There are some religious people who teach that, according to Moses, the universe was created in 6 days, and that any evidence from evolutionary biologists can be dismissed because evolution is just a theory. This is, in my view, based on a gross misunderstanding of what the Book of Genesis is actually saying but setting this aside, let’s examine the ‘it is just a theory’ argument.
Is evolution just a theory?
Wikipedia – A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation.
Dictionary.com – The Scientific Theory of Evolution: coherent group of propositions formulated to explain a group of factor phenomena in the natural world and repeatedly confirmed through experiment or observation.
Young earth creationists often dismiss the theory of evolution by saying ‘it is just a theory’. This statement is misleading because it conflates two meanings of the word. It is, in a sense, a strawman argument which no doubt has Moses rolling in his grave. The term ‘theory’ in regular usage can be similar in definition to the scientific term ‘hypothesis’. A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon that requires further study, or for a very specific set of criteria. A scientific theory, on the other hand, is an explanation of the facts. It is, as the dictionary explains, a well substantiated explanation that has been repeatedly tested and confirmed. All phenomena are explained through theory.
The only way to debunk a theory is to produce an alternative theory that is falsifiable. That means, someone must be able to test it to prove it true or false. The problem with creationism is there is no way to test the claim. The theory of gravity, on the other hand, can be tested by anybody who has an object to drop. It is falsifiable because anybody can test the premise of the law of gravity through the scientific method. To prove gravity false, all you have to do is take an object and have it float in mid air. Good luck. The belief in Santa clause, like the belief in young earth creationism, is not falsifiable, however, nor is the belief in God. God and science are not related, at least not at this time, so you cannot fit religious beliefs with science, just as you cannot fit yoga with the theory of plate tectonics. They are just not related in any way and Moses was not trying to relate them. Moses was teaching religious concepts using the cosmology of his day as a backdrop.
Let me give you another example. I was in Disney world on May 12th 1991. This claim is not falsifiable. You cannot go to Disney World and prove whether or not my claim is true. On the other hand, if I claimed I were in Disney World right now, you could prove this false albeit with a considerable amount of effort.
Rejecting a scientific theory just because it is in conflict with the dogma of your religion is problematic. It harkens back to the inquisitions where people were put to death because they claimed the earth was spherical, that the earth revolved around the sun, or that cats were not evil. The last example is still being debated. Science has forced religions to re-evaluate how they interpret their scriptures and, not surprisingly, the anti-science beliefs they hold are often not in harmony with their scriptures anyways, they are often just the teachings of ignorant theologians from many centuries ago that just got perpetuated from age to age.
How Evolution works
Now, what is evolution? Many people get hung up on it because the bible suggests that animals only reproduce with their own kind, which means they cannot produce a different species. A fish cannot give birth to a fox, therefore evolution is false. Well, this is just ignorant. Evolution requires kind to procreate with kind, and kind to produce kind. So how does evolution work if animals are not producing different species? Let me give you an example:
A small rodent lives at the base of a volcano. Some have thicker fir than others, and some have longer claws than others, but because of the temperature, there is no real advantage to any of these genetic anomalies so none of them become more prominent. On day, the volcano erupts and the rodents on the north side flee north, and the rodents on the sound side flee south. The rodents that flee north end up in an area that is much cooler, and where their normal food, the fruit from the buzleberry bush, does not exist. Many of the rodents with thinner fir die off from the cold, as do those who have severe allergies to the new foods. It turns out that the food they can best survive on is a root from the buzleberry tree. Unfortunately, the animals with longer narrow claws cannot dig down so they eventual starve to death. Over thousands of years, these rodents slowly change. Anomalies that were before quite irrelevant now become very important. It is strictly by chance that enough of the rodents had the right characteristics to survive in this harsh environment.
The rodents on the south side, on the otherhand, fled south to a much warmer climate and an area that has far more predators that just love their tasty meat. The rodents with thicker fir die off, as do the larger rodents, and the rodents with shorter claws. The small rodents with long pointy claws are able to climb trees and some of them discover the fruit of the desertberry tree. Those who are allergic die, those who cannot climb die, and so forth. Over thousands of years these rodents start to flourish. Genetic anomalies appear from time to time that are an advantage to the southern rodents, but a huge disadvantage to the northern rodents. These show up by chance and each animal slowly changes. After 100,000 years, the rodents in the south are small like mice with short hair, long claws, and are herbivores. The rodents to the north are large like dogs, with thick fir and claws, and are omnivores. They have changed so much that they have become two different species. If you put a female from the south and a male from the north together, they would not be able to reproduce. It took 12,500 generations, but over this long period of time, two separate species emerged. Kind produced kind, but with subtle genetic changes over many generations.
If evolution is true, why are there still apes? Where are all the transitional creatures? Again, these types of questions are based on ignorance. We did not evolve from apes, but rather we have a common ancestor to apes. As for transitional creatures, just look around you. Every living creature you see is a transitional creature that evolved from something different, and is evolving into something even more different. As with my example, the changes are subtle and gradual, virtually indiscernible over a few dozen generations. As Andrea Petto and Lauri Godfrey explain in their book ‘Science Confront’s Intelligent Design and Creationism’, evolution is not a ladder like progression, it is more a branching bush, each branch a distinct lineage of an organism. We are not proving how mice became a human but rather what traits they share from a common ancestor.
Too complex to be random
You may have heard the story of a fellow entering the scientist’s classroom and seeing a model of the solar system. The fellow asks ‘Who made this model’? To which the scientists responds coyly ‘Nobody, it just randomly appeared’. The fellow responds by saying that a model as detailed as this would never just randomly appear, and thus is proof that our solar system must have been formed by a creator through careful planning. The premise of this argument that, if a complex model solar system was made by a creator, than all things that are complex must have been made by a creator.
Science has shown why this argument is flawed. Yes, there are complex machines that are made by people, but just because I can build a Christmas tree this does not mean I built the tree in my backyard. There is no reason to presume that God is personally involved in manufacturing every molecule and combination thereof. The laws he set in place are sufficient for the universe to unfold on its own.
There is great complexity in evolution. There is complexity of cause, outcomes, structure, and organization; it needs to be remembered however that complexity is not needed to produce complexity. Ants, with just 10,000 neurons can create very complex colonies. The complex is an outcome of the interaction of simple units. The emergence of complex ecological interrelationships is virtually certain and requires only the availability of usable resources
Who is in charge?
But hold on, Moses tells us God is in charge. How can a theory that suggest everything is up to complete chance that does not require any divine intervention ever be considered compatible with God? Well, unless you can provide a scripture that says how God actually did it, you have an argument from silence. Saying ‘God wouldn’t do that’ is not an effective paradigm to follow if you want to acquire knowledge. The scriptures tell us why we are here, science is discovering how we got here and, just as with plate tectonics’ and yoga, the two are just not related. I have never heard a minster get up in arms over the theory of general relativity, or the theory of statistical mechanics, or heliocentrism. Ok, ministers used to link pure evil with heliocentrism (the earth evolves around the sun) but Hubble has sort of quietened them down a bit.
Consider too that there are countless trillions of galaxies that each contains countless trillions of solar systems. There are no doubt billions of planets that, right now, that sustain an abundance of life, and others that will sustain life sometime in the future. Is it possible that God is manipulating the dna? That could be but such a claim is purely conjecture because there is no clear evidence of external manipulation, and there is no evidence in the scriptures that God has done so or even needs to do so. There is, do doubt, life all over the universe and here on this planet, humanoids evolved. Who knows and, from a religious point of view, who cares. It has nothing to do with religion.
God of the Gaps
Young Earth creationists argue that any gaps in our knowledge of the natural world can only be explained by attributing these mysteries to a creator. They take an absolute stand that anything that cannot currently be explained will never be explained by science. The problem is the gaps between God’s miracles and the natural processes of our planet is getting smaller and smaller. We no longer accept the earthquakes are the result of an angry god, or that lightening is someone’s spear. Disease is caused by microorganisms and not by sin. Does this mean, therefore, that there cannot be a god? As the atheist scientist Robert T Pennock explains, “Science is agnostic with regard to whether there will be gaps in nature that are filled by some supernatural power”. Yes, some atheist scientist are passionate in their claims that science has proven there is no God, but this is not the case. Science is a methodology not a belief.
When Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, her eyes were opened and she gained knowledge. This was God’s plan all along, for us to gain knowledge. Just as Adam was commanded to name all the animals to bring order, so are we commanded to understand the universe that surrounds us. We are to gain knowledge through science to understand the ways of God. Let science tell us how we got here, and the scriptures tell us why we are here. And I suspect Moses would agree.