Generally speaking, mainstream science today endorses a version of Darwinian evolution which proposes that humans are the unanticipated result of wholly natural random forces at work over long ages. But because the Bible makes it clear that a sovereign infinite personal God fully intended from before time that humans would exist, Christians who align with modern science have to somehow involve God in their explanation of human origins. That gets tricky. So theistic evolutionists and evolutionary creationists often avoid taking any explicit position of just how God was involved. Dr. Francis Collins and BioLogos claim that, while certain evolutionary mechanisms “could be” directed, once God created matter and evolution took over, no further divine intervention “was required.” Well then, which is it — directed or not directed?
In an introduction to a formidable exhaustive new critique of theistic evolution, Dr. Stephen Meyer points out that attempts to accommodate both possibilities can lead to a logical contradiction:
“ . . . if the theistic evolutionist means to affirm the standard neo-Darwinian view of the natural selection/mutation mechanism as an undirected process while simultaneously affirming that God is still causally responsible for the origin of new forms of life, then the theistic evolutionist implies that God somehow guided or directed an unguided and undirected process. Logically, no intelligent being—not even God—can direct an undirected process. As soon as he directs it, the ‘undirected’ process would no longer be undirected.”
This brief commentary is part of the result of my March 2018 review of THEISTIC EVOLUTION: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, © 2017 Crossway. This reference incorporates articles by over 20 contributors, including Stephen Meyer, Wayne Grudem, Paul Nelson, and J. P. Moreland. It’s a real tome — over 1,000 pages — and can be rather academic at times. But it’s a work that will hopefully serve the worthwhile purpose of demonstrating that Christians do not need to, and should not, “yield to contemporary evolutionary theory.” — Daryl E. Witmer, Executive Director, AIIA Institute.
