Theistic Evolution Demagnifies God’s Glory

Yes, “demagnify” is an actual word. It means to cause something to appear smaller than it actually is. And that is what theistic evolution does to God’s glory. I hope this will make sense by the end of this post.

My Birthday Present

I see God’s glory revealed everywhere in the world He created. Different aspects of God are seen in different parts of creation. For example, God’s great power is seen in the massive size of our universe which contains hundreds of billions of galaxies each filled with billions and billions of stars.

You don’t have to know anything about biology or physics to see how nature points to our great God. Nevertheless, I have found that science, correctly understood, actually increases the testimony of nature to its Creator. For this reason, I love to read books which show how scientific knowledge about the world we live in reveals God’s great power, wisdom, and intelligence. Reading books on intelligent design has been a type of encouraging, uplifting intellectual hobby for me for many years now. For me these books are not merely intellectually stimulating (although they certainly are that), they lead my soul to worship our great Creator.

So, my wife was not surprised when I asked for the recently published book, Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique (spoiler: this book is against theological evolution and in favor of intelligent design) for my birthday. I don’t expect many of you will choose to purchase and read this one thousand page book, so I’ll attempt to summarize this interesting and important topic for you in about five pages. If you are interested reading more on this topic, the book is very well written and I highly recommend it.

What is Theistic Evolution?

The word “evolution” is used in different ways. For our purposes there are two main parts to the meaning of evolution:

1.  All living creatures have come into existence as the result of a combination of the normal working of the natural laws of physics and chemistry together with random events (such as random, unplanned genetic mutations). This process is believed to be driven forward by natural selection of beneficial changes. Any type of direct, detectable involvement by God is completely ruled out.

2.  Related to point 1 above, all living creatures today share a single common ancestor in the distant past. This is called universal common descent. It means that if you add enough “greats”, then your great, great, great . . .add perhaps a billion “greats” . . . grandmother was literally a bacterial cell on the ancient earth. It also means that every frog, worm, and ape is literally a distant cousin of yours (not a first or second cousin, but perhaps a 100 millionth cousin).

Most Christians (including myself) throughout history and in the world today do not accept either of the above propositions. However, there are a significant number of Christians (and I do believe that some of these are truly my brothers and sisters in Christ) who do accept both of the propositions above. Sometimes they slightly modify the first proposition to say that in some way that is completely undetectable by scientific investigation, the process of evolution is not completely random, but guided and/or predetermined by God. They also give credit to God for creating the physical and chemical laws which they believe led to the evolution of all living things and they believe God is ultimately responsible for creating all of the matter and energy in our universe which was needed for living things to evolve. This view is called theistic evolution.

It appears that a major motivation for theistic evolution is that some Christians have become convinced that evolution (as defined above) is an absolutely certain, proven scientific fact. They think that doubting evolution is akin to doubting the law of gravity. As a result, they have sought to reinterpret some parts of the Bible and adjust some aspects of their theology to be consistent with the theory of evolution.

While I do not doubt that the Christians who are promoting theistic evolution (and considerable effort and resources are being spent on this) are sincere and highly intelligent people, I believe they are wrong. I believe that theistic evolution is a harmful and foolish theory. Theistic Evolution explains why this is so in great detail. I’ll try to summarize just a few of the many reasons this is so in the rest of this post.

Scientific Evidence does not Actually Support Evolution

The most basic problem with theistic evolution is that it is not true. In fact, a correct understanding of the scientific evidence we have shows that life could not have arisen without the active involvement of an Intelligent Designer. The first five hundred pages of the book makes this case convincingly. Here are some examples.

Example #1:  Highly Complex, Specific Information Stored in DNA Cannot be Explained by Evolution

We now know that all life contains large amounts of specified, complex information. This information is stored in the DNA molecule as a sequence of four different base pairs: A, C, G, and T. Chemically, these base pairs can occur in any order. However, in order for cells to function and reproduce, the base pairs must be ordered in very specific ways. This is analogous to the 1’s and 0’s that make up the operating system on your computer. It is also analogous to instructions in a cook book. A recipe is made up of many letters. The letters cannot be just randomly arranged. They have to be precisely arranged to produce words and sentences which can be successfully used to prepare a meal.  Even the smallest cells require a large amount of information in DNA (see a blog post where I explain how the smallest possible cells provide big evidence for God).

One of the specific things that some of the base pairs in DNA do is to provide code which is used to assemble proteins. Proteins are very complex molecules which perform many functions. Some proteins are complex molecular machines (to see some neat animated videos which show protein molecular machines, see this post: Nuclear Submarines and Living Cells). One huge problem for evolution is that the sequence of base pairs in DNA needed to build functional proteins are quite long. Careful scientific research has estimated that sequences which will produce a biologically functional protein are extremely rare compared to sequences which are biologically worthless. How rare? Perhaps about one in 10 to the 77^th power! Considering that there are only about 10 to the 65^th power atoms in our entire galaxy, that is really, really rare (Theistic Evolution, pg. 117). It is unrealistic (to put it mildly) to think that such a sequence of base pairs could have arisen unless an Intelligent Designer produced it. And living cells do not need just one of these. Even the simplest living cells need at least hundreds, if not thousands, of complex proteins all working together in precise and harmonious ways.

The highly complex nature of the information needed in every single living creature rules out the first part of the definition of evolution we looked at above. The natural laws of chemistry and physics, even with the help of natural selection, cannot account for a single complex protein, much less the hundreds and thousands of proteins actually needed. But what about the second claim? Namely, the claim of universal common descent.

Example #2: Orphans are Evidence Against Universal Common Descent

Simply speaking, a gene is a part of a DNA molecule which contains the code for a specific protein (this is not a precise or comprehensive definition, but it is enough to help you understand this example).

An “orphan gene” is a gene that is unique to a specific species, or group of closely related species (more broadly, we can speak of taxonomically restricted genes (TRGs)). The name “orphan” comes from the fact that a gene is sometimes called an “open reading frame” or ORF (again, this is a slightly simplified definition), and also the fact that some of these genes do not appear to have “parents” in the hypothetical tree of life. Thus, thinking about an ORF-an without parents led to the term orphan gene being coined.

Only recently have new methods allowed scientists to determine the sequence of base pairs in the DNA of many different species, from humans to bacteria. Before this, evolutionists expected that orphan genes would be quite rare. But as more and more data has come in, it is becoming apparent that orphan genes are far from rare. In fact, these little orphans are pervasive (Theistic Evolution, pg. 360 and 391-392). The more DNA sequences which are completed, the more orphans are found! Since evolutionary processes cannot account for the existence of even one new protein (as explained above), the fact that many species have many unique genes coding for unique proteins is difficult to explain in terms of universal common descent.

Example #3: The fossil record does not support Universal Common Descent

Evolutionary theory expected a fossil record which would be full of slowly changing creatures. Instead, what is found is that again and again new species appear abruptly in the fossil record without any obvious transitional predecessors. Not only this, there are repeated periods of relatively short geologic time in which large numbers of new creature with new body plans appear suddenly. This is basically the opposite of what would best support evolutionary theory. This case is made in detail in chapters 10 and 11 of Theistic Evolution. The fossil evidence supporting a unique origin for humans is discussed in chapter 14. It turns out that the chimpanzee at the zoo is not your distant cousin after all!

Don’t Understand all the Technical Details? Don’t Worry, You don’t have to!

Do you have to be a scientist to see that evolution is not true? Not at all. The science merely validates the common sense observation that there is no way something as amazingly complex and functional as a human eye, or a bird that flies, or a dolphin that swims, could have arisen by chance. If you found a watch in the woods, you would assume an intelligent designer had made it. How much more when we behold the marvels of life, which are far more complex and amazing then any machine so far designed by humans. Don’t be intimidated by the experts. Your intuition that living things must have been designed by an awesome Creator is entirely correct. And scientific evidence, correctly understood, backs up your intuition.

Why Does It Matter?

The last two hundred pages of Theistic Evolution discusses the many and serious biblical and theological problems which theistic evolution creates. Here, I’m going to focus on just three problems which are very meaningful to me.  All of these problems are related to Romans 1:18-20 (a similar, but not identical, discussion of this passage is found in Theistic Evolution, beginning on pg. 829).

Problem #1:  In Practice Theistic Evolution Helps Atheists and Others Avoid the Plain Truth

According to Paul, the existence and some of the basic attributes of God are “plain” and “clearly seen” by the things which have been made. This means that people should see evidence for God when they look at butterflies, trees, or their pet dog. All living creatures should be seen as providing evidence that is plain and clear that there must be a great, powerful, wise Creator. However, the theory of evolution has very often had the practical effect of obscuring much of this evidence. While theistic evolutionists still believe that God is ultimately responsible for all of creation, their capitulation to evolution says that it is wrong to see direct evidence of an Intelligent Designer in the design of a flower or humming bird. Many atheists have used evolution to “suppress the truth” that nature is proclaiming. It is not the intention of theistic evolutionists to aide this suppression of truth but, even so, the suppression of truth is the practical result.

Problem #2:  Theistic Evolution Promotes a View of God where He is Less Directly Active in our World

This one is personal. When I read about the incredible molecular machines that exist in every cell of my body, and, indeed, in every living thing, it fills me with a sense of God’s great attention to the tiniest details in my life. I don’t think that theistic evolutionists would deny that God cares about the tiny details in our lives. Yet, their account of how He brought about the intricate design of cells feels to me like He is distant and removed from the process. It makes it feel like God is “hand’s off” of nature once He set things in motion through the big bang. I realize that this is subjective. But to me it is important. It is subtle, but I’m concerned that theistic evolution will create a feeling of a less active, less intimately involved in our world, version of God than what we see in the Bible.  Theistic evolution does not seem to harmonize as well with these inspired thoughts:

NIV Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care.

Psalm 104:24 How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

 25 There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number-- living things both large and small.

 26 There the ships go to and fro, and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

 27 All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time.

 28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things.

Job 39:26 "Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south?

 27 Does the eagle soar at your command and build its nest on high?

I’m not saying that theistic evolutionists do not also believe that these verses (and others like them) are true in some sense. I’m saying that, at least to me, the theistic evolution account of creation is bereft of the feeling of intimate and active involvement by God in all of nature that I sense in Scripture or when I’m walking through fields early in the morning.

Problem #3:  Theistic Evolution Demagnifies God

The Bible speaks of us glorifying and magnifying God:

ESV Luke 1:46 And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord,

ESV Psalm 34:3 Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together!

ESV Psalm 86:12 I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever.

What does it mean to magnify or glorify God? Obviously, we do not cause God to actually become larger, more powerful, or more glorious than He is and always has been. Rather, to magnify or glorify God means to help people to see more fully and clearly how great and glorious God is. I explain this in  more detail using a photograph my daughter took in this five minute video (it’s an excerpt from a sermon):

The problem with theistic evolution is that it tends to demagnify God.  By removing God from direct involvement in the creation of living things, it becomes less obvious and plain how intelligent, wise, and amazing God is. On the other hand, when we rightly realize that the only plausible explanation for all the amazing molecular machinery, information stored in DNA, and harmonious workings of every cell is that these things are the direct result of a great Intelligent Designer, then we are magnifying God.  And when we correctly credit wonderful multi-celled creatures like humming birds and elephants to God’s direct creative work, then we are glorifying God. We are seeing more plainly and clearly God’s great attributes as revealed in Creation, and we are helping others to see this also.

To God be the glory!

 

Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .