Genesis and The theory of evolution

John Clayton, promoter of the “Does God Exist?” program, In his book, ‘The Source’ wrote:

“Ever since the first ideas about evolution appeared around 900 B.C., men have viewed the subject as an adamantly opposed concept to the concept of a supreme being. . . If we look carefully at the issues about which we are talking, however, we can find that evolution and the Bible show amazing agreement on almost all issues and that one is not mutually exclusive of the other. . .”

The theory that all life on this planet evolved over time from atoms floating in some biotic soup is the way that God chose to do it as many “theistic evolutionists” have accepted this basic scientific framework of evolution. And they see no conflict between this and the teaching of Genesis 1. In fact, some would say that Genesis 1 supports such a view. After all, if God is a creative God, why should he not take time to do it?

Each of the Bible spokesmen treated the Genesis record of origins as literal history and actually it was written against the flawed polytheistic and pantheistic accounts of creation found in the Ancient Near East at that time. Genesis was not written as a science book to answer questions from physicists or biologists living in the 21st Century. This is vitally important to grasp hold of, for it sets the opening chapters of Genesis into their rightful context, to a time when people knew nothing about microbes or supernovas. Theologians claim it is not important what Genesis says, only what it means. They feel Genesis is meant only to teach us that God is Creator, but it is done in symbolic terms because in reality the words really mean God used evolution.


Dr Earnest Lucas - Can we believe Genesis today? : “It is argued that the more closely one looks at Genesis 1 in the light of the religious ideas with which the Hebrews had to do battle, the clearer it is that the meaning of the Genesis passage is essentially theological, not scientific. It deals with the questions which theology asks, not those which science asks. Those theological questions are just as relevant today as they were 3,000 years ago. They are more important than the scientific questions, since they go to the heart of the meaning and purpose of the universe in a way that science cannot”
Darwin himself never argued against the existence of God. From the second edition of his Origin of the Species, first published in 1859, he inserted a reference to the Creator who "originally breathed life with its several powers into a few forms or into one”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us how to read Genesis: “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.”