Bible Stories

During the first part of the nineteenth century, scientists began the serious study of fossils. This showed a clear succession of life on earth, with some forms (such as the dinosaurs) becoming extinct and new ones arising. At the same time geologists, looking at the natural processes at work on rocks, began to suggest that the world was older than the traditional 6,000 years.

Charles Lyell, who was staunchly opposed to evolution, calculated in 1859 that life had been on earth not less than 300 million years’. Speculations that extinct species had perished in Noah’s flood or that they were remains of previous creations destroyed by God seemed increasingly improbable. But those who denied that God had created each species uniquely did not at this stage find general acceptance. This was because no one could envisage how biological change (evolution) could take place.

Charles Darwin (1809-82) and Alfred Wallace (1823-1913) independently came up with a plausible mechanism, based on their observations of the variation of animals and plants in different parts of the world. Darwin and Wallace argued that, in the struggle for survival experienced by every living thing, those individuals with a helpful inherited variation are likely to leave more progeny than those lacking the variant, and that this will lead to adaptive divergence between populations living in different environments, in other words to evolutionary change. These ideas were presented at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London in 1858, and Darwin expanded them in a book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection published the following year.

The main scientific problems about this method of evolution were resolved in the 1930s when it became accepted that known genetical processes could act to produce the changes found in fossil series. Many discoveries since have borne on these ideas, such as:

• how genes work;
• the occurrence of favourable mutations;
• methods of ageing the earth;
• how new species arise and persist (many examples of this are now known);
• the actual strengths of selection in nature affecting the speed of evolutionary change;
• the existence of large numbers of missing links.
• All have confirmed this ‘neoDarwinian’ synthesis.

As with any scientific topic, there are problems still to be faced, and some scientists, especially in the field of human origins, tend to make sweeping statements on the basis of thin evidence. But it is certainly untrue that an increasing proportion of biologists and geologists are having doubts about the theory as is sometimes alleged.

Merely an ape?

Great controversies have raged round the subject of Christianity and evolution. Often the difficulties have been greatly exaggerated. But some problems remain, of which two are major:

• Does evolution imply that the living world is simply the result of chance mutations?
• Is humanity ‘merely’ a species of ape, rather than a special creation in God’s image?

Christians have tackled the first difficulty in very contrasting ways. Some have argued that the Bible shows us a God who works through natural processes, thus controlling and using the mechanisms studied by scientists, some of which are apparently random in their occurrence, such as the mutations that affect the genetic composition of all populations.

As far as humankind is concerned, the problem revolves round what we mean by being made ‘in God’s image’. If this is taken to mean qualities God gave to a chosen animal at a particular time in history, then there is no difficulty about accepting the conventional scientific view of human evolution. The Christian believes that his ancestors subsequently fell from fellowship with God, but this is outside the scope of the scientist, either to confirm or deny. On the other hand if, as some Christians hold, the idea of ‘God’s image’ requires that God created the human body and soul together in a separate act, then clearly the Christian must part company with any theory that we have genetic continuity with other animals.

The evolution controversy for Christians is about how we interpret the Bible: the fact of creation is not in doubt. The importance of the debate lies in the understanding that we may come to about how God works in his world.

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