The document discusses different views on how Christians should think about creation and evolution. It presents a traditional Christian view that takes the early chapters of Genesis literally, believing in a recent six-day creation and global flood. It then discusses the view of Denis Alexander, who argues that Christians can believe in evolution if they see it as the mechanism by which God created biological diversity over long periods of time, rather than rejecting the Bible's account of creation. The document provides perspectives from both sides of the debate.

1. Creation and Evolution
How a Christian should think about creation and
evolution is the cause of a wide range of views. In
this presentation there are three sections – a
traditional approach followed by two articles arguing
for or against Christians believing in evolution –
each section has been adapted from an original
source and if you want to investigate further I
recommend going initially to those primary sources

2. Creation and Evolution
A “traditional” Christian view
Adapted from a number of sources including an original by Mike
Riddle of the Institute for Creation Research, www.icr.org

3. The Problems that Evolution poses
No historic creation of
humans
No historic Fall that results
in universal sin among
humans (and creation)
Death is not a
consequence of the Fall
but is a natural state of all
life occurring before the
flood

4. No hope of an eternal
life (or second coming)
No need for Christ as
Savior
The Bible is not
reliable or valid for
soteriology (salvation)—
the plan of salvation
has no historic basis in
the past and no hope in
a future reality

5. Randall W. Younker
“A denial of the historicity of Genesis not only
denies the Flood but also the first historicity of
the first week of creation and the story of the Fall
as well as the creation of the first historic
humans who were responsible for introducing sin
into the human race;
this in turn denies the spread of sin from that first
human couple, the introduction of death into the
world, and the need for the cross—at least it
denies how these things have been traditionally
explained by mainstream Christianity for
centuries.”

6. Anon
The foundation and doctrines
of the Bible are built on the
early chapters of Genesis.
The early chapters of Genesis
teach the true history of the
beginning of everything.
Once we believe the lie of the
Prince of this world, Satan, that
Genesis can’t be taken literally,
the foundation of the Christian
Faith begins to crumble.

7. G. Richard Bozarth writes (“The Meaning of Evolution”, American
Atheist, Sept. 20, 1979, p. 30):
“Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight
science to the desperate end over evolution
because evolution destroys utterly and finally
the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was
supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam
and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble
you will find the sorry remains of the [S]on of
[G]od…If Jesus was not the [R]edeemer that
died for our sins, and this is what evolution
means, then Christianity is nothing.”

8. Charles Smith, “From Ameba to Man”
“In the beginning was matter, which begat the
ameba, which begat the worm, which begat
the fish, which begat the amphibian, which
begat the reptile, which begat the lower
mammal, which begat the lemur, which begat
the monkey, which begat man, who imagined
God. This is the genealogy of man.”

10. Creation Model
God created the universe and everything
in it in 6 days
Sin was the cause of death
God destroyed the world by a worldwide
flood
Man was created in the image of God
God created ALL things

11. Evolution Model
 About 15 billion years ago the universe
exploded into existence
 About 4.6 billion years ago the earth
evolved
 About 3.5 billion years ago life evolved
 Humans evolved from ape-like creatures
Time, chance, and natural processes

12. The Process for Creation
• Evolution model
• The Bible
• “And God said”
• Psalm 33:6,9 “By the Word of the
Lord…”
• Hebrews 11:3
Through faith we understand that the worlds
were framed by the word of God, so that
things which are seen were not made of things
which do appear.

13. The Cause of Physical Death
 Evolution: natural process
 Bible: sin (Rom 5:12, 1Cor
15:21)
 Curse (Genesis 3:17)
 Put out of the Garden to
keep from eating from the
tree of life (Genesis 3:22-
24)
 “Very Good” (Genesis 1:31)

14. The Flood
 Evolution: myth or local flood
 Bible: worldwide Flood
 Rained 40/40
 Springs of the deep
 All land creatures perished
 All mountains were covered
 God’s covenant promise (Gen 9:8-11,15)

15. Localised Flooding

16. The Flood in Genesis 7
The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and
the ark floated on the surface of the water.19 They rose
greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the
entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and
covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen
cubits. 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished
—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that
swarm over the earth, and all mankind.22 Everything on
dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.
23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped
out; people and animals and the creatures that move
along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth.
Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

17. Flood Quotes
Henry Clarence
Thiessen, Ph.D.,
Lectures in Systematic
Theology, 1979, p. 117.
“Further, the Bible
teaches a
universal flood…”

18. Gleason Archer (Ph.D., professor of Old
Testament and Semitic languages ),
Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, 1982, p. 82.
“The biblical record in Genesis 7-8
describes no local inundation
confined to the Mesopotamian Valley
(as some scholars have suggested)
but a water level that surpassed the
summits of the highest mountains.”

19. Eugene Merrill, An Historical Survey of the Old
Testament, 1998, p. 50.
“If true scientific principle demands
an observer and recorder of
phenomena, only the Genesis
account can be considered scientific,
for only it dares to claim that there
was an Observer present – the Triune
God.”

20. Keith Wanser, Creation ex nihilo, 1999, p. 39.
(Dr. Wanser works with theoretical condensed
matter physics and basic theories of matter)
“I am convinced there is far more
evidence for a recent, six-day
creation and a global Flood than
there is for an old earth and
evolution.”

21. Ernan McMullin is the John Cardinal O'Hara
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Notre
Dame
“the great majority of contemporary
Scripture scholars agree [that to
interpret early Genesis] literally or
quasi-literally is to misunderstand the
point that the writers of those
narratives were trying to make”

22. The Creation Days
 Evolution demands
long ages
 Bible: literal days
 Meaning of ‘Yom’
 Yom with a number
 Evening and morning
 Genesis 1:14
 Exodus 20:11
 Words used to indicate
time

23. Genealogical Timeline
Years after creation
Creation 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
930
Adam
874 1651
Lamech
1056 2006
Noah
1879 2084
Terah
Year born after Year died after 2009 2184
Abraham
creation creation
Flood (1656)

24. Professor James Barr, Professor of Hebrew at the
University of Oxford.
“Probably so far as I know, there is no
professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at
any world-class university who dares not
believe that the writer(s) of Gen. 1-11
intended to convey to their readers the
ideas that creation took place in a series of
six days which are the same as the days of
24 hours we now experience…”

25. Robert L. Reymond, Ph.D., A New Systematic
Theology of the Christian Faith, 1998, p. 393.
“In the hundreds of other cases in the
Old Testament where yom stands in
conjunction with an ordinal number
(first, second, third, etc.), e.g. Exodus
12:15; 24:16; Leviticus 12:3, it never
means anything other than a normal,
literal day.”

26. Douglas F. Kelly (Professor of Systematic
Theology) , Creation and Change, 1997, p. 51.
“To summarize, liberal scholars of both
19th and 20th centuries admit that the
text of Genesis is clearly meant to be
taken in a literal, historical sense,
although they deny its claims to speak
accurately to our space/time cosmos.”

27. The Origin of Life
 Evolution: chance accident
 Bible: consistent message
Gen 2:7 Isa 57:16 1 Cor 8:6
Gen 5:2 Matt 19:4 Eph 3:9
Deut 4:32 Mark 10:6 Col 1:16-17
Neh 9:6 John 1: 1-3 Heb 11:3
Ps 89:47 Acts 4:24 2 Pet 1:3
Isa 45:12 Romans 1:19-20 Rev 4:11

28. What Did Jesus Say
 Jesus believed Moses: John 5:46-47
 Jesus confirmed Abel: Matt 23:35
 Jesus confirmed the Flood: Matt 24:37-39
 …from the beginning… Mark 10:6
 Jesus is the Creator
 John 1:1-3, Col 1:16, Heb 1:1-3, Eph 3:9

29. Is it possible to be a
Christian and believe
in Evolution?
Yes!

30. Denis Alexander
Chairman of the Molecular Immunology Programme at The
Babraham Institute, Fellow of St. Edmund’s College,
Cambridge, and Editor of the journal Science and Christian
Belief.
I have edited this article for the purpose of simplifying
some points for my students – however it appears
online in at least two locations:
http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/theological-
articles/can-a-christian-believe-in-evolution.cfm
http://www.eauk.org/church/resources/theological-
articles/can-a-christian-believe-in-evolution.cfm

31. It all depends what you mean by the term
‘evolution’. Charles Darwin published the
Origin of Species in 1859 as a theory to
explain the origins of biological diversity. At
that time, that’s all it was – a biological
theory, a theory that Christians were quick
to baptise into a Biblical doctrine of
creation.
Asa Gray, Professor of Natural History at
Harvard and a committed Christian,
organised the publication of the Origin of
Species in N. America and maintained that
God had providentially arranged the
biological processes of evolution to bring
about God’s purposes in creation.

32. The Princeton theologian and
prominent defender of the
inspiration of Scripture, B.B.
Warfield, spoke of himself as a
‘Darwinian of the purest water’. …
virtually every American Protestant
zoologist and botanist accepted
some form of evolution by the early
1870s’.

33. So why does it now seem Christians are
so opposed to evolution? Evolution now
has all kinds of ideological baggage
which are not part of the theory itself.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was a
great populariser of evolution in N.
America but unfortunately tried to
make evolution into a ‘theory-of-
everything’ in which the entire universe
was ascending towards ultimate
perfection. Spencer (not Darwin) who
coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’.

34. Richard Dawkins says Darwinian
evolution enables him to be an
‘intellectually fulfilled atheist’ - this
only reinforces the idea that there must
be something deeply anti-Christian
about evolution.
In fact evolutionary theory over the
years has been called upon to justify as
wide a range of ideologies as
communism, capitalism, racism and
militarism, some of them mutually
exclusive – this should alert us to the
dangers of extrapolating scientific
theories into arenas in which they
actually have little or nothing to say.

35. Is it possible to be a Christian and believe in
evolution? Certainly, as long as ‘evolution’
refers to the biological theory describing how
God has created all living things.
The vast majority of Christians who are
active in biological research today have no
problem with incorporating evolutionary
theory within their belief in God as creator.
Our task as scientists is to describe the
actions of God in the created order as
accurately as we can. If an evolutionary
process provides the best explanation for the
origins of biological diversity, then that’s
fine.

36. Evolution combines together two
mechanisms: first, variation is
introduced into genes by various
mechanisms, second, the
consequences of these mutations are
‘tested out’ by the criterion of
‘reproductive success’, the extent to
which mutations impact on the
ability of individual organisms to
generate offspring. Taken overall,
this is a tightly regulated process, as
far from the idea of ‘random
chance’ as can be imagined.

37. Evolutionary processes are not there to
teach us morality – Christians are
called to behave like children of God,
shown in the Bible.
But Christians should not abuse the
Bible by trying to treat it as a scientific
text-book – as scientific writing as we
understand it now did not even get
going until thousands of years after the
writing of the early chapters of Genesis.
It is outdated to treat Biblical texts as if
they were articles out of a
contemporary scientific journal - if they
were, they would soon be out of date!

38. The Biblical creation accounts
tell us timeless truths about
God’s purposes for his creation
in general, and for humankind
in particular. It is up to scientists
to find out how exactly God
carries out his creative
handiwork.
Some Christians think belief in
evolution undermines the
uniqueness of humankind and
the reality of evil and the Fall.
Not so.

39. Genesis portrays Adam and Eve as Neolithic
farmers. It is perfectly feasible that God
bestowed his image on representative Homo
sapiens already living in the Near East to
generate what John Stott has called Homo
divinus, those who first enjoyed personal
fellowship with God, but who then fell most
terribly from their close walk with God
(Gen. 3:8). All those who disobey God and
trust in their own wisdom in place of God’s
law reiterate the historical Fall in their own
being (Ezek. 28: 11-19).

40. Those many Christians today
who are active in the biological
sciences are amazed as we
uncover more and more of God’s
creative actions in our daily
research. We do not look for God
in the ‘gaps’ in our scientific
knowledge, but instead worship
God for the whole of his created
order, including those remarkable
evolutionary processes that God
has used for his creative
purposes.

41. Can a Christian
believe in evolution?
No!

42. Gregory Koukl
http://www.seanmcdowell.org/index.php
This article first appeared in the Apologetics Study Bible For Students,
edited by Sean McDowell (Broadman Holman, 2010)

43. Evolution means different things to different people. “Change
over time” is one basic definition. Used this way, no one objects to
evolution. Another meaning includes the idea that living things
have descended, with modifications, from common ancestors.
Some evolutionists think all living things evolved from a single
source. This is more controversial.

44. Natural selection is yet another
aspect of evolution. When an
organism’s genetic code changes
(mutates), it produces offspring
whose bodies differ from those of
other members of the species.
Nature then “selects” which
modifications are best at helping
the organism survive and
reproduce. This competition is
called “survival of the fittest.” Over
time, this results in the diversity of
life on Earth. This process is
typically said to be unguided.

45. When combined, all of the above
aspects entail a specific brand of
evolutionary theory called
Darwinism or neo-Darwinism.
Darwinism says that the evolution
of living organisms is accidental,
not designed. Oxford evolutionist
Richard Dawkins takes this to
imply that living systems were made
by a blind watchmaker (unguided
nature) rather than an all-knowing,
purposeful watchmaker (God).

46. How does Darwinian evolution
square with Christianity? The Bible
teaches that God created the world -
the stuff of the universe, which he
formed into individual things (like
Adam). Since this change took
place over time, there is an
“evolution” here, of sorts. All
humans have descended—with some
modification as the gene pool
changed over time—from Adam and
Eve, though each is still human.

47. Is Darwinian evolution therefore
consistent with Christianity? I do
not think so.
Darwinism, as most commonly
defined, says nature is the designer,
not God.
Darwinian “design” is driven by
random, purposeless genetic
mutations which are then “selected”
as organisms compete for survival.
Here there is no God-given purpose
or outcome.

48. Can we say God used evolution?
Natural selection—which we observe
in nature in limited ways—could
theoretically be used by God to
direct the descent and modification
of living things. By making
modifications that increase the
fitness of the organism, God could
guarantee that a species would
adapt and be selected for survival.
But this isn’t Darwinism. It’s a
form of intelligent design.

49. The real question about evolution is
what (or Who) directs the change.
Virtually every authority in the field
of evolutionary biology believes that
Darwinian evolution is mechanical,
unguided, and purposeless.
“Whatever we think of God, his
existence is not manifest in the
products of nature” Stephen Jay
Gould

50. Christians know God is the
Creator and purposeful
designer of all species. Exactly
how He designed them is a
matter of debate. Therefore,
Darwinian evolution,
according to its standard
scientific definition, is un-
Christian. Keep in mind, though,
that it is still possible to be
Christian even if you mistakenly
believe some things that are
inconsistent with Christianity.