Evolution: A Product of God's Design
June 12, 2009
by Brian Woodward
For nearly two centuries the debate of how life was formed has raged. Did it occur through evolution or by creation? For many the debate is a theological one. Many Christians reject evolution holding that this theory is contrary to the Bible. Evolutionists often cite their theory as one refuting the existence of God. But can one believe in a creator while simultaneously accepting evolution?
In the April 13, 2008 edition of the CBMC Fax of Life (a devotional for Christian businessmen) Charles Colson wrote a piece entitled “The Intelligence of Design - The British vs. Darwinism.” Mr. Colson is a man of great intellect but in this piece he proves himself to be wildly illiterate on the subject. His first mistake is one many Christians often make. He states, “The truth is that humans bear the Imago Dei - we are made in the image of God and are designed to long for Him.” While this statement is true his understanding of it is fallacious. While the Bible does state that man is made in the image of God, it is not asserting that we bear physical resemblance as Mr. Colson invokes in his statement. Christians understand God as a spiritual, rather than a material being. Therefore if man is created in the “likeness” of God, the resemblance is clearly not physical.
Colson goes on to claim that Darwin asserted that “we came from a chance collision of atoms, there is no purpose to life, no life after death, no objective moral law.” Darwin’s book “Origin of Species” contrary to the title, did not document the origin of a single species. Evolution is unable to account for the beginning of life. Darwin didn’t even try. He assumed the first living thing, and then attempted to explain how one living organism could be transformed into another.
The mistake of attributing to Darwin the conclusion that life originated by chance, as well as there being no purpose to life is a common one. The reason for this is evolution, as it is taught widely today, is done so with a social agenda, one that is amoral and anti-religious. Such prominent atheist figures as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett twist Darwin’s theory in efforts for it to be an all inclusive explanation of psychology, ethics, culture, cosmology, religion, and politics. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould branded them “Darwinian Fundamentalists” He condemns them for employing a persuasive, yet quite inadequate theory to account for phenomena that fall far outside its biological reach. This theory has recently become much more prominent so much so that it is important to point out that evolution is a scientific theory, while Darwinism as espoused by the likes of Dawkins is a metaphysical stance and a political ideology.
So I urge many to reconsider their position. One cannot close off evolution as an impossibility because of one’s faith. The argument against it is most eloquently espoused by the Institution for Creation Research. They put forth many compelling arguments. However, I would assert that their most ardent claim is that the world shows evidence of a designer. This I would agree with.
However, one glaring fact remains. Virtually every biologist in the world subscribes to evolution. And to be clear, this is not to claim that God is not the designer. This is merely to say this is the process God designed in order for life to unfold. When observing the Bible, one can decipher that it states the universe was created out of nothing, but it does not say that man was created out of nothing. It says in Genesis 2:7, “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” In his account, Darwin is not saying that man is descended from chimpanzees, only that apes and man are descended from a common ancestor. This is to say that man is made up of the same genetic material as other organisms. What separates man from all other beings according to the Bible is that God breathed an immaterial soul into him.
At the time of Darwin’s published account, biologist Asa Gray was his leading supporter in the U.S. She interpreted his conclusion not as a refutation of God’s creation but as an explanation of how God had done it. Darwin wrote that it “pleases me especially and I do not think anyone else has ever noticed this point.” Some of Darwin’s most ardent defenders were Christians such as Theodosius Dobzhansky and R.A. Fisher. Theodosius Dobzhansky claimed “Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution." Pope John Paul II described evolution as “more than a hypothesis”. Even the great Christian philosopher C.S Lewis had no problem with it.
Two of today’s leading evolutionists biologist Kenneth Miller and geneticist Francis Collins are proclaimed Christians. Kenneth Miller has stated, “Evolution is as much a fact as anything we know in science.” Evolution has two main points working for it. All living things are created from the same genetic material from plants to people. This infers that all life has a similar make up. Additionally the geological record shows a undeviating trajectory. The oldest rocks reveal only single celled creatures. Subsequent strata show the appearance of invertebrate, then fishes , amphibians, and eventually mammals. No fossil has ever been found in a place it should not have. Evolution by natural selection also explains why pesticides and antibiotics frequently result in the pests and bacteria developing new strains more resistant to human efforts to wipe them out. In a word they evolve.
For one kind of a life to evolve into another may be attributed to the blind forces of nature, but the anthropic principle implies that these forces were set in motion deliberately, purposefully, with the objective of producing precisely the living beings that biologists superficially presume to have gotten here by accident. The most apparent conclusion is that there is a creator and that evolution is the process by which he allowed his design to unfold.
