Theistic evolution

I would agree, but my question is, what about non-evolutionary models? Is the fragmented field of paleoanthropology open to those kinds of interpretations as well? So let's talk about the fossils.

Unfortunately, time won't allow me to get into great detail, so if you want more, you can check out books like Science and Human Origins, Theistic Evolution, or the open access volume, Science and Faith in Dialogue.

But as you probably heard, we are the species Homo sapiens, which means we belong to the genus Homo and the species sapiens.

Major members of the genus Homo, including our species, Homo sapiens, and also Neanderthals and Homo erectus, are very similar to us.

This radio program is a chapter-by-chapter, verse-by-verse study through the entire Bible.

And on today's edition of the Word for Today, Pastor Chuck continues his message, Theistic Evolution, as we pick up in Genesis 1:2.

And now, with today's study, here's Pastor Chuck.

In Isaiah, the 45th chapter, it declares that God did not create the earth without form and void, but He created it to be inhabited.

Now, there are several fields of thought concerning creation, and each one of them has its own peculiar problems.

There are arguments for and against each concept.

There is what is called theistic evolution, the acknowledging that God began everything but then set it free to evolve.

He formed the first protein molecule, but then He let it free to evolve into many forms of life.

[music] And now, here's our Creation Moment host, Ian Taylor.

[music] Some people think that they can believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior and at the same time believe God created through evolution.

These people are called theistic evolutionists or progressive creationists.

What kind of nature would a god have who creates through the death that is essential to evolution? First, death would have to have begun from the very moment of creation.

Death, disease, pain, and suffering would have had to have originated with this god.

Our special guest this week is Ken Ham from Answers in Genesis.

Now, Ken, there is a movement in culture writ large, which isn't new, but it's gaining momentum, towards the acceptance of what they call theistic evolution.

Can you walk our listeners through the concept of theistic revolu- evolution, and then explain why it is contrary to the scriptures?

You know, Pastor Mark, before, um, mentioned very briefly, uh, the gap theory and people trying to fit millions of years in.

I mean, because of the DNA that builds all replicating life on Earth, you can have credible variation within each kind of animal, uh, variation within cats and dogs and elephants, and so it goes on.

But Darwin said, "Oh, given enough time, now we've got the millions of years, one kind of animal changes into another, ape-like creatures into people." And then there were theologians that said, "Oh, well, we can say God used evolution," and then they added Darwin's ideas into scripture to reinterpret it on the basis of evolutionary ideas.

And so that became known as theistic evolution, and there's various forms of that.

There's progressive creation, threshold evolution, but it's all basically sort of similar to theistic evolution.

Well, we'll talk about our own journeys, and you as a satellite scientist, a PhD in engineering, and me as a PhD in biology, plant biology.

We've sort of got a fairly broad spectrum of scientific backgrounds, but both of us had a journey from believing in theistic evolution, that God used evolution over millions of years, to a point of believing the Bible.

And we'll talk about some of the issues that are involved here that we didn't think about at the time, but now we realize how important they are.

Things like the goodness of God.

And if the Bible's inaccurate about the past, maybe it's inaccurate about the future.

And how do you know? So we're all at sea without a reference.

Yeah, so there's some very grave consequences for theistic evolution if you think about it.

Yeah.