Genesis

How can Genesis 1 be reconciled with theistic evolution?

In dealing with this question, we must carefully define our terms, for "evolution" is used
in various senses by various people. We must distinguish between evolution as a
philosophy and evolution as a descriptive mechanism for the development of species
from the more primitive to the "higher" or more complex stages in the course of
geological history. Furthermore, we must establish what is meant by theistic evolution.
Then we will be in a better position to deal with its relationship to the creationism of
Genesis 1.

Evolution as a Philosophy

Evolution as a philosophy seeks to explain the physical--and especially the biological--

universe as a self-directed development from primeval matter, the origin of which is
unknown but which may be regarded as eternally existing without ever having had a
beginning. Philosophical evolution rules out any direction or intervention by a personal
God and casts doubt on the existence of even an impersonal Higher Power. All reality is
governed by unchangeable physical laws, and ultimately it is the product of mere chance.
There is no reason for existence nor a real purpose for life. Man has to operate as an end
in himself. He is his own ultimate lawgiver and has no moral accountability except to
human society. The basis of law and ethics is basically utilitarian--that which produces
the greatest good for the greatest number.

Not all these positions were advanced by Charles Darwin himself in his 1859 classic
The Origin of Species. And yet the consistent atheism of philosophic evolution was a
position he would not espouse, for he believed that a creating God was logically
necessary to explain the prior existence of the original primordial ooze out of which the
earliest forms of life emerged. It would be more accurate to call him a deist rather than an
atheist, even though his system was taken over by those who denied the existence of God.
But it should be pointed out that consistent atheism, which represents itself to be the most
rational and logical of all approaches to reality, is in actuality completely self-defeating
and incapable of logical defense. That is to say, if indeed all matter has combined by
mere chance, unguided by any Higher Power or Transcendental Intelligence, then it
necessarily follows that the molecules of the human brain are also the product of mere
chance. In other words, we think the way we do simply because the atoms and molecules
of our brain tissue happen to have combined in the way they have, totally without
transcendental guidance or control. So then even the philosophies of men, their systems
of logic, and all their approaches to reality are the result of mere fortuity. There is no
absolute validity to any argument advanced by the atheist against the position of theism.

On the basis of his own presuppositions, the atheist completely cancels himself out, for
on his own premises his arguments are without any absolute validity. By his own
confession he thinks the way he does simply because because the atoms in his brain
happen to combine the way they do. If this is so, he cannot honestly say that his view is

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