Evolution v. Creation Debate

Bill Nye and Ken Hamm

Last night was an interesting debate between Ken Hamm, founder of Answers in Genesis, and Bill Nye, the “science guy” who is a popular TV educator for children.  The debate was held at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY. See the full debate here: http://debatelive.org/.  The thematic question for the debate  was, “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s scientific era?”

I was extremely pleased to see a civil debate!  We need more of this in our society today.  Both authors respected each other.  The crowd was attentive and non-intrusive.  Regardless of where you land on the substance of the debate, we all should celebrate civic discourse in which ideas are compared while people are respected.

The debate really centered on how old the earth is.  I was a bit disappointed that the presenters did not focus more on creation as a viable model.  In other words, Hamm argued that the earth was only 6,000 years old and Nye argued that evidence suggests this cannot be.  I think both presenters missed the central Biblical argument that God is the Creator.  Regardless of how long it took, God created.

I want to especially remind Christians that these questions are not new.  Christians for many years have been asking how our faith fits with modern-day science.  For a scholarly review of three of the key Christian positions, see this excellent book: The Genesis Debate edited by Hagopian.  Solid Christians who love God and follow Christ lay out their positions.

Ken Hamm holds to what is called a “young-earth” framework; he believes the earth is just six-thousand years old.  But many Bible-believing Christians hold to an “old-earth” framework.  They believe in God who created all things, but believe creation happened in stages over thousands or even millions of years.  Both young-earth and old-earth Christians believe that God created “kinds” of plants and animals and that the fossil record does not support the crossing of species (i.e. fish becoming birds).

To complicate things even more, there are some Christians who hold to what is called “Theistic Evolution” believing that “evolution occurred as biologists describe it, but under the direction of God.”

I found this chart by originscience.com which categorizes the differences between the four positions:

• Young-earth creationists
• Old-earth creationists
• Theistic Evolutionists
• Naturalistic Evolutionists

Ken Hamm repeatedly made the point that people can do good science while still believing the Bible and holding to a creation model.  I affirm this.  That is my encouragement to young Christians.  Don’t jettison the faith in the onslaught of attack at today’s universities.  Faith and good science can still meet each other.

But I fear that we settle too quickly for sound-bites.  We wish to simplify things to incredible extremes.  The world does not operate this way.  Science is often deep and complicated (and theology at times too!).  Try explaining to your child how a microwave oven works!  My contention is that Christians must keep their Bibles in one hand and a looking glass into our world in the other.

I would disagree with Hamm that young-earth is the only Christian position.  And I would disagree with Nye that creative design is absent from our world.  And yet I am glad that both of these men were able to take the stage and talk with one another.  It stirred me once again to explore these matters for myself.