There is a lot of discussion about evolution (and science more generally), and what it means in terms of proving or disproving the existence of God. I think it is a valid conversation to have, but I do have issues with how it often unfolds. Most of the time I hear about it as a binary either/or choice. There is a decent amount to unpack here. However it is definitely worth doing.
Even people unfamiliar with Christianity are generally aware of the story of the world being created in six days (God rested on the seventh). The first four days are spent creating the general environment, the fifth is spent populating the world with fish and birds, and finally on the sixth land-based creatures are created. Interestingly enough, this is fairly similar to the theory of evolution in terms of path. However, we have evidence of life that was present at least three and a half billion years ago, whereas modern humans only showed up in the last 250,000 years or so. Is this a nail in the coffin? Not necessarily, and for more than one reason.
For starters some Christians simply take the biblical account as metaphorical. There are creation stories in many completely independent cultures which often include a great flood. From this perspective the account contained within the bible may simply be the most useful metaphor for the authors at the time. One clue as to this was the repetition of the number seven throughout the bible, including the number of days.
Seven was a number that was widely used throughout the ancient world. For example, the Babylonians divided weeks into seven days as this corresponded to the lunar cycle nicely. Each of these additionally corresponded to one of the seven visible celestial bodies (sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn). In Egyptian numerology, seven is a number that has been used throughout history to imply completion or perfection. It wouldn’t be totally out of place for somebody in ancient times to understand the world being created in a seven days as a metaphorical completion.
Even taking the seven days literally, I see an approach of argumentation. This part I like to joke around is my “video game/Matrix” theory of God. This is kind of hard to explain but I will give it a shot. Imagine you are walking through the woods, and you see this:
If you are an experienced tracker, you could determine a lot from this simple set of tracks. You would be able to tell that a rabbit was here, which direction it was going, its relative size and thus probable age. You might be able to determine how fast it was moving by stride length. Depending upon weather conditions, you may be able to fairly accurately determine within a matter of hours when the rabbit was here, and possibly even what it was doing (running from something, for instance). At this point you would have a fairly good understanding of the rabbit which is probably correct. According to how we know the world works, there is a 99% chance that a rabbit made those tracks.
But because we were not there, how could we really know? All we can do is make a best guess based on what we know about how the world works. But if somebody were to very carefully plant those tracks using some kind of imprint with a flying drone (ridiculous, but it makes my point). You would have a history that would almost always be accurate, but in this case the entire scene was carefully constructed and you have no way of knowing. We also cannot even be sure of our own sensing and perception, but that is a big topic that I will have to unpack later.
This entire way of conjecture based upon our understanding of how the world works is essentially how anthropologists make educated guesses about history. With our highly advanced understanding of genetics and DNA, we can even carry this further. However, we have no way of observing what time frame this took place over. According to our laws of nature, there is no way all of these genetic variations could have happened in seven days.
However, the very definition of a miracle is “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.” Saying that there is no way that God could design and create all of these complex genetic trails and variations is basically saying that God is not God. In my opinion, the very fact that God can violate natural laws is a big part of what makes God. Even if we cannot conceive of how something can be accomplished, that doesn’t mean that some divine being cannot do it.
That sounds like a copout, but that is kind of my point. If you say that God needs to follow our understanding of natural and physical laws, then there would be no possible God allowed so that is a tautology. However, saying that the world was miraculously created also cannot be proven or disproven either in any satisfying manner.
I think this means that the only real stance I can personally take is as a strong agnostic in regards to evolution. I am agnostic in the sense that I do not believe that the truth of evolution can be completely known. I am strong in this in that I believe that such knowledge is literally not knowable due to our own limits in perception. However, I do believe that evolution probably occurred according to the general scientific understanding. As a Christian this also means that I believe the creation story to be more myth than historical accounting in the way that we understand it. A lot more can be said about the Bible itself but this is already long enough. Ultimately I think that the theory of evolution is not mutually exclusive to being Christian. And we should not bash each other over the head with dogmatic understandings.
Mono No Aware 