How were we created?
I once wrote a little book entitled, “How Were We Created?” It was used for study fairly widely by university students with much appreciation. Printed in March 1968 it quickly sold out, but it was reprinted five times. It has been out of print since. It grew out of my studies that were selected because I wanted to know more about how evolution and Biblical faith intersected. My studies in biology, geology, paleontology, archaeology, ancient history, botany, geography, and theology have blessed me through fifty years of ministry.
Then while I was conducting evangelistic rallies in universities around Australia, I would always have a session every night where people could ask questions from the floor, and I would answer them with my beliefs on the spot. Then for decades of broadcasting, I would often be questioned on the same issues and I would always answer fully and frankly, unlike some today who talk around the subject, tip-toeing to avoid giving an answer some of their listeners would not agree with them holding.
In fact, few clergy talk frankly about the “how” of creation because if they say what they think, the well-organized fundamentalists assault them with threatening letters and always seek to cause trouble with a minister’s tenure within his church. So while students in particular and well-read laypeople ask the questions, the ministers are too often silent with frank answers.
This week has seen worldwide celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the birth of scientist Charles Darwin on February 12th 1809. More than 300 birthday celebrations are planned in Britain alone, where Darwin’s face graces the 10-pound note along with that of Queen Elizabeth II. Many more events are planned worldwide, including the Second World Summit on Evolution in the Galapagos Islands in August. In Australia, the Perth Mint is putting out a special commemorative silver coin and dinners and church services are being held in every State. There are currently 639 events scheduled in 42 countries for Darwin Day 2009, including a conference hosted by the Vatican.
For even Darwin’s ideological adversaries concede that he was a towering figure. “He was clearly extremely important, his thinking changed the world,” said Paul Taylor, a spokesman for Answers in Genesis, a prominent group that rejects Darwin’s theory of evolution in favor of a literal interpretation of the Bible. “We disagree with his conclusions, with the way he made extrapolations, but he was a very careful observer and we’ve got a lot to be grateful for.”
Recently, while lecturing at Cambridge University, I visited The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences in Downing Street, Cambridge. This, of course, is to be expected of a Life Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society!
Presented here are the artifacts of more than 500 million years of the history of life on Earth. There are the bones of a 125,000 year old hippo found in Cambridge, giant marine reptiles, dinosaurs and a marvellous array of fossilised sea creatures dating back hundreds of millions of years. The rocks, minerals and fossils are striking evidence of climate and environmental change. Included in the displays is the entire collection Charles Darwin made on his journey on the HMS Beagle including all of those from New South Wales, labeled and annotated by the scientist.
In 1836 Australia’s astonishing wildlife influenced him deeply. The fossils were evidence of animals that had lived many thousands or millions of years ago. Darwin saw the rich variety of animal life and the geological features during his voyage.
On his return to England, Darwin tried to solve the riddle of these observations and the puzzle of how species evolve. Darwin did not originate the idea that life on earth had evolved. This notion went back to the ancient Greeks, and was accepted by many of Darwin’s predecessors, including his own grandfather Erasmus. Darwin’s thesis was his claim that evolution could be explained solely by the process of natural selection, whereby an infinite series of minute variations gradually turned one form of life into another. He suggested evolution occurred by the process of natural selection. This means that the animals (or plants) best suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on the characteristics which helped them survive to their offspring. Thus, the species changes over time.
In 1859 Darwin published ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’. The book was extremely controversial, because the logical extension of Darwin’s theory was that Homo sapiens was simply another form of animal. It made it seem possible that even people might just have evolved – quite possibly from apes – and destroyed the prevailing orthodoxy on how the world was created.
Darwin was vehemently attacked, particularly by the Church. However, his ideas soon gained supremacy in scientific circles. After his death in 1882, he was buried in Westminster Abbey close by Sir Isaac Newton.
The theory of evolution made many people furious because it contradicted what many people said was the Biblical view of creation. The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life recently released a report showing the American public is evenly divided on the question of whether or not evolution is the best explanation for life on earth, with 48 percent agreeing that it is and 45 percent rejecting the notion that evolution best explains the origins of human life.
The views on evolution differed widely across Christian communities. Evangelical Protestants, mostly Pentecostalists and Fundamentalists, were most likely to reject the idea of evolution (70 percent). Roughly half of Orthodox Christians and Catholics, however, agreed that evolution best explains the development of life on earth. The Roman Catholic Church understands that natural selection is a God-directed mechanism of biological development and that man’s soul is the divine creation of God. Most mainline churches have taken a similar stance, stating that evolution and creationism do not contradict each other.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church believes that “God created the universe and all that is therein not necessarily in six 24-hour days, and that God actually may have used evolution in the process of creation.” Another mainline denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) affirms that evolution and the Bible do not contradict each other.
Rejecting the theory of evolution altogether is the Southern Baptist Convention. Believing that creation science can be backed by scientific evidence “without any religious doctrines or concepts.” In countries where Southern Baptist missionaries and literature influence churches, (such as Australia) the controversy surrounding evolution extends beyond church walls to church schools.
In recent years, Creation Science has developed “Intelligent design” to challenge science standards to permit students to hear a balanced presentation on Darwinian theory. Intelligent design cannot be taught in Science classes in Australian Schools, but can be taught in religious classes. The response to hearing Genesis 1 being read should be to worship God as Creator; recognition of God’s power and purpose; and a new sense of self-worth as a creature of God who understands personal sinfulness. That was the intention from the beginning.
These chapters were initially a hymn of praise to the God of creation. They were not answering questions from the ancient Hebrew or the modern student about the scientific origins of the earth and humanity. They are in our Bible to help us understand the nature of God as powerful and purposeful. They are there to show the sun, moon and stars were not gods but expressions of God’s handiwork. They are there to tell us that everything in creation was created good and things are not evil of themselves. They are there to tell us what it means to be human, to be made in the image of God yet able to fall from grace, to be made from dust but given dominion over all. They were included to repulse the mythology of those who believed in fertility cults and atheistic scientism. They provide the setting for the shameful story of human sinfulness and the grand plan of God’s redemption, the theme of the Bible.
When scientists and Christians clash over these verses it is because one trespasses in the field of the other. Dr Gordon Dicker says: “The religious person tries to tell the scientist what he must find out about causes, the physical developments which led to the present state of the universe or relations between existing things (e.g., that the world was created in six days about 4004 B.C. or that the sun and the planets revolve around the earth). On the other hand, the scientist may wrongly conclude that his research entitles him to pronounce on ultimate questions and to insist that matter, and matter alone, is eternal, that energy-matter is all that is and that all things have developed by the chance operation of inherent laws of matter.” (“Faith With Understanding” Dr Gordon Dicker. Unichurch 1981).
In the debate on how we were created our understanding of the scriptures is crucial. Some evolutionists see the Bible as irrelevant mythology and pre-scientific. Some creationists replace geology and biology textbooks with the Bible as the only textbook required. Both attitudes are equally dangerous and far from the truth.
The scientific evolutionist believes in the evolution of species as fundamental to all studies of biology. Encyclopaedia Britannica says: “Evolution is accepted by all biologists and natural selection is recognised as its cause. Nature is automatic with no room for a divine design.” Today, many scientists question evolution through survival of the fittest and chance mutation as a method even while not holding creationism. Evolution is a philosophy of belief supported by some evidence but with no certainty of proof.
Today, evolution is under unremitting attack from four directions: from the arguments of mathematics about chance claiming a chance origin of matter is impossible; from the arguments within biology demonstrating that evolution must leap as well as creep; from the creationists who claim the scriptures as the basis for knowledge of creation and blame the teaching of evolution for the decline in social values; from the ecological biologists like Prof. Charles Birch, who argue that purpose and chance are not mutually exclusive but complementary and that neither make sense alone. (“On Purpose” NSW University Press p.58)
The creation scientist, committed to a view of special creation in six days within the last 10,000 years, is ignored by most scientists saying creationism is religion not science. Creationists claim more cases of loss of religious faith are traced to the theory of evolution than to anything else.
Schools have been established to uphold the scriptural view of science, morality and personal faith. Yet many Christians are concerned about the research, scientific claims and teaching methods of creationists and their Christian schools. Teaching evolution has been responsible for casualties in the faith but research by Sally Loane on 300 Queensland University students from creationist schools show they are “totally confused” by Creation Science and Intelligent Design.
We need to understand and believe the scriptures for what they say. We must not make them say more than they do. The evolutionist is in error in not accepting the scriptures. The creationist is in error for claiming they say more than they do. What does the Bible say about our creation?
Ask the FOUR KEY QUESTIONS:
1. When were we created?
There is no timetable mentioned in scripture. God’s Word states simply “in the beginning” (1:1). Creationists try to develop a timetable from the Bible, ending with a date for creation within the last 10,000 years. Some use the method developed by Archbishop Ussher in 1650. They count the age of people in the Bible before the birth of Christ working backwards until 4004 BC thinking wrongly, that includes every generation.
We do not know the date of Creation. The Bible does not say. That is the role of science. Scientists give various dates. Some geneticists in USA conclude that the first women lived in central Africa 200,000 years ago. Professors Leakey, working in the Oldavai Gorge in Africa date the earliest at 2 million years ago. The discovery of a well-preserved woman in Ethiopia is placed at 3 million years ago. Other scientists believe evolution was not slow and steady but leaped in rapid developments. There are 26 Australian archaeological sites indicating that human beings inhabited this country 40,000 years ago.
Creationists argue for less than 10,000 years but the Bible does not tell us. Most Christians think the Bible teaches creation out of nothing: Creatio Ex Nihilo. But Genesis is not that clear: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep.” It appears the earth was formless, empty, dark and in chaos when God created and brought order. The Bible does not say God said a magic word and creation existed. Jesus indicates a continuous creative process: “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” (John 5:17). (All present tense).
It may have taken countless ages to create the world. A number of problems, such as the problem of evil, are less acute if people would give up this magicians’ wand understanding of God’s creative power. We are given no indication of when creation occurred and those who claim it took place over six days within the last 10,000 years claim more than the Bible states.
2. By whom were we created?
“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light.’” Christians agree God is Creator. That is His nature and His creation is deliberate, purposeful and in love. In the Creeds we confess: “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen.” All creationists believe that God was the Creator.
Some evolutionists believe that God was the power behind creation and that evolution was the method He used to create the world. God was not only the cause of creation but is the power behind a continuing creation. Charles Darwin was a theistic evolutionist in saying, as he concludes “The Origin of Species”: “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on…from so simple a beginning endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved.”
When our children were born we published the news saying “Thanks be to God for the gift of our child”. We acknowledged God as the ultimate source of life but the process required sexual intercourse and months of biological growth until the breath of life was breathed into each child’s nostrils. Many believe God created over the aeons before the breath of humanity in the image of God was given. Then the creature became human.
Some evolutionists believe in chance mutation and random selection with no room for God. They are secularists who reject all religion as being untrue. Yet they are overlaying the theory with a philosophy, and creating a new religion of secular humanism without any scientific evidence.
“In modern times it is increasingly affirmed that energy-matter is eternal. It has no creator and its arrangement in its present form is purely the result of the chance effects of inherent laws of matter. This denies flatly the Christian view and also is a faith statement. It is not a matter of Christians arguing on faith against a position which scientists adopt on the basis of knowledge. What is at stake is not scientifically provable facts but questions of ultimate meaning and value and these cannot be established in any scientific or law-court sense.” (G Dicker p65).
That such scientists do not believe in God is of little significance because they are speaking beyond their realm of competence. As scientists they have no more information upon which they can believe or disbelieve than the most ordinary Christian. Their scientific training does not invalidate faith; only their lack of belief puts them beyond faith. The scientist cannot answer the question “By Whom were we created?” except as a believer like any other believer.
3. Why were we created?
The purpose of God in creation runs throughout the Bible: it was His loving desire to have companionship with His creation. So God made man, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,.. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. .. God blessed them God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”(Gen 1:26-31). We only know why we were created, not from any scientific insight, but from our faith.
That is the role of faith. The atheist and the evolutionist cannot answer the question. Sir Frederick Hoyle eminent astronomer says: “If we were to ask why the laws of physics we enter into the territory of metaphysics. The scientist will not attempt an answer. We must not ask “why?” But to the believer, the whole universe demonstrates God’s loving purpose. The scientist who has no faith is out of his depth, out of his competence and out of his experience. He has no valid logic in trying to answer the why of creation.
4. How were we created?
On this question the Bible is silent. It affirms: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”(1:27). The method used is beyond scripture. Christians can only trust the most reasonable scientific answer to that question. Scientific evolutionists believe they know how although others say they claim too much.
But Creationists claim too much when they say they know how we were created from scripture. For scripture simply affirms that God created, not how. To claim Genesis describes instantaneous creation from nothing over six days is to claim these chapters are a statement on methodology rather than a hymn of praise. “Few people realise that the first chapters of Genesis are by no means the oldest parts of the Old Testament and that the oldest surviving statements do not speak of creation or God as creator at all. Rather they concentrate on the mighty deeds of Yahweh in history by which he made himself known and freed Israel to be his people.
Covenant theology preceded creation theology. When the Hebrew people did come to speak about creation it was not because of any profound interest in the natural world or because they sought an answer to the question: how did the world come into being? Rather it was because they were pursuing the historical question: How did history begin? Whence does the history of Israel derive its meaning? The answer was that history began with God’s creation of the world and Israel’s history is meaningful because the God who called and freed Israel was the same God who created all things.” (G Dicker p66)
The clash of religion and science is unnecessary. Creationism that declares instantaneous creation in six days 10,000 years ago is not a scientific statement but a statement of faith. God is not called into question for science cannot answer ultimate origins. It can reveal how and when things came into being, but not answer who caused them and why. That is the field of religion. So religion cannot answer how and when, that is the field of science.
To impose a philosophy over science as evolutionists do is to make science a religion. To limit science by basing its work on Scripture as creationists do is to make religion a science. Science and religion are complementary not competitive and both are necessary for complete understanding.
Prof Ian Falconer, Australian Christian biochemist, says: “There is no real conflict between the scientific knowledge of evolution which is presented in biology and a Bible-based faith in God. Science does not set out to answer the question “why?” but how does the universe work. We cannot ask science “why?” or we’ll get an answer like the one in the “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” in which the computer was asked the ultimate question of the purpose of existence and replied “42”. Conversely we cannot ask Christianity “How?” for religion is not aimed at understanding mechanism but understanding purpose. Christianity is not concerned with teaching physics but the purpose of life.”
The Bible does not tell us “how” or “when”. It tells us who made us and why. The answers to the question of how and when can best be found from the scientist. Galileo, in his dispute with the Roman Catholic Church, which the Church has since admitted it was wrong, said: “The Bible teaches us the way to go to heaven; not the way the heavens go.”
Learn the understanding of the scientist and learn the teaching of the scripture. Once you believe God is your Creator, everything has meaning and purpose. There is a friendliness in the Universe. Life is contingent upon God’s will. You are a person of worth and significance. Your ultimate purpose and destiny is locked in God’s love. Discover that and respond to God’s means of rescuing you from sinfulness and meaninglessness.
Only Jesus is the way to God. Only Jesus gives us our ultimate meaning and truth. Only Jesus gives us the life power to become what God intended when He created us. To believe in Him is to find purpose and meaning. As for the rest, hold loosely to your best understanding and look with eagerness to fresh discoveries.
Today, the grip of materialism has become so strong, and respect for traditional Christianity so weak, that even when people become dissatisfied with materialistic explanations for life, they tend to turn to an unbiblical compromise, like process theology, in which God evolves with the world.
The debate is not a clash between science and religion, or between reason and faith. It is a clash between two religions—Christianity and naturalism—and two definitions of science—evolution and intelligent design.” (Charles Colson).
Many evolutionists make a leap of faith that it must be right, regardless of the evidence. Many ‘Darwinians’ who have found his theory so beguiling that they have refused to recognize how much it cannot explain.
Professor Tom Frame, in his new “Evolution In The Antipodes” says, “Neo-Darwinians such as Richard Dawkins rest their beliefs just as much on an unscientific leap of faith as the “creationists” they so fanatically affect to despise. It is revealing how they dismissively try to equate all those scientists who argue for ‘intelligent design’ with Biblical fundamentalists, as their only way to cope with questions they cannot answer.”
“Copernicus’s demonstration that the Earth was not the centre of the universe was a significant blow to human pride. But Charles Darwin’s conclusion that human beings were not unique in the natural world seemed to demolish any pretence that men and women were special.
Early interpreters of Darwin’s work were plainly ill-equipped to deal with the ramifications of this potentially devastating message. Since religion based its claim for God’s existence squarely on the evidence of design in nature, denial was one of the few options available .It took more than 30 years for theology to perceive that evolution might, in fact, disclose an even more creative God, and that Darwin had actually paved the way for more profound theological thought.
Both religious belief and evolutionary theory continue to contend for the hearts and minds of men and women. For some commentators, there are only two choices available to thinking people: theism or atheism. Either God exists and there is some divinely inspired purpose in human life, or God does not exist and humans will make what they can of life. There is, in my view, a range of other positions.
Evolutionary theory does not explain everything we want to know about the natural world or human life, and some of what evolutionary theory purports to explain it hardly elucidates at all. While we might know how some things occurred we still want to know why. Most importantly, why is there something rather than nothing?
”So how does a Christian account for the origin of life and the emergence of religious faith in the light of evolutionary theory? Some continue to insist Darwin was simply wrong, basing their world view, as before, on the creation narratives in Genesis. Others have decided his theories have been largely discredited and alternatives are presently being devised. Still others accept he was mostly right and his theories have been verified.
Evolutionary theory requires creation to be understood as a continuous process rather than an isolated act in the distant past. In this view, God creates in and through natural processes.”
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.