When it comes to the theory of evolution, there is often an unnecessary clash between “men of faith” and “men of science.” I frequently see other scientifically minded people debate with creationists by either attacking the Bible or completely ignoring it and focusing entirely on the science. I think that both of these tactics are fundamentally flawed. There is no reason why you have to be either a man (or woman) of faith or a man of science, you can be both, and any attempt to persuade a believer to accept evolution without discussing theology is doomed to fail. Therefore, I am going to take a somewhat novel approach to this situation. For sake of discussion, I am going to ask that everyone reading this temporarily accept the premise that the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God, and I am going to then demonstrate that even with that premise in place we still have to accept science, including the science of evolution. To be clear, I most decidedly am not trying to persuade anyone to become a Christian. In fact, I am not making any claims or arguments about whether or not Christianity is true, God exists, etc. Those are all outside of the realm of science. Therefore, I am simply trying to show that Christianity and evolution do not have to conflict with one another, and people with a Christian world view should still consider the scientific evidence for evolution. In other words, within the context of this blog, I am concerned only about science, but sometimes I find that it is necessary to discuss religion before people will listen to the science. So that is what I am going to do here, because I often find that this approach allows me to have conversations with Christians that I could not otherwise have.

Note: As I’ve written about at length here, I was raised as a young earth creationist and did not reject that view until I entered college and was taught how to think critically. After that, I began examining my views and beliefs and they began crumbling around me. Although I am no longer a theistic evolutionist, I went through a period where I considered myself one, and it was a helpful viewpoint for getting me to challenge my creationist views, which is why I advocate for using this line of argumentation (for me, you could almost consider it a transitional fossil between young earth creationism and the ultimate full degradation of my religious views)

It is entirely possible to be what is known as a “theistic evolutionist.” Most broadly defined, this is simply someone who both believes in God and accepts the science of evolution. There are many varieties of theistic evolution, but most theistic evolutionists hold the following:

The Bible is the fully inspired and infallible Word of God. It is impossible to read the Bible without interpreting it. Any interpretation that conflicts with something that we know to be true must be rejected. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that the earth is ancient and life gradually evolved. Therefore, a literal interpretation of Genesis must be rejected. Therefore, Genesis must be a parable designed to teach spiritual truths rather than scientific facts.

Generally speaking, theistic evolutionists argue that God sparked the Big Bang, then allowed nature to run its course and did not intervene again until humans evolved sentience, at which point he established a personal relationship with humans. There are also theistic evolutionists who argue that God created the first cells, then let evolution run its course, and there are still others who say that God guided the process of mutations to ensure that humans would be the ultimate outcome. These views become increasingly unparsimonious, but none of them can technically be discredited using science (I won’t enter into philosophical arguments about God’s existence here).

Interestingly, most of the hostility towards theistic evolutionists comes not from scientists, but from young earth creationists. Organizations such as Answers in Genesis are adamant that theistic evolution is “dangerous,” and theistic evolutionists have “compromised” by rejecting the literal interpretation of the Bible. The vast majority of their arguments are, however, straw man fallacies. Creationists frequently claim that theistic evolutionists are, “trusting man’s wisdom instead of God’s,” “asserting that man is smarter than God,” or some other such nonsense. The reality is that all of the theistic evolutionists that I have met or whose writings I have read, have been extremely sincere about their faith. They are not claiming that God made a mistake or that man is smarter than God, rather, they are claiming that man’s interpretation of the Bible is flawed.

This is a very important point. Creationists continually assert that they have the spiritual high ground because they are simply accepting what the Bible says, whereas theistic evolutionists are making interpretive judgments. In reality, however, both creationists and evolutionists interpret the Bible. What creationists seem to forget is the fact that a literal interpretation is still an interpretation. Nothing in the Bible says that you have to interpret it literally, and, in fact, there are passages that virtually all Christians (including creationists) agree are figurative. So, ultimately, for any given passage, human beings are using “man’s logic” to decide which passages to interpret literally and which ones to interpret figuratively. There are many factors (such as the literary genre of a passage and its connections to other passages) that are used when determining how to interpret a passage of the Bible, and all that theistic evolutionists are proposing is that scientific evidence (i.e., things that we know to be correct) should be included as one of those factors. Creationists claim to ardently disagree with this proposition, but the reality is that they are extremely inconsistent about how they interpret the Bible, and in many passages they do in fact use scientific to make their interpretive judgments. I will prove this using the example of Galileo Galilei.

Galileo was not the first person to suggest that the earth moved around the sun (i.e., heliocentrism) rather than the sun moving around the earth (i.e., geocentrism), but he had something that his predecessors lacked: a telescope. With his telescope, he could make observations that were impossible for his predecessors, and he used those observations to demonstrate that heliocentrism was in fact correct. This got Galileo in trouble with the church (although the outcry against him was not as universal as some would have you believe). You see, several passages of the Bible clearly state that the sun moves around the earth. For example, 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1, Psalms 96:10, and Psalms 104:5 all very clearly say that the earth’s position is fixed and it cannot be moved. Most famously, there is a passage in the book of Joshua where the armies of Israel are in a battle and they need more time to win it so God performs a miracle and makes the sun and moon stand still, thus making the day last longer and giving Israel the time needed to win the battle. The Bible very clearly says that the sun stopped moving, “And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped” Joshua 10:13.

Prior to Galileo, everyone read those passages completely literally, and there was no good reason for them not to (anyone who spends a lot of time observing the night sky without the aid of a telescope will notice that it does in fact appear that the earth is stationary and everything else is moving around it). So, when Galileo said that in actuality it is the earth that is moving, not the sun, many members of the church took umbrage at this claim because it conflicted with a literal interpretation of the Bible. In fact, they made many of the same arguments that creationists make today. They claimed that we have to trust the authority of the Bible, not science and man’s wisdom. Galileo’s response was the same one that theistic evolutionists use today. He explained that he was not questioning the Bible itself, rather, he was questioning man’s interpretation of it. He was perfectly content to reinterpret passages such as the one in Joshua to accommodate new scientific discoveries.

Today, of course, virtually all Christians accept Galileo’s argument. The vast majority of Christians have no problems accepting that Joshua is being figurative when it says that the sun stood still, yet many of them are still adamant that we cannot use science to interpret Genesis, and have to rely on the literal interpretation of the Bible. This is, however, logically inconsistent. Consider the following two arguments:

Argument 1

The Bible is the fully inspired word of God. The Bible clearly says that the sun moves around the earth. We cannot allow science to influence how we interpret the Bible. We have to trust what God said, not man’s flawed logic. Therefore, helicentrism must be wrong.

Argument 2

The Bible is the fully inspired word of God. The Bible clearly says that all organisms were created less than 10,000 years ago. We cannot allow science to influence how we interpret the Bible. We have to trust what God said, not man’s flawed logic. Therefore, evolution must be wrong.

Argument #1 is the argument that was used by members of the church against Galileo, and it is clearly a flawed argument. Argument #2 is the argument that is used by creationists and it is identical to Argument #1. Therefore, according to the Law of Noncontradiction if argument #1 is a bad argument, then Argument #2 must also be a bad argument. In other words, you cannot simultaneously say that it is ok to use the science to interpret Joshua, but it’s not ok to use science to interpret Genesis.

At this point, creationists generally object to the second premise of Argument #1. They claim the Bible does not clearly say that the sun moves around the earth, because those passages are obviously being figurative, whereas Genesis does clearly say that all organisms were created less than 10,000 years ago. There are several problems with this. First, it’s a blatant question begging fallacy. The passage in Joshua does not of itself seem to be figurative, especially when everything else in that passage is clearly being literal. Further, everyone prior to Galileo interpreted that passage literally. So it was clearly not, “obviously figurative” to them. Further, the only reason that Christians interpret that passage figuratively today is because of science! If we had never discovered that the earth moved around the sun, then ipso facto we would still think that the sun moved around the earth, and ipso fact we would still interpret Joshua literally.

The second problem with the creationists’ response is that theistic evolutionists say the exact same thing about premise #2 of Argument #2. While to creationists it is obvious that the Bible clearly supports a young earth, it is not at all obvious to theistic evolutionists. This brings me back to me central point: theistic evolutionists aren’t questioning the Bible itself, rather they are questioning man’s interpretation of it. A literal interpretation is still an interpretation.

Finally, it is worth noting that geocentrists still exist today. There are groups of Christians who are adamant that we cannot use science to interpret the Bible, and therefore we must accept that the sun moves around the earth. Major creationist organizations deliberately distance themselves from these groups, but both groups use completely identical arguments.

This is a statement of faith from the geocentric group, the Tychonian Society:

“The only absolutely trustworthy information about the origin and purpose of all that exists and happens is given by God, our Creator and Redeemer, in his infallible, preserved word, the Holy Bible….All scientific endeavor which does not accept this revelation from on high without any reservations, literary, philosophical or whatever, we reject as already condemned in its unfounded first assumptions”

This is a statement of faith from the creationist group, Answers in Genesis:

“The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout. Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs. It is the supreme authority in everything it teaches. Its authority is not limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes but includes its assertions in such fields as history and science.”

Do they seem pretty similar to you? Both groups ardently claim that the Bible alone is to be trusted, and any scientific results that conflict with a literal interpretation of the Bible must be rejected. Both groups have lengthy pages of “technical documents” where they try to twist science to match a literal interpretation of the Bible, and both groups claim that anyone who uses science to interpret the Bible has compromised and given into man’s wisdom, which is where things get interesting. The geocentrists claim that groups like Answers in Genesis have compromised their faith by accepting the scientific interpretation of Joshua. All of those claims that creationists make about the dangers of theistic evolution are also claims that geocentrists make about the dangers of heliocentrism. Meanwhile, the creationists claim that the geocentrists are wrong to try to interpret Joshua literally, and they find it absurd to think that accepting heliocentrism somehow compromises their faith, even though they use identical arguments against theistic evolutionists. The genocentrists may be nuts, but at least they are logically consistent, which is more than I can say for the creationists.

To summarize, my point in all of this is that if you are a Christian who accepts that the earth moves around, then you have already accepted that science can be used to interpret the Bible. Therefore, you should carefully consider the evidence for evolution rather than blindly writing it off. At least according to legend, Galileo recounted a frustrating tale where he took one of his opponents onto a roof at night and offered him a telescope so that he could see the evidence for heliocentrism with his own eyes, but this man was so persuaded by his religious convictions that he refused to even look through the telescope. Today, we laugh at that man’s foolishness, but that is no different from what most creationists do. Most of them refuse to look at the evidence for evolution and groups like Answers in Genesis openly admit that they are starting with the assumption that the earth is young and then trying to make the data fit that assumption (which is not how science works). So, to any creationists reading this, please actually consider the scientific evidence. Accepting evolution does not require you to reject your faith. Just as Galileo interpreted Joshua figuratively in light of the science of heliocentrism, you can interpret Genesis figuratively in light of the science of evolution. Insisting that you cannot use science to interpret the Genesis is irrational and logically inconsistent.

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.” – Galileo Galilei