Theologians of all stripes have agreed for thousands of years that beginning of Genesis provides a foundation for our faith. It is not "just a faith account," but the primary purpose is to communicate a message of faith.

As a scientific account that describes the present state of our universe, Genesis is not a very good description. One could easily get the impression that planet Earth is at the center of the solar system. Morning and evening happen for three days without benefit of the sun. The firmament sounds like a big blue dome above the atmosphere, or at least a firm demarcation between man's zone and God's realm. In several places rain seems to come from windows in the sky that are opened to let pour out the water that is held up there. You would think that the words "sphere" or "round" would appear somewhere. We are already interpreting Scripture in the light of science.

Remember that in delivering Genesis by means of fallible humans, God had to thread the account through thousands of years of well-meaning scribes who would be tempted to excise nonsense about the earth orbiting around the sun. Also recall that it took great effort to produce a Bible until Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1454. In Genesis God had some very important things to communicate to us, and there was no good reason to include pages of details about the physical layout of the cosmos that He knew we would figure out soon enough anyway.

I believe that the same is true for the natural history contained in Genesis. Genesis is not wrong, it is not simply a myth, it is not just a compelling story with no real basis in history. Genesis happened! All of it! But to try to match up each verse with a scientific finding is to ignore the Author's main purpose in giving this account to us. Genesis 1-2 must be read through the eyes of faith, and that is its most important message. If we concentrate too much on the scientific details or mire these chapters in controversy, we will miss the faith message there.

What I Think About the Soundness of the Theory of Evolution

The theory of evolution sounds pretty good as science, especially the enhancements that were made after Darwin, and are still being made based on continuing research and discoveries. The geological and fossil record shows change over a long period of time. We have a long history of changing life forms. Bugs adapt to poison. Moth populations change color. People get taller. Dogs breed into forms that look much different than the original. In general, the theory sounds pretty reasonable. We can observe evolution happening during our own time in small amounts.

Note that much of the evolutionary action does not involve entirely new structures. New structures are hard to develop. We would all like to see a horse develop wings and fly, but that's unlikely to happen. Plenty of evolutionary mileage can be obtained by modifying and changing the existing structures. For example, most of the mammals have the same basic body plan. Giraffes and humans have the same number of vertebrae in their necks (seven). We have the same bones, but the sizes and shapes are different. The large differences that we see in the animal kingdom can be achieved through small, incremental, useful change.

The term microevolution is used to refer to change at the species level or lower. Macroevolution refers to higher-order changes that cause one species to split into two, or morph into an entirely new species. I do not accept the creationist argument that the small changes we see in microevolution cannot add up to macroevolution under the right conditions. This argument is not even logically reasonable unless a "change barrier" is proposed around every species, and I have heard of no such proposal. Indeed, it is true that microevolution does not prove macroevolution, but it certainly supports it.

However, it is still a evolutionary puzzle how microevolution relates to macroevolution. When do we get stasis, and when do we get change? The old Darwinian idea, that microevolution can be simply be extrapolated to macroevolution over long periods of time, is probably not correct because it is too simple:
microevolution + time = macroevolution (too simple)
More recent research indicates that macroevolution involves additional factors, including the ones present in microevolution (natural selection, mutation). So we can update our equation to express the modern understanding:

microevolution + time + isolation + selection pressure + changing environment = macroevolution

These ideas were discussed at the 1980 Chicago Conference on Macroevolution. For more information, please see the Roger Lewin reprint for the entire text of his Science article "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire."

Transitional Fossils

We have transitional fossils, despite the creationist claim that "there are no transitional fossils". We have transitional fossils for humans, too, in spite of the claim that "there are no ape-men." (see Time magazine, August 23, 1999; "How Man Evolved", by Michael Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, pp. 54-55). The References section of this essay contains links to transitional fossils, including some with pictures.

It is puzzling that transitional fossils are more rare than we would expect. I think that paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould is on the right track with his theory of evolution through Punctuated Equilibrium. This theory states that major changes occur locally in an isolated population, so that fossils are more rare than would be expected by the slow, stately progress of change predicted by Charles Darwin. Punctuated Equilibrium is not just an excuse for finding no transitional fossils, because many such fossils have been found. Transitional forms are found locally for certain animals, and outside the "evolution zone" the transition looks quite abrupt because of migration of the new species and displacement of the original species.