Category: Reasonable Christianity

Much confusion arises in the debate on Evolution and Creation because the opposing sides are working with different meanings of evolution. It would be helpful to refer to the taxonomy of evolution given by Stephen Myer & Mike Keas.

Principal Meanings of Evolution in Biology Textbooks:

1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature.
2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population.
3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms
have descended from a common ancestor.
4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited
descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random
variations or mutations.
5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended
from a single common ancestor.
6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended
from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent,
purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on ran-
dom variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection,
random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic
mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of
design in living organisms.

In my view, there seems to be evidence to support Evolution (1-4). However, the evidence for general evolution/Evolution (5) remains inconclusive, if not debatable.

Myer and Keas suggest that Evolution (6) in reality is a metaphysical theory. Continue reading “Toward a More Precise Definition of Evolution”

It is important that Christians respectfully listen to one another when they disagree on how to relate the Bible to current scientific theories. I hold the view of old earth creationism which accepts the age of the universe and the earth to be respectively, 13+ and 4.5 billion years old.  I accept that fact that interpretation of the length of the Creation day and week in Genesis 1 will remain a moot point. On the other hand, I find it hard to accept the view of the so-called young earth creationist like Ken Ham (who is pretty influential among the home-schooling Christians in Malaysia) who asserts that the earth is only 6000 years ago. Holding to young earth creationism would require an outright rejection of hundreds of technical papers on geochronology published in scientific journals written by scientists from across the whole spectrum of beliefs. It cannot be denied that consensus of old age of the universe and the earth transcends individual ideology and belief. Continue reading “Relating the Bible to Science (Evolutionary Theory): Some Cautionary Notes”