Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

creationist organization will discredit the “data”
of others. The scientific community would not
deliberately suppress real out-of-place fossil
data. Evolutionary scientists may be biased in
their interpretation of such data, but they would
not be able or willing to hide it. Only conspiracy
theorists who don’t know any real scientists
would spread such malice.
Yet there are good scholars out there who
still say they believe in the young earth. The
best of them (Kurt Wise, Paul Nelson, John
Mark Reynolds) admit that the evidence supports
an old earth better than a young earth
right now but that they are precommitted to the
young earth because of their view of he Bible.
So they will endure the ridicule of the scientific
community for the time being. Unfortunately,
these good people are so preoccupied with
the creation-evolution controversy that they
don’t get around to doing much laboratory
science. They are like C.S. Lewis’ character
Reepicheep, a militant mouse whose loyalty
and valour are unquestioned but who suffers a
bit in credibility.
The evidence for an old earth is so strong,
however, that most people will try to incorporate
it into their belief systems. Conservative
Christians found ways to do this a hundred
years ago. B.B. Warfield, James Orr, and
Charles Hodge were staunch conservatives in
reaction to liberalism, and all of them believed
in the old earth. Even William Jennings Bryan,
the defender of the Bible at the Scopes Trial in
1925 was an old-earther.
As a result, a great number of Christians are
comfortable with the idea of the old earth and
do not let it decrease their respect for the Bible.
There are different ways to interpret Genesis
other than the strictly literal one.
There are some real problems with literal interpretation.
The most obvious one is that Genesis
has two origin stories which don’t agree on
important details. In the first story humans do
not appear until day six while the second story
starts with the creation of Adam. The first story
has male and female humans created at the same
time, the second completely separates these creations
into two different times and two different
methods. Adam was formed from dust early in
the story; Eve was made from a rib late in the
story. There are people who invent circuitous
arguments to resolve these discrepancies but
for me they don’t work. Jews and Christians
over the millennia have always been aware of
these differences in the two stories and have
intuitively realized that you can take the Bible
seriously without pushing it to a literalistic
extreme. Christians face the same dilemma
when comparing the four gospels. Many of the
details don’t match perfectly from one gospel
to the other, but this is no reason to doubt the
stories. In fact it makes the stories more believable
because it is less likely that someone has
tampered with the stories to make them agree
on small details.
If the earth is very old, and if there have
been living things present almost from the start,
as the fossil record tells us, and if those living
things have been very different from those we
see around us today, then we must have a theory
to account for these realities. The theory has
to account for change. Change in complexity,
size, distribution, body plans, and what not.
Scientists have such a theory and it is called
evolution.
Evolution, in one sense, is simply the history
of life on earth. From a Christian point of
view, it is the story of God’s ongoing creation.
That’s what God has been doing over the eons of
time that this universe has existed. Species have
had their time of flourishing (usually a million
years or so) and then they have become extinct
so that they could be replaced by a new species.
Their molecules and their place in nature were
needed for the next species. This is the ongoing
story: newness, flourishing, extinction-- episode
after episode, while every conceivable niche in
nature became filled with living things. Such
was God’s will. It’s very much like our own
lives – we are born pristine, we enjoy the life
span that we are given, and then we decline and
die, sometimes very painfully. We accept this
formula and gladly bring children into the world
to experience such a life, with all its ecstasy and
horror. We trust that everything has meaning in
the end and that it is in the care of a loving God.
This is what faith is about.
You notice that I have been writing only
about evolution in the sense of the history of
life on earth, and that I have not mentioned
Darwinism yet. Darwinism is much more
controversial than just general evolution. It is
an attempted explanation for the changes that
evolution tells us about. In common language
it is the survival of the fittest. Everyone, even
the strict creationists, agree that Darwinism
(natural selection) accounts for changes in
microevolution: the development of antibiotic
resistance in bacteria and the development of
wolves, coyotes, dingos, and wild dogs, to name
only two examples. But not everyone believes
that this mechanism can cause the big changes
that we call macroevolution. They would say
that dinosaurs can’t change into birds – special
creation is required for such major changes.
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At this point I would have to confess that
I don’t really know whether natural selection
is powerful enough to produce all the diversity
and complexity we see in the living world. To
prove it solidly, we would have to know the
detailed history of the past. As it is, we have
only the fragments of the past – spotty fossil
records, jerky family trees, and hints from
embryology and biogeography. How could we
possibly prove that natural selection can explain
absolutely everything? We would have to keep
looking forever. And how could we prove that a
certain apparent gap had been closed by means
of a miracle? There is always the possibility of a
future scientific discovery that would explain it
better. If we want proof we are in trouble.
We will just have to live with our uncertainty
about what causes the changes in
living things over the eons of time. Whatever
the explanation, our faith tells us that it is all
God’s doing, whether we can explain it with
science or not. Here is a simple analogy: when
a cook bakes bread, is it the cook or the oven
that causes the bread to bake? Both at the same
time. Some philosophers would say that the
cook is the primary cause of the bread, and
the oven is the secondary cause. God’s action
is the primary cause of all that exists, and this
existence is brought about by the processes of
nature, which are the secondary causes, working
within God’s will.
When I was growing up I always looked
forward to hearing Frank C. Peters preach. I
remember once he was talking about our attitude
to science and faith and how we should
be cautious about what we say on either side.
He told us about a dear relative of his who
visited the Field Museum of Natural History
in Chicago. Upon seeing the extensive fossil
displays in the basement, he turned away with
the comment, “Na, dit gleew eck aula nijch!”
(Well, I don’t believe any of this!)
I am grateful for people like Frank Peters
and Archie Penner who have led us toward
open mindedness while modeling respect for
the authority of the Bible.
Preservings is looking for Biographies and Family Histories
to include in future issues.
Submit a biography or a short family history with
photographs to:
86 - Preservings No. 26, 2006