Christians and Creation: Who is Right?
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I love to think about the different ways Christians engage with science, because it’s a fascinating and important topic. The most controversial intersection of Christianity and science is the question of origins: How old is the world, how did people get here, and how is God involved? There are several different Christian ways of dealing with these questions.
I’m not an expert, but I’d like to give my preliminary impressions, analyzing what seem to me to be the strong and weak points of each view. I’m not associated with any of these organizations, but I love these believers as my brothers and sisters and I’m glad that many Christians are diving into these difficult questions
Young-Earth Creationism (Answers in Genesis)
Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) is the belief that the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 are literal, scientific descriptions of the creation of the world, and that this creation event happened within the last 10,000 years.
The Positives:
YEC adherents take the Bible seriously and care about how we handle the inspired Word of God. They are concerned about the implications of watering down the truth, and they strive to reconcile what we see in the world with what we believe about spiritual reality.
Young-Earth Creationists have a reputation for not caring about science, or being opposed it, but they actually dig deeply into science for confirmation of their beliefs. They do not reject the scientific method, but they believe that modern science has been corrupted by bad assumptions, and that their own understanding of creation can be vindicated by scientific evidence.
The YEC movement has a fantastic outreach and public relations apparatus. They understand that their views are not popular in the scientific community or secular society, but rather than withdraw, they publish as much as possible, in an organized and professional way. The main organization, Answers in Genesis, runs the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. They have the website Answers in Genesis and a strong social media presence. They’ve held debates between Ken Ham and Bill Nye. They put out well-designed articles and videos and print materials. These Christians are serious about making their message accessible to the masses, and they care about evangelism.
The negatives:
The problem many people have with Young-Earth Creationism is that their main idea does not seem believable in light of much physical evidence. Genetics and biology provide evidence that animals have been around for many millions of years. Astronomy reveals that the universe is billions of years old. Geology, physics, and most other sciences present ample evidence that the universe, Earth, and life are very, very old. Among scientists who look at the evidence without biblical notions about how old the universe must be, there are virtually no young-Earth proponents.
So, what are we to think of this? Is God a deceiver? Has He made the universe look much, much older than it really is? Why would He design the universe to many to believe something that isn’t true? Why would He put evidence of an old universe pretty much everywhere scientists look? The Young-Earth view struggles to reconcile the observed facts of the universe with this understanding of the Bible.
In addition to these questions, many Bible scholars question reading the Bible without a proper regard for genre. Genesis was probably not originally understood as a scientific description of the world’s beginning, and even as far back as St. Augustine (in the third century), Christians wondered how the Earth was actually created. The question of what Genesis “literally” means didn’t start with Charles Darwin; it’s been asked a lot longer.
Evolutionary Creationism or Theistic Evolution (BioLogos)
Evolutionary Creationism/Theistic Evolution is the belief that God works through evolution, that the universe is billions of years old, and even human beings are biological products of evolutionary processes. Evolutionary Creationists trust “secular” science as generally reliable, and believe that we are all descended from a common ancestor that appeared on Earth a little under four billion years ago (a tiny, single-celled creature).
The Positives:
Evolutionary Creationists respect God’s gift of science and believe that God wants us to know Him through the world He’s made. They believe that God has made an orderly creation that accurately reveals much about its maker. And, by embracing evolution, they are able to make sense of a wide range of facts from geology to biology to physics, while holding onto their faith in a supernatural God. Many of the most respected Christians have held, or admitted to the possibility of, the EC view, including C. S. Lewis, Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham, and Tim Keller.
The Negatives:
Evolutionary Creationists often don’t seem to know what to do with Adam and Eve and original sin. Some in this camp believe in a literal Adam and Eve, some in a figurative Adam and Eve (they represent a particular population), and some in none at all (that they are some kind of literary device). But this is not a good issue to be confused about - the story of sin and the Fall is part of the Gospel story, and we need to have a robust theology built on a firm foundation to make sense of what sin is and why Jesus had to die for us.
Old-Earth Creationism (Reasons to Believe)
Old-Earth Creationism (OEC) is the belief that the universe really is billions of years old, but Genesis is still literally true. How OEC proponents disagree with Young-Earth Creationism is that they argue that the “days” of the six days of creation were really “eras” or “ages” that could have lasted for millions of years. Old-Earth Creationists believe in a literal Adam and Eve, and many believe that while other creatures may have changed form, human beings did not evolve and were created, as we are, in a supernatural event.
The Positives:
Like YEC Christians, OEC believers take the Bible seriously and want to be faithful to what God says through it. But they also respect the God-given gift of science, and trust that even “secular” science practiced by non-believers reveals many true things about the universe (mostly that the universe is very, very old). Old-Earth Creationists provide an interpretation that meshes better with broadly accepted science while adhering to their interpretation of literal scripture.
The Negatives:
The problem with OEC is that it tends to separate God’s “personal” work in the miraculous (such as creating Adam and Eve) from His “impersonal” work in the natural order (such as genetic adaptation). I believe this divide is unhelpful, because it’s not a natural separation; God’s personal work isn’t limited to miracles. He creates through the “natural” processes of creation, and He’s just as responsible for a blazing sunset as He is for a newborn baby.
I believe we do need to separate God’s primary work from His secondary work so that we don’t blame Him for sin and evil - God created humans, but He doesn’t make us sin; He knows every sparrow, but He doesn’t like when they suffer. But there is a difference between not blaming God for sin, and making Him an observer who only steps in to work in creation when He needs to. God is omnipresent - He is there in every molecule of His creation, sustaining and working in it in every nanosecond of every millennium. He doesn’t have to work around the natural processes that He created, because He works through them all the time.
God does do miracles. But when we see miracles in the Bible, they are always done for our sake - to reveal something about God to us. God doesn’t do miracles in our world because He has to keep putting things back on track; He does them because He loves us and wants to show Himself to us and reveal His Kingdom to those who believe. I’m afraid that OEC can lead to a false separation between God’s natural works and His creative works.
Intelligent Design (Discovery Institute)
Intelligent Design is the belief that by whatever process the universe came to be, it was created by an Intelligent Designer (presumably God), and evidence of that design is found all over creation. This belief is often associated with Old-Earth Creationism, though not always.
The Positives:
In the big picture, the ID folks are right: the universe was designed by an intelligent being (God) and evidence of His handiwork is found all over creation. ID proponents make some very good arguments, such as the Anthropic Principle (or Fine Tuning), which shows that given the conditions necessary for life, the odds of us existing are infinitesimally small, and that warrants an explanation. They also make strong cases for ID from the existence of consciousness and the moral law. Even some Atheists have admitted that the universe looks incredibly well-designed, and they have embraced fantastic ideas like the Multi-verse in an attempt to push the question back far enough that they won’t have to think about God.
The Negatives:
I have two concerns when it comes to Intelligent Design. First, ID proponents often confuse science with philosophy, which is the same mistake that Materialists make, and it only strengthens the Materialistic argument. ID is not a science; it is a philosophy. Even if it is a true philosophy, and guides and affects science in many ways, it is still not a science. Confusing the two, especially when it comes to education, hurts the case.
The other problem is that ID relies far too heavily on its weakest argument, what proponents call “Irreducible Complexity.” Evolutionary processes are, the argument goes, insufficient for explaining certain features of the natural world (bacteria flagellum, the Cambrian Explosion, etc.). So, we should assume that God supernaturally intervened at these points in creation. This sounds a lot like the old “God of the Gaps” argument - if we can’t explain something given current scientific information, we call it a miracle.
The problem with God of the Gaps theories is that as science advances and we are able to explain more phenomena in scientific terms, the role for a God who has to keep supernaturally goosing His creation along gets smaller and smaller, and Christians look like we don’t know what we’re talking about. Irreducible Complexity leaves ID philosophers exposed to being proved wrong, yet the movement leans on this argument pretty heavily.
Conclusion
Each of these frameworks for understanding science and scripture has strong and weak points. There are fascinating scientific and philosophical arguments for each position, and godly men and women hold each view. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the websites, books, and articles from the organizations linked above.