May 31, 2026

On Creation and Evolution

There is, in Petersburg, Kentucky, something called a “Creation Museum.”  It is a twenty seven million dollar facility with “high-tech exhibits designed by a theme-park artist.”  It includes animatronic dinosaurs and a wooden ark at least two stories tall, plus a special effects theater and planetarium.  Some exhibits show dinosaurs aboard Noah’s Ark and assert that all animals were vegetarians until Adam committed the first sin in the Garden of Eden.  The central message of this theme park is that science has got it all wrong and that if one truly believes the Bible, one has to conclude that the earth and human beings were created in a one-week period just six thousand years ago.  Apparently, the Associated Press agrees that this is the only way to read the text of Genesis.  I saw an AP article that says this “museum . . . tells the Bible’s version of Earth’s history.”

Since this Genesis story is in our lectionary readings for this morning, and I find myself so exercised by this foolishness I simply had to take a dive into this whole business of creation and evolution.

First, I have to confess that, in the year 2026, I find it hard to believe that this is still an issue.  Personally, I thought it was pretty much settled fifty or more years ago.  I am amazed that in these modern times, we have seen school boards putting evolutionary theory back on “trial,” and trying to put warning stickers on science textbooks to remind children and their parents that “evolution is only a theory.”  I am appalled that polls conducted by news and polling organizations over the past several years continue to show that a declining but still significant percentage of Americans simply do not believe in evolution,¹ as if evolution were some speculative notion that one could simply choose to believe or not.

If I’m going to jump into this fray, I might as well do it with both feet.  Folks, let’s get something straight.  Evolution is about as much of a dead-bang fact as you get in science.  That genes mutate and recombine in ways that pass on new characteristics to future generations, and some of these characteristics give individuals a survival advantage, and these characteristics tend to increase in frequency in the population, while those that are less advantageous decrease in frequency – in other words, “natural selection” works – is virtually unchallenged by any reputable scientist.  This process has been demonstrated and observed over and over in laboratory experiments and reflected in the fossil record of life on the planet earth to a stunning degree of certainty.  Evolution is called a “theory,” not because it’s basic tenets are in any kind of question, but because that’s the name we give to general principles in science.

Other examples of scientific “theory” are Albert Einstein’s special and general relativity, on the basis of which we are able (among other things) to understand how light from distant stars shifts in the spectrum and gives us a measurement of distance; the notion that Earth orbits around the sun is a theory; continental drift is a theory; the existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms comprise atomic theory – based on that theory, we are able to develop a theoretical construct called “electricity,” but I doubt that UL laboratories is likely soon to put disclaimer labels on our extension cords and light switches warning us that “electricity is only a theory.”

In science, a theory is a statement of general principles that explains observable, recorded phenomena, and is subject to rigorous and repeated tests.  Members of actual school boards – people who are responsible for seeing that children are educated – instead interpret the word “theory” to mean a whim that is largely unproven and subject to conjecture.  That, my friends, is a sad indictment of the state of education in our society.

Fundamentalist Christians all across America are perpetrating a hoax.  They are spending gazillions of dollars trying to convince you and your children and grandchildren that one has to choose between science and religion, between their textbooks and the Bible.  They are trying to portray science as pure atheism.  And they are organizing in election districts and school districts all across this land to press that message.

The most sense I can make of their message is that there is not one reality, but two.  There is a reality that we are somehow tricked into observing in the world around us, and then there is the reality of God’s “supernatural” realm.  I have to confess, I have never understood the word “supernatural.”  It seems to imply that there exists something that is not “natural” – in other words, not “of or pertaining to the nature of things.”  Folks, if God truly exists, then by definition God is “natural” not “supernatural.”  If there is a life beyond this one, then by definition the afterlife is “natural” not “supernatural.”  There is only one reality, and that reality must encompass everything that is, and everything that has been.  It encompasses only that which is and has been in fact, and does not encompass that which is not or has not been.  One would think that this is a priori, but apparently there are a lot of folks out there who simply can’t get their minds around it.

Why should you care about any of this?  There are two big reasons.  First of all, precisely because you and your children and grandchildren are under assault by those who would try to fool them into not believing their eyes or using their minds.  Someone has to stand up and wave their arms and say, “Whoa!”

And secondly, this matters because I’m convinced that most of us wander through our lives held back from a deeper experience of the reality of Divinity within us, among us, and beyond us by half formed religious notions and constructs in our heads that don’t really jibe with the world as we see it.  We learned in Sunday School that the Bible says God created the world in seven days by dividing waters and hanging lights in the sky, and in one quick act stuck completely formed human beings in that world.  And now, the evidence of science seems to be telling us something entirely different.  Here’s why this matters: because no matter how sophisticated and clever you are, I don’t think you can deal with that truth without some degree of internal struggle – and if you don’t face that struggle, and sift through all the information and feelings and insights with care and perseverance, I don’t think you’ll ever be totally free to embrace the reality of that Divinity within us, among us, and beyond us.

So, here’s a good starting point.  The Bible is not a science textbook, and the biblical creation story is not science.  It is not an accurate record of how the earth and human beings came to be, it is an affirmation that the Divinity of which I spoke is at the heart of the reality of people and planets, and that, because this is true, then we are best defined by our goodness.  That’s what Genesis means when it says, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”  And do you have any idea what a powerful counter-cultural statement that is to make?

When you see extremists working feverishly to find a way to destroy as many innocent men, women, and children as humanly possible, it’s hard to believe humanity is defined by our goodness.  When you see the steady march over generations of human folly acted out in war (and after a weekend when we have honored all those who have fallen in combat, we have to acknowledge that for every just and worthy war in the record of human history, there are a dozen foolish, prideful wastes of human life) – when you see our proclivity to senseless violence, it’s hard to believe we are defined by our goodness.

But that’s what Genesis unabashedly proclaims.  And it does so artfully and eloquently.  We have to give the authors of this brilliant piece of theology a lot of credit.  They described our origins in wondrously poetic and ingenious ways.  They spoke of a cosmology that was the best of which their society was capable.  They believed that because rain fell from the sky, there had to be a great sea of water above the heavens, so they envisioned a giant dome, like an upside-down bowl placed over the flat earth to keep all that water away from us.  And that’s what Genesis describes.  God placed a “firmament in the heavens” actually, the word translated “firmament” is the Hebrew word “raqiah” which means “a hammered-out bowl.”  God placed an upside-down bowl in the heavens to separate the waters that were above the bowl, from the waters that were below – that is: under the earth.  It was in this bowl that God was said to hang the two great lights, the sun and the moon.  I’m not making this up – it’s all right there in black and white.  Read it for yourself.  Anyone with a sixth-grade education knows that this is not science, and it’s not factually correct.  I’ll tell you what it is: it’s truth.  And truth is a far more penetrating and enduring thing than mere facts.  The truth about our origins is that we are created in the image of the Creator – in other words, no matter how tremendous is our fall from grace, how pervasive is our capacity for evil, the truth about our origins is that we carry somewhere within us the inextinguishable spark of divine goodness – and that means not only the good-hearted, loving, self-sacrificing, noble ones among us.  It means all the deluded, psychopathic, hate-filled people we consider enemies or criminals.  And it also means you, whether you want to believe it or not.

What does all this do to the authority of scripture?  In my view it reinforces Biblical authority in a way that literalists can’t even begin to.  When we stop tying our brains in knots trying to defend as facts the stories in the Bible, and accept its truths as a book of theology, then the Bible is freed to speak with profound relevance and incontestable authority.

So, here’s my appeal: we should spend time with the creation story in Genesis, and spend time looking at the evidence of decades of scientific inquiry, and then spend time coming to grips with the one reality that includes them both – the reality of the world we live in, a reality that includes a creative and very pervasive Creator.  And then, whenever we have the opportunity, talk to our children and our grandchildren, telling them not to settle for mindless dogma, telling them that faith means opening your eyes, not closing them, telling them that Love and Grace live within them, that they are one of the precious things that has been created in this world, and that the truth is that “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

¹ https://ncse.ngo/vast-majority-americans-accept-human-evolution-new-survey-finds