discussion of a Christian worldview applied to science will eventually lead to the topic of creation and evolution. This is because a biblical worldview and the subject of evolution both deal with where we have come from and where we are going. How might we approach this subject in a manner that is both biblically submissive and scientifically aware?
We should probably start by asking what is meant by terms like evolution and creation? How will we use the terms, and what is at the heart of the debate? Let's work on a couple of basics.
1. Evolution. The word evolution literally means unfolding. Even if the idea is restricted to life and its history (as opposed to something like stellar evolution), it is fairly easy to see that the term can have a broad meaning. One common benchmark used to define evolution is speciation -- as illustrated in the title of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. But micro-evolution may simply involve a change in gene frequency. So defined, evolution is as subtle as a shift in how often a particular trait (something like eye color, for example) occurs in a population.
An entomologist once told me, after a seminar on creation and evolution, that a group of grasshoppers breeding in her lab were not the same as what she started with. This is fine. A child is not the same as a parent. A Holstein is not the same as a Jersey. Traits can be eliminated. Changes can happen. It might not be too difficult to imagine a scenario where change resulted in some form of speciation, although observing examples in nature has certainly proved difficult. If this is how evolution is defined, most of us are probably evolutionists. After all, the various races of men exhibit variation within species -- and all came from one human couple.
However, evolution also encompasses much broader meaning. It is said that evolution is the grand unifying theme of all biology. We might think of this use of evolution as associated with evolutionary theory, or what has been called organic evolution. To use another phrase coined by Darwin, evolution is "descent with modification," where the process is continuous. The assumption is that all life is related phylogenetically; that is, all of life is developmentally interconnected. An essential ingredient is the idea of the common ancestor * (a most elusive and ever-expanding category of species). Eventually, all of life can be traced back to a single cell, or to alleged chemical precursors.
As such, evolution sets out sequences of events and explanations of causes. It seeks to explain both the origin and development of life. The requirements of evolution as used in this sense can be stated as follows: the basic properties of matter, energy, space, and time, coupled with chance and natural selection, provide sufficient mechanism for both the phenomenon and diversity of life. In scientific terms, this is called a naturalistic explanation for life. In perhaps more philosophical terms, this is called a materialistic explanation.
This assessment of evolution may not make everyone happy,but evolution has historically been described in broad and mechanistic
terms. Even Darwin imagined a "warm little pond" where the right mix of chemicals might get life started, and evolution was not given scientific respectability until coupled with the mechanism of natural selection. Even if not always overtly stated, evolution is a materialistic, "molecules-to-man" proposition.
2. Creation. A dictionary definition of creation is the act of creating or the fact of being created. To create is to cause to come into being or originate. (As explanation, creation occupies similar territory as evolution.) It seeks to explain both the origin and diversity of what we see around us.
When the Bible says God created the heavens and the earth, the implication is that the properties of matter, energy, space, and time, would not exist had God not made them. When God said, "let earth bring forth . . ." the implication was that nothing would be here if God had not been actively bringing it to pass. Creation necessarily implies active, outside intervention on the natural system.
What is required for creation? The "mechanism," in the words of Wilder-Smith, is intelligence, or concept (idea, know-how, information, plan, expertise). Creation should be understood as requiring the input of concept or information, beyond what is intrinsic to a system, acting on that system.
It should be obvious that sufficient intelligence (concept, information, etc.) can produce things like complex living systems. Let us look at a specific example.
The chemistry of carbon is such that four different groups can be attached to a single carbon atom. An interesting result of this is that organic molecules (organic means carbon-containing compounds, the kind on which life is based) can occur in arrangements that are identical with the exception that they are mirror images of one another. Their chemical properties are also identical except under very specialized conditions. There are different conventions for naming them, but they can be considered analogous to left and right hands, and are said to be chiral (pronounced ky-ral). It just so happens that the proteins of life almost exclusively use one mirror image form (L) in amino acids. There are good biochemical reasons for exclusive use of one form or the other, but presumably either form could have been used. It is almost as if an arbitrary choice were made.
One problem in considering the origin of life is this -- how could a pure form of just one kind of chiral molecule be obtained, given the chemical similarities of the mirror images? No plausible explanation has yet been found, at least in "origin of life" experiments. However, an experiment done by Louis Pasteur, gaining him initial notoriety, involved separating a chiral mixture of tartaric acid. He was able to obtain large enough crystals to distinguish between them with the aid of magnification. He used a function of his intelligence, e.g. pattern recognition, to separate the crystalline mirror images. This is a practical example of how the addition of intelligence can accomplish what would otherwise be a difficult task.
Since intelligence (creation) clearly works, the real question is will the absence of intelligence, or non-concept (evolution), work? This, of course, is a major portion of the debate.
* No evolutionist would say, for example, that man descended from the chimpanzee. Rather, the explanation would be that both humans and chimps came from a hypothetical common ancestor.
