The Incompatibility of Biblical Christianity and Evolution

 This is a long article, but from my heart on an important subject.

Darwinism is alive and well in the 21^st century.  In just the past few years, several prominent atheists/evolutionists have released books that have rermained on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks and months, not just days.  Books like Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea have not only garnered academic and scientific praise, but popular acclaim as well.  Because of this onslaught from naturalists and its increasingly popular appeal, Christians have sought to figure out how to deal with the apparent increased popularity of Darwinism and at the same time how it figures into the Bible, if at all.  Organizations such as Answers in Genesis (AiG) have strived to uphold the Bible as the Word of God and to carefully, and even scientifically, explain the Bible, the world, and science in terms of the clearly defined Biblical account of creation in thousands, not millions, of years.  AiG starts with the Bible, assumes it is truth, then uses science to explain what we see in terms of God’s word.  They have done an admirable job. 

Others, however, start with science, and all of its naturalistic and evolutionary assumptions, and then try and make the Bible and God fit this scheme of thought.  In the first paragraph of an article in The Christian Century magazine entitled “God in Evolution: The Nature of Divine Power,” Amy Frykholm states, “While controversies over evolution continue to arise in some sectors of American Christianity, most mainline Christians have made their peace with Darwin. We may not grasp all the nuances of the scientific debate, but we have concluded that evolutionary theory is good science and therefore must be compatible with good theology. Darwin’s name doesn’t send chills up our spines. We are theistic evolutionists: we believe that natural selection is evidently part of God’s method of shaping the natural world.”[1]  She and others have made peace with Darwin, but what exactly does that mean?  How do Christians in fact make peace with Darwin, hold to the naturalistic evolutionary process, and at the same time believe in the God of the Bible who created the universe and plays an active role in its sustainment?