This week we’ll discuss if evolution contradicts creation:

We’re using the “Handbook of Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli to go over the arguments for the existence of God.  Today, we will be covering the above question in relation to God.  Dr. Kreeft teaches logic in two major universities, so his arguments tend to be clear, concise and very helpful.

Does Evolution Contradict Creation?

What we have said above, and elsewhere in this book, seems to show clearly that the answer is no. God created the universe at the beginning of time; the universe could not possibly have evolved, because there was nothing for it to have evolved from, and not even any time for it to have evolved in. But what about life evolving? God may have created organic life directly or he may have evolved it from inorganic life by natural processes; nothing we know for sure in either theology or science, God or nature, makes us absolutely certain of either answer.

Now the human body is one form of organic life. If organic life-forms evolved by natural selection, the human body may have done so too. Or God may have created it directly. Certainly, a God who creates a whole universe from nothing can perform miracles within that universe, including creating that comparatively little thing called a human body, if that is what he wished to do. Nothing we know about either nature or God seems to make it impossible for our bodies either to have evolved, or to have been created directly.

The soul, however, cannot evolve. Spirit cannot evolve from matter; it would be easier to get blood from a stone. No matter how many atoms you line up, or how complicated their lineup, you cannot get a wholly different thing—thought, consciousness, reason, self-awareness—from mere bits of matter. Awareness of the material universe is not one more part of that universe. The knowledge of a thing is not one of the thing’s parts, it is transcendent to the thing, an addition from without. Science can say absolutely nothing about where souls come from, for souls simply are not the sort of thing you can see or measure. (For more on creation and evolution, see External Contradictions?.)

Kreeft, P., & Tacelli, R. K. (1994). Handbook of Christian apologetics: hundreds of answers to crucial questions (p. 107). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.