Question: "What is theistic evolution?"
Answer: Theistic Evolution is one of three major origin-of-life worldviews, the other two being Atheistic Evolution (also commonly known as Darwinian Evolution) and Special Creation.
Atheistic Evolution says that there is no God and that life can and did emerge naturally from preexisting non-living building blocks under the influence of natural laws (like gravity, etc). Special Creation says that God created life directly, either from scratch or from preexisting materials. (There are a variety of Special Creation hypotheses reflecting a variety of Theistic traditions. For the purpose of this article we will focus on the Biblical Christian perspective.) Theistic Evolution says one of two things:
That, while there is a God, He wasn’t directly involved in the origin of life. He may have created the building blocks, He may have created the natural laws, He may even have created these things with the eventual emergence of life in mind, but at some point early on He stepped back and let His creation take over. He let it do what it does, whatever that is, and life eventually emerged from non-living material. This view is similar to Atheistic Evolution in that it presumes a naturalistic origin of life.
Or, that God did not perform just one or two miracles to bring about the origin of life as we know it. His miracles were multitudinous. He led life step by step down a path which it took it from primeval simplicity to contemporary complexity, similar to Darwin’s Evolutionary Tree of Life (fish begot amphibians who begot reptiles who begot birds and mammals, etc). Where life was not able to evolve naturally (how does a reptile's limb evolve into a bird's wing naturally?), God stepped in. This view is similar to Special Creation in that it presumes that God acted supernaturally in some way to bring about life as we know it.
There are numerous differences between the Biblical Special Creation perspective and the Theistic Evolution perspective. Perhaps the most significant difference concerns their respective views on death. Theistic Evolutionists tend to believe that the Earth is billions of years old and that the geologic column containing the fossil record represents long epochs of time. Since man does not appear until late in the fossil record, Theistic Evolutionists believe that many creatures lived, died and became extinct long before man’s belated arrival. This means that death existed before man Adam’s sin.
Biblical Creationists (as Biblical Special Creationists are often called) tend to believe that the earth is relatively young and that the fossil record was laid down during and after Noah’s Flood. The stratification of the layers is thought to have occurred due to hydrologic sorting and liquefaction, both of which are observed phenomena. This puts the fossil record and the death and carnage which it describes hundreds of years after Adam’s sin.
Another significant difference between the two positions is how they read Genesis. Theistic Evolutionists tend to subscribe to either the Day-Age theory or the Framework Theory, both of which are allegorical interpretations of the Genesis One Creation Week. Biblical Creationists tend to subscribe to a literal 24-hour reading of Genesis One. (See “
Does Genesis chapter 1 literally mean 24-hour days?”
Both of the two Theistic Evolutionist views are flawed from a Christian prospective in that they don’t line up with the Genesis creation account. Consider:
Theistic Evolutionists imagine a Darwinian scenario in which stars evolved, then our solar system, then earth, then plants and animals, and eventually man. The two Theistic Evolutionist viewpoints disagree as to the role which God played in the unfolding of events, but they generally agree on the Darwinian timeline. This timeline is in conflict with the Genesis creation account. For example, Genesis One says that the earth was created on Day One and that the sun, moon and stars weren’t created until Day Four. Some Progressive Creationists argue that the wording of Genesis suggests that the sun, moon and stars were actually created on Day One but that they couldn’t be seen through earth’s atmosphere until Day Four. Hence their placement on Day Four. This is a bit of a stretch as the Genesis account is pretty clear that the earth didn’t have an atmosphere until Day Two. If the sun, moon and stars were created on Day One, they should have been visible on Day One.
Another example of discordance is, the Genesis account clearly says that birds were created with sea creatures on Day Five while land animals were not created until Day Six. This is in direct opposition to the Darwinian view which says that birds evolved from land animals. The Biblical account says that birds preceded land animals. The Theistic Evolutionist view says exactly the opposite.
See also:
http://www.gotquestions.org/questions_Creation.html
