Richard Dawkins first gained prominence in 1976 with the publication of his The Selfish Gene, a book that popularized the gene-centric view of evolution. Since that time, Britain’s influential academic has published works excoriating religion in general and Christianity in particular with such books as The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design and The God Delusion, just to name a few. It is in the latter that Dawkins cites a survey taken of members of the National Academy of Sciences in which they were asked if they believe in God. Only 7 percent reportedly answered "yes". This survey, Dawkins argues, is statistical proof that intelligent scientific thinking inevitably leads to one conclusion—there is no God, an often-repeated theme throughout the corpus of his writings.

Answering the challenge to this new breed of atheists is Timothy Keller, founder and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. In his New York Times bestseller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Keller responds to the more common platitudes against Christianity, while at the same time attempting to muster a seemingly intellectually progressive view of Christianity—including the belief that science and Genesis are compatible. That is to say, Keller does not see a disjunction between theistic evolution and the biblical account of creation. Keller tells us that he believes the first chapter is a "song about the wonder and meaning of God’s creation," while the subsequent chapter deals with how creation happened. Therefore, Keller attempts to reconcile scientific explanations of creation with the Bible. He writes, "For the record I think God guided some kind of process of natural selection, and yet I reject the concept of evolution as All-encompassing theory." In other words, according to Keller, the Christian can rightly maintain that the God of the Bible used a process of natural selection whereby more complex forms evolved from less complex forms and not fall outside of the pale of orthodoxy.

But is this truly the case? Is such a view tenable? Is theistic evolution a rational possibility or is it merely a conceptual absurdity? I ask this because it seems that all too often Christians forget to ask the simple, yet foundational question: does theistic evolution violate the nature of God? That is to say, when we consider God and His attributes, does evolution comport with the revealed understanding of God or are Christians simply attempting to reconcile God’s Word with an anti-Christian philosophical worldview in hopes of being accepted by academic elites who hate the very thought of God anyways?

Oftentimes, the debate centers on discussion about how one should interpret Genesis (allegorically, poetically, historically, etc.), or if Jesus and Paul believed in a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2. While these are indeed valid arguments and are in need of clear representation and articulation, I would submit to you that the Christian who believes in theistic evolution must first answer how it is that God could create a world in which lesser creatures who were unfit for survival mutated or progressively evolved into higher forms in a world replete with death and disease prior to Adam’s sin. It is a logical impossibility for the Christian to maintain the belief that God can create imperfectly. Just as God cannot both be God and not be God, cannot create an equal, and cannot limit His own power, it would be a violation of God’s nature as a logical and rational Being—and therefore an irrational impossibility—to say that God could created an imperfect system that required change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to another. Genesis records that when God created He did so—and it was very good. Furthermore, Paul tells us that sin entered the world through Adam (Rom 5:12) and that death came as a result of his sin, and not that unspeakable death and destruction preceded the first man in the Garden.

It is incoherent and absurd to think that God could produce a defective creation in which death and mutations were necessary in order to bring a finished product to fruition. If more Christians thought critically about the nature of God and understood He must out of necessity act in accordance with His own nature, they would arrest such notions as reconciling godless worldviews with Scripture. Moreover, if the Christian has no apprehension about believing in a worldwide deluge, a sea parting to let the Hebrew people pass through safely, a virgin birth, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the death, burial, and physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, upon what basis, then, does the Christian find himself reluctant to believe in a literal rendering of the Genesis account of creation? The Christian focus should be upon the one paramount verse in the biblical account which reads: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen 1:31). When God creates, He does so according to His nature—perfect and very good.