Hmmm. Well, for what its worth, here are my two cents:
The argument against “creationism” is that it isn’t a scientific theory. God created everything. Great. What was the mechanism, though? How did it happen? These are the things that science cares about. “A miracle occurred” is not a satisfying scientific mechanism. Scientifically satisfying mechanisms have to rely on foundations that can be put to the test. A Christian in science will recognize that other mechanisms may exist, but those are supernatural, not natural. As far as science is concerned, everything has a natural cause–that is, by a Christian way of putting it, everything obeys God’s standard natural laws–until it is demonstrated otherwise. A scientist who is Christian has to play the Devil’s Advocate until satisfied that no natural explanation exists. The creationists have not demonstrated a miracle to a level of satisfaction that is likely to appease a Devil’s Advocate.
So what about evolution? Evolutionists can cite instances of new subspecies: that is, animal populations that are genetically distinct arising from other populations with the same number of chromosomes, but with which they cannot breed for reasons of seasonality of breeding readiness, physical separation, or whatnot. These distinctions arise from the kinds of reproductive pressures Darwin talked about. Great so far. However, there aren’t any known instances of a single organism with a different number of chromosomes being able to breed successfully with others of its own kind. So how does an organism with one number of chromosomes ever arise from a previous ancestor with a different number, if the mechanism of chromosomal change is random mutation in individuals? You don’t see this happening…that is one way of saying that you don’t see the “transitional state”. There just aren’t known cases of it happening. As it sits, then, evolution is not yet totally intellectually satisfying, either. As a mechanism explaining life as we know it, evolution has its own “a miracle occurs” step, too.
The problem is that although no one can prove there is a mechanism by which one species gives rise to another with a different number of chromosomes, it can’t be proven that this rare mechanism doesn’t ever happen. It is like saying, “Nobody ever saw God plop a new species down ‘poof!’ from nothing, and yet species just start showing up in the fossil record, so therefore God doesn’t ‘poof!’ plop down a new species from nothing. There must be a natural mechanism for it.”
The Church teaches that the Bible does not speak about scientific mechanisms. As far as the Church is concerned, God could have chosen to employ either mechanism, neither mechanism, or both mechanisms.
Take, for instance, medicine. We know that God sometimes uses the natural mechanism of human understanding to facilitate healing, sometimes uses natural agents that no one at the time understands are helpful, and sometimes uses direct miraculous intervention. In any of these cases, the Church asserts, God is the agent ultimately responsible for the healing taking place.
Likewise, God is the responsible agent for all of creation. Finding that he uses one mechanism in particular or two or more different ones, as it pleases him, or even that he always uses some third mechanism no one has imagined wouldn’t change that.
So if you become a partisan for or against evolution, don’t force yourself to believe that your faith in any way depends upon it. It just doesn’t.
