An Evangelical Statement on Evolution

Steve Martin, of An Evangelical Dialog on Evolution, is in the process of beginning work on what he is calling "An Evangelical Statement on Evolution." He has made a good start, but is asking for assistance. This is an attempt to offer such assistance.

I won't repeat Martin's work, which I applaud, here. I do want to make some suggestions.

Martin is attempting to demonstrate that there are evangelical Christians who believe that God used natural selection in bringing about the present diversity of living things. It seems to me that one thing a Statement of the type he is working on should do is to define evolution, and, in doing so, indicate part of the common ground that Christians who reject evolution, or say that they do, have with the Christians indicated in the first sentence in this paragraph. I am assuming that orthodox Christian belief, as set forth, for example, in the Nicene or Apostle's Creed, is common ground, and that probably doesn't need to be set forth. But some other things should be:

1) When Martin says that he is an "Evolutionary Creationist," I suppose that he means that he believes that God made the universe the way it is so that natural selection was the process which led to most or all of the various kinds of living things. In other words, an Evolutionary Creationist does not believe that humans, or all of the other organisms, are here solely due to blind, purposeless chance. Evolutionary Creationists agree with other types of Creationists that, at some level, God designed the universe so that natural selection was possible, and that part of His design was the eventual existence of human beings.

Evolution is a process whereby natural selection, over time, has caused new forms of living things to come about. Evolution did not bring about the existence of the universe itself, or of the various entities studied by astronomers. Evolution is not responsible for the appearance of life for the first time.

2) Textbooks, teachers, and scientists who claim that science has proved that God does not exist, or does not have any creative power, should be resisted. Such statements are beyond the scope of science.

3) The Bible teaches not only that God created things, but that He sustains them now. (Colossians 1:15-20)

4) Humans are special organisms. They were created in God's image, with responsibility for other organisms. Although other organisms, or even non-living things, may also have some part of God's image, Genesis mentions this only about humans, indicating that humans have significantly more of God's image than any other organism. God the Son came to earth in human form, which also indicates that humans are special.

This world, as it is now, is temporary. Nonetheless, as humans, and especially as Christians, we have responsibility to maintain God's creation, including non-human organisms and ecological communities and ecosystems, as well as we can.

There are some other Biblical principles that Evolutionary Creationists should set forth, but that other Creationists may not agree on, without some persuasion.

1) The Bible teaches that scientific evidence is part of God's revelation. Psalm 19:1-4 and Romans 1:20 tell us this.

2) It is not possible to scientifically prove God's creative power. Although scientific data are part of the reason for believing in that power, acceptance of its reality comes by faith. (Hebrews 11:3.)

Martin sets forth objectives. The second such is to "Provide Encouragement for those Struggling with the Perceived Conflict between Science and Faith." One group of those that Martin doesn't mention, but should, is parents who believe that public school science classes are detrimental to their faith, and, therefore, do not place their children in the public schools, but home school them, or place them in Christian schools. This is bad for the health and well-being of the public schools, because it keeps thousands of concerned parents from supporting them, and because it keeps thousands of children who might be an example to non-Christian schoolmates from having the opportunity to provide such an example. Not only that, but such parents help to propagate the belief that there is a conflict between science and faith among a significant portion of the evangelical leadership for the next generation.

Thanks for reading. Read Steve Martin's blog.

Visual models of the various views on origins

Steve Martin has proposed a visual model of the relationship between various views of origins. You can see that model, and discussion, here. The springboard for that discussion was the publication of a more complicated, and, says Martin, somewhat flawed, previous model, produced by Eugenie Scott of the the National Center for Science Education (Click on Figure 1 to see a larger version of Scott's diagram). Martin begins his own discussion by making some improvements to Scott's visual model.

I think Martin's model is a definite improvement. I would, however, suggest that there is one rather serious problem with it, namely that he has not defined what he means by "evolution." Unfortunately, that problem is very common. In a non-blog web page, I have attempted to categorize the meanings of that word.

A careful reader who looks at Martin's model, or Scott's, may notice an omission. That omission is that Intelligent Design is not listed. In a way, that's too bad, as so many people claim to believe in this. But the omission is legitimate, because people who believe in Intelligent Design are divided in their belief in, for example, the age of the earth. Intelligent Design, as usually understood, does not provide a model for origins.

See here for some musings on evolution, here for my own visual representation of various views on origins (click on the chart to see it all) and here for my take on Intelligent Design.

Thanks for reading. Read Steve Martin.

Macroevolution and microevolution

Some Christians who think about origins have no trouble believing that varieties, perhaps even species, have come about through natural selection. They call this microevolution. The same people may have difficulty, for various reasons, believing that a whole phyum, say, Chordates, evolved from some other group, which would be an example of macroevolution. Some criticize such beliefs, saying that there is no difference between micro- and macro-evolution, and claim that Christians invented these two terms, and that they are unnecessary.

However, the distinction has some merit. There is a Wikipedia article on macroevolution, and, according to it, there has been some use of the term, including its invention, by mainstream scientists, for other than religious reasons. The article does not support the idea that new groups have come about by other than natural selection.

There are some people who do doubt that new groups came about this way, for several reasons, some of them religious, of course.

One reason is the many phyla discovered in the fossils of the Burgess shale, which, according to some authors, arose all at once with no known fossil ancestors. I'm not sure that that helps those who disbelieve that new groups came about by Darwinian selection, but, rather, by divine creation, though. Why did God create whole phyla that soon became extinct?

Another reason is logical. How could, say, a forelimb that was intermediate between a walking reptilian leg and a flying bird wing give any advantage to a creature (if there were any such) who possessed such an appendage, over its ancestral types, which walked on four limbs? It would not, seemingly, aid in either flight or walking. A number of like transitions can be imagined, and it is not always easy to come up with reasonable intermediate steps. This doesn't prove that the intermediates weren't there, of course.

Another reason is,of course, that some people believe that there hasn't been enough time for large changes caused by natural selection.

It seems to me that macro- and microevolution are legitimate terms.

Thanks for reading.

The origin of humans (and a little about the meanings of "evolution")

I have recently discovered a pretty good attempt to differentiate among the meanings of evolution, by Steve Martin, of "An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution," and I commend it to you. I also have a web page that tries to do this. We say some of the same things, but there are differences. I have recently updated this web page, which has been on-line, with occasional updates, for a few years.

The main reason that I have updated, is because I decided that I didn't say enough about the origin of human beings. (Steve Martin doesn't deal with this much, either) If human beings came from some other type of organism through an evolutionary process, there is no good reason to suppose that there was anything special about this, any more than, say, the apparent descent of zebras and horses from a common ancestor would have been by a unique process, so there's a good reason for leaving it out of a discussion of the types of evolution -- it's not a unique type, if it happened. But the response of many Christians to the suggestion that humans may have evolved from some pre-human animal requires some discussion, in my view.

Why is there so often a response to the possibility that humans have evolved? There seem to be several answers, the most obvious being that we are human, and may not want to know anything "bad" about our origins, just as we might not want to know that we had an axe murderer in our family tree. (I don't see that origin from some non-human type, if it really occurred as God's way of producing us, should be considered a bad thing.)

Another answer is that the Bible indicates that the origin of humans was special. Genesis 1 and 2 do not describe the origin of any other species in detail, but the origin of humans is detailed. The process is described in such a way that, if it was meant to be taken literally, it leaves no room for an evolutionary process in human origin. The origin of humans is not only described, but we are also the only beings described as being in God's image, whatever that means, and as having some sort of control and responsibility for other living things.

It is also true, of course, that the Bible tells us that Christ came as a human, miraculously becoming a God-man. This, too, indicates that humans are special.

So it is no wonder that many Christians have a very hard time believing that humans came from some non-human species.

I'm not sure how to take Genesis on the origin of humans. I don't know enough of the original language. There are those who do know it, and believe that the Bible is God's word, divinely inspired, but disagree with one another about how literally to take the first part of Genesis. It doesn't seem likely that I can determine this issue in this life.

The Bible doesn't seem to allow for any doubt that God was involved in the origin of humans, however and whenever it came about. We are here because of God's purposes.

It is, of course, possible that other organisms came to be as they are through evolutionary processes, but that humans were specially created, as described in Genesis.

However humans came about, it seems clear that they have changed ("evolved," if you please, in one meaning of the word) since the first humans. Taken literally, Genesis teaches that the various races of humans all sprang from Noah's family, and there are differences between races. (These differences are insignificant, compared to the similarities!) Even to a young-earth creationist, who might be supposed to doubt that humans have been subject to evolutionary processes more than others, these differences must have come about in the few thousand years since Noah's flood. I have never read a scientifically informed young-earth creationist who doubted that natural selection, Darwin's main mechanism, works, or that it has worked in humans, at least since the flood. A person who believes that the earth, and humans, are more than a few thousand years old, will also accept that humans have changed since Homo sapiens first appeared.

Some Christians believe that the first part of Genesis was not meant to be taken strictly literally, and some of these Christians are willing to believe that God used some sort of evolutionary process to bring about the existence of humans here on earth. Billy Graham, for one, is on record as saying that this may have been true. Note that he doesn't say that it is true, but that it might be. I'll give Graham the last word:
". . . whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God."

Thanks for reading!