Obviously, some people with strong pro-Christian views believe that Evolution is nothing less than an “anti-God religion of death,” to quote Ken Ham. Similarly, many modern atheists believe that Evolution is nothing less than the proof that Christianity is false and atheism true. So, on this point, the loudest voices adamantly agree. But there are also others who claim it’s possible to reconcile the Bible with Evolution. Some do so because they haven’t thought much about the difficulties. Others do so because they really have sought a way to reconcile them. So tonight I thought we’d discuss what the areas of conflict or tension between these two views are and whether there’s an intellectually honest way to hold both of them simultaneously.
6 comments:
I once asked a Christian blogger who is a Young Earth Creationist if the onus is on God to make the fossil evidence and genetic evidence in the biosphere point directly toward Young Earth Creationism and away from Old Earthism and Evolution. His answer was “No.” I did not ask him to elaborate. That might be an interesting side topic for today’s discussion.
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Completely off topic, but--
Fuddy duddy old skeptic that I am, I can enjoy Christian music when it is well-written and well-performed. I get rubbery knees listening to Carrie Underwood’s rendition of ‘How Great Thou Art.’ I am betting Andrew has heard it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLLMzr3PFgk
I hadn't heard it, but now I have. Thanks! That's beautiful.
Ben Austin I may just be restating an idea outlined in the show, to me there were glimpses of it, but I thought I'd try: A problem with evolution is the death mechanism. That seems contrary to the nature of God--to bring about man (or just other species), death was necessary. But what if that wasn't God's original plan? What if His plan was quite different, but through Man's choice to sin (which is a kind of death) lead to the death mechanism? We weren't created to behave like animals, but the sin in us imparts to us an animal nature, while we also retain a soulful uniqueness from the rest of the animal kingdom. And perhaps animals weren't even supposed to behave as they do in many ways (the eating of their own young, all the killing of the weak and old). The lion does not lay down with the lamb at this stage. But, due to our sin, all of creation was "mutated" and made evil in a way.
Yeah, I think the real concern about the relationship of death to sin is whether there was (or could have been) any death before (chronologically) there was sin in the world. Both the Genesis account and also the general Christian doctrine of sin and death seem to say not. Therefore, the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection (death of the less fit) doesn't seem to work as even a mechanism leading up to a "unique creative moment for man apart from apes."
What it makes me wonder, for the very first time, is whether there could be any way to retain the basic evolutionary model of descent with modification (where God is doing the modifying, and therefore it would happen in a perfectly efficient manner) but WITHOUT any death or bloodshed. Could it be that all offspring survived but that some were adapted into new organisms over some period of time prior to man coming, at which point sin entered and death along with it? I've obviously never heard anyone offer this story, but I suddenly wonder how plausible (or not) it might be as a way of harmonizing the concerns here.
Just thinking out loud about something I've never thought before...=)
The same Christian blogger I referred to in my comment two days ago said this:
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The text regarding "death" and "Adam" is in regards to spiritual death. Some people try to tell me that "If you're going to take the book as written, you must affirm that there wasn't anything at all that died prior to Adam's sin." Nonsense. If Adam ate once prior to sinning, he killed something to do it. If a single leaf fell from a tree prior to Adam's sin, something died. The text in question isn't talking about "all deaths of all kinds", but the death with which the life of Christ is contrasted.
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But as Henry Morris pointed out in his publications, it is hard to imagine a decent God calling creation “good” if there were organisms dying prior to human sin.
It is an interesting hypothesis, especially since Adam and Eve pretty obviously did not "die" the day their defiance brought "death" into the world.
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