I had never read an entire book on theistic evolution so I thought that Saving Darwin, by Karl Giberson, would be an excellent place to start. When I read the subtitle, How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, I decided to read it with an open mind to see if Mr. Giberson could come up with any good arguments for theistic evolution. His reasons were not very convincing and his support of those reasons was even less convincing.
His tone, throughout the book, was very condescending and he constantly referred to the theory of evolution as a fact that only the foolish and uniformed could believe otherwise. Giberson is so confident that evolution is a fact he says, “There is, quite simply, a mountain of evidence from multiple sources supporting evolution.”1 My problem is that this mountain of evidence is not scientific evidence but inferences from observation. Scientific evidence can only be obtained from observable and repeatable experimentation and origins by definition are not subject to the scientific method. How everything began can only, in the last analysis, be accepted by faith and evolution is clearly not a fact but a theory that can only be accepted by faith.
In order to get a theistic evolution worldview Giberson has to basically trash (Genesis 1-3). He believes that we can’t take (Genesis 1-3) literally because it conflicts with his worldview of science. As a result, fundamental Christian doctrines, such as man being made in the image of God, the Fall of man and how sin entered the world, and how man was made from the dust of the earth have to be interpreted away. The problem is that if we choose to not interpret these passages literally then why should we believe later on in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, as Giberson believes, since clearly miracles are outside of science. And since the Bible is full of miracles, which ones should we believe in, since all of them are outside of the realm of science. Clearly, Giberson believes that science should be the lens we should view our world with and not the Bible.
Clearly macroevolution has never been observed. And since there isn’t even a hint in the Bible that God used this method to bring us about, why should we trash the literal interpretation that God shares with us, in Genesis, on how man came about, for a theory that has only circumstantial evidence?
Giberson makes a fair point when he states, “If the earth was really just a few thousand years old as the Bible seemed to indicate, why would God plant evidence to trick us into thinking it was billions of years old?”2 But I can just as easily state, why would God not tell us how he created the world and humans by the process of evolution, if he did, and instead trick us that he did it the way Genesis 1 clearly states. My biggest problem with theistic evolution is why did God need billions of years of trial and error to bring about man – couldn’t he have brought about man simply the way he said he did. If God can raise Jesus from the dead he certainly could have made man from the dust of the earth.
1 Karl W. Giberson, Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution: (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), p. 194.
2 Karl W. Giberson, Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution: (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), p. 7.