Don’t Conflate Geology with Evolutionary Biology

Within science and faith debates, the creation of false dichotomies is an all too often occurrence. Either, a literal Adam made directly from physical dust or no historical Adam. Either, seven, 24 hour day creation or atheism. Either, no animal death or a rejection of inerrancy. If you’ve done any research into these debates, you’re sure to hear one of these, if not all of them. 

Part of the reason for this is a failure to make proper distinctions. Nowhere do I see this more prevalent than in the failure to understand the difference between literal and historical, as briefly mentioned above. 

I recall a discussion with a pastor who was talking about the importance of believing in a literal Adam, but he kept implying that rejecting such a belief would necessarily entail believing in no Adam at all. Although I still lean to both a literal and historical Adam, I’m very sympathetic to (and open to) views that allow for a literary (i.e. non-literal) and historical Adam. 

Maybe Adam was created directly from dust, maybe God breathed into the nostrils of a pair of hominids. Christians can easily choose one or the other without many theological consequences, as long as they maintain a historic Fall (for now, we’ll avoid the scientific implications of either view). Either way, both views do believe in a historical person, Adam. And that is the key belief that has massive theological implications and ramifications. When I brought up this distinction with my pastor friend, he quickly corrected himself and agreed with the importance of the distinction. His concern was not with the rejection of literalism, but rather with the rejection of historicity.  

Another common occurrence within these debates that often fails to make a necessary and proper distinction (and the primary subject of this blog), is when young earth creationists (YEC) present all forms of deep time geology as “evolutionary.” This is unhelpful at best, and deceptive at worst. The common (real) meaning of evolutionary within such circles is centered primarily around biological evolution. That is, young earth creationists strive against the idea that plants and animals have been formed through Darwin’s primary process of natural selection acting upon random mutation. This idea is found within the science of biological evolution, which studies how the various forms of life (bio) came to be. 

Many of these same creationists then attack another discipline, geology, claiming it is darwinian or evolutionary in nature. However, this is an error that combines two separate sciences into one. It fails to make a significant and proper distinction between evolutionary biology and geology as two fully separate practices. YEC are welcome to critique both fields, but accusing mainstream geology of being evolutionary wrongly conflates the two ideas. 

At most, evolutionary biology uses the geological timescale as a framework for when and where evolutionary progress has occurred, but it cannot be overstated that geology is not subservient to the theory of evolution nor any aspect of the study of biological evolution. As an important sidebar, if geology really was a slave to evolution, it would create a much greater timescale for evolutionists to work with than it currently provides. One of the biggest challenges facing modern evolutionary theories is the fact that there is not enough time (even with our standard billion-year timeline). 

Time, even deep time, is still a major problem for all encompassing theories of evolution. This is only exasperated as much of the geological record indicates stasis (life staying as it is). As the famous American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould proclaimed, “Stasis is data. Stasis is data.” 

Stasis is a problem because Darwinian evolution is supposed to take time, lots of time. But when paleontology finds that “most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed, and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group,” ¹ it creates difficulties for the standard theory of evolution. Of course, this sidebar is coming close to conflating two other disciplines, that of geology (rocks) and paleontology (life in rocks), but I’m merely pointing this out to show how not every finding produced by these separate disciplines is supportive of the grand narrative of evolution. 

Which brings us back to our main point: When young earth creationists claim geology, or even paleontology, is all evolutionary, and especially when they associate any claim of an ancient age of the earth and universe as evolutionary, or darwinian, or atheistic, they are not presenting the truth accurately. Geology is its own science, separate from and independent of evolutionary biology. When geologists state that the earth is billions of years old, they are (when staying in the lanes of their own discipline) speaking as geologists, not as evolutionists. As a frustrated geologist once put it:

A favorite claim of creation “scientists” is that geologists have somehow devised the geological time-scale and an ancient age of the Earth in order to provide adequate time for the biologists’ theory of evolution… The idea that the theory of evolution and the age of the Earth are the result of a conspiracy is absurd. I have no reason whatever to want the age of the Earth to be any more or less than it happens to be. I would take great delight in proving that the Earth is only 10,000 years old if it were possible to do so. As for the biologists, they are entirely on their own—they will have to make do with whatever we geologists are able to discover about the age and history of the Earth. If there is a conspiracy of “evolutionists,” neither I nor my colleagues were invited to join.² 

The important takeaway is that it is grossly misleading to claim an old earth is necessarily evolutionary, as many YEC do. For Christians, this creates a grave injustice as it makes them think that they only have two options when many more exist. 

There is nothing about the findings of geology, even the evidentially sound findings of an ancient earth, that requires any kind of belief in darwinian evolution proper or even evolution more generally considered. All that a belief in the findings of geology requires is a belief in the findings of geology, not in evolutionary biology. Once that is sorted out, Christians can then consider their options for understanding the age of the earth, and they can breathe a little easier knowing that Darwin isn’t the only one. 

Notes

1. Gunter Bechly and Stephen C. Meyer, “The Fossil Record and Universal Common Ancestry” in Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, ed. J.P. Moreland, Stephen C. Meyer, Christopher Shaw, Ann K. Gauger, and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 332
2. Quoted in: C. John Collins, Science and Faith: Friends or Foes? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 398; emphasis mine