Reply]
Donutdrunkp Reply:
June 8th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
@Taylor Kauffman, Sorry I’ve been absent from this discussion for some time. I meant to answer much sooner, but just forgot. So here I go.
Q. 1. When you say that the Bible is half Figuretive, and Half literal can you list an example of Figuretive scripture then bring in a literal one for me?
A. Well, when Christ calls us the salt of the earth, he’s speaking figuratively. He doesn’t mean we’re literally salt.
“Duh” you say? Yes, it’s obvious. Likewise, reading the story of Genesis as a literal account of what occured is an obvious exegetical blunder. It’s also a misunderstanding of the origins of the Creation story. In all likelihood, the creation story is a rehashing of an ancient Babylonian myth co-opted by the ancient Jewish traditions. This doesn’t make it any less important or any less poignant. The story conveys the truth that we as humans are lost, we are separated from God, we are in need of reconciliation with that creator. For the ancients they sought reconciliation through sacrifice. Today, through the Paschal mystery, we are able to find that same sort of reconciliation. None of that necessitates that the story be literal.
Q. In the Creation story Death and SIn do not enter the world until after the fall. If Death and Sin do not exsist until after ALL OF CREATION is made, how do you suggest Evolution happened during the days where no death occured.
A. This is not a correct interpretation of Genesis. There is nothing in Genesis that says anything of whether animals died or not. It’s a fallacious extra-Biblical extrapolation. But I reject your premise. In order to make the assertion that there was no death in the garden, one would have to believe that the story was a literal account of what happened int he beginning, which I just explained, I reject.
Q. Also to bring the point of 6 literal days, in case your reading it incorrectly plants are made the day before the sun……Tell me, how do plants live for however long you say the days really were without the sun. I believe plants can exsist for a day without sunlight, in fact im pretty sure they do.
A. Wait…what? What possible explanation would there be for a perfect God to have created plants before he made the sun? Anyhow, my comment ont he word yom has less to do with the literal order of events as they are outlined in Genesis, and more a point about the story itself. It is not meant as a literal story of creation.
Q. The fact is, The Bible is the Physical Word of God, I can get you scripture for this, but I think you are intelligent enought to figure it out yourself. If the Bible is wrong, if you can actually prove it with physical evidence, then the Living God, Jesus Christ, does not exist and is a complete lie that supposedly men died for. I dont know about you but I dont know of men who make up their own lie and get tortured for it and do not admit its a lie. I just dont think it happens.
A. I’m sorry to inform you that the Bible did not fall out of the sky. It is written by man inspired by God, no doubt. But it is not sufficient on its own. People go to seminary and study Theology in order to learn how to read this complex book full of literary devices and timely references. Moreover, you can’t point to an example of where scripture says that it is the physical word of God. Scripture was compiled by humans, selected from among other sources with a set of guidelines to guide the selection process. And that was the new testament. The old testament was compiled much later. While it is true that TRADITION (which Protestants, and evangelicals in particular, pretend to reject) dictates that the Bible is, in fact, God breathed, such an acknowledgement puts your thesis on tenuous ground. There are no scriptures that claim the Bible is God-breathed. That would be self-referential. A scripture like that would be saying that this compilation of books, which wouldn’t have existed as a cannon when the scripture was written, are the specific words of God. Also to say that if the Bible isn’t literal (which is what I think you mean to say), then Jesus isn’t who he says he is, is a logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy or bifurcation. As Voltaire says, you are making the perfect the enemy of the Good. It is to say, you are making a leap when you say, if everything can’t be proved, then everything is false. You know that’s not true. What’s more, if you are comfortable believing that everything in the Bible is meant exactly as it is stated, then you haven’t read the scriptures. Do you think that when Jesus says, if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains? While I believe in an all-powerful God who could certainly make that happen, I don’t think he will. In fact, I’d near promise you he wouldn’t. If you don’t believe me, then go test your faith. Go pray that God moves some hill in the distance. You’re going to have to come to a conclusion. Either, you are faithless (which I’m sure you know you are not), or the verse wasn’t quite meant as a literal truth. It’s figurative, it’s hyperbolic, and it’s about the power of prayer and the power of God. Does your inability to move mountains disprove the power of Christ? Nope, it just means you were reading the scriptures incorrectly.
It’s also not convincing to say that people don’t die for lies. People die for lies that they believe in all the time. Joseph Smith did it, Hitler did it, and throughtout the centuries millions of others have done the same.
Thanks for the response.
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Well there sure is alot being said. And I hope this isn’t too overwhelming but @donutdrunkp I think what you said about How we determine right and wrong is a little off. Whether or not we are Christians there are a set of basic rules that man kind has chosen to use. What you are saying is that our conscience is a result of how we were brought up (culture, society influences, parents) even though we could argue about what’s custom and what is something that’s just wrong doesn’t get rid of the fact that the conscience is still there. No society could be without this (laws like, murder, rape, stealing, lying, etc.) if it was without absolute law then that society would not be able to live and grow. God gave us a conscience that we use to determine right and wrong though some of us lie to ourselves that conscience is there you just have to move some crap to get to it. Hopefully this made sense! lol It sounds right in my head but then comes out jumbled!
[Reply]
Donutdrunkp Reply:
June 8th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
@Ben Forsman
Where did I talk about formation of conscience?
[Reply]
Thank you all for the discussion surrounding my post. I feel I should respond to some of the questions raised in the discussion.
First, theistic evolution is certainly a legitmate and defensible view for a Christian to take. Dr. Ken Miller is referenced and I take him to be a leading proponent of this view.
For anyone interested in the theological implications of the various approaches to creation vs. evolution I would encourage them to read In The Beginning by Henri Blocher. He has a terrific section on the spectrum of belief for Evangelicals as we seek to take Genesis 1-2 seriously.
I am not a theistic evolutionist for scientific and logical reasons and not just because it contradicts a literal reading of Genesis. As I tried to say in my post, and say more in depth in my book, the evidence for evolution, such as that sited by Dr. Miller, is circumstantial and indirect. It claims to “see” the development of the organs of hearing in the fossil record of the early reptiles, just as they claim to see the development of whales in ancient fossils found in Asia. The problem is that some form of this argument has been the entire foundation of the evidential support for evolution from the very beginning. The similarities between the skeletons of horses, or the bones that form the inner ear in reptiles, doesn’t explain the accidental development of bone or skeletons or the inner ear, which are all of a complexity and functionality that make their accidental development inconceiveable.
For me, it ultimately becomes a mathematical and logical problem. Probality theory attempts to quantify the chances of a random even occurring in nature. The levels of complexity involved in just a single evolutionary event (the development of an inner ear, for example) is so gigantic that the very idea that this could have happened purely by chance is completely illogical. When you add up all the events that would have to take place for evolution to occur you end up completely beyond the realm of possibility.
What I was trying to say in my post is that when actual experimental science has been applied to the theory of evolution, in the case of all the mutation experiments that have been undertaken over the last 70 years or so, they have shown that the theory doesn’t work. Evolutionists have been making excuses about these experiments for decades (“Evolution works too slowly for us to be able to acutally see it while it happens.”). But they are crucial to the verification of the theory because they are built upon its premises, and the fact that they have come up empty is empirical proof that the theory doesn’t work.
To be honest, this debate will go on until Jesus returns, and my own concern is not with the various approaches that Christians take on the questions. I am most disturbed by the implications of methodological naturalism and the secularism that inevitably flows from it in shaping the values and lifestyles of the modern world. Worldview matters, beliefs matter, they shape the way people experience life, they determine whether they believe in goodness and truth, and of course, whether they believe in God. Many lives have already been destroyed by our flirtation with enlightenment philosophy. The Gospel is truth at so many levels, not the least of which is the actual human experience of life. When Jesus promised peace and an abundant life, He was offering us reality. To ignore or deny His words is to embrace chaos and death. Sadly, because of our acceptance of the relativism and secularism of the enlightenment, way too many people know what I just said first hand. This is our battle, to present Jesus and thus to present life.
[Reply]
Donutdrunkp Reply:
June 8th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
@Tom Shetler, I appreciate acknowledgement of the position, but it’s insufficient to say the theory has been shown inadequate. That’s acknowledged by scientists. That’s why they don’t simply stop at evolution happened. Science is the advancement of truth. And while that shouldn’t happen at the expense of morality (like in the case of harvesting stem cells from fetuses to advance science), to simply offer the gospels as an alternative to science is in direct contradiction to the implicit message of the gospels. We are commanded to seek Christ, which means that we are commanded to seek truth. Seeking Christ means we seek for evidence of his existence. Seeking evidence means that we continue to seek truth. Seeking truth means we cannot simply stop at the gospels and believe they are sufficient. Relativism exists because Christians have stupidly exited academic discourse. To simply say that relativism has no credence is to ignore the nuance of morality formation. To suggest that Christians shouldn’t flirt with anti-Christian philosophies indicates a lack of confidence in your own position. The most educated person alive in the days of the New Testament was Paul. He was also the most influential member of the early church. The books he wrote are wrought with his personality and humanity. But to follow his example is to say that Christians ought to be trying to prove to themselves that Christ was not who he said he was. For if we’re wrong, we’re the disgustingly sad.
[Reply]
donut:
I think you’re guilty here of the “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” role.
There are major problems with evolution, and after this many years you would THINK that they would have found
a) Transitional fossils that weren’t deliberate hoaxes
b) Perfectly consistent strata layers worldwide for fossil dating
c) Spontaneous generation of life
d) One single observed net gain of function in one single organism
Sadly, all we’ve had as “proof” of evolution are the Haeckel drawings that still resides in our high school Biology books years after they’ve been exposed as fraudulent fakes meant to prop up Darwin’s original theories. We’ve had billions of generations’ worth of manmade mutations on fruit flies and moths yet we wind up with… fruit flies and moths. We’ve had no evidence from the scientific community to debunk the information science that requires a mental source to generate information in this universe and that DNA is indeed a form of information. Did DNA exist on a rock and then magically evolve into a life form? DNA can’t sustain itself. Did a life form exist before DNA? Impossible, as DNA is a precursor to existence and without it the proteins and cells of the body wouldn’t even form. We’ve had no scientific “rebuttal” of the huge problem that chirality presents to evolution, and yet here you are, advocating that we take the Bible less than literally because of this great search for truth.
You do not have to pick and choose pieces of the Bible in order to view the world through a scientific lens. You can accept it entirely and believe that a God who can create human beings can do it in a literal human day. You can believe that when the sun both rises and sets in Genesis, it’s because the planets were already aligned and operating as they do today in perfect harmony. Science exists because God gave human beings a mind capable of rational and logical thought. Monkeys and slugs don’t believe in science, as they don’t have the capacity for it. Rather than use science to prop up the false theories of mankind, perhaps you should appreciate that real observable, repeatable and testable science always aligns with the Bible and what it says ought to be true.
If you want to believe that we are glorified swamp ooze, or if you believe that Oort clouds are hiding around the corner of our galaxy churning out new comets, or that a fish can somehow sprout legs, lungs, and start breathing oxygen without such a transient form ever being found AND ignoring the concept of irreducible complexity, then it is you who believes things outside the scope of reason, logic, or science.
If you are the product of billions of random chance events over the course of our universe’s history, how can you even trust that your brain is able to reason appropriately? Evolved swamp ooze ought not have such strong opinions.
To respond to your earlier comment that “To suggest that Christians shouldn’t flirt with anti-Christian philosophies indicates a lack of confidence in your own position,” I would respond that it is never bad to know what else is out there in the world, but read Romans 12:2 and don’t be so easily distracted and misled that you fall for what all of these other impressionable young minds are falling for.
It’s a sad day when a 20-year old college student speaks about the theory of evolution with absolute conviction that it is absolute fact. That is not the mindset of an objective and curious person.
That is the mindset of someone who believes in something just as intensely as a Christian, and that is what can happen to anyone who attempts to pick and choose parts of the Bible to prop up a misguided theory that was disproven before it was ever published.
Darwin himself said that he was hopeful the fossil layer would support his theory. He outright attempted to legitimize his theory under the assumption that the fossil record was incomplete. We’ve been digging desperately for something to validate this theory for 150+ years and have found nothing at all to even come close to validating it. Yet kids today are graduating from school with the perspective that evolution is scientific fact and we are the descendants of monkeys. How is this possible?
The same people who challenge us to question our beliefs should first question their own. In the end a rational and logical mind would see the perfect symmetry with which this universe behaves.
After questioning your own beliefs more intensely donut, perhaps you would arrive at a rational and logical conclusion.
[Reply]
Taylor Kauffman Reply:
August 3rd, 2010 at 7:13 pm
@BigSeph,
Concerning your third to last paragraph:
Not to mention that Darwin himself, in his book, announced that if his theory was not fully proven within 100 years we should denounce it.
Its been way over 100 years. He himself would have rebuked his own theory.
[Reply]
donutdrinkp Reply:
December 20th, 2011 at 8:59 pm
@BigSeph, First off, I never spoke of evolution as definitive. That’s your projection of what I said. You’ve set me up as a straw man. It’s interesting to say the one who is advocating consideration of another is close minded. Also, notice that in the same breath you say I am close minded, you tell me that a Christian is called to be close minded, utterly confident in their belief, un-distracted by the possibility of incorrectness.
The reality is, you do not read the Bible as a literal document. You are an intelligent reader who understands when Christ calls us the salt of the earth, we are not literally salt. When Christ tells us to be fishers of men, he doesn’t literally mean that we are supposed to go hook people in the mouth with hooks. You have the ability to read metaphors, similes, and more. You also understand that the Bible doesn’t need to be 100% literal in order to still be 100% true. Yet you are telling me that one of the stories written by second hand authors is absolutely 100% true and that it must be because if the Bible is in any way read non-literally, the whole of it can be called into question. But that’s false on its face since much of the Bible isn’t to be read “literally”. Does it matter whether God created the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th? Does it matter whether that was literal or whether it was some sort of epoch? If you think the important bit of that story is the number of days used, you miss the entire point of the New Testament. It is much more interesting when you understand that the entirety of the NT is to prepare us for the OT. 7 days doesn’t matter; our sin matters.
Moreover, your assertion that evolved swamp ooze ought to act in some specific way is uninteresting and reductive. The Christian claim is that we are made from dust. How ought evolved dust act? Seems to me that the breath of life, our wonderfully complex sentience, regardless of our origins, changes everything. Irrespective of whether we were once ooze or dust, we are not ooze or dust anymore. Being insulted of origins is like being insulted that you were once an incomprehensible, babbling little baby. You aren’t a baby anymore. But you once were. Aren’t you glad that you grew up?
a) Transitional fossils that weren’t deliberate hoaxes
Dismissing everything as a hoax isn’t helpful. Anyhow, here’s Ken Miller. He’s a Catholic, and an evolutionist. Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9a-lFn4hqY
b) Perfectly consistent strata layers worldwide for fossil dating
Why do you think this is necessary? Are you a geologist or a biologist? Seems like if you aren’t an expert on understanding regional changes, tectonic plate shifts, etc, you probably can’t just decide that this is important.
c) Spontaneous generation of life
If this is as rare as you claim, which I believe it is, why would you be able to observe it. Interestingly, the creationist argument requires spontaneous generation of life as well. The question is of how life was spontaneously generated. Once again I ask, what’s the difference if God breathed life into dust or whether God breathed life into ooze. Get over it. Both are equally weird.
d) One single observed net gain of function in one single organism
Really? You don’t think this has happened? This is what farmers do everyday. I used to work at lab where we tested sugar beet seeds. We would find plants with resistance to funguses (a mutation that was not natural to the plant), and we would grow those plants. How about when viruses mutate so that they can resist medicine. How about how in Africa if you overlay a map of sickle cell anemia cases and malaria, you end up with a nearly perfect correlation because sickle cell anemia is a great physiological way to avoid contracting/dying from malaria. This is the most absurd objection one could level.
Whether you find what I wrote to your objections is convincing to you or not, the reality is, you run into huge problems when you pretend your faith is an empirical practice. If you say that Evolution is obviously false because you haven’t found enough data and imply that if it were true, the whole of your religious world would collapse, answer me what you will do when or whether enough data is gotten. Then you will be forced to make a decision. Either you will have to give up your beliefs and accept another set of beliefs, or you can be suffer the fate of a liar. I think the better path is to simply be measured about beliefs. Consider that there are reasonable things to believe in, and that you can’t know everything. Evolution and science in general disprove God just as much as a Heliocentric universe does. And yet, you seem fine with the understanding that the earth isn’t the center of the Universe.
[Reply]
First off, I never spoke of evolution as definitive. That’s your projection of what I said. You’ve set me up as a straw man. It’s interesting to say the one who is advocating consideration of another is close minded. Also, notice that in the same breath you say I am close minded, you tell me that a Christian is called to be close minded, utterly confident in their belief, un-distracted by the possibility of incorrectness.
The reality is, you do not read the Bible as a literal document. You are an intelligent reader who understands when Christ calls us the salt of the earth, we are not literally salt. When Christ tells us to be fishers of men, he doesn’t literally mean that we are supposed to go hook people in the mouth with hooks. You have the ability to read metaphors, similes, and more. You also understand that the Bible doesn’t need to be 100% literal in order to still be 100% true. Yet you are telling me that one of the stories written by second hand authors is absolutely 100% true and that it must be because if the Bible is in any way read non-literally, the whole of it can be called into question. But that’s false on its face since much of the Bible isn’t to be read “literally”. Does it matter whether God created the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th? Does it matter whether that was literal or whether it was some sort of epoch? If you think the important bit of that story is the number of days used, you miss the entire point of the New Testament. It is much more interesting when you understand that the entirety of the NT is to prepare us for the OT. 7 days doesn’t matter; our sin matters.
Moreover, your assertion that evolved swamp ooze ought to act in some specific way is uninteresting and reductive. The Christian claim is that we are made from dust. How ought evolved dust act? Seems to me that the breath of life, our wonderfully complex sentience, regardless of our origins, changes everything. Irrespective of whether we were once ooze or dust, we are not ooze or dust anymore. Being insulted of origins is like being insulted that you were once an incomprehensible, babbling little baby. You aren’t a baby anymore. But you once were. Aren’t you glad that you grew up?
a) Transitional fossils that weren’t deliberate hoaxes
Dismissing everything as a hoax isn’t helpful. Anyhow, here’s Ken Miller. He’s a Catholic, and an evolutionist. Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9a-lFn4hqY
b) Perfectly consistent strata layers worldwide for fossil dating
Why do you think this is necessary? Are you a geologist or a biologist? Seems like if you aren’t an expert on understanding regional changes, tectonic plate shifts, etc, you probably can’t just decide that this is important.
c) Spontaneous generation of life
If this is as rare as you claim, which I believe it is, why would you be able to observe it. Interestingly, the creationist argument requires spontaneous generation of life as well. The question is of how life was spontaneously generated. Once again I ask, what’s the difference if God breathed life into dust or whether God breathed life into ooze. Get over it. Both are equally weird.
d) One single observed net gain of function in one single organism
Really? You don’t think this has happened? This is what farmers do everyday. I used to work at lab where we tested sugar beet seeds. We would find plants with resistance to funguses (a mutation that was not natural to the plant), and we would grow those plants. How about when viruses mutate so that they can resist medicine. How about how in Africa if you overlay a map of sickle cell anemia cases and malaria, you end up with a nearly perfect correlation because sickle cell anemia is a great physiological way to avoid contracting/dying from malaria. This is the most absurd objection one could level.
Whether you find what I wrote to your objections is convincing to you or not, the reality is, you run into huge problems when you pretend your faith is an empirical practice. If you say that Evolution is obviously false because you haven’t found enough data and imply that if it were true, the whole of your religious world would collapse, answer me what you will do when or whether enough data is gotten. Then you will be forced to make a decision. Either you will have to give up your beliefs and accept another set of beliefs, or you can be suffer the fate of a liar. I think the better path is to simply be measured about beliefs. Consider that there are reasonable things to believe in, and that you can’t know everything. Evolution and science in general disprove God just as much as a Heliocentric universe does. And yet, you seem fine with the understanding that the earth isn’t the center of the Universe.
[Reply]