Doesn’t evolution cast doubt on the idea that God created life and man?

If there is one modern secular belief that causes doubt to arise in the Christian, it is evolution.  Outside of the major religions in the United States, Darwinian Evolution is viewed as fact.  All current life forms have come about through natural selection acting upon random genetic variation. Some Christians have recoiled at this theory and claimed that there is no scientific credence to evolution.  They would like to paint Darwin and those that followed as evil liars and sinners, purposefully misleading the masses in spite of the evidence.  However, this is hardly the case.  The reason evolution causes so much doubt within the Church is that it has substantial evidentiary support.

The fossil record is there for all to see.  While all sides admit that there are “missing links” in the fossil record, it at least shows that there have been many species on earth that have been extinct for a long time.  Concurring geologic evidence seems to show that life began very simply and, over time, became more complex.  The evidence supports the idea that this process occurred over millions of years.  Moreover, it is basic intuition that the most “fit” survive in the wild.  We also know genetic mutations happen regularly and randomly.  Thus, evolution stands to reason based on the evidence and its own merit. 

Furthermore, there are many Christians who believe in many aspects of the evolutionary idea.  They do so because they think the evidence is overwhelming.  It should also be noted that these Christians are not abandoning Biblical inerrancy or infallibility in adopting aspects of the evolutionary narrative.  It is possible to hold a literal view of Genesis and believe in an old earth (more on this in later posts).   It is also possible to believe that God used some process in which his creatures changed over time, ending at the pinnacle in Mankind.  However, there is at least one part of the traditional Darwinian idea that is not and cannot be compatible with Christianity.  That part is the implicit idea of naturalism. 

Naturalism claims that only the physical world exists, and only natural means can be used to explain things satisfactorily.  This has long been a tenet in empirical science.  One cannot claim the miraculous in the lab when trying to explain phenomena.  However, position of naturalism is not itself a part of science.  It is a philosophical (almost religious) position that science has adopted and applied to its theories.  It was this application of naturalism that, in part, led to the development of evolutionary thought.  After all, If God was not allowed to explain how life came about, we had to come up with a “natural” explanation.  By removing God and his guiding hand from the creation narrative (evolutionary or otherwise), Darwinism became incompatible with orthodox Christianity.

Yet, the doubt that Darwinian evolution causes Christians is unwarranted for at least three reasons.  The first reason is that Darwinian evolution has no answer to the origin question.  Even if we grant, contrary to my belief, that evolution did occur completely by natural means, it does nothing to say how there was once no life in the universe, and now there is.  Evolution only works when there is pre-existent life.  Famous Darwinian atheists today have gone so far as suggest aliens planted the first life on earth.  This of course only passes the buck (where did that alien life first come from), but also shows the extreme futility of their position.  On the naturalist perspective (unlike the Christian perspective), the origin of life has no answer.

A second reason to reaffirm Christianity in the face of Darwinian evolution is the complexity of life.  The fossil record and Darwinian evolutionists agree that life progressed from the very simple to the incredibly complex.  They also claim that this occurred naturally and at random.  Yet, if naturalism is true, then biology is nothing more than physics and chemistry on a much more complex scale.  Furthermore, we know one of the basic tenets of physics is that all things decay. All things tend towards disorder when left to themselves.  While Darwinists react to this truth by pointing out that the sun’s energy can supply order (theoretically, this may be true), there is no way to explain how a single cell, over time, accidentally produced the human brain.  If there is no external power keeping and progressing life, we would be left with the same natural consequences of leaving a sandcastle unattended.  The results would not be good.  Yet, since we are here, we have solid reasons to doubt Darwinian naturalism.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, if naturalism were true, we would have no right to believe what we actually thought to be true.  Why is this the case?  If the natural is all there is, then our brains are the product of random variation acted upon by natural selection.  There is little reason to believe that natural selection would “select” a brain based upon its ability to know truth.  Sexual prowess and ability to survive would lend themselves to natural selection more than the ability to do complex math or write poetry.  Thus, if naturalism were true, we could not even be confident that what we thought to be true was in fact anywhere near the truth.  For the Darwinian evolutionist, they would hold that naturalistic evolution is true while at the same time having no grounds for believing their perceptive truth to be, in fact, true!  The only way we can be confident that we can discern truth is to discard naturalistic evolution out of hand.