ABSTRACT

This section has really dealt with a range of objections to evolutionary theory. Not all of these are religious objections, and not all of them relate to original sin. A preliminary issue concerns the doctrine of creation. This doctrine is based on a number of stories in the Hebrew Scriptures, notably those in Chapters 1 and 2 of the Book of Genesis. The story in Chapter 1 is rather like a mural in seven panels, in which the creator orders the universe in six “days,” resting and enjoying it on the seventh. Clearly, those believers who do not accept any literary or historical analysis of the context, literary genre, and purpose of the story, but read it as a strictly literal chronicle of the history of the cosmos, will need to reject all possible evolutionary theories in order to preserve their faith. Their problem, however, is not only with the natural sciences, but also with literary theory, comparative religious studies, history of ancient literature, and with biblical scholarship itself. Some of these believers have tried to ease the problem with evolutionary theory by suggesting that the “days” are really very long periods of cosmic time. However, this leaves the problem that the narrative of Genesis 1 has light created before the sun and moon, and that the stories of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contradict each other in important components.