Evolution or Creation? ...

Tuesday, November 22, 2011. When we talk about nature, often the question of “evolution versus creation” is discussed. Is the world created by God, or did it evolve from a big bang according to some basic natural laws? What idea do we have about the way the world became what it is today, and what can we prove about it?

What do you say as a scientist? …

First, who has the most competence to talk about how the world became what it is today? Perhaps some astro-physicist? Or some biologist, some expert on evolutionary biology? Or some particle physicist? Should he or she be someone who is more an expert on theory or on experiments? Perhaps my questions already indicate that it is very difficult to find an expert on the history of the the universe. Historians might know many things, but can they explain the arguments why they believe things are as represented? Our idea of the universe is shaped by many people, from very diverse areas.

Second, our idea of how the universe has evolved is shaped by a mixture of findings, theories, experiments and derivations. It is like a big puzzle. It is partly like a remote sensing problem back into time. There might be several options which can explain an observation today. There might be instability and non-uniqueness. As scientist, we know that it is a puzzle which is not completely understood today - it would be good to communicate this process into a wider public, instead of presenting preliminary results as truth for our societies.

Third, as scientists we can only talk about “evolution”. God is not directly accessible. Creation is not something, we could fully grasp with the tools we have available. We can only prove statements of the form: “this existed at some point in time and we think it arose from an earlier state following a particular set of natural laws”. We cannot prove that God in fact wanted something and then carried it out. Our situation is like someone observing a person carrying some stone. He can describe the chemistry of the body, the structure, the biology. But without interaction with the person, you cannot talk about purpose, about tasks and why the stone is carried. Without interaction with God we will have difficulties to understand creation, we will remain on the level of evolution!

What does the Bible say? …

The bible states that the whole universe has been created by the lord. He is the one who started it, who wanted it and who carried it all out. It states that there is purpose in all what exists.

The bible does not explain the tools and particular way in which God did what he did. It does not explain natural laws, it does not even give details of the creation. The creation stories just state “and God created the fish” … etc. It presents the creation as a process which took several days. I read this as a presentation which clarifies that creation took place in space and time, in our own space and time, represented by the morning and evening, by days. Creation is not something which took place somewhere else, in some abstract space or in his mind. It is a process in the middle of our world.

In the above sense I do not see any problems with evolution or creation. There are, however, sincere difficulties if we want to bring together the biblical idea of creation with the creation by random variations and selection. We need to talk about this in our next session. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts