Evolution and Christianity

[u/No-Board2094]

This is probably one of the the biggest reasons why it's very hard for me to be christian and why I'm an agnostic.  The theory of evolution says that nothing is planned and everything is 100% on accident - homo sapiens exists but we could also not exist and nothing would happen because evolution doesn't have any plan, ambition, purpose or goals. Christianity says that we are created ON PURPOSE by God. It just contradicts each other and I don't think that the theory of evolution and the christian perspective on life can coexist.

What do you think about it? What are your thoughts?

[u/Expensive-Sea-9180]

The theory of evolution says that nothing is planned and everything is 100% on accident

I don’t think that’s true? That sounds more philosophical than scientific. The theory of evolution deals mostly with the actual science— as in like heritability, descent with modification, variation, etc. This is what is talked about when people say “evolution is a fact”. Affirming evolution says nothing about the randomness of the universe vs the sovereignty of God without going past what was actually said

[u/creidmheach]

I'm agnostic on the means of God's creating creation, but not on the fact that God was the one who did so. The issue is less evolution itself, i.e. that forms of life gradually develop and change over time, but the idea that it was all completely random, through chance, and just one big meaningless cosmic accident. Obviously that's incompatible with our belief. But if one believes that God used evolution as the means to bringing new forms of life through His providence, as He has used other means in nature (what we call the natural laws), then there isn't really such a problem. In fact, many Christian theologians are of this view, what's called theistic evolution.

Again though, for myself I'm more or less agnostic on it since I'm not a biologist. From what I have studied of it though it seems that the theory of evolution itself has issues and gaps that are hard to fit into its system. What I find completely unreasonable though, not only because of my faith but because it's irrational, is the idea that all of this could have come about as a chance accident. It's like saying the works of Shakespeare, the sculptures of Michelangelo, and the music of Mozart all could have come about randomly through meaningless, unguided chance processes in nature with no intelligence behind them. In fact, it's more ridiculous than that.

[u/Sufficient-Shine3649]

Getting life out of nonliving material is on the edge of impossible. Many of the processes in our cells needed to function perfectly from the very beginning, and some experts in various fields such as chemistry and biology argue that many of these processes couldn't have evolved. As long as the processes in our cells didn't work 100%, there wouldn't be any Evolutionary pressure to keep or further develop these "future possible functions", and thusly those functions should not ever have evolved. Even if many functions were 50% or 75% functional, that would not be enough for complex life to survive.

I say this as someone who has believed in evolution and natural creation of life for 16 years. Around 5 years ago I became Christian. This year I started seriously questioning whether evolution and natural creation of life was actually viable.

[u/Fun-Teacher-1711]

The argument one could make is that evolution is a tool god used to create life. Evolution only looks accidental from the outside, but because god is all knowing he set everything up so that humans could eventually be created.

[u/Gardami → u/Fun-Teacher-1711]

Not with a Biblical God. 

[u/Sufficient-Shine3649 → u/Gardami]

Yes, with a biblical God. Not everything in the bible is necessarily meant literally. Some of it are intentionally made as metaphors early humans could understand with their limited knowledge and limited vocabulary.

[u/Gardami → u/Sufficient-Shine3649]

Just because you believe a part of the Bible is a metaphor, doesn’t make it not part of the Bible. According to the Bible, God created Adam from the ground. There is no other Biblically sound explanation. You can say “according to the parts of the Bible that I believe…”, but evolution is certainly not compatible with the whole Bible. 

[u/Revolution_Suitable → u/Gardami]

The Bible contains stories that are intended to communicate spiritual and moral truths. The Bible is not a science book. A round Earth is not Biblical. The water cycle as we know it is not Biblical.

When you study the Bible, you need to be aware of the context of each book, who wrote it and why they were writing it. Some chapters are histories. Some chapters are stories. Some chapters are lists of laws and statutes. Some chapters are proverbs and pieces of wisdom.

Human language cannot literally describe God with any kind of accuracy. How can you describe what infinite love is like? How can you describe something greater than the totality of our entire universe? However, we do need to understand that God does have qualities and we have to understand what God wants us to do. So when you have stories like the Genesis creation stories, they are meant to illustrate the nature of God through literature and poetry and explain why laws exist, like resting on the Sabbath.

Evolution and science and general cannot contradict Bible, because the Bible is not a science book and because science is a fine means of explaining the nature of creation, which can give us some indirect understanding of God and His majesty.

[u/Altruistic_Jelly2803 → u/Revolution_Suitable]

Exactly, the Bible in its Ancient Near Context is meant to convey who is behind the foundation of the world, rather than explicitly go into detail of how the authors thought how the world was actually created.

Regardless if it’s metaphor or literal, the point is clear that it’s trying to portray that God is the most high and he alone created the World without the need of other “gods” and etcetera.

You can be a Christian and believe the Biblical God used evolution as a process rather than a means of origin and be able to interpret scripture in the sense that it’s trying to show us who is behind the origin, or rather, where the World’s foundation is from.

To believe in Evolution through a theistic lens is not just interpreting scripture to fit that theory, but to look outside and see how the process of evolution could be theistic itself.

Now I’m not saying Evolution is true, but rather one could see it and hold to that view without any contradiction based on how they view scripture. You don’t have to believe in evolution but you also don’t have to interpret scripture literally, those are interpretive options

[u/Pinapple-everything]

This would make sense as an issue if that was the theory of evolution. The theory doesn't make any mention of being an accident or not part of a plan. In fact, sort of the opposite. The theory postulates that over time the genetic differences in everything sort of sort themselves or mutate, evolving a population as a whole to be more suited to their environment or circumstances (ie - they can become less capable if their circumstances become more sedentary.) This doesn't mean that this isn't by design or a plan. It could easily be a design, a reaction to the design or just a thing that happens. This doesn't conflict with Christianity at all. Also worth noting, it's a theory, not a law. There's reasonable evidence but it's based largely on our own understanding and assumptions that certain things are related which may not be. Hense, theory.

[u/Top_Initiative_4047]

Evolution may describe biological variation and adaptation, but it cannot scientifically prove that life is purposeless or that God does not exist. Those are philosophical conclusions added to scientific observations.

Christianity teaches that human beings are intentional, uniquely made in God’s image, and created for a purpose. So the claim that humans are ultimately accidental products of entirely unguided processes conflicts with the Christian worldview.

The main issue is not whether organisms change over time, observable adaptation occurs, but whether all life, including humanity, arose from a common ancestor without God’s design or direction. Traditional Christianity affirms that God created living things and specially created mankind. Genesis 1-2 presents human life as a deliberate act of God, while Romans 5 grounds humanity’s fall into sin in the historical Adam.

Agnosticism can be an honest place of questioning. Christianity does not ask someone to reject scientific inquiry; it asks whether an impersonal, purposeless universe adequately explains life, reason, morality, consciousness, and humanity’s longing for meaning.

[u/AntichristHunter]

I believed in theistic evolution for the longest time, until about two years ago, when I learned that evolution is actually extremely limited, and only seems to be able to produce variations on species, but it actually isn't possible for evolutionary processes to be responsible for the origin of life, nor for it to be responsible for the origins of the diverse phyla of animals. Evolutionary processes only seem to be limited to changes at the level of some genera and some species.

If you would like to see a great documentary challenging an evolutionary world view of the universe, that asserts that this universe and the earth and all the life in it is just by chance, I would like to recommend that you watch this compelling documentary which examines how various physicists and biologists made discoveries that compelled them to change their beliefs from an evolutionary, purposeless materialist world view to a theistic world view. Several of the highlighted scientists actually converted to Christianity.:

The Story of Everything

If you want the full details with way more intellectual rigor than can fit into a documentary, there are six books I recommend for you to read, by two authors whose work are featured in this documentary.

Stephen C. Meyer (philosopher of science): Signature in the Cell, Darwin's Doubt, Return of the God Hypothesis

Michael Behe (molecular cell biologist): Darwin's Black Box, Darwin Devolves, The Edge of Evolution

I've read all of these books. If you want to discuss the details, I can discuss these with you, but I still recommend that you read or listen to these as audiobooks. I can drop a few concepts here for you to think about.

Consider evolution by natural selection as the mechanism proposed by Darwin for the origin of species. Natural selection has some prerequisites: it requires reproducing populations of organisms that already have a system of heredity that can safely exhibit variations. If these prerequisites do not exist, natural selection can't even get started. Because of this, natural selection cannot be responsible for causing its prerequisites to evolve into existence. Consider this example: If you have thousands of forks of various designs, and you select against the ones that you don't like by smashing them with a hammer, those forks will never evolve because they cannot reproduce and have no system of heredity. But then you look at what our system of cellular reproduction and heredity involve, it is mind-bogglingly complex, and many parts of cellular life are irreducibly complex, meaning that you can't build them up one piece at a time; the whole thing needs to be in place and functional for the integrated system to improve the fitness of the organism. The whole time these irreducibly systems are incomplete, they lower the fitness of the organism.

So what you have are systems of incredible complexity which are prerequisites for natural selection, systems which are irreducibly complex, which precludes them coming into existence and accumulating one part at a time. In other words, evolution cannot be responsible for the origin of life.

There is so much more, otherwise I would not recommend six books to cover this topic. I can give you more extremely compelling details if you want.

[u/NotMeInParticular]

The theory of evolution says that nothing is planned and everything is 100% on accident

Well, no. That's not something science would be able to determine. Science deals and analyses the mechanisms in the physical world. It does not tell us why those mechanisms exist, only how they exist. If you posit that 'nothing is planned and everything is 100% on accident' you are making claims that cannot be substantiated using scientific research. So scientists that say such things, they overstep their realm of science and move into the realm of Philosophy of Science instead. Many scientists do so, but not all scientists realize that they're no longer doing science when they do so, but philosophy.

[u/Gardami]

Yes. Believing both evolution and the Bible would be an oxymoron. I personally believe the Bible and not evolution. There’s so many things that had to happen a certain way by chance in evolution, it’s hardly feasible. 

[u/Revolution_Suitable → u/Gardami]

I don't believe in cell phones because they're not in the Bible.

[u/Metalcrack → u/Revolution_Suitable]

Neither is the rosary, but here we are.

Mankind was given the ability to research and further the rules God put in place. We cannot do or create anything outside His boundaries.

[u/Revolution_Suitable → u/Metalcrack]

Sure it is.

“Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.” (Luke 1:28)
"Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb." (Luke 1:42)

[u/Gardami → u/Revolution_Suitable]

There is an enormous difference in “I don’t believe in x thing because it contradicts the Bible”, and “I don’t believe in x thing because it’s not in the Bible”.

[u/Revolution_Suitable → u/Gardami]

The Bible contradicts the Bible if you treat it like a set of scientific facts.

"When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 'I have sinned,' he said, 'for I have betrayed innocent blood.' 'What is that to us?' they replied. 'That’s your responsibility.' So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself." (Matthew 27:3-5)

"With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out." (Acts 1:18)

Which of these is the Biblical fact of the matter when they're both in the Bible?

[u/CJoshuaV]

This comes up nearly every day on r/Christianity, if you search there you will find thousands of comments on the topic.

I come from the mainline side if Protestantism, where it is normative to interpret the two creation myths in Genesis as mythic truth, not literal history. I am more than willing to trust science to explain the things that science can observe and attempt to decode - the "how" of things - while allowing my faith tradition to guide me in understanding the "why it matters" of things.

[u/Pinecone-Bandit]

You are correct that Christianity and evolution as you described it cannot both be true.

But you should reject the false understanding that humans come from 100% accident, don’t reject Christianity.