geocreationism.com

Evolution is among the most controversial theories when discussing Creation.  Did God use Evolution?  Did God design Evolution?  Did God participate in Evolution?  and on it goes.  The problem with discussing Evolution as a Christian is that other Christians disagree on what it is.

Evolution is change in organisms over generations. Offspring differ from their parents in various ways. When these differences are helpful, the offspring have a greater chance of both surviving and reproducing, making the differences more common in the next generation. In this way, differences can accumulate over time, leading to major changes in a population. - WikiPedia, Introduction to Evolution

Taken at face value, this definition appears harmless enough, and it sounds reasonable enough to be true.  Scientists have witnessed changes within a species (micro-evolution) and Christians have generally accepted that.  The appearance of a new species however (macro-evolution) is another thing altogether, and Christians generally reject that it occurs.

Young Earth Creationists reject macro-evolution (when I say Evolution, I will generally mean macro-evolution) because they believe the earth to be 6,000 to 10,000 years old, and that’s just not long enough for Evolution to occur.  Another reason is because Genesis records God’s intentional creation of life, and Evolution appears to result in accidental creation of life.  Finally, there do not appear to be all of the transitional fossils that one would expect to find in the earth’s fossil record.

Theistic Evolutionists (comprising arguably the majority of Old Earth Creationists) also reject macro-evolution as such, because they believe God actively created new species at specific points in time.  Therefore, life was no accident, species weren’t created through an accumulation of changes, and the fossil gaps are explained.

It is when Christians claim belief in Evolution that terminology gets in the way.  A Christian who believes evolution accepts the idea that small changes over time can accumulate to the point where a new species will eventually emerge, at least when compared with its ancestor.  Where is God?  For a Christian, God is the one who created the process of Evolution, the source of the evolutionary changes, or perhaps the one who does the selection.

Whatever ones view of God, discussion of Evolution remains straight forward when its focused on whether changes can accumulate over time to produce a new species.  Discussion becomes problematic however when Evolution is defined in a manner excluding God as the active agent in the Evolutionary process.

Many Christians, myself included, believe that life developed in phases over billions of years, and that this development is recorded in the fossil record.  The easiest manner for characterizing this apparent history is to say that life “evolved”.  Once that is accepted, the next step is to explain how God participated in the process, and this is where communication begins to break down.

While Christians like me consider Evolutionary theory to be silent on how or whether God participated in the development of life, other Christians see it as the theory that God most assuredly did not participate… and atheists would generally agree.  Therefore, discussion of God’s participation in the evolution of Earth’s species is seen to be a contradiction.  That’s it.  Conversation over.  However, I could not leave it at that.

Somehow, the fossil record captures the history of God’s development of Earth’s species.  Somehow it captures God’s choice to allow the accumulation of changes to produce new species in some cases, and surely not in others.  Somehow.  I don’t mind if this cannot be called Evolution, but then what can it be called?

In my question for clarification, I happened upon the testimony of Stephen E. Jones, where he made an excellent point I had never considered: “Jesus warned his followers that after him would come false teachers, and these would be recognised by their “fruit” (Mat. 7:15-20).” Well, I must agree that the “fruit” resulting from Evolution’s exclusion of God is rotton enough on its face to reject it based, on Jesus’ own words. However, does that make the entire theory rotten?  Or are there valid “Evolutionary” elements that might be included in a larger theory devoid of the rotten fruit?  Well, there may be, but at the end of the day I’m still inclined to call it Evolution, even if I do mean something different than the Godless version that helped man produce stalinism, nazism, and others.

As much as I love my fellow Christian brethren, I am going to continue referring to a God-managed Evolution-type process as simply Evolution.  In my mind, the theory of Evolution is scientific, while the choice to believe God managed it is religious.  Therefore, at least when I write of it, the mention of Evolution doesn’t actually speak to whether God participated in it.  After all, God could have authored the mutation or change; He could have authored the moment when a mutated animal survived or died before reproducing.  He could be starting and stopping the process at His whim. Any of these options looks enough like the fossil record that using the term Evolution will convey enough of the meaning.  But insisting on calling it Evolution still presents a problem.

Let us take a step back for a moment, and examine the mechanism of Evolution: Natural Selection.  If by “Natural” we mean “without God”, then a Christian could not believe in a lone Natural Selection driving Evolution, because then God truly has no room to act.  But, there are many Evolution-believing Christians who are not exluding God in their meaning, though they cannot avoid sounding like they do.  Well then, we should agree this makes “Natural Selection” is a poor or misleading term.  Instead, I propose that “Divine Selection” be used as the term for the mechanics of Evolution, where you believe that God was an active participant in the mutation or selection process.  Perhaps it was mix, some Natural and some Divine, so long as God was no less active than required by the book of Genesis and other related scriptures.

In closing, anywhere on this blog you see a discussion of Evolution, I will simply mean the accumulation of changes over time, leading to new species.  If the context isn’t clear, I will qualify it with the proper mechanism, either “Natural Selection” or “Divine Selection”.