EVOLUTIONARY CREATION

Forum Homeschool Forum Open Forum. Classical Christian orthodoxy as expressed in the Creeds begins at the beginning: One implication is that the best way of finding out about nature is to look at nature. Science and the Bible: Concordism, Part 1 By Ted Davis. Saving Anthony By Darrel Falk. Anthony had little room for mystery in his theology. Everything had to be nailed down tightly and he built his life around being-in-the-know about everything related to God.

Theology of Theistic Evolution (Evolutionary Creation)

When he found that his tight theology didn't mesh with the facts, he thought he had no choice but to give it all up. I became such an expert in young-earth creationist theology and science that it turned into a wrecking ball for my faith. Recent high-school graduate Jacob shares about his journey from young-earth creationism to evolutionary creationism, and how his faith was challenged and strengthened along the way.

Bethel was where I learned that the science that I loved could be a Christian calling. Before that I had a vague notion that truly serving God meant being a pastor or missionary. As an Evangelical and a scientist, Katharine Hayhoe is already a member of a rare breed. As a climate change researcher who is also married to an evangelical Christian pastor, she is nearly one of a kind. I wanted to shift away from that.

It covers a wide range of beliefs about the extent of any intervention by God, with some approaching deism in rejecting the concept of continued intervention. Just as different types of evolutionary explanations have evolved, so there are different types of theistic evolution. Morris and John D. Morris , point out that there are different terms which have been used to describe different positions: Others argue that one should read the creation story in the book of Genesis only metaphorically.

Others see "evolutionary creation" [9] EC, also referred to by some observers as "evolutionary creationism" as the belief that God, as Creator, uses evolution to bring about his plan. The Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was an influential proponent of God-directed evolution or "orthogenesis", in which man will eventually evolve to the " omega point " of union with the Creator. Eugenie Scott states in Evolution Vs. Creationism that it is a type of evolution rather than creationism, despite its name, and that it is "hardly distinguishable from Theistic Evolution".

Regarding the embracing of Darwinian evolution, historian Ronald Numbers describes the position of the late 19th-century geologist George Frederick Wright as "Christian Darwinism". Historians of science and authors of pre-evolutionary ideas have pointed out that scientists had considered the concept of biological change well before Darwin.

Linnaeus had initially embraced the Aristotelian idea of immutability of species the idea that species never change , but later in his life he started to challenge it. Yet, as a Christian, he still defended "special creation", the belief that God created "every living creature" at the beginning, as read in Genesis, with the peculiarity a set of original species of which all the present species have descended. Let us suppose that the Divine Being in the beginning progressed from the simpler to the complex; from few to many; similarly that He in the beginning of the plant kingdom created as many plants as there were natural orders.

These plant orders He Himself, there from producing, mixed among themselves until from them originated those plants which today exist as genera. Nature then mixed up these plant genera among themselves through generations -of double origin hybrids and multiplied them into existing species, as many as possible whereby the flower structures were not changed excluding from the number of species the almost sterile hybrids, which are produced by the same mode of origin.

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We imagine that the Creator at the actual time of creation made only one single species for each natural order of plants, this species being different in habit and fructification from all the rest. That he made these mutually fertile, whence out of their progeny, fructification having been somewhat changed, Genera of natural classes have arisen as many in number as the different parents, and since this is not carried further, we regard this also as having been done by His Omnipotent hand directly in the beginning; thus all Genera were primeval and constituted a single Species.

That as many Genera having arisen as there were individuals in the beginning, these plants in course of time became fertilised by others of different sort and thus arose Species until so many were produced as now exist Jens Christian Clausen , refers to Linnaeus' theory as a "forgotten evolutionary theory [that] antedates Darwin's by nearly years", and reports that he was a pioneer in doing experiments about hybridization. Later, in a number of experiments carried out between and , the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel , aligning himself with the "new doctrine of special creation" proposed by Linnaeus, [20] concluded that new species of plants could indeed arise, although limitedly and retaining their own stability.

Georges Cuvier 's analysis of fossils and discovery of extinction disrupted static views of nature in the early 19th century, confirming geology as showing a historical sequence of life. British natural theology , which sought examples of adaptation to show design by a benevolent Creator, adopted catastrophism to show earlier organisms being replaced in a series of creations by new organisms better adapted to a changed environment.

Charles Lyell also saw adaptation to changing environments as a sign of a benevolent Creator, but his uniformitarianism envisaged continuing extinctions and replacements. In continental Europe, the idealism of philosophers including Lorenz Oken developed a Naturphilosophie in which patterns of development from archetypes were a purposeful divine plan aimed at forming humanity.

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The idealist Louis Agassiz , a persistent opponent of transmutation, saw mankind as the goal of a sequence of creations, but his concepts were the first to be adapted [ by whom? In Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation published in , its anonymous author Robert Chambers set out goal-centred progressive development as the Creator's divine plan, programmed to unfold without direct intervention or miracles.

The book became a best-seller and popularised the idea of transmutation in a designed "law of progression". The scientific establishment strongly attacked Vestiges at the time, but later more sophisticated theistic evolutionists followed the same approach of looking for patterns of development as evidence of design. The comparative anatomist Richard Owen , a prominent figure in the Victorian era scientific establishment, opposed transmutation throughout his life.

When formulating homology he adapted idealist philosophy to reconcile natural theology with development, unifying nature as divergence from an underlying form in a process demonstrating design. His conclusion to his On the Nature of Limbs of suggested that divine laws could have controlled the development of life, but he did not expand this idea after objections from his conservative patrons.

Others supported the idea of development by law, including the botanist Hewett Watson and the Reverend Baden Powell , who wrote in that such laws better illustrated the powers of the Creator. When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in , many liberal Christians accepted evolution provided it was reconciled [ by whom? The clergymen Charles Kingsley and Frederick Temple , both conservative Christians in the Church of England , promoted a theology of creation as an indirect process controlled by divine laws.

Some strict Calvinists welcomed the idea of natural selection , as it did not entail inevitable progress and humanity could be seen as a fallen race requiring salvation. The Anglo-Catholic Aubrey Moore also accepted the theory of natural selection, incorporating it into his Christian beliefs as merely the way God worked. Darwin's friend Asa Gray defended natural selection as compatible with design. Darwin himself, in his second edition of the Origin January , had written in the conclusion:.

I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak-tree.

I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator. Within a decade most scientists had started espousing evolution, but from the outset some expressed opposition to the concept of natural selection and searched for a more purposeful mechanism. In Richard Owen attacked Darwin's Origin of Species in an anonymous review while praising "Professor Owen" for "the establishment of the axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things ".

He added "On the other hand, we do not mean to deny that such intelligence may act according to law that is to say, on a preconceived and definite plan ". Darwin " in which he rejected many Darwinian ideas, such as those concerning vestigial organs or questioning God's perfection in his work.

Brewster concluded that Darwin's book contained both "much valuable knowledge and much wild speculation", although accepting that "every part of the human frame had been fashioned by the Divine hand and exhibited the most marvellous and beneficent adaptions for the use of men". In the s theistic evolutionism became a popular compromise in science and gained widespread support from the general public.

After graduation, he experienced a born-again conversion and then embraced belief in a literal six-day creation. Graduate school training at the doctoral level in both theology and biology led him to the conclusion that God created the world through evolution. Lamoureux closes with the two most important issues in the origins controversy--the pastoral and pedagogical implications. How should churches approach this volatile topic?

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Theistic evolution

Please try again later. This book by Dr. Lamoureux is well organized with 85 illustrations that really help to understand that God created all things by way of His teleological evolutionary hand, "a design-reflecting natural process that He ordained and continuously sustains. The two on the left include Young Earth Creationism and Progressive Creationism both clearly wrong as Lamoureux explains throughout the book , and two on the right which include Deistic Evolution and Dysteleological Evolution both wrong as Lamoureux explains.

The truth is in the middle of the chart - Evolutionary Creation, incorporating God's ordained and sustained natural processes. Evolutionary Creation also holds to the truth that God is a personal Designer. The illustrations are truly outstanding. They relate to both science and Scripture. Like most Christians, I do not have advanced training in science.

Lamoureax has a doctorate degree not only in science Biology but in Theology as well. This is a big plus for the reader as it is evident throughout the book. The biblical and scientific truths presented in the content of the book are simply profound. The book is pages in total with all of the Appendices, Notes, Glossary, etc.

The book is 6 x 9 and has a nice Scripture Index in the back that is very helpful as well. I have about 40 books on evolution and creation to include commentaries on Genesis and this book is one of my favorites. The points that the author makes really enlightened my eyes to the word of God and helped me with my walk with the Lord. When you actually study the scientific facts and combine them with the correct interpretations in Scripture, you will be really thankful for understanding the truth.

Through this book, I was blessed to better know my Creator and His ways.