Cre­ation and Evo­lu­tion, Reconcilable??

I’m wise enough to admit that I am not a sci­en­tist. I haven’t fol­lowed the sci­en­tific method through on any­thing that I can think of since my sev­enth or eighth grade project on the rhodo­den­dron plant, and I’m not even sure if I’m spelling it cor­rectly anymore!

But, I’m also wise enough to know that the wis­dom of the world is made fool­ish by that of God. I believe Gen­e­sis 1 just as it is writ­ten, with six days of cre­ative work hap­pen­ing in the order described, in the man­ner described, and in the time described.

I believe that crea­tures were cre­ated to repro­duce after their own kind. The Bible begins with this foun­da­tion, and from it we can be assured that man did not have his ori­gin from the beasts of the field, but rather from the cre­ative work and breath of God.

So what then of evo­lu­tion? Again, I am not a sci­en­tist, nor would I ever accept that evo­lu­tion can account for the ori­gins of all life on earth. The only way land life would have ever formed would be two sea crea­tures evolv­ing into land crea­tures at about the same time and in about the same loca­tion (else they would never find each other to breed, thus dying out after one gen­er­a­tion) and if some form of food had already evolved on land or in shal­low water which existed at the point land life evolved. The odds of all that being “just right” seems absurd to me. Again, I’m not a sci­en­tist, and no, I don’t care to have it explained in detail. As stated, I don’t feel evo­lu­tion is nec­es­sary to explain origins.

But what about since that time? Muta­tions within species do hap­pen, and they can be passed along. I saw a pro­gram on Ani­mal Planet yes­ter­day which dis­cussed two-​headed ani­mals and other such muta­tions. The exam­ple was given of a sow which had a genetic muta­tion which she passed to her piglets. One was born with two esophogi, two snouts, two mouths, and there eyes. It lived for about a year and a half until dying of a lung disease.

We know that muta­tions do hap­pen. That’s evo­lu­tion. That’s genetic change over time. Can it cre­ate a new species? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t think it is impos­si­ble either. A small change every few thou­sand gen­er­a­tions would mean a very slight change in the kind. But the off­spring would always be quite sim­i­lar to its par­ents, and this would be true down the line. Only by look­ing at the begin­nings and end of such a genetic line would one notice a dif­fer­ent, and at no time did any crea­ture not repro­duce after its own kind. The kind sim­ply became some­thing else one minor step at a time.

Sec­ond Peter 3:4ff. speaks of those who mock the com­ing of Christ by claim­ing that every­thing has always gone on as it has now, that no sig­nif­i­cant changes ever take place. Peter calls them will­fully igno­rant of the great flood of the past, which rep­re­sented a sig­nif­i­cant change from the way things had been since cre­ation. Would it not be accu­rate, then, to say that about those who claim that crea­tures can’t, over count­less gen­er­a­tions, become some­thing else if even in the slight­est way, so that they are reg­u­larly dis­tinct from gen­er­a­tions past in at least one notable way? Are they not claim­ing that crea­tures remain the same since God cre­ated them, despite the fact we know they evolve and change, if ever so slightly?

Cre­ation­ists use the straw man of micro– verses macro-​evolution, but they fail to real­ize that macro-​evolution is micro-​evolution over a longer course of time. It doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily require that goo turned into you, but rather that some­time ago a pri­mate existed which, over the course of thou­sands of gen­er­a­tions, has become slightly dif­fer­ent, the pri­mates we know today.

It is sig­nif­i­cant that when unbe­liev­ers attempt to rebuke the Bible or to make sense of it, they often make fools of them­selves for they can­not even com­pre­hend what they are read­ing – it is spir­i­tu­ally dis­cerned and their spirit is dead to the things of the Lord. It seems to me that when Chris­tians attempt to dab­ble in sci­ence, they make fools of them­selves too, and per­haps I am doing a bit of that here. But I pro­pose that there is a mid­dle ground, which accepts the find­ings of evo­lu­tion­ary sci­en­tists in light of what we know to be true from the Scrip­ture. Scrip­ture gives us ori­gins, sci­ence gives us “since then” mate­r­ial, and we are left to draw the con­clu­sions for ourselves.

Any feed­back any­one can give would be appre­ci­ated. But don’t bother attempt­ing to con­vince me Gen. 1 and 2 are a lie or a metaphor or a myth or what­ever else. You’d just be wast­ing your breath. :)

Credit for some of the ideas pre­sented here goes to my dad based upon an old page on his now defunct web­site, a soap­box page in which he won­dered why the Cre­ation vs. Evo­lu­tion debate was still rag­ing when it was seem­ingly quite easy to rec­on­cile the main issues between them. I’ve given that some con­sid­er­a­tion, and I think he may have been on to some­thing there.

Small edit: Thank you, 74.134.106.31, for the col­or­ful com­ment which you left. Due to its nature and the nature of Timothy’s Bur­den, the com­ment can­not be pub­lished, but I wanted to let you know I appre­ci­ate the time spent writ­ing it. With love, thanks for reading.