THE SEVEN VIEWPOINTS
Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, his famous book on the theory of evolution by natural selection, in 1859, so we've been arguing about the theory now for more than 150 years. Unless you're part of a relatively small group of people, you probably don't pay much attention to the debate. From a distance, it looks as though there are two broad groups: one group that believes in evolution and doesn't believe in Christianity, and a group of Christians who don't believe in Darwin's theory.
It's actually a lot more complicated. In fact, there are actually seven different broad viewpoints. Six of these have been identified by Gerald Rau, a former professor at Wheaton College in Illinois. To Rau's list of six I will add a seventh. I'm bringing this up in order to give you an idea of the diversity of opinion on the subject. You'll see why I'm doing this.
Viewpoint #1: Naturalism
The first school of though is what is called naturalism. Naturalists strongly accept Darwin's theory. In particular, they believe that the world, and the emergence of all life, can be explained without the need to invoke God. It happened because of a completely natural process. Usually, naturalists are either atheists or, at best, agnostics.
Viewpoint #2: Deism
Deists believe that God created the world, but after the creation, God pretty much took a holiday. Deists tend to think of God as the great watchmaker – He created the world, but has chosen to sit back and watch the creation operate on its own, without influence or interference by God.
Viewpoint #3: Planned Evolution
Supporters of planned evolution believe that both the Bible and Charles Darwin are right. The world was created by God, but He used the evolutionary processes described by Darwin.
Viewpoint #4: Directed Evolution
Directed evolution is pretty much the same viewpoint as planned evolution, but there is an important difference. Those who support planned evolution tend to believe that Adam and Eve weren't really people whereas those who support directed evolution tend to believe that Adam and Eve were real life people.
Viewpoint #5: Old Earth Creationism
Creationism is the idea that the description in the early part of Genesis is largely correct. Those who support the "old earth" variety believe that God definitely created the world, but that his timetable was a little longer than one might infer from the Book of Genesis. The big question concerns the length of a "day". For an old earth creationist, the length of a "day" might be hundreds of millions of years. As such, an old earth creationist can reconcile what the Bible is saying with the evidence of geology, that the world is millions, or billions of years old.
Viewpoint #6: Young Earth Creationism
For a young earth creationist, a "day is a day", meaning that God literally created the world in six days or so, and the world itself is probably not much more than six or seven thousand years old. Young earth creationists reject both Darwin and modern geology.
Viewpoint #7: Intelligent Design
The seventh viewpoint is Intelligent Design (ID for short). This is the concept that the world was designed by God. It's an idea that traces back at least to St. Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages, but it's modern day variant has become much more famous. Briefly, ID is an attempt to apply a modern day scientific critique to Darwin's theory. It is an attempt by serious, and well trained, scientists to raise objections to Darwin's theory. We'll discuss it more in a later posting.
Many Christians love ID but most scientists hate it. While ID theorists raise a number of concerns about the robustness of Darwin's theory, there are two key objections: 1) ID isn't a competitor theory to Darwin, merely a series of disparate objections; and 2) most scientists think it is "junk science," so even if ID were a coherent alternative theory to Darwin, it would likely still be rejected by most scientists.
Some Christians probably have the impression that non-Christian scientists line up behind Charles Darwin and Christian scientists both support ID and reject Darwin. The case is nowhere near that simple. Probably the majority, if not the vast majority, of Christian scientists reject ID – because they believe it doesn't qualify as good science. Conversely, not all supporters of ID are Christians: some support ID because they really believe Darwin didn't create a rigorous theory.
So what's the takeaway? First, that there are so many different viewponts. Second, that there isn't any consistent "Christian" viewpoint. About the only truly consistent viewpoint is that of atheist scientists, who pretty nearly universally believe in a "naturalist" view of Darwin. More importantly, these atheist scientists tend to be almost universally shocked that Christians haven't embraced the science the way they have. But as others have pointed out, the only ones who really should be shocked are the atheist scientists themselves. In our next few postings, I'll explain why nobody should be shocked about what Christians believe … and don't believe.
