Do I believe in evolution?

            Whenever anyone asks if I believe in evolution, I don’t know how to respond. Not because I’m not sure what I believe, just that I don’t know what they mean. Do they want to know whether or not I accept the observations of Charles Darwin, when he noticed that animals can adapt to unique and changing environments. I absolutely believe that animals can and do adapt, often resulting in speciation, the creation of a new and separate species. But when most people ask if I believe in evolution, they really mean, do I believe that the diversity of life on Earth can be wholly and entirely explained as a product of random and spontaneous evolutionary processes. If that’s the question then no, I don’t believe in it. 

           You'll notice I added two key words: random and spontaneous. Random means by pure chance, like rolling a set of five dice and coming up with yahtzee each and every time. That’s not going to happen. Spontaneous means occurring on it’s own, with nothing to initiate or guide it, like when my wallet gets up and walks to the other side of the room to hide under my jacket, all on its own.

            There’s nothing that Darwin observed that would indicate spontaneity. In fact, it was only after something in the environment triggered a change that speciation occurred, like an earthquake splitting an island in two, or London’s soot turning the trees a few shades of grey darker. (Don‘t worry; it was only about fifteen shades of grey, not fifty.) And nothing that he described would indicate randomness either. The ability to adapt in response to change is actually strong evidence for a Creator. If my Wizards and Dragons videogame gets harder as my character gains experience points, I attribute it to good programming, by whoever wrote the code years before I ever became a level seven elven ranger, not to random glitches in the software. All kinds of things “evolve” over time: cars, TVs, cell phones, and refrigerators. With phones, it seems like new versions appear every few months, each one just a little more developed than the last. Does anyone believe that’s random, or happening on its own? Of course not; we all know it’s carefully orchestrated by greedy corporate bigwigs who like to steal children’s candy while rubbing their hands together and saying, “Ehhhx-cellent” in a thin, reedy voice.

            So yes, I do believe in the principle of evolution, the observed process of adaptability in species, programmed and guided by God. Do I believe in the Theory of Evolution, wherein all life randomly and spontaneously grew out of electrostatically charged amino acids? Not so much.