- The Bible is not an encyclopaedia of science, but rather God’s message to mankind about how they can be re-united to Him, and know true meaning and real forgiveness for their lives. It does not set out to teach us about gravity, electricity, chemistry or biology. However, it does have a lot to tell us about our origin.
- We need to say what we mean by the word “evolution”. Few, if any, people deny the fact of evolution by selection within a species (called “micro-evolution); everyone who breeds animals is doing micro-evolution every day – sheep with more wool, cows with more milk, stronger horses or cats with pointier ears. They practice artificial selection from the existing pool of genetic material. Natural selection works the same way but without human intervention, and more slowly. No one argues about this. It can be observed at work.
- However, what most people think of is large-scale evolution “macro-evolution”, the concept of an unbroken line from molecule to man on the basis of time and chance. That is, that some chemical soup in the early seas of Earth generated the simplest life-forms spontaneously, and that these, over the ages, have developed into all the millions of life-forms we see now (including ourselves). This can not be observed at work, and there were no witnesses in those past ages. That is why it is correctly called the Theory of Evolution.
- So, what does the Bible say? It tells us that God created the different kinds of plants and animals. It doesn’t give us a scientific definition of “kind”. We certainly don’t need to say that He made every different species we now see. Whatever “kind” meant in Genesis chapter 1, it at least tells us that God created the ancestral prototypes of modern cows, crows and crocodiles.
- What about Adam and Eve? Genesis 1 says “God said, ‘Now we will make humans, and they will be like us. We will let them rule the fish, the birds, and all other living creatures. So God created humans to be like himself; he made men and women.'” – Man is the crown of God’s creation, an animal but also a spirit, able to think, love and see beauty, and as a secondary creator, able to create ideas, art-works, machines and all else with the brain and materials God has given.
- The Bible speaks of Adam and Eve as real, historic, people, separate from the animals, made to be King and Queen of the Earth. They were glorious, beautiful, intelligent, and a special creation.
- What we actually know of ancient history shows us great civilisations appearing quickly, not primitive sub-men groping towards human-ness.
- On the general question of time, whether thousands, millions or billions of years, see the answer above on the “Big Bang”. For the creation of Adam and Eve, estimates based on the loose chronological hints in the Bible, and on historical evidence, vary, but are in the range of tens of thousands of years, say 20,000.
Chemical Soup
- This idea, known as the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis, was popularised in the mid-twentieth century following experiments which passed electrical energy through mixtures of water vapour and gases that were guessed to have existed before life on Earth. These resulted in some traces of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and thus vital to life.
- However, repeated experiments over many years never yielded anything more. Professor Steven Benner, originally from Harvard University, said “Prebiotic chemistry could produce a wealth of biomolecules from non-living precursors. But the wealth soon became overwhelming, with the ‘prebiotic soups’ having the chemical complexity of asphalt (useful, perhaps, for paving roads but not particularly promising as a wellspring for life). … How could life (or any organized chemical process) emerge from such a mess?” (March 26, 1999 issue of Science magazine, quoted by Professor Henry F. Schaefer in “Climbing Mount Improbable”).
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