I told him that while I could see how one might follow an evolutionary pattern of thought, I had certain problems when I went down that pathway. He was interested. I listed to him a number of scientific problems with evolution, including the fact that when one goes down into the rocks to find the fossil evolutionary ancestors of the turtle, none are found. The turtle is a unique organism that would be expected to leave many intermediates as its systems gradually changed from an assumed lizard type of ancestor to a fully evolved turtle. Many thousands of fossil turtles have been found, one more than 10 feet long, but the many evolutionary intermediates expected are notoriously absent. Did the turtle evolve, or was it created?
The professor admitted to me that there were some problems with evolution and seemed satisfied with my scientific approach. This incident well illustrates the ongoing battle being waged between science and the Bible.
While science is highly respected, the general public in the United States has not been that supportive of the evolutionary model. Six Gallup polls over the past two decades (sidebar) indicate that only 9-12 percent of Americans believe science's naturalistic evolutionary model, while 44-47 percent believe God created humans within the past 10,000 years. Some 35-40 percent believe, however, that God guided in the development of life over millions of years.
It is hard for most people to believe that all the amenities of the universe that provide for life on earth, and the incredible complexities we have found in that life itself, just happened by themselves as science postulates. Even many scientists believe in God. Surveys (sidebar) indicate that about 40 percent believe in a personal God who answers their prayers, 45 percent do not, and 15 percent do not know. The incongruity between the personal belief in God of many scientists and the general absence of God as an explanatory factor in scientific interpretations can probably best be explained on sociological grounds.
Adventism and Creation
The Adventist Church has had more than a passing interest in this discussion. We believe that the Bible is the word of God and that God is the creator. One of our most distinctive doctrines, the seventh-day Sabbath, rests largely on the fact that God created in six days and rested on the seventh, as recorded in Genesis and especially as declared by God Himself during the dramatic events around Mount Sinai. There He spoke and with His own finger wrote the Ten Commandments.1 These are likely the most authoritative words from God that we have.
In the fourth commandment God explains that He created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh day. It is not easy to dismiss God's plain statement in Exodus 20 that "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day." This does not at all sound like the development of life over millions of years, as proposed by science. Furthermore, it is not easy to read millions of years into the Genesis creation account, as some do, when each of the six days of that account is described with its own "evening" and "morning."2
The three angels' messages of Revelation 14, given as a warning for the last days of earth, provide further reason for Adventism's interest in creation. Part of the first angel's message is an admonition to "worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters."3
The message that God is creator would seem to be particularly timely for the Adventist church, since Adventism developed just as evolution became generally accepted by the intellectual community of the western world. Probably no other idea has had such a pervasive and secular influence on humanity's thinking as evolution has. The date of 1844 is particularly meaningful to us, since this is the time of the Great Disappointment that brought forth Adventism. But 1844 is also an important date in the history of evolution. That year there appeared in England a book entitled Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a title that belies the book's heretical contents.
The book caused a minor explosion in placid Victorian England.4 The author, after analyzing fossil patterns, proposed a then-shocking principle of progressive development for life on earth, i.e., evolution. For that time, the sale of the book was phenomenal. During its first 10 years 24,000 copies were sold, which is more than twice as many as for Darwin's famous On the Origin of Species (also published in England) 15 years later. Sales of Vestiges were enhanced by violent objections from leading thought leaders. Adam Sedgwick, the president of the Geological Society, wrote a 400-page critique of this "false philosophy."5 Adding to the intrigue was the fact that the name of the author was kept secret because he did not dare to identify himself. Only after his death in 1871 was his name revealed. And it turned out to be the well-known Robert Chambers, editor of Chambers' Encyclopedia.
Darwin's Origin of Species had more influence in the long run, however; and by the end of the century there was general acceptance of some form of evolution by most scientists and many theologians. It has sometimes been proposed that it was no happenstance that the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with its special Sabbath based on creation, came into existence at the same time as evolution. Could it be that one of the special purposes of Adventism is to counter the secularism brought on by the acceptance of evolution?
Adventism with its seventh-day Sabbath that honors God's six-day creation week is a special answer to ideas of millions of years of gradual evolution where it is postulated that there is no need of a God. It is hard to separate Adventism from creation. Even the first part of our name, "Seventh-day," refers to a memorial of the six-day creation week.
Speculative Models
When Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species, it was greeted with a strong but mixed reaction. Some prominent biologists especially objected to his views. However, within a few decades evolution was generally accepted, especially among scientists, and eventually by many theologians.
Of special interest was a noted group at Princeton University who opposed Darwin but adopted views that incorporated ideas of both creation and evolution. Such intermediate views, of which there are many now,6 have played a prominent role in the debate. None of them agree with the biblical model of a recent creation by God in six days. These models are notably speculative, lacking any direct authentication either from the data of nature or from the Bible. Almost all advocate that life developed over long geological ages, but that in various ways God was somewhat involved.
Crucial to the debate is the origin of the fossil-bearing layers of the crust of our earth. Did they form gradually over eons, or were they the result of the horrendous worldwide deluge brought on as a result of human wickedness as described in Genesis.7 The Genesis flood is the crucial event that can reconcile the six-day creation account to the fossil record of the earth.8
Progressive Creation is one of the intermediate views closer to the biblical creation account. It proposes that life developed over millions of years, as God from time to time created more and more advanced forms of life, eventually creating humans. Some advocates of this view propose that each day of creation week described in Genesis represents a very long period of time. However, the sequence of events in Genesis, where plants are created on the third day, before animals on the fifth and sixth days, does not fit the order in the geologic layers, where the major groups of animals appear before almost all the major groups of plants.
Probably the most serious inconsistency this model faces is that we see the effects of sin in the fossil record at a time that this model assumes to be long before the creation of humans, their fall, and the consequences of that fall on nature.9 The Bible tells us that what God creates is "very good."10 How could that very good creation explain dinosaurs chewing each other up over millions of years before the arrival of sin and its aftermath?
Furthermore, many thousands of important groups of fossil plants and animals are not now living on earth. Why would a kind and omniscient God create so many species over millions of years, only to have them die out? The biblical model of a recent creation, the fall of humankind, the consequences of sin on nature, and the subsequent destruction by the Genesis flood, resolves these inconsistencies.
Theistic Evolution is another popular intermediate view between creation and evolution. Here God is closely associated with a continuous evolutionary process over millions of years. He uses evolution, and He is there to help when evolution is inadequate. The model faces the same problems mentioned for progressive creation. Also the many thousands of missing fossil intermediates between major groups of organisms strongly suggest that evolution never occurred.
Furthermore, it would seem strange that a loving and omniscient God would use the crutch of evolution, in which only the fittest survive. The concern God has for his erring and wayward children does not fit at all with the harsh competition and survival of only the fittest, as proposed for the evolutionary process.
The recent Intelligent Design movement is a new kind of approach that aims to point to the scientific evidence for some kind of designer. It studiously avoids any reference to the Bible and religion. While its contribution to the origins debate is significant, Adventism, which upholds the Bible as the word of God, adds a much richer input to the discussion.
Lessons From the Past
Intermediate views such as theistic evolution and progressive creation have had a significant influence on religious beliefs. The mainline Christian churches have generally accepted such concepts. Evangelical churches, which favor a more direct interpretation of Scripture, tend to have reservations about such views in various ways. It does not appear that trends toward evolutionary concepts have been especially beneficial to mainline churches. In the United States, in the past century, mainline churches have been losing members by the millions, while evangelical types of church organizations have been growing, some quite rapidly.11
Church growth is a complicated thing, and this data does not warrant the firm conclusion that the trend toward evolution is necessarily the cause of loss in membership. But the trend is away from the Bible, and does not appear to have been helpful for either growth or the spread of the gospel of salvation.
In order to accommodate the Bible to a variety of other ideas about our origins, it is often suggested that the first 11 chapters of Genesis, which includes the accounts of creation and Noah's flood, are allegorical and not factual history. The problem with that interpretation is that the leading biblical personalities do not treat the creation and flood accounts as allegorical. Many, including Peter, Paul, Christ, and even God,12 authenticate the factuality of creation and the flood. It would be a strange kind of God who would create over millions of years, and then ask us to keep the seventh-day Sabbath holy because he created all in six days! When the Creator of the universe makes a plain statement of fact, who are we to put a question mark after it?
Drifting away from God's words is a pattern that occurred frequently in Old Testament times. More recently, mainline churches have drifted away from their original beliefs in the Bible. In the past two centuries, many of the leading United States educational institutions that began as church-related institutions (such as Auburn University, Boston University, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, Tufts, the University of Southern California, Wesleyan University, Wichita State University, and Yale) have abandoned their religious foundations and become independent, secular institutions. In some of these institutions we now find the leading evolutionary authorities of the world. Adventists need to be especially careful that the pressures that have caused other churches and institutions to drift away from the Bible and God do not affect us.
The Opportunities
It could be argued that the trend toward evolution and secularization is a trend toward truth. Science has proved its value, and we might as well follow it. However, this argument cannot be easily sustained. While some scientific interpretations challenge the Bible, the past two decades of scientific investigation have not been kind to evolution. Discoveries in three major areas challenge traditional scientific evolutionary interpretations:
1. The recent discoveries in molecular biology present complexities of integrated and feedback mechanisms that thwart any idea that these could have just happened by chance.13 Thus far, evolutionists have not been able to produce a workable model for the development of complexity. It appears that there has to be an intelligent mind behind all this.
2. A number of physical constants related to matter and the universe are exactly what they should be to make the universe habitable for life. Even very slight deviations could spell cosmic annihilation.14 This is very precise design.
3. The new trend in geology toward rapid catastrophic interpretations, which has been labeled as "a great philosophical breakthrough,"15 fits in well with what would be expected from the Genesis flood of the Bible.16
Adventism has a special opportunity here. We believe that the Bible is the word of God. We believe that God is our creator and that He has the ability to re-create us at the resurrection. We have a seventh-day Sabbath that witnesses to our belief in creation. The opportunities before us are unprecedented. The world needs to know that the Bible is the word of God and that God is the creator. Our creation message provides healing for the skepticism, relativism, agnosticism, and nihilism that are so prevalent now.
Above all, the world needs to know about the faithful and forgiving God of the Bible who is doing everything possible for the salvation of all.
1 Gen. 1, 2; Ex. 19; 20; 31; 32.
2 Gen. 1.
3 Rev. 14:7.
4 E. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 32.
5 Ibid.
6 For a review of the main ideas and references, see: A. A. Roth, Origins: Linking Science and Scripture (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1998), chap. 21.
7 Gen. 6-8.
8 Roth, Origins, pp. 204, 205; J. T. Baldwin, "The Geologic Column and Calvary," in J. T. Baldwin, ed., Creation, Catastrophe, and Calvary (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 2000), pp. 108-123.
9 Gen. 3:14-19; Rom. 5:12-19; 8:20-22.
10 Gen. 1:31.
11 D. M. Kelley, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing: A Study in Sociology of Religion, 2nd ed. (San Francisco, New York, and Hagerstown, Md.: Harper and Row, 1972, 1977).
12 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; Rom. 5:12-14; 1 Cor. 11:8; 15:22, 45; 1 Tim. 2:13, 14; Heb. 11:4-7; Matt. 19:4-6; 24:37, 38; Mark 10:6; Luke 17:26, 27; Isa. 54:9; Ex. 20:11; 31:17.
13 L. M. Spetner, Not by Chance (New York: The Judaica Press, Inc., 1996, 1997); M. J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: Touchstone, 1996).
14 D.L. Overman, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997).
15 E. Kauffman, quoted in R. Lewin, "Extinctions and the History of Life," Science 221 (1983): 935-937.
16 Roth, Origins, pp. 195-232, 262-274.
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Ariel A. Roth, now retired, was director of the Geoscience Research Institute for 14 years and editor of the journal Origins for 23 years. He has published more than 150 articles in scientific and general journals. His recent book, Origins: Linking Science and Scripture, is being translated into 11 languages.
HE PROFESSOR OF EVOLUTION CALLED me into his office, and I was apprehensive. He informed me that the faculty of zoology had been discussing my case, and that while they realized that it was my own business what I believed, it was their duty to see that they did not grant a Ph.D. to someone who was not a scientist. So he wanted to know about my belief in creation.
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