Creationism versus Evolutionism

Christopher Vasey

Creationism and evolutionism are two different ways of explaining the emergence of living organisms on earth: plants, animals, and human beings. Both have been the cause of numerous conflicts between their advocates, as they were presented as mutually exclusive. These conflicts are, however, unnecessary, as the two concepts are in reality complementary when considered from a spiritual perspective.

Creationism, which is based on the Bible, states that God created every plant and animal, and then placed them together on earth. Thus everything came directly from the hand of the Creator.

We read from the book of Genesis: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit… Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth… cattle and creeping thing… So God created man in his own image.” (Genesis 1, 11-21; 24-27).

According to some interpreters of the Bible, this creation of all living things took place 4004 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since then, plants and animals have populated the earth without changing their form or capacity, since they were already completely formed from the beginning.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882), while studying the shapes of extinct animals preserved as fossils, and comparing them to animals living in his time, observed that all animal species appeared as improved variants of their predecessors.

It became clear to him that the different creatures did not appear on earth at the same time, fully formed, but issued from one another. In developing its faculties, the simplest creature brought forth a creature a little more evolved, which in advancing its own qualities enabled a new creature endowed with superior qualities to itself to emerge, and so on to the great apes, and finally the human being.

Therefore the many plants and animals we know today did not exist from the beginning but are the result of a slow process of evolution and transmission of faculties.

Thus, over millions of years, living species appeared, not simultaneously as creationists believe, but successively, and not complete with finished qualities, but gradually becoming improved.

The controversy

When in the middle of the 19th century Darwin presented his ideas, he was strongly challenged by creationists. He was in effect questioning the fundamental vision of the world and man that had prevailed hitherto.

Man was suddenly relegated to the rank of a glorified animal since he was now a descendant of apes. It also implied that he had not been created in the image of God but in that of the ape. Worse still, if animal species originated one from another, it meant that God did not create them but that they had created themselves. God was therefore not the Creator of everything, and perhaps we could infer that He did not exist at all.

For any believer to question the creative omnipotence of God is nonsense, and this is what drives him to reject evolutionism.

The problem is that the evolutionary approach is based on the observation of concrete and incontestable facts leading to the conclusion that filiation and evolution of species are logical and objective.

How can this impasse be averted?

The key : a broader approach

In spite of appearances, creationism and evolutionism are not irreconcilable because the elements of truth that each advocates are not at the same level. Creationism actually refers to the creation of souls, while evolutionism refers to the physical bodies into which souls incarnate..

For the sake of simplicity we will limit ourselves to animals and human beings. The creation of the animal species, followed by that of man, as described in the Bible, and on which creationists base their arguments, concerns the animating core of these creatures, that is, the animal soul (souls of dogs, horse, ape, and so on) and the human spirit. All were created by God, each with its own characteristics.

Now, the human spirit needs a physical body to clothe itself and stay on earth, just as the animal soul also needs a body of dense matter for the same purpose. But where were these vessels on earth? At the beginning they did not yet exist on the planet Earth and needed to be formed. These vessels were not formed at the same time, but one after the other in the course of an evolutionary process spanning millennia, as pointed out precisely by the evolutionist approach.

A long evolution of the body

The most basic animal soul was incarnated in the simplest animal body comprising only a single  cell.

In its struggle to survive, this animal brought its body to a little higher stage of development, which, through multiplication of  species, offered souls a little more improved the opportunity to be embodied in such bodies. These souls in turn brought their bodies up to a higher level, thus allowing yet more evolved souls to incarnate. The process is repeated until the bodies of the great apes were formed, and in some descendants’ bodies human spirits finally incarnated instead of souls of apes.

These apes became extinct. The incarnation of human spirits in their bodies was possible only within a very definite period. The great apes in question had reached their highest stage of development on earth. Though different, their faculties came close to those of human spirits, who were less developed at that time since they were still at the beginning of their journey of development. Thus the most developed of the lower species was able to provide a vessel to the least developed of the higher species. That vessel was transformed to become more human by the spirit presence, and human spirits could incarnate into human bodies and no longer into bodies of apes.

It should be noted that a more developed body, not a different one, is passed on throughout the course of evolution. This body only changes through the action of the animating core. The ape did not pass on a human body to the spirit, but the body of an ape.  It is only because the spirit took possession and inhabited that body and began to utilise it that it finally acquired a human form.

Souls already created

The progressive evolution of the physical body here on earth provided souls in the beyond the opportunity to incarnate, one after the other, as and when the vessels which they needed to come to earth were formed.

Therefore an evolution exists at the level of physical bodies, and not at the level of souls, which had already existed as such before their incarnation, since they were created by God. They do not, therefore, originate from each other. In other words, the spiritual core of human souls created by God existed long before his incarnation on earth. Being able to incarnate in the material allows him to experience and develop.

The soul of an ape cannot develop into a human spirit any more than a human spirit can regress to become the soul of an ape. Creationists and evolutionists are not in opposition but are complementary.

Man, as a spiritual creature, is not a descendant of the ape; only his physical body comes from it.