Evolution Professor: Evolution Reconciles “Gross Evil and Suffering in the World”

This is from an article I read some time ago about evolution’s compatibility with the Bible (and religion): “According to the Bible, Jehovah made the first man perfect. It is impossible for God to make things any other way. The creation account says: “God proceeded to create the man in his image . . . After that God saw everything he had made and, look! it was very good.” (Genesis 1:27, 31) What is a perfect man like? A perfect man has free will and is able to imitate God’s qualities completely. The Bible says: “The true God made mankind upright, but they themselves have sought out many plans.” (Ecclesiastes 7:29) Adam chose to rebel against God. By his rebellion, Adam lost perfection for himself and his offspring. Man’s fall from perfection explains why we often disappoint ourselves, even though we want to do what is good. The apostle Paul wrote: “What I wish, this I do not practice; but what I hate is what I do.”—Romans 7:15. A perfect man would live forever in perfect health, according to the Bible. It is evident from what God said to Adam that if the first man had not disobeyed God, he would never have died. (Genesis 2:16, 17; 3:22, 23) Jehovah would not have declared the creation of man to be “very good” if the man had a tendency to get sick or to rebel. The fall from perfection explains why the human body, though marvelously designed, is susceptible to deformities and disease. Evolution is therefore incompatible with the Bible. Evolution presents modern man as an improving animal. The Bible presents modern man as the degenerating descendant of a perfect man." Barb

As you keep reminding us, Cornelius, most of the strongest arguments for evolution are of the form "God wouldn't have done things this way". ID proponents' primary arguments are of the form "unintelligent forces alone couldn't have done this". For me "couldn't have" is a much more scientific argument than "wouldn't have". In any case, you don't have to believe God had complete control over evolution to be an ID supporter. Granville Sewell

Really excellent post, Cornelius. The individual who wrote the recently published Mathematical Intelligencer "rebuttal" to my unpublished Applied Mathematics Letters article is a "Biblical scholar" who told me in an e-mail that this was one of his main arguments against ID. The fundamental flaw in logic here is the assumption that if you attribute ANYTHING to God, you have to attribute EVERYTHING to Him. We don't make this assumption about any other intelligent designer. Granville Sewell