Some of the apologetes I’ve been reading and listening to are in favour of evolution. I never really considered it very plausible, I have to admit. Some might say that I just haven’t allowed the thesis to sink in properly. When I’m confronted with evidence that supposedly suggests evolution, I always find myself quite able to interpret it as suggesting ID as well.

Yet, most scientists embrace the evolution thesis and somehow I have to deal with that when I’m making claims about human origin based on the Bible. At this point, I’ve started listening to Christians who believe in evolution. I want to get a greater understanding of this position because I really haven’t heard much from them.

I have a number of issues that keep me from really considering evolution as something I could fit into my own worldview. These issues are both theological, philosophical and slightly scientific in nature. On the other hand, there’s a number of issues I don’t have anymore, and perhaps I should present these issues first.

Issues I don’t have with evolution

1. I accept that the thesis of evolution does not necessarily leave God out of the picture. Evolution centres on the question of how one kind of animal becomes another kind of animal, but it does not even come close to tangle the question of life’s origin. Quite a number of scientists praise God whenever they make discoveries that suggest evolution. God is the intelligent designer, and evolution is his biological tool. Even Richard Dawkins, one of the world’s most prominent Atheists, had no problems admitting that evolution could be an instrument of some kind of Creator. I regard fellow Christians perfectly able to believe in evolution without compromising their faith.

2. The Book of Genesis does not contradict evolution in a straightforward way. We need to consider writer’s Hebrew background and the litterary genre if we want to understand what the book is really getting at. First and foremost, the Book of Genesis have theological messages. The authors probably had very little interest in scientific questions like the dating of earth, the characteristics of cell cores, etc.. The Creation account is written as poetry, and there’s a polemic tone we have to consider as well. It doesn’t make much sense to take it all too litteral seeing that the first two chapters of Genesis don’t even match each other from a scientific point of view. Exegetically speaking, the Book of Genesis says little about how God created humans, even though it clearly states that He did. (There’s a little “but” to this point, though. You’ll see it in the other list. Point 2.)

Issues I have with evolution

1. Evolution seems to generate and promote selfish ideas like eugenics and survival of the fittest. From an evolutionary perspective, who exactly is worthy of life? I know that most people would never go to the extremes of killing other people, but I can’t see how evolution eventually can lead elsewhere. Surviving on the account of others—by sacrificing those who are less fit for life—seems to be at the core of this thesis, and if we embrace it, it’s gonna come to the surface at some point. In other words, I believe evolution itself carries an ideological danger to our society.

2. Going from an idealogical reason to a more theological one: The Sabbath. Surely, my belief in the Sabbath can be based on other parts of the Bible than the Genesis account, but it’s often referred to as a reminder of Creation. Not just that, the doctrine of the Sabbath says that Creation lasted about a week seeing that the Sabbath was the seventh day. It would have to be in order to make the weekly Sabbath practice make sense to us and to the people who kept it from the “beginning”. The Evolution thesis clearly states that the origin of the first human beings was a long process. The process could easily be guided by God’s invisible hand, but it would still last millions of years.

3. Another theological concern of mine is the doctrine of human nature. If evolution is true, are we really that different from animals? The Bible clearly says we are. Dinesh D’Souza used this question to argue for the concept of the Immortal Soul. At some point in the development, God “blew” the spirit into one of the well-developed animals, and thus he created humans in his image and set us apart for a greater purpose. I, however, don’t believe we have an immortal soul. I believe that we’re physically superior to the animals, and I believe we can derive this point from the Bible. If I accept evolution, it seems I have a problem distinguishing people from animals. This could be related to my first concern on how we look at our value compared to other people’s value: If we’re all just animals anyway, may the most fitting one live on account of the others!

4. The next issue that comes to mind is perhaps more scientific in nature. I don’t know much about biology, but I’ve heard a number of times that cells contain massive amounts of information. These amounts have come into existence through a long process of mutations. But here’s the issue: As far as biologists have observed, mutations never really do any good. It certainly wouldn’t help life move forward and develop in beneficial ways. In real life, mutants are organisms whose information (DNA?) has been partly damaged and destroyed. If God used evolution as a way of creating us, it doesn’t seem to work anymore? I’m sure other scientific arguments could be added, but for some reason my mind clinged to this one.

5. My last concern could be summed up as the historical and/or archeological issue. According to a random article on National Geographic, “New DNA studies suggest that all humans descended from a single African ancestor who lived some 60,000 years ago.” So, intelligent human beings have been around for 60,000 years according to common evolution-favouring science. But none of our history books go back that far. And none of the archeological discoveries do, either. If evolution were true, I’d expect we somehow “remembered” much more than we do? But the past history of the intelligent human beings only covers a few thousand years. Also, to say that we have been this intelligent for about 60,000 years raises the issue of technology. You’d expect man to discover electricity and watch colour-TV much earlier on, wouldn’t you? In other words, evolution makes no sense to me when I consider what I know about archeology and history of the human race.