Category: Evolution

Thoughts: The Language of Genesis

Posted by on February 7, 2012

The fol­low­ing are my thoughts on chap­ter two of Should Chris­tians Embrace Evo­lu­tion? “The Lan­guage of Gen­e­sis” by Alis­tair McKitterick.

I just want to say first of all, that this book should prob­a­bly have been called Should Chris­tians Embrace Evo­lu­tion? Bib­li­cal and Sci­en­tific Responses to Denis Alexander’s “Cre­ation or Evo­lu­tion? Do we Have to Choose?”. It is turn­ing out to be not so much about ‘Dar­win­ian Evo­lu­tion’ as it is about Alexander’s attempt to cre­ate a syn­the­sis between Dar­win­ian Evo­lu­tion and Chris­t­ian the­ism. Some­thing for me to keep in mind mov­ing for­ward (as well as for any­one who may be inter­ested in pur­chas­ing the book).

McKit­t­er­ick begins with a brief word on pre­sup­po­si­tions and how our pre­sup­po­si­tions influ­ence the way we inter­pret a text. In this case, our pre­sup­po­si­tions influ­ence how we inter­pret Gen­e­sis; cer­tain pre­sup­po­si­tions allow for Gen­e­sis to be more open to the pos­si­bil­ity of an evo­lu­tion­ary inter­pre­ta­tion than … (Read more)

Category Church and Faith, Evolution

Thoughts: Evolution and the Church

Posted by on February 6, 2012

The fol­low­ing are my thoughts on chap­ter one of Should Chris­tians Embrace Evo­lu­tion? “Evo­lu­tion and the Church” by Alis­tair Donald.

Don­ald begins his chap­ter with a brief sur­vey of the his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship between Chris­tian­ity and evo­lu­tion­ary the­ory, or more specif­i­cally, ‘Dar­win­ism’. Although by no means exhaus­tive (Don­ald dis­cusses some of the more promi­nent fig­ures of the past — Lyell, Mivart, Warfield, etc.), it should prove an inter­est­ing intro­duc­tion to the reader. It is of great per­sonal inter­est to me as in the com­ing weeks I will be writ­ing an essay on the very same topic.

Fol­low­ing this sur­vey Don­ald wastes no time get­ting to the heart of the mat­ter: the impli­ca­tions (for the Chris­t­ian) of embrac­ing evo­lu­tion. I myself will waste no time in say­ing that Don­ald uses the terms ‘Dar­win­ism’ and ‘evo­lu­tion’ seem­ingly syn­ony­mously (from what I can tell). For exam­ple, the header text on page 19 reads, “the impli­ca­tions … (Read more)

Category Church and Faith, Evolution

On Words, Meaning and Implications

Posted by on February 4, 2012

In the ‘debate’ between young earth cre­ation­ism and the­is­tic evo­lu­tion, it is often the case that one or both sides is espe­cially accusatory towards the other. The fol­low­ing is one such example:

There are obvi­ously many who believe that evo­lu­tion is the mech­a­nism that God used to cre­ate the vari­ety of life on this planet. How­ever, for those of us who are seri­ous about the supremacy of Scrip­ture, it is essen­tial that any appar­ent the­o­log­i­cal ten­sions that arise from this are rig­or­ously reviewed. It would be pre­ma­ture to say the least to com­mit to a sci­en­tific posi­tion with­out hav­ing a clearly worked out the­ol­ogy that accords with it, par­tic­u­larly when so much of the sci­en­tific evi­dence does not neces­si­tate a Dar­win­ian expla­na­tion.1

The impli­ca­tion here is that the­ists who sug­gest that God used or could have used evo­lu­tion as a mech­a­nism are not seri­ous about the supremacy of Scrip­ture, … (Read more)

Category Evolution

God and Evolution

Posted by on February 3, 2012

Near the end of his fore­word to Should Chris­tians Embrace Evo­lu­tion? (fol­low­ing the com­ments dis­cussed in a pre­vi­ous post), Wayne Gru­dem says this of rela­tion­ship between evo­lu­tion and God:

…When athe­ists assure us that mat­ter + evo­lu­tion + 0 = all liv­ing things, and then the­is­tic evo­lu­tion­ists answer, no, that mat­ter + evo­lu­tion + God = all liv­ing things, it will not take long for unbe­liev­ers to con­clude that, there­fore, God = 01.

What inter­ests me most are the equa­tions, fol­lowed by Grudem’s men­tion of athe­ists. Con­cern­ing the first equa­tion: what does an athe­ist mean when he says “mat­ter + evo­lu­tion + 0 = all liv­ing things”? He means that the evo­lu­tion­ary process is suf­fi­cient in and of itself to pro­duce “all liv­ing things”. But what does a the­ist mean when he says “mat­ter + evo­lu­tion + God = all liv­ing things”? He means that … (Read more)

Category Evolution

Should Christians Embrace Evolution?

Posted by on January 31, 2012

That is the ques­tion posed by Wayne Gru­dem, Nor­man C. Nevin, and eleven other con­tribut­ing authors in Should Chris­tians Embrace Evo­lu­tion?: Bib­li­cal and Sci­en­tific Responses.1 As you may have assumed, these authors believe that Chris­tians should not embrace evo­lu­tion. But what is at stake if Chris­tians were to embrace evo­lu­tion, and the posi­tion known as ‘the­is­tic evo­lu­tion’? In his fore­word, Gru­dem lists eight beliefs which must be adopted if evo­lu­tion is accepted as true, these beliefs are con­trary to Scrip­ture and include:

  • Adam and Eve were not the first human beings
  • Other humans had already been try­ing to wor­ship and seek God in their own way
  • Adam was not spe­cially cre­ated by God
  • Eve was not spe­cially cre­ated by God
  • Not every­one can be traced back to Adam and Eve
  • Adam and Eve’s sin was not the first sin
  • Death was a fea­ture of orig­i­nal creation
  • God did not alter the nat­ural world

    • … (Read more)

Category Church and Faith, Evolution, Theology