The fossil record fits best with progressive creation

My religious background is that I was raised Catholic, but I fell away from Christianity for several years, ending up as some kind of unhappy New Ager. But then the Holy Spirit led me back to Christianity via various non-Catholic denominations, and then finally back to Catholicism again.

Regarding creation, I had long been a “six days of creation” believer, but after studying what science has discovered about the age of the earth and what the fossil record says, I recently came to the conclusion that the “six days” interpretation must be wrong, even though that was what was generally believed by Christians for thousands of years.

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For one thing, in accordance with Thomistic philosophy, creating a new creature from nothing is a much greater feat and much better demonstrates God’s power and glory than modifying a pre-existing creature.

As S.J. Gould stated, the fossil record is “embarrassment” to Darwin’s theory of gradualism, with is gaps, sudden appearance, stasis and general lack of transitionals. The fossil evidence much better describes a process of progressive (ie,separate) creations than a contiguous process of evolution. Gould and Eldrege proposed Punctuated Equilibrium as an attempt to make up for the fossil record’s “inadequacies”, but really it’s just a Band-Aid to cover up said “embarrassment”.

Progressive creation is also biblically sound, as opposed to evolution, which is biblically unsound - which is hardly surprising, as evolution is an atheist construct (imo).

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Actually, as this stage in my understanding, I can accept that the evolution of non-human creatures may be biblically feasible, but I believe Genesis 2:7 precludes the evolution of man. But in my opinion, evolution of any creatures is a odds with that other revelation provided by the Lord, the fossil record.

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I agree, but an evolutionary process that is characterised by lots of big gaps, a lack of transitionals, sudden appearance and stasis.

Incidentally, the “Progressive Creation” graphic you supplied in your post appears to reflect the belief of a PCist who attempts to squeeze the fossil record into a literal interpretation of the Genesis “six days”. In which, case that is not my position - I don’t interpret the Genesis text literally at all until after Adam and Eve are created.

The first three chapters of Genesis contain much figurative language and therefore shouldn’t be interpreted literally, but the remainding chapters read like literal history. Take the account of Noah’s flood, for example - it contains very precise details of not only the ark dimensions and construction, but also very precise chronological details. These features are not typical of fables or mythical stories. Then there are the genealogies to contend with.
The fact that other cultures feature similar floods stories that may even pre-date Genesis doesn’t prove that the Genesis account it borrowed from them - a flood that wiped out all humanity would feature in the folklore of many subsequent cultures.

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It sounds like you have gone through a lot. I’m glad you are able to be back in the church. Hopefully we can share interests and common ground, not only through science and faith, but also with mutual gratefulness for His grace.

Maybe you can elaborate a bit on why you made the trip back to the church sometime.

I was born in Africa, to medical missionary parents (born in Jos, Nigeria and grew up in Galmi, Niger). The area was about 99% Muslim, but they were salt of the earth. I grew up “young earth creationist,” but in my secular undergrad became suspicious through study of genetics (especially mitochondrial RNA and a capstone course in evolutionary biology based on Gould’s text) that evolution was true. At that point, I thought that the Bible was somehow concordant. It was while taking an online course by Denis Lamoureux that I realized that it could also be that God used ancient motifs of faith to reveal spiritual truths. As when I tell my 5 year old about how God made the beautiful sun to rise, I don’t think that God planned on explaining that evolution brought about the earth, any more than I want to confuse her about how our earth tilts toward the sun (that discussion is coming soon though; she’s asking questions). Peter Enns’ books also helped me study more about contextualization.

So, I probably come down on a different point of view than you. However, I found an address by Stephen Meyer and Ann Gauger (with J P Moreland and Wayne Grudem) at Biola’s Youtube site to be interesting. Who do you find the most helpful with ID? We can learn from each other.

God bless.
Randy

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I accept that genetics provides evidence of “evolution”, but I suspect you are referring to what I call empirical evolution, aka microevolution. (The word “evolution” as used in biology can be very misleading and confusing.) But then I have heard of a DNA “fault” (something to do with Vitamin C metabolism) that is common to chimps and humans. Perhaps the evidence of this “common fault” has been misinterpreted - but unfortunately I’m not in any way qualified to make an assessment.

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I am not best suited to discuss this either. I am sure others can do better. I am curious what route brought you back to the church?

Not sure what you mean by “concordant”, but I think most of the Christians who believed in a literal “six day” of creation in the days of yore would not hold that position if confronted with modern scientific discoveries about the age of the earth (based on geology and atomic physics) and what is revealed by the fossil record. They would realize that the Genesis description of pre-Adamic creation is non-literal. The Bible is about God’s relationship with man, so the billons of years of earth history that unfolded prior to man is not important from a spiritual point of view - hence the presentation of that history using figurative (and brief) language.

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I think you’re mistaken on the thousands of years part.

Hi Edgar -

Glad you’re here, and that we can have a peaceable discussion as members of one family.

I am not sure why you would think that Genesis 1-3 mandates special creation of Homo Sapiens a few thousand years ago, but permits the appearance of other species over perhaps a billion years. Saint Augustine recognized that the creation of plants before the creation of the sun ruled out any chronological interpretation of Genesis 1-3, and I agree with his reasoning. But perhaps you would politely disagree with the saint, in which case I would welcome your further analysis.

Actually, there are close to 200,000 non-functional DNA sequences which are shared by humanity and chimpanzees. These are the by-product of infections by endogenous retroviruses, sometimes referred to as ERVs. These are readily explained by evolution from a common ancestral population some 8 million years ago. How would progressive creation explain these?

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Hello George,
I wondering what makes you qualified to judge how God would or wouldn’t have created.
Please consider this point of Thomistic philosophy: It is a much greater feat for God to create a new creature from nothing than modify a pre-existing creature.

The fossil record reveals does reveal an OVERALL evolution - relatively simple creatures appear first, followed by more complex creatures, finally culminating in man. But the plentiful gaps, lack of transitionals, sudden appearance and stasis reveal an evolution featuring separate creations.

Interpreting Genesis as six literal days of creation predates even Christianity - but thousands of years - I imagine it’s what most Jews would have believed as well.

Hello Chris,
I don’t think I disagree with the saint, as the dating of Adam I believe in isn’t based on Genesis 1-3, but on the genealogies described in latter chapters. The Matryology of the Catholic Church says Adam was created between 70000 and 8000 years ago (if memory serves). The year the Septuagint was written is also taken into account when arriving at this figure.

Well, all I can say is, I suspect a mistake has been made and this evidence of common descent is not really evidence at all. How could it be? … man didn’t evolve; he was created from inanimate matter.

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I’ll keep it brief here as it’s off topic: Having reached my “unhappy New Ager” stage, I started talking to a Jehovah’s Witness who knocked on my door. The idea that God loves me, will always be with me and may one day grant me eternal life in paradise with Him really appealed to me and this rekindled my interested in the God of the Bible. I studied the Bible with JWs for a while but became disillusioned with them and moved on to various other sects and various forms of Protestantism, before going back to the Catholic Church.

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Sorry, I should have quoted more. I’m disputing your assertion that this has been a general Christian belief for thousands of years. Is it even a general Christian belief today?

Would you mind providing what you’ve learned from your study of the fossil record?

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Well, I’m not expert, but I’m led to believe the fossil record reveals that the first forms of life were microscopic organisms. More complex and larger organisms appear as time goes by. I rely on experts like Gould to inform me of how poorly fossils support Darwin’s theory of evolutionary gradualism.

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That’s not what you wrote!

You wrote that progressive creation “actually fits the fossil record much better.” Shouldn’t a reader interpret that to mean that you’ve actually studied the fossil record for yourself, since you didn’t cite anything/anyone else, and even used “actually”?

Organisms today are larger than those that lived in the past? I don’t think so. So how does that fit with progressive creation and not evolution?

Interesting. How many of Gould’s papers and books have you read? Are you sure you’re not really relying on secondhand, highly selective quoting?

Do you realize that modern evolutionary theory is far more than Darwin?

You claimed that there was a distinct lack of transitionals. How did you determine this? Do you modify your position when some of the many gaps are filled?

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@Edgar

That is like saying Condensation as a method to create rain is Biblically unsound.

Gould is my scientific hero so it frustrates me and angers me when I see so many abuse his work, quote him out on context and not understand his work. My main issue is your explanation for how punk eek came to be. It came to be based on POSITIVE fossil evidence not negative as you argue. Have you ever read the punk eek paper or the book length chapter on it in “Structure”? Punk eek is just Mayr’s allopatric speciation applied to the fossil record. It wasn’t invented to be a band-aid…

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My main issue is more basic, that Edgar claimed “actually” when directly citing the evidence, when his handwaving answer strongly indicates that Edgar has not actually looked at any evidence nor read Gould.

Actually writing, “Actually, I’ve never looked at the evidence, but I like what someone else said about it (without actually knowing if the someone else carefully looked at the evidence or is telling the truth), so I’ve taken a certain position,” sounds pretty weak.