Evolution by Design

Well, it's almost the start of the new semester. Classes start this coming Tuesday and slowly more and more students are arriving back on campus. I, along with a handful of other OCC students, came back a week early for winter session. Winter session is the opportunity for students to get a class done in a week...literally. Some people went on a Spiritual Reformation retreat, others to New York for Urban Ministries, some took Foundations for Christian Education, but I took Creation and Science.


Creation and Science is one of the least favored classes at OCC. I was told by everyone who had taken the class before to avoid taking it over the semester and to take it over winter session. So that's what I intended to do. I figured, "Well, it may suck, but at least I'll be done with it in a week." And then I found out that Andrew Kirschner, one of the most favored professors at OCC, was teaching it over winter session this year. I made sure that I was going to be in that class with him. Not taking Creation and Science with Kirsch was not an option. And of course I made the enrollment list only hours before the class was closed.


I just knew that with Kirschner teaching Creation and Science, the class had to be awesome. And not to my surprise, it was. I've only been going to Ozark for a year and a half now, but by far, Creation and Science was my favorite class. It made me think and analyze things I never have before and I was presented with arguments to help better explain my faith. I was so exhausted by the end of every seven hour lecture, but I always walked away really excited and anticipating the next day to be just as awesome, if not, more! I can't think of one time when I was bored.


One day in class Kirsch split us up into groups and had us read different chapters from a book of compilations of writings from scientists, athiests, Christians, and Darwinists/evolutionists. The chapter our group read was written by Jonathan Wells who believes in evolution by design. In other words, he believes in evolution, but not in Darwinian evolution (the idea that everything came about by random chance and natural selection). He claims that there was a designer (although he doesn't specify who the designer could have been) and that he created the earth with us humans in mind but left the earth to evolve, with humans, of course, being the end of the evolution process.


Now, I won't say that his arguments weren't valid and didn't make sense, but of course I don't believe his theory. This is something I thought about alot this week and have a problem with because I know that some Christians believe that God used evolution. I don't believe He did.

First off, and most obvious, if you read Genesis one, you'll notice that God made everything. Nowhere does it say, "And God created an ameoba and left it to evolve into all of the animal kingdom and human race."

Now getting on to some more legit points...
God is perfect. There are many words to define the word perfect, one of them being complete/completiton. Someone or something is imperfect when it is lacking that which would make it perfect; it is incomplete. Evolution, in my understanding, is a description of imperfection. It explains that something evolves from another, making the post form better than the first. This does not sound like something a perfect designer would do. Because God is perfect, I don't believe He could have made something that is out of His character. When God created the Heavens and the earth and everything that dwells within them, he made them perfect and complete, no evolution necessary.

Also, saying God used evolution implies that he is impersonal. "God created an ameoba and sat back in his big recliner throne and left it to evolve into the rest of all living creatures." We know this is certainly not the case, not only by reading the Bible, but by examining our own personal relationship with Him. God is and was involved in everything good. God fought many battles on behalf of the Israelites in the Old Testament. God incarnate became the Christ in human flesh and died on the cross on our behalf. God sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in us that we may still have relationship with Him. God is very personal. He calls us to run to Him because He's the only one who could ever provide the answers we're looking for! He desires to have a relationship with His children. He knows our heart's desires and wishes to reward us accordingly. That does not sound like a God who would create an earth and then just leave it alone to do what it will.

God did not, by any means, use evolution!...And I really hope Kirschner reads this post.