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Theories of Origins, and Their Strengths and Weaknesses

By Martin LaBar

Some theories of origins, and their strengths and weaknesses, and different meanings of the word, "evolution."

see also my page on the Age of the earth, and my page on principles of scripture that relate to science

As many links as are appropriate are to the Wikipedia, an Internet encyclopedia. I am not aware of any bias toward Christianity in articles posted there. For particular views, I have tried to link to a page produced by some entity that holds that view. For a wider set of web pages on many views of origins, go here.

Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. . . . The other view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know. That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself--I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds. Please do not think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both views turn up. And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense. . . . Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. . . . But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes--something of a different kind--this is not a scientific question. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity: What One Must Believe to Be a Christian. New York: Macmillan, 1952. p. 31-2.

Four points to bear in mind:
1) It may be easier to gain supporters, including financial supporters, if you can characterize your view as a crusade. Thus, saying that all the science teachers at state universities are godless atheists, or that all Christians are ignorant yahoos, will often get you an audience, whereas saying that you believe you can reconcile most of the scientific evidence with scripture may not.

2) Christians, on this, and all other issues, should set an example by their honesty. For instance, a claim that "there is no such thing as evolution," by a Christian who knows science fairly well, may not be honest.

3) Christians should be willing to fellowship with other Christians who do not agree with them on these matters, and humbly recognize that their own particular views may be wrong. Differences between them on these issues are usually because of differences in interpretation of scripture, not differences in whether or not they believe in scripture. As Pastor Jon Payne once said, "The Bible is inerrant. My interpretation of it isn't." All views are surely considerably short of God's understanding of origins.

4) Just because a scientist says something doesn't make it a scientific statement. As an example, the late Carl Sagan, one of the most important scientists, in terms of popularizing science, in North American in the 20th century, wrote, and said on TV, that "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be." That was not a scientific statement. He had no scientific proof of that. How could he have? He believed it. It was a statement of his faith. As Hebrews 11:3 puts it, "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." (NIV)
Naturally, the same could be said for statements made by people who don't share Sagan's world view. Just because someone is talking about a scientific subject doesn't mean that what she says has been, or even can be, scientifically proved.
 

Evolution means "change," and there have probably been several kinds of this. Failing to distinguish between them, or to identify which kind you are talking about, leads to confusion. Unfortunately, some have deliberately confused on this point.

Just because something is listed here doesn't mean that it occurred. It may or may not have. These different types of evolution do not necessarily have the same likelihood of having occurred, and, if they did, did not necessarily occur by the same mechanisms. The further down the table you go, the less evidence there is for a particular type of evolution having occurred. (Which is, by the way, what you would expect, even if all of them did occur--it would be difficult to obtain evidence of anything which happened in the remote past.)

It is possible to teach biology without referring to evolution, or without believing that organisms are related by descent, or are subject to natural selection, but doing so presents a type of biology which leaves an awful lot out. Adherents of every view of origins below believe in at least some relationship and selection.

As far as I know, every biological scientist believes in this type of evolution

See here for more (and more recent) examples, and critical discussion of "what is a species?"

See Methodological Naturalism, a related, but not identical, philosophical concept.

"29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent"

Often claims that questions of purpose in nature are scientific in nature, when they aren't. No experiment can possibly answer the question "why is the universe here?" or "why do I exist?" I personally don't believe that any experiment can determine whether or not God exists. But there are naturalists who claim that science has proved that God doesn't exist, when no such proof exists.

Rejects belief in an omnipotent and omniscient God. This rejection is an assumption, not a provable statement.

Most people, even atheists, aren't really comfortable with the idea that there is no purpose in the universe.

Some thinkers have suggested that, if the human mind is the result of chance processes, there is no good reason to trust it.
 

Unfortunately, this belief is often known as just creationism, thereby making it seem as if, for instance, Intelligent Design proponents don't believe that God created.

Also known as creation science

Note: Intelligent Design (ID) and Young-earth creationism are often confused. Proponents of both are agreed that they aren't the same thing. See here for a blog post by William Dembski, who is a believer in ID, on that question.
Here is a Slate article, pointing out how many ID proponents accept that the earth is not of recent creation.

Baker's Evangelical Dictionary, for one, asserts, in its article on the flood, that the flood was world-wide, although it acknowledges that some believe that it just affected the local area, and others believe that the flood was not literal. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's commentary says the language of Genesis 7:20 "is not consistent with the theory of a partial deluge." Wesley seemed to believe in a world-wide flood. Calvin did. If the flood wasn't world-wide, why didn't God just tell Noah to walk away from everybody else? Why have an ark?

(Note that, even if there was a world-wide flood, this does not absolutely prove that most geologic phenomena are the result of that flood. It merely means that such a flood could have been responsible.)

Willing to question common interpretations of scientific data

Very few scientists, and, so far as I know, none who are not already committed to young-earth creationism, believe that the flood could have been responsible for most of the geologic data. See here for a revealing quote from a Christian geologist who was trained as a young-earth creationist, who has come to doubt young-earth geology entirely. Geologic strata are more consistent with slow deposition than with a single catastrophe which laid down a lot at once. The geologic evidence related to plate tectonics indicates that the earth is very old. The apparent expansion of the universe, and the background radiation left over from the Big Bang, indicate that the universe is very old. (but see below)

Some details of the flood story, if it was a world-wide flood, are difficult to understand. How could so few people have cared for so many animals for so long a time? How could, say, the Australian animals have come all the way to the Middle East before the flood, and gotten all the way back after, leaving no traces between? Where did all the water come from, and where did it go? See this article, or this one, if you are interested, on these and other problems.

Not everyone believes that Young-Earth creationists are interpreting the Bible correctly.

Smith's Bible Dictionary says this (in its article on Noah): The language of the book of Genesis does not compel us to suppose that the whole surface of the globe was actually covered with water, if the evidence of geology requires us to adopt the hypothesis of a partial deluge. It is natural to suppose it [sic] that the writer, when he speaks of "all flesh," "all in whose nostrils was the breath of life" refers only to his own locality. This sort of language is common enough in the Bible when only a small part of the globe is intended. Thus, for instance, it is said that "all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn and that "a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." (emphasis in original)

Meredith G. Kline, in "Because it Had Not Rained," comments on interpreting the days of Genesis 1 as consecutive 24-hour days:

The results, indeed, approach the ludicrous when it is attempted to synchronize Gen. 2:5 with Genesis 1 interpreted in terms of a week of twenty-four-hour days. On that interpretation, vegetation was created on what we may call "Tuesday". Therefore, the vegetationless situation described in Gen. 2:5 cannot be located later than "Tuesday" morning. Neither can it be located earlier than that for Gen. 2:5 assumes the existence of dry land which does not appear until the "third day". Besides, would it not have been droll to attribute the lack of vegetation to the lack of water either on "Sunday" when the earth itself was quite unfashioned or on "Monday" when there was nothing but water to be seen? Hence the twenty-four-hour day theorist must think of the Almighty as hesitant to put in the plants on "Tuesday" morning because it would not rain until later in the day! (It must of course be supposed that it did rain, or at least that some supply of water was provided, before "Tuesday" was over, for by the end of the day the earth was abounding with that vegetation which according to Gen. 2:5 had hitherto been lacking for want of water.)

How can a serious exegete fail to see that such a reconstruction of a "Tuesday morning" in a literal creation week is completely foreign to the historical perspectives of Gen. 2:5? It is a strange blindness that questions the orthodoxy of all who reject the traditional twenty-four-hour day theory when the truth is that endorsement of that theory is incompatible with belief in the self-consistency of the Scriptures.

The Parableman blog has a post on the interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2:3. I quote: "Many of the best Genesis scholars don't think the passage requires a time period corresponding to each day at all, though. The commentaries by the above-mentioned Bruce Waltke and Gordon Wenham, whose commentaries are at least among the very best of evangelical commentaries on this book (and Wenham's is probably the best commentary on Genesis from any perspective), do not take such a view." This post is, in part at least, a response to a post by another blogger, who wrote about death before the fall as a problem for old-earth views. I have linked to that post below, under weaknesses of theistic evolution. Based on my limited experience with Christian blogs, these are two of the most important out there, and I consider both of the authors to be much more theologically sophisticated than I am.

Parableman's author has kindly corresponded with me, and we have agreed on this statement about his interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2:3: "if he is correct (and he presents some good evidence) this indicates that this passage was not meant to be interpreted in what most people would describe as a strictly literal fashion (though he wouldn't describe his view that way for technical reasons)."

"Creation science" is a matter of looking for weaknesses in evidence about similarities, the fossil record, or dating methods, and has little or no research program of its own. There are weaknesses in this evidence, but they are all-too-often reported with poor scholarship, without understanding of their real meaning, or in a biased or even dishonest manner. Tends to ignore the scientific evidence.
 

There is no way to prove or disprove such ideas. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, surely He could have, for example, created me 10 minutes ago, complete with documentation and my own memories, and those of my family, and I, or others, would never know the difference. So far as I know, there are few, if any, young-earth creationists who hold to this view of the earth, or the universe, although holding it would explain, or explain away, the evidence for an old earth, and an old universe, without requiring creation more than a few thousand years ago.

Most people are reluctant to entertain appearance of age views seriously. Such views seem to make God into a deceiver. They also would mean that nature doesn't clearly reveal what God has done, which seems to contradict Psalm 19 and Romans 1.
 

This view has become quite popular in the last twenty years. This is perhaps the most important web site arguing for it.

(See also the Anthropic Principle)

See this blog entry (and comments) for some insights about ID.

Often accepts scientific evidence that the earth is very old

This blog, featuring some of the founders of the ID movement, argues for ID. So far, there is no provision for comments, which is strange.

It is always theoretically possible to argue, or even find, that a property or part functioned well in a state less "mature" than the present state. If so, this weakens ID arguments.

This blog argues against Intelligent design. Here's a recent attack, directly answering Michael Behe, the scientific founder of ID.

Answers in Genesis (which is definitely young-earth) has an article giving the strengths and weaknesses of Intelligent Design.

Apparently compatible with original Hebrew of the Old Testament.
 

May be attributing too much power (to destroy God's work) to Satan.

As you will see if you do a web search on "gap theory," there are a lot of people who don't believe it. Of course, that doesn't make it wrong.

Our understanding of a phenomenon by no means proves that God wasn't involved in it. On the contrary, it ought to deepen our appreciation of God.
 

Some theistic evolutionists believe that God created sub-atomic particles with a tendency to form atoms, and created atoms with a tendency to form molecules, etc. In other words, God's original creation had emergent properties built into it.

If God used evolutionary processes to bring about the species we have today, wouldn't that have entailed a great deal of suffering by non-human animals, which allowed natural selection? How could a good God do this? See here (this blog post is the one I referred to above) and here for comments on death before the Fall, as a weakness of this and the next category of theories. See here for a claim that death before the Fall is not a weakness of these theories.

Requires belief in other than literal interpretation of scripture. It is possible that Genesis 1 was meant solely to teach that God is a God of order and power, and that humans are special, with special responsibilities toward other organisms, but there's quite a bit of detail there, which seems to be saying more than that.

Usually requires belief that flood was not universal, but just where humans were. (Some Bible scholars accept this.)

If God used evolutionary processes to bring about the species we have today, wouldn't that have entailed a great deal of suffering by non-human animals, which allowed natural selection. How could a good God do this?

Requires belief in other than literal interpretation of scripture.

Here's a page from Answers in Genesis, criticizing Progressive Creation.
 

Last word: The most important question about origins is not about when, or how. It's the question of whether we are here because of blind chance processes, or because of a divine plan.

I thank Walt Sinnamon, various speakers and authors, both web and traditional, and many other people, especially Southern Wesleyan University students, for the insight they have given me, and the questions they have asked. I doubt if any of these ideas are original with me. - Martin LaBar

The author is not responsible for the content of web pages linked to this page, other than his own, nor does he necessarily agree with their content. However, he believes that they present material relevant to the investigation of this topic, and that they are representative of the views of their authors.

This page is (may I say it!) evolving, and is an example of secular change, or, at most, speciation.

To my page on Origins links, giving links to web pages with several different views.

To my blog, Sun and Shield, which sometimes considers matters that have scriptural and scientific implications.

To my home page, which has my e-mail address. Any comments would be appreciated.

June 13, 2005

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. The purpose of this is NOT to prevent use by others, but to prevent other users from restricting free use. I claim no ownership of materials in the above material which are quotations from other sources.