No, it sounds like evolutionary creationism. And there are a lot of evolutionary creationists everywhere, not just at BioLogos. It is far more widespread than that particular corner. The vast majority of Christianity, close to 70 percent, believes in evolutionary creationism of one kind or another, so you will find them everywhere—including this place (waves).
Side note for readers: BioLogos was the project of Francis Collins, for whom I have profound disrespect.
Peaceful Science was the project of S. Joshua Swamidass, for whom I have much respect. I tend to direct people away from BioLogos and toward Peaceful Science, as well as the
Faraday Institute for Science and Religion (Denis R. Alexander),
American Scientific Affiliation (and its peer-reviewed journal
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith),
Christians in Science (UK-based), and the
Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS).
Which is why I never say just “evolution,” devoid of any context. I always contextualize it as biological evolution, or evolutionary science, or the theory of evolution, and so on. Otherwise, we talk about things like the evolution of social media and that’s just not the same thing.
This is an example of things that never happened. I challenge you to identify this ever happening, anywhere. Using cited quotes that can be verified, provide a concrete example of (a) different forms of evolution, and (b) someone substituting macroevolution for microevolution.
Thank you for admitting that it’s true. An honest and courageous move. Now we can narrow the discussion to focus on this term,
macroevolution.
And let’s start by cleaning up the erroneous adjective “lesser,” which does not belong to evolutionary science. Value-laden terms belong to philosophy, not science. It also hints at the Greek idea of a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, the
Great Chain of Being (derived from Plato and
Aristotle), which Christianity inherited (from syncretic Neoplatonism to medieval scholastic synthesis).
In science, life is not categorized into greater and lesser beings. A salamander is not lesser than a dog, it is just different (especially when you consider that a salamander genome is over ten times bigger than a dog genome).
So, an accurate restatement would be, “Macroevolutionary processes speak of descent with modification from a
common ancestor,” wherein ancestral and descendant populations are different species.
Would you agree that this is an accurate statement of what macroevolution entails?
Please identify which fallacy is being committed there.
I don’t know what you’re asking. When I said that evolutionary history does not map onto Genesis, I meant that it cannot be overlaid onto Genesis as if the text were attempting to describe three billion years of biological development. (It is not.)
I distinguish between
natural history and
redemptive history. Evolution belongs to the former, the providential unfolding of creation through time. Genesis, however, marks the earthly dawn of redemptive history, God’s covenantal engagement with humanity under the first Adam as our representative head. In other words, over three billion years of natural history had already elapsed by the time we reach Adam and the events in the garden of Eden.
The technical term for what I reject is
concordism, which is “the hermeneutical view that biblical statements pertaining to the physical world correspond to scientific facts” (
van den Brink 2022). An an example of this is the Day–Age view of Hugh Ross, who tries to map a multi-billion-year-old earth onto Genesis 1 (emphasis added):
In this view the theory of common descent is still rejected; at the beginning of each biological group or main species is God’s creative word. However, the progressive unfolding of God’s creative work over long periods of time is accepted. The order in which the main species appeared on earth is considered to mirror the sequence of God’s creative acts as recorded in Genesis 1. … The Christian belief that God created the universe is not dependent on a detailed correspondence between the Old Testament creation records and the results of scientific research.
Let me reiterate: I emphatically reject this idea and the whole approach. Concordism simply fails.
This is a false allegation. I don’t use any terms outside their common meaning—including macroevolution.
I don’t know what that was supposed to say. However, I do not deny that Adam was made of dust. I deny, rather, that he was the only one. Just like you and I and everyone else, so Adam was made of dust (Ps.103:14; 1 Cor. 15:48).
