What do you want to know about Evangelicalism? Pastor Rob Bryceson, of The Gathering House Church, and Elizabeth Backstrom, a member of The Gathering House, co-author this column. Submit your question here.
What do Evangelicals think of evolution?
(Read Pastor Rob Bryceson’s response to this question here.)
Hi, thanks for your question. I have my own views on this, but honestly, they’re mostly just opinions. I’m not that informed on this subject. I can Google with the best of them, but honestly, I have someone living in my house who’s much more versed in this field than I am. My husband, Ben, graduated with his degree in cellular biology from Western Washington University in 2009, and worked in the field for a year before switching jobs to software development, where he now works. However, he grew up in an Evangelical home and church and was also a rabid science nerd. As a result, he studied the subject for several years before and during college, not just as a scientist, but as a Christian. I asked him what he thought of this question and he gave me some great material, which forms the bulk of this column.
___
What do Evangelicals think of evolution? We generally fit into two groups on this one.
The first interprets the Genesis account as literal and chronological. In other words, God created the heavens and earth in exactly this way in exactly this time frame; six days. That means that fish and birds didn’t exist until the fifth day, but were supernaturally created and placed on earth on that specific day. This group is usually known as Creationists.
This camp usually argues for the so-called young Earth view. They add up the ages of people in lineages in the Bible and come up with around 6,000 years from Adam and Eve to the present day. This has two consequences:
1. The view conflicts with the scientific consensus and evidence that the age of the earth numbers into the billions.
2. Evolution can’t be possible, because 6,000 years isn’t enough time for life to evolve from a basic single cell to a fully grown human.
People from this group argue that the account is supernatural, and that God created life and the cosmos as mature, so there is no need to account for all the places where this may conflict with scientific consensus. For instance, how would Adam and Eve be able to see light from the starts, millions of light years away, in their own lifetimes? The answer given is that the universe was created as a mature universe. Thus, the stars are fully grown and their light has already made the trip from far off star to the earth.
Creationists point to several pieces of evidence to disprove evolution and an old earth. Generally, these arguments cite the lack of solid evidence for macro-evolution. For instance, one has ever seen a cow slowly turn into a whale over generations of swimming. Putting different sized cow and different sized whale skeletons next to each other to communicate a common lineage may or may not represent the correct lineage, but certainly is not observable evidence. They also cite fraudulent cases where scientists claimed to find missing links from ape to human only to realize years later that the bones were from a fully formed ape, fully formed human, or some combination of the two put together to look like a common ancestor.
This camp may also add that there is a philosophical problem with evolution. Since death entered the world by sin, it doesn’t make sense for millions of years of death to occur before Adam and Eve sinned. Would a loving God force millions of years of death on nature and still call it good?
The second camp chooses to interpret the Genesis account as poetry. Instead of reading like a historical record, the account reads like a poem describing God’s care for his creation and was not intended to represent literal time or literal method. With this interpretation, there is room for an old earth and for evolution. This group generally has no issue with scientific consensus.
Included in this group are people who view the account as a human’s perspective of seeing creation unfold, perhaps in a vision. A similar example would be Joshua 10, where the Israelites are fighting the Amorites for control of the promised land. Joshua 10:13 says, “The sun stopped, and the moon stood still, until the nation avenged itself on its enemies.” Now, we know today that the earth revolves around the sun; it is impossible for the sun to “stop” in the sky. The literal interpretation breaks down at this point. But since the Bible was written from the perspective of a person, the sun stopping in the sky makes perfect sense. If the earth were to stop rotating, it would appear that the sun has stopped in the sky. In this context the Genesis account makes sense not as a literal account but a general one.
As you can see, it’s a complicated answer on both sides, and as usual, Evangelicals don’t fall neatly into one answer or the other. Hopefully this helps give more of an idea of where many of us stand.
