Or Is He?
Essays, Featured — By John Pattison on November 27, 2009 at 11:48 am
A couple days ago I finished reading a very good book, “The Language of God,” by Francis C. Collins, the longtime head of the Human Genome Project and, by the way, an evangelical Christian. At one point in the book, Collins cites a 2004 Gallup poll which asked the following question:
“Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?”
(1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided the process.
(2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in the process.
(3) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one within the last 10,000 years or so.
When the results were tallied, 38 percent of Americans chose the first option, 13 percent chose the second option, and 45 percent chose option three.
Collins says that Americans’ beliefs about creation, evolution, and theistic evolution haven’t really changed over the last few decades. While I hesitate to disagree with a world-class scientist, especially since he has evidence on his side – a variety of surveys taken over time tend to look a lot like the one above – I sense there may be a sea change among Christians, the bulwark of Young Earth Creationism. Based rather precariously on anecdotal evidence, it seems like a growing number of younger Christians especially are finding a kind of harmony between their faith and the basic tenets of evolution.
This position is often referred to as theistic evolution, a position which Collins holds (though he wants to re-christen it BioLogos) and describes this way:
God, who is not limited in space or time, created the universe and established natural laws that govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God chose the elegant mechanism of evolution to create microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts. Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise to special creatures who would have intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will, and a desire to seek fellowship with Him.
Last Tuesday marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of “The Origin of the Species.” (This year is also the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth.) I thought I would use this occasion to conduct a highly unscientific poll of my own. How would you respond to the above question? What seems like a more likely explanation for the origin of the species?
Loading ...*Author’s Note: First, I apologize in advance if I am violating a Gallup copyright by using the same language as the original poll. Second, you’re right if you think this post was just an excuse to use the image of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Darwin,” which I found here but originated here.
15 Comments
In all fairness, i should point out that this survey does little to accommodate the various “apparent age” twists out there, which i personally tend toward, though with rather weak conviction.
It seems to me that the fact that the universe is appears (to some observations) to be billions of years old is not in the least logically contradictory to believing it created 10000 years ago. There is absolutely no reason to think that creation ex nihili requires creation at a starting point. In fact, reason would tend to argue the opposite. To use a jovial example, even in a young earth creationist view, Adam and Eve probably did have belly buttons, for why on earth should we assume God would leave that feature out just because they weren’t born of woman?
Anyway, i guess my view (today, at least) is that God created an amazingly complex, interwoven, adaptive and yes, evolutionary system, and created specially created humans to multiply and be responsible for it and be in loving relationship with him. Whether He did that slowly over billions of years kicking off our story with a particular Breath-infused pair of homo sapiens around 7000 years ago or whether He spent just seven periods of 24 hours creating the same system and pair of humans seems like a terribly fascinating yet ultimately irrelevant question to me. Really, it’s not hard to interpret creation’s witness and Genesis either way for me.
I’m not sure I’ve ever said it before, but it’s great to have you on here, nate.
Beautiful, Nathan. I was in a church membership class for little kids (my dad the pastor and teacher) in the third grade, when I stated that I believed evolution and creationism could exist together and I could see no reason why not. I boldly told my dad that God was big and days were big to him.
This got me reprimanded before my peers and to be honest, not much has changed when I see the topic discussed in my conservative e-van church. Your last paragraph speaks beautifully to the wonder and mystery behind the God of creation and our very small understanding of the how and when…And perhaps who cares? He made it all to continue creating. I can only worship.
Yeah, what he said!
(Thank you, Nathan, for saying exactly what I would have liked to have said, except doing it all smart and articulate and stuff.)
I’d go for an either/or option. While scientific evidence certainly points to an old earth, I don’t necessarily trust science.
My two questions are:
1) Why does it have to be either millions or 10k? Nothing in between?
2) How does this change faith in any way?
1) Let’s do this Price Is Right style. I’m gonna say 10,001 years.
2) I can’t see how it does, but I once heard a guy claiming that evolution requires death to operate, and it contradicts scripture to have death precede Adam’s sin. Therefore we have to believe the young earth view. I don’t think though that when the Bible talks about death as a consequence of sin that it meant that was true for any but Adam and Eve and progeny. I think that both because of the whole spiritual/second death aspect and the fact that i’d put down good money that somebody in Eden would have at least squashed some bugs before eating that damned fruit. You can’t honestly think no created creature died before there was sin. No way.
I guess it has to be millions or 10,000 because the Young Earth Creationists put the age of the earth at no more than 10,000 years and the vast majority of scientists put it at something like 4.5 billion years.
There are Christians of vibrant faith on both sides of this issue (and everywhere in-between) so I don’t think either of the positions diminish faith, though one’s position could very well alter their perception of how God works through scriptures and in life.
Jordan, I’m also distrustful of science, especially the two disturbing tendencies in modern science to (a) assume they know more than they do, and operate from a position of hubris rather than from the useful position of ignorance, and (b) assume that everything about humans and human nature will someday be explained by science.
I find it fascinating that we were right here 120 years ago. There were a number of respected (if hypermodernist) theologians and ministers who celebrated the discoveries of science and their concordance with theology. This all blew up with the fall of Progressivism and the rise of Fundamentalism. We are the heirs of a few generations of overstrong distrust. However, Jordan and John, you’re right that science has become quite agenda laden. (I pronounce that like “bin Laden.”) I do hope for a better day with honest scientists and honest theologians who genuinely seek truth. BTW, check out “Paradigms on Pilgrimage” by Smith and Godfrey, I think. Both those honest types trying to figure out whether there’s an evolution and a theistic, respectively.
For all we know the universe could have been created 5 seconds ago, and we’ve been created with the memories that we have in order to make it seem like life has been happening for ages…
freaky.
Absolutly, positivaly, exestentiallyscifi!
Take away Gary’s posting privileges now! My head hurts, or maybe it’s always hurt. Argh!
It saddens me to see all the comments regarding “I don’t trust science” here. Some research is clearly biased towards proving what those that funded it want. But, much of science is only interested in knowable, provable facts. The scientific method focuses on removing as many variables, until you control the one you’re interested. This leads to great information. The problem is that in the real world, there are many more variables at play, which is often why science appears to be “flawed”.
Fundamentally, science isn’t the problem. The way we go about research, and the way research is often funded is really the problems.
P.S. This isn’t a statement for, or against evolution.
John,
It is interesting to note the softening of the dogmatic edges (even within myself) on this issue. I think I’ve been conditioned to believe faith requires drawing digging in, and when the attack volley comes, just dig in deeper.
I suppose I’m a young earth guy, but I’m also more drawn to the higher argument of science vs. religion. I got asked this question by a friend, and I didn’t know fully what to tell him, so I asked someone smarter, and here’s what he wrote:
http://cravesomethingmore.org/tag/ask-a-smart-guygal/
*Disclaimer: this is my blog, but it’s technically not blog pimping b/c I didn’t write this post. And the smarter guy is my brother. And he’s indeed smarter.
Why do we try to explain the unexplainable. I think the younger folks are scared of being shot down as lunatics. That really is a shame. Maybe its just where I stand, from viewpoint of an artist who has more of an imagination rather than a mind guided by the laws of science. The more I live I truly and simply believe that God put us here in a manner which is inexplicable. Let scientist believe what they want about how the the world began. The Book of Genesis says that God created in the world in 7 days. I know it takes a whole lot of faith to believe that, but thats a lot of being a Christian entails. While conventional creationism may not make sense, neither does salvation or the Resurrection, but these are the truths of God and I believe we are to rest on theses truths even if they don’t make complete sense.