Defense Laboratory / Is evolution incompatible with Christianity?
1. The objection
“Genesis says God made each kind of creature, made Adam from dust and Eve from his side, and that death came into the world through Adam’s sin. Evolution says life developed over billions of years through death, struggle and chance, and that humans descended from earlier creatures. You cannot have both. Either the Bible is true and evolution is false, or evolution is true and the Bible is a collection of old stories. A Christian who accepts evolution has already given up the authority of Scripture, and a God who creates through millions of years of suffering is not the God of the Bible.”
2. Investigation
Assumptions
- That the first chapters of Genesis were written as a scientific or chronological account in the modern sense.
- That a natural explanation of how something happens excludes God as the reason it exists.
- That reading Genesis in a non-literal way means the reader has stopped taking Scripture seriously.
- That ‘evolution’ names a single claim, when the word can mean common descent, natural selection, a mechanism for human origins, or a worldview that denies God.
- That animal death before Adam’s sin cannot fit with the Christian doctrine of the fall.
Evidence and historical claims
- What literary form does Genesis 1 have? Compare it with Genesis 2, which gives a different order of events, and note what each is emphasizing.
- How did early writers such as Origen and Augustine of Hippo read the days of creation, and what reasons did they give? Where does their reading differ from the one common among modern literalists?
- What do Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 say about Adam, death and Christ, and how do different Christians read them?
- What does the scientific literature actually claim about common descent, and which parts are widely accepted among biologists and which are still debated?
- What have the Catholic Church, the Orthodox churches and major Protestant bodies officially said about the subject, and how much variety is there inside each?
- What did the ancient Near Eastern creation stories look like, and what is the difference between them and Genesis 1?
Philosophical and theological claims
- Is there a difference between explaining how a thing came about and explaining why anything exists at all?
- Can chance at one level serve an ordered purpose at another level? What would count as evidence either way?
- Does the claim that God is the creator depend on any particular method by which God created?
- What is the difference between science as a method for studying nature and scientism as the claim that only that method yields knowledge?
Logical structure
- Premise 1: Genesis teaches that God created all living things directly and in a short time.
- Premise 2: Evolution teaches that living things arose over a very long time through natural processes.
- Premise 3: Two accounts that contradict each other cannot both be true.
- Conclusion: Therefore a Christian cannot accept evolution.
- Test each premise separately. Premise 1 is a claim about how to read Genesis, and Christians disagree about it. Premise 2 depends on whether evolution is being treated as a scientific theory or as a worldview. Premise 3 is sound only if the two accounts are answering the same question.
3. Christian responses
Response A: Genesis is literal history, so evolution is rejected (young earth creationism, mainly conservative Protestant)
Young earth creationists hold that Genesis describes real events in six ordinary days a few thousand years ago, and that the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 allow the age of the earth to be estimated. They argue that if death existed before Adam, then the statement that death entered by sin (Romans 5:12) loses its force, and that Jesus’ own references to Adam and Eve and to the beginning treat them as real people (Matthew 19:4-6).
They usually do not deny that science can be done. They dispute how to interpret the evidence for the age of the earth and for common descent, and they hold that Scripture is the higher authority where the two seem to conflict. Many hold this view sincerely and as a matter of faithfulness, not ignorance.
Response B: Creation through an ordered process, with Adam and Eve as real persons (the Catholic position in broad outline)
The Catholic Church does not teach that Genesis is a scientific text, and it has allowed the discussion of evolution as a theory of the development of the body. Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950) said that research into the origin of the human body from earlier living matter was permitted, while holding that the soul is created directly by God. Later popes have spoken in a similar way. The Catechism teaches that Adam and Eve were real, that there was an original fall, and that the question of how God brought about the development of life is open to natural inquiry.
On this view, there is no contradiction between God as the creator of everything and natural processes as the way he brings things to be. What is held firm is the creation of the soul, the unity of the human race, and the reality of the fall. The precise way these fit with the findings of biology remains debated among Catholic theologians.
Response C: Creation as a theological claim, not a scientific mechanism (many Orthodox and mainline Protestants)
Orthodox writers vary. Some are strongly opposed to evolution as a worldview, some are open to an evolutionary development of life, and the church has not issued a binding definition on the matter. Many Orthodox theologians point out that the Fathers read Genesis in several ways, and that Basil of Caesarea, in his sermons on the six days, was more concerned with the meaning of creation than with a timetable.
Many mainline Protestants, and many evangelical scholars who hold to an inerrant Bible, hold that Genesis 1 teaches who made the world and why, not how long it took. They read the text as using the language of its time to say that the world is ordered, good, and made by one God and not by many. They accept common descent as the best scientific account and reject evolution as a philosophy that says there is no God.
Response D: The scientific view and the secular objection
Most working biologists, including many who are Christians, hold that common descent and natural selection are strongly supported by evidence from fossils, comparative anatomy and genetics. Science as a method does not say whether God exists, since it studies natural processes. Some prominent scientists draw atheist conclusions, and others draw theistic ones, and a person who holds either view can recognize the same body of data.
A secular critic of Christianity may say that the account of origins in Genesis is simply mistaken and that the doctrine of the fall depends on it. The Christian reply is that this depends on which doctrines are tied to which reading, and Responses B and C argue that the core of the fall can be kept without a literal reading of every detail.
4. The strongest counterargument
The strongest reply to Responses B and C is that they risk making Scripture say whatever the current science needs it to say. If Genesis is taken as symbolic whenever it conflicts with modern findings, critics ask where the line falls and why the resurrection of Jesus is treated differently. There is also the real problem of Adam. Paul draws a direct parallel between Adam and Christ (Romans 5), and if Adam was not a single person, it is not clear how the argument still works. Finally, the problem of animal suffering and death over millions of years is a hard one for any reading that calls the creation very good (Genesis 1:31).
The strongest reply to Response A is that it ties the Christian faith to a reading of Genesis that most Christian writers before the modern era did not hold in the same form. Augustine, for instance, argued that the days of Genesis could not be read as ordinary days in a simple way. The reply also says that making the rejection of evolution a test of faith can turn away serious people who are told they must choose between honest science and Christ, a choice the creeds themselves do not require.
5. Your independent defense
- Write the objection in one sentence in your own words, and say which of its claims are about the Bible and which are about science.
- List the premises hidden in it using the logic outline above, and mark the one you think is weakest.
- Read Genesis 1 and Genesis 2:4-25 side by side. In your notebook, list three differences in order and emphasis, and say what each text seems to be doing.
- Read Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22. Write in your own words what Paul is arguing and which part of the argument depends on Adam being a single person.
- Look up the Catholic statement in Humani Generis and the Catechism on creation and the fall. Write a paragraph on each position that a Catholic and a conservative Protestant would each accept as fair.
- Choose your own position and write 300 to 500 words defending it. State what you believe about Genesis, about the age of the earth, about Adam, and about death before the fall.
- Write the strongest objection to your own position. Make it as strong as you can, then answer it.
- Finally write one sentence on what would change your mind.
- Keep this in your own notebook or document. Do not send it anywhere.