 Is it possible to believe that the Bible is true and evolution is real? Some Christians say yes and argue that God created the earth over billions of years and He used evolution to create the diversity of life that we see today. Others disagree and say evolution contradicts fundamental Christian tenets like a literal Adam and Eve in a historic fall. Today, we'll explore the issue with leaders on both sides. Welcome to Up For Debate. I'm Julie Royce. Joining me today is Deborah Harzma, president of Biologos, a group committed to promoting an evolutionary understanding of God's creation. Challenging her perspective is Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute, a critic of evolution and a proponent of intelligent design. We'll hear from both guests in a moment, but first, here's what some of you think about whether or not Christians should embrace evolution. Well, I'm not so sure that it makes sense to say that man evolved from, you know, some other life form as if God created something prior to man and man came from that. My worry there is the thought that man is simply a more intelligent form of another created being. I mean, if he wanted to use theistic evolution, I'm sure he could have. He is God. I'm not. So at the heart of it, I believe God created the world. Well, coming from my worldview that is based on the Bible, God put man on the earth. He created them on the sixth day from the dust of the earth. I would say no. I don't believe there's evidence for it in the biblical record. I do believe in theistic evolution because I don't think the Genesis account was meant to be taken literally. So what do you think? Did God intend Genesis to be taken literally? Or did he intend it to be more of a metaphor? Do you think Christians need to embrace a literal Adam and Eve? Or is it okay to think of them symbolically? And what do you think of the evidence for evolution? Is it so overwhelming that refusing to embrace evolution is tantamount to believing that the earth is flat? Evolution is definitely one of those beliefs that the majority culture embraces. But evangelicals largely do not. According to a Pew Research Survey, only 27 percent of evangelicals agree that humans and other living things have evolved over time. However, among those unaffiliated with the religion, 78 percent agree with an evolutionary perspective. So is this one of those areas where Christians just need to kind of get with the times? Or is it an area where we need to stand firm and uphold a Christian worldview that may be counter to the culture's worldview? While helping us to sort that out today are two Christians with two very different views on evolution. Supporting theistic evolution is Deborah Harzma, president of Biologos and someone with a PhD in astronomy. Previously, Deborah served as professor and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College. She's also authored several books on creation, evolution and intelligent design. So Deborah, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you join us. Thank you, Julie. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. Yeah. And also joining us today is Steven Meyer, director of Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture and also one of the world's leading proponents of intelligent design. Steven holds a PhD in the philosophy of science and is author of numerous books including Darwin's Doubt, Signature in the Cell and his most recent Theistic Evolution. So Steven, thanks so much for taking the time today and welcome to Up for Debate. Yeah. It's great to be here. Good morning from the West Coast. Good morning. And I know for some of you, it's afternoon if you're on the East Coast. So welcome all of you. And interestingly, both you, Steven and Deborah contributed to a book called Four Views on Creation, Evolution and Intelligent Design. Let's begin our discussion today with some definition of our terms because I think that's really helpful before we debate them. Let's know exactly what we mean by them. So Deborah, let me start with you. Would you explain what Theistic Evolution is? All right. So Theistic Evolution is a broad term for a lot of views that accept some form of God and the evidence for evolution of the scientific process of evolution bringing about the diversity of life on earth. At Biologus, we take a narrow review of that that we call evolutionary creation. It's parallel to younger creation, older creation because we want to emphasize God as the creator. And Christians then can disagree about how God went about creating. And we believe that God did use this process that we described as evolution to bring about the species. And we, people who use the term evolutionary creation, hold to the truth of Scripture and the authority of God's word and believe that all of that can sit together with a robust understanding of the theology of creation. And let me just ask a question that Steven, you actually ask in your book, as far as clarification of your view, Deborah, do you affirm the view of mutation and natural selection as completely undirected kind of process, or do you believe that God actually guided the mechanism or process of evolution? Yeah, well, what I might mean by guided and what Steven means in his question are a little different. I'll say that God governed and controls the process of creation. He upholds the existence of these laws and that evolution is proceeding according to God's intention. The particular mechanisms of evolution that would include mutation and natural selection, but also other mechanisms from epigenetics and embryo development, there's a lot of different mechanisms going on. But all of those are our growing understanding of how God brought about life. Okay, now let me throw this to Steven Meyer, again, of Discovery Institute on Proponent of Intelligent Design. Steven, would you explain what intelligent design is and also why you prefer it over theistic evolution as an explanation of how God created the world? Yeah, absolutely. Intelligent design is the idea that there are certain features of life and of the universe that are best explained by the action of a designing intelligence rather than an undirected process such as natural selection and random mutation. And the kind of features we're talking about are in physics, for example, the fine-tuning of the laws and constants of physics and the initial conditions of mass and energy at the beginning of the universe, striking discovery of modern physics that the universe seems to be finely tuned to allow for the possibility of life. And in biology, we're finding extraordinary indicators of design. First of all, the miniature machines that you find in living cells, the rotary engines, the turbines, the sliding clamps, little tiny nano-machines that are being discovered within cells. And even more fundamental, the information that's stored in the DNA molecule that is necessary to building the proteins out of which those machines are made. So you have digital code, you have nano-machines, and then you have other fascinating things in the information processing system of the cell. You have automated error correction, what computer scientists call design patterns. You have control systems, integrated control systems. The integrated complexity of the cell screams design in the very specific sense that the key features that make life possible are features that we know from our experience to only arise from the activity of designing intelligences. So when we find a control system or a section of software, digital code, and any other realm of experience, and we trace it back to its source, we always come to a mind or not a material process. So we think we're seeing in living systems evidence of design. And we think that those of us who are, those design theorists among us who are Christians, I am one of those, see that this affirms versus in the Bible, such as Romans 1, which tells us that from the things that are made, the unseen qualities of the Creator are clearly manifest, His divine nature and power. And so we think that nature is bearing witness to the intelligence of the Creator and that you can tell by looking at these amazing systems both in biology and in physics. So it seems we have two sources of truth when we try to discern something like how God created or how everything came into being. One, which you're referencing is just the natural world, the general revelation that God gave us, that we can actually look at creation and make some inferences from looking at creation that's affirmed in Romans 1, for example, or the Psalms where it says that the heavens declare the glory of God. So I think it's okay to say, you know, as Christians, let's look at the science that is indicated here and see what the science says. Also, then look at the second source, which would be the Bible, specific revelation. And let's unpack that and see if it's consistent with our views. So let me start since you did. Yeah, that's exactly right. And it speaks to why I didn't answer the second part of your question about why I favor design over theistic evolution. We have these powerful evidences of design that are also, I should add, not being adequately explained by standard evolutionary mechanisms. There's a major book out with MIT Press, with two authors, Gerd Muller and Stuart Newman, and in their, called On the Origin of Organismal Form. And in the introduction to this book, they have a table of unsolved problems in evolutionary theory. And in their introduction, they say that the neo-Darwinism, with its reliance on the mechanism of mutation and natural selection, is still the textbook orthodoxy in evolutionary theory. But they say no theory of the generative. It's not a creative process. Many other evolutionary biologists are now saying that natural selection explains the survival, but not the arrival of the fittest. And so just the time when you have all this striking evidence of design and leading evolutionary biologists within the field saying the evolutionary mechanisms that we know of lack the creative power to generate that design, the integrated complexity, what Muller calls morphological novelty and phenotypic complexity, you have folks on the biologous side of the discussion, the evolutionary creationists and theistic evolutionists saying, well, we need to accept that natural selection and other evolutionary mechanisms are God's way of creating. And I think it's just a mistake to equate mechanisms that, for scientific reasons, lack creativity with the creative power of God. Okay, let me throw this to Deborah. I want to give you a chance to respond to that. And let's just, let's start with the science. Since, Steven, that's what you brought up. Design, is it explained by evolution? How do you respond to some of the points that Steven just made? Yes, so there is a fascinating debate going on among evolutionary biologists about these mechanisms of creation. And you mentioned some of those. We, the consensus among biologists, 99% of biologists, affirm evolution as the process by which life came about. They affirm the common ancestry of all life. There is a debate about the details of how this works. And I think it's a lot, there's a lot of open questions there. When we consult the biologists in our network who are at many leading universities, they see this as a fruitful research area. And that, as we discover how these different mechanisms work together, that these explanations are able or will soon be able to explain the origin of life. I do want to say, to highlight one point Steven made of, he said, design in a limited sense. I do want to say that I believe God designed the world and God is intelligent and a creator. And that design, I fully affirm the fine tuning that Steven mentioned of the fundamental laws of physics from the beginning of the universe. We see that it was crafted in order to bring about complexity. That the laws and the particles are such that it could produce the complexities, galaxies that we see of this planet and of life. And we believe that biologists, that God intended and designed the universe to bring about this life. Okay, so what I'm hearing is, 99% of biologists affirm this view. And I hear that a lot, and that God created the laws that then maybe, are you saying those laws are what accounted for the apparent intelligence that we see in nature? Because that's what I'm looking for. What does evolution, how does it describe or how does it explain this incredible amount of apparent design? Oh, and it is designed. So what is amazing is how God created a process where the creatures could explore the possibility space in the biochemistry and in the body plants in order to create the whole host of amazing creatures that there are. And they truly display God's glory and power. So I affirm Romans 120, I believe that the universe just affirms in every way God's beauty and glory and power and design. And the very fact that there is DNA, that the letters of the DNA are so fundamental to life just resonates so beautifully with what we know of Christ as the logos, the word. But it doesn't evolution say it all happened by a random process, an undirected process. At least that's what I'm trying to get to. How do we get designed from an undirected random process? So I don't think that random means an absence of God. So humans use random processes with intention all of the time, like a coin flip before a game. You actually want it to be an undetermined outcome for fairness or in a video game. A designer will put in random elements in order to make the game more interesting. And so I think God has chosen to use random elements in creation in order to bring about the variety that he intended. Deborah, I'd like to just pose a question that somebody called in and asked, what is the evidence for evolution? What do you think it would be the strongest evidence for embracing evolution as the mechanism God used for creating the world? Sure. So there's multiple lines of evidence and some of these lines would be things I think Stephen might affirm in some ways. So one is the fossil evidence. For example, we see intermediary fossils in the development of whales. These are originally descended from land mammals and we see this gradual progression of the creatures becoming more adapted for ocean living. So the fossil record is incredibly rich and growing rich as we discover more and more of those intermediary fossils. In addition, there's the genetic evidence, which is just pouring in. You know, we know about the human genome project and now the genomes of many humans have been sequenced and many other species as well. And so you can actually track the family tree of all of the species through the DNA, and it is a wonderful confirmation of the view that we've built through the fossil evidence. So the fossil evidence first gives us a picture of the relationships between the species and makes predictions about how those are related. And then it's confirmed in the genetic information. OK, let me ask you a question right there. Just from a biblical standpoint, how do you reconcile that? And I'll let Stephen weigh in in just a second. But how do you reconcile that with just the scripture? It says that each reproduced according to its kind. Sure. And yes, do give Stephen a chance to respond as well. So each according to its kind, this is what we know in our all of our experience, cats give birth to kittens, dogs give birth to puppies. We know that that's how the creatures work, but God created them according to many different kinds. God also said, let the land bring forth life, which is has this interesting resonance with the evolutionary process of species arriving arising out of the fertile earth. So the Genesis was written in an ancient context, something like 3,000 years ago in a very different culture that was pre-scientific. And since they did not have a conception of these scientific terms, that God was teaching them something else in those passages. And so we did teaching them important theological truths rather than modern scientific concepts. OK, let me throw that to Stephen. How do you, one, account for the fossil evidence and the genetic evidence, but also what does the Bible mean when it says reproduced according to its kind, do you accept Deborah's explanation there? Let me go back to something she said before the break, because I think it's really the key issue. There's a bit of equivocation around definitions with the term evolution. I just mean generally, Deborah's done a good job to distinguish between the mechanism of evolution and the pattern or alleged pattern of common ancestry, which is a theory about the history of life and the crucial question in evolutionary biology today is what actually caused the new forms of life to arise in the book, the Four Views book in which Deborah and I interacted in print. And it's fun to do it over the over the phone as well in Viva Voce as a word. She affirmed that the gradual process of evolution was was crafted by God to create the diversity of all life. And then she she equates that gradual process with the process of natural selection and random mutation. And that's precisely what leading evolutionary biologists are disputing. I was at the Royal Society meeting. I was at the Royal Society meeting in the November of 2016. And the leading the meeting was called because leading evolutionary biologists are concerned about the absence of a mechanism that has the creative power to account for what they called morphological innovation, the origin of new form. And the first talk at that conference by Gerhard Muller laid out what he called the explanatory deficits of the standard neo-Darwinian evolutionary mechanism. And the rest of the conference was looking for for new mechanisms that could fill in that gap. Now, whenever we challenge the biologous people on that and their their willingness to equate the creative power of God with a failing evolutionary mechanism, they come back and assert that there is a ninety nine percent consensus around common ancestry. Well, first of all, that's that's a separate question. What is the pattern of life, not the process or the mechanism by which it was created? That's a different definition of evolution. And secondly, I don't accept that there was a ninety nine percent consensus in our book Theistic Evolution. We have some very prominent biologists from both sides of the the ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, who are also challenging universal common descent. And one is the German paleontologist, Gunter Beckley, who has spent for a long time a lead curator at the Stuttgart Museum of Natural History. It's multiple dozens of publications in paleontology. And in an article that he and I jointly wrote together, we go through the fossil record and show that there were I wrote a whole book about something called the Cambrian explosion, the abrupt appearance of animal forms and so record. But we show that there are actually 17 or 18 major what are called radiations in the history of life where that that show that the the dominant pattern in the fossil record is that of abrupt appearance without discernible and connections to ancestors in earlier lower strata. So the the idea that the fossil record supports even universal common ancestry, let alone the creative process of mutation and selection is simply contradicted by the evidence. And I think just simply appealing to a consensus and throwing out a number like 99 percent really doesn't engage the scientific argument or the scientific problems associated with with the evidence that I think that's mounting against the standard theories of macro evolution. Deborah, you probably want to respond to that. I do. So, Steven, you say that I equate the process by which God used to create with mutation and natural selection. And I was pretty careful not to do that. Mutation and natural selection is one important mechanism of evolution. But I also said there's many other mechanisms of evolution. And with all of those at work, it's the whole larger picture of common ancestry plus a set of several likely mechanisms that working together could do this. You also so I I feel like you are mischaracterizing the state of the science by calling it, you know, that there is this incredible lack of consensus or debate over these things. We use the 99 percent number because we know that there's a misconception among a lot of evangelicals that scientists are deeply, deeply divided about evolution and common ancestry entirely. And you, I think, agree that there is a broad consensus on common ancestry, even if not universal. And that's what we want to convey to our audience, that there's something here and that consensus is based on the strength of the scientific evidence. And I said that I would give Deborah a chance to respond a little bit more. But I do want to just quickly go to a phone call and let some of our listeners weigh in, because so many of them are eager to do so. Let me go to Robert calling from Tampa, Florida, listening on WKES. Hey, Robert, welcome to up for debate. Hello, thank you. Yeah, what's your comment? Comment on something that Deborah said, where she was offering the support for evolution by by saying the example of the game designer that introduces a random element, well, a very fact that the game designer made a conscious decision in the focus thought to introduce some element. That's not random at all. And she also was speaking about fossil evidence, supposedly supporting the evolutionistic position, but we know from archaeology, a number of examples where they have found fossil records of fossil items, be they animal or plant that come from mixed periods that evolutionists talk about and the very fact that they're in the same fossil record disproves the concept of evolution. So those are just two examples. All right. Let me throw that to Deborah. Can you respond to that? So on the first one about the video game designing in that in that analogy, which isn't perfect, God would be analogous to the video game designer in choosing to create a system that includes those random elements. So I definitely believe there is intelligent design in God making that decision to include randomness. And that was his conscious choice. And then watching how that plays out, it plays out according to his intention. Interesting leads that you see randomness and positive waves in many areas of nature, like the formation of snowflakes. They are bounced around through the atmosphere. And the thing we love about snowflakes is that each one is unique. And that's because it's a random process. And so in there, we see both the beauty and order of the six-sided symmetry and the randomness leading to incredible variety and beauty in that structure. He also mentioned the fossil evidence. And I'm not sure exactly what he's referring to there. I'm not familiar with that. But I know that overwhelmingly throughout the earth that in the different layers of rock, you do see creatures all from one epoch and that they are not mixed together. One of the things though that you said is that we see transitional forms. And I thought that was one of the things that was lacking in the fossil record was trans transitional forms. And we do see, I think, Steven referred back to the Cambrian Explosion where we see this sudden introduction of different life forms, so suddenly that it doesn't seem to match the evolutionary explanation. And how do you count for that? Let's see, the Cambrian answer is a bit different. So in the Cambrian Explosion, those fossils there are related to a certain epoch. But there is actually evidence of epochs before and after that, and especially before preceding it, that do show a more gradual transition leading up to that. Fossil evidence is tricky because most creatures die and do not have their fossils are not fossilized at all. So we have this very little sprinkling of the few creatures that are preserved in the fossil record for us. And what has happened over the last few decades is the discovery of many of the intermediary fossils that were previously unknown. And we fully expect as more paleontology work is done that more of those intermediaries will be discovered. So and you mentioned is one of the you mentioned is one of the intermediary, some of these predecessors of the modern whale. Is that right? Yes. Yeah, that's been exciting. OK, so Steven, what do you say about these supposed predecessors of the whale? I mean, do you see those as intermediary? The more logical characters that distinguish whales from the preceding land mammals appear abruptly in a very narrow window of geologic time about one to three million years now is the recent date. The whale sequences, perhaps the best argument that can be offered for gradualism in the fossil record. And even it shows abrupt changes of the of the distinguishing morphological characters. In the case of the Cambrian explosion to refer to the earlier strategy is referring to would be the strata that preserve what are called the Ediacaran fauna. And no serious Cambrian paleontologists thinks that there's a morphological connection between them anymore and also the idea that the missing ancestors are not being preserved is what's called the artifact hypothesis. And the leading paleontologists of the Cambrian period are also rejecting that as well. We've been searching for ancestral forms for a very long time and the depositional environments in the Cambrian locales such as Southern China are preserving small microscopic organisms in the lower strata probably microscopic sponge embryos. But they're not preserving the ancestors to the much larger and more complex animals that come later. So it's really hard to argue that the ancestral forms simply weren't being preserved or were preserving microscopic soft tissue organisms but not the ancestors for say trilobites. So but I really want to get back to the more important point about the process or the mechanism of evolution because fundamentally evolution is a theory of creation. That's why our friends are calling it evolutionary creationism. And Deborah said that that she carefully noted that natural selection wasn't the only such evolutionary mechanism. And she does say that natural selection and other evolutionary mechanisms are responsible for macro evolution. In my book Darwin's Doubt and also in our new book critiquing theistic evolution we very carefully critique these other evolutionary mechanisms and show them to be inadequate as well. And in the review of my book that was published on the Biologos website by one of their leading biologist Darrell Falk who was Deborah's predecessor as president of Biologos. He says very explicitly that Steven is right that none of the other evolutionary models fit the bill in a fully satisfactory manner either. So it's fine to invoke these other unspecified or yet vaguely formulated evolutionary mechanisms but none of them nor natural selection and random mutation account for the origin of new biological form the abrupt appearance of the new form that we see in the history of life. And none account for the origin of the information the digital code that's necessary to build that form. And it's true that there are random processes in nature but random processes don't generate information. If you want to generate a section of digital code you don't rely on a random number generator. That requires intelligence that requires a programmer. And so the crucial things that need to be explained in the history of life are the origin of form and the origin of information that's necessary to build that form. And those things we know from experience always require intelligent design not undirected processes whether they rely on on chance or randomness on the one hand or or natural laws on the other natural laws just for just repeating patterns of order like the six sided symmetry of a snowflake or a crystal of salt. They don't generate informational sequences. They generate mantras but not messages. I know we could discuss the science this entire time I feel like and I know that you guys love it because you're both scientific minded and I appreciate that and this has been fascinating. But I do want to get to the biblical issues that are at hand here too because I know that's what a lot of us are wrestling with that maybe aren't scientists and again this fascinating discussion. But I want to go to some of the biblical things and Deborah let me just throw this to you first. The idea of common descent that all organisms are related by descent you know with some common ancestor. How do you reconcile that with the idea that humans you know are made in God's image. You know at what point did man you know I mean I'm assuming you believe we descended from primates. At what point did man become man and do you believe in a literal Adam and Eve and do you believe in a literal fall and how do you reconcile that. Yes thanks because this is such an important question I'm glad you raised it. So at Biologos we believe that God created humans in his image and all Christians believe that. So what you're asking them is well how exactly and when exactly. And what we have the evidence in God's creation is that humans first arose about 200,000 years ago or so and that we arose as a population and that we have a population rather than just two individuals. And you know when I first learned that that there was more than two individuals at the headwaters of humanity I asked the Christian biologist really are you sure because I'm an astronomer I wasn't familiar with that genetics research at that time and they said yes and the evidence for that in the genetics is very strong that we do share common ancestry with chimpanzees and and other apes living today and that there was a large population at the beginning but that does not mean that there was no Adam and Eve there still could have been a historical pair living in a real place at a real time at the headwaters of humanity who are perhaps leaders of a group of people Adam and Eve could have been two individuals in the group that God called out and that represented humanity in that situation. Do you think there was a literal fall then too I mean that there was that there was Adam and Eve were the ones that introduced that actually sinned and violated God's law and then did suffering I mean did suffering come through sin or it seems like there must have been suffering before sin? Yes so in that scenario I spun there and there are other scenarios too but in that one yes Adam and Eve could have been the ones who first disobeyed God's command now the Bible teaches that death comes through sin and that is in most places it's referring to spiritual death the sting of death is sin and so that arose that break in our relationship with God arose through Adam and Eve's rebellion but nowhere does it say that animal death comes through human sin and so animal death is a separate issue and what we see in the evidence in God's creation is that many animals lived and died long before humans ever arose. AC is on the line calling from Cleveland Ohio listening on WCRF so hey AC welcome to up for debate. Hello I'd like to bring up something real quick earlier in the program Deborah said that the whales had evolved from land creatures and then they became whales okay and that's in direct opposition to what the scripture says because it tells us in Genesis chapter 1 verse 21 it says and God created great whales and every living creature that moved it. Yeah the land animals and the sea animals are created on different days so that does create a problem let me throw this to Stephen Meyer what do you think about about that and the explanations how evolutionists how they synthesize those things. Yeah in both the books that you've kindly touted on air and thank you for doing that I just I discussed the whale sequence so I may leave that to the readers of the books but I have a broader concern and it's the reason we wrote the book about theistic evolution than providing a scientific philosophical and theological critique and that is that our our friends at Biologos and it is a it is a great pleasure to interact with Deborah and and thank you for having us both on in case we don't get to say so at the end of the hour but our my concern is a Christian layperson who is immersed in the science of these issues is that that the our friends at Biologos are telling the the Christian world that they have to adopt essentially an evolutionary hermeneutic and reading scripture that is they have to assume the truth of evolutionary theory and then read scripture through that lens and that causes them to have to reinterpret a lot of of standard standard theological doctrines and theological understandings and so in Deborah's response to your question before the break she was talking about different possible scenarios and it could have happened this way and that way and and what that reflects is this need to reinterpret the the scriptural texts and one of the reasons we wrote the book is to to show to Christian laypeople and and to theologians and to pastors and seminary professors you don't need to adopt this evolutionary hermeneutic you're not under an intellectual obligation to accept it we think that the the folks at Biologos rely too much on their assessment of consensus in science and not enough on critical scientific evaluation of the actual evidence they claim that on the basis of a population genetics model that was put forward by Francisco Ayala that that the original human beings were not there wasn't an original breeding pair there wasn't a original male and female but there was a group of 10 000 or a population out of which human beings came that's one population genetics model in our book Theistic Evolution a very we have a very distinguished team including a population geneticist at the University of Stockholm named Ola Hussra and Anne Gager who has a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Washington and did a postdoc at Harvard and in embryology and molecular biology they have developed a population genetics model that shows that the diversity of genetic traits in the human population is perfectly consistent with an original two parent origin for our anatomically modern human beings so the idea that evolutionary current evolutionary doctrine is dictating a particular reading of scripture that's contrary to the readings that that are most natural on on the face of the text itself I think is what we're concerned about in the book I and I think we in a way want to liberate theologians and pastors and seminary professors from the sense of intellectual obligation or the the sense that they have to yield to this alleged consensus there's a lot of good reasons to doubt the consensus and therefore a lot of reasons to be skeptical about this evolutionary hermeneutic as a way of reading scripture just a minute if you have some last thoughts yes so it's good Stephen you raised what's the larger things at stake here and what we are doing at Biologus is presenting evolutionary creation as a faithful option we want faith leaders like you mentioned pastors theologian seminary professors to be aware of the scientific evidence that's out there and not just the consensus but the strength of the evidence itself and to be aware that there are ways of working with this with scripture we hold firmly to the truth of scripture we're not just willy nilly about it but we do talk about we do oftentimes talk about different options because we think the church needs to be debating these questions and what we feel is at stake is the the next generation of young people we hear all the time from Christian young people who are concerned about this issue and and older adults as well the next generation is confused about this issue although i would ask you know how many of them have really studied it i think they have this idea of consensus as well and haven't really delved into the issue but here's what i think you know when i read about god in the scriptures i find a creator who is intimately involved in his creation in Psalm 95 it says the sea is his for he made it and his hands formed the dry land similarly god formed man from the dust actually breathed into his nostrils the breath of life evolution presents a vision of god that to me as i read it is deistic a god who starts creation and then essentially abandons it in truth it seems to me it's more deistic evolution than theistic evolution i also find extremely problematic the notion that god intended genesis to be taken figuratively i can't accept that adam and eve and even the fall of mankind is symbolic and in that case you know when did man sin and what is sinning from the minute he evolved into a sufficient man-like person i you know and problematic to me too is the idea that there is suffering before the fall all these things make me feel like christians certainly are evolutionists but i do think it's incompatible with a christian world view that's my view thanks so much for joining me i hope you have a great weekend and god bless