It is of VITAL importance that you define terms here!!! The word "evolution" encompasses an awful lot and it's very difficult to have any meaningful discussion without carefully and specifically defining that term. As a christian and a biologist, I personally believe that evolution, as described by Darwin, is responsible for much of the world's biodiversity. I do not, however, believe that it is responsible for all diversity - i.e. that all life shares a single common ancestor.

If you accept a very broad definition of evolution (to include the origin of man), you're going to run into some serious theological problems, starting with Gen 3 and percolating throughout the rest of scripture - ultimately undermining nearly ever major christian doctrine. If Adam was not really Adam, the first human created directly by God, and the fall did not literally occur, the whole premise of Christ's death is called into question. Romans 5 throws this into sharp relief with Paul's comparison of Adam and Christ. I personally think the doctrine of creation is extremely important as a foundation of sound doctrine. That said, I also do not believe we are saved based on our understanding or acceptance of this particular doctrine and it is therefore not a point I am willing to beat very far into the ground, especially with non-christians. But throw it out, and your faith is not going to have much of a foundation and will thus be very vulnerable to false teaching that undermines the diety of Christ and the sovereignty of God.

I personally stay away from the terms "macro-evolution" and "micro-evolution" for several reasons, but mostly because I think they're irrelevent. I absolutely think that speciation occurs through evolutionary processes (i.e., one species evolving from another.) It's an observable process that actually happens much more rapidly than you might think with very good evidence - read a few genetics papers and you won't have much doubt!

First of all, understand that I am by NO means anything even remotely close to an expert in evolutionary studies or in creation studies! I know just enough about both fields to know that I don't know very much at all! A great person to talk to would be Dr. Wood over at Bryan. In fact, I think it would be the utmost coolness for Rachel to post an interview with him on this blog! What I'm getting at though, is that the question really boils down to where are the breaks in the evolutionary chain? When you look at Genesis, you see certain categories of creation, e.g., the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the swarming things of the earth, etc. That suggests that the fish of the sea were created separately from the birds of the air, or that fish did not evolve into birds. But within those created kinds, it is reasonable to assume that speciation occurs. For example, and I'm just making this up, think about song birds. There are thousands, litterally, of species of song birds (Passereformes) world-wide. It may be that God created only a very few or even a single species of song bird in the beginning and all modern song birds have evolved from that single created kind. You really can't get around that either - we know how big the arc was and we know that barely a fraction of the species on earth today would have fit in that boat!

There is an entire branch of science that is devoted to trying to figure out as closely as possible what those original created kinds "looked" like. It's called baraminology and it's really a brand new thing in the creation science world. Dr. Wood wrote a fascinating text book on the subject that really gets into the nitty gritty of it all. I highly recommend it!

Does that help? I should say, I really like what Rachel said above! It's great that she's asking those questions and clearly trying to approach the issue reasonably. I applaud her for that! More christians need to shed their science prejudices and take an unbiased look at this issue. The scientific community loves a good discussion. Sadly, there hasn't been much in the way of a good reasonable scientific debate about the issues of creation and while there might never really be one in the mainstream, there are some voices out there who are starting to really make some strides. As christians, there is no more efficient way to completely abolish our credibility with anyone in the scientific world than to make broad sweeping statements against evolution because they simply don't hold water. I've seen it happen! But, define terms well and understand a little bit about the nature of evolution, and people will listen. The way I look at it, the evolution issue is one of the biggest distractions keeping people from seeing Christ. Christians really only need to know enough to remove that stumbling block so that poeple can see Jesus.

I agree entirely with Mitch! I don't think it is reasonable to interpret the creation account in Genesis as a metaphore. I think other scriptures confirm the historical nature of the account, as well as the context of the account itself as Mitch so eloquently pointed out. I also maintain that to discredit the Genesis account as historical will lead to serious inconsistencies in the rest of your theology. If you lose the creation account, you lose the fall, and if you lose the fall, you lose everything. Again, I don't think we're saved based on the consistency of our theology (and aren't I grateful!) but in many ways the integrity of the gospel itself rests on the accuracy of the first three chapters of Genesis. So the consequences of marginalizing it are dire indeed.

Fortunately, I really don't think it is necessary to interpret Genesis as metaphorical in order to maintain both consistent theology and consistent science. There is very good scientific evidence to support the creation account, and that body of evidence is ever-growing due to the hard work of some very brilliant and dedicated christian scientists. You just have to look for it....and generally not on the discovery channel! :-)

By the way, I also really appreciated Mitch's previous post that suggested that the foundation of the church is Christ and is unmoving, but it's our building on other foundations that causes problems. Well said! And Rachel, thanks for generating such an interesting and stimulating discussion!