I’m not a scientist. And this issue isn’t critical to my faith. I mean, it’s possible that God put in place evolution. It’s also likely that God was responsible for the variety of life on this planet without evolution.
I have noted a couple of things. While we can breed animals for desired traits, we have yet to breed a dog and yield a cat. Or a snake. This makes me wonder about the supposed mechanism to yeild multiple species from a single origin, without God’s help.
Secondly, in the variety of life, there are quite sophisticated adaptations. So many, that it makes me doubt that it all could be some huge accident.
I’m firmly in the camp of this being God’s will, and God’s design. But, those that believe in evolution don’t bother me. We’ll all find out what the answer is, one day.
We did breed carp and yielded goldfish
The one problem you must consider then is if you believe the Bible, is that death entered the world through original sin. So how do you have evolution without death?
I just finished reading Richard Dawkin’s “Selfish Gene”.
I find the argument compelling for what I and others term “micro” evolution.
There are still great gaps in evidence (so-called missing links that SHOULD rival or outnumber “links” in the fossil record) for the idea of Evolution as a displacement of a Creator.
Atheism is not a necessary prerequisite for a belief in evolution. However. Evolution IS a necessary prerequisite for a belief in Atheism. The greatest result of a theory of Evolution is to transform the relationship of the world culture to God as a lateral instead of vertical relationship. Agnosticism doesn’t carry as much weight when evolution shows how God can be ignored, altogether.
Except. No honest account of evolution can accomplish that goal. Only those that require that evolution must give them cover to deceive themselves can actually accomplish the link that evolution dismisses a Creator.
Dawkins on page 86 of “The Selfish Gene”: “The gene pool is the long-term environment of the gene. ‘Good’ genes are blindly selected as those that survive in the gene pool. This is not a Theory; it is not even an observed fact: it is a tautology.”
The above is an amazing admission of faith.
The bottom line is that however compelling evolution might be, there is a God-shaped hole in its presentation. In order to ignore that gap requires a faith of a different type, but nevertheless: faith.