I attended a Zoom lecture from Dr. Denis O. Lamoureux billed "beyond the Evolution vs. Creation debate". Lamoureux is a doctor of both theology and biology. A Canadian, he has the voice, cadence and mannerisms of Dr. Jordan Peterson.
The highlight of the lecture wasn't anything to do with the proposed topic. Counter-intuitively, his strong-suit was connecting on an emotional level describing his own conversion to Christianity and God's work in his life. Especially moving was his discourse on the problem of pain as expressed in the slow and painful death of his godly mother. It is obvious that this man loves God and cares about people.
Ironically, the weak point of the talk was the nominal topic. He went from a handout which he developed, part of which is pictured below. He used scriptures which he said pointed to a three-tier view of the cosmos which he posited was so far from known scientific observation of the cosmos that it precluded the idea of concordism. That is, that the bible will speak with accuracy about the natural universe because scripture and the universe have the same Author.
I think he gave this topic very short shift and as such it would not have been possible form him to have made his case even if he is correct. It is true that the ancients had some ideas about the construction of the universe that we know to be false, the question is whether scripture really takes the same position or whether it takes some other position that was misinterpreted by the ancients.
I would argue the latter. The Apostle Paul wrote of being taking up to "the third heaven", clearly his cosmology didn't fit the "three tiered" view of the Ancient Near East. Dr. Lamoureux made repeated reference to "the waters above" to indicate the ancients believed there was an ocean of water beyond the stars. There isn't a literal ocean there, but the idea of "waters above" is very well documented scientifically. Just last year scientists discovered a vast cloud with 140 trillion ocean's worth of water in it. Here is an article from NASA claiming earth's oceans came from ancient comets. So literally the waters above were split off into the waters below.
That is not even considering the Christ-centered view of the matter where what is happening in the physical world is only a figure or shadow of what is happening in the unseen realm. The bottom line is that if the bible writers thought that there were waters exceeding those of earth beyond the visible stars, they were right, so dismissing scripture as accurately depicting the natural universe can't be done on account of that claim.
A lot of this is just being hasty. Time is a tyrant, but the good doctor was also hasty to discount the suggestion that Christ and the Apostles spoke of Adam and Eve as historical figures and the flood as an actual historical event, not just archetypes. The idea was that Christ and the Apostles were just "meeting people where they were" and speaking as if these were historical facts instead of just archetypes because that was what the hearer's understood. But the assertion itself is not evidence that this was indeed the case.
I think the term "dismissive" was used, and as incongruent as it seems for an obviously decent fellow like Dr. Lamoureux, it was probably fair in this case. If one is going to make such a claim, sufficient evidence should be put forth to support the claim, because everything in the text of scripture seems to indicate the very opposite. Christ and the Apostles spoke as if Adam and Eve and Noah were historical figures. Pointing out that the word "adam" can also mean "mankind" doesn't begin to suffice because he was supposed to represent a sort of "federal head" for us all as a figure of Christ. Adam was an archetype, so we might expect him to have a name suitable for this position, but this isn't evidence that Christ or the Apostles viewed him only as such.
While these issues are important, it was his system of categorization that I found most disappointing. I believe it is important to define our terms so that we don't talk past one another, but the definitions should be fair, rather than skewed to move the audience to one position or the other based on the way things are defined rather than the evidence to be considered. For example, here are Dr. Lamoureux's categories...
(EDIT - Dr. Lamoureux was very upset at my review and complained that the picture I had of his chart was used without his permission and is copyrighted material. I don't know how the laws are in Canada, but down here I am really sure that if you credit properly, which I did saying it was his chart and even providing a link to the paper it was used in above, that other people have fair use rights to excerpts. Nevertheless, I have deleted my screen shot of his chart, which until he takes the link down you can see
by scrolling down here. In the meantime, everything I say about it below is an accurate representation.)
click on picture to get a large view
One issue I had was that it wasn't quite accurate to say that Progressive Creationists, or even Young Earth Creationists. don't believe in the Evolution of Living Organisms. Almost all Christians acknowledge that some evolution has occurred. Some Young Earth Creationists even believe in rapid evolution of creatures off of the ark. The question is whether evolution is powerful enough to explain everything we see or whether nature merely diversifies from types provided from beyond nature. I think we agreed that "No macroevolution" would be a more fit label for these two positions.
What is macroevolution? We didn't even agree on the definition of evolution! No wonder people are talking past one another. Dr. Lamoureux defined it as....
"Scientific theory that natural processes over billions
of years produced all living organisms & humans"
This definition isn't neutral. If evolution is merely a "scientific theory" rather than the actual phenomenon of changes in the biota of the world, then it can only be considered to occur by naturalistic means. Science after all can't properly test for supernatural causes, it is limited to methodological naturalism. He doubles-down on this a priori assumption by specifying that it was natural processes that produced the change. This biases the discussion by excluding the possibility that God actively intervened in the evolution of life on earth. The way he defines it, if it was evolution, then God wasn't involved, except perhaps in setting things up at the very beginning. Nature took it from there and no divine intervention in the process is allowed by definition.
I find this effort to exclude divine action from the mix by re-defining the terms to be injurious to the debate in a very unnecessary way. Look how mainstream sources define "evolution":
Merriam-Webster defines it as : descent with modification from preexisting species : cumulative inherited change in a population of organisms through time leading to the appearance of new forms : the process by which new species or populations of living things develop from preexisting forms through successive generations....
Cambridge Dictionary puts it:
"the way in which living things change and develop over millions of years:
Darwin's theory of evolution
B2
a gradual process of change and development:"
As you can see, several of these definitions do not rule out divine action as a possible source of the change and there is surely no need to use a definition which does so in a discussion on creation and evolution. It biases the debate right from the start.
What if God took a population of fish and "created" the amphibian kind by inducing a series of genetic changes over a few dozen generations that nature would be extremely unlikely to achieve on her own? Would that meet most of these definitions of "evolution"? It would. But it would also be creationism. The war would be over, at least among believers. The war against naturalism, the belief that nature is all there is and that all causes are natural ones, would continue. But Christians shouldn't be defending naturalism anyway. It is an inherently anti-theist philosophy.
Dr. Lamoureux insisted more than once that God intervened in his life, and his conviction and sincerity could not be doubted. And yet he described his own position as "Evolutionary Creationist" which according to his own chart claims that life arose by evolution, and as defined by him evolution operated by natural processes alone. So one has the dichotomy of a God who never intervened throughout the course of all of life's history but repeatedly does so in our lives today. Shackled with his one-sided definition, I sense some inconsistency in the position.
I objected to his defining "evolutionary creation" as God using natural processes, period. Where is the "creation" in that? It can be nowhere but at the very beginning, I.E., in God designing the process so that the dominoes fall a certain way. But this is just the same as what he has for "Deistic Evolution". There is no difference in process, the only difference is that the God in his definition of "evolutionary creation" is a personal God, but one who- despite what Genesis chapter one says- impersonally stays out the first 99.999% of the history of living things, at which point he starts intervening in the life of Denis Lamoureux et al.
I maintain that the broader category "theistic evolution" should be used to label the position which he calls "evolutionary creation". At least it only has "evolution" in it and not "creation"! The "Evolutionary Creation" label is better suited for those who believe that evolution of life on earth was actively God-directed or at least God-assisted. In other words, also creationism. He left "theistic evolution" off his chart on the grounds that it is the same as "evolutionary creation". But as you can see this is not really true. There may be some overlap in the positions but I maintain that there should be another entry in his chart. Another chair at the table in his conversation as it were.
That it was excluded was particularly annoying to me because the Doctor noted that in the late 80's, his own position was somewhere between "Progressive Creation" and "Evolutionary Creation". In other words, pretty close to the position that I suggest should be included in the discussion. He is leaving off a position that he once held!
My own position on these issues is complex and I believe the text of scripture describes a more complicated relationship between natural effect and His own actions than either side is acknowledging. Dr. Lamoureux described his journey and how he changed his position over the years and so I hope he is a life-long learner and is not done changing yet. The Christ-centered model in my book below reconciles these paradoxes from history, scripture, and the natural world in a most glorious way- just by looking at the text through the lens of Christ these other issues resolve elegantly.
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