(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of "Evolution According to Contemporary Science." Beginning with "How Has Life Evolved?," be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the next primary section, "Evil, Ethics, and Human Values in an Evolving World.")

How Has Life Evolved?

Most unsettling of all, scientists discovered that, when viewed on a timescale of millions of years, the kinds of living things we see all around us are as unstable as the eroding rocks and moving continents beneath our feet. Far from having been specially created in anything like their present forms, all living things have descended from one or a few common ancestors that likely resembled bacteria more than anything else we know.

From these unpromising beginnings, they were slowly modified along constantly splitting lines of descent to yield the exuberant diversity of life we see today. Along the way, moreover, countless forms were ruthlessly eliminated. Even diverse groups of creatures that dominated the Earth successfully for scores of millions of years, such as the dinosaurs, ended up on the same fossil heap with the shortest-lived evolutionary failures.

Furthermore, although humans have not yet produced life from nonliving matter in the laboratory, many scientists today are confident that we will achieve this, along with explanations of how life could have arisen naturally on the primordial Earth—and probably on countless other planets as well.

To make clear how evolution does and does not relate to theology, we need to summarize the twentieth- and twenty-first-century understanding of Darwinism embodied in the so-called "Neo-Darwinian Synthesis" or "synthetic theory of evolution."¹ This theory² is extremely well supported by scientific evidence, and many consider it a grave threat to the Christian worldview. But even this most uncompromising, hardcore version of evolution, allegedly the believer's worst nightmare, is entirely compatible with Christian faith. And although neither the pattern nor the process of the unfolding evolutionary panorama seems to hold out much comfort to the traditional view of divine providence, the core mechanism of the evolutionary process has profound and fruitful implications for theology, especially the doctrine of original sin.

1. The terms "neo-Darwinism" and "synthetic theory of evolution" refer to the synthesis, achieved in the early twentieth century, between Darwin's concept of evolution by natural selection and the understanding of genetics gained by Gregor Mendel and others.



2. For a list of recommended works on evolution see the "Literature Cited" section, listed in the menu to the left.

Words highlighted in green appear in the Glossary.