God's man, Darwin
By Clifford Goldstein, Adventist Review website.

“Let’s get hypothetical and pretend that the Genesis Creation account was never meant to be taken literally. Although God was communicating with us about the work of creation, suppose the texts themselves were to be understood metaphorically, symbolically, nothing more. Given that premise, what, then, was the Creator seeking to reveal about our origins? Two points, even in a broad and liberal reading of Genesis 1, come through. First, look at these verses: [Quotes from] (Gen. 1:3, 9, 11, 26, 27, KJV). Everything was planned, precise, calculated; nothing random, arbitrary, chancy. It would take a Dadaist interpretation to derive randomness out of Genesis 1. Second, look at these: [Quotes from] (verses 21, 24, 25). The texts reveal unambiguously that each creature was made after its own kind; that is, each one was made separately and distinctly from the others. Even from a nonliteralist interpretation of Genesis, two points are obvious: nothing was random in the act of creation, and there was no common ancestry for the species. Now, along comes Darwinian evolution, which in its various incarnations teaches two things: randomness and common ancestry for all species. How, then, does one interpret Genesis through a theory that, at its most basic level, contradicts Genesis at its most basic level? If evolution were true, it would mean that for thousands of years (from the Israelite period up through and beyond the Protestant Reformation) the Lord’s church was kept in darkness regarding human origins, until God, in His infinite wisdom, raised up His divinely appointed one, Charles Darwin, an atheist, to finally reveal the truth about the proper interpretation of Genesis. And though we shouldn’t judge someone in the nineteenth century by our standards today, God’s man Darwin also held racist views that would make David Duke look like an ACLU lawyer. Even worse, thanks to Darwin and his theory of human descent, racism had now been given a ‘scientific’ rationale. Finally, many of Darwin’s teachings are rejected by evolutionists today. Even Richard Dawkins (the most vociferous of the evolution apologists) wrote: ‘Much of what Darwin said is, in detail, wrong.’ So, if evolution were true, then the Lord used an atheist racist with detailed errors in his teaching as the divinely appointed one to finally set the church straight on the book of Genesis and our origins. I don’t know, but if Charles Darwin were right, it would seem that the One who is ‘the Word’ (John 1:1), the One who created language, could have done a much better job of communicating with us than He did. Why inspire a creation account that teaches nonrandomness and a noncommon ancestry of all species when God used randomness and a common ancestry as His means of creation? Am I being a closed-minded, right-wing dogmatic intellectual bigot not to see something radically wrong here? Though I disagree with those who don’t read Genesis literally, their position is not absurd. What is absurd is to read an evolutionary schema into a biblical account that, even with a broad and free interpretation, denies it at the most fundamental level” [Op-ed].

Editorial comments: Cliff Goldstein in his AR print-blog states that even a "broad and liberal" or non-literal reading of Genesis 1 forbids any randomness or common ancestry in the creation of living things whereas Darwinian evolutionary theory affirms both. Although this column was posted earlier in the summer, clarifying some issues is a worthwhile endeavor.

Creation accounts in the Hebrew Bible
Rather than only one literalistic Genesis creation account, numerous Bible students and scholars see two detailed and differing creation accounts in Genesis 1-2:3 and 2:4-25 (continuing in chapter 3). In addition, there are seven other creation accounts elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. Far from being literalistic, all of them are vividly diverse portrayals of God's primordial creative work, how he acted, and in what order, and each account is richly marked by non-literal, metaphoric, and parabolic language and imagery. There have been Christians throughout the centuries, long before modern science, which have recognized aspects of this.

Furthermore, there is nothing in Genesis 1 or any of other Hebrew creation accounts that even addresses let alone forbids the following phenomena. (a) The randomness of genetic mutations is well-observed but the fixation and loss rates of beneficial and deleterious mutations within populations under natural selection are vastly non-random. (b) Speciation, or the evolution of new species, occurs through the erection of reproductive, chromosomal, geographic, or behavioral barriers within populations severing once common gene pools into separate gene pools, and ultimately separate species. (c) Many extant species of living things once shared common ancestral gene pools as evidenced by numerous shared, derived genetic changes. (d) Discovering more functions within the vast non-coding DNA in genomes is fully consistent with the common ancestry of species as has been pointed out by some evolutionary biologists for more than a decade. (e) Complex adaptations in morphology, physiology, coloration, and behavior of numerous extant species are specific adaptive responses to local selective constraints, resulting in non-random genetic fixation of these traits in new species.

Whether and at what level extant living species share one or several common ancestral species, other processes are at work (such as horizontal gene transfer, genomic duplication, common mechanisms like "hot spots" at some loci rather than common ancestry, etc.), they present us with explicit hypotheses that continue to be tested in the emerging age of genomics. However, even in evolving new species, every individual is always born "after his kind” with some changes. The question of the origin of new species is not even addressed in Genesis 1 or in any other creation account in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Contrary to some culture warriors of the right and the left, acknowledging these phenomena does not do away with God, make life a meaningless accident, or remove purpose from the universe. For many who are Christians (including Adventist Christians) and scientists, observing life's resilient adaptiveness in the face of adversity reveals the grandeur of creation and constitutes real evidence of the genius of our Creator.

What Darwin didn't know
Cliff quotes from "Memes: The New Replicators" in Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976): "Much of what Darwin said is, in detail, wrong." But Cliff fails to take in the historical context. As careful, exhaustive, and observant a naturalist as Charles Darwin was, he knew nothing about Mendelian genetics, discovered by Gregor Mendel several decades later. Darwin believed in blending inheritances, instead of the atomistic, particulate inheritance of Mendelian factors (i.e., alleles of genes). In fact, natural selection cannot operate on blending inheritances, but works very predictably with well-worked out mathematical models on allelic inheritance. Expansions of these models underlie modern molecular genetics and the exploding fields of genomics and bioinformatics. The adaptive, non-random shaping of life by natural selection is evident throughout the living world. Like questions in physics or cosmology, the details will be resolved by researching the growing scientific data. An exciting development would be strong evidence that there were more independent common ancestors than currently thought! A forest of life rather than a tree of life! Darwin himself asserted the possibility of more than one common ancestor in the closing paragraph of Origin of Species.

An atheist?
First, it is simply mistaken to claim that Darwin was an atheist. Besides concluding Origin of Species with a reference to life "having been originally breathed by the Creator," Darwin varied in his description of himself as a "theist" or as an "agnostic" respectively depending on whether he thought of the wonderful intricacy of life or considered the problem of evil. The death of his beloved 12 year old daughter, Annie, rendered his struggle poignantly difficult.

A racist?
Far from being the backward racist comparable to David Duke that Cliff describes, Darwin (although a product of his time in many ways) was quite progressive in his historical context. This was an age when many Christian and political leaders held that the races of people of color were different species, mentally inferior, not truly human, harmful to intermarry with, condemned because of sinfulness by the curse of Ham, fixed forever separate and inferior by God to be dominated by whites, and were the product of human-animal interbreeding. The more reactionary defended as Biblical the slavery of Africans, and the genocide and ethnic cleansing of American Indians. The subjugation of women was a given. The more progressive, for example Abraham Lincoln at a earlier stage, still insisted on innate African inferiority, denounced political and social equality, and defended laws forbidding intermarriage.(1) By contrast, Charles Darwin (although he used the common terms “barbarian” and “savage” to describe indigenous peoples including our ancestors) vehemently condemned slavery ,(2) held that people of all races are part of the one human species, all of one ancestral stock, essentially equal in every way, that racial differences are biologically overlapping and insignificant, that differences in ability are greater within races than between them, and that intermarriage has no ill effects. Hardly the ideas of a 19th century racist!

Slavery apologists aside, Darwin also compares favorably with the founders of the Adventist church, some of whom had mild abolitionist sympathies, but were also productsof their time. Along the same line as the contemporary author Buckner Payne,(3) Ellen White wrote that “the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God, and caused confusion everywhere” was the main cause of the flood and was repeated post-flood as is evident “in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men.” (4) While some Adventist scholars have struggled since then to interpret the meaning of these quotations, the Review and Herald editor, Uriah Smith, felt no such hesitancy. In an apologetic book on Ellen White’s ministry, he defended this view arguing that “naturalists affirm that the line of demarkation between the human and animal races is lost in confusion” and argued that White’s critics could be “easily silenced by… such cases as the wild Bushmen of Africa, some tribes of the Hottentots, and perhaps the Digger Indians of our own country.”(5, 6) Of course, there is not a shred of biological evidence we realize today to support Smith's claims. Also, in a smaller vein to Francis Galton in England (a relative of Darwin's), Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was an active figure in the American eugenics movement and the push for “race hygiene” which had fateful consequences then, and later when adopted by Nazi Germany in the 20th century.(7) Yet, it would be unfair to ignore the contributions of our Adventist leaders by noting how the prejudiced racial climate of the time may influenced them. One thing Darwin also suggested was that humankind has African roots. Genetic markers in many independent data sets strong suggest that all of us in the human family are part of the African diaspora. This evidence is surely a strong refutation of racism as has been pointed out by biologist Luc Cavalli-Sforza (see The History and Geography of Human Genes [Princeton University Press, 1994] and in many more additionally definitive studies since).

For a church like ours which has struggled within to come to terms with racial and gender equality, and which was sadly silent during the Civil Rights movement, some humility is in order. Within a church paper, to compare Darwin, who on race was at least among the more advanced and progressive of his age, to David Duke, the neo-Nazi, white supremacist, Holocaust-denier, one among the most backward and regressive of our time, is a real distortion and misrepresentation indeed. Honest openness and humility on many subjects Biblical, scientific, and historical is important for all of us.

Why would God use a sometimes agnostic/theist?
Now why would God use a reticent, sometimes agnostic-theist, who struggled with a God who created parasitic wasps and allowed his 12-year old daughter to die, to discover evolution of species via natural selection? Why not? God used a sometimes cantankerous, spiteful man, Sir Isaac Newton, who practiced Alchemy, to discover the law of gravity and co-discover the calculus. Evidently God had no problem using Albert Einstein, a Spinozista who did not believe in a personal deity at all, to discover special and general relativity, and the photoelectric effect. Similar observations could be made about many biblical characters and other great people of history. Of course, there is no conceivable reason why God should not use them. Such objections do not bear any weight.

Rhetorical question: “a closed-minded, right-wing dogmatic intellectual bigot…?”
A standard for a reasoned critique of historical figures and their views is accuracy and fairness in representation of the person and the historical context. Regretfully, Cliff’s criticisms fail on both. Only if these failures were deliberate and malicious would "yes" be the answer to his prominently-displayed, rhetorical question, "Am I being a closed-minded, right-wing dogmatic intellectual bigot not to see something radically wrong here?" Simply not being aware isn't bigotry, because there is the straightforward solution of becoming aware. Thankfully and in fairness to thoughtful fellow Christians across the centuries, Cliff grants that although personally disagreeing with it, a non-literal reading of Genesis "is not absurd." –Lee F. Greer.

Footnotes: (1) See the first full paragraph in the text of Abraham Lincoln’s fourth debate with Steven Douglass on September 18, 1858: http://www.nps.gov/archive/liho/debate4.htm.

(2) “It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children – those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own – being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty” Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 1839. There are many references attesting to Darwin’s abolitionist views and progressive bent.

(3) Buckner H. Payne, 1799-1883. [pseudonym ‘Ariel’]. 1867. The Negro, What Is His Ethnological Status?: Is He the Progeny of Ham? Is He a Descendant of Adam and Eve? Has He a Soul? Or Is He a Beast In God's Nomenclature? What Is His Status As Fixed By God In Creation? What Is His Relation To The White Race? (2nd edition, first edition in 1842). Cincinnati, OH: 48 pp. For references to amalgamation as the terrible sin bringing the flood and occurring after the flood (or ‘miscegenation,’ i.e., interracial mixing of “whites” as “humans” with Negroes whom Payne considered “beasts”), see pp. 25, 27, 31, 34, 38, 40, 41, 45, 48.

(4) The statements from Ellen White, 1864. Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, pp. 64, 75: “But if there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God, and caused confusion everywhere” (p. 64). “Every species of animal which God had created were preserved in the ark. The confused species which God did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood. Since the flood there has been amalgamation of man and beast, as may be seen in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men” p.75).

(5) James White reviewed and endorsed Smith’s book in the Review and Herald (August 15, 1868). The Whites apparently also promoted the book on the campmeeting circuit according to Gordon Shigley in “Amalgamation of Man and Beast: What Did Ellen White Mean?” Spectrum 12(4): 18 footnote.

(6) Uriah Smith, 1868. The Visions of Mrs. E. G. White, A Manifestation of Spiritual gifts According to the Scripture, p. 103. (Battle Creek, Michigan). The entire quote from pp. 103-4 “‘Since the flood there has been amalgamation of man and beast, as may be seen in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men.’ This view was given for the purpose of illustrating the deep corruption and crime into which the race fell, even within a few years after the flood that signal manifestation of God's wrath against human wickedness. There was amalgamation; and the effect is still visible in certain races of men.’ Mark, those excepting the animals upon whom the effects of this work are visible, are called by the vision, ‘men.’ Now we have ever supposed that anybody that was called a man, was considered a human being. The vision speaks of all these classes as races of men; yet in the face of this plain declaration, they foolishly assert that the visions teach that some men are not human beings! But does any one deny the general statement contained in the extract given above? They do not. If they did, they could easily be silenced by a reference to such cases as the wild Bushmen of Africa, some tribes of the Hottentots, and perhaps the Digger Indians of our own country, &c. Moreover, naturalists affirm that the line of demarkation between the human and animal races is lost in confusion. It is impossible, as they affirm, to tell just where the human ends and the animal begins. Can we suppose that this was so ordained of God in the beginning? Rather has not sin marred the boundaries of these two kingdoms?”

(7) Edwin Black, 2003. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. (New York, NY ), pp. 88, 238 on Kellogg, and pp. 15-17 and elsewhere on Galton."