http://www.theistic-evolution.com/. Don't forget the dash!

(C) Copyright 2000 by Carl Drews
Last update: November 15, 2006

Contents: Welcome, Begin With Prayer, Goals, My Story, Theistic Evolution, References, Checking Things Out, Other Web Sites, William Stansfield, Roger Lewin, Gary Parker's College Debate, Josephus and Jesus Christ, Transitional Fossils of Hominid Skulls, Intelligent Design, Morality Index, Apostolic Succession, 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.

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.

This page describes my lifetime experiences with the theory of evolution and Christianity.

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!"

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:

This page is a reprint of "The Science of Evolution," by William D. Stansfield, 1977. A creationist named Don Patton quoted sections from pages 80-84, and these quotations are widely distributed in creationist circles. I had a hard time finding this source to check his quotations, so this reprint will make it easier for you. Andrew Arensburger has asserted that these are misquotations, and I agree with him. Arensburger did not reproduce the entire context in his analysis, so I am pleased to be able to provide the entire text of pages 80-84 here for you to review.

Creationists Ken Ham, Gary Parker, and others quote from an article in Science magazine by Roger Lewin entitled "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire." This article describes the 1980 Conference in Chicago on Macroevolution. The Lewin article was also hard to find, so I looked up the back issue on microfiche and scanned it in. I believe that the quotations made of this article by creationists are also misquotations because they give an incorrect impression of what happened at the conference. Young-earth creationists claim that macroevolution doesn't happen, and they use quotations from this article to support their viewpoint. The text is provided here so that you can review the entire article and check the context of each quotation.

It's a long article, and it's pretty technical. Here's my take on the state of evolutionary science in 1980; the old guard of classical Darwinists were coming to grips with Stephen Jay Gould's theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. They seem to be saying in 1980 that microevolution happens as a species adjusts to a stable environment. Macroevolution happens when the environment changes drastically and populations are isolated. However, natural selection and mutation are present in both kinds of evolution. You should read the article yourself; you can search for a particular quotation.

Creationist Gary Parker tells a story of a debate he was involved in as a college biology professor: "The Bible Department defended evolution, and two other scientists and I defended creation!" I decided to investigate this story. Here's what I found out.

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.

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:

Don't forget: God reads e-mail.

Send e-mail to: jambo789 at hotmail.com

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