#26: Chris, Me, and that Evolution/Creation Thing (Part 1)

Confronting Origins of the Universe and Man

I hadn’t given the “evolution-creation thing” much thought until 10 years ago when science educator and television host, Bill Nye “the Science Guy,” and Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis (AIG), a young earth creation ministry, debated the question “Is Creation A Viable Model of Origins?”

A couple of audience-submitted questions being debated was:

• Does it damage children to teach them biblical creationism?

• What are the costs of denying evolution, one of evolutionary biology's core tenets, if any?

The event was live-streamed and those on both sides of the evolution/creation issue gathered in small and large groups nationwide to watch it together. My husband and I were among them. You can watch the full debate here.

Viewing the event together proved to be a fruitful experience, particularly given the preconceived ideas Chris and I later realized we had going into it. I suspect we weren’t alone on this score.

Chris’s Background

My husband, Chris, is a closet geologist, an almost archeologist, and has always been fascinated with the ancient world. As a kid, he read every book on ancient history he could put his hands on and watched The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston a gazillion times. I think he secretly hoped he could join an expedition to Mount Ararat to find Noah’s ark. Perhaps a retirement project?

Chris was also raised to believe in the Biblical view of creation even though he had to study Darwin’s theory of evolution, aka “natural selection,” in grade school. But nearly all his friends in southern Pennsylvania were Christians of some stripe (this is the home of the Amish, Mennonites, Dunkers, and German Lutherans) so no one really took it seriously. Everyone “knew” you learned one thing at home/church and another in public school.

Kelley’s Background

I, too, was raised as a creationist and never doubted the Biblical account in Genesis, but that was about the end of my knowledge of origins. Like Chris, I also learned about evolution in school and on visits to science museums, but I always dismissed it as another effort to ignore reality. Never once did I think I evolved from an ape.

Charles Darwin never even attempted to explain the origin of humans (much less the first human) so I didn’t think much of his theory—and I was a very curious kid. His whole “survival of the fittest” seemed random and well, a bit racist, as was the full title of his famous book: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

SIDEBAR » Indeed, the textbook A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (1914), written by George William Hunter, was at the center of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes in Tennessee in 1925. The book, which was the mandatory text in Tennessee high schools at the time, set forth views common to the then American Progressive movement, including broad support for eugenics. Recall that progressivism, which arose in the Enlightenment-era, is a left-leaning movement that seeks to improve the human condition through social reforms - reconsidering social organizations (the family), .

For some additional context, here are a just a few excerpts from A Civic Biology:

The Races of Man. – At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

Eugenics. – When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.

Parasitism and its Cost to Society. – Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

The Remedy. – If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with some success in this country.

The prosecution (State of Tennessee) won the case initially, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality.

The trial garnered national attention and highlighted the schism between those who thought evolution was consistent with religion and those who said the Word of God as revealed in the Scriptures takes priority over all human knowledge. It was as much a theological contest as a legal one.

The Last Generation

Chris and I were also among the last generation (Gen X) of American kids to be taught both evolution and creation as viable models of origins in public schools, even though creation science was given just about a paragraph of attention in a side callout. As was the case with Chris’ social circle, my friends were also raised in the church and we just laughed evolution off (much the same way naturalists laugh creation off today).

To be clear, we knew we (all humans) were special creations of God (per Genesis 1-3) and that there was only one race, the human race. We didn’t believe for a minute that we were advanced animals, and, if nothing else, special creation was a way cooler—and more believable—story than coming from cave-dwelling swamp scum that lived billions of years ago. Asking reasonable kids raised within the context of the Judeo-Christian consensus (that baseline for all of Western civilization and goodness in the world) to swap their beliefs in favor of evolution was futile. For us, evolution was nothing more than a billion year dystopian story of “eew to goo to you”!

A Note on Teaching Evolution and Creation in Schools

Teaching creation in public schools was outlawed in 1987 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578.

Edwards v. Aguillard centered on Louisiana’s Creationism Act which forbade teaching the theory of evolution unless instruction in the theory of creation accompanied it. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Louisiana law on the grounds it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, a very predictable result after the high court’s 1963 decision Abington v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203.

Abington was the seminal school prayer case given that it declared any speech supporting or otherwise endorsing the theistic worldview by an employee or agent of a public school constitutes a violation of the Establishment Clause. This means that if a high school teacher tells his classroom that the Founders were correct in stating that there are indeed Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God (referenced in the Declaration of Independence), he could lose his job.

With this decision, secular humanism (a product of the naturalist and evolutionary worldview) became the only permissible and acceptable worldview for the government to promote. With the imprimatur of the United States Supreme Court, America abandoned its founding worldview and principles it supports. To add insult to injury, the Court made it illegal to teach the truth of it. It’s been a sticky, tricky, mess ever since!

And we wonder why we fight?

Back to 2014

After Chris and I watched the Nye/Ham debate in a public forum, we rewatched it at home a few days later. For some reason, it awakened strong feelings in both of us and, for the first time in our then 6-year marriage, we struggled to find common ground on a major issue that had massive implications for how we understand the world.

At that time, we each had a more anemic understanding of the Scriptures and the Biblical worldview than we do now, so it was a curious, and perhaps even troubling, situation that caught us both off guard. We weren’t having an argument, just a conversation that revealed neither of us knew as much as we thought. And we weren’t equipped to navigate it well.

While Chris and I both agreed that the universe, and humanity, were created by God, we didn’t agree on the age of the earth and whether the Genesis account of origins could or should be taken literally. This meant that we weren’t in agreement about the age of the earth:

• Is it millions of years old?

• Or is it 6,000 - 10,000 years old?

Chris was initially taken by the arguments in support of an old earth, but the arguments for a young earth convinced me.

Gradually, he and I began to work through different perspectives on whether the six-day creation account was to be taken literally.

• Were the “six days” literal 24-hour days?

• Or were did they refer to longer periods of time, such as “the days of old”?

At that time, neither of knew how to read the Bible well and certainly didn’t realize there were competing interpretive methods, each with pretty big consequences for our understanding of God’s plan for the earth and humanity.

Even though I’d been a Christian (with varying degrees of commitment) most of my life, I was still what I’d call a “baby Christian” in terms of my understanding of the things of God. Frankly, I think I would have been more comfortable in “children’s church” than the main sanctuary back then. Most of what was coming from the pulpit went way over my head since I was ill-equipped to situate or contextualize the sermons with my barely-surface-level knowledge of the Scriptures. Chris was more or less in the same boat and neither of us was pulling our oar evenly.

20/20 Hindsight

Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, our respective views were more akin to “hunches” strengthened by some confirmation bias. Chris was more fluent in earth science and I didn’t have the knowledge or vocabulary to articulate, much less defend, my position well. Nor did either us truly understand the complementary relationship between Christianity and science, so it was a tough topic to engage. I was truly fearful that we were beginning to believe two very different things that could potentially have eternal consequences.

My reaction, in retrospect, was probably overblown, but it felt really big, ominous, and overwhelming at the time.

• What if Chris and I don’t believe in the same Bible?

• Will one of us go to heaven and the other to hell?

• What did all of this mean?

While those questions were a product of our fear and lack of knowledge, asking them began a decade-long and very honest conversation about ultimate things that we didn’t know we needed to have.

It was the beginning of an unexpected but extremely fulfilling journey of discovering origins and outcomes, beginnings and endings, and starts and finishes. To stay on the same page spiritually, which was of premium importance to us, we knew we had some work to do.

We haven’t rewatched the Nye/Ham debate since 2014, so perhaps we’ll mark the 10th anniversary of our excavation of “everything” by taking another look. We certainly bring very different preconceptions to the table today.

I tell this story because it was the first time I considered that the concept of origins matters in profoundly important ways.

SIDEBAR » As I began my search a couple of years ago, I wanted to know what was true, regardless of my preconceptions or previous assumptions. I didn’t just want to know what was true, in my opinion, I wanted to know what was objectively real, true for all people, at all times, and in all places. I wanted to understand reality as it is, not as I wanted it to be.

While I didn’t really understand the concept of worldview in 2014, I knew that how and what we believed about how things begin mattered - a lot - and that I needed to know more.

We’ll leave it there for now and be back next time with Part 2 of Chris, Me, and that Evolution/Creation Thing!

xo,

Kelley

October 12, 2024