Ask Cooper Anything 1: Evolution vs. Creation

"What is your view on Genesis and evolution? Do you take a literal view of Genesis in 7 days?"
- Erik C.

In preparation for this entry, I watched the entirety of the debate between Ken Hamm of the Creation Museum and Bill Nye the Science Guy.  Now, I am not, nor will I ever be, a scientist.  When I was of grade school age, I did have thoughts of becoming an archaeologist or an astronomer.  However, as you may notice, I am neither of those things, so I'm not going to delve too incredibly deep into the science of it all.  Anyway, the debate itself was interesting, though it did not quite capture the two opposing sides that I am considering.  It pitted Ken Hamm, a Christian and young-Earth creationist, against Bill Nye, an atheist who believes the Earth is billions of years old.  I am coming to this issue with one unquestionable truth: there is a God, and His hand was at work in the creation of this universe and this planet.  The question is whether he simply spoke things into being, or if he used processes such as the big bang and evolution to allow for the universe, the planet, and the human race to arrive at their current existence.

On one hand, I truly want to believe the literal Genesis creation story.  If I take the story as literal truth, it makes a lot of sense to me.  There are certain Biblical things that I would have issues reconciling if evolution is true.  For instance, as Christians, we accept that Jesus was a real person, flesh and blood.  The Bible lays out his genealogy, following His ancestral trail back through King David, back to Jacob and Abraham, back to Methuselah, and back to Seth, and back to Adam.  According to the Bible, Adam was the first man created.  Now, if you're an evolutionist, and you accept Jesus, and accept the people before Him in the ancestral line, what about Adam?  Was he a real person? 

If he was a real person, then he would have simply been the next generation.  He would have had parents and grandparents, and yet God chose Adam's generation as the first important enough to mention.  Would he really have done anything important?  Or was his name just chosen by the writer of Genesis as the scapegoat for bringing sin into the world? 

If evolution is the way God created humans over millions of years, was there one generation that did not have a soul, but their offspring did?  One generation not made in God's image, while the next generation was?  Did they know that they had a soul, and thus needed to worry about things like afterlife and righteousness, and sin, while their parents did not?  Did their parents have free will?  If the first sin brought death into the world, and thus there was no death in the world before that moment, and evolution happened over millions of years, would not every being that had been created before that moment still be alive up until the first sin?

If Adam was not a real person, then why was he included in Jesus' genealogy?  Why was it recorded that he lived 930 years, and that he was the father of Cain and Able and Seth?  Why would the genealogy of our savior include fictional characters?  If that part of the genealogy is not accurate, does that not bring into question the whole ancestral line?

On the other hand, I understand that the evidence to support evolution and the big bang are convincing.  Stars are moving away from each other - the universe is expanding.  There are mutations in nature, and new species do spring up.  There are fossils that seem to show changes over time. 

After watching the debate, my mind hadn't changed on one thing: I don't think this question is something we can truly answer.  We can look at the science and make observations, but those observations are based purely on the physical universe.  Like I said earlier, the one unquestionable truth in all of this for me is that God created the universe.  He had his hand on whatever process caused all of this to come into being.  I find it completely illogical to believe that, if there was a big bang, that it happened by itself, for ultimately, there needs to be a source.  There cannot be nothing, and then an explosion, for there was nothing there to explode. It makes no logical or rational sense.  So, we're dealing with a physical universe, in which we can only observe its physical attributes, and yet it was created, in part, by the actions of a limitless, incalculable supernatural being.  If you accept that God created everything, then you cannot be limited only by what can be physically explained.  If there was a big bang, the He started the fire.  If evolution was the path used to get us here, then He guided that path.  There may be things in nature that we cannot explain, because it was not created or affected by something natural.  I see God's handprints everywhere in nature, but I certainly don't believe that we can see all of God's handprints.  Science is a wonderful thing that should be embraced, but it can't and never will explain everything, because not everything is physically explainable.

I certainly cannot say that I unquestionably believe it was done in a certain way, but I have a harder time believing in evolution.  That's more of a personal bias though.  I don't like the idea of evolution.  That being said, at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter, because the foundation of my faith is not affected by which method God used to create the universe.  I can accept the fact that I do not know, and that some of my assumptions may be misguided or completely wrong, and that would be okay.  The only thing I can say I believe without question is that God is the great creator, and that it was His hand that created this amazing universe and this diverse planet.  I'll wait for Heaven to be sure of the details.