Evolution vs. Creationism vs. Sanity

While I was teaching a church class a couple Sundays ago, the topic briefly sidetracked into the evolution vs. creationism debate. There were two people in the class who were pretty clearly worried by evolution, since it seemed like a threat to the Genesis creation account. There seemed to be an unspoken fear that if evolution were ever proven right, it would prove religion wrong. It's pretty easy to answer this one from an LDS perspective, and I did so in the class. I'll chuck in the Biblical references too, just in case some very lost Bible belter wanders past and wants to use them.

First, evolution is openly taught and espoused by the biology teachers at BYU. Since this position is widely disliked by a lot of the students, they hand out a sheet of quotes from church leaders just before the relevant lectures. The gist of the quotes is that mankind was created by divine means, and that mankind enjoys a special relationship with God. It is wrong to use evolution to claim that mankind is an animal unbound by moral law. That said, the actual means God used for creation is a reasonable question, and biological evolution in and of itself is not a problem theologically.

Some time after BYU, I found that there's actually a reasonable scriptural defense of biological evolution, which I will share here. We begin in the book of Genesis, which starts something like this (KJV):

(1) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (2) And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (3) And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

It goes on to describe six days of creation, with man and woman being created on the sixth day, and God resting on the seventh. Now we move on to chapter two, in which the Earth gets created. Yes, again:

(1) Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. (2) And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (3) And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

(4) For these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, (5) And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. (6) But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. (7) And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

So was that all clear? Basically, God created all the life on Earth before anything had actually grown on the Earth. Now, without immediate proof, I claim that chapter 1 is describing a spiritual creation. After this spiritual creation (chapter 1), God created physical forms for all of these spirits (chapter 2). This second bit is the physical creation. This secondary physical creation starts with rainfall, and procedes with forming life (mankind in verse 7, other critters in verse 19) from the dust of the ground, a different term than was used in Genesis 1.

I've stated the spiritual/physical dichotomy without proof, and if you need a good Bible-only proof, I think you're stuck. I'll let you ponder over verses 4-5, which pretty clearly claim the two creations are a sequence, but I don't think you can get much further. The explanation here was in fact derived from LDS scriptures. The double-creation is explained much more clearly in Moses 3, which runs parallel to Genesis 2:

(4) And now, behold, I say unto you, that these are the generations of the heaven and of the earth, when they were created, in the day that I, the Lord God, made the heaven and the earth, (5) And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew. For I, the Lord God, created all things, of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth. For I, the Lord God, had not caused it to rain upon the face of the earth. And I, the Lord God, had created all the children of men; and not yet a man to till the ground; for in heaven created I them; and there was not yet flesh upon the earth, neither in the water, neither in the air; (6) But I, the Lord God, spake, and there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. (7) And I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul . . .

In short, if evolution is correct, then it refers to the period of creation described in Genesis 2. All of the wringing of wrists and yanking of hair that's gone into trying to make Genesis 1 fit with evolution is a waste of time, because Genesis 1 does not describe the physical creation of the earth. It describes the spiritual creation, where all the spirits of things were formed.

Genesis 2 even has some echoes of our classic understanding of evolution--rain and dust is an appropriate description of life emerging from the primordial ooze. And why not? The Bible makes no bones about the humble nature of our origins. We are referred to as being "from the dust" no fewer than seven times Biblically (Gen 2:7; 3:19; 18:37; Ps 103:14; 104:29; Eccl 3:20; 12:7), and a host more times in other scripture. It's also pretty clear that this dust reference isn't exactly complimentary; it seems odd that we should be so deeply offended to think of very-great-grandpa as being simian when very-very-great-grandpa is dust.

Of course, the scriptures also makes it clear that at a certain point, a change occurred. Mankind was given his spirit, the breath of life, and that spirit makes human beings God's children. As such, we need to follow a higher law than selfish desire if we are to be happy. Let's focus on that struggle, and give the evolution thing a rest.