Saturday, December 24, 2005

Rambling: Theistic Evolution

In light of the Dover, PA, decision against Intelligent Decision, I wanted to take a few minutes and discuss a common "compromise" position on evolution that many well-meaning Christians take. The position, "Theistic Evolution", says that evolution on a purely mechanistic level could not have happened, and that God's intervention was required for the process to have occurred. Generally, the time scale proposed was on the order of millions of years, just as in mechanistic evolution.
While it at first seems like an appealing option for Christians, Theistic Evolution is untenable.
Theistic Evolution says that evolution is the mechanism by which God brought forth life on the earth. It requires that there be death before the Fall, something that the Bible indicates was not the case, for Genesis 2:17, Genesis 3:3, and Romans 5:12-14 all indicate that death did not exist before the Fall. Thus, the very mechanism by which natural selection works (death of the unfit) would have to exist before sin, which is not the order seen in Scripture.
For this reason, along with others that I don't have time to write about right now, Theistic Evolution is incompatible with the pattern presented in Scripture.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What? A girlfriend?