Why I am an Evolutionist

One of my favorite songs in Scripture is Psalm 148.  It is a song of praise to God that speaks of the beauty of creation.  Verses 5-6 are particularly moving to me:

Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for at his command they were created,
and he established them for ever and ever-
he issued a decree that will never pass away. 
(NIV)

The Benedictine Daily Prayer breviary that I use to pray the divine office,  translates the last line a little differently: "He gave a law which shall not pass away."

I love that verse and the image that it presents.  It reminds me that God is behind all that I see, God is behind all of creation.  That's right, I just said - in a post explaining why I am an evolutionist - that I believe God is Creator of all that is.  And in my mind, there is no conflict between those two statements - that God is creator and that the theory of evolution is, in all likelihood, true.

I read verses like the one above which speaks of the "law that will never pass away" and my mind is drawn back to my brief foray into the world of physics as a freshman at Purdue University.  I think of the laws of thermodynamics, and Newton's laws and all the other laws that I was supposed to memorize.  And I think how amazing it is that even though we have only recently "discovered" some of these laws, they have nonetheless been operating for thousands of years. 

This is what comes to mind when I think of Psalm 148 - that God established the physical universe with its governing laws, and that those laws have been established forever and will never pass away.

At this point, I imagine some objecting, "But what about the Genesis account?  Doesn't the Bible say that God spoke everything into being, not that it took place over millions of years?"

Well, that depends on how you look at the Bible.  The Bible was never meant to be a science textbook, or a history textbook for that matter.  Let me say that again, because it is tremendously important - The Bible was never intended to be a science or a history textbook.  That is, its task is not to describe the exact events of creation in factual form as we (post)moderns would expect from a history book; nor is its task to offer the explanations of the theoretical physics of creation as we might expect to find in a science book.

When we read the accounts (yes, there's more than one) of creation in Genesis, then, we cannot read them as scientific treatises and/or factual essays.  The author of Genesis knew nothing of quantum mechanics or biological adaptation or recombinant DNA or anything like that, and to expect their writings to conform to such things is, well, ludicrous.

The strength of Genesis, of the Christian creation accounts, is found where science is at its weakest.  Science, for all its insistence otherwise, is fatally limited when it comes to exploring the beginning of all time.  It cannot account for the ultimate starting point without resorting to the very unscientific creation ex nihilo, or the idea that the matter which was present at the Big Bang spontaneously appeared out of nothing. 

This is where Genesis matters, because Genesis offers an answer to the question that science cannot answer.  Genesis may not explain the how of creation, but it clearly identifies the who of creation.  Genesis says that it was and is God who was and is the First Mover of creation.  Genesis tells us that we do not have to resort to ex nihilo thinking, but that we can say "Yes" to the evidence of science while still affirming that, in the beginning, God.

And for Christians, that last part - being able to say "Yes" to the evidence of science will affirming God's role as Creator - is important.  In the letter to the church in Rome, Paul writes that, "since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities...have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made..." (Romans 1.20).  That is, creation itself points to God.

I have yet to meet a Christian who would disagree with that.

So go with me on a thought experiment for a moment.  We'll start with the assumption that the Genesis account is literally true.  That being the case, we have to acknowledge that the physical world God created - with all of its laws of physics and carbon dating and fossils and all of that - is somewhat deceptive.  After all, the vast preponderance of evidence points to an old earth, not a young earth.

So what invisible qualities of God do we learn from that creation?  That God is a trickster?  An illusionist?  That the God who desires that creation enter into relationship with God would create a world that pointed people away from God?  Certainly we do not see love as part of the divine nature here, because true love does not deceive.

Back to our thought experiment.  Let's assume for a minute that the physical evidence that points to evolution is true and that God was involved in the process.  What do we learn about God's nature?  We learn that God is infinitely creative, and that God created a world of relationships, that God's is complex and amazing.  Certainly it is easier to imagine that such a God is a God of love.

That is why I accept the theory of evolution...because it reveals the God I see and the God I serve, it expresses the beautiful complexity of the "law which shall not pass away."

jB