Why Creationism? Why Not Evolution?

Today’s Reading:
• Genesis 1:1-3:24

Faith-Stretching Verse(s):

• The land produced vegetation—all sorts of seed-bearing plants, and trees with seed-bearing fruit. Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. – Gen. 1:12, NLT
• So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird—each producing offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. – Gen. 1:21, NLT
• God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. – Gen. 1:25, NLT
  

Thoughts:
In Hebrews (I’m jumping ahead, I know) we’re told that it’s by faith that we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of visible matter. That was true around 2,000 years ago when Hebrews was written and it’s still true today; creationism has always been a faith-based understanding of our origins.

But I’ve always loved science, especially biology. And one of the questions that scientists seek to answer is the question of where all us living beings came from—the question of origins. Modern science has some pretty amazing tools at its disposal, tools that help us to observe our world in more detail than ever before and, we hope, to therefore to understand it better. And modern science has been largely developed around the theory of evolution—the theory that life as we know it developed and mutated over millions of years from life as it once was, that organisms which exist today have not existed since the earth’s formation.

So why would a science-loving, reason-based, intellectual (at least intellectual wannabe) like me believe that the world’s life forms were created rather than that they evolved?

Faith. Reasonable faith. Genesis, like all Scripture, claims to be authored by God. Written through men (in this case, Moses, for instance), but authored by God. And one of the counter-evolution notions in the verses above (besides the idea that God made the things mentioned) is the notion that God created plants and animals to reproduce themselves rather than to produce new types of creatures.

It’s a claim that seems trustworthy. For one thing, I see exactly this sort of thing going on today. I see pine trees bearing pine cones which lead to more pine trees, guppies reproducing guppies, rabbits reproducing rabbits, etc. Are there variations within these species? Yes. Mutations? Yes. Microevolution? Yes. It’s observable. But microevolution does not oppose the Bible’s account of creation; it fits this biblical teaching that species reproduce themselves.

‘What about the fossil records?’ someone might ask. After all, there used to be other species alive, species similar to today’s species, but that no longer exist today. Didn’t today’s life forms come from at least some of these now-extinct species? Similarities make it seem possible. The fossil records supposedly support the theory of evolution.

Fossils are observable. But they also need to be interpreted. And they do not require an interpretation that favors evolutionary theory. They can be interpreted to support creationism. For instance, as a creationist I happen to agree that there used to be many species alive that are not alive today. Extinction is still occurring. According to http://www.petermaas.nl/extinct/lists/mostrecent.htm (today, Jan. 1, 2011) at least six species have become extinct since the year 2000. And yet no one claims that any new species have arisen from any of these recently extinguished gene pools. Their similarities to other creatures are documented and can be used to speculate on what their evolutionary history could have looked like. But the fact is that none of them can be proved to have come from any other species. To come to this conclusion requires an interpretation of the observable data. And interpretations can be wrong.

So we have two interpretations of the data that I think are worth considering. One interpretation says that life has evolved over time and that current species arose from prior species. This interpretation agrees that species generally reproduce themselves; it simply argues that, over time, mutations and variations can and do lead to new species. And the other interpretation says that the reason we observe species reproducing themselves is because that is precisely how God created the world to work.

Which one’s right? Which one’s wrong? Do I go with the interpretations of mortal men like me who have previously unimaginable capacities to observe life’s structures and whose interpretations have the support and trust (faith) of most of the scientific community? Or do I go with the interpretations that are scorned by most of the scientific community but that claim to come from God? Either way, I have to trust someone.

Here’s why I choose creationism: I trust God. God exists. I know that I can’t prove to everyone that He exists, but I am personally convinced that He does (and possibly at some point this year, I’ll talk a bit about my reasons for this). The God who exists has an advantage over every single one of today’s scientists—and not just today’s, but history’s. He observed what we can’t observe. Science begins with observation. So if I’m going to choose to trust in a scientific theory, and one scientist’s theory is based on fewer observations than the other’s, I’m going to trust the scientist who has observed more so long as his theory can still fit with the data.

In this case, that scientist is God. What He teaches about creation (not that the Bible was written to be a scientific manual) fits today’s observable data just as well as the evolutionary theory, or better. It simply offers a different interpretation. But that interpretation is based on God’s own observations and experience of history.

So I follow the theory of creationism because it fits the data I can observe today while evolution seems to oppose it (teaching species arising from other species) and because it follows the interpretation of the One who has experienced and observed more than any human scientist. It seems reasonable to me to trust Him. How about you?