http://www.theistic-evolution.com/. Don't forget the dash!
(C) Copyright 2000 by Carl Drews
Last update: May 26, 2024
Contents: Welcome, Begin With Prayer, Goals, Theistic Evolution, References, Checking Things Out, Other Web Sites, Josephus and Jesus Christ, Transitional Fossils of Hominid Skulls, Intelligent Design, Morality Index, Apostolic Succession, Biblical Kind, New Genetic Information, Historicity of the Exodus, Zaccheus, Concluding Thoughts, Contact
Welcome to my evolution web site! I am glad you're here! I have prepared this information so that you may learn about evolution from one Christian's perspective.
The matters we study here deal with Life and Death, Salvation and Eternal Life. It is entirely appropriate and necessary that we begin by praying to God. If you are a non-believer, you may skip this section.
"Father in Heaven, we ask Your guidance as we study Your Word and Your Creation. Give us wisdom, insight, and humility in this task. Bless us as we seek Your truth. Help us to speak in love with those around us. We ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen."
1. The most important goal of this web site is that you will come to know Jesus Christ if you do not know Him already, and that believing in Him you will have salvation and eternal life.
2. The second most important goal is that you will Test Everything! I hope that you will be instructed and inspired to check and verify everything that you hear or read. There is not enough checking going on in the study of creationism and evolution. If you are a Christian, you should test everything because the Bible tells you to in 1 Thessalonians 5:21. If you are not a Christian, you should do it because you don't want to be deceived by false teaching.
I am a Christian who accepts the scientific theory of evolution. This is an essay describing what I believe. You will have to sort out and determine what you believe. There is a lot of nonsense out there about the theory of evolution: that it denies the Virgin Birth, that it denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hopefully this essay will at least dispel some of those false statements.
It is vitally important to back up an assertion with the facts. In my essay on theistic evolution I make many statements, and I stand behind those statements. Here are Internet references to support what I have said. You should check them out. If you find that I have made a clear factual mistake, please contact me.
I do not necessarily endorse all the viewpoints in the references that I cite; in fact, I strongly disagree with some of them. All these references are included because they contribute something to the study, either a point or a counterpoint. In general I have looked them all over, but I have not checked all the details on every web page for accuracy (that's called secondary checking). I have checked everything that I have cited in my essay.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 says to "test everything". "Everything" means more than just the Biblical information. Acts 17:11 also approves of checking up on people, "But the people of Beroea were more open minded than those in Thessalonica, and gladly listened to the message. They searched the Scriptures day by day to check up on Paul and Silas' statements, to see if they were really so." The great Welsh preacher Arthur Burt also agrees. "Truth demands independent witness," he preaches. "Test it! It's your responsibility to test what I say!"
Your local library is an excellent resource for checking up on things that you hear and read. Quotations are the easiest to check, and they are indeed worth checking! The quotation should capture the original author's meaning completely, accurately, and fairly. The greater context should reinforce a reasonable person's understanding of just the segment that was quoted.
I have used the Internet as a gigantic on-line library. There is some risk to this approach, because the Internet contains a lot of false information and some outright hoaxes. You will have to discern what information is correct and what is not. Independent confirmation is extremely important on the World Wide Web.
Here are the locations of some popular search engines. Go to one of these sites, type in some keywords, and press the Go/Search/Find button.
These search engines all use different algorithms for classifying web sites and searching among them, so you will get somewhat different results for each. If you can't find what you want, it's worth trying the same keywords on another search engine.
You can go to Google and search for "theistic evolution." When I did this in October 2000 I immediately found at least 50 web sites that all condemn theistic evolution. I speak in favor of it. So why should you accept what I say instead of what they say? That is an important question for you to ponder carefully and decide responsibly. While you do that, consider the following:
1. How many of those other web sites urge you to check everything you read and hear?
2. What other web sites begin with prayer?
3. Who else charges you with the responsibility to discern what information is correct and what is wrong?
This doesn't have anything to do with evolution, but it's interesting. Josephus was a Jewish historian who lived in the first century A.D., shortly after the time of Christ. His great work, "Jewish Antiquities," contains a reference to Jesus Christ. That passage is known as the "Testimonium Flavianum" in Latin, or "The Testimony of Flavius." I have reprinted the entire chapter here so that you may read it in context.
By 2000 enough pre-human fossils had been recently discovered to form a clearer picture of human ancestry, something that was difficult 20 years earlier. This web page contains an illustration of those skulls, displayed in a lineup so that you can compare them and see if they look like transitional fossils or not. I have provided my own commentary, but feel free to analyze them yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Intelligent Design Theory contends that the complexity we see in biological organisms is the result of an intelligent designer, not Darwinian evolution. ID asserts that certain complex organs found in nature could not have evolved. I believe that this theory has some scientific and theological problems. This page describes my objections to intelligent design.
I am working on a project to measure the morality of the people of the United States over time. My numbers show a long improvement in American morality since 1900. This is mostly due to the value we place on human life, and our success at saving lives. Marriage took some wild swings during the mid-20th century, and is now in a slow decline. Crime took a huge drop during the 1990s! Charitable giving was up recently, until about 2000. Click on the link above to go to moralityindex.com.
I am a member of a Christian church in The Anglican Mission in America (AMiA). The AMiA is a mission church of the Anglican Province of Rwanda, in East Africa. Our bishops are consecrated by the laying on of hands in a line of succession that extends back to St. Peter, the first Pope and Apostle of Jesus Christ. This article explains the Apostolic Succession and traces the line back through the histories of the Episcopal and Catholic churches. For anyone who is interested in church history, there may be a few tidbits here you don't know! So check it out.
The creation account in Genesis 1 refers to organisms "after their kind." What level of classification is a Biblical kind? The answer may be found by looking up 31 occurrences of the Hebrew word "miyn" in the Old Testament. The Biblical meaning is really not that complicated.
Evolution can indeed add new and useful genetic information to the genome.
Here's how.
Isn't that amazing? Yes! God invented evolution.
(This is also unrelated to evolution.) The biblical book of Exodus relates the deliverance of Moses and the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. In October 2014 I published a book about the Exodus, focusing on the account of crossing the Red Sea in Exodus 14. The full title of my book is: "Between Migdol and the Sea: Crossing the Red Sea with Faith and Science". The book presents scientific and literary evidence that the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt was an actual historical event that occurred in 1250 BC. The Israelites escaped from Pharaoh's army through the yam suf in the eastern Nile delta. To leave theistic-evolution.com and learn more, please visit migdolbook.com.
Zaccheus was a "wee little man" and a great sinner who repented when Jesus accepted him and loved him. His story is told in Luke 19: 1-10. Zaccheus went to great lengths to make amends for the money he had stolen from people, and he did it with great joy and thankfulness.
We are all sinners. When we sin or make a mistake we are called to repent, ask for forgiveness, make amends where we can, and go on loving and serving the Lord. This is part of the Christian life. The Zaccheus section of this web site lists significant errors that I have corrected.
Here are a couple of good Bible verses to keep in mind:
2 Timothy 2:23-25
"Again I say, don't get involved in foolish arguments which only upset people and make them angry. God's people must not be quarrelsome; they must be gentle, patient teachers of those who are wrong. Be humble when you are trying to teach those who are mixed up concerning the truth. For if you talk meekly and courteously to them they are more likely, with God's help, to turn away from their wrong ideas and believe what is true."
Unlike Timothy, I don't have St. Paul's personal assurance that my views are correct. Neither do you. This is all the more reason to follow Paul's advice.
Matthew 12:35-37
Jesus says, "A good man's speech reveals the rich treasures within him. An evil-hearted man is filled with venom, and his speech reveals it. And I tell you this, that you must give account on Judgment Day for every idle word that you speak. Your words now reflect your fate then: either you will be justified by them or you will be condemned."
This web site is owned and operated by Jambo Productions, Inc.