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Creationism, Evolution, and The Urantia Book
By Dick Bain
Evolution has been a bone of contention between science and religion ever since Darwin published his famous Origin of The Species in 1859. Darwin must have had some inkling of the storm he was about to unleash on the world since he delayed publishing for a number of years.
And what a storm it has been! Sometimes the debate has become very heated, with the anti-evolutionists portraying the evolutionists as Godless humanists and the evolutionists portraying the anti-evolutionists as ignorant religious fanatics. Biology teachers have had an especially difficult time since they teach the children of both groups, so they are right in the line of fire.
The famous 1925 so-called "Scopes Monkey Trial" of John Scopes, a biology teacher, highlighted this issue. Even though the trial was pre-arranged just to challenge the Tennessee law against teaching evolution, the intensity of the debate between attorneys Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan during the trial illustrates the tension between the two sides of this issue.
Since the authors of the papers comprising The Urantia Book portray both life and the universe as evolutionary, but not accidental, how will the various segments of our culture receive this book?
It seems to me that the evolutionary scheme of the Urantia Papers lies half way between the radical positions of strict evolutionist and radical anti-evolutionist. The strict evolutionist says that the origin of life is purely accidental and that the evolution of life is obviously a matter of natural selection. Natural selection, as defined by Darwin, says that new species occur because of the accumulation of small changes within a given species. The strict evolutionist says that appeal to a supernatural source is so much hubris. On the other hand, the anti-evolutionist usually objects to evolution on religious grounds. Their ideas are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, in particular the well-known six days of creation portrayed in Genesis. The positions of these two groups are pretty well entrenched; neither one is liable to convince the other of the correctness of their position.
The creationists are immovable because they base their beliefs on the Bible, and for them the Bible is the "Word of God." Their attitude seems to be that if any part of the Bible was called into question, then it would cast doubt on the truth of the entire Bible. Therefore, so-called Creationist scientists look for evidence that will invalidate the theory of evolution and thereby prevent this theory from undermining people's belief in the Bible as the inspired Word of God. They are especially interested in getting school boards to replace the teaching of evolution with the teaching of creation science, or at least having creation science taught along with evolution as an alternative theory.
To further their agenda, they have endeavored to get those who believe the creationist doctrine elected to school boards so they could get biology books featuring creation science into the schools. They have had a few temporary victories in a few states (most recently Kansas,) but have not prevailed for long in most cases. In comparison, the strict evolutionist need not have such an agenda, since most high school biology texts already feature the story of evolution.
The evolutionist looks at the scientific evidence and sees what appears to be a series of evolutionary steps leading finally to us--Homo Sapiens. The evolutionist believes that life existed at least as long ago as 3 ½ billion years because evidence for bacteria has been found in rocks in Australia that scientists dated to that age. Furthermore, many hardcore evolutionists believe that the origin of life is strictly accidental. They contend that given a few billion years of heat, lightning and cosmic radiation, existing hydrocarbon molecules will conglomerate in ever more complex associations until at last life will appear. Astronomers have found that the hydrocarbons needed to form life are found throughout the universe. No Creator is needed. Is a compromise possible between the extremes of hardcore creationism and hardcore evolutionism?
There is a group of conservative Christians who promote an idea called "Intelligent Design." They present this as a compromise position, but is it? The "Intelligent Design" folks contend that evolution may operate on a limited basis within a species, but that new species do not appear as a result of the accumulation of small changes as Darwin's concept of natural selection theorizes. Many of these folks also accept that the earth is older than the 6000-year-old world promoted by the Creationists, but they do not accept a million-year existence for humans. These folks, like the creationists, are trying to get their ideas taught along side of or as an alternative to evolution. Because their position is less extreme than the creationists, they may have more success. But they are certainly don't occupy the middle ground between the creationists and the evolutionists. The strict evolutionists say that the "Intelligent Design" people are just Creationists in moderate's clothing. But there is indeed a middle ground in our culture between the two extremes, though it hasn't been given a name.
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